Joanne and I sit next to one another at the theater for Life & Times of Michael K. As she stands up so I can take my seat, I compliment her tan faux fur hat and ski pants as a form of introduction. She is my height and frail, and her eyes have a smile to them that makes me inexplicably emotional.
There’s silence for a few minutes as we settle in. I take pictures of the art deco ceiling and she reads the playbill. I play with my nails, and she smooths back her white hair into a thin ponytail, her hands shaking from an aggressive tremor. Then, when she takes a sip of her coffee, I gather up just enough courage to tell her this is my first time inside the Paramount Theatre, and I’ve made it a point to myself to do more things this year, even if it means doing them alone. I feel uncomfortable rambling to a stranger, but her smile has an earnest compassion to it, like that of a pre-k teacher listening to a child tell them about their weekend. Originally, she says, she was supposed to meet up with two girlfriends, one of whom is from Barbados and paid for her ticket. 27 degrees and overcast kept them at bay, but she loves doing things, too, anything to get out of the house, and she finds the theater especially “cathartic.”
Joanne tells me she’s been in Boston since ‘66 or ‘68, and she hardly ever goes back home to Minnesota because she finds it boring. There are valleys, however, along the Mississippi that she still dreams about, and great rolling hills and cliffsides. She sways her shaking fingers from side to side as she demonstrates the movement of the tall grass blowing in the wind. In her dreams, she goes everywhere, even the Notre Dame de Paris. She asks me if I liked growing up in Miami because it seems a lot less boring than Minnesota, but I tell her I don’t really like going back home either, and Miami reminds me of the girls in high school who had boating licenses and access to ketamine. I refrain from telling her my dreams often involve screaming because I want her to like me, the same way a granddaughter craves the approval of her matriarch.
When she finds out I’m a publishing grad student, she asks me what I think of the word ‘charming’ and whether it’s out of use. This is because she had a conversation about it with her siblings wherein she described one of her brothers as charming ‘even though he has brain damage’, and they found it weird to call someone with brain damage charming, so she’s been thinking about it ever since. I tell her I use the word charming relatively often, and I think it’s fine to describe her brother that way. She says I can call her Jo since that’s what her siblings call her, anyway.
Jo was a substitute teacher for a while and worked a bit in psychiatry, but she developed a neurological condition and has been retired for some time. After telling me this, she is quick to change the subject and mentions when she first came to Boston, she would go to all the libraries and bookstores and just sit there for hours and hours reading. She gestures with her hands in circular motions when she says ‘hours and hours’, and her eyes light up as she seems to regain a sentimental memory that has been out of thought for some time. Her brother also loves books, so they have a bond there. I tell her my brother and I were the first in our family to get degrees and they both happened to be in English, and she says it’s nice to have someone older than you who understands those things.
The best acting is at Central Square, and she prefers the interior design of the Paramount Theatre to the Opera House. She doesn’t know anyone in the mafia, but she knows a lot of Sicilians, and she doesn’t like their attitude. She says the only way to get used to the cold is to be in it often, and that rule applies to a lot of things in life. I’m not entirely sure what she means by this, but it sounds important.
The announcer comes on, and we quiet down. I am immersed in the play, but from time to time, my mind wanders to what Jo is thinking. There is something about her that reminds me of myself, though I can’t quite place it. In a way, I see her as an older version of myself, and I want to know her whole life story but feel too embarrassed to ask. I wonder if she’d think me a loser to ask her to coffee, as I’m sure when she was my age she didn’t want an old lady as a friend. I also wonder if she is going home to an empty apartment and might enjoy the company.
After the standing ovation, we slowly gather our things and put on our extra layers. I contemplate asking her what her plans are for the rest of the day, but as I shove my hands through the elastic of my jacket sleeves, she says, “It was nice to share a little bit of life with you.” I shake her hand and say “Maybe I’ll see you again at the next play,” and she agrees. As I’m heading down the stairs, she mispronounces my name in an attempt to remember it, but I don’t correct her, I just smile and say yes. I put on my earmuffs, open the theater door to the outside world, and cross the street to the cafe. I find myself waiting for her to walk out after me. I tell myself if she comes out within the next 5 minutes, I’ll run over to her and exchange emails. I wait for 10 minutes, but I don’t see her, so I leave. The whole encounter leaves me feeling refreshed and lost at the same time, like someone who takes their honeymoon alone.
When I get off the trolley, I pass the local elementary school and baseball field. A flock of Canadian geese is resting in the milk-white snow, their long black necks coiled up into their feathers. They are sitting so still that they look like little pebbles. I think to myself that they must be stopping in from Quebec or New Brunswick, making their way down to Florida.
I wonder if Jo enjoys the migrating geese in Minnesota, if they ever pop up in her dreams about the nature of her home state. I imagine a young Jo about 12 years old, sprinting through the Aspen Parkland prairies in the spring, her siblings at home waiting for her. The Canadian geese fly above her against the clear blue skies in a V formation. I make her hair blonde like mine, and I wonder if one day I will be in my 80s, trudging out through the snow to the Paramount Theater, alone. If I am, it will be an honor.
Brenna Sheets is a graduate student in Emerson College’s Writing and Publishing M.A. program. Her hobbies include going on long walks, watching bad television, reading, and writing.
