The Johnstown Girls

Chapter 15. Saturday, May 13-Sunday, May 14, 1989

313 T H E J O H N S T O W N G I R L S Saturday, May 13– Sunday, May 14, 1989 ■ Nina hardly slept at all and now it’s only six thirty in the morning and she is in her car, almost there. After a while, she decided the tossing was a silly way to spend her time. She got up and wrote a bunch of paragraphs—about twins, about the secret language of twins, and then conjectural paragraphs about a twin seeing an article and knowing—that part could turn out to be fiction, that part could be all about wishing. But she used her time last night and hardly thought about herself, which felt wonderful. She quoted Ellen about time—the short time of an event and the long time of the life after it. Which do you use to take the measure of a person? The latter of course. Why even a murderer might be better measured by the period of paying, how he paid for the act. A new woman hunkers over the reception desk like a bulldog, like a junkyard bulldog, whose job it is to scare Nina away. “Yes, I was told about you,” the woman says. “There is no law that you can’t come in here, but it’s disruptive of course. You may harm our resident. She’s overexcited . I’ve been asking everyone who was on duty yesterday. So I have to caution you to do nothing to overexcite her fancy. Meanwhile when she’s ready, I’ll go with you.” This one has her name on the desk. Hilda Matvay. Protector. “That’s fine,” Nina says as calmly as she can. “I’m interested to see this place. It looks lovely.” “Well, yes. We keep it lovely.” 314 K AT H L E E N G E O R G E Billie Holiday singing. William P. Gottlieb Collection at the Library of Congress. Courtesy of the Maryland State Archives Collection. 315 T H E J O H N S T O W N G I R L S “Those chairs are wonderfully soft.” Nina points backward to the waiting area. “Those, yes. They’re too soft for the residents who have trouble getting up out of them. We do a different chair in their meeting area.” Nina says, “That makes good sense.” She leaves the office to sit down in the soft chairs, wanting to sleep to make up for the short night she had, but also because she fears disappointment. Eventually Matvay comes for her. They pass through an area with at least twenty wingback chairs in dark blue upholstery with a small diamond shape to pattern it. “These are better for the residents,” Matvay says. Nina touches the seating cushion of one of them. Foam, not the old classic stuffing of club chairs, but comfortable, probably, and firm enough to provide a hoist upward. There is a slightly flowery smell in the atmosphere , but not a chemical smell or the insistent smell of urine—these she knows from when her grandmother needed a retirement home. They turn two corners and stop in front of a room. “You will be wise,” Matvay says. Nina almost laughs to feel like she’s in first grade again, being told how to be. We will all be thoughtful today. They enter the room. Anna Hoffman sits propped up in a bed, supported by both the elevated mattress and several white starchy pillows. She’s looking down at her gnarled hands, which rest on the turned-over flap of her sheet. Her hair is white, wavier and thicker than Ellen’s, not long but almost stylishly bobbed. Another nurse, not Kelly, stands as soon as they enter the room. “She’s doing well and she says she’s not sleepy.” Hilda Matvay says in a low voice, “Just remember her age. Go slowly. She may—” She makes a face to surely mean make no sense at all. Nina has been hungrily studying Anna Hoffman’s face, eager for a quick sign. Old ladies are like babies, similar. The eyes behind the metalrimmed glasses are blue as Ellen’s are. The nose, not quite the same, is perhaps a bit smaller. Anna’s lips tremble. “I wanted them to call the woman, Ellen. They told me they called the man who wrote the article. Who are...