The Moustache
By Robert Cormier
At
the last minute Annie couldn’t go. She was invaded by one of those
twenty-four-hour flu bugs that sent her to bed with a fever, moaning about the
fact that she’d also have to break her date with Handsome Harry Arnold that
night. We call him Handsome Harry because he’s actually handsome, but he’s also
a nice guy, cool, and he doesn’t treat me like Annie’s kid brother, which I am,
but like a regular person. Anyway, I had to go to Lawnrest alone that
afternoon. But first of all I had to stand inspection. My mother lined me up
against the wall. She stood there like a one-man firing squad, which is kind of
funny because she’s not like a man at all, she’s very feminine, and we have
this great relationship—I mean, I feel as if she really likes me. I realize
that sounds strange, but I know guys whose mothers love them and cook special
stuff for them and worry about them and all but there’s something missing in
their relationship.
Anyway.
She frowned and started the routine.
“That
hair,” she said. Then admitted: “Well, at least you combed it.”
I
sighed. I have discovered that it’s better to sigh than argue.
“And
that moustache.” She shook her head. “I still say a seventeen-year-old has no
business wearing a moustache.”
“It’s
an experiment,” I said. “I just wanted to see if I could grow one.” To tell the
truth, I had proved my point about being able to grow a decent moustache, but I
also had learned to like it.
“It’s
costing you money, Mike,” she said.
“I
know, I know.”
The
money was a reference to the movies. The Downtown Cinema has a special Friday
night offer—half-price admission for high school couples seventeen or younger.
But the woman in the box office took one look at my moustache and charged me
full price. Even when I showed her my driver’s license. She charged full
admission for Cindy’s ticket, too, which left me practically broke and unable
to take Cindy out for a hamburger with the crowd afterward. That didn’t help
matters, because Cindy has been getting impatient recently about things like
the fact that I don’t own my own car and have to concentrate on my studies if I
want to win that college scholarship, for instance. Cindy wasn’t exactly crazy
about the moustache, either.
Now it was my mother’s
turn to sigh.
“Look,”
I said, to cheer her up. “I’m thinking about shaving it off.” Even though I
wasn’t. Another discovery: You can build a way of life on postponement.
“Your
grandmother probably won’t even recognize you,” she said. And I saw the shadow
fall across her face.
Let
me tell you what the visit to Lawnrest was all about. My grandmother is
seventy-three years old. She is a resident—which is supposed to be a better
word than patient —at the Lawnrest Nursing Home. She used to make the
greatest turkey dressing in the world and was a nut about baseball and could
even quote batting averages, for crying out loud. She always rooted for the
losers. She was in love with the Mets until they started to win. Now she has
arteriosclerosis, which the dictionary says is “a chronic disease characterized
by abnormal thickening and hardening of the arterial walls.” Which really means
that she can’t live at home anymore or even with us, and her memory has
betrayed her, as well as her body. She used to wander off and sometimes didn’t
recognize people. My mother visits her all the time, driving the thirty miles
to Lawnrest almost every day. Because Annie was home for a semester break from
college, we had decided to make a special Saturday visit. Now Annie was in bed,
groaning theatrically—she’s a drama major—but I told my mother I’d go anyway. I
hadn’t seen my grandmother since she’d been admitted to Lawnrest. Besides, the
place is located on the Southwest Turnpike, which meant I could barrel along in
my father’s new Le Mans. My ambition was to see the speedometer hit
seventy-five. Ordinarily, I used the old station wagon, which can barely
stagger up to fifty.
Frankly,
I wasn’t too crazy about visiting a nursing home. They reminded me of
hospitals, and hospitals turn me off. I mean, the smell of ether makes me
nauseous, and I feel faint at the sight of blood. And as I approached
Lawnrest—which is a terrible, cemetery kind of name, to begin with—I was sorry
I hadn’t avoided the trip. Then I felt guilty about it. I’m loaded with guilt
complexes. Like driving like a madman after promising my father to be careful.
Like sitting in the parking lot, looking at the nursing home with dread and
thinking how I’d rather be with Cindy. Then I thought of all the Christmas and
birthday gifts my grandmother had given me and I got out of the car, guilty as
usual.
Inside,
I was surprised by the lack of hospital smell, although there was another odor
or maybe the absence of an odor. The air was antiseptic, sterile. As if there
was no atmosphere at all or I’d caught a cold suddenly and couldn’t taste or
smell.
A
nurse at the reception desk gave me directions—my grandmother was in East Three.
I made my way down the tiled corridor and was glad to see that the walls were
painted with cheerful colors like yellow and pink. A wheelchair suddenly shot
around a corner, self-propelled by an old man, white-haired and toothless, who
cackled merrily as he barely missed me. I jumped aside—here I was, almost
getting wiped out by a two-mile-an-hour wheelchair after doing seventy-five on
the pike. As I walked through the corridor seeking East Three, I couldn’t help
glancing into the rooms, and it was like some kind of wax museum—all these
figures in various stances and attitudes, sitting in beds or chairs, standing
at windows, as if they were frozen forever in these postures. To tell the
truth, I began to hurry because I was getting depressed. Finally, I saw a
beautiful girl approaching, dressed in white, a nurse or an attendant, and I
was so happy to see someone young, someone walking and acting normally, that I
gave her a wide smile and a big hello and I must have looked like a kind of
nut. Anyway, she looked right through me as if I were a window, which is about
par for the course whenever I meet beautiful girls.
I
finally found the room and saw my grandmother in bed. My grandmother looks like
Ethel Barrymore. I never knew who Ethel Barrymore was until I saw a terrific
movie, None but the Lonely Heart, on TV, starring Ethel Barrymore and
Cary Grant. Both my grandmother and Ethel Barrymore have these great craggy
faces like the side of a mountain and wonderful voices like syrup being poured.
Slowly. She was propped up in bed, pillows puffed behind her. Her hair had been
combed out and fell upon her shoulders. For some reason, this flowing hair gave
her an almost girlish appearance, despite its whiteness.
She
saw me and smiled. Her eyes lit up and her eyebrows arched and she reached out
her hands to me in greeting. “Mike, Mike,” she said. And I breathed a sigh of
relief. This was one of her good days. My mother had warned me that she might
not know who I was at first.
I
took her hands in mine. They were fragile. I could actually feel her bones, and
it seemed as if they would break if I pressed too hard. Her skin was smooth,
almost slippery, as if the years had worn away all the roughness the way the
wind wears away the surfaces of stones.
“Mike,
Mike, I didn’t think you’d come,” she said, so happy, and she was still Ethel
Barrymore, that voice like a caress. “I’ve been waiting all this time.” Before
I could reply, she looked away, out the window. “See the birds? I’ve been
watching them at the feeder. I love to see them come. Even the blue jays. The
blue jays are like hawks—they take the food that the small birds should have.
But the small birds, the chickadees, watch the blue jays and at least learn
where the feeder is.”
She
lapsed into silence, and I looked out the window. There was no feeder. No
birds. There was only the parking lot and the sun glinting on car
windshields.
She
turned to me again, eyes bright. Radiant, really. Or was it a medicine
brightness? “Ah, Mike. You look so grand, so grand. Is that a new coat?”
“Not
really,” I said. I’d been wearing my Uncle Jerry’s old army-fatigue jacket for
months, practically living in it, my mother said. But she insisted that I wear
my raincoat for the visit. It was about a year old but looked new because I didn’t
wear it much. Nobody was wearing raincoats lately.
“You
always loved clothes, didn’t you, Mike?” she said.
I
was beginning to feel uneasy because she regarded me with such intensity. Those
bright eyes. I wondered—are old people in places like this so lonesome, so
abandoned that they go wild when someone visits? Or was she so happy because
she was suddenly lucid and everything was sharp and clear? My mother had
described those moments when my grandmother suddenly emerged from the fog that
so often obscured her mind. I didn’t know the answers, but it felt kind of
spooky, getting such an emotional welcome from her.
“I
remember the time you bought the new coat—the Chesterfield,” she said, looking
away again, as if watching the birds that weren’t there. “That lovely coat with
the velvet collar. Black, it was. Stylish. Remember that, Mike? It was hard
times, but you could never resist the glitter.”
I
was about to protest—I had never heard of a Chesterfield, for crying out loud.
But I stopped. Be patient with her, my mother had said. Humor her. Be
gentle.
We
were interrupted by an attendant who pushed a wheeled cart into the room. “Time
for juices, dear,” the woman said. She was the standard forty- or
fifty-year-old woman: glasses, nothing hair, plump cheeks. Her manner was
cheerful but a businesslike kind of cheerfulness. I’d hate to be called “dear”
by someone getting paid to do it. “Orange or grape or cranberry, dear?
Cranberry is good for the bones, you know.”
My
grandmother ignored the interruption. She didn’t even bother to answer, having
turned away at the woman’s arrival, as if angry about her appearance.
The
woman looked at me and winked. A conspiratorial kind of wink. It was kind of
horrible. I didn’t think people winked like that anymore. In fact, I hadn’t
seen a wink in years.
“She
doesn’t care much for juices,” the woman said, talking to me as if my
grandmother weren’t even there. “But she loves her coffee. With lots of cream
and two lumps of sugar. But this is juice time, not coffee time.” Addressing my
grandmother again, she said, “Orange or grape or cranberry, dear?”
“Tell
her I want no juices, Mike,” my grandmother commanded regally, her eyes still
watching invisible birds.
The
woman smiled, patience like a label on her face. “That’s all right, dear. I’ll
just leave some cranberry for you. Drink it at your leisure. It’s good for the
bones.”
She
wheeled herself out of the room. My grandmother was still absorbed in the view.
Somewhere a toilet flushed. A wheelchair passed the doorway—probably that same
old driver fleeing a hit-run accident. A television set exploded with sound
somewhere, soap-opera voices filling the air. You can always tell soap-opera
voices.
I
turned back to find my grandmother staring at me. Her hands cupped her face,
her index fingers curled around her cheeks like parenthesis marks.
“But
you know, Mike, looking back, I think you were right,” she said, continuing our
conversation as if there had been no interruption. “You always said, ‘It’s the
things of the spirit that count, Meg.’ The spirit! And so you bought the
baby-grand piano—a baby grand in the middle of the Depression. A knock came on
the door and it was the deliveryman. It took five of them to get it into the
house.” She leaned back, closing her eyes. “How I loved that piano, Mike. I was
never that fine a player, but you loved to sit there in the parlor, on Sunday
evenings, Ellie on your lap, listening to me play and sing.” She hummed a bit,
a fragment of melody I didn’t recognize. Then she drifted into silence. Maybe
she’d fallen asleep. My mother’s name is Ellen, but everyone always calls her
Ellie. “Take my hand, Mike,” my grandmother said suddenly. Then I remembered—my
grandfather’s name was Michael. I had been named for him.
“Ah,
Mike,” she said, pressing my hands with all her feeble strength. “I thought I’d
lost you forever. And here you are, back with me again. . . .”
Her
expression scared me. I don’t mean scared as if I were in danger but scared
because of what could happen to her when she realized the mistake she had made.
My mother always said I favored her side of the family. Thinking back to the
pictures in the old family albums, I recalled my grandfather as tall and thin.
Like me. But the resemblance ended there. He was thirty-five when he died, almost
forty years ago. And he wore a moustache. I brought my hand to my face. I also
wore a moustache now, of course.
“I
sit here these days, Mike,” she said, her voice a lullaby, her hand still
holding mine, “and I drift and dream. The days are fuzzy sometimes, merging
together. Sometimes it’s like I’m not here at all but somewhere else
altogether. And I always think of you. Those years we had. Not enough years,
Mike, not enough . . .”
Her
voice was so sad, so mournful, that I made sounds of sympathy, not words
exactly but the kind of soothings that mothers murmur to their children when
they awaken from bad dreams.
“And
I think of that terrible night, Mike, that terrible night. Have you ever really
forgiven me for that night?”
“Listen
. . .” I began. I wanted to say: “Nana, this is Mike your grandson, not Mike
your husband.”
“Sh
. . . sh . . .” she whispered, placing a finger as long and cold as a candle
against my lips. “Don’t say anything. I’ve waited so long for this moment. To
be here. With you. I wondered what I would say if suddenly you walked in that
door like other people have done. I’ve thought and thought about it. And I
finally made up my mind—I’d ask you to forgive me. I was too proud to ask
before.” Her fingers tried to mask her face. “But I’m not proud anymore, Mike.”
That great voice quivered and then grew strong again. “I hate you to see me
this way—you always said I was beautiful. I didn’t believe it. The Charity Ball
when we led the grand march and you said I was the most beautiful girl there .
. .”
“Nana,”
I said. I couldn’t keep up the pretense any longer, adding one more burden to
my load of guilt, leading her on this way, playing a pathetic game of
make-believe with an old woman clinging to memories. She didn’t seem to hear
me.
“But
that other night, Mike. The terrible one. The terrible accusations I made. Even
Ellie woke up and began to cry. I went to her and rocked her in my arms and you
came into the room and said I was wrong. You were whispering, an awful whisper,
not wanting to upset little Ellie but wanting to make me see the truth. And I
didn’t answer you, Mike. I was too proud. I’ve even forgotten the name of the
girl. I sit here, wondering now—was it Laura or Evelyn? I can’t remember.
Later, I learned that you were telling the truth all the time, Mike. That I’d
been wrong . . .” Her eyes were brighter than ever as she looked at me now, but
tear-bright, the tears gathering. “It was never the same after that night, was
it, Mike? The glitter was gone. From you. From us. And then the accident . . .
and I never had the chance to ask you to forgive me. . . .”
My
grandmother. My poor, poor grandmother. Old people aren’t supposed to have
those kinds of memories. You see their pictures in the family albums and that’s
what they are: pictures. They’re not supposed to come to life. You drive out in
your father’s Le Mans doing seventy-five on the pike and all you’re doing is
visiting an old lady in a nursing home. A duty call. And then you find out that
she’s a person. She’s somebody. She’s my grandmother, all right, but
she’s also herself. Like my own mother and father. They exist outside of their
relationship to me. I was scared again. I wanted to get out of there.
“Mike,
Mike,” my grandmother said. “Say it, Mike.”
I
felt as if my cheeks would crack if I uttered a word.
“Say
you forgive me, Mike. I’ve waited all these years. . . .”
I
was surprised at how strong her fingers were.
“Say
‘I forgive you, Meg.’ ”
I
said it. My voice sounded funny, as if I were talking in a huge tunnel. “I forgive
you, Meg.”
Her
eyes studied me. Her hands pressed mine. For the first time in my life, I saw
love at work. Not movie love. Not Cindy’s sparkling eyes when I tell her that
we’re going to the beach on a Sunday afternoon. But love like something alive and
tender, asking nothing in return. She raised her face, and I knew what she
wanted me to do. I bent and brushed my lips against her cheek. Her flesh was
like a leaf in autumn, crisp and dry.
She
closed her eyes and I stood up. The sun wasn’t glinting on the cars any longer.
Somebody had turned on another television set, and the voices were the show-off
voices of the panel shows. At the same time you could still hear the soap-opera
dialogue on the other television set.
I
waited awhile. She seemed to be sleeping, her breathing serene and regular. I
buttoned my raincoat. Suddenly she opened her eyes again and looked at me. Her
eyes were still bright, but they merely stared at me. Without recognition or
curiosity. Empty eyes. I smiled at her, but she didn’t smile back. She made a
kind of moaning sound and turned away on the bed, pulling the blankets around
her.
I counted to twenty-five
and then to fifty and did it all over again. I cleared my throat and coughed
tentatively. She didn’t move; she didn’t respond. I wanted to say, “Nana, it’s
me.” But I didn’t. I thought of saying, “Meg, it’s me.” But I couldn’t.
Finally
I left. Just like that. I didn’t say goodbye or anything. I stalked through the
corridors, looking neither to the right nor the left, not caring whether that
wild old man with the wheelchair ran me down or not.
On
the Southwest Turnpike I did seventy-five—no, eighty—most of the way. I turned
the radio up as loud as it could go. Rock music—anything to fill the air. When
I got home, my mother was vacuuming the living-room rug. She shut off the
cleaner, and the silence was deafening. “Well, how was your grandmother?” she
asked.
told her she was
fine. I told her a lot of things. How great Nana looked and how she seemed
happy and had called me Mike. I wanted to ask her—hey, Mom, you and Dad really
love each other, don’t you? I mean—there’s nothing to forgive between you, is
there? But I didn’t.
Instead I went upstairs
and took out the electric razor Annie had given me for Christmas and shaved off
my moustache.
The Moustache Questions
Answer each of the following in full sentences on
this page.
Reading Check
a. What clues tell Mike
that it is not one of his grandmother’s “good days”?
b. Who does his grandmother think
he is? Why?
c. What event in the past is she sorry about?
d. Why does Mike’s visit give his grandmother her
only chance to be forgiven?
First Thoughts
1. Complete the chart below. On the left, copy two short passages from the
text that made a strong impression on you. On the right, jot down your thoughts
about each passage.
|
Passage
|
Impressions
|
|
1.
|
|
|
2.
|
|
Shaping
Interpretations
2. Complete the following sentence in at least two
ways: Mike expected . . . but . . . so . . .
Mike expected ________________________ but
_________________
______________________ so
_______________________________.
Mike expected ________________________ but
_________________
______________________ so
_______________________________.
3. What inference can you make about the fact
that when Mike returns from the nursing home he does not tell his mother about
what happened there? (Inference means the story did not directly tell
you, so make an educated guess).
4. Mike directly reveals a lot about himself in this
story, but he doesn’t tell us why he shaves off his moustache. What did you infer
about his reasons for the shave?
5. What do Mike and his grandmother give each other?
(What is passed from generation to generation?)
Connecting with the Text
6. Go back towards the end of the story, and reread
the paragraph starting “My grandmother.” Have you ever come to a similar
realization about an adult in your life? If so, what event brought you that
awareness?
Challenging the Text
7. Does Mike do the right thing by saying “I forgive
you, Meg”? What would you do if you were Mike?
