When Scanlon felt he was ready to let people back into his life, he signed up at the Senior Center. He was pleasant and responsive, and he even took part in the chair exercises and the other therapy programs, never mentioning that they seemed to be an inglorious way of winding down a life. But he sensed a distance between himself and others at the Center, and he saw no easy way to close it. So, he waited a few weeks, and when nothing happened, he developed a plan that would have him performing a solo dance -- to everyone's surprise -- at a Senior Center Social. But when the right time came, he simply couldn't get up and dance. He told himself that attention-getting was all right for some people, but not for him, and he should have known better.
But he was disappointed anyway, because he had schemed a little for The-Dance-That-Didn't-Happen. Not that scheming was strange to him. He liked harmless plotting and posturing and looked for the possibilities for innocent intrigue in many situations. It kept his mind active, he believed, and that was as important as walking and the light workouts of the exercise classes. And he liked to tell himself that he was still living by his wits, just as he had all his life. He never had any special skills, but here he was: sixty-eight and a survivor. And no one had to repeat things a dozen times for him or to remind him it was Wednesday, so the Tai Chi class must be meeting.
He was sure he could still do the work of a sixty-year old man, but the doctor had told him to take it easy. You don't need to prove anything, John, Dr. Fallelli had said.
* * *
A few courtships did get under way at the Center. Scanlon watched couples holding hands, walking the perimeter of the parking lot, sitting together. Most of the pairings didn't last. It was inevitable that one or the other eventually would start talking about a dead spouse, who was always a saint, of course. That ended it for most of the couples. Who could stand up to being compared to a saint?
Scanlon didn't participate in all the Senior Center functions. He'd go crazy trying to be a regular at bingo and pinochle, but he went to the lunches almost every day. It was good to get a hot meal. He didn't criticize, but the portions were small, not like the substantial lunches he'd been used to with his Helen. Bird food, he thought. as he looked at three tiny sausages, a scoop of mashed potatoes, and a few wandering peas on his paper plate. But he ate it, and he regularly had his blood pressure checked, and went to the exercise classes, and kept his complaints to himself.
Sometimes, at night, Scanlon would take a short walk, just a turn around the Center parking lot. Not too fast, just fast enough to get the blood out of his feet. Lately, walking in the parking lot was getting to be a problem. That was where the prostitutes from downtown had begun to bring their customers. On any warm night, the Center lot would have eight or ten cars, some of them getting pretty noisy.
Once, on a Friday night, weaving his way through the maze of cars, Scanlon slowed his pace to overhear a prostitute and her trick, who seemed to be drunk.
"Where the hell are we?" the trick asked. "What are we doing here?"
"Where are we?" the prostitute said. "Where are we? We're at Wrinkle City, honey. That's where we are, and we're gonna have some fun."
The drunk laughed and laughed. "Let the games begin," he said.
* * *
At home, rattling around alone in his big house, Scanlon checked his furniture. It seemed that he and Helen had spent their lives scrimping and saving to buy each piece. Now, his kids couldn't decide which of them should get which pieces of furniture. He was tired of listening to them argue. When he'd made out his will, his lawyer had told him not to include anything about the disposition of his furniture. Nobody's furniture is worth more than a few hundred dollars, the lawyer said, and it would be better to let his children decide who gets what themselves.
During their most recent visit, they wanted to put red and blue and yellow tags on the chairs and sofas and dressers, but Scanlon said no. He wasn't about to live in a house with tagged furniture. Did I raise three insensitive clods? he asked himself. Then, he excused them, thinking, it's a new world out there, and thoughtlessness is rampant.
* * *
When Scanlon saw Ruth at the Senior Center one day, everything changed for him. Obviously a first-timer, she had just sat down at one of the long tables. He spotted her right away, and she noticed him, too. He and Ruth had worked for the same company years ago, he in the shipping department, she in billing. They had gone out a few times, and Scanlon really liked her. There was even some passion on a park bench after a company party one night, he remembered. Then, the first thing he knew, she was getting married. He saw her around after she announced her engagement, but they never had much to say to each other. He figured he just hadn't measured up.
The looks they exchanged over the dining table didn't reveal much. He ate his scanty lunch and made small talk with the people around him, occasionally sneaking a look at Ruth. She had new teeth, but they looked good, not like the teeth of some of the old folks Scanlon thought should sue their dentists.
When lunch was over, he left the table quickly. His plan was to intercept her, but in the confusion of many people getting up and moving around, some of them irritatingly slow, he missed her.
Confused a little himself, he looked toward the exit and saw her. She was just going out, and she paused and turned, obviously to look for Scanlon. It reminded him of the way a deer pauses at the edge of a field and looks back, just before it bounds into the woods.
Ah, Scanlon thought, she remembers.
The frames of his glasses had been making noises lately, sounds like floor boards creaking, only not as loud. It happened only when he was talking. One day, he asked a friend, "Did you hear that?"
"What? Hear what?" the friend said.
He knew he wasn't going dotty, and he knew that the sounds were real, but he was reluctant to tell anyone about them. He knew what they'd think: oh, oh, the old guy's losing it.
He considered telling his optometrist but hesitated when he imagined the reaction.
"I've got a good one out there today," the optometrist would say to his partner in the back room. "The old fart says his glasses are making noises. Pretty soon, he'll be telling me they're reporting the weather."
When Scanlon saw Ruth the next day, he said, "My glasses told me to talk to you."
He didn't really need an icebreaker, but he hoped she'd think it was funny. She did. And she laughed again as he told the story of Scanlon's Magical Talking Glasses.
They talked about the old days and the people they knew at Willis Brothers.
"We should have a reunion," Scanlon said, just to keep the conversation going.
"I'm not crazy about reunions," Ruth said. "I went to a high school reunion once, and it wasn't much fun."
* * *
Her answer pleased Scanlon. He knew they'd be able to talk to each other. Anyone who didn't like reunions was OK with him.
She had four children, she said. One of them, a daughter, still lived in the city. Since Ruth's husband died, she'd been living in the house they'd bought forty years ago. It was lonesome, but she had a few friends, and they had persuaded her to go to the Center, just to get out in the world.
Her hair was gray, of course, a muted version of the shiny black of long ago, and her eyes had faded from the deep blue he remembered, but she had kept herself up.
When she left the Center that day, she said to Scanlon, "Am I going to see you again?"
"Yes. I'll be around."
He went home, surveyed his furniture again, and waited that weekend to see if any of his kids would drop in for a visit. Nobody came. He wanted to talk some more about the furniture, maybe explain the little stories behind the purchase of some of the pieces.
The next time he saw Ruth, she left the friends she was talking to, and they had lunch together. Well, not exactly together, but they sat opposite one another at the table with a lot of other senior citizens.
As she was leaving that day, Scanlon said, "Could we go someplace and neck?"
She laughed, and her eyes got brighter, and she looked right into his eyes with a nice smile on that wonderful face, but she didn't say anything.
* * *
Scanlon had seen other golden agers in love, the few who chose to ignore comparisons to saints. They'd clasp veiny hands and try to say nice things to one another, but they never seemed to be able to get the familiar love words out. Scanlon figured they had used those words a long time ago with someone else and felt guilty about using them again. So the weather, and food, and exercise, and heart medicines became major topics. For the nice words, they substituted a lot of hand-squeezing.
"All I expected was a bridge game and a lunch and a chance to see people," Ruth said one day, "and now look what I've got: John Scanlon."
"Are you having a good time?" he asked.
"Yes," she said.
He basked in the renewed friendship. He consciously put aside his love for gamesmanship, aware that cunning was not appropriate when the other person was important to him.
Then he said something about memories, and Ruth seemed to drop out of the conversation.
Instantly, he wished he could pluck the words out of the air and destroy them. He had violated one of his own rules: Don't get into exchanging memories. Those conversations, he had learned, often become contests. Besides, a lot of people don't want to swap memories; they just want to keep them stashed away and visit them alone once in a while.
To cover the awkward moment, Scanlon got Ruth involved in an explanation of blood pressure readings and which was systolic and which was diastolic.
He and Ruth talked about going to her house or to his house. She said her daughter was very pregnant and visited often and unannounced, and she just wouldn't go to his place.
He told her about the debates his kids were having about his furniture, and she said the best idea was for him to divide it up.
* * *
Scanlon got updated regularly on the daughter's pregnancy and when Ruth didn't show up at the Senior Center for several days in a row, he figured the baby had arrived.
When she finally did return, she didn't stay long, not even long enough for lunch. She told Scanlon she had a new granddaughter. It's a special baby, she said, who needs a lot of attention, and she'd be pretty busy from now on. His guts twisted a little on that, but he managed to say, "Well, I'll see you sometime, then."
That night, Scanlon walked in the parking lot, carefully steering away from the occupied cars. He stopped once to look up at the stars, steadying himself by holding a post, and managed to locate the Big Dipper before he began to get dizzy. Then, he went on. When he stopped again, it was for a studied look at the sky, and he stretched out on the warm pavement. He found the Big Dipper again and traced, with no difficulty, the line pointing to the North Star and the Little Dipper. Celestial bodies, he said, half aloud, enjoying the sound of the words. The sky seeemed to be active, and Scanlon was entranced. He cradled his head in his palms and did the whole discovery thing again. Then, he got up and continued his walk, listening to the tree toads screeching, taking pleasure in small things.
The next day, he sought out Evelyn, a newcomer to the Senior Center, inviting her for a night walk, but she said, no, "Going My Way" was on AMC, and she wanted to see it again.
That Saturday morning, Scanlon rummaged around in his backyard shed until he found an ax and then trudged back to his house. Methodically working from one room to another, perspiring, arms aching, but marvelously in control of his world, he chopped up his furniture, then divided the broken chairs, dressers, tables, beds, and all the rest, and piled the pieces neatly in the corners of three rooms, and that took care of that, anyway, and then he slept on a mattress on the living room floor.
Robert Croken, MA '65, is in the public relations business in western Massachussets.
