All participants are over 18.
*****
I knocked at the door for a second time and Lorne finally opened the door. What I faced was not a pretty sight for anyone who knew Lorne from the old days.
Lorne of old had always been a fit, vital, active man, always well-groomed, well-dressed and handsome, so it came as an extraordinary shock to see this spectre of the man. He stood at the door and stared at me with vacant eyes, lacking interest or recognition. A dirty housecoat hung open to show a soiled t-shirt and boxers. He was most shocking from the neck up. His dark brown hair had grown long and greasy and a thick, long, tangled and matted beard stood off his face like a bush. Both his hair and his beard were shot through now with threads of grey. His smell was rank and offensive.
I had tried calling Lorne several times over the past few years and particularly in the last few months, but he never answered and never replied to my messages. I e-mailed with an equal lack of response. His Facebook account was dormant. I have to admit that I started googling obituaries, wondering if my old school friend was still alive.
When I eventually called his sister, she explained that Lorne had experienced a breakdown after his second divorce. The wife had taken everything and Lorne didn't lift a finger to stop her. He was saddled with enough marital debt to force his bankruptcy. All of his investments and savings were wiped out. He hit the bottle hard for a while and became more and more socially isolated. He lost his job of fifteen years and had now been unemployed for two years.
He had some kind of mental health breakdown for which he had been hospitalized and he was in the process of making a slow recovery. He was on several medications. He had drawn disability assistance and that was now his only source of income. Since social assistance paid far less than was possible to live on, his brothers and sisters chipped in to keep Lorne's cupboard full and his lights on, but they were also busy people and most of them lived far away.
I offered to stop by and check on Lorne and his sister welcomed the news. Most of his friends had faded away as if they'd never been. I had to admit, I had not been around to see him either and I felt guilty. I only lived on the other side of the city; I might have visited sooner had I known the hardship he was enduring.
Lorne stared at me blankly for several seconds. I introduced myself to him several times. It would be an exaggeration to say there was a spark of recognition; those eyes held no spark. Rather, there was a kind of shift that registered on his face. He stood aside and let me in.
As I entered, I realized that my host was not all that smelled here. The apartment, a small bachelor affair, reeked. The strongest smells hung over the unwashed dishes soaking in weeks-old dishwater in the kitchen and the area around the bathroom toilet. I opened a window to help blow off the stink.
I decided to leave my shoes on. I followed Lorne's zombie walk over to a small couch and chair servicing the small visiting area of the apartment. I tried to engage Lorne in conversation, but it was nearly impossible. He heard, but he was capable of only the simplest discussion; mostly, I asked questions and he answered "yes" or "no". His sister had described his condition as one step above catatonia.
While I picked at his shell, I surveyed the apartment, nearly all of which was visible from this vantage point.
There were a few pots and pans soaking on the kitchen counter, but the double-sink overflowed with bowls and plates. Used cutlery lay scattered around the dirty pots and pans. The stove-top was filthy with food waste and the residue left when a pot boiled over. The kitchen floor looked sticky even from a distance. The sleeping area was a tip, with blankets on the floor and a tangle of sheets piled in the middle of the bed. Two wrinkled pillows looked like large, stamped out cigarette butts. The mattress was visible where the fitted sheet had been pulled off the corners. It was clear the bed had not been changed in weeks or months. The carpeted floor of the apartment living area was matted with hair and lint and buried under randomly-discarded dirty clothes. I hardly needed to inspect the washroom to know that it would be disgusting.
After a half-hour playing twenty questions with Lorne, I was played out. I had very little new information from him that the state of his apartment didn't explain more eloquently. He was not managing on his own. I wondered how I could help.
I myself was recently divorced, though I had not suffered an ordeal like Lorne's. In fact, my ex-wife and I were still friends, occasionally with benefits, and I was still on good terms with her family. We cut everything down the middle. My share of the proceeds from the sale of the marital home would be enough to put a sizeable down payment on the right place when I found it. I worked full-time but, having no full-time girlfriend or little children, my off-hours were my own. In fact, I was bored with all my spare time.
It occurred to me now that I could spend a little time helping my friend. Before I left that night, I rolled up my sleeves and washed all of the pots and pans, all the dishes and cutlery. I wiped down the stove-top and sanitized the counters. I polished the stainless-steel sinks until they gleamed. I found a long-ignored mop and pail and washed the floor three times; it was clean when I was done. When that was done, I checked the linen closet and found a clean set of sheets there. I took off the old bedding and made up the bed afresh. I dropped the pungent old bedding and pillow cases into a laundry basket I found by the bed. There was still room in the basket, so I collected all the abandoned socks, underwear, shirts and pants littering the apartment. I set the basket by the door. I would wash these items at my apartment building's laundry room.
That was enough cleaning for one night, and it was no small improvement. The kitchen was clean enough to eat out of. I asked Lorne if he needed me to do anything else while I was there; he shook his head. I told him I would come back the next day if that was alright. He nodded yes.
I stayed up fairly late that night washing and folding Lorne's clean clothes and thinking about my old friend. We had known each other since high school, where he had been a grade ahead of me. We took several classes together, including physical education. Lorne taught me about the birds and the bees when my parents refused me 'the talk'. Later, we golfed together and went to car shows. We even went on a Caribbean cruise together when my ex and his first wife were friends. Was my life-loving old friend still alive in that shell of a man I met earlier that evening?
The next day, after work, I went straight to Lorne's, lugging a laundry basket full of clean clothes and bedding under one arm and my vacuum cleaner in the other. It was just as hard to get him to acknowledge me this time as the last. He let me in and I was quickly reminded of the limitations on his conversational abilities. I decided to talk to him as if he was the way he had always been, filling his ears with everyday talk about the news, the weather, sports, entertainment and work. I thought it might do some good in drawing him out.
I checked the kitchen and found nothing in the sink but a water glass. I asked Lorne if he had eaten that day. After a long pause, he told me "no." I sighed and checked his pantry and freezer. The freezer was nearly empty, so I looked in the fridge. There was nothing edible within and much that was rotting. I realized the fridge needed to be cleared out, power-cleaned and restocked. There was canned soup in the pantry, so I heated it up and served it with some slightly stale salted crackers. He seemed satisfied. I remember making a mental note to call Lorne's sister to let her know that he was almost out of food. She had mentioned they usually got him some groceries every second week or so. He was clearly due.
Lorne resumed his place on the couch and moved his feet while I vacuumed the floor in front of him. Along with my other improvements, vacuuming really made the apartment start to look like a kind of home. Lorne watched me continue to labour on his behalf.
Once I washed his dinner dishes and put them away, I tackled the bathroom. I began by sanitizing the toilet inside and out. The mop and bucket came in handy taking layers off the bathroom floor. I scrubbed out the disgusting sink and the filthy tub. I wiped the mirror clean. After an hour or so of steady labour, the room was clean.
The next night was spent in cleaning out all the spoiled food in his refrigerator and emptying the overflowing garbage can.
By the following evening, there were still touch-ups needed to get the apartment gold-standard clean. There was dusting to do and the windows needed washing. Pictures on the wall needed straightening. These were smaller jobs and of less importance. I had been prioritizing up to now. Two out of three of the apartment's dirtiest, smelliest areas had been cleaned. Lorne was the next priority. I had been putting off his clean-up in hope that he might show some initiative, but that was clearly beyond his current abilities.
We went into the bathroom and I stood him in the bathtub. He had wireless hair clippers and by luck they were completely charged; perhaps someone in the family had recently planned to do this job, but they never got around to it. It took fifteen minutes to cut through the thick wavy hair, but I was soon looking at a man with a short buzz cut. Another ten minutes passed and his beard was neat and trim. I used a broom and dust pan to pick up the cut hair before depositing it in the garbage.
Lorne was still standing in the tub, so I told him to take off his clothes for his shower. Lorne let the open housecoat fall off his shoulders. I helped him off with his t-shirt and was offended by the ripeness of him. He pulled down his boxers and stepped out of them. I reached in and pulled the clothes out of the tub.
