【Written by Sadie Zeiner-Morrish】

Geraldine was a round old woman who was always moving, clacking her knitting needles, snapping her gum against her teeth, shuffling in her mink purse. I watched her all the time. In the mornings she would ask me to clasp her turquoise necklace for her, before painting a thick rouge on her cheeks. She’d smile at me when I brought her breakfast, ask me how I was doing and if I wouldn’t stay for tea. At some point it occurred to me that she was my only friend. This was a jarring realization, but not anything I was actively trying to change. 

I had been alone for some time. My early childhood was filled with fond, fuzzy memories of warm parents and a baby brother. But my brother had died when he was two, and I was only six. After that, I was left to only my imagination. My parents grew colder as the years went on, less attentive. I often wondered how my life would look if Charlie was still here. On darker, lonelier days, I wondered how things would have turned out if I had died instead. 

The loneliness had followed me since. But I entertained myself by watching the different residents. Every year there was one in particular who caught my eye. Geraldine, however, I had grown closer to than any former resident. We had met in April of the year before when she had moved in. A plump, bright eyed and outgoing woman, she had hurried right up to me on the second day and struck up a conversation about my shirt, which displayed a picture of the Golden Girls from their fourth season. She told me I reminded her of Rose, and I told her she was more of a Blanche, which made her laugh. 

There was something about her which reminded me of my mother when I was young, before her work consumed her and we grew distant. My mother, in the early years, would read to me, wrapping the blanket tightly around my shoulders as I drifted off into sleep. That’s how I felt around Geraldine, like she was wrapping a blanket around the younger version of myself, kissing my forehead and telling me it would be alright. 

The only difficult part of this lifestyle was coming home alone to my empty apartment. I made a large enough salary to afford the rent for a one-bedroom, one-bathroom outside of San Francisco. Mostly this was a good thing. In the mornings I sat alone and drank my coffee watching the sun stream through the dogwood in the front. I drove to work alone and came back and slept in my bed alone. The loneliness was a creeping thing: sometimes stronger, sometimes a faint hum in the back of my head. But always there. 

I checked into work at Grassy Elms Senior Residential Community at 9:30 on Friday, slipping into my scrubs and going to make a coffee for myself. In the break room, Helen was having yet another heated argument with her husband over the phone. She flashed me a quick smile with the corner of her mouth before returning to her conversation. “I don’t care, Keith, she’s your assistant for God’s sake! You shouldn’t be canceling date nights to help her with her fucking laundry.” 

As a rule, I didn’t involve myself in my coworkers’ lives. Once I did that, I would inevitably have to involve them in my life in return, which could only end in disaster. And I told myself I didn’t need to; I had the residents. I had Geraldine. And I had my fish, Dino, Elliott, and Roman. 

I went to check the whiteboard of tasks in the hallway. Supervise cafeteria, lead support group, run afternoon medical checks. Grassy Elms wasn’t a dream job by any means, but there was something satisfying in the repetition of my days here.  

I kept an eye out for Geraldine, and I finally spotted her in the cafeteria, carefully peeling an orange, with a bundle of colorful yarn bunched in her lap. 

“Good morning!” I told her, trying to hold back slightly, so she didn’t know just how desperately happy I was to see her. “How are you today, Ger?” 

She looked up from her orange. I noticed she had spilled something, maybe oatmeal, on the top of her blouse, and that her great hair was in a frizzy halo around her head. I was taken aback because I was used to seeing her appearance polished, even for something as casual as breakfast. But she smiled when she saw me. “Oh, Meg! I have to show you something.” 

She presented the bundle of yarn proudly. As the project unfurled, it became clear that it was an oversized striped sweater with one sleeve missing. There was also some sort of writing across the front, but the stitching was so bulky that I couldn’t determine what it said. I held up the finished sleeve and nodded in approval. 

Before I could ask, she supplied, “It says ‘Alexander’. I hope he likes it.” 

I smiled, even though I was going to guess something closer to ‘antenna’ or ‘anarchism’, “Very nice, Geraldine. You’ve been hard at work.” 

“It’s for my son,” she added gleefully. “He’s a very nice man. Very handsome. You know, you would like him.” She added this in a conspiratorial whisper, winking first with the left eye, and then with her right. 

This was a game she liked to play every week, even though her son was most likely a good thirty years older than me, and I suspected was no longer on speaking terms with her. This was a fact that always broke my heart. Who wouldn’t want such a caring mother, as well as an endless sweater machine, I didn’t know. 

“Oh, really?” I responded in the same jovial tone. “I’ll have to meet him sometime.” I turned away to continue greeting the residents, but a moment later I heard a clatter. Geraldine was on her back on the ground, her legs sprawled out underneath her. Her green eyes fluttered rapidly, and I noticed for the first time just how tired she looked. 

I rushed to her side. Before I could call for help, Helen was at my elbow, clearly on the way to her shift in the hospital wing. “What’s the problem?” 

I gestured wordlessly at Geraldine, and Helen moved forward swiftly, pulling instruments out of her bag, checking her blood pressure, reflexes, heartbeat. 

Hannah shrugged. “All normal. What happened?” 

“We were just talking, and then she was on the ground.” We helped her to her feet. She looked grey in the face, but cheerful. I watched her pick up her knitting and start a new row, humming happily under her breath, and I pulled Hannah over to the side.  

“I don’t know,” I told her. “It was weird. And concerning to me. Have her charts been abnormal recently?” 

“No, nothing out of the norm. There was no sign of a drop in blood pressure, so she probably just lost her balance. But I’ll pass it on to the pharmacist we should up her dosage of Glimepiride.” She scribbled something down on a notepad and patted me on the shoulder. “She’s fine, Meg. You worry too much. And you know, better to not get too attached.” 

That was something I often was told working at Grassy Elms. Don’t get emotionally involved, the seniors come and go. But I couldn’t help it. The residents always stole into my heart with friendly demeanor and kind smiles. I had never gotten to know my grandparents, and maybe this was my way of replacing them. Watching the residents, keeping an eye on their quirks and anecdotes, also kept me entertained during the long and tiring days. I had kept up a rapport with Geraldine for some time. Bubbly, creative, nurturing Geraldine. She talked often and lovingly about her children, a girl and a boy named Alexander and Lucy, who now must have been well into their fifties. But in the year and a half she had been a resident, they had never come to visit. She didn’t receive letters or presents in the mail. 

So, she had, in a way, adopted me, and I supposed I had adopted her right back. On Christmas Eve when I had reluctantly dragged myself out of the house for my shift, grumpily going about my day, I had discovered in my employee mailbox a purple and red striped sweater, slightly uneven but so soft and comfortable. That night I went home to an empty house, slipped the sweater over my head, and cried. 

My parents were corporate, high-powered lawyers who had been cold to me until my college graduation, when they had stopped talking to me entirely except through monthly checks to help with my rent. Even at twenty-nine I still received the occasional check in the mail. Not that the loss of touch hadn’t been mutual, because it had. But I missed the little things that parents were supposed to do; the hugs, the late-night phone calls and peppermint tea to soothe a cough. So, Geraldine filled a kind of hole, even when I couldn’t admit it to myself. 

I let myself into my apartment at the end of the week, setting my bag on the marble counter and immediately reaching for the fish food by the sink. Dino had been swimming strangely recently, hovering toward the bottom of the tank, not weaving through the plants as much as he used to. I dropped a pinch of flakes into the water, watching them float slowly downward, until they were devoured by the fish. I loved to watch them eat, taking nibbles out of the flakes until they were gone. Such a simple life, I thought. Just swimming, eating, sleeping. That’s what I want. 

I turned on all the lights, the overheads and the smaller lamps in the kitchen, and cooked dinner with music playing over my phone speakers, not too loud, in case a neighbor complained. I ate in front of the television, a rerun of Golden Girls season two. Right now, Dorothy and Blanche stood across the screen arguing about work. I shook my head disapprovingly.  

“You just need some time apart,” I said out loud. Neither of them responded. 

In the morning I woke up, stared at the white ceiling, and made a resolve to myself. I would greet all my coworkers when I came in, ask them about their weekends. I would listen to Helen’s drama with a smile on my face, or a frown, or a shocked expression if that’s what the situation demanded. And I would spend extra time with Geraldine, reveling in all the love she provided. I might even do something special, like go out and buy her some flowers on my lunch break. I was done being alone. 

I’d always come to Geraldine’s room with dinner at 6:30 sharp. She’d be in there watching reruns of Jeopardy, and she’d rush to the door with a big smile on her face, thank me, and ask me to stay a little while. I’d always politely decline. But I’d linger for a few moments, letting my eyes take in her cozy room lit up by the screen, soaking in a little of her company. 

But that day when I knocked, no one came to answer the door after two, three tries. No warm eyes greeted me. No game show music played softly. There was only silence. 

I knocked again, and then hurriedly reached down and used my administrator key to get in. Usually in these situations, the protocol was to knock three times and wait two minutes before becoming alarmed. But I could feel it in my gut that something was wrong. 

I found Geraldine on her back on the carpet, her arms spread, her mouth lolled open, and her green eyes open wide. Her muscles seemed to shake. I checked her pulse, beating faintly under the thin skin of her wrist. Her breath was rapid and heavy, ragged and strange. 

I picked up my radio, my hands shaking. “I need emergency assistance in Suite 237.” Then I dropped it and turned my attention to her breathing. It was evident that she needed CPR, and my hands worked in autopilot, sounding out a rhythm on her chest.  

After an undeterminable amount of time, I felt her stop shaking under my hands, her muscles going still. I ceased my movements, looking at her. “Geraldine?” 

Her eyelids fluttered slightly but stayed shut. One of her hands reached out and grasped mine tightly. “Lucy?” she said in a small voice. 

“Geraldine, it’s Meg, your caretaker. Are you alright?” 

She shifted her head slightly, and I eased her up so that she was resting in my lap. “Lucy,” she murmured. “Lucy. Lucy. Lucy” she kept saying while I sat there holding her. 

A minute or an hour or a lifetime later I watched as someone moved my hands away from Geraldine, placing her gently on a stretcher and wheeling her out of the room. I don’t know how to describe it to someone who has never seen a person die. You watch the blood leech out of their skin, watch their eyes flutter closed. You feel their chest exhale with a final breath, like that little whistle of wind when a bird rushes past your ear. Geraldine hadn’t yet reached that stage, but I could feel it. I had seen enough death to know. I knew she was dying like I knew that I was now, absolutely, alone. 

I don’t know how long I sat there. But I remember looking around, seeing her dinner scattered across the floor, the blue TV screen projecting the same old Jeopardy episode. 

The rest of the day I went about my work in a kind of trance. I couldn’t stop picturing her on the ground, eyes open, like she was seeing something that I couldn’t.  

That night I went home, and the house was empty. The refrigerator lit up the cold space of the kitchen, and I looked over my abysmal selection of dinner foods, leftover pasta and frozen Indian food. For a moment I stood in the cold air, just listening to the sound of the fridge humming and an owl hooting outside, and the trickling water running through the filter of the fish tank. Finally, I was alone, deeply and truthfully. 

I crossed to the living room, picked up my phone and dialed a familiar number. I held my breath as the phone rang. I didn’t know what I wanted, whether I wanted to hear her real voice, or the artificial sound of her voicemail.   

My mother answered on the third ring. “Hello?”  

Her voice sounded tired, like it used to when she would come home after a long day at the office. Maybe the kind of tiredness that came with age, too. I couldn’t really tell. It had been a long time since I had spoken with her. 

“Hi, mom.” There was a panic flooding my body, and along with the pain of the day, it was hard to keep myself from crying. But I swallowed the feeling down. She had always hated it when I cried. 

“How are you, Margaret?” Clipped, cool and professional. 

“I’m, um, I’m okay. I just needed someone to talk to.” 

“Then talk. I’m listening.” 

I had a bad habit of pacing during phone calls, my stress manifesting in my body as I traced my steps back and forth across the room. But I forced myself to be still, and my breath to slow. 

“Remember when I was little?” I started, and my own question surprised me. I kept going. “You used to tuck me into bed after work. You’d get home so late, but every night you still came into my room and tucked the blankets around me. I used to stay up for you but close my eyes when you came in, so you didn’t know I was still awake.” 

I listened to my mother breathe on the other line. I pictured her now, her brown hair streaked with silver and her green eyes still sharp and intelligent, the kind of gaze that made clients spill their guts about what had really happened, and little girls strive for her approval. I wondered what had happened to that other mother, the kind one, who had loved me enough to tuck me into bed every night, who I hadn’t spoken to in so long I had forgotten her voice. 

“Yes, I remember.” I heard her smile through the phone. “You had those green sheets, with the little pink roses.” 

“Why did you ever stop coming in?” 

“I-Margaret, you have to understand. After Charlie-” she swallowed. After twenty-two years, it was still difficult for her to say his name. “After, it was difficult to be a parent. I looked at you, and I remembered him.” 

“That’s not fair. I grieved too. I needed my mother. I-I still do.” 

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be enough for you.” 

I knew what she was thinking. I knew she was picturing a little boy with brown curls and a high-pitched giggle, wearing overalls and a striped tee shirt, pushing plastic trucks down the driveway and watching them crash into the fence. But she wasn’t thinking about the little girl who played alongside him, who kissed his skinned knees and put rocks in the pockets of his overalls and cried at his funeral in her black cotton dress, barely understanding how and why her best friend had been taken away from her. 

I almost opened my mouth and told her about Geraldine. But I didn’t want to hear anymore shallow sympathy. I hung up the phone. 

On a Saturday two months later, I was stacking boxes in the pharmaceutical wing, watching the remaining minutes of my shift drain away, when I received a call from an unknown number. I answered absentmindedly, phone nestled between my ear and my shoulder as my hands moved on autopilot. 

“Hello?” 

“Hi,” the voice responded, female, and cautious. “This is Lucy Hawthorne. I’m under the impression that you took care of my mother before she passed?” 

I swallowed. “Yes, this is Meg. I work at Grassy Elms.”  

There was a pause on the other end. “You don’t have to respond right away, but I was hoping I could meet with you to talk.”  

“Talk?” 

“My mother and I weren’t close by any means. It would be nice to hear from someone who knew her at the end of her life.” 

I set down the box in my hand. “I would love to meet.” 

*** 

By the park that weekend we walked in circles around the sidewalk. The swing set beckoned under the weight of school children as dogs barked for their owner’s attention. I told Lucy about the sweater, about meeting her mother for the first time, when she had smiled, and given me a peppermint, and told me I had the face of a girl she had seen in a dream. I told her about reruns of Jeopardy, and then I told her about death. 

“And when she passed, she…had a stroke, right?” 

“She did. A brain stem stroke. That’s when there isn’t enough blood pumping to the brain, because of a blockage in the blood vessels.” 

Lucy hummed in agreement. She had read the file from the hospital, but I didn’t blame her for wanting to hear it from me. 

I added as an afterthought, “She said your name.” 

Lucy’s eyebrows rose. “What?” 

I nodded. “I found her on the ground in her room. She kept saying it.” Lucy, Lucy, Lucy, in that frail voice. “She loved you a lot. She talked about you all the time.” 

Lucy sighed, her eyes on the pale sky. “She wasn’t a perfect mother. Sometimes she wasn’t even a good one. But I wasn’t the perfect daughter, either. I know that now.” 

I thought about my early teenage years, of locking myself in my room while my parents had dinner in the kitchen. I was so angry with the world after Charlie was gone. I knew that I hadn’t been close with my parents, but maybe that was my fault as well as theirs. I had felt that there was a hole in their lives now that I couldn’t fill. I couldn’t be what they wanted, and that almost killed me. But maybe I had barely tried to be their daughter. Maybe by shutting that door, I had closed myself off from a relationship with them forever. But maybe there was a chance to get it back.  

I answered the rest of Lucy’s questions. And I asked her questions too. We talked until I could close my eyes and see Geraldine fully in my mind.  

“Thank you for this,” Lucy told me at the end of the call. “I’m grieving her life, and I’m grieving the fact that I couldn’t have been a bigger part of it before she passed. But you make me feel like now she is not so far off, like there is a bridge between us instead of chasm.” 

I thought about Charlie, and what I wouldn’t give for a bridge between the two of us. Then, inexplicably, I thought about my mother. Maybe there was still time. 

“You’re welcome, Lucy. I’m glad I can be that for you. And thank you too.” I hung up the phone and called my mother back. 

“I’m willing to try,” I said as soon as I heard the answering beep. 

“Try at what?” 

“At being your daughter again. If you will be my mother.” 

There was a soft sound on the other end of the line. It was so different from what I was used to hearing from her that I was taken aback and almost didn’t recognize it for what it was: a sob. 

“Yes, Meg, I can do that.” 

And there, I felt it. Some little bridge between us.