Short Stories from Wing's Authors.

I Knew You When...

by

Linda Rettstatt

Walter walked from room to room and memorized the house one more time. He walked into the bedroom, the one that had been theirs. He could still smell her cologne. He could still see her pattering around in her full slip and bedroom slippers, deciding what dress to wear for the day. For as long as he had known Alma, he had never seen her wear pants like some other women. She always wore a dress and nylons. He loved that about her.

He picked up the picture on the dresser. It had been taken at their fiftieth wedding anniversary. He remembered thinking that he loved her as much that day as he had on the day she became his wife. In the sixty-two years they had now been married, there had never been a single time when Walter even considered another woman. He knew that the same was true of Alma, that she had never turned her eyes toward another man and looked at him in the same way he looked at her.

They had a love that few would ever know. They had a history that only the two of them fully understood. Now it was he, alone, who would remember. He put the picture down, swallowing hard, grabbed his car keys and headed for the garage. He didn’t want to be too late to help with lunch.

At eighty-two, Walter was still a handsome man. He had a full head of thick, white hair and had kept his mustache, the one he had grown when he came back from the war. He was still a tall man, having stood six one in his youth, although he had noticed a droop in his shoulders these days—not quite befitting the proud soldier he had once been. He still towered over Alma, who had stood at exactly five feet when they married. She had begun to shrink in the past few years—seemingly disappearing right before his eyes.

He eased the Buick out of the garage and pressed the button to close the automatic door—a gift from his daughter and son-in-law a few years ago, when arthritis started to make it difficult for him to pull down the old door. The drive across town at this time of the morning was easy and traffic was light. He wasn’t so sure about driving in heavy traffic anymore and generally avoided driving after dark. He knew that his response time and his vision weren’t all that they used to be, back when he and Alma would jump into the car and take off for long Sunday drives together.

Walter pulled into the parking lot of Sunset Acres and shook his head with disgust as he observed a young woman without the proper plates pull into a Handicapped Only parking space near the door and leap out of her car. He hoped that she would never have to use a space like that. Why didn’t people appreciate what they had while they had it? He parked midway between the drive and front door, got out and straightened his jacket.

The first time he’d come here, the place had been called The Geriatric Lifecare Center. He hated that name. It sounded cold and lifeless, all business, he thought. It was sold a year ago and the name changed to Sunset Acres. He hated this name even more. Sunsets were beautiful, something that he and Alma had always enjoyed watching. In this case, sunset only meant eventual darkness and that scared him, made him feel vulnerable and alone. Why couldn’t they call this place something positive and cheerful, hopeful even? He had to admit, though, that even he couldn’t come up with a hopeful name for such a place.

The receptionist, whom Walter had come to know well, greeted him cheerfully, “Hi, Walter. My, don’t you look spiffy today!” She then turned to answer the phone.

She was always sweet enough, but today her greeting just unsettled him. Who used the word ‘spiffy’ any more! He didn’t want to come here, didn’t want to spend his day here, didn’t want to then go home alone.

He passed the gift shop and thought of getting some flowers, but they would go untended and die. There was enough death around here already, in various forms.

Walter got a whiff of a familiar odor—the smell of hospital clean—that ammonia and pine smell that clung to the air and made your shoes squeak on the freshly-mopped tile floors. It took him back sixty years, back to when his son, Michael Joseph was born. He had paced for hours, worrying about Alma and worrying about the baby. Alma’s mother had been alive then and kept telling him to sit down, that nature had to take its course and all of his pacing wouldn’t speed things up one bit. He would sit for a moment and then jump back up and look down the corridor. He remembered seeing Alma after the baby had been delivered. Mike was a big baby—eight pounds, nine ounces—and Alma was so small. She looked spent and worn after the delivery, but smiled at him just the same.

He wasn’t any better with this when their daughter, Olivia, whom they had named for Alma’s mother, was born two years later. It was an easier delivery, with Olivia weighing only six pounds, two ounces.

An announcement over the speaker system brought him back to the moment. It was a reminder that there would be bingo in the lounge at three o’clock. Alma used to love bingo. He never got into it, but did accompany her on a few occasions just to be near her. He remembered how excited she would get when she won anything, and she never won a lot, usually just ten or twenty dollars. She would smile broadly, her eyes sparkling, and discreetly tuck the money into her bra and tell him she was saving it for a rainy day.

Walter said ‘hello’ to a few of the nurses and nurses’ aides that he had come to know. Checking the clock at the nurse’s station, he saw that it was only eleven-fifteen. He had plenty of time to visit before moving to the dining room for lunch at twelve-thirty. These are his days now, his life. He turns down the corridor and presses a buzzer at the locked door of the Alzheimer’s Unit. A nurse peers over the counter, smiles and waves, and the buzzer indicates that Walter may open the door and enter.

“Hi, Walter, how are you today?” she asks cheerfully.

He first thinks of telling her the truth, of spewing out all of his anger and hurt on her. He simply forces a smile and says, “I’m okay, thanks.” He keeps walking and turns the corner towards Room 115, the door that bears a picture of Alma.

Alma has been a resident of Sunset Acres for nearly three years. She has Alzheimer’s. Walter visits her faithfully every day, even though she never seems to know who he is. Some days she is smiling and polite in their conversation; other days, she wears a dark, troubled look and ignores his presence. But on this one day when Walter walks into the room, she smiles that smile that had won his heart over sixty years ago and says, “Walter, where have you been? I’ve been waiting for you.”

He is stunned and stops dead in his tracks. Then, as tears fill his eyes, he kneels next to her chair and hugs her frail frame, “Alma, you know me!”

She laughs and pats his back, “Oh, Walter, of course I know you. Why, I knew you when… It’s so good to see you again.”

He isn’t certain that she truly knows that he is her beloved Walter—Walter who had asked for her hand when she was just seventeen; who wrote her every day while he was overseas during the war; who cried when she told him she was expecting their first child, and again when he learned about the second; who lay by her side night after night, stupefied by the fact that she loved him; who wept with her when their son was killed in Viet Nam; and who had to love her enough to let her go and place her here where she would be safe. He chooses to believe that she knows most of this and takes this moment of recognition as pure gift.

They talk for nearly an hour and she is as clear as she was before all this started—before that day three years ago when she looked at him with tears in her eyes, hands trembling and said, “I forgot who Joey was today.” Joey was their grandson.

After that day, Walter thought back on the previous year. He realized that there had been signs and he should have noticed. She had forgotten names, she had forgotten to cook dinner once. She had even forgotten his birthday—something she had not done in their entire married life. It all came to a head the day that he got the call from the police telling him that they had found Alma wandering in the parking lot at the mall where he had dropped her a few hours earlier to do some shopping. He was waiting for her call for him to come back for her. The police told him that she was frightened and unable to tell them where she lived. She had lost her purse and didn’t have any identification. Finally, a good samaritan found the purse and turned it in to mall security. They were then able to find an emergency number.

He remembered how she ran and clung to him when he walked in to the police station. She was scared to death and didn’t know why the police had ‘arrested’ her. He took her home and told her that they had found her purse and just wanted to return it to her and that they had called him because she needed a ride home. She did nothing wrong and was not under arrest. This explanation seemed to settle her at the time. Then things got worse—he found the teakettle smoking with nothing in it; he found the water running in the sink, ready to overflow. He knew that he had to do something when he woke up at three in the morning and Alma was not beside him. He searched the house frantically and then turned on the outside light. He saw her shape reflected in the porch light, standing in the backyard in her nightgown and calling for Michael to come inside and get ready for dinner. When he approached her and asked what she was doing, the vacant look in her eyes told him that his Alma was slipping away and could not get back to him. He told her that Michael wasn’t here anymore, reminding her that he had died years ago in Viet Nam. She looked at him for a moment, her brow furrowed, then said quietly, “Oh, yes. I remember,” turned back to the house and went right back to bed.

Today, by some miracle, Alma is back. He tells her about the trip that Olivia and her husband, John, took to Hawaii last month to celebrate their wedding anniversary. He shows her the picture of Olivia and John that stands on her dresser and she smiles with recognition, commenting on how much Olivia looks like her namesake, Alma’s mother. Walter’s heart quickens and he decides to push a little further. He brings a picture out of his wallet. It is their grandson, Joey, his soon-to-be ex-wife, Melissa and their son Michael.

“Do you know who this is?” he asks, hopefully.

She studies the picture and lifts it close to her face. “That looks like Joey and Melissa and—oh, my—can that be Michael? He’s grown so.”

Walter is elated. He removes the picture and tucks it into the frame in front of the picture of Olivia and John. “Why don’t you keep this one? I’ll have Olivia send me another one.”

She smiles and runs her hand gently over the photograph, “Oh, thank you, Walter. You know, I miss them so.”

Walter wants to ask if she would like to go outside, but he is afraid that any movement will break the spell and she will leave him again. He decides, instead, to ask if she wants him to get them something to drink. She smiles and nods ‘yes.’

Walter leaves the room briefly to go to the soda machine and to get two glasses with ice. He talks for a moment to one of the nurses, excitedly telling her that Alma is back—for now. She smiles and cautions him not to be too optimistic, that these ‘episodes’ don’t usually last for long. He bristles inside at her calling this time they have been given an ‘episode.’

Walter goes back to Alma's room with two glasses of ice and a can of ginger ale for them to share—it’s her favorite. She smiles up at him as he pours their drinks and hands a glass to her.

“Why, thank you dear,” she says as she takes a sip and giggles the way she always used to when the bubbles tickled her nose. “How thoughtful, and ginger ale—how did you know it was my favorite?”

Walter covers her hand with his, “I know all of your favorites, Alma. You like ginger ale, daisies are your favorite flower and pink is your favorite color—not pink pink, like Pepto Bismol, but that softer, dusty color—dusty rose, I think they call it.”

She is smiling and nodding, but pulls her hand from under his and continues to sip her drink. He looks into her eyes and sees the veil over them telling him that she has left him once again. There is no recognition when she looks back at him. He wants to shake her, to try to make her remember their conversation. They had talked about their daughter’s trip to Hawaii, about Joey’s unfortunate divorce and about their great-grandson, Michael, who was turning eight next week. She had worried about how the divorce would affect him. He had told her that he was thinking of selling the house and moving to an apartment, one that would be closer to the nursing home and to her. She had said that it was sad to do that, but that she would love for him to be closer so he could visit every day.

In this moment of clarity, she had not remembered that he did visit every day and sat idly while she stared blankly and smiled or angrily told him to leave her alone. Now, all of this was lost—all except that brief recognition and her soft, loving tone as she had gazed directly into his eyes and said, “I knew you when…”

With that phrase, Walter knew that he would be back tomorrow and the next day and the next, because somewhere behind that vacant look, somewhere locked deep within the shadow that held Alma captive, was the memory of him—and that was enough.