The Visiting Hours

The nurse at the front desk doesn't look up anymore when I sign in. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. Sometimes Wednesday. I've been coming long enough that my handwriting has its own spot in the ledger, a crooked signature that leans left like it's trying to escape the page.

Room 147. The number's burned into me now, the way phone numbers used to be before we stored them in machines. I know the exact number of steps from the elevator, thirty-two if I take the long way past the sunroom, eighteen if I cut through the activities hall where they're always doing crafts that smell like elementary school.

Today I take thirty-two.

She's in the chair by the window when I arrive, which means it's a good day. On bad days she's in bed, curled small, talking to people who've been dead for decades. On good days she sits up and watches the parking lot like she's expecting someone.

"Hello," I say.

She turns. Her face does that thing, a flicker of almost-recognition, like a light bulb deciding whether to come on. Then it settles into pleasant blankness.

"Do I know you?"

"I'm David," I tell her. "Your son."

She nods slowly, the way you nod at strangers who tell you things that might be true. "David. Yes. You look like someone."

I pull up the other chair, the vinyl one that squeaks. The maintenance man oiled it once but the squeak came back within a week, loyal as a dog.

"How are you feeling today?"

"Oh, fine, fine." She smooths her skirt, which doesn't need smoothing. "Have you seen Robert? He was supposed to bring the car around."

Robert. My father. Dead eleven years, though in her mind he's perpetually about to arrive, perpetually useful.

"He got held up," I say. "He'll be here soon."

This is Tuesday's story. On Thursdays, I tell her Robert is on a business trip. On Saturdays, I don't mention him at all and she doesn't ask.

We sit in the quiet. Outside, someone's loading groceries into a sedan. The world continuing its mundane business, indifferent to memory.

"I brought you these." I hand her the flowers I picked up at the Safeway, orchids, generic and cheerful. She takes them like they're made of something precious.

"How thoughtful. You didn't have to."

"I wanted to."

She looks at me then, really looks, and for a second I think she knows. Knows that I'm lying, or telling the truth, or something in between that doesn't have a name.

"You have kind eyes," she says.

I don't know what my eyes are. I don't know what they've seen or failed to see.

***

Thursday I arrive during dinner. The dining hall smells like overcooked vegetables and institutional soap. She's at her usual table, pushing food around her plate in patterns that might mean something or nothing.

"Hello," I say.

She looks up. "Do I know you?"

"I'm Thomas," I tell her. "Robert's brother. Your brother-in-law."

I've never had an uncle named Thomas. Robert was an only child. But she smiles like I've confirmed something she suspected.

"Thomas! Of course. Sit, sit. Have you eaten?"

"I'm fine, thank you."

"You're too thin. You were always too thin. Even as a boy."

I was never a boy to her. Thomas was never anyone to anyone. But I let her build the story, watching how she furnishes this fiction with details I haven't provided. Thomas had a motorcycle. Thomas worked in insurance. Thomas married that awful woman from Minneapolis.

"Do you still have the motorcycle?" she asks.

"Sold it," I say. "Bad knees."

She nods sympathetically. "Getting old is terrible. No one tells you how terrible."

We sit there, me and this woman who might be my mother, talking about a man who never existed. She seems happy. Happier than when I'm David, maybe. David disappoints her in ways she can't articulate; visits that are too short, flowers that are too cheap, some fundamental failure she can't name but feels in her bones.

Thomas brings no baggage. Thomas is clean.

When I leave, she touches my hand. "Come back soon," she says. "Robert would want to see you."

***

Saturday I'm late. There was traffic, or I sat in the parking lot for twenty minutes or both. Time does strange things lately, stretches and contracts like it's breathing.

She's in bed today. The TV is on, some game show where people spin wheels and guess prices. She's not watching it.

"Hello," I say.

Her eyes find me. "Do I know you?"

"I don't think so," I tell her. "I'm just visiting. They let me come in sometimes. I like talking to people."

This is the most dangerous version. The one where I'm no one at all.

She considers this. "That's nice of you. People don't talk enough anymore."

"No, they don't."

"What's your name?"

"Michael."

Another invention. Michael is easier than David somehow. David carries weight.

"Do you have family, Michael?"

"I did. Once."

"What happened?"

"I don't remember."

She laughs; a small, dry sound. "Join the club."

We watch the game show together. A woman in a yellow dress wins a dinner set and screams like she's won the universe. The audience applauds. The wheel keeps spinning.

"Can I tell you something?" she asks.

"Of course."

"Sometimes I don't know who people are. They come in here and they say they're my son, or my husband, or my sister, and I smile because that's what you do. But I don't remember them. Not really. Just shapes. The idea of them."

My throat tightens. "That must be frightening."

"Sometimes. Sometimes it's a relief. If you don't remember the bad things, did they happen?"

"I don't know."

"Me neither."

We sit in that uncertainty together. On the TV, someone spins the wheel wrong and goes bankrupt. Sad music plays.

"Michael," she says. "That's a good name. I had a brother named Michael."

She didn't. I've seen the family tree. But I don't correct her.

"Did you?" I say.

"He drowned. Or maybe that was someone else. It's hard to keep track."

***

The nurse catches me in the hallway after. The new one, with the nose ring and tired eyes.

"You're here a lot," she says. Not accusatory, just observing.

"I like visiting."

"Are you family?"

"Sometimes."

She looks at me like she's trying to solve an equation. "Mrs. Patterson doesn't get many visitors. Just you."

Patterson. That's her name. My name, maybe. Or maybe I just borrowed it.

"She's easy to talk to," I say.

"She thinks you're different people. You know that, right?"

"I know."

"That doesn't bother you?"

I think about this. "I think I'm different people too."

The nurse's pen stops moving across her clipboard. She looks up, then back down. Clicks the pen twice.

"Well. It's good she has someone. Even if she doesn't remember."

***

Tuesday again. Or maybe it's Wednesday. The ledger will know, but I don't check.

She's in the chair. The window. The parking lot.

"Hello," I say.

She turns. The flicker, longer this time. Her hand rises, touches her throat.

"Do I know you?"

"I don't know. Do you?"

She studies my face. A car alarm goes off in the parking lot. Someone swears.

"You look like my son," she says. "But he's dead."

I've never told her this story. She's never told me.

"Is he?"

"I think so. Or maybe he just stopped coming. It's hard to tell the difference from here."

I sit in the squeaking chair.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. Maybe it's better. Maybe he was terrible and I've forgotten that too." She smooths her skirt. "Were you close? You and your son?"

"I remember being close. But I also remember distance."

She nods. Looks out the window. A pigeon lands on the sill, pecks at nothing, flies away.

"Do you want to know something?" she asks.

"Yes."

"I'm tired." She says it to the window, not to me. "All these people coming in, telling me who they are, who I am."

The game show is on again. Or still on. The wheel spins.

"Do I know you?" she asks. Her voice different now. Not about before. About now.

"Yes," I say. "No. Maybe."

She smiles.

I reach for her hand. She lets me take it. Her fingers are cold. Mine might be too.

A golf cart putters past the window. An orderly whistles something tuneless. The fluorescent light above us flickers, catches, holds.

She's looking at the parking lot again. I'm looking at her looking.

When I stand to leave, she doesn't turn.

In the hallway, the nurse is at her station.

"Same time next week?" she asks.

"I don't know. Maybe."

The parking lot has forty-seven cars. I walked past them all on the way in, counting without meaning to. Now there are forty-eight, or forty-six. I find one with my keys in my pocket. The engine turns over. The radio is on a station I don't remember setting, playing a song I might know.

The rearview mirror shows the building getting smaller.

I drive.

At the first red light, I check the visor. There's a Post-it note there in handwriting I don't recognize: Room 147. Tuesdays.

The light turns green.

I keep driving.

Or I turn around.

The Post-it doesn't say.