Go Ask Alice…when she's 94

Sometimes when we’re together or talking on the phone, Alice and I zip around in time at our whim, untroubled by either sequiturs or non sequiturs. (How did they get to be so important anyway?) Last night our phone conversation started with her telling me that Mrs. Obama wore a pretty pale blue sweater with a beaded collar to lunch. She was not talking about Michele Obama at a White House luncheon, but about a woman named Susie who had often worn an Obama sweatshirt to the dining room throughout the last Presidential campaign, as had her husband.

In 2008 Alice was new to The Place. She didn’t know their names, so she called them the Obama People, as in: “The Obama People came down the elevator separately tonight. First Mr. Obama came down and then a few minutes later Mrs. Obama came down and she was mad at him because he hadn’t waited for her. Mrs. Obama stopped at my table and said, ‘I’ve never thought about divorcing him but plenty of times I’ve thought about killing him.’” 

Alice could relate.

Even after she learned their names, Stanley and Susie, Alice held fast to the Obama part. Stanley died last spring and now she and Susie stop to chat occasionally. They usually complain not about the state of the nation but about the state of the food they’re expected to eat. Last night Alice told me, “Susie Obama agreed with me that the chili today was nothing but mush.” Susie knows that Alice calls her Susie Obama or Mrs. Obama because Alice believes in full disclosure about nearly everything, even though she often says later, “Oh, why didn’t I keep my mouth shut?” A few things are saved for my hearing only, whether I want to know them or not. Countless times I’ve put my hands over my ears and begged her to stop telling me about her various bodily functions, to no avail. For some reason, she thinks I’m on a need-to-know basis, even when nothing is either needed or worth knowing.

Seconds after the mushy chili comment we launched a discussion about her grandfather, Christian, a Norwegian immigrant who could barely speak English, but he could sense water for wells under a span of Dakota earth that looked exactly like every other span of Dakota earth.

Dakota 1

Dakota 2

The well that almost killed his daughter Martha was one of his finds.

Christian also knew things before anyone else knew them. For example, one night as he started to blow out the flame of a lantern in the bedroom of the sod house he shared with my great-grandmother, Josephine, the light went out by itself. He was unfazed. “Anneus is dead,” he said, referring to a perfectly healthy cousin in Norway. Sure enough, weeks later they got a letter from a relative back home stating that Anneus had died, and the time of his death matched the moment the lantern’s light extinguished itself.

We skip forward 115 years to Mr. Fickle. After a week of exchanging Hellos and even a hug, he has gone back to his maddening trick of peeping into the (empty) post office whenever he passes by Alice’s table in the dining room, instead of peeping in the opposite direction, at her. “I guess we’ve broken up again,” she said. Lately he has been attentive toward Alice’s friend, Aurora, a woman she admires for her relaxed social skills. Aurora table hops in the dining room, a practice she shares with Mr. Fickle, while Alice shyly sits at her table with Irene, observing people, never seeking companionship but pleased when it seeks her.

“I was reminded of that old song,” she said about their flirtation, and she sang this (popular in 1926):

The pal that I loved stole the gal that I loved
and took all my sunshine and joy.
Nobody but he was a buddy to me
since we played on the floor with our toys.
I just can’t believe my old pal would deceive,
Gee but I’m heartsick and sore
Cause the pal that I loved stole the gal that I loved;
That’s why we’re not pals any more.*

“I like Aurora,” Alice said. “Mr. Fickle won’t come between us.”

For some reason, this led us to the mystery of the bathroom scale I bought for her not long ago. It’s a digital scale, the first she’s ever seen, and she doesn’t trust it. “Yesterday morning it said I weighed 141, which is fine, but then last night it said I weighed 144. Then today it said I weighed 142. At least it’s never boring.”

“Most people weigh more at night than in the morning,” I offered in defense of the scale’s side of the dialogue.

“That scale doesn’t know the difference between night and day. It’s wrong no matter what time it is.”

There was a second or two of silence on the line. “Somebody’s trying to get me,” she said, which sounded ominous, but it was only Call Waiting.

We hung up to make room for the other call because we are Christian’s granddaughter and great-granddaughter and we sensed it was her sister Pearl calling from the Old Country, the Midwest. (And besides, she calls at the same time every night.) Alice would tell Pearl about Mr. Fickle and Aurora, and about Mrs. Obama’s beaded sweater and the mushy chili. And Pearl, who is 90, would report the happenings at her own Place, where the food is better and the scale is not digital, but the day would be empty and lonely without talking to Alice. Every night they travel around in time together too, and they stitch together a lively conversation from the scraps they find scattered around in memories, family history, and their present lives in Places neither one of them wants to be but tries with good humor to accept.

Christian

Old recording of song: “The Pal that I Loved Stole the Gal that I Loved”

*(Words and Music by Harry Pease and Ed. G. Nelson)

And here’s something so beautiful that I came across while researching the song Alice sang to me: Blind Willie McTell singing Pal of Mine.

Only my own real family names are used in this blog. Although all others mentioned are, or were, actual people, I haven’t used real names in this or any other blog entry.

Click on any photograph to enlarge it.