on thursdays, a young man cleans out the pool. i look forward to that. we all do. he sings along to music plugged into his head, uploaded through tiny pods in his ears. he dances side to side, shaking his heinie, and chucks his arms about as though swinging across the monkey bars. he is tall, and when he pretends to sing, his lips warble like a limp rubber band.

to us, he is a rock god in baggy white cargo shorts and a large bahama shirt. we all gather in front of the window and coo like partridges. to us, he is some long ago idol on a faraway stage and we are all suddenly sixteen again, greasy and pitted shoulder to shoulder at the bar, dying for a piece of breakaway glory, an ember of something cindered and immortal.

on fridays, the ladies from the local methodist church visit. they descend in a flock of minivans and drop two dozen glazed donuts onto the rec room banquet table. the table cloth is stained and needs washing. also, many of us are diabetic now, so we can’t touch the donuts. the ladies don’t realize this or perhaps believe we are just grateful for the thought. i can assure you, we are not.

they crash through the front doors well after 1pm, after we have already eaten our lunches of clam chowder and mashed potatoes. many are well into their second midafternoon naps. when the ladies come through the doors, they balance the donuts high above their heads like ghanaian head porters, white women with painted smiles, desperate to show you their burdens.

why, they’re feeding the dogs, lillian observes each time they come in.

we are strange figures to them, half objects of aspiration and half harbingers of dread. sometimes the head nurse will come out to shake the ladies’ hands and the lot of them will stand around talking only to each other, as though we weren’t adults, too. perhaps we are children. i, for one, am not supposed to have donuts, but when the nurse’s back is turned, i sneak them anyway.

on saturdays, i walk down to the intensive care unit and take the elevator up to the hospice wing. i like to see who’s checking out that week. the staff let me wander about as i please. i make a good show of my sadness, and they leave me alone.

once i clung so desperately to life’s edge. everything was such a bustle: the wars, the disease, the failure of nations. but then at a certain age, reality tip toes behind a pane of glass, and it makes no more sound. we only know it’s there because the monitor still beeps and the bag inflates and the catheter fills.

my son turns fifty-two this year. he hates his job at the bottle plant where he’s worked for three decades, all to provide for his four boys. the youngest of his boys is thirty-two now, and they’ve their own little mouths to feed and jobs of their own to hate. we are powerless to stop this.

on sundays, if the boys visit, they mull about and bump into the walls, the doors, the railing on my bed. their new face wrinkles squinch and submit to the dull blue light of their devices. they concern themselves with pressing matters, critical affairs they must attend to as soon as they get home.

when they are not fretting about nothing, they lament a litany of lifelong failures to me. but i have heard these stories before: tales of cheap affairs in bargain motels, interstate addiction, graphic violence. i pretend to be glad and grateful they visited, or else they won’t come again. i can’t tell them they’ve missed the whole damn point, and that it is now too late for them.

we are supposed to put our hopes in our children, but to be honest, mine give me no hope at all. the road they walk will one day land them here, in this same chair, perhaps this same window, the same sugarberry tree outside, its berries ripening too late in the stark october light.

on mondays, we play games: backgammon, battleship, bingo, boggle, bridge, checkers, chess, craps, jenga, mahjong, mancala, monopoly, parcheesi, pictionary, risk, scrabble, whist. yahtzee, if we feel frisky.

luck makes anyone a winner, and it’s good to know god still shines on you, still glances your way but once in a while. and yet winning is one of life’s most fleeting illusions. it is a young person’s game. for here we suffer no rise and fall of fortune’s tide. no, sir. we’ve nothing to lose, and nothing won will stay.

besides, i find i need little these days. you can take the tchotchke and souvenirs on the dresser. i’ve forgotten their stories anyhow. and take the photos on the bedstand. i hardly recognize those young, smiling faces. i eat less and less. i’ve lost the urge to roam. if i win a prize, i will only lose it somewhere along the way to my room.

but monday’s winner receives a second helping of jello dessert with an extra dollop of cool whip. and if the night nurse likes you, she’ll lead you on an evening stroll through the community gardens after dinner. and in the summertime, she’ll even leave you out there for a whole hour, you in all your anonymous, unconfronted joy. sitting there beneath the dark, fathomless skies, you breathe a little lighter and soak up your prize.

on tuesdays, i lay in bed all morning and watch daytime talk shows. i pretend i’m one of the celebrity hosts like oprah or sally jessy raphael. i hold up my big red coffee mug, curl my fist into a microphone, and pretend the potted hydrangeas are a live studio audience. they’re good listeners.

i tell them all about growing up in the old neighborhood, how the pools halls smelled like chalk and salted pretzels and how my mother made dinners on saturday nights because my old man would spend sundays at the track. i say remember the sad old songs your pop played on the radio. i say what i know, i could only know now, that once the truth would have been a useless thing. my audience eats it up. the hydrangeas bask in my light and bloom.

the doctor visits on wednesdays. he checks my heart rate and monitors my breathing. he asks how i’m feeling and if i’ve any pain. he reads over the notes and history the nursing staff compiled throughout the week, adding little check marks down the margins of the page. he wants to know if i feel sad or lonely. i tell the poor man what he wants to hear, and only what i think he can handle. then i send him along his way.

tomorrow the pool boy arrives. i look forward to that. we all do.