We came in through the back parking lot, which apparently was not the main floor. An old man and an even older woman, both in wheelchairs, flanked the elevators, staring morosely at the indoor-outdoor carpet. My mother said in her loud smoker's voice, “Here's the welcome committee!” What happened next was bizarre: It was like someone put a quarter in those old folks and turned the key: The old man sat up straight and grinned right at my mother. Nice dentures, I thought. The old lady perked up, too, and I wondered if they got paid to sit there at the elevator and welcome hapless newcomers in the door.
We rode up the elevator and met the marketing manager, Tom, who had only been there four weeks and was still finding his way around.
“First you can have lunch,” he said, “and then I'll give you the tour!”
Lunch just happened to be a buffet, in honor of Halloween. Aides dressed as goblins and vampires ushered us toward the buffet table along with a horde of smiling old people pushing wheeled walkers. Once you get on the buffet line ride, you can't get off until it's over. I handed my mother a Halloween themed plate and served her up some beige rice. “You want meatballs with that?” I asked, searching in vain for the salad bar.
“What else is there?” asked my mother.
“Teriyaki chicken. Cole slaw. Celery sticks. Hotdog on a bun.”
I served her up the chicken and put a little of (almost) everything on my plate. After I watched the old people load their plates with a teaspoon of cole slaw, a dab of rice, one meatball, I tried to restrain myself, even though I was starving. Clearly, by octogenarian standards, I ate like a lumberjack.
My mom and I found an empty table in the cavernous dining room, hoping we weren't inadvertently sitting in someone's assigned seat. I sipped the odd green punch (carbonated) and watched the lively crowd mill around. Even though they all left their walkers parked in the dining room lobby, for a bunch of old folks, they seemed pretty energetic. Not fast moving, but peppy nonetheless.
“I want some pie,” declared my mother. She got up and went in search of dessert. I thought, should I be fetching and carrying for her? Is that my new job now, to wait on my mother? I watched her walk away, noticing how tiny her flat little butt was in her baggy faded jeans. I slipped gently into a sugar coma. Pretty soon she came marching back with a sliver of pumpkin pie topped with a quarter-sized dab of whipped cream.
“She's bringing you some low-fat ice cream,” my mother said triumphantly. A young woman dressed in a brilliant lime green, air-filled balloon came wallowing across the room toward us, holding a tiny dish in green spandex gloves. Her face was covered with a green spandex hood.
She handed me the tiny dish of ice cream. “What are you?” I blurted out in awe.
“I'm not sure,” she said and waddled away.
Pretty soon the marketing guy found us and herded us out of the dining room for the tour. We followed him like puppies as he backtracked from one side of the place to another, trying to find apartment 330. My mother was not impressed: The ceilings were too high, she said. (She's very short.) For the next hour we rode the elevators and trod the hallways, avoiding slow-moving walkers trundling little tubs of polyester blouses and flannel nightdresses to the laundry room. We looked at beige apartments with one bedroom, beige apartments with two bedrooms, ones with tubs, ones with no tubs, patios, no patios, until it all blended into a beige carpeted blur.
Finally, exhausted, my mother and I extricated ourselves from the castle, loaded with brochures, and exited into the cool afternoon air. Mom needed a cigarette. We both needed a nap.
Later she called me. “What did you think of the place?”
“The food was lousy,” I said, “but the people seemed happy enough.”
“Did you notice how many of them used walkers?” she said. “I don't think this is the place for me.”
One down, four more to go. At least. My advice to you: don't get old.
