The Falling Leaves Home

By Harry Buschman

My name is Charlie Morasse. I am one of the thirty seven 'guests' of the Falling Leaves Rest Home here in the borough of Brooklyn. Most of us in the Falling Leaves Home for the aged spend our days jockeying for a seat by the sitting room window. We're curious about what goes on outside. It's the same curiosity that goldfish have when they stare out at the family living room. I'd be the first to admit there isn't much going on out there that concerns us, and the little that does doesn't hold a candle to what goes on in here.

Inside, the Home is a place of dynamic change. People you speak with today
may not be here tomorrow, and even if they are, they may be different from
the people you spoke with yesterday. Changes occur to the elderly at a bewildering pace. My friend and roommate Seymour for instance -- a friend of
two years standing. We were discussing our problems of evacuation just this
morning. I was two days overdue, he was right on time. He was fortunate to
leave this world this morning in that blessed state of elimination, and were
the tables turned, I am sure he would have left his good fortune to me. Within the limitations of our worldly goods we give each other the most we can.

Then we turn to the window to see if life goes on outside -- it is a steadying influence. Although what happens outside is usually a mystery to us we are able to keep abreast of the weather and the slow steady changes of the season. In the winter we chuckle comfortably to ourselves when it snows as we watch poor Dexter shovel a path to the driveway.

We take particular notice when Dr. Miles Outerbridge's black Mercedes appears
on Tuesdays, knowing that in spite of his encouraging words of cheer we are far beyond his ability to turn back life's clock. We are not particularly interested in the clock, so long as it keeps ticking. The ladies enjoy the doctor's visits more than the men. Bertha Wollensak for example, although crippled and pretzellized with arthritis, manages to get into the blue silk dress she bought for her seventieth birthday twenty years ago. She writes her symptoms on a slip of paper with a shaky hand and monopolizes Doctor Outerbridge as long as she possibly can. Lotte Weissenbach is so nervous on Tuesdays, she must be sedated.

If the doctor were female I am sure the men of the Home would make fools of
ourselves as well, but as things stand he represents an intrusion and an element of competition we old men can well do without. He is a weekly threat to the little masculinity we still possess.

Seymour used to call Falling Leaves the 'clubhouse'. He theorized that we had
all finished our eighteen holes, tallied our scores, and sat around having a beer or two before it was time to call it a day and head for home. I will miss Seymour and I wonder who will take his place in the bed next to mine. I am a light sleeper -- I wake with a start at the slightest noise and I was grateful that Seymour did not snore. He had his faults mind you, but he was about as good as you can expect. I grew used to his excessive interest in the bowel movements of his closest friends, both male and female -- and I think it showed the goodness of his heart. His, as I have stated, were faithful to the end.

No one, of course dies of old age, it's always something -- and in Seymour's case it was forgetfulness. I believe he just forgot to breathe. It is a common cause of slipping away here at Falling Leaves. Someone can be sitting there passing the time of day with you and the next thing you know they aren't there anymore -- they have 'slipped away', as we say. Seymour would invariably greet you with a cheery, "Had your bowel movement today?" But if, like Seymour, I have any advice for the elderly it can be summed up simply by saying, "Don't forget to breathe."

I am more animated than usual today due to the exciting news that Falling
Leaves has engaged a Guest Activities Hostess. We are guests here at the home, not inmates or patients. The term 'guest' implies that we have been invited and that as 'guests' we may come and go as we please. We are neither able nor willing to come and go, but it helps to think the option is open. Many of us still have a hat and a coat hanging on the clothes tree in the front hall, although we wouldn't recognize one from the other. The possibility of putting on a coat and a hat and stepping outside into the turbulent world we normally only see through glass is tempting, but common sense always prevails and keeps us inside.

After paying my respects to Seymour as he exited by way of the service entrance, I have spent the remainder of the day at the window awaiting the arrival of the new Guest Activities Hostess. Her name is Claudine Prolifka .... an intriguing name, a blend of eastern and western Europe I imagine. I am told she will teach us to do things -- useful things, things which will make our lives here more meaningful. Those of us not confined to wheelchairs or encumbered by prosthetic devices may learn to dance again. Others may thread beads or paint by the numbers. There is always the danger that the most fragile of us may find such activity exhausting, but we all agree that the challenge is worth it. "No pain, no gain" as they say. The alternative is 'slipping away' -- without so much as a 'by your leave'.

Nurse O'Casey, the commanding officer of the second floor west made a point
of nudging me the other day, and with what I thought was a rather lewd wink,
she told me the new 'Hostess' is quite a looker and that we old lechers had better watch our step. I was thoroughly deflated. She is passing fair at giving enemas but completely ignorant of old men's sensitivities.

My vigil by the window was rewarded -- but I got the shock of my life! Claudine Prolifka is none other than Heidi Hollander, a woman I knew and loved many years ago! I bolted upright in my chair .... how could such a thing be? It was such a wonderful experience for both Heidi and me, but it is certainly sixty years since we said goodbye on the eve of the Great War. Yet she is lovelier and more desirable than ever. I have given her a wide berth while the other 'old lechers' fought to take her bags. None of them could lift them so they were left for Dexter. She is definitely Heidi, the same dark hair falling in careful disarray, the same amber eyes. How clear it all comes back to me! How can it be? I watched her walk and there are some things you always remember. She had a dancer's walk -- a turning at the waist, as though she were winding herself up for a tour jete. It's not a look-alike, it is she!

I hurried back to my room to pull myself together. Had I been a drinking man,
and if Falling Leaves permitted its 'guests' to imbibe, I would have had a stiff one -- "Here's how, Doctor Outerbridge!"

I wanted to be alone, but my new roommate was settling in -- they don't let the grass grow at the Falling Leaves home. His name is Hugo. He was in a "threesie" before, now he's in a twosie. He's toothless and deaf as a post, and like many deaf people he assumes everyone is whispering behind his back. It's not going to be easy with Hugo, but for the present I have more important things on my mind.

How am I going to handle Claudine Prolifka? I am a reasonable man, I don't
believe in miracles or ghosts, yet I am faced with the undeniable evidence that our new Guest Activities Hostess is a woman four score and upwards, who
should be in the clubhouse with the rest of us.

I have checked myself in my shaving mirror -- and I am I, just as I am today,
not as I may have been when Heidi and I were young. How can I be as I am, and
she be as she is? Something has gone wrong. Something is out of joint. I'm not blind and I'm not forgetting the greater part of my life was spent with another woman I grew to love even more dearly and with whom we had three sons -- one now in Minneapolis, one in Atlanta and the other buried beside her in Evergreen. Heidi and I never got off the ground.

With the slipping away of Seymour and the coming of Hugo, my mind is in a
whirl. Perhaps the night will bring an answer. It often does. I have always
believed that if one sleeps alone one can solve the problems that the world
is helpless to solve on its own.

O'Casey tells me it's dinner time -- "Shake your ass and get down there," she
tells me.

"Would the world suffer if I ate here in my room?'"

"Look, this ain't the Plaza, Dexter ain't meals on wheels -- you're one of the ambulatories -- move it -- move it!"

Prodding is one thing O'Casey does well -- at both ends of the spectrum, and there was no way I could explain the spot I was in, so I pulled myself together and followed her slowly down the stairs knowing I would see Heidi/Claudine sitting at the staff table.

The meal began with pineapple salad, it is a specialty of the home and served
whenever there was something in the wind. Even those who could not attend the
evening meal, (the non-ambulatories who were compelled to eat in their room)
would know something was up downstairs if they saw pineapple salad on their
trays.

The occasion was the introduction of Claudine Prolifka as a new staff member,
and Pastor Sweetwood rose to tell us of the fascinating things she was going to teach us to do. I was very nervous being in the same room with Claudine. Although I realized she would never recognize me, her uncanny resemblance to
Heidi, and the memories of our wild love affair, made the situation unbearable. Something else occurred to me -- my name! She was bound to remember my name! I couldn't keep that a secret for long. Then, when Pastor Sweetwood announced they would both pass among us to be formally introduced, I stood and asked to be excused.

For a brief moment Claudine and I locked eyes and stared straight at each other. Did I detect a glimmer of recognition? The look was identical to those angry glances of reproach I occasionally got from Heidi long ago whenever I did something she didn't approve of. Sweetwood, (damn his hide) remarked, "That's O.K. Charlie, we understand, we all have to go sometime."

At that moment I wished Sweetwood would go permanently and take his mealy
mouthed homilies with him. I glanced quickly at Claudine to see if the name
"Charlie" rang a bell with her, but not a glimmer! Yet the quick glance was
enough to assure me that it was indeed Heidi Hollander. She sat there holding
her fork over her pineapple salad precisely the way Heidi did over her caviar
that final evening at the Russian Tea Room.

I made my way to the door with no intention of coming back that evening and I
slowly made my way upstairs. Realizing I would be awake with gas on an empty
stomach as well as a troubled mind all night, I stopped off at Bertha Wollensak's room. Bertha was not ambulatory and took all her meals in her wheelchair from which she could look out her small window at the brick wall across the street. Her bones were brittle with age and arthritis had nailed her joints shut but she had a sharp mind and an eloquence of speech that seemed to grow more flexible as her body grew more rigid. She could keep a secret too.

"C'mon in Charlie, what's the pineapple salad for?"

"The new Activities Director," I replied, "You going to finish those chicken
croquettes?"

She screwed up her nose at the croquettes, "Help yourself, finish the squash
too -- honestly everything they give you here looks like it's been half eaten before you get it" .... she cocked her head at me a little .... "you look a little sickly, Charlie -- have a bad day at the office?"

Well why not I thought, if there was anyone I would trust with a secret in this place it was Bertha. "Can you keep a secret Bertha?"

"Charlie Morasse, I've got so many secrets I have to keep them in folders. Every brick in that wall over there hides a secret. I know something about everybody here, even O'Casey. The only one I'm not holding secrets for is Sweetwood" -- she leaned back a bit in her chair and grimaced -- "I'm looking forward to his secrets, I'll bet he's got some beauties."

So I let it out. It came in a rush. I told her about the magic days before the war, long before I'd met Hester, how those days had come back to haunt me, and how guilty a man can feel when they take so strong a place beside the memories of being a husband and a father. "Sixty years ago, Bertha, and I can still remember her perfume, the sound of her heels on a hardwood floor, the funny way she would say 'Sharlie' -- she was French/Austrian, you know?" Then I went on to tell her about Claudine -- "They are one and the same Bertha -- no doubt about it!"

Bertha put her claw-like hand on mine, "You old dog, Charlie .... you must have been a pair. I just hope there's a couple of old bastards out there who remember me that way. They should -- I wasn't always like this you know."

"I'm sure they do, Bertha -- but suppose one of them walked in here now ....
would you recognize him?" That was the whole point. The implication was not
lost on Bertha who in any case looked ready for bed with another Falling Leaves secret to digest along with her half-eaten chicken croquettes.

I was about ready to turn in also. It had been a long day. If Seymour hadn't
chosen this day of all days to slip away, I might have laid it all out for him.

So here I am, flat on my back with Hugo snoring next to me, going back over
the life I've led. I've been a good husband on the whole -- faithful, but with a nagging memory of youth and romance. A time when there was no tomorrow and sharing that time with a woman I really never got to know. If the war had not come, if I'd never met Hester, if Heidi was all there ever was .... what would it have been like? .... What then?

Are you Heidi, Claudine? .... it's been such a long day.

Chapter 2

It was an even longer night, an endless night interrupted by a catnap or two.
I was too tired to get up and too restless to sleep. My senses seemed sharper
than usual and I could hear noises throughout the home I never noticed before. A cry in the dark, a cough .... someone padding by my door on a walker. Do you know the sound of an old man on a walker? .... a click, a creak and a grunt. Outside, the wind seemed to have picked up and I thought I could hear bones rattling.

How little the young know us, I thought, here I am -- like Lear, "eighty years and upward" falling in love all over again. Some things are always the same, toothaches, heartburn and yes, heartache too, they hurt the old as much as the young, and with so little strength left to fight, they can hurt even more.

About an hour or two before dawn I got up and stared down into what we call
our patio, a strip of dirt and dying grass. Ah yes! There's the bones I heard
-- the wind had blown the plastic chairs in a tangled heap across the driveway. I went to the bathroom, (and thank God for small favors) you'll be happy to know, Seymour, I won't need your support and advice. I was hungry too, love is like that.

I was edgy, too keyed up to stay in bed. I wondered if the cook had gotten in
yet. You can't sneak a snack at the home, everybody eats by the clock -- but
I thought maybe she was in the kitchen by now and I could work my charm on
her. Ophelia was a cheerful black lady not much younger than we were, and
very susceptible to flattery. She usually got in around dawn to fire up the
oatmeal.

"Oo-eee, you scared the hell outa me, Mister Morasse. What you doin' wanderin' around this hour?"

"Come to see you Ophelia -- I've been thinking about you all night."

Flirtation is a dying art, but when you desperately need a cup of coffee you'll use every rusted and bent weapon in your arsenal. "Actually, Ophelia, I've been awake most of the night .... I heard you come in and rather than ring for O'Casey I came to you."

"I'm surprised there ain't more of you," she said, "It hadda been them
croquettes, they came from the chicken we had Sunday -- don't get me wrong
Mr. Morasse" she added, "The food's good here, good as I can make it, but it
doesn't always go down too good with old folks."

I got a cup of coffee and complimented Ophelia on her gorgeous legs, and with
my mind dreading the coming of the day, I went back to my room. Hugo was up
and brushing his uppers and lowers in the bathroom. There are few things to
compare with the sight of a man brushing his teeth in the palm of his hand, unless it's the sight of Herman down the hall putting his shoe on the end of
his wooden leg. We are made up of bits and pieces. We come apart. We are
dismembered, and we don't know which is the living part of us and which is
the property of Medicare.

Today I must face Claudine Prolifka. It's been a sleepless night, but after a
memorable bowel movement and a cup of Ophelia's coffee there's a chance I may
survive another day. I picked out a red tie with black stripes, (Hester had bought it for me to wear at the retirement dinner) my gray slacks with the elastic waist band, (no belts at the home) and a white shirt. The shirt had yellowed in the three years I've been here, but in the morning light it wasn't noticeable. Hugo was through in the john and I was determined to make myself as young as a man of 84 can be.

I took a shower -- that's a no-no at Falling Leaves unless you give notice. Then they have to find an attendant to hold you up. Well, the hell with that, "I wanted one now, not four hours from now. Listen to me! I was talking like a man getting ready for a date -- what had gotten into me!"

With breakfast over, the next sporting event was the dash for the morning paper and if you lost out on that there's nothing for it but to sit and watch Good Morning America. I wasn't interested in the news -- too much on my mind I guess. I checked out the bulletin board to see what excitement was planned for the guests of Falling Leaves for the day. There was a bus trip to a pickle factory out on Long Island, and a man was coming in to show his slides of the nation's national parks. But more important than either of these was a hand lettered note on pink paper from Claudine Prolifka saying she was having a "getting to know you" party at 1:00 p.m.

"Well, this is it, Charlie," I thought. Maybe I could put this time warp dilemma to the test -- get it out of my mind. I couldn't go on this way much longer. But there were five hours to go, what would I do with myself until then? Well, it was a warm morning, Dexter had put the lawn chairs back on the patio -- it might be nice to sit in the sun and think a while.

Joe Acker was already in his catbird seat with his binoculars. Joe was a bird
watcher and kept a daily list of the feathered friends who visited Falling Leaves. Pickings were slim for both Joe and the birds -- I never saw anything but pigeons and sparrows scratching in the dirt and I suspect Joe didn't either but his list of rare species grew longer every day.

With the warm sun on my chest I must have drowsed a bit, I fantasized too, in
a way and wondered why I was here in this place, this home -- I wasn't like the others. I had most of my buttons, and in pretty fair shape for the shape I was in. I thought how nice it would be if I was back in my old apartment again, to come and go as I pleased -- on my own .... on my Goddamn own! If it hadn't been for the accident I could be. I was standing in the front of the bus having given up my seat to a girl young enough to be my granddaughter .... she took it too! Then the cab cut in front of the bus and the driver swerved up on the sidewalk and into the wall of Citibank.

Fractured skull, broken shoulder and amnesia. Everything in my past wiped
away, it was like I was a new-born, no memory of anything before the accident. I didn't know my two sons, I didn't know my name, I didn't know why I was in the hospital with a broken shoulder. They put me in Falling Leaves. I can't blame them, who wants to be saddled with an 82 year old infant?

Little by little things came back, a sound or a smell would trigger my mind into remembering something that happened long ago. When it did come back it was sharper and more focused than it had ever been. Lots of things I had forgotten in the course of earning a living and raising a family -- Christmas and vacations, and how Hester looked on that last Easter Sunday .... I must have dropped off to sleep. Someone was shaking my arm gently.

"Mr. Morasse -- are you all right?"

It was Claudine -- God was I embarrassed! I was slumped to one side in the
plastic chair, I had drooled down the front of my shirt and my tie was pulled
askew. She couldn't have seen me at a worse moment, and after all my careful
planning! I don't think I said anything -- probably couldn't.

"Mr. Morasse, we didn't get to meet last night and everyone around here tells
me you should really meet Charlie Morasse, he's such an interesting man -- I
wanted to make sure you'll be with us this afternoon."

Yes, the voice was the same. The accent not as pronounced as Heidi's, but after all, sixty years in the states would account for that. "I'll be there Miss Prolifka, I'm looking forward to it."

Please, Mr. Morasse -- it's Claudine."

Here was my first chance -- "Please Claudine .... it's Charlie."

"Okay, it's a deal." Dammit she didn't bite -- I wanted to hear her say Charlie and she didn't take the bait -- well, later maybe, I had enough to think about now.

It was later than I thought, almost noon. I must have slept a couple of hours. But God Almighty she was the spitting image of Heidi! .... I would have bet my shirt if she wasn't Heidi. Speaking of my shirt, I would have to change it now, but maybe I should wait until after lunch .... and that means I'll have to look for another tie too. I was trying too hard, too many things to think about, why couldn't my life be as simple as Joe Acker's -- counting the pigeons and the sparrows.

This afternoon would tell the story -- suppose she asks me to dance, could I
possibly put my arms around her without blurting out the whole story? I'm not
sure -- I'm not ....

***

I can now look back at those last twenty four hours. They started with the loss of Seymour and ended half-way up the stairs to my room on the second floor. That's as far as I got. I have a blurred impression of O'Casey, (strong as an ox she was) with her hands under my armpits pulling me up the rest of the way. I'm not sure about the rest of it .... Outerbridge was there, so was Sweetwood -- they seemed very far away, so far I could barely hear them. I can't remember when I've been so tired. How young they look, Outerbridge reminds me of Hester's obstetrician whom I never met until after Herbie was born and Sweetwood looks like a choirboy. I turn my head a bit to look for O'Casey but she is not there.

"Can someone bring me a glass?" .... my words come slowly, but in a voice I seem to remember from long ago.

"It's hard to understand you, are you thirsty Charlie?"

"No, no .... a glass I can look in .... a looking glass."

I don't know why I asked for one, except I felt like having one last look. I don't know what I expected to see except I knew it wouldn't be the same. Outerbridge brought me my shaving mirror and held it in front of me.

"No, no!" I said, "Go away, I want to do it myself."

"You can't hold it, Charlie, I'll hold it for you." Outerbridge turned to Sweetwood and mumbled something about 'him slipping away'.

I shut my eyes before looking in the mirror and took a couple of deep breaths. I opened them slowly. The light wasn't good, but there was no mistaking a full head of dark hair, a lean jaw and piercing eyes. It was me all right, the me I used to be, not the old man I turned out to be.

"So that's the way it goes," I thought. You go back. Just before it's over you go back. It must have happened to Heidi too. Claudine really was Heidi! I tried to push myself up into a sitting position.

"Charlie! What are you doing!" Outerbridge put the mirror back and pushed me
down again. I tried to say her name. Over and over again I slowly and carefully mouthed each syllable.

"HEI-DI-HOLL-AN-DER .... get her! Please get her!"

"Can you understand him, Sweetwood?" Outerbridge shook his head.

"He's saying something about a Hi-di-ho something .... I couldn't get the rest, but he said 'she'. Is there anyone here by that name?"

"I think he's imagining things, Doctor. We have no one here by that name."

They don't believe me. It's just as well, I couldn't face her again, not here .... not in this place. There will be plenty of time.

©Harry Buschman 1998

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