Talking With Mary

I was feeling better. It was my second ambulation after yesterday's "baptism" with I.V. bag above shoulder level dangling from a sturdy rolling "coat rack", properly shod: snug hospital issue non-skid slippers upon my tootsies, flimsy gown strategically tied in back, and relatively free from pain and certainly from seemingly endless supination. Today's "gambol" was less a celebration of itself (like yesterday's trek of a couple of dozen feet) than it was a mission to meet and greet fellow patients: really a way to give thanks for being alive. A tall "drink of water", a young black janitor, tiny golden rhomboid object attached to an earlobe, was mopping the far left side of the corridor of the ward as I made my way gingerly toward him. "How we doin' today, cap'n?" he sang out. I remembered him somehow. Four days ago he helped steady me as I writhed on a gurney while in and out of wakefulness. Or was this man someone who looked like that person? Would not an orderly instead of a cleaning man have tended to me? There was something familiar about him still, as I said. Just the friendly manner perhaps, that brought me back to another incident in which a totally guileless colored man had enquired of my health as well as the whereabouts of my mommy and daddy. This was well over a half century ago, when I had briefly lost my way just yards from my uncle's brownstone in Italian Harlem. A stranger's concern, wrapped in the natural pleasantness of his personality, his heart unfathomable maybe, but worth a wager about its goodness by the charm of those social skills, was a residual micro-particle of trustfulness that had never been completely blotted out though time and cynicism had accrued as with many middle aged folks like me. My spirits today were buoyant enough to greet this new cheerfulness more than halfway and my response lacked the usual preceding pause that unready and neutral torpidity of everyday life's low levels of vigor and receptiveness usually signal. In fact, I nearly overlapped the janitor's query with my own zippy "Good morning, sir! Wow, who ordered that sunshine?" Raised blinds in the nearby dayroom afforded plenty of chances for splashy yellow-white beams to illumine one and all. A slight chuckle escaped from the cleaning man's throat as he continued to go about his business. I was a bit disappointed that the big bright room was unoccupied, but I soldiered on, noticing my shuffle for the first time and aware of other rooms, all emitting daylight as well and full of the promise of ensconced fellow patients. Next door over I heard the light snoring of a figure whose naked lower limbs were pudgy and smeared with dried blood. As I passed the open door and looked back at the face that went with this body, I thought "Boris The Horrible. I would even say hello to him. Well…. no…" I thought. "I'm glad he's asleep." He wasn't, generally speaking, so much a horror as he was a bore (hence, "Boris"). But the nurses gave him his full alias, never to be erased since that particular morning during my stay in the I.C.U. diagonally across from him where his newly unfettered hands exploited the liberation in a torrent of destructive acts that included tubes being torn from his body and excrement excavated from same and hurled at no one (smallest of consolations) in particular. "Rest, Boris…for as long as you wish…..in peace."

Forward, onward, upward….second chances are not as common as human interest stories on television would lead you to believe. Must and will "carpe diem." No Boris, unconscious or not, can diminish this feeling of rebirth. "Who's in the next room?" I thought, like a kid espying another package under the Christmas tree, hopeful that another toy rather than a shirt awaited. At the entrance to 732B a sign read "Kileski, Anna" and leaning forward thoughtlessly, I winced while glimpsing a tiny gray haired lady sitting next to her bed, perfectly coifed yet robed, and humming to herself. She met my gaze and my robust (or so I thought) "Good morning!" with an intense smile that crinkled her face. "Going home today?" I asked unreservedly. She continued to grin and I nodded a goodbye, unperturbed that language or her hearing may have hindered a response. Her smile was enough.

I turned a corner and there he was. "Mr. Salvemini! Well, what have we here?" "Hi Dr. Krantz! I guess you were right" I offered. He studied me, clinically of course, for a brief moment. "I was coming your way. I see that you're continuing to follow my recommendations. Good. Yes sir, seemed impossible to you at first, but a rapid recovery is indicated in these cases. Now don't get too rambunctious. Five or ten minutes at most of walking is best for another day or two" said my surgeon, clipboard in hand and with a million other things to attend to, his smile fading quickly as he went past with big strides that I marveled at and yes, envied. Now I began to feel some weariness. "The spirit is willing, etc.. etc." I thought. The corridor darkened as other buildings close by formed inner courtyards outside this group of windows and blocked more than some of the daylight. Someone had left an incandescent light on in a room near the far right corner of this dead end hallway where the usual sign admonished about its fire exit door not to be opened and with warnings about alarms, sirens, etc. Almost adjacent and perpendicular to this furthest portal, I saw the familiar bright red exit sign at the door to a no doubt drafty stairwell and entertained a dark notion about there really being "No Exit" a la Monsieur Sartre's famed worldview. "Is my honeymoon with gratitude over already?" I mused. I had to return to my room anyway, but there was no sense getting moody or raining on my own parade. "You're having a good day, damn it!" I argued with myself.

"Hey, what about this room?" I silently protested to my gloomier side. The one with the warm yellow light was not to be ignored. There was someone inside as I heard a voice in apparent conversation, perhaps on a telephone. Approaching more closely, the sounds were clearer now. It was the sweet, somewhat high pitched timbre of a man from old New York. He reminded me of some of my father's half-Irish cousins-in-law from Inwood. Images cascaded out of my memory banks: pitchers of beer, sawdust floors and frequent laughter interspersed with longwinded tales of the "Olde Sod", mundane complaints about the weather and the venting of ancient hurts of the undoing of Jimmy Walker. "Mary! Oh, Mary! Where are you now? Oh Mary, I need you!" The distinctly conversational and loving tone of his enquiries made me certain that a reply was imminent from "Mary." Then he whistled, as if he were calling for a beloved sheepdog on some fog enshrouded hill in Killarney.

I boldly stuck my head into the room and saw a gangling, large framed, very old man, taller than the amiable janitor and with most of his very white hair that was neatly combed and parted in the middle, reclining on his bed in a union suit of yellowed white wool with the Dr. Denton styled elasticized cuffs on ankles and wrists. Around this rosy complected man's neck was a very large, thick gold chain with two revealed pendants: a crucifix and an anchor, both of gold as well. There was no telephone in the room and no television set. "Good morning sir, my name is Vincent. I hope I'm not bothering you, but I just wanted to say 'hello.' It's my first big walk after surgery." "Oh, hi ya. Can you sit down? There's no one in the other bed today" he helpfully suggested. "I'd better just stand. It's still a little tough to change positions, sitting or standing. Thanks. Excuse me, but who were you talking to? I haven't seen a nurse since I left my room and the visiting hours haven't started." He smiled in a very pleasant way, like someone who knew a wonderful secret that he didn't resent sharing. "Oh, sonny, I was talking with Mary. I want to see her." His eyes were moist and gleaming…eager: as if he were greeting someone very dear as he looked beyond and above my head and cried "Oh, Ma-ary! It's Kevin." "Was Mary your wife?" I ventured, his sweetness a strong encouragement, quite aside from my crusading gregariousness. "Oh no, she's my friend, our Mary." My sustained quizzical look interrupted his joyful reverie of her and he patiently put me "in the loop": "The Virgin Mary! I want to see her soon. I'm so looking forward to it! Oh, Ma-a-a-ry." I smiled hesitantly. He did not seem to have dementia and there was nothing to really make me uncomfortable. It was, I now guessed, a wondrously novel and oh, so simple way to pray. I, of the brittle brain, who spent decades (both the years and the beads) praying the "Hail Mary" by rote, found this a revelation and exceedingly comforting. "How old are you sir, if you don't mind my asking?" "I'll be ninety eight in September." I quickly calculated that this man had attained the age of reason before the close of the nineteenth century and I became excited about the prospects of sounding out his "primary source" credentials. I could not resist: "May I call you Kevin?" "Mr. Garrity, if you please." "I'm sorry, of course Mr. Garrity. Sir, what is one of your earliest memories?" "He was murmuring Mary's name now, but his alertness was not to be underestimated. "What say sonny?" he said, turning in the bed with its well starched fresh sheets. I repeated the question and his face lit up, brighter than it had already been. "'Rushing the Growler' was a big job for a little boy! That little boy was me." "How old do you think you were then?" "Guess about five, maybe six. Before my first communion." "I've heard the phrase but I'm not sure what it means." "Well, you see sonny, we lived next door to the firehouse on Ninth avenue. I loved the dalmatians they had and they let me help feed them. We had McCurdy's near the other end of the block and after duty hours they gave me the can to refill down there. That was the growler. Seemed about half as big as me. Big metal can. Half a gallon of beer each time. I got a penny for every roundtrip and two cents on Fridays. Didn't want to delay when the big boys wanted another round. So you had to rush." "Weren't you kind of young, sir?" "I was a pretty big sprout for my age and I loved those dogs. Didn't like the horses as much…all that doo-doo in the street. Big Bohemian man pushing a broom all day long trying to keep the street clear. No cars then, sonny, but lots of doo-doo." He sat back, having almost left the bed while reliving those trips to McCurdy's. "Thank you, Mr. Garrity. Can I get you a drink of water or a candy bar?" "No thanks. Got to "see a man about a horse" and then I'll turn in 'til lunchtime. Take care of yourself, sonny." "Thanks, thanks for the stories." "Come round tomorrow, I'll tell you more." "Sure will. 'Bye now."

I started back, my heart full and no longer seeking human contact like a hungry man trying to gather apples. Mr. Garrity had sated me with more than enough food for thought. Little doubt, his race was almost run, but he was like his former self: skipping along or purposefully trudging to McCurdy's, happy in either case and singing a kind of song that required no special vocal talent, but that gladdened the heart at least as well as a Como or a Cole could. I knew that my future statistically, stretched before me, not likely concentrated in an unknown, but maybe precious few weeks or a couple of score of months like Kevin's and I was grateful for the chance to fill that blank slate with redeeming chapters of my story. I was going home, safe again, for hopefully a long while. But Mr. Garrity was going home too, and whether it was to be his apartment or to a beatific place beyond time, he was embracing either future. As I carefully began to ease myself down upon returning to my bed, it struck me: his gift to me. Whether many or few, a certain future hospital stay would one day be, whether I came home or not, my last. Kevin showed me how it could be. With the faith of a child this nonagenarian had held open a door to where no engulfment was to be feared or abandonment was possible: to a place where the heart was always at home with Mary, her Son and all one's loved ones.