By TOBY ROSEWATER
Peeling floral wallpaper covers every corner of the senior center’s game room, wilting like an unfurling flower come springtime. The room holds five round tables, and every Sunday, the Austin senior card group fills every seat. For a few hours, cards slap tables like hands to a drum, and the room’s atmosphere transforms into that of Texas Memorial Stadium. It’s rowdy and lively – a far cry from the silence many associate with senior living.
Martha is the loudest of them all, and with her short stature and awfully lean build, she is the smallest, too. Her shoulder-length gray hair frames her smiling face, and she always wears a rose pin evocative of her late husband. She is the kind of person, come Christmas, who dresses up as the holiday’s zeitgeist, representing every knickknack, thought, and sentence ever generated from its celebration. She was the only woman at her Santa Claus school last year. That Sunday, she was a no-show in the game room. Instead, she flew out to Albion, New York, where she studied with some of the best Santas in America. She came back the next weekend, and before you knew it, she was at the mall every day, roleplaying an extra elderly, extra petite Santa.
In the game room, you can always make out Martha’s voice amongst the chorus of competitive shouts. She doesn’t know how to play cards, though. Instead, she paces around the room and watches others play, taking it as an opportunity to engage in small talk with friends. She strolls around the room with her bright yellow, most definitely appropriative, Hawaiian shirt and lifts her arms in aloof, excited celebration whenever a card slaps the table.
Around two hours into a session, the group breaks for snack time. Among other things, volunteers pass out graham crackers, apple sauce, oatmeal, nuts, clementines, and orange juice. Martha normally brings her own snacks, opting for her unhealthier options. One day, though, she forgot her snacks at home and was forced to eat from the snack table.
“Oh! Hello Martha! What snack are we feeling today?”
The volunteer’s words flew right over Martha’s head as her eyes latched onto the prettiest clementine she had ever seen. As she picked it up, it rose like the sun in the morning sky. It called to her as if she were a stalk of corn that stretched – and begged – and clamored for the heavens. It reminded her of her childhood. When she’d go to the market and carefully pick the five prettiest clementines she’d bring to school that week. Something about this clementine seemed youthful; it appeared to elicit a feeling she could never quite capture, and when she saw it, she never wanted to let go.
She took the specimen and sat at a table.
“Would you look at this, Joanne? Have you ever seen a clementine this bright?”
“Can’t say I have!”
“What a lovely thing!” Sue quipped.
“Would you look at this, Joanne? Have you ever seen a clementine this bright?”
“Can’t say I have!”
“What a lovely thing!” Sue quipped.
Martha looked down at her thin fingernails – bitten away – so battered their anatomy was visible. You could see the thinnest layer of keratin, exposed, so dainty and clear, and the reddened skin under it, so raw it could bleed. She hesitated for a moment.
“Do you want me to peel it for you, Martha?” Joanne offered, noticing her friend’s hesitation.
“That would be great.”
Joanne stuck her talons into the peel, slowly uncovering the juicy fruit beneath.
“Enjoy! You better savor that one.”
Martha detached a segment and popped it into her mouth. Its juice was a sweet nectar, a divine, ideal citrus. She munched carefully on its skin, gently puncturing the juice out. Suddenly, as quickly as the pleasure appeared, it disbanded; her teeth hit a hard seed, and then another, and another, and another, until the juice was all gone, and only the seeds remained. She attacked another segment – same problem. Then she tried a third; this time, she took the segment and tried to squeeze the seeds out – no luck. The juice sprayed from the fruit like water from a high-power hose. It was no use; the clementine was less perfect than it seemed. Martha placed the clementine down, threw her napkin out, and returned to watching cards.
“All good?” Joanne said.
“All good.”
“Wasn’t as good as you hoped?”
“Nope, nothing ever is.”
“Indeed, and we move.”
“Indeed.”
Martha sat, smiled, and watched the cards hit the table.
Writer | Toby Rosewater ’28 | trosewater28@amherst.edu
Editor | Mikiko Suga ’27 | msuga27@amherst.edu