THE WARM SMELL of hogs was one thing, but the stink of the nursing home always gagged Gene as soon as he walked into the lobby. He wished he could keep his helmet on when he went in, but he hung it on the handlebars of his BMW and walked across the parking lot. To the left were mini apartments, little duplexes clumped together, assisted living homes for the elderly who could still mostly function on their own. These units circled a grassy courtyard with a fountain and a recreational building, which also housed their own cafeteria and a large room for crafts, movies, and bingo. His mother, Elizabeth Barnes, stayed in the larger building, the one Gene referred to as the slobber house, the one for old people who were far gone and needed constant attention.
The slobber house was emblematic of Carmi and this whole region of Southern Illinois. Carmi was one sprawling nursing home anyway. Most young families left, or when kids finished high school they moved to larger cities and never came back. Most of the people his age had either moved or died. The old folks who remained were eventually transferred to nursing homes where they could finish their years in derangement, misremembering their personal histories, family histories, and the history of Southern Illinois—all in a miasma of piss and baby food.
Gene checked in at the front desk, and the receptionist, Laurel, recognized him immediately and smiled behind her bangs while checking the computer.
“Hi, Mr. Barnes!”
Gene always winced when anyone called him Mr. Barnes.
“It’s not visiting hours until seven,” she drawled. “Is it an emergency?”
“I’m traveling out of town and may be gone for a while.”
“No problem. Elizabeth is already up and in the community room. Have a good visit!” Gene wondered if she were flirting with him. Laurel was certainly cute. To be cute at that age, mid-twenties, all a girl had to possess was good skin and little fat, but she was much better than not fat. He would have traded Danise for Laurel any day.
The community room was a large colorless room with white-curtained windows and beige, fake-marble linoleum tile. A television showed The Weather Channel on a big-screen TV in the corner, which Gene thought was funny since none of these residents ever went outside, and the weather in this building was always the same: musty, urinary. Gene soon picked out his mother in her wheelchair among the rows of other white-haired ladies, whose heads bobbled like wispy dandelions in the late summer.
Elizabeth had once been fantastically pretty—Gene still had pictures of her and his dad, and she looked like a young Elizabeth Taylor or Natalie Wood with thick dark hair, pale skin, and a charming smile. After his parents married, his mother taught middle school for several years and never lost her sweet, not-quite-condescending, reassuring singsong teacher’s voice, ideal for a full-time mother of two troublesome boys. When he was growing up she filled out a bit, but was always one of the prettier soccer moms on the sidelines. Later she put on a bit more weight and looked like a sweet, plump, doting grandmother, a part she played well, but now, even though Gene prepared himself before each visit, he was struck by her emaciated frame.
Gene approached her with a casual, “Hey, Mom” and wheeled her toward an alcove, studying her once full head of hair, now thinned to white unwashed cobwebs and combed back over a dull, pale skull. The reception area, with two avocado-green vinyl chairs and matching vinyl couch, was where he usually wheeled her so they could talk privately, if one could call these talks “private” or even “conversations.”
“Are we going to a basketball game, Kelly?”
“No, Mom. Kelly was your uncle. He died thirty years ago.”
“Oh. That’s too bad.”
Gene sat facing her in one of the vinyl chairs and touched the back of her hand, birdlike bones beneath crepe-paper skin. “I’m Gene. Your son.”
“You’re awful old to be my son,” she said skeptically.
“Well I am.”
She looked down at her wheelchair, a little puzzled, then said decisively, “My car is in the shop. All they had was this convertible.”
Gene laughed in one short blast and shook his head. A few other sparse-haired old ladies dozed or stared from their wheelchairs parked at the end of the hallway less than thirty feet from their little alcove.
“Look, they must have their cars in the shop, too. They’re all driving convertibles.”
He tossed his head back and laughed again. “Hope it doesn’t rain,” he said. He found his mother easier to get along with in her demented state and cartoony emotions than when she had her wits about her but was always having her feelings hurt and feeling sorry for herself. At least this state of mind was entertaining and didn’t make him feel guilty. He shook his head, wondering where his mother thought she was at this very moment, then tried to get serious. He could stretch out his arm and touch an empty gurney, recently occupied, and supposed that someone had died there in the middle of the night.
“Mom, there’s something I need to tell you.” He paused until she looked up at him. “Miller is dead.”
“Who’s Miller?”
“Oh gawd,” he sighed, then mustered more patience. “Miller is your son, my brother.”
“He is? Where’s my husband?”
“Pardon?”
“I said where’s my husband?”
“You don’t have a husband.”
“I do too have a husband. I’ve always had a husband.”
“Mom, you don’t have a husband. Dad died years ago.”
“I do too have a husband. I just saw him. He went right through there,” she said, nodding down the hall where someone, he didn’t see who, went into a room.
“Mom, trust me, you don’t have a husband. Dad died of a heart attack twenty years ago.”
“Oh, thank goodness,” she sighed, clearly relieved. “I didn’t think I could ever love anyone again.”
Gene guessed that his mother was referring to Bobby, her high school sweetheart she always wanted to marry but never did because her family believed Bobby was literally from the wrong side of the tracks that cut through Carmi, not the type of people their people married.
“Did you hear what I told you, about Miller?”
“Yes, I heard you.”
“OK.”
They sat there facing each other, and Elizabeth smiled at him sweetly. It was the kind of smile a small child would give an indulgent stranger in the next booth at a restaurant.
“Mom, I gotta get going. But I thought you should know. Maybe it will sink in later. Maybe you’re better off not understanding.”
Gene wheeled his mother back to the community room among the rows of old people who stared straight ahead or looked up at him and smiled. The smell of mushy greenbeans spilled into the whole room, mingling with the tang of urine, hospital bromide, and antiseptics. Gene bent down and kissed his mother’s tissue-paper cheek.
“Love you, Mom. I’ll be back soon.”
“Thanks for visiting,” she said, looking up at him through her watery brown eyes with what Gene thought looked very much like love.