The day Delia checked in, Mrs. Markham began to drift slowly out of port. I had been at Mt. Carmel for three months. That morning I was in the rec room on the first floor with the General, Joanne and Mrs. Markham playing bridge as we did every morning at 10am after breakfast. The Brass Hats were all assembled: bingo in the back corner by the Bulletin Board, four bridge games convened at card tables in the center of the room, a small group in the corner on the paisley couch entranced by Regis Philbin and that little blonde girl.
“What’s a Brass Hat?” Andrea Lee, our resident psychologist, asked me once.
I couldn’t believe she hadn’t heard the term. That’s how impossibly young she is.
“My dear girl, a Brass Hat is a high-ranking military officer.”
“Oh.” She looked stumped because I was sitting with the General, Joanne and Mrs. Markham. The General was 4-F because of the eye—he only has one that works. Joanne was a showgirl and Mrs. Markham, a librarian. None of them looked like they’d ever seen combat.
I explained now we are so old and sage, we have all earned the moniker.
Just beyond the glass partition that separated the rec room from the gym, Shelley, the gargantuan, tattooed activities director, a woman who looked like she’d never exercised a day in her life, was leading a chair aerobics class. Cookie, an endearing mentally challenged woman, who was transferred here when the Holden State Hospital closed, hobbled around the room calling “Wanta Cookie! Wanta Cookie! Wanta Cookie!” as she has done every day since I’ve been here.
- K.F., Love Fits Itself – Novel Submission
Reader:
Well, immediately the characters are off, yet there is something about them that makes me think I should continue. These people are odd, quirky, even, and I have visions of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and “That’s right, Mr. Martini. There is an Easter Bunny.” I won’t know until I get into this one, but I thought I would let you know that I may be on to something here.
