Marilyn's eyes flickered as the summer dawn broke. She inhaled and exhaled deeply, slowly waking up. A quick glance over to the nightstand to her old wind-up clock showed the time at just after seven.
She was surprised that she had slept in so long, and then began to remember the events of yesterday. She took deep breaths and looked to the other side of the bed, half-expecting to see Penny there, but she was not.
What was she doing, anyway? Fooling around with this girl. Swatting her on the bare bottom and fingering her silly right there on the couch like a fucking teenager! Outrageous! She must be getting senile in her old age.
It was Saturday, and she had a normal routine. She would open the bookstore at ten, after making her weekly trek to see her husband.
She swallowed and took a deep breath. What would Thomas say? How could she deal with her shame when she saw him? Could she even talk to him? She knew in her passing conversations, she had mentioned Penny, but nothing, ever like this. She had kept her desires regarding other women locked down pretty tight, but now, with this, she had no idea what to do.
She sat up in the bed, the thin camisole draping across her body, following her petite breasts and curves as she moved. She took deep breaths and grabbed for a Shambala Edition of Lao Tzu's the Tao Te Ching. She read a few passages from it and found calmness in them. She looked on the dresser and saw a picture of her and her husband on their wedding day, back in nineteen-forty. She was sixteen, a Wac, he, seventeen, an Army Ranger.
She put her hand on the filing cabinet that served as a nightstand and pushed herself up, wavering a bit. She grabbed for her crook handled cane. Like her silver-capped one, it was made of rattan, but unlike it, was a spanking cane. Softly, using it she balanced herself. Slowly, she ambulated, balancing carefully, moving smoothly. In the house, she rarely used the cane, but this morning, her bones felt weak, and she needed it to stand.
The bedroom had its own shower with toilet, and she turned on the hot water and sat on the commode. She watched the steam billow out, and thought of Penny again. The young girl was so alive, so vibrant. Like a beacon over the ocean, she illuminated a path, a way through the darkness. She thought of Penny's small, tender butt when her hands ran across it, the jiggle from the hips, and then that warm, soft cleft that sucked on her fingers.
Stepping into the shower, she took the handheld shower massager off its' hook and ran it across her weathered, tanned back, then lower, using it to pleasure herself. She felt so alive as the jets reached deeply into her and imagined Penny on her knees licking and sucking at her.
She staggered, her body off balance, and then her mind refocused itself, and went to the task of cleaning her body. Shampoo, body wash, rinse. Conditioner, shave, rinse again, all in her neat, tidy, little-old-lady manner.
Idly she pondered and then decided that perhaps she needed to soak. Flipping the bathtub's drain, it quickly filled with the nearly scalding-hot water. She slowly slipped to her knees and felt the water bake at her bones. Her fantasies took her hands over and she worked her body, playing it like a classical instrument.
Before long, she shook softly, a small climax came. Nothing particularly spectacular, it was a rather prefunctionary orgasm at best, but it did the job. In the hot water, it made her drowse ever so softly, and she soaked for quite a while, a luxury she did not often allow.
At last, seeing the wrinkles on her hands, she admonished herself yet once again, and struggled out of the tub. Carefully wiping her feet, she used countertops to balance herself, and looked critically in the full-length mirror.
She allowed herself some pride, as close to seventy, she had the body of a fifty year old. She lifted weights to combat osteoporosis, and had given up smoking in the nineteen-seventies. Her vices she limited to a small shot of Irish Whisky a few nights a week, writing bondage stories, and apparently now, Penny.
She toweled dry her hair, and styled it with a dab of mousse and the flick of a wide-toothed comb. A bra and garter belt, stockings, and panties layered with a camisole, and then followed by her nice black skirt with the wide belt and shiny buckle, followed by a loose, white turtleneck.
She re-looked over herself in the mirror, again, critically. A stray gray hair she picked off the skirt, and discarded in the trash. After the second inspection came a very light application of makeup, not much more than a lip-gloss and translucent powder. Her mother believed that one should wear so little makeup it wasn't visible, yet enough to refine her appearance. She agreed with this philosophy.
Down the hall, she made herself a quick breakfast of a grapefruit half with some toast with butter, jam, and hot Earl Grey tea. The warmth of the tea warmed her from the inside, just as the bath had warmed her from the outside, and between the two of them, put her in a very good mood.
After eating, she put her dishes in a dishpan in the sink, filled it with hot water, and let it soak. She turned and then went over to the shelf that held her purse and keys. On it were some books with classical authors, and she selected some Tennyson, Dickens, and on an impulse, Melville. On top of this pile, she laid a very well worn copy of a collection of Rudyard Kipling's work.
These she put into a homemade bag made of cut-up old pieces of jeans she had bought at yard sales. It was patchwork and wholly eclectic and she had taken great pride in making it. It was not often she had these craft-making impulses, but when she did have them, she honored them.
She backed the black Cadillac out of the garage, and sped to Visa Rose Nursing Center. When she arrived, it was shortly after eight-thirty.
The Saturday morning charge nurse watched her approach, and always admired her, the classic lines of a lady, in a long-forgotten world. Always polite, always civil, and utterly devoted.
"Good morning, Mrs. Marshall," Kathy, the lead floor nurse said.
"Good morning, Kathy." Marilyn replied.
Before she even opened her mouth to inquire, Kathy presented Marilyn with the plastic flip-open chart that had become her husband's life.
"Thank you, Kathy." Marilyn replied. She flipped directly to the chart notes and looked over the last few days. She noted that the bedsores he once had been healed. Her only displayed emotion was a flare of her nose as a horrific smell permeated through the nurse's station.
Kathy of course, was used to such things, but Marilyn, no matter how many Saturdays she came here, was not. She held her breath as the bin passed by, its contents were two laundry bags full of soiled materials and one garbage bag full of biological waste.
Kathy had turned and was talking to someone when Marilyn closed the chart and laid it quietly on the nurse's station, she waited patiently for a break in the conversation and then said, "anything new?" to her.
Kathy looked at her and replied, "No. Thomas is stable, outside of that minor infection."
"Thank you, Kathy."
Kathy's head popped to the left for the moment and then turned back toward Marilyn.
"Violet and Trinity are working on him now, if you want to give him a moment," she said.
Marilyn merely nodded.
Soon, an enormous woman waddled out of the room with a huge bag full of sheeting in one hand, and a smaller, bag in the other. She dumped both bags into her bin, and stripped off her disposable purple nitrate gloves into the garbage bin. She stuck her hands into a large thigh-mounted exterior pocket, pulled out another pair, snapped them on with a flourish, and went back in.
A smaller woman came out, with a sheaf of paperwork in one hand, and glass vials of blood in the other. She, too, bore the purple nitrate gloves, and took a moment to peel them from her hands. Her name badge read, 'Violet, RN'.
Marilyn walked toward her.
"Mrs. Marshall," Violet said warmly, "how are you?"
"I am well, thank you, Violet," Marilyn replied.
"I'm hoping these will show your husband's antibiotics have run their course." Violet said, holding them up.
Marilyn nodded, "of this I have no doubt."
They both heard the sink run from the room, and Trinity's voice echo, speaking to Thomas, "Well big guy, you're all taken care of. Nice fresh sheets, clean comforter, you're going to do all right today, Tom. Vi and I won't be on tonight, but you know the weekend crew, they're as right as rain." Marilyn could hear the joviality in Trinity's voice, and then she came bursting through his door, using an inside-out glove to hold yet another trash bag.
"Hey Mrs. Marshall, he's all ready for you," Trinity said with a smile.
"Thank you, Trinity," Marilyn said, somewhat coolly.
Trinity was oblivious of the older woman, and pushed her cart away, heading down the hall, where the other laundry cart had gone.
Violet took that excuse to leave as well, and Marilyn Marshall knocked first out of habit, and then opened the door to the room that had been her husband's home for the last twenty years.
Thomas Marshall's eye was closed; he was lying on his back. The left two inches of his face was a singular mass of scar tissue, with small peaks and valleys where pieces of bone protruded out. He had no left eye, and had a glass prosthesis that barely fit into the skull, but rarely was it inserted. Most of his nose had been sheared completely off; in fact, his once noble, almost Roman visage was now more reminiscent of a pig prior to slaughter. Without muscle tone, the facial flesh merely hung from him.
Thomas had no left arm, his legs amputated at the thigh. He used a tracheal tube to breathe, and had a bag that held a chocolate-looking substance that dripped constantly into his system.
When she pulled back the covers, she found a newly placed ostomey bag attached to his abdomen, and a fresh catheter coming out of his uncircumcised penis. She had seen both of those enough times to not let them bother her, and so, inspected their placement for infections.
Satisfied that the plumbing was intact, she addressed him.
"Good Morning, Thomas. Today is Saturday the Twentieth of August, in the year two-thousand and five. I have brought with me some of your favorites." She kissed him on the forehead.
She sat to his right, where his only ear was, and pulled out the Tennyson. She read to him from that book for fifteen minutes, then switched to Dickens knowing that, 'A Tale of Two Cities' was one of his favorites. She concluded the story, and put a stick mark in the back of the book. It was the seventy-third time she had read the story to him.
