Don't Cry Now by Joy Fielding

Author:Joy Fielding
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780380711536
Publisher: Avon
Published: 2007-07-30T04:00:00+00:00

Sam and Lauren were nowhere around.

“Sam?” she said, attracting the attention of an elderly gentleman wandering the halls in his pajamas.

“Did you call me?” he asked.

Bonnie shook her head, then wished she hadn’t, the motion upsetting her already delicate equilibrium. They’d obviously gone ahead without her. And why shouldn’t they? she asked herself, walking slowly toward Elsa Langer’s room. The woman was their grandmother, for heaven’s sake, even though they had little recollection of her, and she probably none of them. Still, they didn’t need Bonnie to make introductions. Probably she should just wait for them in the waiting area.

Too late, she thought, as the door to Elsa Langer’s room swung open before her. “Remember me?” the old woman asked from her wheelchair, allowing Bonnie just enough room to step inside.

“Hello,” Bonnie said absently, her attention focused on Elsa Langer, who was sitting up in her bed, propped up against several pillows, her lunch on a tray in front of her, Sam sitting in the chair beside her bed, Lauren standing beside her, both studying her blank face, seemingly mesmerized.

“I’m Mary,” the woman in the wheelchair said. “I don’t think we were properly introduced the last time you were here.”

“I’m Bonnie,” Bonnie told her, eyes riveted on Elsa Langer. Sitting up, the old woman looked even more fragile than she had lying down, her body a mere skeletal outline of a human being, her skin all but disappearing into the whiteness of her bedclothes and sheets, her eyes blank and unseeing, like empty sockets.

“You came at lunchtime,” Mary said. “I already finished mine.” She indicated her empty tray. “Chicken soup, macaroni and cheese, and vanilla custard. That’s what I ordered. I don’t know what they ordered for Elsa.” She wheeled herself over to Elsa Langer’s bed and lifted the top off her lunch tray, revealing a singularly unappetizing-looking arrangement of soft beige foods. “Yep, same as me,” Mary said. “But she won’t eat it. She never eats unless I feed her.” She lifted a spoon from the tray, like a conductor raising his baton.

“Can I do it?” Lauren asked immediately. “Please?” she asked the woman in the wheelchair.

“Maybe,” the woman said. “Who’s asking?”

“My name is Lauren,” Lauren told her. “Elsa Langer is my grandmother.”

“Lauren, you said?”

“Yes, and this is my brother, Sam.”

“Sam?”

Sam said nothing.

“Didn’t know she had grandchildren,” Mary stated, staring at Bonnie. “Isn’t it funny? You live with someone for years, you think you know everything about them, and then you discover you didn’t know them at all. Don’t you think that’s funny?” she asked Bonnie.

Bonnie ignored the question. “I’m sure she’d be happy if you fed her,” Bonnie told Lauren.

Lauren smiled, although the smile was quick, almost too brief to notice. “Here, Grandma,” she said gently, lifting a spoonful of the chicken noodle soup to her grandmother’s mouth, the spoon gingerly prodding the woman’s dry lips apart. Lauren tipped the spoon toward Elsa Langer’s throat, brought it back empty. Some liquid dribbled down her grandmother’s chin, and Lauren quickly wiped it away with a napkin.

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