Page 22 of The Only One Left

I smile despite my nervousness. “Hello.”

Lenora bobs her head toward the typewriter. A sign she wants to keep going.

“Isn’t this hard for you?” I say.

Once again, her left hand roams the keys before pressing a letter. Her typing isn’t fast. I suspect she averages about a word per minute, which isn’t much worse than me in the typing pool. Unlike me, she’s persistent, working with intense concentration. As she hunts and pecks, her brow furrows and her tongue pokes from a corner of her mouth. Soon she’s typed nine more words, each one broken by a thwack of the space bar.

my body is dead but my mind is alive

Lenora stares up at me expectantly, nervously biting her lower lip, trying to gauge my reaction. It’s such a pure expression. Her feelings are so evident that she reminds me of a teenager. Someone who can’t help but wear her heart on her sleeve.

It occurs to me that Lenora could still be like a teenager in so many ways. For decades, she’s been living in this house, in this very room, surrounded by objects of her youth. Nothing about her life has changed since she was seventeen. Without family or friends or even a change of scenery to push her into maturity, Lenora might still mentally be a teenager.

Which means there’s a chance her emotional state now is exactly how it was the night her family was murdered. The rhyme again skips through my memory, taunting.

At seventeen, Lenora Hope

Unnerved, I pull my hand away from the typewriter, as if Lenora’s about to reach out and grab me. She notices, of course, and nods for me to hit the typewriter’s return bar. I do, quickly and abruptly, making sure there’s no contact between us.

In response, Lenora types out three small but meaningful words.

dont be scared

Another nod from her. Another swift swipe of the return bar from me, allowing Lenora to type another line.

i cant hurt you

If the goal was to put me at ease, then Lenora has failed miserably.

I won’t hurt you.

Nowthatwould have calmed my nerves.

What Lenora ended up typing does the opposite. That insidious, apostrophe-lesscan’tsuggests a lack of capability, not willingness.

And that Lenora would hurt me if she could.

SEVEN

We eat dinner in silence, something I’ve become quite used to in the past six months. I sit facing Lenora, making sure our knees don’t touch. Since we left the typewriter, I’ve kept physical contact to a minimum.

Our plates sit on the wooden tray I attached to Lenora’s wheelchair. Roasted chicken and glazed carrots for me, mashed acorn squash seasoned with crushed pills for Lenora. Since I don’t know who to feed first, me or her, I decide to alternate bites. One mouthful for Lenora and one for me until both plates are cleaned.

After dinner is dessert. I get chocolate cake. Lenora gets pudding.

After dessert, it’s time for Lenora’s evening circulation exercises. Something I’m not looking forward to because it means our limited contact must come to an end. For the rest of the evening, Lenora and I are going to be uncomfortably close.

I use the Hoyer lift to get her out of the wheelchair and onto the bed. It requires sliding the sling under her, raising her out of the wheelchair, moving the whole contraption while she dangles like a kid on a swing, lowering her onto the bed, then pulling the sling out from under her. It’s easier in theory than in practice, especially because Lenora is heavier than she looks. A surprising sturdiness hides inside her birdlike frame.

On the bed, I lift Lenora’s right leg before bending it, pushing the knee toward her chest. Lenora stares at the ceiling while I do it, seemingly bored. I think about how many times—with how many different nurses—she’s had to do this. Thousands, most likely. Morning and evening, day after day after day. When I move on to her left leg, Lenora lolls her head to the side, as if trying to see past me to the window.

Even though it’s dark now and there’s not much to see, I understand why. It’s better than looking at the ceiling. At least there’s variety out there, even in the darkness. The full moon sits so low on the horizon it looks like it’s bobbing on the ocean’s surface. Clouds as thin as fingers drift in front of it. In the distance, a ship cruises through the night, its lights as bright as stars.

I glance down at Lenora and notice longing in her eyes. I can relate. All my life, I’ve felt like the world is passing me by. I was born in 1952, and my late teens coincided with the end of the sixties. I spent my high school years working in a diner, watching as my few friends decamped to San Francisco, skipped north into Canada to avoid the draft, went to Woodstock and came back tuned in, turned on, dropped out. I watched the moon landing on the evening shift, catching glimpses of history while carrying trays of blue plate specials.

My mother assured me not to worry. That by reading, whole worlds could be explored without ever leaving home. My father, on the other hand, warned me to get used to it.

“It’s our lot in life, Kit-Kat,” he told me. “People like us toil. The rich bastards running everything make sure of that.”

---