Remember Me

The door eased open with only a mere creak to announce the intruder. A man wearing a tan topcoat peered through the crack and examined the room. It was small and stark, not too far from being a monk’s cell rather than living quarters, but it was filled with love and memories, wilting flowers and hanging pictures. The stink of all-purpose cleaner assaulted the man’s senses making him want to sneeze, but he could see that Aunt Melba was still asleep. She was on the bed under the boat picture, the one of her and her husband holding fishing rods while their gleaming teeth sparkled in the sun. If it weren’t for her matted hair sticking out from the antiseptic covers, he’d have thought one of the nurses has forgotten to make the bed.

He walked into the room keeping his steps steady so his rubber soles patted the waxed floor with the gentleness of feline paws. Micro tornadoes swirled the dust into new patterns behind the wake of the door, and Melba stirred and muttered in her sleep. Her voice sounded parched, strained, and the words were like the forgotten uttering of a soul lost in the woods. The man could see that her forehead was crinkled with worry lines, and the hand sticking out to the side quivered like autumn leaves straining to hold onto the tree. “Aunt Melba,” the man whispered, and then he let the door shut; holding it steady so there was only a gentle click to disturb the silence.

He walked over to the table next to the bed and studied the pictures. He took one at random and peered at the happy face of the old woman holding her arms across the shoulders of twin boys, blond kids with wide smiles. The man reached to his own head and ran his fingers through his dusty brown hair. A couple of locks still held the hint of blond, but that was it. Time was passing for him as well as the old woman.

He looked into the background of the photo and saw a pair of grinning clowns holding bunches of balloons. As he brought the photo closer to his eyes, he saw the lie in the picture, the offset that changed the entire scene. The smiles were painted smiles, red lines that stretched across white faces, but even in the picture, he could see the thin lines of angry lips. It was bit strange seeing the mixture of emotion on children’s entertainers, but he guessed even clowns had to be human, once in a while.

The old woman muttered and shifted, and the man put the picture back on the table. He stroked her wrinkled forehead while fighting the impulse to cringe at the clammy skin, and then sat down in the chair next to the bed. He folded his hands and studied the woman’s face, the pallid skin, the cracked lips. It was a rough path from the smiling woman that was photographed not to far from angry clowns. Did the clowns fight? Was it a territorial dispute, like the kind between neighboring dogs? It was an old picture from a forgotten time, a past lost even to the old woman, withering alone in a small room.

The old woman stirred again, and then her eyelids popped open like dirty windows wrenched up to let in fresh air. The eyes had become as old as the woman’s skin, the iris a pale shade of blue and the white streaked with red. They rotated in their sockets until they rested on the man, and then the woman opened her mouth. The man thought she was about to say something, a greeting of sorts, but all she did was run her tongue over her cracked lips leaving a bit of spittle in the corner. “Aunt Melba?” the man said, and the woman looked away. She seemed to study the photos on the shelf next to her bed, seeking memories and answers. They paused on one picture, a laughing child riding a horse, and then she tipped her head back and stared at the ceiling. “Aunt Melba, it’s me. Don’t you remember?” The old woman kept her lips shut and made kind of a clucking sound in her throat.

The man sighed and passed his gaze across the pictures again, and then he grabbed the one with the angry clowns and handed it to the old woman. “Hey, remember that day at the circus? Cotton candy, elephants, lots of acrobats. We had a great time, remember?” The old woman held the picture close to her face, her withered hand making it shake, and then she let the picture and hand drop to her chest. The man closed his eyes. She was still sinking. “Remember the clowns?” he said, and then he leaned back and covered his face with his arm.

“Harry?” the woman said, and the man looked up. The name was more croaked than spoken, but it was a word, an actual word. She glared at the ceiling, screwing up her face as if in a mental struggle, and then she lifted the picture and held it in front of her eyes. “Harry?” she said again, and then she looked back and forth from the picture to the man seated next to her side. She seemed to smile for a moment, and then the grin faded, melted away like ice cream in the hot sun. “Not Harry. Harry’s dead.”

“Yes,” the man said, and then he put a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “I miss him.”

The woman stared at the photo again, and then let her eyes dart back and forth between the man and picture of twin boys. “Howard?” she asked, and the man smiled.

“Yes. Howard,” he said, and then he leaned forward and kissed the old woman’s crinkled forehead. “I love you, Aunt Melba,” he said, and he sat by her side holding her hand. The two held that pose until she fell asleep, and then the man replaced the picture and left the room.

The young nurse seated at the reception desk looked up. “You stayed fifteen minutes past your usual time.”

The man jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “She remembered something. I’ve been coming in for three weeks and nothing, but tonight, she remembered. She remembered that her nephew, Harry, was dead.”

“Oh. That’s a happy thought.”

“It’s a thought,” the man insisted, leaning over the desk with his fists planted on the hard surface. “Hey, anything is progress, isn’t it?”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” the nurse said as she pulled a locked box out of a file drawer. She opened the box and began pulling out bills, fives and tens. She handed the wad over to the man and waited as he counted it.

“Uh, you gave me an extra five.”

“You earned it,” she told the man, and then she handed him a file. “Feel up to another job? He’s a Vietnam War veteran named Jason Bergstrand. Same condition as Melba. He has a younger brother about your age.”

“Name?” the man asked as he studied the file.

“Robert. Bobby for short. Room 226.”

“Okay, thanks.” The man put the file down and walked down the hall to room 226. He eased the door open and peered into the room through the crack. An old man was sitting on a chair by the window. His hair was long and gray making the younger man think of Woodstock, and hippies smoking weed. The younger man walked into the room and sat on the bed next to the old man, and then he waited. When the old man turned his tired eyes away from the window, the younger man said, “Hey bro. Remember me?”