Your mother, the social worker says, "is having some trouble adjusting." (a short story)
Landau, Annette Henkin
ANNETTE HENKIN LANDAU "YOUR MOTHER," THE SOCIAL WORKER SAYS, "IS HAVING SOME TROUBLE ADJUSTING." The nurse telephones. She has fallen out of bed again, my imperious mother. "I can't manage her...
...Goin' home now," she says, "she do it on the next shift" I complain of this in Family Conference...
...I am still angry with her...
...We find Lily in the corridor, tied into her wheelchair in front of the television set, her head slumped on her chest...
...It's a nice room...
...Annette Henkin Landau is a reference librarian and freelance writer, whose work last appeared in Commentary, February 1977...
...My most feeling, tender-hearted child...
...The Mayor of New York wanted to marry her, but she didn't love him...
...The architect has fastened them to rods and hung them at different heights from the ceiling, sharp, spiky, unreadable as stalactites...
...How can you be so selfish...
...Stricken people...
...Angry, I hang up...
...Could your daughter...
...In later years she thinks better of him, she forgives him for marrying me...
...I need her, so she comes with me...
...I yell at my daughter...
...When my mother was fourteen, I tell her, she won first prize in an essay contest for all the children of the City of New York...
...First he tells me his troubles...
...With a B.A...
...She will not forgive him any more...
...Lily is the one who never hears me, she is so busy worrying about other people's children...
...I have a job, I worked hard to get it, a master's degree, three credits at a time, ninety dollars a point...
...An old man plucks at me and grimaces like a conspirator...
...She doesn't remember me...
...My present sister-in-law's ex-husband is also bothering him...
...Coffee is served in styro-foam cups...
...A sweeping contemptuous arm is my answer...
...All I can say," he begins in a tight, cultivated voice, "is that I brought my father here a fine, alert gentleman...
...What are you crying," says my grandmother, "I lived enough already...
...She is losing...
...I run down the corridor...
...The other O.D.'d...
...To cheer things up...
...How does Lily look, her few old friends whisper...
...The words shock me...
...My Lily was the smartest girl in New York, said my grandmother as she lay dying...
...A tall man speaks...
...The sound is off...
...The Supervisor looks at me coldly...
...He wears sharp denim leisure suits, his mouth turns down at the corners...
...Is that what I really want...
...She sings "Bei Mir Bist Du Scheyn...
...I am only fifteen...
...Schmeer," croaks Lily frantically, schmeer...
...She should be in a nursing home...
...It is not easy...
...My mother, I start to say, but the elevator doors open and he leaves...
...The Social Worker scolds me...
...Also the money...
...Water is running down between her legs...
...It makes me think of Lily's life, her drive, her pushy ways, her obsession with the school...
...I am too late...
...The wheelchairs are drawn up in front of them, heads are sunk on chests...
...Do," he says...
...She fills up on books and articles, writes papers for conferences, reads them before professionals in her brash downtown accent...
...My mother is senile...
...In the distance I see two aides in white uniforms...
...The bed is wet...
...Our eyes meet...
...I have a teenage daughter...
...To die in your own house, that's the right thing to do...
...Incontinent...
...We have an extra room, I say tentatively...
...I don't believe it...
...No go...
...A famous sex therapist is giving a lecture on Thursday evening: Beyond Sensuality...
...Angry tears sting my eyes...
...We are turning our parents over to their enemies, I cry bitterly, stung as I am by the charges of bribery...
...Whatever is past is past, she says...
...He gives me to understand that I am trying to fob my obligations off on him...
...The only problem was his legs, he couldn't get around...
...Nobody comes...
...She is pretty, her dark eyes brim with sympathy, her head nods in perpetual acquiescence...
...I apologize to her...
...Incontinent...
...Don't let me get crazy like this...
...There is a Family Conference for the children of the residents...
...Guilt, says Social Service, shaking her head in reproof...
...I do not dare to tell them...
...She traveled and met somebody who wanted to marry her, but she scoffed at the idea...
...Sidney wants me to come home," she says, "he can't manage without me...
...I hate myself...
...Her school one of the first in the city, still cited in the literature...
...Six television sets are on, two have no sound and one is flopping...
...A pioneer without credentials, the State Education Department is always after her...
...I will always be there to front for her, she never has to give up the school...
...The subject was Citizenship...
...Shoot me first...
...In the end the dirty job falls to my husband...
...Who knows the right thing to do...
...A practical plan...
...At my funeral you want them to say what a wonderful daughter you were you put me in a place like this...
...They're going to give her a school to run, accounts to go over, parents to consult with...
...I don't need his Israeli irony...
...He made her a widow at fifty...
...I can't spare any money for private nurses, I got alimony, child support, doctor's bills...
...I call my brother in Chicago...
...She wants to go to the bathroom...
...A pioneer in early childhood education...
...It's a nice room, Mom...
...We cry in each other's arms...
...I don't take education courses...
...I look around the table...
...On the bulletin board is a notice...
...Make me a promise," she says to me...
...Tell me about Mother," she says...
...Magic words to make you vanish...
...Troubled eyes in Lily's young face, taffy colored hair in a splendid Jewish Afro...
...Lily, sitting beside her mother's hospital bed, laughs tearfully...
...Lily is dying and I am still angry with her...
...Social Service frowns...
...All together now, she says, efferybody join in...
...She would take it better from you...
...Poor Lily, flopping out of her nightgown in front of a strange policeman, she must have hated that...
...They assign a Social Worker...
...Years ago she used to have it straightened...
...A thin blonde woman says in a worried voice that she can't understand why everything is so dim...
...Her eyes gleam shrewdly, she has a trump card...
...Now, in her age, he has become the prince of her dreams...
...All important people, I recognize the names...
...The doctor is an Israeli...
...She is too heavy for me, her fat old legs don't work any more...
...It is on the grounds of a famous Jewish hospital...
...She is laughing, her arm raised to keep her straw hat from blowing away, the smartest girl in the City of New York, starting on her honeymoon...
...And Sidney, my father, the school set him free to find his fortune in a multitude of imaginative businesses, chocolate covered popcorn, synthetic heels that explode in the summer heat, every gamble beginning with high enthusiasm (the chance of a lifetime...
...The gutsiness of her, a bookkeeper with a high school diploma, she made herself into an authority...
...Here is the occupational therapy room, does Mother like to crochet...
...For a moment I think she is going to lose her professional decorum...
...To race up the stairs at Lily's command, carrying bedpans, wringing my hands raw, screaming at my husband, blaming my child...
...Your mother," the Social Worker says, "is having some difficulty adjusting...
...If you bribe you start a situation that we cannot control...
...The occupants are invisible, it is rest time, but each room has a balcony and a private bath...
...She held on to the school too long, then she sold it...
...and ending in disillusion (the partner turned out to be a bastard...
...Oh fine," says the Social Worker, relieved that I have remembered something...
...I open my mouth hopefully and something comes out...
...My daughter strokes my shoulder awkwardly...
...She saw the need for it...
...She tells the aides who she is, what she wants them to do, how they are to run the school...
...Sometimes she liked to listen to music, thinking of the time she had an opera subscription...
...Baby, do what you want," he says...
...Grandma," says my gentle daughter, touching Lily's hair...
...To take me out of my beautiful apartment and put me in a place like this...
...I ring for the aide...
...You must not bribe," she says...
...He doesn't need my American ambivalence...
...The Mayor of New York himself hung the medal around her neck to thunderous applause...
...What to do with the accumulation of bronze memorial plaques that were gathered from the walls and doors and beds of the home on Eastern Parkway...
...Why are you letting them do this," she says...
...We are encouraged to say what is on our minds, the Staff appreciates our difficulties...
...Finis...
...She is not in charge...
...Margo...
...I'm up to my butt in psychiatrists...
...Frail and fearful, they do not dare to visit her...
...One of them is trying on a blonde wig, the other is screaming with laughter...
...And the First Prize goes to—Lily Gotdieb, Washington Irving High School...
...It is easier for him, he is less involved...
...Can I make such a promise...
...Social Service says that she has exhausted the skills of domestic aides...
...She loved instead an Italian on the boat coming over, for three weeks throwing up in his lap...
...The Supervisor gives the tour at a measured pace, stopping nowhere, drawing attention with discreet social worker gestures to the muted lighting, thick carpets, wide corridors, gliding elevators...
...Make me a promise...
...Through the telephone he shrugs...
...The mother dies she feels better, she did the right thing...
...They really mean peeing...
...He wants my brother to be a better male image for his two sons...
...Lily will not raise her head...
...Maybe a little color, a few posters...
...I push it into the hand of the aide...
...I stare at my mother...
...Hurry," she gasps...
...My mother was a woman of accomplishment, I was going to say...
...I don't know what to say...
...I visit Lily's doctor...
...Research has demonstrated that older people prefer muted colors...
...She is a middle-aged woman back in the job market, like myself...
...You could come and tell her she has to be in a nursing home...
...Her voice sighs professionally...
...Her eyes are wild, she rages at me...
...The building is massive, stressed concrete, bulging and curving and rippling into balconies, shadowy gray glass slitting dense walls...
...We meet with the Staff in the Board Room, around a rosewood directors' table...
...She puts her head down on the hospital bed, her tears fall on my grandmother's hand...
...But Lily is the personage, the one the parents trust...
...How does she look...
...The Supervisor is pleased to explain that point...
...We have the eyes of cancer patients...
...The rest pay no attention...
...Go visit your grandmother...
...She takes a folded sheet and wedges it under Lily...
...At the rear of the lobby is a place where the architect has solved a problem in aesthetics...
...The aide comes in and stares at the wet bed with flat expressionless eyes...
...My father...
...Tell me what to do...
...I betray her...
...She becomes desperate and I try to help her off the bed...
...Grandma," says my daughter, leaning over the wheelchair, the movie is over...
...Lily in a photograph, her chin high, white pleated skirt blowing across slim ankles, on the handsome granite steps of Pennsylvania Station...
...She has not forgotten how to give orders, but she does not know what to do when nobody takes them...
...I am thinking about it...
...Sometimes a daughter she takes care of the mother, she drives herself crazy, also the husband...
...Only the young black aides watch the programs, interrupting their gossip to cheer as a contestant races down the aisle to claim a refrigerator...
...She sends me to college to get the credentials...
...Someone has to talk to her, she cannot stay in her apartment any more...
...I'm not crying for you, Ma," says Lily...
...There was nothing else to do, I had surrendered my birthright...
...from Barnard and a Master's from Teachers I can keep the director's salary in the family...
...A professional director has to front for her...
...She is studying bio-rhythms...
...A white haired woman with a Viennese accent is playing an accordion and singing into a microphone...
...She wants to send the four children to camp so she can have the summer free...
...Fortunately, it is dark and nobody goes in there...
...I go into the corridor...
...Raging through the upstairs of our house (downstairs the school is going on), her wrath is ungovernable...
...When she retired she read a lot of novels she had missed, but she didn't like them...
...Her lip trembles...
...I think of her still as competent, demanding, her walk brusque, her voice authoritative...
...I rush to the bathroom, find the bedpan and try to put it beneath her...
...No expense has been spared, the building has won an award...
...She has friends, a stereo, they smoke pot You think your mother could handle that...
...The sweet ones smile at her, the careless ones ignore her...
...Some of the wheelchair audience are obedient, they wave handkerchiefs...
...And now...
...Junk, says my mother as they wheel her away, junk...
...I want to do the right thing, I say...
...Tochter," he whispers hoarsely, "help me, get me out of here...
...You want to give up your job to take care of your mother, is that what you really want...
...He liked a little brandy, a good book, a card game...
...My voice chokes...
...Such a literary word, incontinent...
...On the way down in the elevator I stand near the man who broke down...
...We sit in front of the television set...
...Later, later, mama, she is told...
...Last time I went she thought I was someone named Margo...
...She spits at me...
...Meshuggenah daughters...
...I am humoring her too...
...It has a history, this word...
...She has no credentials...
...He shakes his head, he doesn't want to go on...
...All the venerable Children, they packed them up one day and moved them to the suburbs...
...Lily is in the geriatric center three hours and she is giving orders to take her home...
...In the lobby a marble plaque honors the donors...
...She is fighting on unknown terrain...
...And this is the auditorium where we have many programs for Friends of the Center, we hope you will join...
...Jewish teenagers don't seem to want these jobs, she says at last, with a minimum of irony...
...Once it was the Home of the Children of Abraham on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, now it has a secular name...
...You think I don't know what you're doing," she says in her old principal's voice...
...They wheel her chair into a large open area, soft blue carpet, dusky lights...
...Secretly I major in French, by the time Lily finds out it is too late...
...Now he is having trouble with me...
...A holocaust landscape...
...One died of a brain tumor...
...Who accomplishes this...
...His ex-wife, my ex-sister-in-law, has been bothering him...
...We visit the geriatric center, the best in the country, they tell us...
...They smile and humor her...
...I return to Lily's room...
...She wants to kill me...
...Lily kept the school money separate from my father's business, a point of bitterness between them...
...His voice gives way and his face collapses into his hands...
...The youngest child, the one they have between them, is asthmatic...
...And now...
...She berates me, insults me, calls me her enemy, calls me a bum, vows to throw me out into the street, hits me across the face...
...What are you yelling at me for...
...The director who fronted for her...
...She gettin' too heavy for me, I got to get a policeman heist her back...
...Black teenagers racing through the halls, laughing raucously, treating their patients with indifference or contempt...
...She looks furious, her eyes glare with helpless anger...
...She is not really a nurse, Social Service sends her...
...I complain of the quality of the aides...
...Two old movie stars, wetlipped and open-mouthed, are embracing...
...It has a balcony, a loggia like in The Magic Mountain, you remember...
...What should we do about Lily," I say...
...Senile...
...Out of the generations a word comes to Lily, crossing the ocean, fighting through thickets of English...
...Double messages...
...What did she like to do...
...Tell me what she liked to do before she came here...
...I can't manage her no more, mizz," the nurse says, forgetting my name as she always does...
...Somebody has tried to pin her hair flat, but it frizzes wildly, gray and kinky, with its own stubborn will...
...He has a small distinguished paunch, he looks like a lawyer...
...She sings "I'm Just Wild About Harry" and "The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise...
...I search my pocketbook and find a five dollar bill...
...To Help Me Deal With The Trauma...
Vol. 4 • December 1978 • No. 2
