The Falling Leaves Home - Part 1

The Falling Leaves Home

Part 1

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 must have when they stare out into 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 bee hive 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 my personal problem of evacuation just this morning. I was two days overdue, he was right on time. He was fortunate to leave this world later 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 possessions we give each other the best we can.

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 can at least 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 cheerful and encouraging words, they belie his ability to turn back our clock. We are not particularly interested in the clock anyway, 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 in 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 was female I am sure the men of the Home would make fools of ourselves as well, but as things stand the doctor 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––I think it showed the goodness of his heart, and were his heart as steady as his bowels he would be alive this afternoon.

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. No one dies here, by the way–we 'slip away'. Someone can be sitting here passing the time of day with you and the next thing you know they aren't here anymore–they have 'slipped away'. Seymour would invariably greet you with a cheery, "Had your bowel movement today?" 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 still available. Many of us still have a hat and a coat hanging on the clothes tree in the front hall, although we wouldn't recognize which one was ours. The possibility of putting on a coat and a hat and stepping outside into the turbulent world we normally only see through the window is tempting, but common sense always prevails and keeps us indoors.

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 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 these activities 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 keep our flies zipped up. 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 here 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 in a woman. 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 contend with 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, a woman 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 lovers. 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 I fathered 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 cannot 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.