The Visitor

“Your bone supplement, Ms. Tenley.” The nurse handed an antidepressant to Caroline Tenley who flashed a look of uncertainty to the eyes of the visitor sitting next to her.

“It’s okay. Go ahead,” the visitor said to Ms. Tenley, knowing full well this was no bone supplement but hoping her encouragement would soothe Ms. Tenley’s doubts. Caroline Tenley, who would turn 87 the next day and lived in an assisted living facility, needed the antidepressant desperately as her dementia continued to set in more and more each month. She would forget to eat and sleep 20 hours a day if it weren’t for the pill disguised as a supplement.

Ms. Tenley swallowed the pill and sighed, content to trust her visitor. The nurse left the room, winking subtly at the visitor on the way out.

“Are you excited about your birthday party tomorrow?” the visitor grabbed Ms. Tenley’s hand.

“Oh, darling, is it my birthday tomorrow? Another year already. Wow. I suppose I am excited, though I haven’t so much as baked a cake yet.”

The visitor chuckled. “No need, Ms. Tenley, everything will be done for you. The dining hall is going to be set up with party hats, cupcakes, even purple balloons—your favorite color.”

Ms. Tenley smiled, but her eyes remained blank. “If you say so, darling.”

The visitor was unsure if Ms. Tenley believed her about the party; or, maybe Ms. Tenley didn’t remember that purple was her favorite color. The visitor’s chest tightened at the thought of this woman she’d grown close to losing her memories and abilities one by one. The losses had escalated over the months they had known each other. To keep from crying and alarming Ms. Tenley, she hopped up from her seat. “Ms. Tenley, shall we go for a walk?”

It took a full five minutes to get out the door because the visitor had to hoist Ms. Tenley out of her chair and secure her to her walker. They slowly shuffled their way, side by side, down the hallway to the facility’s garden outside.

Though the walk was merely a few yards, Ms. Tenley wanted to take a rest on a bench in the garden. The visitor obliged, lowering Ms. Tenley down, parking the walker next to the bench, and sitting down herself.

“Darling, tell me, are you married?”

The visitor didn’t mind the question, though she had told Caroline Tenley about her love life more times than she could count. She wouldn’t volunteer here if these kinds of things bothered her.

“No ma’am, not yet.”

“How could that be? Just look at those high cheekbones and pearly whites. Plus, you’re not a hussy like so many young women these days.”

The visitor blushed and bit her lip to keep from laughing. She agreed with Ms. Tenley that she was marriage material, but no man had yet to live up to the standard one boy had set years ago. A stranger, really. “Do you remember me telling you about my childhood crush?” she asked Ms. Tenley.

Ms. Tenley shrugged. “Maybe?”

The visitor continued, happy to relive the tale again and again. “I only knew him for one summer, but I never really knew him at all. He was in high school, a few years older than me. That summer, which feels like ages ago, like a blurry dream, he mowed my parents’ lawn once a week. I would watch from my bedroom window; he was shirtless, shiny with sweat, and his shoulders were always approaching a dangerous shade of red. It sounds creepy, that I watched him like that, but I was painfully shy then.” And still now, she thought. “It wasn’t just a physical attraction, though. It was the way he would chat with my dad outside before he started working or stop in the middle and help my mom carry groceries inside. He seemed, I don’t know, genuine.”

“What was his name, darling?”

“I don’t know. I never knew.”

“You didn’t ask your parents?”

“No, I was too embarrassed. They would have known immediately that I had a crush, and the thought of them knowing that secret, or worse sharing it with him, mortified me.” The visitor shivered at the thought. “So, he remained a mystery, and I moved on with my life, but I never forgot him.”

Ms. Tenley persisted. “Can you call them up and ask them now? Would they remember?”

The visitor looked down. “My parents are gone,” she reminded Ms. Tenley, once again.

“Oh darling, I’m so sorry.” She rested her hand on top of the visitor’s.

“Don’t be. I’ve poured all my energy into my career, you know? I love my job, but between the hours I put in there and the wonderful time I get to spend with you here, all that’s left to do is go home and sleep.”

“Ahh. Who says you have to sleep alone?” Ms. Tenley gently elbowed her visitor.

The visitor cleared her throat. “When and where would I meet this sleep partner?”

Ms. Tenley looked around the garden, like she was looking for someone. “I suppose the men here are a tad old for you?”

They both giggled, and for a moment the visitor forgot she was talking to her favorite dementia patient. Caroline Tenley seemed more like a mother.

***

The visitor lost her parents when she was in her twenties, one in a car accident, one to cancer. Both instances nearly crushed her. She had wondered once in a while if her memories of this boy, this crush, were so vivid because they tied her to a happier time when her parents were alive. He knew her parents, even if only a little, and she often wondered if he thought of them fondly or remembered them at all.

Less than a year ago, on the night of her 30^th birthday, alone in her office at work, crying at her desk, eating her third slice a of cake leftover from the lunch celebration her colleagues threw her, she scrolled the internet, searching for something—she wasn’t sure what. But she needed a spark of light, something to look forward to, something to fulfill her lonely life. Her company had always encouraged their employees to serve in the community, but she had always claimed to be too busy. Luckily, an ad for an assisted living facility popped up in the sidebar of a totally unrelated website, and she clicked on the smiling white-haired couple who were basking in sunlight. Before she knew it, she donned an official volunteer badge, and she was chatting up real-life, white-haired residents.

Volunteering at the assisted living facility quickly became more than a box to check. The visitor came to feel at home there. She liked to discover and embrace maternal and paternal qualities in the residents to keep alive the feeling of being a daughter. She would even search for physical features that reminded her of her late parents, her dad’s sharp blue eyes, or her mom’s tight curls. She began to care deeply for the residents, and it felt like they cared for her. She could escape into an alternate universe where her parents felt alive, and love was a two-way street.

Caroline Tenley had golden brown eyes and wavy grey hair, but the visitor was inexplicably drawn to her when she started volunteering last year and had been attached to Ms. Tenley’s hip—allowing space for the walker—ever since then. Ms. Tenley seemed to light up when she would arrive, which warmed her to the core. Ms. Tenley seemed genuinely curious about the visitor’s life, which filled a certain void that her parents used to occupy. Caroline Tenley’s confusion and forgetfulness at times had really been a side note to the fulfilling relationship they had created together.

***

“You must meet my grandson!” Ms. Tenley beamed at the visitor as they walked back to her room from the garden. She had mentioned this to the visitor dozens of times. “I can’t remember his exact age, but it seems you two are close.”

“I’m sure I will, if he ever comes to visit you,” the visitor responded, as she had every time. “Oh, maybe he will come to your party tomorrow!”

Ms. Tenley looked surprised. “Darling, you’re throwing me a party?”

The visitor smiled. “You’ll see.”

***

As a nurse was lighting the single candle that adorned Caroline Tenley’s cupcake, and the crowd of her elderly friends, a handful of nurses, and one young visitor inhaled to begin singing the birthday song, a man turned quickly into the dining room, out of breath from jogging down the hallway.

Most of the residents didn’t notice him and began singing. A nurse turned to him, and above the sound of the multiple-keyed, imperfect, jolly singing, asked if he was there for Ms. Tenley’s birthday. He nodded. The young visitor turned her head, and as her eyes met his, the sounds around her seemed to submerge in water and disappear. He looked even better now, in his mid-thirties, with a beard and crow’s feet. He looked even better with a shirt on.

What may have surprised her even more than the fact that it was really her childhood crush standing there was the way his eyes seemed to register familiarity when he looked at her. How would he recognize me? she thought. She brushed that off and decided to feign ignorance; she could never admit to having spied on him.

What he would be too afraid to admit, what he wanted to say but couldn’t, was that he had seen her crying all those months ago, alone in her office. He didn’t know her, but he was taken by her emotion, as if his heart was breaking with hers. He had had an interview late that evening and was leaving the office when he spotted her. He lingered and watched her scroll the computer screen, like she was searching for something, like she was missing a piece of herself and she would find it hidden in the screen.

She had a huge corner, glass office, and he was interviewing for an entry-level position—probably the oldest applicant—so he was too intimidated to go to her and introduce himself. She would have been embarrassed, too, even if he had pretended like he hadn’t noticed her tears. He dreamt of her that night, and the next day when he found out he didn’t get the job, he was only disappointed for the fact that he might never see her again.

What is she doing here? he thought. Does she know my grandmother? He decided to walk up to her and introduce himself but feign ignorance; he could never admit to having spied on her.

“Hi, I’m Mark,” he said as the birthday song ended. He pointed to Caroline Tenley. “That’s my grandmother.”

The visitor looked over at Ms. Tenley as she was blowing out her candle. She smiled and looked back at Mark, sealing his name to the face that had haunted her mind’s eye for years, taking a breath to break through her nerves. “Nice to meet you, Mark. You’re just in time.”