Retirement homes can be pleasant places to visit. The calm, unhurried atmosphere…the polite smiles of the aging residents…the need for compassion…the feeling of inevitability…that this is where it ends…room and board…the care one needs…no more earthly worries…and a final prayer…

The final stop for Edward Lehman was a two-story home, one that featured seventy five rooms and a distinctly Southwest design – two-toned stucco painted in soft pastels. It was located in a quiet residential area in the suburbs twenty miles East of Sacramento, surrounded by five pristine acres of well-manicured lawn and a grove of California oaks.

Janet waved to the guard as she drove through the pearly gates, across the parking lot, and into the circular driveway in front of the entrance. She parked the car by the double automatic doors and hurried into the lobby. An elderly woman sat in a wingback chair near the front desk, her wrinkled hands folded in her lap, her dark eyes bulging behind her thick glasses, her walker safely parked beside her. She looked vacantly at Jan as she hurried past the woman. The girl at the desk smiled as Jan approached.

“Hi…is my Dad ready?”

“Yes, I’ll take you back,” replied the girl.

Jan followed the girl along a wide hallway until they came to solid double-doors. The girl entered the pass code on the electronic lock; a loud click was heard. The girl opened the doors and they entered a long, narrow, white-washed hallway. There was dead silence. Jan slung her purse strap onto her shoulder, breathed deeply to calm her nerves. She dreaded this walk down the cold white corridor.

The girl stopped at one of the doors near the end of the hallway. She knocked twice, then opened the door. Jan walked in, followed by the girl.

By a small, square-shaped window in a tiny non-descript room, Jan’s father sat motionless in his rocking chair, as he gazed through the window at an empty courtyard. The girl stood near the door as Jan walked over to her father. “Hello Dad,” she said, almost in a whisper.

He turned his head slowly toward her. She bent over and kissed him on the forehead.

His blue eyes widened as he looked up at her. She sat close to him, so their knees were almost touching. In a calm, unemotional voice he said, “Hello…Ladybug.”

Jan didn’t smile. She glanced at the girl standing by the door. “Is he getting the same meds, the same dosage?”

“We had to increase this week. He’s been slipping a little.”

“Recognition issue?”

“Yes.”

“Is he eating enough?”

“Yes…I think so.”

Jan looked closely at her ailing father. He had lost a little weight; his cheeks were drawn in, and his shoulders were slumped forward. His face looked almost yellow, as if he had jaundice. His thin wavy hair was pure white; his bushy white eyebrows had almost grown together. The backs of his hands were covered with brown blotches, and the veins were about to pop through the wrinkled skin.

Edward Lehman was seventy eight years old. He grew up on a farm in the Central Valley, baling hey, harvesting corn and tomatoes. After a four year stint at Berkeley he moved to Sacramento and started a small architectural firm.

For thirty five years he designed buildings large and small, and oversaw the renovation of many from the nineteenth century. Toward the end of his career he designed track homes for local builders, and watched as the farmlands he once knew were transformed into suburban sprawl. His wife Emma had passed away from cancer four years earlier, and the following year Jan moved him to assisted living. For the first two years he was spry, independent, and required little care. But then the symptoms started; little things he couldn’t remember. Did he take his pills, when did he last shower, what day did Jan come for a visit. Eventually the lapses worsened, until they had to move him to ‘that other side’. But as the memory deteriorated, Jan’s father became more childlike. He began fixating on one particular memory, even as many others were fading away.

“Ladybugs are beautiful,” he said. “Too beautiful to kill.”

Jan looked away from him. There was a brief knock at the door and a young caregiver wearing a white uniform stepped in carrying a small cup of water and a pill. She looked at the girl from the front desk. “Is it okay?”

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The girl looked across the room at Jan. She nodded and stood up, letting go of her father’s hand.

The caregiver crossed the room and handed him the pill. He put it clumsily into his mouth. She held on to the cup as he put his shaking fingers around it to drink the water. The caregiver then silently left the room, and Jan walked over and put her arm around her father’s shoulders.

“Would you like to go for a walk?” He shook his head briefly. Jan gestured to the girl near the door that she should leave them alone. Sometime later she walked into the lobby and stopped at the front desk. “Call me right away if he gets worse.”

The roar from the freeway traffic could not drown out the depressing thoughts that came to her after the visit, as she reflected on her father’s condition. His memory was fading, he was slipping away. He knew it, and he fought hard against it, desperately clinging to one lasting memory, a memory he would take to the grave…but one that Jan wanted desperately to forget.

She drove off the freeway and crawled through the five o’clock traffic along L street toward the office building. The sights and sounds of the city – the stop-and-go traffic, the screech of brakes, the blaring horns – brought her thoughts back home, to her own disassembled life.

At the intersection of L and eighth she hung a sharp left to bypass the bumper-to-bumper traffic near the capital. But it was almost as bad on eighth, and she found herself stuck behind a line of cars waiting for the red light. When she glanced to her left she saw a small group of people on the sidewalk, crowded around someone. At first she couldn’t make out who, but then, as one of the spectators moved along, she saw the man who rescued her in the alley. He was playing a clarinet, and Jan could hear a rapid fire of classical jazz through the open car window. The man was dressed like a clown, in a bright red flannel shirt and a pair of baggy white trousers. She could tell that he’d trimmed his black beard and combed his tangled black hair. But who the hell is he, she wondered.

The light turned green, the traffic started to move. At the intersection Jan made a sharp left turn and parked on the side street. She hopped out of the car, slung her purse over her shoulder, and tossed her long black hair away from her face. She quickly wiped her eyes and walked around the corner. There must have been a dozen people gathered around the man, digging his music. Jan had always been a fan of jazz, and she immediately smiled at the sound of America’s own.

She stood at the back of the crowd, listening to the music, watching the man’s fingers wiggle and dance on the long black licorice stick. He was playing one of her favorites, Stranger on the Shore. On the ground near his feet, which were covered by a pair of hand-painted, bright blue sneakers, the clarinet case lay open, welcoming donations.

When he ended the number everyone applauded. Some of the people tossed dollar bills into the instrument case. The man briefly nodded and uttered thanks. Most of the spectators moved along, but Jan stepped forward. He was about to start playing when he saw her, but recognition gave him pause. They looked at each other for a moment in silence.

“You play very well,” she said.

“Thanks. You made it home that night?”

“I did…and thanks for helping me. I didn’t really thank you enough that night for what you did.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Jan smiled at his outfit. “I’m glad to see you have a wardrobe. Red white and blue – patriotic colors.”

He frowned behind his black beard. “I’m no patriot. Bright colors bring attention. Attention brings money out here on the street.”

“Your music brings enough attention. Where did you learn to play like that?”

“In prison.” He spoke the words casually, as if it made no difference.

Jan lost her smile. “Oh…in prison.”

He took note of her sudden change in demeanor. “You can go now,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

Jan narrowed her eyes and looked intently at him. “Maybe I don’t want to go; maybe I want to hear some music.”

“Suit yourself,” he replied, as if he didn’t give a damn what she did. He brought his clarinet up to his rather thick, chapped lips, and started playing. Jan recognized it; ‘Down by the Riverside.’ Some people passing by stopped to listen. A few moments later Jan opened her purse, took a twenty dollar bill out of her wallet, and dropped it in the man’s instrument case. Without looking at him she walked away. He continued playing as he slowly turned his head to watch her go.

That evening, as Jan walked into her apartment, her furry, gray and white, brown-eyed cat came prancing over to her and gently caressed Jan’s leg with her soft furry body. Jan reached down, picked the cat up and stroked her back.

“Hello Eleanor…how’s my girl?” she said, stroking the cat as she walked across the carpeted living room, tossed her purse on the dining table, and collapsed with the cat on the sofa. Jan continued stroking the cat as she gazed at a photo on the mantel above the fireplace. It was a picture of Jan, dressed in graduation robes, with her arm around her mother, and above the photo was her framed P.H.D. Other family pictures, of Jan and her mother, were scattered across the mantel. There were no photos of her father.

The apartment itself was modest, the furnishings eclectic: a sea-green traditional ‘skirted’ sofa, an antique table lamp in the Tiffany style that stood atop a ‘transitional’ end table, a contemporary dinette set featuring swivel chairs on ball-bearing wheels, and a French Empire writing desk in the corner upon which rested a laptop computer and a telephone.

Jan picked herself up off the sofa and walked toward the bedroom carrying the cat. “Come on Eleanor, let’s go to sleep. I’ve had enough excitement for one day.”

But late that night, as she slept in her apartment, Jan was awakened by the shrill, hysterical sound of someone screaming and pounding on the door. It was a sound she’d heard before; it was all around her, in her room, in her head, outside the window. Naked and sweating, she jumped out of bed, ran through the living room and yanked open the door. The empty hallway winked at her. Jan caught her breath and wiped her forehead. She closed the door, locked it…unlocked it…then locked it again. She stood motionless for almost five minutes.

“Ladybug,” she whispered…as she walked slowly back to her bedroom.