Circa Now Read online

  “Yes, that’s it,” Circa said timidly.

  “Yo, stud,” Stanley called out to Miles. “She your girl or what?”

  Miles reddened. “No. She’s not,” he said. “I believe she’s just Circa.”

  It reassured Circa that Miles had gotten riled in her defense. “He’s my friend,” she said. “And that’s all you need to know.”

  “What’s your name again, man?” Miles said to Stanley. “I forgot it already.”

  “Well, then, welcome home, stud,” Stanley said. “We got thirty-one flavors of forget in this place.”

  “And what we’d all most like to forget is him,” said Nurse Lily crossly, provoking Stanley to wink and make smoochy lips at her.

  “The name’s Stanley. Stanley Betts,” he said to Miles. Stanley held out his hand, and then pulled it back again with a smirk. “But you can just call me sir.”

  “Never mind him, Miles,” said Lily. “And Circa, baby, I’m still aching so about your sweet daddy. How are you and your momma doing?”

  Stanley made an immediate cringey oops face. Like his forgetting about Todd Monroe’s death was the thirty-second and most sour flavor of forget.

  “We’re doing okay,” said Circa. “I guess.”

  “Mmm, mmm, mmm.” Lily shook her head. “Way too young for such an ordeal. Way too young,” Lily mumbled her own echo.

  “Can we go in?” said Circa.

  “You bet,” said Lily. “You’ve got some folks up here who’ve been wanting to see you something awful.”

  “All right,” said Circa, deciding she’d share more about the Memory Wall plans with Miles on their way out. She pressed her palm to a green button on the wall to open up a set of glass double doors, and she and Miles both stepped inside the big, bright sunlit atrium.

  “This is where the residents’ rooms are,” she said. “And they are always residents. Lily never calls them patients.”

  “Nice,” said Miles, marveling at the space before them. “This is really something.”

  The living area at Maple Grove was a spacious, round place lit up through an impressive dome of windows at the top. In the middle of the atrium was a magnificent, colorful garden of flowers and plants that didn’t seem to care what season it was, and a pond full of bug-eyed, speckled koi fish bubbling at every turn. There was a brick walking path just wide enough for a wheelchair winding through the greenery, and the path began and ended at a carpeted circle that ran around the outer edge of the garden, all the way to the entrances of the residents’ rooms. Each room had a different colored door to help a person know which place was home when he or she went for a stroll around the atrium.

  Surrounding Circa were so many of the things she had been missing for the weeks she’d been away from the residence. The sun’s rays beaming through the skylight as if they might shatter it, that smell of rosebushes and fried cafeteria food, the splashing sounds of the chubby fish. To Circa and Dad, this place had been like a little Garden of Eden. Only now that a key ingredient was gone, the sights and smells suddenly made her a little unsteady. As she and Miles stood at the edge of this big terrarium of memories, Circa began to wonder if she could handle any of this without her dad beside her. What in the world would Dad have done right now if he’d felt like this?

  “So where are the people?” said Miles, unwittingly fanning her fog away.

  The people. Those two words alone gave Circa the strength she needed. She took in a deep breath and stepped onto the path.

  “This way,” she said. “We’ll start over here.”

  They made their way counterclockwise around the big circle of carpet, where Circa launched into tour guide mode.

  “Good thing is, Stanley’s not allowed in the atrium ever since Lily saw him spit in the pond to watch the fish eat it,” she said. “So now all he really does is clean the lobby, cut the grass, and take care of the van.”

  “And be a jackola,” said Miles.

  Jackola. Circa laughed inside at hearing Miles’s version of shmoo. She and Miles approached the first door on the path. It was a green one with a wreath of fake cherry blossoms hanging on it.

  “This is Miss Rempy’s room,” Circa whispered. “She was the first ever female crop duster in Georgia. She starts a lot of her stories with ‘And another funny thing is…’” Circa said as she knocked softly.

  “Yes?” drawled out a sweet, Southern old-lady voice.

  Circa opened the door and peeked in.

  “Come on in, love,” Miss Rempy said.

  “Two loves,” said Circa. “I have a friend with me.”

  “Come on in, loves,” Miss Rempy said again.

  The two of them stepped into the little room, where Circa introduced Miles and also introduced herself, as a courtesy. She was never certain when a Maple Grove friend would recognize her from one visit to the next. But this time, Miss Rempy remembered her. Maybe. They began their visit by sitting around a card table for a few minutes’ worth of an odd, yet humorous, conversation about how Circa and Miles were the most loving brother and sister pair she’d ever known, and how proud their mother Ruby, God rest her soul, would be. Then Miss Rempy suddenly got distracted by a toy parrot on the shelf and had Miles switch it on, after which the parrot repeated the last thing each person would say, but in a slurred, dying battery kind of way. After numerous tales of plane crash rescues and diamond mines, any of which could have been fact or fiction, Miss Rempy insisted on teaching them how to play a dominoes game called Chicken Foot, with the plastic bird repeating every instruction she gave.

  When the kids got up to leave, Miles switched the bird back off for Miss Rempy, who called out after them as she shuffled the dominoes, “And another funny thing is…I’ve never even had to change those batteries in all these years.”

  As they shut Miss Rempy’s room behind them, Miles repeated her words in his best dying parrot voice until Circa shushed him when they arrived at the next door, a blue one.

  “This is where Hank-not-the-Mayor lives,” she said. “We call him that because we actually have a Hank-the-Mayor in Wingate.”

  “I figured,” said Miles.

  “Don’t be alarmed when you see him,” she warned. “Sometimes he soaks his false teeth in Kool-Aid just for fun.”

  “What?”

  “He also talks about his digestion problems all the time, real loud because he can’t hear well. ‘Have some couth’ is what Nurse Lily always tells him.”

  Circa knocked hard. “We’re restoring a photo of him rescuing a dog from a well,” she said.

  “You know what to do!” the man inside shouted.

  When they walked in, Hank-not-the-Mayor was cutting his toenails and letting the trimmings fly. Miles took the seat farthest from Hank’s recliner, and Circa took the next farthest. Circa reintroduced herself to Hank, which did prove necessary this time, and then she introduced Miles. Hank promptly put away his toenail clippers and installed his teeth, like he had a little Nurse Lily on his shoulder reminding him to have some couth.

  The teeth were purple as ever, and Circa could tell Miles was trying not to laugh as the man told story after story of ailments past and present and future. They ended up visiting with Hank longer than with anyone else that day, mainly because he insisted on sharing his lunch with them, dividing french fries and green beans and corn fritters up slowly with a one-for-me, one-for-you, one-for-you precision. By then, Circa and Miles were both so hungry, they weren’t even squeamish about the toenails.

  Hank took such a liking to Miles, he made a great effort to stand up and shake his hand as they left, even if he did accidentally call him Mr. Monroe. And then he urged Mr. Monroe to be nice to his intestines while he still could.

  Miles shook his head as he and Circa continued on the path.

  “Sure is a crazy place,” he said. “These folks have so many stories, it makes it hard to
remember that they forget. Wait. Did that even make sense?”

  “Totally,” said Circa, passing up a white door and moving along toward the red one.

  “Why did we skip that one?” said Miles.

  “Because the ones with the V sticker on the knob are the vacant rooms,” said Circa.

  “Beautiful girl,” called out a voice from behind Circa and Miles. It was Maki Lee, exiting the garden path on her way back to her red-door room with a fistful of small twigs. Maki was herself a beautiful, seemingly ageless Japanese lady who wore bright red tennis shoes and loved to walk the circle.

  “Beauty,” she said, cupping her soft hand on Circa’s cheek. “I’ve cried many tears for your father.”

  “Thank you,” said Circa, feeling Maki’s comfort encircle her. “It’s great to see you, Mrs. Lee.”

  “Now I’ll go make a blessing for you,” said Maki, touching Miles on the cheek before she disappeared into the room beyond the red door. “See you at the wall, my beauty,” she called out, filling Circa with warmth.

  “Maki Lee remembers better than any of the others,” Circa said. “She likes to gather those twigs and wrap them up tight in colored tissue paper. Sometimes when she runs out of colored stuff, Hank-not-the-Mayor lets her dip some white paper into his Kool-Aid.”

  Miles cringed. “In with his teeth?”

  “No, the spare Kool-Aid,” laughed Circa as they walked on, skipping another couple of doors.

  They neared an orange door that was already mostly open, but Circa stopped shy of the room. “This is one of the others I was telling you about,” she explained softly.

  Through the open door, Miles and Circa could see a redheaded lady in a wheelchair. Joe the food man was gently placing a napkin in her lap in preparation for the soup and crackers he’d brought in on a tray. Circa waved big, and the lady smiled sweetly back at her.

  “Glad to see your face, Circ,” said Joe. “Don’t you be a stranger, now.”

  “I won’t, Joe,” she answered, and Miles gave him a friendly nod.

  “He’s the one who gives me glass-bottle Cokes,” said Circa, moving on to a mostly closed brown door.

  “Now this room here is the Nelsons, who mostly stay in bed all day. Nurse Lily plays music from the forties on a record player for them sometimes, because she says they probably dance in their dreams. One time, my dad and I heard them singing a song called ‘Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree’ in there. We stood out here and listened to them sing the whole thing to each other.”

  Circa turned to cut through the garden. “Let’s go on around to the other side of the circle, and I’ll show you the inside of my very favorite room. It’s the one Aunt Ruby stayed in. My favorite days were when me and Ruby folded ourselves up in her adjustable bed. The room’s even still got her old dresser in it, where we used to sit and do our hair all crazy. Taped to the mirror, there’s a drawing of a chicken on a bicycle that I made for her when I was little. Nobody’s stayed in the room ever since Aunt Ruby died last year, but Lily still lets me play with the remote on the bed.”

  Circa and Miles took the scenic route all the way around the circle to a purple door.

  “Huh. No V sticker,” said Circa. “We better check with Lily before we go in.”

  She raised her arm high to wave Lily over from the lobby, but there was no need for flagging. Lily was already halfway to Circa and Miles.

  “Oh me,” said Lily upon arriving at the purple door. “I nearly forgot to warn you two about this one.”

  There isn’t a corporation on earth that doesn’t value an employee who can successfully draw a chicken on a bicycle. That’s why Professor Lo is on a mission to teach you how. His motto: You might get frustrated by the arm part, but stick with it. Your efforts will pay off tenfold.

  “Oh, children, do be praying for this man,” Lily said.

  “Somebody’s moved in?” asked Circa.

  “Yes. He arrived here the day of the storms,” Lily said. “He just showed up shivering like January with a sack full of stuff and wouldn’t tell us the first thing about himself, so we assume he’s got some kind of dementia. I figure as long as we got the room, how could we turn him out on the street?”

  “What’s his name?” asked Circa.

  “Wish I knew,” said Lily. “The man came in wearing an old army captain’s hat with some patches on it, so we all just came up with Captain Mann.”

  Circa grew more curious, but Miles got a sudden sickly look, like he’d had a delayed reaction to the flying toenails.

  “We’ve contacted the police about him, but they haven’t done much to turn up any information yet,” said Lily.

  “We know,” said Circa. “There’s no such thing as a Found Person Report, per se, right?”

  “Yeah, that was something like it,” said Lily with a grin. “No one’s even come by to evaluate him yet,” she added. “But I figure it’s just as well, ’cause he hasn’t even come out of that room hardly at all.”

  Lily held up her hand to shield a whisper. “Except of course when the sly fella snuck out and took a joyride in the van last Sunday, while the rest of us were singing in the chapel.”

  “Nuh-uh!” said Circa.

  “True as truth,” said Lily. “We didn’t write it up, so don’t you go telling anybody and get me in trouble, okay?”

  “Promise,” said Circa.

  “Okay?” said Lily to Miles. He solemnly nodded his promise too.

  “Imagine that,” Lily said. “A man old as him, driving that van who knows where. It’s a wonder he made it back in one piece.”

  “Did he get pulled over?” asked Circa.

  “Nope. Just came on back when he got low on gas,” said Lily. “But there’ll be no more of those antics,” she said, pointing to a bell hung strategically at the top of the purple doorway. “Now we’ve got a homemade alarm rigged up for his own safety.”

  Circa eyed the little brass bell. Then, without hesitation, she approached the door and knocked gently.

  “Hello, Captain,” she said. “My name is Circa, and I’ve brought my friend Miles. It’s very nice to meet you.”

  There wasn’t a speck of noise from the other side.

  “See on your mirror there,” said Circa. “I drew that bicycle chicken when I was little, for my great-aunt Ruby. She used to live in this room.”

  More silence.

  “I figure he’s got him some kind of unspeakable ordeal he’s been through,” whispered Lily, shaking her head. “Imagine being a misplaced person.”

  “Wow,” Circa marveled, but Miles remained unresponsive, like the foggy funk he’d waved off for Circa earlier had now settled over him.

  The three of them walked the rest of the way around the circle to the lobby doors, where Circa peered around for Stanley.

  “Don’t worry,” Lily said. “I made him go out back and clean the van windows to get him out of our hair.” She settled herself back at the desk. “Boy, those van windows sure have been sparkly lately,” she added.

  Circa and Miles stopped and faced the blank, gray wall opposite Lily’s desk.

  “Dad said the pictures were going to fill up the whole wall,” Circa said. “With bunches for each resident all mixed in with the historical Wingate pictures.”

  “Stories they can reach,” said Miles.

  “Exactly,” said Circa. She gazed at the vast empty space and felt intimidated by the sheer volume of the work left to be done to make the Memory Wall happen. But then those two words popped into her head again. The people. She thought about all those people behind their colored doors and her compassion flickered inside.

  “My dad always said the thing that he most loved about photographs was how a good one could make one single now speak for a million thens,” she said.

  Miles just stood there frozen, still focused on the center of the empty wa
ll.

  “Lily,” Circa turned and said. “Do you have any fresh old pictures for me to take back to the studio?”

  Lily stopped her paperwork and puzzled at Circa.

  “To restore,” said Circa. “Dad taught me how.”

  “Oh my,” Lily said. “I guess I just assumed we weren’t—” Lily gave Circa a worried look. “I mean, I thought you had enough pictures to work on already,” she said. “But let me check here.”

  Lily did some quick rustling around behind the desk. “Nope, no more pictures.”

  “So Captain Mann didn’t have any with him?” said Circa.

  “Well, come to think of it,” said Lily, “he did bring one picture with him. It appears to be from way back, but I get the feeling he wouldn’t be willing to part with it.”

  “Okay,” said Circa. “But will you please let me know if you collect any more for me to work on?”

  Lily hesitated, looking fretfully from Circa to the empty wall. “All right, precious,” she said. “But you just take care of Circa for a while, though, you hear me?”

  “I hear,” said Circa.

  As she and Miles walked out the front door, Circa noted that even her step was made lighter from the time there, but her friend’s gait was markedly heavy.

  “Hey, thanks for sticking up for me with Stanley before,” said Circa, but Miles walked on with no response.

  “Miles? You okay?” she said, trying to catch up.

  Miles stopped. “What do you think?” he said abruptly.

  “What do you mean?” asked Circa. “Didn’t you have fun?”

  “At first, maybe,” he said. “But tell me, Circa. Do I remind you of somebody?”

  “Sure,” she said. “I told you before, you kind of remind me of my dad a little.”

  “No, I mean, from back there at Maple Grove. Who do I most remind you of?”

  Circa knew the answer he was driving at, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud. Captain Mann.

  “You know who I’m talking about,” Miles said sharply.

  Circa nodded.