Apricot Press

In the distance I hear the entertainer singing Magic Moments too close to the microphone. I usually have to wait for him to finish, but apparently she’s already in her room today, staying away from it all. This place just looks like a larger than average bungalow from the outside, but the corridor down to her room seems endless and reminds me of ones I’ve been chased through in anaesthesia-fuelled dreams. The windows are huge but still manage to avoid the sunlight. The fresh white walls, the aqua-blue linoleum, the red nameplates on every door. She must feel as if she’s been ejected from her room every morning into a tube of toothpaste. I try not to peek through the open doors as I pass, and I ask myself the same question I did this time last week, and every week prior for the last eighteen months. 

Who am I to her today? 

The TV is on but she’s not watching. I don’t think she ever really is, even though she tends to make a show of laughing and saying “Isn’t that terrible?” at all the appropriate moments. I see myself before I can fully see her, in the mirror above her chair. I look humbled and haggard, not a state I would want her to see me in if she were in the whole of her health, but nowadays she tells everyone they look well, so the bluish bags under my eyes, my creased linen shirt, my single shimmering grey hair and the way my bag is half falling down my arm towards my elbow doesn’t bother me. Having said that, I’m still disappointed I haven’t run into the woman who’s always in the dining hall and says “Youth is beauty” while shaking her head at me. 

I take a couple of tentative steps in through the open door, but I don’t bother saying anything until I’m right in front of her. Her hair cirrus-light and flyaway, her glasses that no longer help her vision perched on the end of her nose, eyes milky and vacant, hands clutching an empty handbag she keeps wrapped around her wrist at all times. 

“Now!” I say. “There she is!” I avoid saying Nan, or even her name; she’s suspicious of both. She raises her head and looks just to my left. 

“There you are. You’re looking very well.” 

I bow my head as if out of deference to royalty and shuffle over to the bed where I sit down delicately on the cold covers. She stays facing the TV. It’s promising that she’s let me sit down without chiding me as though I’m a lazy maid or a meals on wheels delivery man who’s making himself at home. 

“How are you today?” I ask. “What have you been up to?” 

“Bah!” She raises her eyes to heaven. “The usual. Not a moment’s peace.” 

She lowers her voice conspiratorially, though still not looking at me. “I don’t like that one that comes in when it’s dark. She’s cheeky. I think she thinks this is her own house.”

I consult my mental list of people she tends to mistake me for and cross another one off, because I know she means the night nurse. This is good news. It means I’m in the loop, the select inner circle of people she shares her grievances with, and not the grievance itself. By elimination I conclude that today she must think I’m Mrs. Leavy, a woman three rooms down from her who doesn’t have what she has, but instead riles her up with conspiracies about the staff drugging the mash and blowing second hand smoke through the vents. While I’m in her image I decide to exert a calming influence for a change. 

“Ah she’s harmless” I croon, drawing out my vowels. “You know I think she’s just glad of the company at night.” 

She humphs and looks unimpressed. “Hm. She should leave me to my own devices. I’m not doolally yet, you know.” 

If she missed her exit off the motorway or bought the wrong kind of ham she used to say she was going doolally. 

“No. Not doolally.” 

She sighs wistfully and tells me she just has no energy these days. Not a level of vulnerability she has ever reached with Mrs Leavy, and I’m on edge again. A game show has come on the TV and the theme tune blasts from the screen as the light fades outside.My back aches and I 

straighten exaggeratedly, pulling my shoulders back. I consider turning down the TV, turning on the light, fussing over something, but I don’t want to startle her. Instead she startles me. 

“You shouldn’t be here” she states. 

She turns herself completely in her chair to look at me. It’s disconcerting; I haven’t had more than a sideways glance from her in a while. It used to upset me, but then I was glad of it, because her voice has never really changed, and not being able to see her as she spoke meant I didn’t have to connect it with the sight of her searching my face, nearly feeling my eyes drift apart, my nose sink downwards, my mouth forget my voice, and my hair fade to transparency. I only had to hear myself disappearing without having to watch it happen. Now I feel my throat tighten, because if I’m not the nurse, the neighbor, or the meals on wheels, then I don’t know who that leaves. I could just as easily be an intruder, an in-law, a TV license inspector. 

“You should be off somewhere else.” She nods solemnly. “Making trouble.” 

When she squints her eyes I get ready to stand up and leave, but when she unsquints them my breath catches and I’m rooted to the spot. I feel as though I thought she was out, only for her to enter the room and catch me eating her good biscuits. Or as if I’ve answered her door to a stranger and she’s finally come to take over and tell them what they need to know, me stepping back behind her where I belong. When her eyes turn from mine there are a lot of different places

I could be with her at this moment, and I don’t know whether to choose one or try to exist in them all. My eyes widen and we stare at each other for a moment longer. Then she cocks her head. 

“How old are you now?” she asks. 

I barely miss a beat before answering “Twelve. But it’s my birthday next week.” She raises her eyebrows and looks at me over her glasses. 

“Oh well I know that. Sure I’ve your card already bought.”

Photo credit: cottonbro studio