Free The Mysteries of Soldiers Grove by Paul Zimmer Page A

mysterious light.
    So I go off to ease my suffering butt onto the seat of the limbering machine, which is like an upside-down spider. You pull on its legs with your hands and push down on its palps with your feet, and it runs poison up your ass as you pump. A man can’t think straight when he’s using all his energy like this.
    All you can do is gaze up at the soaps on the TV screens, and hope for the best. There’s no sound coming from the TV, but there is always some very tense situation going on with those young actors in the dramas. They all look like they need a laxative.
    By the time I’ve shagged my ass at .05 for ten minutes on number five machine, it’s time for all of us to crawl back to the minibus and be driven back to the home for lunch. I can’t talk because my tongue’s hanging out, and the rest of my fellow exercisers don’t look to be in much better shape. But we have done our duties.
    For lunch it is mac and cheese, green beans and a salad. There’s a new tenant sitting in the chair next to me. She looks mighty woeful and she doesn’t speak to anyone as she eats.
    This care home is not exactly Romper Room —everyone is generally in a sky blue funk when they’re first rolled in here. As I shovel in my mac and cheese I’m trying to think of something nice to say to my neighbor that might give her some cheer. She’s a real pretty woman with her short white hair and slender hands.
    I’ve never known how to talk much to women, but this is one I’d really like to talk to. Cyril , I say to myself, you dope, don’t get nervous and start blathering—just say something cool to her! Look at her—she’s elegant. Don’t just spout some empty-headed crap. Maybe you could give her an interesting life to think about.
    I’m not good at this sort of thing, never learned how to be smooth, but I try to display a little class when I speak to her. “My name is Cyril,” I say. “Are you familiar with Christine de Pisan? You remind me of her.”
    She blinks only once. I can see she’s surprised by my question—but she is thinking. I’m not used to people mulling over what I say to them! Then she starts talking: “Christine de Pisan was a medieval woman, the daughter of a Bolognese astrologer, very beautiful and witty, wrote poems and even a chronicle of Charles V.
    “I was born in France, and where I’m from it is part of our history that Christine came to visit her daughter in the priory at Poissy near where my family home was. She wrote poems about her visit and left important details of how young, cloistered women lived.”
    I almost fall out of my chair. My mouth is open, my sore eyes are wide. I am numbed, unable to respond. No one has ever answered one of my questions and given a life back to me.
    I struggle for breath, so surprised that I am speechless. A moment of moments. If I could get down on my dubious knees I would kneel before her.
    Finally . . . finally I manage to utter, “Will you marry me?”

C HAPTER 6
    Louise
    I read as much as my challenged eyes will permit, I spend many hours listening to music, but I want to do this selectively, not merely perform these things as rote activities. I want to really listen, so I parcel out my limited energy. At times I sit in my stern chair and look at my framed reproduction of “Mme Manet on a Blue Couch” which I had hung on the wall. I cherish the cobalt color of her settee, and the way Mme looks so knowingly, almost impatiently, at the painter. Hurry up! she seems to say.
    Sometimes I lie on the bed and dredge through remembered pieces of my life hour after hour. There’s no order to my rambling—a memory of a small event comes into my mind for no particular reason, or something reminds me of something else. My eyes might be open, but I am taking a nap, a sort of open-eyed coma, and my dreams wash together with bits of reality; my unconsciousness is always odd and unrelated until it startles me back into cognizance. There is the good—and