Suggesting the operation of uncanny corn

I met Moise (pronounced MY-zee) eight years ago at an inpatient 'rehab', which occupied the third floor of a nearly abandoned old hospital in a small, withering town of unemployed factory workers and meth-freaks.

Last summer when I was committed, hundreds of miles away from that hell-zone, Moise was what you might call a 'good night nurse!', if you expressed surprise like my grandmother.

That is to say, she worked the night shift, as a psych-nurse.

She didn't wake me to say hello, of course. (What kind of nurse would wake you up in the middle of the night, eh?)

So a month passed and I was at The Eclipse by then, returning from a forbidden trip up the street to the internet. There she was, sitting with my housemates in the front yard.

"Hello, John. Do you remember me?"

I said "Yeah!" enthusiasticly, and then, "Well, no. I'm lying. Except right now. I don't, I'm sorry."

Those years ago we were patients together. It must have been ...1998, we've decided?

True to form --- and why not---I was mute most of the time, bigoted regardless of race, color or creed, and afraid of most everyone,--- including her, I suppose.

Our group of ten was too rowdy, too young for me even then!

They alluded to songs and movies and TV shows I didn't know.

I brooded lonesome, a bit angry the staff confiscated the books I'd brought with me in my granddad Jigg's suitcase.

I was just quietly waiting for the world to explode or something, and writing in my spiral notebooks. I forget what sort of trouble I was in. This was five years or so after my felonies. Maybe depression after losing a bookstore job.

Moise was shaken and afraid she was going to die from her addiction. She had two young children, Mariah and Zack.

Outwardly she was laughing, cheerful and outgoing. Young enough to follow along and participate. She'd try to shake me out of my supposed doldrums but there was nothing to shake awake, I was just ignorant and didn't know how to talk to these kids.

At first I thought she fit in with everyone else. And natch, she felt alienated too, even with all the laughter.

I'd get up very early so I could have the TV room and watch Morning Journal on C-span. Moise must have been an insomniac, because she started to join me.

I liked it being just us two.

She didn't feel any compulsion to talk friendly, like every other woman there. Maybe she'd ask me to catch her up on some scandal, which of course I was happy to do, flattered.

Probably thought: hold still...hummingbird? Dream girl?

So over a few weeks of living together like that, we became like partners, in so much as you can be partners in a co-ed re-hab. We signed out for walks around the grounds. Sat together for meals sometimes. Said goodnight and good morning without being automatic or deaf to the reply... Had our private talks.

But those walks. Which is where I'm headed here...

One Saturday night, there was a new nurse at the desk. She was preoccupied with her paperwork, and Moise and I told her we'd be gone awhile, and got a cheerful okeydoke.

Looked at one another and realized we had some plausable deniability about curfews or where we could go...

We opened the first unfamiliar door we could find and started exploring this nearly abandoned old 1910 building. Flights of stairs down, down, down; then underground passage-ways between several buildings.

Stop and wait, ---shhh!--- if we thought we heard someone. Ok.

(Surely there were security guards around somewhere.)

We found a small chapel, I remember well. I turned on the lights with the dimmer switch. We sat and talked rather seriously about what you'd expect, in this quiet mutual reverence for the security guards. Then I noticed a drop-down door on the ceiling, and pulled it down so a staircase unfolded for us. But we agreed that was a bit risky, going up there to the attic.

So we looked around some more. Opened the two doors of the confession booth and spoke through the screen, without reverence now, I'm sure, since by now we were both laughing with one new discovery after another.

In back of the pulpit curtain we looked around the clergy's cloak room, shamelessly opening drawers and cabinet doors, looking for old books or antiques. Not to steal, of course, but just to see and admire.

And then this very narrow door.

I opened it and was surprised to find these very steep, carpeted stairs which seemed to go up two floors instead of one, without zigzagging. The carpet was a strange 1950 style sea-blue (or 7-up green?) The walls were plaster white but the light cast odd shadows, oblique from above us.

I insisted. I may have said "after you!" politely. Or, maybe I didn't have to insist. Moise followed me up, holding on to my shirt-tail I think. We were treading very lightly now, not sure if we were about to find ourselves suddenly in a very public, populated place, or back home, or what.

There were several doors.

We'd found the Nuns' old living quarters.
____
Turning on an old lamp, I was agarsh.

Moise was 'wow'.

This was their common area, or living room, and it was neat and clean but could have smelled of mothballs. There was a TV set from the late 50's, I was sure.

Beautiful but faded, comfortable couches and chairs.

No windows!!

No windows... I think that's what really got to me. We were at the core of something now.

"I think this is it, Watson."

"What?"

"Home!"

"What? Wait, am I Holmes or Watson?"

"We're home, Watson!"

"Haha! Hey you're right! Let's find the kitchen!" she said, and bravely set off on her own, but never out of ear-shot.

I plopped down and stared at the dead eye of the tv and didn't feel the need to turn it on. I knew it'd be something awful, like The Ed Sullivan Show, with some trapeze artists and maybe a dancing bear.

The end.
(Oh. Yeah, we made it back okay.)
____
After our inpatient treatment was over, we wrote a lot, for about a month. I drove to see her once or twice. Something sad was going on. I remember there was a state prison in that town, I'd been reading about all my life but had never seen.
___
Now, since last summer, we are good friends. She came back to the Eclipse with some letters I'd written her. I showed her the Garcia Bear she'd given me, and said perhaps I'd return it someday.

"No, it was a present, John".

"You're...not returning my letters?" I joked.

She laughed. "No, Silly!"
______
Now we are in the same, greater Recovery Movement in this town, and as fate would have it, she is dating one of the brethren here.

Monastaries need women like Moise. Monks like us don't become The Seven Dwarves, of course, I mean, she's just one of the guys, except you offer her your seat at the table, and try to do so before anyone else. That's how it is, is all.

Nice, I mean.

Today