Outing

Their gray heads bob up and down as they talk in subdued voices on the way back from the stores. I can see them in the rear-view, their puffed-up hairdos all identically elegant because they’re done by the same Polish woman in the parlor next to the cafeteria. I can hear the bags rustling over the tape of Christmas carols and the hum of the motor as they show off their purchases. The nice fabrics and gee-gaws pass back and forth among the seats.

Anna is not taking part. She’s sitting in banished isolation in the row behind me, staring ahead through the windshield and occasionally catching my eye in the mirror. She’s regretful, and I appreciate that, but if she has any idea of my responsibilities, she may also be troubled about what happens next. She’s in hot water and I’m sorry but I have to do my job. We’re running late and the superintendent will have questions that must be answered. I really have no choice. I don’t want to be fired again.

I’ve known Anna as an older woman for a few years, and have been flirting with her and driving her around all that time to various destinations and gatherings, sometimes alone but often in the company of this same group of companions. I drive all these old characters around. Mornings we go to radiation and dialysis centers, afternoons there are outings and social visits. The faces change but the hairdos remain the same as each of these old ladies rides around with me for a few months or a few years and is then replaced by another. My wife Karla says I drive them all to the cemetery. It’s not literally the case, but that's sort of how it is.

Anna is special in that she’s the only one I knew from before. Thirty years ago, she used to direct plays in the old town hall building in the Ponkapoag village, and I took part in some of them. I was in a Pirandello and a Thronton Wilder and a few others I forget. My best role was Biff Loman in Death of a Salesman. Anna said I had good timing, and for a while there was talk of sending me to some fancy place in Connecticut, but then I did a stretch in Billerica and things took a different turn.

At the mall this afternoon, I had to wait an extra half hour for Anna to show up. She knew she was late and was urgently pushing her classy walker forward with the bag almost tumbling out of the basket. As I was helping her into the van, she made a halting excuse in a barely audible voice about how important it was to get the right style of shirts for her nieces and nephews, but the helicopter view, as my dispatcher Esmerelda would say, is that she’s getting pretty far along the route. Her condition has advanced to where she’s becoming irresponsible and we can’t handle it any more.

After making the turn into the long driveway that goes up to the Briarwood Assisted Living Facility, I loop through the entryway to the nursing home building at the bottom of the hill, slowing down in front of the door as if to let someone off. Just before rolling to a dead stop, I slam the wheel hard and gun the motor to take the van the rest of the way up the hill.