Being the only person around who seemed to be talking anymore, Pandora decided to stop and hum for a while instead. She’d noticed how the sound made Gladys smile, and so she did it some more, wheeling the old woman up and down the hallways, seeing who was up and who was down.
“Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm,” she went, remembering her father and his ukulele.
“Or even a comb and wax paper will do . . .”
Because if there was one thing he knew about humming, it was this: it was damn hard to do without smiling a little.
The younger woman looked down at the older one, who’d joined in the humming. Gladys could still do that, it seemed. And so they did—together—killing time while Pandora thought about what to do next.
Gladys—her body, at least—seemed to have ideas of its own.
As Pandora prepared to roll past another resident’s room along a hallway full of them, her grandmother’s hand shot out, catching the jamb of the open door, causing the wheelchair to turn inward. Her granddaughter looked inside the room and saw the satiny UAW windbreaker draped over the back of a guest chair, its retired auto worker in pajamas, sitting on the edge of his bed, lit by the spillover from grow lights clamped above a small forest of Styrofoam cups, all filled with potting soil, all sprouting the Alaskan state flower in various stages of maturity.
Pandora looked down at her grandmother, who was beaming like a teenage girl in love.
“Gladys Kowalski-Lynch,” the younger woman scolded. “Seriously?”
The older woman hummed her answer.
Screw it, Pandora thought, wheeling Gladys next to her auto worker. She tiptoed out then and closed the door as softly as she could, giving them back a little privacy. Lingering in the hall, she could just make out the sound of laughter coming through the door. Good, she thought. Have fun, she added. Because if a war hero didn’t deserve a happy doomsday then who the hell did?