the exchange
by karen lauritzen

Clarisse crossed the street and sensed dryness in her throat. She wished she’d had that second glass of iced tea with her lunch. The air held the burdensome weight of August and the afternoon was still and quiet except for the distant background noise of local traffic. The heat seemed to have defeated even the playful grey squirrels and sent them to the cool of their nests.

Clarisse pushed open the glass doors to Parkway Village Care Center and moved from the dry as dust day to a climate-controlled environment. Goose bumps rose on her arms as her body adjusted to the change in temperature.

She stepped into an empty elevator and pressed the button for the second floor. Grateful that no one was in the car, she let out a long sigh, dropped her shoulders, and then closed her eyes while the elevator shuddered and rose.

The doors opened to the scent of stale air, pine sol, and freshly waxed linoleum. Ahead of her, patients clustered around a circular nursing station. A few sat in wheelchairs, immobilized by medications or disease. Many paced back and forth, urgently tracing and retracing the same movements. One woman walked briskly, arms swinging back and forth, around the perimeter. She turned her head from side to side as if looking for something that she could not find. Clarisse watched while the woman stopped and nodded to the nurse. The nurse acknowledged the nod by raising her eyebrows slightly and then the woman resumed the patrol of the room’s perimeter.

Clarisse stepped around a wheelchair to sign the visitor’s register before moving into the alcove next to the nursing station. Each visit, she sat there on a narrow, backless bench to gather herself before seeing her mother. The bench, upholstered with a floral fabric in shades of peach and light green, reminded her of the dressing table bench in her parent’s bedroom. She ran her fingers across the padded fabric and sighed again.

She pushed her headband back on her hair and tucked the tail of her shirt neatly into the waistband of her slacks. She looked up and saw her mother walking alone past the bench. Her hair had been clipped into a short, almost mannish haircut. Even though Clarisse had suggested this haircut would simplify grooming and bathing, she was startled by the change in her mother’s appearance. She looked less familiar without the frame of soft curls around her face. She wore the sweat suit Clarisse had purchased on her last visit six weeks ago. On her feet were house slippers that Clarisse did not remember. Today her size five feet were flip flopping along the floor in a pair of size eight dirty, pink flat house slippers.

Her mother looked gaunt; “Worn to a shadow,” her grandmother’s words, came to mind as she walked past Clarisse without acknowledgement. Clarisse followed the thin, shrunken ghost of the woman who had always been eager to see her, face filled with laughter, her arms held out to offer a hug of warmth and affection.

“Hello, Jean. How are you today?” Clarisse walked beside her mother now, addressing her by the name she was most likely to recognize. Jean didn’t remember being a mother, and didn’t remember Clarisse. Jean stopped moving, turned and looked at Clarisse with vacant eyes.

Clarisse gestured toward the alcove, “Would you like to sit on the soft bench and visit for a few moments?” I’m certain that no one will mind if we sit here to visit. I’ll sit here with you.” Jean backed up to the bench, sat down, pulling her body slightly forward as if she prepared to depart at any moment. Her hands lay limply at her sides and her eyes stared straight ahead. Clarisse sat next to her.

Clarisse began speaking rapidly, struggling to stitch a thread of memory into the gnarled mass that was her mother’s mind. She kept her tone smooth and untroubled. She did not want to frighten this tiny bird of a woman perched precariously between the present and her forgotten yesterdays. Clarisse’s voice maintained a steady tone as she searched for a connecting doorway to her mother’s memory: “You remember, your son, Paul, your sewing room, going to the house on Normal Avenue every Sunday to have dinner at Grandma’s house. Remember, Mom, remember?”

As she spoke, she slipped her arm tenderly, slowly around her mother’s shoulder, feeling the bony shoulder blades against her arm.

Jean turned her head and looked directly into Clarisse’s eyes. The corners of Jean’s mouth pulled upward into a slight smile. Then, this frail bird rested her head gently on her Clarisse’s shoulder.

The next breath Clarisse inhaled seemed to carry the fragrance of hyacinths as if a cool breeze wafted through the alcove of this empty, barren place.

© Karen Lauritzen is a retired medical social worker who lives in Brevard, North Carolina . She attends writing and critique groups in west Asheville. She is working on her first novel.