An Old rope

The smell of fresh cotton sheets floated lightly through the air, and the scent was greeted by a feeling of cleanliness that never seemed to escape the building. A few rays of the rising sun seeped through the pulled blinds of Norman’s window, and their irritating presence began to wake him. Wiping his eyes and realizing their flaws, he awkwardly swiped his right hand to the nightstand and rounded up his glasses. A maid with fresh sky-blue sheets stood before him smiling a smile that had become old before it was ever cute.

“You know they tell us the comfort of the world comes in this place, but they won’t even let you wake up by your own means.” Norman grumbled the sentence off, tumbling all the words together, but managing to make his frustration very clear. He took to his feet and set off for his bedside window. The valley that sat outside the bustling parking lot was streaked with golden rays and navy shadows. The morning still possessed its chill and a sheet of fog blanketed the valley’s deepest point. Norman wished to disappear behind this light blanket, and he saw its beautiful existence as nothing more than a tease.

“Tell your manager that I would like to request a new room. One without all this life outside of it.”

“Yes, Mr. Walters.” The maid said dryly, paying no mind to Norman’s discomfort for she had become immune to bitterness some time ago, specifically to the mentioned characteristic that this certain man so possessed. Norman seemed to wear his discomfort as if it were a badge of honor, and the maids expected this mind set upon all their encounters with the troubled soul.

Ever since his wife Marie died, life hadn’t been the same for Norman Walters. Her demise cast a shadow over his existence; one that he was convinced would never leave him. You see, Norman believed that we were all led through life by a rope, a rope that stretched upward along the tallest mountain and disappeared high into the heavens. We climbed this rope vigorously; never questioning what lay ahead, but knowing in our hearts that we must get to the top. The meaning of life pulled us up this mountain, getting us through all the heartache that we all certainly endure during out time, and to Norman, just giving us all one last tease. Just when you thought things were at their greatest, just when the brink of perfection was upon you, when your imagination had run out of spoils for your mind, and just when you began to see the crest of your unreachable mountain, Norman believed that your rope was simply cut, and your life was through. Marie’s death had cut his rope, and things hadn’t been the same since.

Her death brought The Country Inn to Norman, a nursing home that the state provided him free of financial charge but full of mental degradation. It was a painful and regretted hospitality for Norman, a man who thrived on possessing self-respect. Without the blessing of children, there was no one to take care of his after Marie passed on. He resented his late wife for this, almost to the point of blaming her for his newly found troubles. This thought would escape him rather quickly though; his love for her would never allow his mind to process the idea of the two of them trading places. She didn’t deserve this life.

“What day is today?” Norman asked the maid, almost in disgust of the fact that she had not already told him.

“Its Sunday Mr. Walters.” She said, still paying no mind to his tone and instead focusing on the bed’s making.

“Well thank you so much miss. You see in my senile state of mind I had completely lost all grasp of time, only remembering that when the sun is up, so am I, and when the sun is down, I rest. No, what I meant, darlin’ was: What is today’s date?”

“The eighteenth Mr. Walter- ” The bed was finished, and her words were cut off by the slamming of Norman’s door. Realizing the day’s significance, he sighed, and continued watching the morning fog disappear.

Every month, The Country Inn held a visitation day. A day that resembled the days of kindergarten, but where the children of the old come to gawk at what their parents had accomplished in their stay. Norman didn’t have an annoying nephew, or an exaggeratingly excited cousin to come visit him, no. He had no one, and would spend the day in the discomfort of his own room, wallowing in his own despised existence.

Three beats came suddenly across Norman’s door, and although he was now fully awake, the disturbance was just as annoying as the one that preceded it minutes ago.

“My sheets are clean and I’m not dead and I do not want-, Oh, it’s you.”

A delightful man by the name of Thomas Roberts stood stiffly at the door. Tom had always feared Norman with some type of pity, a pity that stemmed from his own happiness, a happiness which Norman could never possess.

“Good mornin’ there Norm. I was just wonderin’ if maybe you would want to have some breakfast with me and my family, seein’ as how, well, I thought you might enjoy the company.” Just as Tom felt pity for Norman’s depression, Norman felt pity for Tom’s ignorance.

“Yeah Tom, that’s real nice and all, but I think I’d rather just sit in here, and, well, just sit in here.” The two men always interacted rather awkwardly, both trying extremely hard to keep their pity from being obvious.

The sun passed slowly over the brightening sky, taking its time to make the day memorable for all those who had lugged miles upon miles to see their loved ones. Norman’s door was open for circulation. The building fried like an adobe hut on humid days, and the open door sometime lessened the extreme heat. The old man sat comfortably in his rocking chair (a family antique which could no longer be passed down), with his feet propped on the fresh sheets of his bed. A light orange shirt that was tucked securely into a wrinkle-free pair of khaki shorts, clung to his dampening body. And an ancient pair of spectacles sat crooked on his nose, allowing his squinted eyes to read the current events from the past week.

“Hey!” Some small voice quickly entered the room and, with the same haste, disappeared behind the other side of the doorframe. Norman dropped his paper for a moment, but discarded the noise as nothing more than a noise.

“Hey!” It came again, this time followed by a small giggle of adolescent disobedience and a soft patter of footsteps. Norman folded his paper calmly and pulled his glasses from his face. The child knew no better and deserved no wrath from Norman, and realizing this, the door was shut abruptly. Silence was restored for a few moments but was suddenly devastated by a mixture of door beating and anxious screams. “Hey! Hey! Hey, hey, hey, hey!” The door was opened and her small mouth fell shut. A young girl stood maybe three feet tall in his doorway, scratching furiously at the uneven part of her pigtails. Norman hovered his body over her own, stretching his neck into the hallway, searching for a parent or grandparent, or stork or something.

An uncomfortable outfit of lace and blue corduroy hung from her small build. The two just stood there staring for some time, curiously searching for explanations to the other’s presence.

“Hello, Sir!” No answer from Norman. “My name is crystal Arlene Thomson. My Mom’s upstairs with Grandpa but he kinda’ has this smell to him that didn’t quite suit me, so I decided to take off runnin and Mom gave up on chasin me when Grandpa told her there was a daycare even further upstairs. When they took me there I took off again, but not cause of another smell but because I thought I kinda missed the smell, but I got lost and you look like Grandpa sorta so I thought Mom might be in here. Have you seen her?” Her words rambled together much like Norman’s, but her reasoning was excitement and not disgust. The girl was, at best, six-years-old, and it pained Norman to see her looking to confide in him, a man with no answers.

“Don’t slur your words together Miss Crystal Arlene Thomson, makes you seem not as smart.”

A moment of silence dominated the air while Crystal attempted to decipher the meaning of Norman’s words. After extracting a topic of interest, she took a deep breath and began again, “Well, I got an A+ on this one worksheet once in spelling with Mrs. Stone. She said only smart cookies could get A’s in spelling. She gave me a sticker and everything, and-” Norman realized what was happening, so he grabbed Crystal by her shoulders, and with her body remaining stiff she was escorted to Norman’s bed. “-and that’s why Mom doesn’t think it’s very nice to make fun of people who don’t do as good as me.” She concluded.

With her mind now content, Crystal sat in silence, staring at Norman. “Crystal it is?” Norman asked stiffly, extending his hand for a shake. The young girl spat in her own hand and then proceeded to mash her palm into that of Norman’s, shaking steadily all the while. “Crystal Arlene Thomson, and your name mister?”

“I’m Norman, Norman Walters.” He said, trying with all his heart to excuse the girl’s disgusting welcome and blame it on adolescence, a quality that was beaming brightly through the space in Crystal’s teeth. “You know young lady, where I come from it is not very nice to exchange such a greeting upon one’s first meeting.”

“Well, where I come from, me spittin’ and you not spittin’ back is mighty insultin’, Norman.” She starred at him with such bewilderment. How curious it was to her that a man might not want to spit in his own hand. Her big blue eyes devoured the shell of Norman, exposing the first glimpse of what used to be a happy man. Never losing eye contact, he placed his hand before his mouth, puttered out a bit of saliva, and extended his reach to give another go at this interesting salutation.

“There you go Norm, now we’re friends.” She said, smiling brightly at the fact that someone liked her. Those beaming baby teeth sparkled in the light of a now setting sun, delicately tugging at Norm’s withered heartstrings and shinning light on a shadowed life. Love, even in the most simplest of forms, had not braced him in the longest time, but there, standing before Norman Walters with her hands energetically tearing at her pigtails, was Crystal Arlene Thomson, with all the love in her heart for a man with nothing but heartache.

“Oh, there you are, honey!” Crystal’s concerned mother said as she entered through the opened door. “I’m so sorry, Sir. I hope she didn’t bother you any. She has the energy of a power plant. She just took right off from daycare upstairs, the little devil. We’re up visiting my father from the east coast. She gets real jittery on those long drives, and-” Norman could see where Crystal got her social skills.

“Oh, no, no. She was no trouble at all, Miss.”

“Well, come on now Crystal, we have to get back to Grandpa.” The woman said taking the girls hand and exiting the room.

“Goodbye Norman! Muah!” Said Crystal as she stormed back into the room, jumped on Norman’s lap, and planted a big kiss on his smooth chin. She then proceeded to chase after her mother, leaving nothing but an elongated shadow that bounced happily down the hallway.

It was a five-minute existence of friendship, and that was all. It was a six-year old’s intellect, a speech on spelling, and another on smells. It was an embrace that comforted Norman as he fell asleep beneath the stars of the Western sky, dreaming of tomorrow, and not of demise. It was a little girl who retied Norman’s rope, and it would hold strong for years to come.