you aren’t here with me, the waiters lend me a hand. They are all very, very kind. People are generally very kind, especially when they see me with the walker,’ she said.
She always ordered the same thing, a cappuccino, and Kaia or I would bring her a cheese turnover, a triangular piece of pastry, from the shop two steps down from the café. Without her ritual turnover and the cappuccino, the day wouldn’t function. If the weather was bad and she couldn’t go out herself, someone else would bring the turnover, and the cappuccino would be made at home.
After she sat for a bit, she had to go to the bathroom. She came back from the bathroom upset.
‘How could that happen to me! The prettiest little old lady in the neighbourhood!’ she grumbled.
She refused to wear the incontinence pads with the same obstinacy that she refused to wear flat-heeled orthopaedic shoes for the elderly (I can’t bear them! I have always worn heels!). Someone had told her she was the prettiest little old lady in the neighbourhood. A year earlier she would have been insulted by a similar sentiment, but now she was pleased to say it over and over: Everyone says I am the prettiest little old lady in the neighbourhood! It is true that she said it with a hint of irony. She used the phrase as an apology for her clumsiness and as a request to respect her ‘exceptional’ age. The incontinence was the worst insult her body had come up with for her. And she was irked by her forgetfulness (No, I did not forgot!) yet ultimately she relented (Maybe I forgot after all?) and finally she made her peace with it (It is hardly surprising that I forget things nowadays. I’m eighty years old, you know!).
‘If this happens again, I’ll kill myself straight away,’ she said, indirectly asking me to say something to console her.
‘It’s perfectly normal for your age! Look on the bright side. You are over eighty, you are up and about, you are in no pain, you live in your own home, you go out every day and you socialise. Your best friend, with whom you drink coffee every day, is ten years younger than you. Jasminka visits you three times a week. Kaia brings you breakfast, lunch and dinner every day, and she is an excellent cook and keeps you on schedule with your medical check-ups. Your doctor is only five minutes’ walk from your house, your grandchildren visit you regularly and love you, and I come to see you all the time,’ I recited.
‘If I could only read,’ she sighed, although she had little patience for reading any more, aside from leafing through newspapers.
‘Well, you can read, though, it’s true, with difficulty.’
‘If only I could read my Tessa one more time.’
She was referring to Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
‘As soon as you decide, we’ll go ahead with the operation. It is a breeze to remove age-related cataracts.’
‘At my age nothing is easy.’
‘I said a breeze, not easy. Do you want me to buy you a magnifying glass?’
‘Who could stand reading with a magnifying glass?!’
‘Do you want me to read you Tess out loud? A chapter a day?’
‘It’s not as nice when someone else reads to you as when you read for yourself.’
She responded to all my attempts to cheer her up with obstinate childish baulking. She’d give way for a moment (Maybe you’re right), but the next instant she would clutch at some new detail (Ah, everything would be different if I could only walk a little faster!).
‘I have changed so much. I barely recognise myself.’
‘What are you saying? You haven’t a single wrinkle on your forehead.’
‘Maybe so, but the skin sags on my neck.’
‘The wrinkles on your face are so fine they are barely visible.’
‘Maybe, but my back is so hunched.’
‘You’ve kept your slender figure.’
‘My belly sticks out.’ she complained.
‘Sure, a little, but nobody notices,’ I consoled her.
‘I have changed. I barely recognise myself.’
‘Can you think of anyone your age who hasn’t changed?’
‘Well, now that you ask,’ she’d relent.
‘What were you expecting?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Your beloved Ava Gardner, for instance.’
‘Ava was the most beautiful woman in the world!’ she said firmly, but with a hint of melancholy, as if she had been speaking of herself.
‘Ava died at the age of sixty-eight.’
‘You’re kidding!’
‘No, really, she had a stroke. Half of her face was paralysed. Near the end of her life she was penniless, so Frank Sinatra paid for her medical expenses.’
‘She? Broke!? I can’t believe it.’
‘Yes, she moved from the States to London. She was isolated there, she was probably no longer able to earn anything. Her last words to her servant Carmen were: “I am tired,”’ I said. ‘Story has it that Frank Sinatra locked himself up in his room for two days when he heard that Ava had died. They say he sobbed uncontrollably.’
‘Well, and so he should have!’ she said. ‘Such a little man, nothing much to look at, scrawny, a shrimp. Next to her he looked like a frog!’
‘What about Mickey Rooney?’
‘Why Mickey Rooney?’
‘Well, he was her first husband.’
‘Well, that Rooney was a shrimp too! Such an exquisite woman and around her she had only dwarves.’
‘Ava was only four years older than you.’
‘Ava was the most beautiful woman in the world!’ she repeated, ignoring the comment about the difference in their ages.
‘Take, for instance, Audrey Hepburn.’
‘That little woman? The skinny one?’
‘Yes. She died at sixty-four.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘And Ingrid Bergman?’
‘What about Ingrid Bergman?’
‘She died when she was sixty-seven.’
‘She was a little clumsy, but still exquisite.’
‘What about Marilyn Monroe? Marilyn was a twomonth- old baby when you were born! And she died at thirty-six!’
‘Marilyn was my age?’
‘Your generation! You were both born in 1926!’
It seemed that the fact that she shared her year of birth with Marilyn Monroe left her cold.
‘What about Elizabeth Taylor?’ she asked.
‘She just celebrated her seventy-fifth. They wrote about it the other day in the papers.’
‘I can’t believe Liz is younger than me.’
‘A full six years!’
‘She, too, was a beautiful woman,’ she said. ‘There aren’t any more like her today.’
‘You should see her now!’
‘Why?’
‘They took a picture of her in her wheelchair for her birthday.’
‘How much older am I?’
‘Six