144
Mitchell had never heard the woman who lived in the apartment on the other side of the patio. In the warm months he saw her outside with her walker to watch the birds or to supervise the work done in her flower garden. She was always pleasant, always said hello. Mitchell did likewise but there was nothing more to say, really. The truth was in their eyes. Why they were there.
Maggie stepped into the bedroom doorway tying her hair back with one of the cloth elastics she sometimes wore on her wrist. "Hi," she said and her hands were still working with her hair. The caregiver preparing herself. Hands to her hips. "I thought I’d let you sleep."
"Thanks," Mitchell said.
She dragged the bed covers off him. "I brought you a newspaper and some books and morning glory muffins. Did you?"
"What?"
"Sleep?"
"I’ll catch up. I’ve been thinking. Missing the men I knew. And working."
"Were they like you?"
"Sure. They had their strengths and weaknesses. They were men."
He changed his catheter and stretched and then ate while Maggie dusted and ran the vacuum. She swept and washed the kitchen floor and then she cleared Mitchell’s dishes and changed the dressing on his decubitus. They finished the morning routine in the usual two hours. She took her hair down and walked from the bathroom to the bedroom rubbing moisturizer from her hands up into her arms. "If you stayed off that sore for a few weeks you’d be good as new."
Mitchell placed an ancient postcard between pages and closed a book she had brought. He looked at her with earnest eyes. "Maggie have you ever started out for something and arrived at whatever it was you had in mind?"
"Of course I have," she said, annoyed, and her hands at her arms moved slower, then slower, and then stopped. Her eyes had widened, full of discovery.
Mitchell nodded. "Thanks, Maggie."