Read Online The Adjustment League by Mike Barnes - Free Book Online

the end to doing little girls in jumpers and frills staring out at sixty.
    Amrita leaves and shortly after a maintenance man with a wispy moustache arrives. Again, that sense of a well-oiled operation: help arriving in small, unobtrusive doses. “How you folks doin’? Not so good, I guess. I’m sorry for your troubles.”
    A young guy, early thirties at most, yet sounding wise and old-timey, the way the simple-minded can.
    â€œThere’s no hurry, you know. I just want to make sure you know that. This place has a five-day compassion window. Longer than some places, that’s for sure.”
    Longer than Max’s. “Thanks,” I say. “Do you need to do some work?”
    He raises and lowers his tool box. A blush seeping out from his ginger hair, as if an old scalp wound has opened. “Well, I just thought I’d see if I can get her toilet moving better. I had it on my list for yesterday, before…”
    â€œIt’s all right. Go ahead.”
    I follow him into the bathroom and, while he’s down on his knees opening up the tool box, ask him what the problem is. His hands sunk in tools and oddments, he speaks more comfortably.
    â€œWell. It happens sometimes around here. The ladies—not the men that I’ve seen—they start putting a lot of things down it. Papers, socks. Underwear. Even slacks and blouses. Sometimes cut up some, if they get ahold of some scissors or a knife. Confused, I guess. You can’t blame them. But you don’t want to be putting those things down pipes, do you?”
    You might if you couldn’t fit yourself.
    He’s got a big wrench out and is reaching behind for the valves. “You folks okay without this for a bit? There’s the little sink by her fridge, that still works. And there’s a bathroom down the hall if you need it.”
    â€œWe’ll be fine.”
    On the metal frame of the mirror above the sink, two photos under butterfly and beetle magnets. Pictures of Maude, unlike any I’ve seen. Tousle-haired, a wind pushing her perm around, broad smile. The sun full in her face, sparking off her glasses as she turns up into it. Who took these? Just behind her, thick autumn colours: tall white flowers, blue ones, yellow goldenrod, big purple thistles, milkweed—a wild beauty in the disordered clump, bumblebees sunk in blooms or fat blurs lifting off or landing. This time of year —though not this year, surely. Water in the background, blurry dots that might be ducks or geese. The same day. Reaching out a hand toward a bumblebee on a purple thistle—smiling, unafraid. Alone again with nature, the photographer forgotten—the miracles of growing things and small animals she reached out to first, sitting on the ground, before she could walk. Who? Someone she trusted. Probably the same person who added tape behind the magnets. These ones should stay. These ones she should see, morning, night. I slide the magnets aside and peel off the shots. Pocket them.
    Â§
    1:00. Small as the room is, we’re going to have to pick up the pace to be ready for Strongbacks in an hour. I decide to break down the bed to give us more room. I look around for Judy, thinking this part might be difficult for her to watch, but she’s gone.
    Bathroom break? She always seemed to recall the needs of her body suddenly, as if it were a mostly silent companion who sometimes tapped her on the shoulder to make a request. There’s no telling. She’s always taken powders. Ghosting in and out of rooms and scenes. Not her rooms, not her scenes. Drug itch? Drug bladder? Beyond those, just an inability to situate herself anywhere for very long. A psychic vagrant. Long before she was a physical one.
    Strange, how work goes faster when the one not working leaves. Non-help not just failing to add but subtracting from what’s there. Sinkhole of inaction…
    Five minutes and the bed’s apart and leaning against the