Pearls before dawn

ere it was, the token moment, and Dawn wasn't about to milk it, her spirit being too raw. The table seemed longer today, the volunteers taking up the best corners. Jinga on the far right, brushing cake off Heather's gown, that horrid gown, loose and flowing from too many washings, sequins falling off by the minute. Jinga wiped her hands with a crumpled napkin, then stood to ask the big question, the one designed to intrigue the youngsters, sadden the patients, unite the generations--oh what a valuable soul we have here on her ninetieth birthday, what an array of marvelous stories she has to share.

"Happy Birthday, Dawn!" Jinga said, swooping a plastic champaign glass over the silver heads of the patients. "And now we'd like to hear from you, okay?"

Jinga waited for an answer, a yes or no, but Dawn only forced her lips into a slit of a smile. Everything was such an effort these days, even feigning enthusiasm at a token party during a token moment, a moment that would be snatched away the minute she opened her mouth. No use in trying to milk it, god how it would sting.

"Dawn, of all the eras you've lived through, which one was your favorite?" Jinga sat and folded her arms, her duty complete. Heather was fingering her plate for traces of icing, while Valdayne was tugging Brian's shoulders toward the back of his chair. Dawn didn't bother to stand.

"My favorite era would have to be the 1970s," she said. "Back when I was a teenager." She poked at the ribbon on her jelly bean bowl, it had already started to unravel. "But you wouldn't know anything about that."

"I know! I know!" Valdayne said. She was always piping in, more interested in knowledge than in spirit, but her knowledge seemed so forced and lacking, like she never knew where to direct her enthusiasm. "That was during the AIDS epidemic and cable TV and music videos, right?"

"Before all that." Dawn could say anything and they'd believe her. Good thing her peers had forgotten their own names. "Elton John, platform shoes, bean bag chairs. I was famous back then," she said. "I was featured on The Brady Bunch, episode number eighty-four, the one where I introduced Greg and Marcia to cocaine."

"Was that when recovery groups were big?" asked Jinga, wanting to move it right along so she could clear the table and catch the four-thirty before rush hour.

"No. There wasn't anything to recover from yet. Anyway, I appeared on The Brady Bunch, then the producers of The Partridge Family got jealous because I'd been a choreographer for the Jackson Five, and the Partridges needed some new moves..."

"Birds?"

"Yes. There was a sitcom about dancing birds. They sang, too, with instruments and everything. Of course they weren't actually playing the instruments, but the producers made it look like they were. They used mirrors or something, I don't know. I never showed up."

Jinga rose to clear the table, not wanting to appear rude but Nicholas needed his pills and Karen was scheduled for a quick trim at four. "Go on, Dawn," she said. "I can listen and work at the same time. Uh... who was president then?"

"Nixon, Ford, Carter, all the greats, especially Ford," Dawn said. "He really turned things around when Nixon resigned. I don't know what we would have done without him--withered from all the chaos, I guess. But he made things nice and stable so that the rest of us could boogie on the dance floor, have sex with whomever we wanted, smoke doobies, whatever."

"Didn't Nixon resign so he wouldn't be impeached?" Valdayne asked.

"He was framed," Dawn said. "And he refused to be associated with a corrupt government, so he quit." Okay, that was enough. Dawn was ready to retire to her room with her new slippers and jelly beans and wait for her son to pick her up for dinner. Not that she was at all hungry, the cake had been too rich, everything was rich in that place, starchy, rich, heavy, maybe she'd order a salad this time, or maybe the usual vegetable plate with that luscious dip. She was still trying to figure out the recipe.

Dawn gathered her gifts and crammed them into the basket she'd gotten from the volunteers. They had signed their names on the side, too, maybe so she'd remember them in heaven, like she'd be taking that basket of all things. She rose, holding the basket with one hand, gripping the walker with the other, and began shuffling one step at a time toward her room. It seemed to take longer today, five minutes instead of three, but she'd been cursed with two knees that seemed to fail at random. Cursed with all her faculties, too, that harbored memories as clear as the sun on a July afternoon, cloudless and permanent and forever etched on a painter's canvas. The 1970s, yes, a time when everyone had been a star.

Never cast your pearls before swine, she always said, to herself anyway. She placed the basket on her dresser and sat on her bed. Four o'clock. Two hours before Garth would be arriving. Valdayne peeked around the corner. "You all right?" she asked.

"Fine."

"Can I get you anything?"

"An aspirin." Dawn lay back to rest her knees. She would get an aspirin today since it was her birthday. Never deny an old woman an aspirin on her birthday, it would look bad. Nursing homes hadn't changed much, except for the volunteers who began appearing after the government had tagged a value mark on its citizens' time. So now a slew of volunteers show up every January, but they always dwindle by June. Congress should have made caring tax deductible.

Valdayne returned with an aspirin and a glass of milk, a real luxury. "You didn't get much of a chance to talk today," Valdayne said. "I'm sorry about that."

"Why be sorry?"

"You were talking about being famous--it just seemed like a special era for you."

"No one remembers it but me, so its life has the same value as mine. It just keeps fading with every birthday."

"There's museums," Valdayne said. "It will stay alive in the museums."

"That's not life, that's history. Something to memorize, maybe, but not agonize over," Dawn said. "It's the difference between sobbing with your dying sister on her hospital bed and showing your great grandchildren an old photo album." Dawn gulped the milk and shoved the glass at Valdayne. "Thank you for the aspirin."

"Can I get you anything else?"

"Nope." She would nap until dinner, be refreshed when her son arrived. She propped a pillow under her knees, pain hadn't changed any, pillows neither.

"Mother, I'm here." Dawn blinked to see the wrinkled face of her son and the silver box he held in his palm. She sat up and reached for her loafers. "I wanted to get you something special this year," he said, placing the tiny box on her lap.

Jewelry. Now what on earth was she going to do with an expensive piece of jewelry, the party being over, nobody ever noticing jewelry anyway? She lifted the lid and found a gold bracelet with nine pearls stacked three in a row. "It's beautiful, honey," she said. "Help me put it on."

Garth strapped the bracelet around his mother's wrist, more brittle today, frail as a blue toothpick, while Dawn ran her fingers down his cheek, her only way of saying thank you and meaning it. Garth snuggled beside her on the bed.

"Son, did you ever see Saturday Night Fever?"

"Yes, Mother. You made me watch it when I was seventeen years old, then again when Boss turned seventeen."

"Did you like it?"

"Yes, I liked it. And so did Boss. Why? Do you want to see it again?"

"Has Boss ever heard of Led Zeppelin?"

"No. But he'll be meeting us at the restaurant in thirty minutes. Are you getting the vegetable plate again?"

"I wonder if they'll serve a salad with that luscious dip if I ask for it." The trees outside her window were arrowing sun rays at her pearls. Good thing trees offered a hefty tax break for property owners. Good thing the sun had remained exactly the same--yellow at noon, gone by dusk--now splotched against a slightly grayer sky.

The big nine-o, dinner with Garth and Boss, a valiant attempt to describe Led Zeppelin--today was the day for genuine interest. She would unravel the recipe this year, its main ingredient being milk. Maybe she'd even take some of that dip home with her.