NEW VOICES

A Short Story

by Jeanne Lightly

In Loving Memory

I STARE AT THE WALL and wonder what kind of woman Anna Lifshitz could have been. The brass plaque with the chipped black letters reads: THIS ROOM DEDICATED IN LOVING MEMORY OF ANNA LIFSHITZ.

What had this woman done in her life to have a 10 by 14 cat-shit-yellow-walled room, chain-link covering the window, dedicated to her?

She obviously hadn't been a decorater. Two plastic cafeteria chairs, one orange, one chartreuse, huddle in the south corner, separated by a battered brown end table. A blue ceramic lamp shaped like a poodle sits on the table's top shelf, three tattered magazines rest on the scratched wood-grain Formica underneath. Next to my iron bed stands a rolling cart-tray and a nurse who looks like Phil Donahue in a white housedress.

She hands me a white cup containing two huge blue-green capsules.

"Take these."

I dump them into my hand. They're sticky: the blue-green rubs off on my palm.

"What are they?" I pick up a pill, sniff, lick it.

"They'll calm you," Phil answers. "You won't be nervous."

She pours ice water from a scabby white styrofoam pitcher into an amber tumbler.

"I'm not nervous. In fact, I'd like a nap."

She thrusts the water toward my face, her ham-hand fisted around the glass; it looks like a thimble clutched in a pitcher's mitt.

"Take them," she commands.

Ten minutes and three glasses of water later, I feel the pills slide down my throat. They leave a bitter garlic taste in my mouth.

"Why don't you rest now?" asks Phil in her one-octave-below-middle-C patronizing-trying-to-be-soothing-voice. "I'll be back soon to check on you, and the doctor will be in shortly."

She turns and wedges her way through the heavy iron door. I hear keys clank, the dead-bolt slip into place.

I lie on my side, contemplating the tarnish on Anna Lifshitz's memory, and picture a gaunt woman, tall, stern, greying hair yanked back into a frazzled bun, furiously flagellating her children with a willow whip, nagging a cowed Mr. Lifshitz into bouts of nervous diarrhea, leaving memories as scarred and barren as this room of honor.

The pills take effect, the bed is a cloud. I float, gently rocking, drifting ...

Marina Jack's ... scotch-soaked twilights ... the sun and Johnny Walker Red warming me ... sailboats slicking across the bay ... cabin cruisers, outboards sidling up to the pier ... brown-blonde people crawling out of hulls, jumping off decks ... laughing, glistening, oiled-brown people with white teeth.

...the waitress stands beside me, pad in hand. I order another Johnny Walker with a splash ...

"How are we doing?" asks Phil. She picks at the sheets, straightens the blanket around me. "You should be feeling very relaxed. The doctor will be in soon to talk with you. You know, we can't help you unless you let us."

I talk, but I can't hear my voice. I roll over, my back to the white intruder. I run my hand across the plaster, the cold, rough, cat-shit-yellow, real wall.

There was only one person I wanted to talk to.

Anna, what the hell did we do?

[ Story copyright © 1998 Jeanne Lightly. All rights reserved. ]

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