The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace Read Free Book Online Page A

circle, each area accessible by two and only two others, or via the center of the circle, a courtyard filled with chalky white gravel and heavy dark plants and a pool of concentric circles of colored water distributed and separated and kept unadulterated by a system of plastic sheeting and tubing, the tubing leading in toward the pool in the center from a perimeter of ten smooth, heavy wooden sculptures of jungle animals and Tafts and Stonecipher Beadsmans I, II, and III, with a translucent plastic roof high overhead that let in light for the plants but kept rain or falling dew from diluting the colors of the pool, the interior planes of each of the ten sections walled in glass and accessing into the courtyard, the yard itself off-limits to residents because the gravel was treacherous to walk in, swallowed canes and the legs of walkers, mired wheelchairs, and made people fall over—people with hips like spun glass, Lenore had once told Lenore.
    Down a corridor, through a door, around the perimeter of one area, past a gauntlet of reaching wheelchaired figures, out a glass panel, through the steamy crunch of the courtyard gravel, through another panel and halfway around the perimeter of area F, Mr. Bloemker led Lenore to her great-grandmother’s room, put his key in the lock of another light, pretend-wood door. The room was round, looked with big windows into the east parking lots with a view at the comer of which glittered, spangled with light through the trees in the wind, Lenore’s little red car again. The room was unbelievably hot.
    “You didn’t turn the heat down?” Lenore said.
    Mr. Bloemker stayed in the doorway. “The owners had installed an automatic duct complex to this room that is as difficult to dismantle as it is resistant to malfunction. We are also of course expecting that Lenore will be back with us very soon.”
    Steam hung in the air of the room, you could feel each breath on your lips, the windows sweated broadly, the movement of the sun through the trees made a dark green flutter on the white walls.
    Lenore Beadsman, who was ninety-two, suffered no real physical disability save a certain lack of capacity on her left side, and the complete absence of any kind of body thermometer. She now depended for her body’s temperature on the temperature of the air around her. She had in effect become sort of cold-blooded. This had come to the attention of her family in 1986, after the death of her husband, Stonecipher Beadsman, when she began to take on a noticeable blue hue. The temperature in Lenore’s room here at the Home was 98.6 degrees. This simultaneously kept Gramma alive and comfortable and kept her visitors down to Lenore and a brief bare minimum of other patients and staff and very occasionally Lenore’s sister, Clarice.
    The room contained a bed that was made, a desk and bedside table sheened with humidity, a water glass on the bedside table whose contents had almost evaporated, a bureau on which were ranged some jars of Stonecipheco baby food, some vaguely malevolent black cords snaking out from a wall, the remnants of a cable hookup to a television Gramma had caused to be removed, a chair, a closet door, a clotted shaker of salt, and on a black metal TV tray a little clay horse Lenore had gotten Gramma in Spain a long time ago. The walls were bare.
    “OK,” Lenore said, looking around, “she pretty obviously took her walker.” She opened the closet door. “She couldn’t have taken very many clothes ... here’s her suitcase ... or taken much underwear,” looking in the bureau drawers. Lenore picked up one of the jars of Stonecipheco baby food, one with a red-ink drawing of a laughing baby on the label. Strained beef flavor. “She eats this stuff?” she asked, looking over at Mr. Bloemker, who stood with a sweat-shiny face in the doorway, massaging his chin.
    “Not to my knowledge.”
    “I’d bet money she doesn’t.” Lenore went to the desk. There were three light, empty drawers.