Raven during his oral examination.
So, in the end, it was no big deal, though of course it is not the end, strictly speaking, just another buoy on the long voyage.
I hit the door to the lobby at Potemkin Village at ten sharp. I saw two women- one young and the other a bit older than me- though that is increasingly a tenuous guess- waiting at the elevator.
I had a hunch it was them, Mary from Admissions and the Bay Bluffs Social Worker, and they were headed upstairs to do Raven’s assessment.
I raced them in the other slow elevator and managed to catch them in the corridor before they knocked on the door.
“Hi,” I said, extending my hand to the older lady. “You might be Mary?”
“I am,” she responded, and shook my hand. She had some semi-Euro glasses and nicely cut dark blonde hair. “This is my associate, Kelly, our Social Worker.”
“Great, glad I caught you before you went in.”
“We thought you might be Vic when you came in the lobby.”
“Yeah, our appearance lowers the average age here by a couple decades,” I said. “So, what is it we need to accomplish in this meeting?”
“Nothing really,” said Mary. “We just want to chat with your father.”
“That is likely to be a challenge,” I said brightly. “But let’s get on it.”
I made a symbolic tap on the door-knocker to the apartment and ushered the women in. Big Mama was a little flustered by the appearance of the ladies, who I explained I had met at my meeting, and they wanted to chat.
Raven was seated on the faux leather couch and was briefly stimulated. He had no shoes, so I had to locate some and got down on the floor to put them on him. While I was down there I noticed Mary had on some stylish flats, constructed of elegant swaths of shiny geometric contrasting leather. “Nice shoes, Mary,” I said appreciatively.
Big Mama said: “Don’t put holes in my floor.”
Mary laughed. “I used to wear spikes, I did. But not any more.”
“How tall?” I asked.
“Three or four inches,” she said, seeming embarrassed. “It was another life.” I was interested by her reaction, and what she might have done before becoming a licensed Practical Nurse and living in Alansan, Michigan. She might have thought the same thing, and opened her notebook to demonstrate that an official moment had begun.
Mary asked Raven the first question, which was something like “William, Bill? Which do you prefer?”
Dad was slowly slumping to his left and looked at Mary without much interest. I said he preferred Bill, back when he was communicating, but that we called him Raven now because of his fondness for shiny articles. The first stop on the trips up here were always to the locksmith, since he gathered up all the keys to the house and hid them someplace. We didn’t find the hoard until we got down to the bottom layers of his closet in the big clean out.”
Big Mama poses a question about the whereabouts of her car.
Big Mama was engaged in the moment, glad to have guests, and carried on a conversation that had nothing to do with what we were talking about. Raven lost interest and seemed to sag in on himself and went to sleep, his mouth gaping open.
Mary introduced Kelly to Big Mama, and Kelly in turn started to ask her when we first noticed stuff was going wrong.
“You know, I went to that High School,” Big Mama said, apparently referring to something playing on Turner Classic Movies we could not see.
“I think it was when Raven was 84 or so,” I said. “We thought it was his hearing at the time. Remember when he lost all those hearing aids?” I said to Mom.
She nodded. “I don’t think it was hearing, I think it was cognition.”
We continued a nice chat, Big Mama talking about the movie, and her high school, and Mary and Kelly asking me about the family history. I filled them in as Raven slept, slumping slightly to his left, mouth agape.
Mary seemed genuinely interested in getting to know Raven, whether he was going to participate or not. Big Mama interjected points she thought were important along the way. “He was a Naval Aviator in World War Two,” I said.
“Oh,” said Kelly. “We have an Air Force photographer at the Bluffs.” The way she said it made me think of butterflies in a collection, but then, that is what this is about, right?
“And he was an artist and a an auto stylist and a corporate CEO. He owned Curtis Wire here in the Little Village By the Bay, too. He was our Mayor pro tem when he was on the City Council.”
Bluff's Social Worker Kelly.
Kelly took notes. Raven dozed. I showed the ladies the many wonderful features of my iPad, which, coincidently, adorned the cover of this week’s New Yorker, with St. Peter shown looking up a name on his tablet at the Pearly Gate in front of a fellow in jeans and a black turtleneck.
Admissions Director Mary.
After twenty minutes, Mary folded down the cover of her spiral notebook and asked Kelly if she had any further questions. She said she didn’t. The ladies got up and I was not fast enough to help Mary with her coat. Big Mama was excited by the activity, and got out of her chair.
“Why don’t we take Dad down to the lounge and get coffee and a donut. Would you like that, Mom?”
“Oh, yes. That would be wonderful. I glanced at the clock, realizing I had a full hour to kill before the Challenged Lunchroom opened up. Raven awoke to the bustle in the apartment and spoke for the first time. “Thanks!” he said.
Big Mama was working on getting her shoes on. I went out in the hall to speak to the ladies.
“So,” I said. “What is next?”
“Well, we think that your father needs a space in the back room,” said Mary. Kelly nodded. “We would have to move things around. We will call once Kelly’s evaluation is filed and we make a plan.”
“You will call?” I asked. Mary nodded, and the ladies walked down the corridor toward Sheri’s beauty shop and the slow elevator bank.
I turned and went back into the apartment. Raven was up, and in the kitchen.
“Great news,” I said to Big Mama. “Raven passed his test.”
“Oh, that is wonderful,” she said. “Did they spend the night here?”
“No, Mom. But everything is going to be just fine.” I have no idea if that is true, sptrctly speaking, but I figure if I say it enough it might be true.
I held Raven’s hand as we slowly moved down the hall and boarded the elevator with Irene and one of her helpers. They were apparently headed for the exercise class in the multi-function room. I sang the first bars of “Irene Goodnight,” to her, as I always do, and she said that she loved me.
Raven was very interested in the exercise class, but we steered him into the coffee lounge. Beth, a stout woman in dark scrubs, showed me the trick to the coffee maker, and in exactly as much time as that took, Raven got out of his chair and disappeared into the corridor. He was reaching for the knob to apartment 132 to enter when I got to him.
“No, Dad.” I gently took his arm above his now-thin left arm. “That is what is getting you evicted. Let’s just get a cup of coffee and a donut, shall we?”
“Damn,” he said.
“I wish you could have said that when the ladies were here. But the good news is you passed the test.”
“Damn,” he said.
Raven after his test. All Photos Socotra, rights reserved.
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com