This is a fictional character study I wrote for class.  Writing students are encouraged to create characters we feel invested in, be they heroes or villains.  I would like to have coffee with this narrator.

I work the day shift at Harmony House, mostly because I’ve been there twelve years and I get to pick.  When I was young, every teacher I had told my mother, “Mrs. Huff, that Helen of yours is a people person, she just loves being around people,” and it’s true.  At night the residents are all medicated or asleep and there’s no talking to them so that must feel like a lonely shift.  Sometimes there’s not much talking during the day either, or maybe what I mean is there’s talking but not so much understanding.  I’m an aide on the dementia floor, but for the most part only a handful of the residents are so far along they don’t recognize their visitors.  If they get visitors.  To me they’re my job and my entertainment, and I hope you don’t think that’s disrespectful because I don’t mean it like that.  They make me laugh and not just when they say silly things.  The truth is, if I ever do laugh when someone says something nonsense, they wouldn’t know what I’m laughing at so why would they feel bad?  Whatever I do or say won’t change anything.

My favorite residents at Harmony House are Burt and Molly.  They’re in their nineties and you hardly ever see one without the other unless one is in the infirmary.  They’re not married, just “keeping company” as they say.  Sometimes I wonder if they have sex, but it’s none of my business if they get busy when no one’s around, although I don’t know when that would be.  I do see them kiss sometimes.  Good kisses, too, not little pecks.  Burt will always get something for Molly from the cookie cart when it comes around in the afternoon.  He has diabetes so he can’t eat sweets himself.  We do offer a selection of sugar-free biscuits, but they look like dog treats and Burt used to be a baker so you can tell he has no use for them.  He does enjoy watching Molly chomp on the lemon shortbread, though, and he’s always asking her if they taste buttery.  He says it’s amazing the garbage people eat that’s made with fake butter.  Like why bother?

Molly you can tell used to be a beauty in her day and a real lady.  She still has a little bit of a southern accent, even though she’s lived out here in Pennsylvania for I don’t know how long.  Her people were from Georgia, and when her mind’s sharp she’ll talk about how her great-grandfather never felt right owning slaves and was the first plantation owner in Savannah to free his after the war.  You can tell from the way Molly talks to the black workers here that she comes from good people that cared about others.  I like the black workers fine, too.  I can get along with anybody.  It was a black friend of Tooey’s who came to tell us about the road bomb.

My boy Tooey was one of the first to go serve in the Iraq War.  Not the Gulf War, the one the first President Bush got us into.  Tooey signed up after 9/11 when the Twin Towers came down and he was so mad anyone could do that it was like he had to do something about it, so he enlisted in 2003 right before Baghdad.  My ex-husband Darryl, who Tooey’s named for, said for me not to worry so much, that wars make boys into men.  He served in Nam back in the sixties before we met.  Him and Tooey were closer than anything, Darryl Sr. and Darryl Jr.  As soon as Darryl Jr. could walk everybody would say “Here comes Darryl and Darryl Two,” or “Darryl Too,” it worked either way.  So that’s how he came to be Tooey.  When that friend of his, that black soldier, came to the door in his Army uniform with his hat in both his hands, I just about fainted.  I knew; I knew right away.  My boy’s body was never recovered, not even his dog tags.  Half the platoon was killed and even though no one saw him die, the letter we got said how sorry the U.S. Army was and how grateful the whole country was for his service.  He’d only been over there three months.  He was the only child me and Darryl had even though we always wanted more.  Darryl had a hard time with the bottle after Vietnam, and when we lost Tooey we kind of lost ourselves and got a divorce three years later.  When I hear people talk about the war, it’s like they don’t know what to call it; the War on Iraq, Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Second Gulf War, you name it.  I call it the war that broke my heart.

Yesterday while I was giving out the afternoon meds, Burt and Molly were playing this game with their fingers.  It was kind of like “Here’s the church, here’s the steeple, look inside and see the people” except Burt kept showing Molly over and over and she couldn’t ever do it the right way.  Instead of getting frustrated like a lot of old men would, Burt just squeezed Molly’s hands together and kissed each finger by itself, then started over.  Molly is much farther along in her dementia than Burt.  He’s actually doing pretty well with this new medication.  It’s not helping Molly, though.  She has a skinny, nervous-looking daughter, Ginny, who comes to visit once a month in too much makeup and a skirt up to here.  She always leaves her mother in a worse state than when she came, and the few times I overheard them talking it made me mad.  That daughter must take after the father because she’s nothing like Molly, who’s so sweet.  Ginny’s forever bringing papers for Molly to sign and I feel like she’s not really visiting, she’s just waiting to get whatever her mother has left.  Burt stays in his room when Ginny comes, and I don’t blame him.

There was one time last year when the chain on Molly’s little diamond heart pendant broke, the one she never took off, even slept in.  It must have been a gift from her late husband.  Anyway, I ran up to Ginny as she was getting on the elevator and said, “Please take your Mom’s necklace and have it fixed so she can wear it again.  If it stays around here broken, it’ll just disappear one way or the other and she loves wearing it.”  That Ginny took out a Kleenex and dropped the necklace in it and stuffed it in her purse.  I told her to be careful because I once did that with a chain when the clasp broke and wound up throwing the tissue away without remembering the chain was in it.  She just said, “That’s a shame,” and left.  That was a year ago and Molly’s never had that heart pendant back.  It’s not my place to ask Ginny when she comes, but I bet that little tart lost it just like I said.

Family is the most important thing.  That’s what I’d tell Ginny if I thought she’d listen.  They say you’re born alone and you die alone, but that’ll happen no matter what.  The thing to do is love the people in your life while you have the chance.  One of the new aides who found out I was divorced and lost my son in the war said she was sorry I don’t have any family.  I told her nobody has to feel sorry for me, I have lots of family.  I have all Darryl’s nieces and nephews, I have the people I work with who know me better than anybody, I have the War Moms of America down at the VA and the wounded soldiers we visit.  And I have Burt and Molly and all the residents here at Harmony House who count on me to know what they want before they know it.  Everyone here has me to spend time with even if they don’t have anybody else.  I have a good life.  It may not look like it to some, but it does to me.


Daughter’s Fotos revisit 2010’s NYC art installation Event Horizon by Antony Gormley in which life size sculptures were placed on buildings around Madison Square Park causing quite a stir