Visiting Hour
She is so much smaller than he remembers. He remembers a vivid, wiry woman, lean hands, a trim figure, dark flashing eyes. Not this listless wraith in a flimsy flowered wrapper. God, when did old age lose its dignity?
Nonetheless he takes her hand. "Hey, Mom."
She turns, and her face lights up like a child's, that uncomplex delight in attention. "Well hello!"
"It's Nathan," he says, standard procedure. She has never yet failed to recognize him, but David claims to have been mistaken for Bobby a couple of times, and he figures it's best to be on the safe side. "Happy Easter. How're you doing?"
"Oh, I'm fine," she concedes, good-humored. "How are you, dear?"
"Doing okay. Keeping busy." For proof he hands her the magazine he's brought along, the page marked with a paper clip because she abhors dog-eared pages. She is always tickled to see his name in print.
"Isn't that something."
"I'm pretty pleased. I didn't expect to get in there."
"That's your trouble," she says, suddenly severe. "You don't have any confidence."
"Oh, Mom." Nathan laughs despite himself.
"Nobody's going to know what you can do if you don't go out there and show them."
"I know. I know, Momma."
She taps the page, emphasizing her point, and then leans over laboriously to put the magazine down on her bedside table. "That way I'll have something to read in bed," she explains.
He smiles. "I guess you will."
Small talk. Talk of the nice lady across the hall and her grandchildren. Of the terrible things you see on the news. Of the flowers in the garden at home, "I do miss those." The decorations they've put up here for the holiday-- crepe paper streamers and store-bought paper eggs tacked to the speckled walls, trappings that strike him as piteous.
Once she asks him, "Are you seeing anybody?"
He stifles a flare of exasperation. Reminds himself that she forgets things, now. And braces himself to answer matter-of-factly.
"I'm with Martin, Mom. You remember, right? He said to say hi."
"Oh, that's right," his mother says, with no hint of anything but satisfied recollection; and then, only then, his heart skips a beat.
Memory fails, but not, apparently, acceptance.
Oh, damn, did I really think otherwise?
Impulsively he leans over to hug her, feeling the frailty of her shoulders. He used to be able to half knock her down with an embrace; now he's gentle, cautious. That, more than anything, brings home the passage of time.