Thursday morning at nine.

 Thursday morning at nine. 

Nine o’clock this morning: The phone rings. Maggie Paul’s voice: “Hi.”

     “Hi.”

     “Your uncle - Albert - said not to call you.”

     “But you did.”

     “Yes.” I waited. “Are you coming by to pick him up this morning?” Maggie’s voice said. “He says you usually come a little after 10:30.”

     “Yes,” I said.

     “He goes with you to your appointment, and then the two of you get lunch.”

     “He told you that?”

     “Yes.” Her voice sounded as if it wanted to be officious; she, however, did not. I waited again. “It’s okay,” Maggie said. “But I think you ought to call him this morning. Maybe he shouldn’t go, and maybe he wouldn’t if you called.” Which meant what?

     “Meaning what?” I said.

     She waited, so I waited. Then she said: “He fell last night, I’m not supposed to tell you. And he couldn’t get up, so he called me. On the phone; he didn’t want to bother anyone else by yelling or something.”

     “And you could get him up?”

     She swallowed a laugh. “How much do you think he weighs?” she asked. I shrugged; that is, I cleared my voice. “And how much do you think I weigh?” she asked.

     “I don’t know,” I said. “Either.”

Uncle Albert is small, maybe five-and-a-half feet tall. It’s an advantage when he falls: he doesn’t have far to go. Another advantage according to him, he learned in school, part of “calisthenics” in those days, he maintains - he learned how to fall, so that he never gets hurt.

     He hasn’t so far, if he’s fallen. I assume he has because we’ve all fallen, from the clumsiest to the most graceful of us. Besides, why would he talk about learning how if he hadn’t had occasion to practice what he’d learned? Still, I can only assume he has fallen because this is the first time I’ve heard about it. This, I imagine, is because before he’s always gotten up without help. That’s another thing he learned, though not at school but from a French physician friend. Every day from the time you turn seventy, at least once in the morning and once in the afternoon, you should get down on the floor and get back up again, for practice and to keep up your strength.

Maggie, on the other hand, is pretty big. It’s not a word, “big,” you should use to describe a woman, Roz says; but I don’t know another. I could say she’s stout, and she is, but in the sense of strong not portly; but I don’t think “stout” is any better word than “big.” Maybe robust? In any case, if I imagine the circumstances, I can see her getting Uncle Albert back on his feet - with one yank.

“Is he okay?” I asked her.

     “Sort of,” she said. Hesitated. “No,” she said, “he is. Really. And maybe the best thing for him is to go with you, as usual, to move around - I’m just not sure.”

     I wasn’t sure either, so I waited. “I’m just not sure,” she said again, “but I thought if you called him, he could decide.

     “Only don’t say I called you,” she said. “Though don’t lie if he asks.

     “What do you think?” she said.

     I didn’t know what I thought. So, again, I waited.

     “I think you should call him,” she said. “Like I said. You should.”

continued . . .

09.06.18