The Life and Time of Norma Ennis - An Example of My Work
At 103 years old, Norma Ennis was something of an enigma.
‘Just watch your stick, Mrs Ennis.’
Norma glanced at her hands, positioned
inside each other. She cradled them on
her lap.
‘Your stick, Mrs Ennis?’
Throughout life, it had been her hands
that had amazed her the most. Everyone
told you to look after your face, buy those miracle creams the beauty adverts
recommended, invest in expensive treatments, look to delay the signs of
time. If you really wanted to know a
person’s age, thought Norma Ennis, you needed to look at their hands.
‘Norma! Your stick!’
‘Eh? Speak up, I can’t hear you for all
that racket.’
Norma saw Molly’s laugh before she heard
it. It emerged from behind a shiny
panelled vacuum cleaner, the type these days that were not only bag-less, but used
solar energy to ‘sun clean your home’.
The advertisers claimed that a built-in noise extractor meant they were
far less noisy than they had been when Norma was a little girl. But they still made too much bloody noise.
‘Ahhh… I see, dear. Let me move my stick for you.’
‘Don’t worry, Mrs Ennis. I’ll come back later.’
Norma smiled and returned to look out
her window. There had been something on
her mind, but she had lost it now, a memory stuck to the wisp of a trail Norma
was now too frail to chase.
‘Did Abigail drop the kids off?’
‘Yes, Mrs Ennis. They’re next door, safe and sound.’
Norma watched as May-time blossom
floated in a curve outside her window.
Pink spots rolled along the basketball court opposite.
‘Molly…’
‘Yes Mrs Ennis?’
‘You really need to stop calling me ‘Mrs
Ennis’.’
Molly straightened out her blue uniform.
‘I’m sorry, Norma, I… I just can’t help it.
You’ve always been…’
‘The boss… I know.’
Norma looked at her hands again and
traced a finger along the back of her hand.
She liked the smoothness of her hands and the reassuring roll of excess
skin. A band of gold still shone despite
the decades since she had first put it on.
Norma sighed.
‘Cup of tea, Norma?’
Mrs Ennis nodded.
As Molly turned to leave Norma’s
quarters, the old lady raised her hand as her memory seeped back.
‘Molly?
Did Abigail drop the kids off?’
Getting
anywhere these days was hard work. Norma
did not know how her parents had coped living into their nineties, back in the
old days when everything was manual and slow moving. These days, you could always go places, it
was just the ‘going’ that could cause problems.
Take for example, Bob Oderson. He had
tried to convince everyone when he arrived at Norma’s retirement home that he
could manage the Walker. The
two-wheeled, self-balancing, solar powered unit often deceived the driver as to
its user friendliness. Thanks to the
panes of heated fibre optic glass which cocooned the driver into their own
self-regulating temperature system, drivers often thought they were safe.
With Bob Oderson, Norma had worked long
enough in the home to know a late-life crisis when she saw one. Despite her half-hearted attempt to dissuade
him from over using the Walker, he had simply patted her hand and given a
wink. Less than a week later, he was
laid up in bed, with a fractured arm and dented pride. Over the many years, Norma had grown to
recognise the signs of those still eager to live out their youth, despite the limitations of their bodies.
Still, Bob had
been there for Norma that day. The day
she lost her Norman.
Norma and Norman. People of course used to laugh at the similar
names. But then, they were very similar
people. They used to sit on their
favourite bench every day, holding hands, watching basketball in the park. They would watch old movies together, attempt
walks that would often leave them near-crippled, and dance slowly together when
no one was watching.
Then one fine sunny day, Norma got out
of bed for a new day. And Norman didn’t.
That was 19 years ago this Spring. All those years ago, on that terrible day, her
family had found her wandering the roads outside their detached bungalow, at a
loss with the world. The world that had
been theirs.
In the weeks and months that followed, a
steady trickle of friends and family wandered in and out of the house she had
once shared with her Norman. Stories had
been exchanged, tears shed, lives adjusted.
But Norma never got over it.
Throughout her life, she had lived
brilliantly. Four kids, her own house, and a multitude of achievements from a
PhD in Literature to a Grade 8 as a pianist.
She had defeated breast cancer and lived to tell the tale. She loved life. Or had once loved it.
Since Norman died, that light inside
Norma died with him. Life became
routine, an existence, a way of being. Like
a disease, loneliness began to take hold.
She told no one when she boarded the bus
to go to the Clinic.
‘Eight dollars, ma’am.’
The bus driver was a rotund woman in her
fifties, chewing bubble gum like her life depended on it. She knew where Norma was going. Very few people ever went as far as the Clinic.
Norma had nodded.
‘Thank you.’
Even the words sounded empty and
meaningless.
The bus had taken her along the route
she had often walked with Norman, past Cedar Oak Street, through Mountsville
town, and slowly to Snow Hill.
Old age often has a way of playing
tricks on the mind, so when Norma saw Norman sitting on the bench where they
had spent many a happy day, she did not believe it at first. She remembered jumping in the air, and nearly
losing her balance as the bus swerved round a bend.
‘STAAAWP!’
Everyone on the bus had stared. No one could believe that a little old lady
could make so much noise.
With flushed cheeks, Norma had done her
best to exit the bus. Stupefied, the
driver had spat out her bubble gum and guided Norma to the kerb with her stick.
If Norma had been paying attention to
the driver just then, she would have noticed a note of admiration in the woman’s
tired eyes.
Norma’s gaze transfixed, she still saw
him, watching the empty basketball court.
His white hair fluttered loosely in the wind. She recognised the tartan-checked scarf
tucked into his dark blue shirt.
Willing herself to run, and cursing her
body for being unable to, she lolloped awkwardly to the bench. As the blue of his eyes met hers, her legs trembled,
and she found herself collapsed into him, the familiarity of his aftershave
overpowering her senses.
‘Shhh…’
Norma touched his neck and stroked his
hands. She kissed his cheeks. She saw wetness on his face and realised they
were her tears.
‘Norma.
Listen. Please, darling, listen.’
Their knees still touched. Her hands searched for his.
‘I’m not here for long.’
Norma watched as his wrinkled hands took
hers. He still wore the Rolex she had
bought him for his 75th birthday.
She nodded.
‘I’m here to tell you something.’
‘What, what is it, Norm?’
The lines between his eyebrows deepened.
‘Simply this: Never give up. Never.
Ever. Give up.’
‘Oh Norm…I miss you so much…’
She saw the creases around his eyes and
how they curved upwards. She had
forgotten they did that.
‘Norma.
You’re not listening. I can’t
stay. You know that. But you
have to. Promise me, you’ll never give
up.’
Tears flooded her eyes.
“Of course… of course. I’ll keep fighting for you Norm.”
He stood then. The slight stubble on his chin grazed her
cheek as he bent to kiss her.
‘I love you, Norm. Please don’t go.’
As he walked away, the darkness that had
grown inside her started to diminish. The words I love you too floated on the air as her beloved disappeared from
sight.
Norma had spent the remainder of the
afternoon sitting on that bench. Her
mobile phone had rung, but she knew it was the Clinic. And she knew she would never go there.
As she had contemplated what someone
like her in her 80s could possibly do with the remainder of her life, she had
spotted a placard stamped on the site of a mansion opposite the basketball
court.
The
obviousness had made her laugh out loud.
For the years that she and Norman had shared sitting on that bench, guessing
at the lives of random strangers walking past, they had always assumed that
someone rich and famous had lived at the single storey mansion.
That building had become dilapidated
since Norman’s passing. But with the
sale of all her worldly possessions, the help of the community, and a little
luck when it came to fundraising, Norma Ennis opened the world’s first ‘care in
the community’ retirement and childcare centre, focusing on the quality of
life, and not the end of it.
Everyone loved it at the Cedar Bank
Centre. Within the last five years, six
more centres had opened in the near vicinity, with a further 13 in the
planning. The waiting lists for such a
facility were years. The word ‘laughter’
featured in all the media reviews. From
Jack Smith who spent hours looking for his glasses on his hands and knees in
the corridors of the centre to finding them on his head, to Doris Buchannan who
one day had decided to emerge from her quiet existence into a giggling,
naughty, not-so-secret ice cream thief.
Norma had made so much money, it often
made her head swirl. But this adventure
had never been about the money. It had been
about Norm, and how much she missed him.
‘Mrs
Ennis?’
‘Molly! How lovely to see you!’
The look on the carer’s face told Norma
this was one of those occasions where she had forgotten something.
‘I’ve got your tea for you. I’ll just place it here.’
China clinked.
‘I forgot again, didn’t I?’
Norma gave a sad smile. A reassuring hand caressed her shoulder.
‘The girls are doing tai chi this
afternoon, if you’re feeling up to it?’
‘That sounds lovely, dear. I’ll just finish my cuppa… if you could
remind me?’
Molly nodded.
‘I’ll be back in five.’
The gentle click of the door signalled
Norma was alone again. Alone, but happy.
Returning her gaze to the blossom
accumulating on the windowsill outside, Norma spotted a man sitting on the
bench she used to share with her Norman.
She placed her cup and saucer on top of her side table, and pulling her
glasses down from her head, she leaned forward in her chair.
The man stood and waved at her, a
familiar hello that she recognised in the red, black and blue checked scarf he
wore around his neck.
Using her thumb, Norma rubbed the
wedding ring on her left hand, and looked again out the window. Happiness surged through her.
‘I’m not making tai chi today, am I
Norman?’
And with a smile, Norma closed her eyes
and drifted off to sleep.
___
Author
note: The wording in the title is intentional, the word “Time” was not meant to
be plural. I got inspired to write this
simply from playing basketball myself on a court covered with pink blossom! The
futuristic devices created in this story are characteristic of the multitude of
futuristic gizmos in my books. Other examples of my short stories include:
Author update - you can now purchase my debut novel 'Where Were You When the World Ended?' from the Amazon Kindle store.
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