The Ruminating
Nothing breaks his heart quite like seeing an old person eating alone. Park bench or corner of a restaurant, it doesn’t matter. The mottled skin, hand slowly moving to mouth, crumbs tumbling, maybe a little tremor in the arms or steady wobble in the head and neck. It just ruins him.
Sandwiches especially.
Something about the gentle corners of the bread, unidentifiable grey meat or soft cheese, the mashing of a slimy bolus against the palate. White coagulation in the corners of the mouth. A long sigh, a look skyward. The urgent dart of a songbird twisting flamewise on the surface of thin-framed bifocals.
It’s not the pathos of the scene that gets to him. It’s the courage of it all.
The ruination is somehow worse if he thinks they made the sandwich for themselves, carefully and with much advance planning, to take it out into the world, to eat beneath unlit clouds rather than the same four corners of their one-bedroom apartment. Spenser imagines them rolling through a lonely wintersleep, sepia nightmares already fading as they awaken to the sound of their lips suckling frantically in the dark. Well, get up then. Limping to the kitchen, then buttering, assembling, and wrapping on dull formica countertops, dreaming formica dreams of sandwiches long past, sandwiches yet to come. Doing all this first thing, rising before the sun, the world awash in silence, everything graveyard still. The static crinkle of wax paper on a wedge of red cheddar. Peal of knife on plate. Click of burner. Lazy purls of steam. Ashen teabag leaking tendrils ruddy and serpentine. Gurgle and dollop. Peal of spoon on saucer. This the vivid apex from which the day will descend and muddy. Spending all morning waiting for lunch to arrive.
Part of it must be fear, Spenser thinks. Is this me? Is this what I will become? A little table in the garden outside the public library. Alone. Baloney on whole wheat. Or is it that loneliness is the terrible secret that we all share, too terrible to ever be acknowledged or spoken out loud?
He never feels compelled to share the park bench or strike up a conversation. Doesn’t need to hear their life’s story. What Spenser wants to do is walk up close, catch their attention and mouth, slowly and with great deliberation, so that even if they are hard of hearing — stone deaf — they will understand what he is saying.
“I know.”
Comically exaggerating the shaping of these words on his lips.
“I know.”
That’s what he wants to do. But all these mundane acts of courage just ruin him.
_________
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