Renovations

  She hadn’t eaten in a day. She was convinced, however, that her clock was wrong.  Some man was supposed to fix it, but he had never come.  She would have asked to see his ID through the peephole, and if he hadn’t had it, she would have sent him away.  But no man had come, with or without ID.

   The peephole was one of the few things in her apartment that was not electronic.  The Olde Brooklyn Apartments had not escaped the last version of upgrades.  She had held out for a long time, claiming she was used to her ways and quite old, but the super had finally insisted. For property value.  For her safety.  And on and on and on.

   Her spotted hand fumbled over the china teacup in front of her, fingering the curves and curlicues. The one with the pink roses was her favorite. Her kitchen table was small and tidy, ringed as it was with traces of previous teacups.  The eastern light filtered onto it, making the wood gleam.

   She heaved herself up from her chair to try again.  The buttons had been installed above the sink.  They weren’t even actually buttons, she thought.  Not like the ones on your clothes or on old telephones.  These were orange spots on a black screen with yellow words printed above them.  Words like “dispense” and “override”.  What sense did that make?  Where were “go” and “stop”?  Or how about just “water”?

   She stared at the orange blobs, wondering which one to touch.  She didn’t want to do it wrong, because it beeped when she did it wrong.  She lightly touched the one with the word “dispense” written above it.  Nothing happened.  She stared at her new, sleek faucet, bent and looked under it even, though she was scared the water would choose just that moment to come gushing out.  Not a drop.  She straightened and jabbed the button angrily with her finger.  A beeping sound, shrill and bleating, came from the kitchen wall.  A message flashed on the black screen: “Please make only one selection at a time”.  She covered her ears and stepped away from the sink.  Her hip banged into the dishwasher behind her, resulting in a second wave of beeping.  She screamed, cramming her fingers into her ears.  The beeping finally stopped.  She stood in her kitchen, a ghost of a woman bathed in morning light.  Her hip throbbed and her mouth watered.

   She looked down at her kitchen counter, tracing her fingers over the pattern in the Formica.  Her hand fluttered over her stack of tattered cookbooks.  Old friends, she thought.  She’d always favored the ones with pictures; portraits of dripping roasts nestled among browned vegetables, whole chickens stuffed with onions, white cakes made to look like wedding dresses.  Though she hated coconut- she had always left the coconut off of her white cakes, and everybody had liked them just the same.  Her two nieces had assured her many times that the cake was just as good without the coconut, if not better.  Nothing to get stuck in your teeth.

   On the other side of the counter lay a manual.  The installers had left it with her, cautioning her to read it thoroughly, for her safety.  Inside it, she was assured, was the key to understanding every single new button and spout in her apartment.  Food did not come from grocery stores anymore, the man had said, but from the wall.  And she could now have a bubble bath even if she didn’t have a bottle of Mr. Bubbles.  Dirty clothes were deposited in one slot and came out another, clean and pressed.  Then they had started talking about atoms and molecular bonds. She had said she didn’t believe it and they had laughed at her.  “It’s okay, old lady,” one of the men had said.  “We’ll leave you the manual.”

   The manual was an inch thick with small black printing.  There were no pictures.  Halfway through the book, the words were upside down and in another language.  Upon reaching this page, she had thrown it down in disgust.

   The elevator man might be by today, she thought.  He sometimes came to check on her, though he was not very good at working the buttons either. He wasn’t really an elevator man anymore- he had retired before the old elevators had been replaced and now lived in another apartment in her building.  Being an older gentleman, he was more respectful of her than the younger people in the building.  And he knew more about buttons than she, having once been an elevator operator.  Of course, those buttons had been actual buttons you pressed in, not blobs of color on a screen that beeped when you pushed them too hard.  A couple of days ago he had helped her get her tea and some food out of the wall.  But the food was now gone and she had gone without, not wanting to risk the device herself.

   She looked down at her body.  Her housedress was pale and wrinkled.  She noted a faint trace of scum on her skin.  She was not a dirty person, but she had not bathed in days.  If the elevator man did come, she could not receive him like this.

   She shuffled towards the bathroom, favoring her bruised hip.  Her heart began to beat faster.  She was scared of her bathroom now.  She had figured out the toilet- just one orange circle to push when done with one’s business.  The sink, of course, was a problem.  And the shower.

The shower had a large, black screen built into the wall.  A grid of orange lights offered options beyond her comprehension- the shower stall had been transformed into a pharmacy of oils, salts, and exfoliants.  One could set the temperature of the water to the tenth of a degree in Fahrenheit or Celsius.

   She stood in her beige and pink bathroom and stared over her tub at the black screen. Forty-eight orange eyes stared back at her.  She felt so tired and dirty, and the thought of fresh water made her brave.  Reaching clumsily over the tub, she pressed the button labeled “dispense” with a firm but not too heavy touch, and then jumped back.  A stream of water poured from the bath spout.  Cautiously, she reached down with her hand, and felt cool water against her fingers.  She laughed out loud with relief.  She tried to kneel on the bathmat.  She was so thirsty!  Her hip refused to bend all the way without considerable pain. Kneeling onto her other knee, she crouched awkwardly and bent her head as low as she could under the faucet.  She gulped the water down, stretching out with her tongue to capture every drop.  She drank until she felt like she would throw up, and then she painfully straightened herself back up again.

   Now…. to raise the temperature of the water and make it come out of the showerhead instead of the faucet.  But which button to push?  This would actually require a combination of buttons, and she couldn’t begin to guess which one must be pressed first to get the water to do what she wanted.  She felt better after her drink, though- stronger.  If she couldn’t figure it out, maybe she could just take a little birdbath in the cool water.  How she missed hot showers, though.  And warm, billowy steam. It was worth it to try.

   She began the arduous task of standing up.  Her hip hurt.  She felt dumb and slow. I’m so old, she thought.  So much older somehow than just a few months ago.  Before all the buttons came.

She pushed down on the side of the tub, now damp with the cool water.  Her hand slipped down underneath the faucet as she tried to lift herself, and she pressed her other hand against the wall to steady herself.  Her fingers pushed up against the shiny black screen.  Against all the little orange buttons.  Her bathroom began to scream and the water turned to liquid fire gushing out at full strength over her right hand.  She screamed too, joining her voice to the screaming coming from the wall.  A yellow light flashed on and off- words telling her not to push more than one button at a time, for her own safety.  She snatched her hand back and tried to stand up, but the porcelain was so slick she slipped again, smacking her head on the side of the tub and dropping her right hand and part of her forearm into the scalding water.  The room darkened and began to spin.  Her head hurt and she could feel the pain in her hand, but from far away.  She closed her eyes.  Slowly, her head slipped backwards and she fell back onto the floor, her hand finally free of the water.  After a minute, the beeping stopped.  The water continued to pour out, and steam filled the bathroom, fogging the mirrors and the black screen on the wall.  The orange eyes glittered at her.

   She awoke to the sound of knocking.  And then to pain.  Her head, her hip, and her hand hurt.  But it was her hand that was on fire.  The knocking was coming from her front door.  She sighed in small relief that it wasn’t the newly installed doorbell.

   She began to rise slowly, leaning on her good arm.  Steam still filled the bathroom, but it was dissipating.  The water, inexplicably, had turned off.  She still felt dizzy, and could feel tears on her face.  She looked down at her injured hand.  It seemed to be someone else’s hand, or not a hand at all.  Surely not something that belonged on her body.  It looked like an alien.  A red and ruined starfish, white in places where the skin had peeled back.  She began to cry, not only in pain but also in embarrassment and loss.  She had done this to herself. 

   The knocking at the door resumed.  She heard the elevator man’s voice.  She was glad it was he and not the landlord.  The landlord would have yelled at her.  She pushed herself up from the floor and straightened her housedress around her body as best she could.  She hated receiving someone like this, but she had no choice.  She needed help.  She limped to the front door and thanked God that the doorknob had not been replaced.  She opened the door.

   The elevator man was smiling, but immediately stopped.  He opened his mouth wide in horror.

   “Dear God in heaven, what happened?”

   He rushed inside and began to grab her hand, but stopped when she flinched back.  Her eyes rolled up and she started to faint, but he pressed her down lightly into a chair and knelt in front of her.

   “We need to call the super.  Get you to the hospital,” he said.

   “No,” she said, and her voice was strong though her eyes were still hazy.  “Don’t call him.  He’ll yell at me and call me stupid.  Don’t call anyone.”

   “But listen, old dear.”  His face was worried and he fingered her good hand lightly.  “We can’t just hide this.  This will get worse.”  He nodded towards her ruined hand.

   She closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the cushion.  She was so tired, and the pain in her hand and arm was blocking out everything, all her thoughts and her sense.  Everything except the fear.

   “I don’t know much,” he continued, “but I know this will get worse.  I was in the army.  You’ll get infected, gangrene.  It could kill you.”

   She opened her eyes and looked into his face.  It was an old face, worn and sad.  Concerned for her.  She liked his face.  It helped a little.

   “It will turn black,” he said.  “It will… it will go bad,” he whispered.

   “Don’t you understand I can’t tell anybody?  Or go anywhere?” she said.  “They’ll yell at me for pushing the buttons wrong.  Or laugh at me.  They’ll tell me I’m stupid and that I did it to myself.”

   “But they’ll fix you!”

   “They’ll make me leave my home!”

   They stared at each other, at an impasse.  The elevator man rubbed at his mouth with his hand.

   “Oh,” he said.  “ I guess I didn’t think of that.”

   He sat back on his haunches, thinking. “Maybe I could find somebody to help us who won’t tell nobody.  Someone nice.”

   “There’s no one nice,” she said, defeated.  She was beginning to shake, her knees knocking together.  “Besides, can you even work the door to the outside?  With that new computer on it?”

   “There’s still stairs, aren’t there? Kept ‘em in case of fire, didn’t they? We could go down the stairs and get out. The super don’t need to know.  And you won’t lose your home.”

   “And once we’re down the stairs, can you even work the door? With all the new safety features?”

   “That’s true,” he whispered, shaking his head.  “Damned computer on the door- can’t get in or out ‘less someone’s already coming in or going out.  New computers everywhere- new latches and buttons and such.  I got bug spray in my eye this morning.  Came right up out of the floor behind my chair.  I was bending down to pick up my book and poof!- right in my eye.  Supposed to keep all the cockroaches away.  I think I’d rather have the cockroaches!”

   She made a small whimpering sound in her throat.

   “I’m sorry, dear,” he said.  “Let me get you a blanket.”

   He grabbed an afghan and wound it around her shoulders, careful to avoid her arm.  Then he went into the kitchen and dispensed a glass of water, cool.  He knelt beside her and held it while she sipped it.

   “You’re very sweet, I don’t want you to think I’m ungrateful,” she said, her manners taking over.  The pain was beginning to recede, as was her vision.  She didn’t have much time to think this through, before she passed out.

   “You were in the army?’ she asked.

   “Yes, dear.”  He patted her hand.

   “So you must have seen… things.  You’ve got to help me.”

   “What do you want?”  He was feeling defeated.  Things were moving quickly, and he couldn’t get a grasp on the best course of action.  He was old, too… out of touch.  Perhaps, as the old lady said, their times were past.

   “My big butcher knife.  It’s in the drawer next to the sink.”

   A sense of foreboding settled in his stomach.

   “What do you need that for?”

   The old woman merely sighed, trying to keep her thoughts in order. 

   “And my frying pan,” she continued.  “My good cast iron one.  It’s in the big cupboard.  Look, you’ll see it.  You’ll need to heat that up, “ she gulped and looked at him.  “To stop the bleeding.”

The elevator man began to shake his head from side to side, silently voicing his protest.

  “You said it will rot, right? You said you know about things like this.  This is important!”  And she grabbed his arm with her good hand, staring hard into his eyes until she saw agreement there.  She relaxed, tilting her head back into the chair.  She closed her eyes.  “You’re the only one who can help me.  I’ve got no one else.  I’m just an old lady, and I don’t know much.”

   The man nodded, and quietly got up, his knees creaking, to find the materials he would need.  The knife, the frying pan, probably some sheets from the hall closet to contain the… the mess.

   “You are very kind.  Maybe once we’re all done, if you can figure out the button for the water, I can make us a nice cup of tea.” She said it quietly, almost to herself, and he couldn’t hear her, so engrossed was he with his task.