Are You New Here?

Gloria Zimmerman

Word Count 436

I am sitting on the patio at Ginger Cove when the abyss opens up in front of me. Ginger Cove is the retirement community where Roz lives. Roz is the woman formerly known as my mother. Around the time she moved in here, soon after my father died, she stopped signing her emails as “Mom.” Now she is simply “Roz.”  New chapter? Perhaps.

Roz is upstairs taking a well-deserved nap after her three-hour bridge tournament. I head over to the community room, where there’s a gleaming cappuccino machine that dispenses high-end beverages all day long free of charge. The touch screen interface is intimidating but if this crowd can master it so can I. I manage to make myself a mocha and stroll out onto the patio. Book in hand, cell phone by my side, I settle in at a table. It’s early November and the umbrella’s been pulled down for the season. The sun throws a weak light across the deck. It’s wonderfully quiet here.

Before long, an elderly lady plants herself opposite. Why right next to me? I barely have time to register my annoyance when she looks over and inquires brightly, “Are you new here?” And there it is.  The abyss.  Am I new here? I’m a 59-year-old woman in wide-belted skinny jeans, cashmere hoodie, and a gauzy scarf draped casually around my neck. Is that not what she sees? True, the scarf is hiding my delicately creased neck and yes, there’s considerably more salt than pepper in my hair, but it’s cut short and stylish. What’s more, I have on a pair of fashionably scuffed black leather boots.  Am I new here? Inside my head I scream, I don’t live here! I will never live here! You will not see me in the “boutique” downstairs, where they sell dead people’s clothes and housewares. I give the old lady a tight smile and tell her I’m Roz’s daughter. “Too bad. I was going to ask if you’d like to join our Mah Jongg table.” I start gathering up my things, pretending to make an important phone call. As it happens, I do play Mah Jongg, but how is she to know that? This woman will have to find a new recruit elsewhere.

Downstairs over dinner in the Chesapeake dining room I share this episode with Roz. We have a good chuckle. But at the end of the meal, the young waitress asks me for my room number and I am no longer laughing. I imagine Roz, too, awoke one day to see her mother staring back at her in the mirror. Now it’s my turn.

Gloria lives in New York City with her husband in their empty nest. She teaches English as a Second Language at Lehman College. Her essays have appeared in Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, Borderline Stories and Beach Reads. Her piece, “Multitudes” was set to music for a concert series in New Ulm, Minnesota and she directed her stage play, “The Negative Space,” at Town and Village Synagogue on the Lower East Side.