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There was another woman there at the Institution by the name of 'Sybil', except with the two vowels interchanged. I almost wrote, "This woman was the polar opposite of the other" -- except that both earthly poles are coated with ice and this woman most definitely was not. (Neither for that matter was the other, who bore more resemblance to a volcano if you want to speak of earthly phenomena.) Behind their backs we referred to them as "The Bad Sybil" and "The Good Sibyl", and we always knew which was which.
I realize that when I wrote about the other -- that is, 'Sybil' -- I called that name 'prickly' and likened it to the personality of its owner. Perhaps it is in that spelling; but interchange those two vowels and all bets are off. 'Sibyl': suddenly the name connotes sweetness and light. For here was a person who was welcoming and tolerant of every person she met.
She was only a little bitty waif of a thing, pencil thin (I would joke that she weighed the same as her body temperature -- and I was right.) I knew that she was 54 (the same as her birth year) at the time of this writing; but her pale unlined face, together with her all-dark hair drawn back into a jaunty ponytail, caused her to look like she was but 16. I myself called her "The Kid", and I thought of her as the younger sister I never had.
When I began living at the Institution, I was assigned to eat lunch at the table of the two Sibyl/Sybils. Due to the relative remoteness of the latter in terms of distance and cantankerousness, I would mainly converse with the former. ('Converse' may be too ponderous a word here. Perhaps I should say that we would banter together.) I would always begin by asking in Californeese: "So what up?" She would reply equally irreverently: "Aww -- nuttin'!" I would then accuse her of being a squirrel. And so we embarked on another humorous linguistic adventure. We were the perfect couple in that one little area called merriment, where we complemented each other admirably: for I enjoyed attempting to make her laugh, and she enjoyed laughing (often with the emphasis of bringing her hand down on the table -- a gesture which visually brought the enjoyment back in turn to me.)
When we had finished eating, I would ask her what she was planning to do that afternoon? She would pretend to deep thought for a moment or two -- and then gleefully round her fingers in the shape of a '0'.
We often left the lunchroom at the same time, and in time it became our daily custom to race our power wheelchairs down the long corridor. As far as I know, we were the only two residents who engaged in such (immature? Perhaps. But it was a lot of fun!) behavior. We were almost perfectly matched in speed, with just a sliver of an edge going perhaps to me.
I think that I was (re)living the sort of thing I would've done in my childhood with a tomboy kid sister had I had one. When one is in that kind of situation, one feels a subconscious thrill that one has bridged two cultures -- one of the boys, the other of the girls; and that the common activity (in our case racing) is what virtually all human beings enjoy doing at some point in their lives.
One day she was not at lunch, and when I asked about her, I was told that she was sick in bed. I went to her room to check on her. She was watching TV. Her thin little head lay on the pillow surrounded by a perfusion of dark hair. Her face was even paler than usual. And suddenly two emotions welled up in me more or less together: a fear that
she might die; and the feeling that I was in love with her. But both convictions dissipated when I became conscious of the fact that I was probably grafting the ultra-romantic story of Robert Browning's visit to Elizabeth Barrett's bedside onto my own situation. (It didn't hurt that Sibyl's hair was parted starkly in the middle in the very style of a mid-19th century daguerreotype. Of course, her skin was not olive in hue like that of 'the Portuguese'.)
She married her high school sweetheart almost as soon as they had graduated. She worked for a few years as a bookkeeper. Then she bore two daughters. A few more years and she was diagnosed with MS. One day the husband announced, "You're not the same woman I married!" and left her for another woman. The ex-husband and his new wife accused Sibyl of "faking it" in order to get sympathy. For awhile, they had her legally judged as "incompetent" and took her two daughters away from her.
Somehow she was able to endure all of that (which she likens to "Hell on Earth") and emerge a stronger person. Now the tables are reversed: she is in an institution which really cares for her; and (as she says with triumph in her voice) "I have a boyfriend!" Meanwhile, the ex-husband's second marriage is lackluster, and he is an aging alcoholic.
One of the first things that I noticed after I arrived at the Institution was Sibyl sitting quietly beside a fellow named Michael during the hour before supper in the Garden Room just off the main corridor. I was told later that the two were an 'item' there. Indeed, at various times during the day one could see them zipping rapidly about in tandem in their power chairs. Sometimes he would be in the lead; but as often hers would be the first chair.
After awhile I gravitated down there to sit near them, and they cheerfully welcomed me into their little twosome. From that vantage point I could readily observe their interaction together. What struck me was that they very seldom talked to one another. And when they did exchange words, it was most often of this sort:
Sibyl: "Is outer space empty?"
Michael: "It must be -- your head's out there!"
Sibyl: (Grins and pretends to beat Michael with her bib)
At first I thought that this sort of thing constituted verbal abuse on the part of Michael and I wondered why Sibyl put up with it. A bit later my opinion changed and I assumed that Michael, who had been unmarried in his 'former' life, was playing out some sort of 'Honeymooners' role as henpecked husband. Recently, though, I came to see deeper currents running through this banter, namely: that Michael's sarcastic putdowns were a form of self-defense -- an emotional firewall set up as insurance against a possible devastating loss.
Usually when I came down to sit before supper, Sibyl and Michael were already there. I'd ask how their afternoon have been (I knew that they almost always watched TV together during that time of day.) Inevitably I would get these responses:
Sibyl: "Boring."
Michael: "S.O.S." [Same Old S--t)
I wondered how terrible their afternoons would be if they did not have one another to share them with!
Gradually, our little group before supper expanded to a half dozen or so. In addition to Michael, an informal admiring coterie of three other men formed around Sibyl. One of these was a big brusque bruiser of a fellow called Bluto; another was a gentle egghead ex-engineer named Dwight. The third, of course, was myself. I think all of us were attracted to not only Sibyl's obvious essential goodness, but as well to her childlike qualities as a sort of naïf. I think Bluto and Dwight [another large fellow] were additionally attracted to her physical delicacy. [Other than their size and their residence, this may have been the only thing these two men had in common. In their 'former' lives, one had settled all his arguments with his fists, while the other had never hit anyone.]
(I might just add here that, as Dwight and I were both happily married men, our interests in Sibyl did not extend to the erotic. I'm afraid that the same could not be said of Bluto. Once he confided to me, "If it wasn't for Michael, I'd move in on her in a second!" The very idea of that ultra-crude Neanderthal touching her -- and he could have crushed her effortlessly with one hand -- filled me with the sort of revulsion I hadn't experienced since our daughters were teenagers. It would've been like handing a Stradivarius to a gorilla.)
One evening out of the blue Sibyl asked Dwight whether she could ask him a question? (I would have responded "You just did. Would you like to ask me another?") He readily assented (he was not interested in playing my sorts of verbal games), and she asked: "Why is bird poop white?"
Dwight, and everyone else, took a shot at trying to answer this question that I had never heard asked before despite the universal presence of bird poop. Indeed, no one that evening gave a satisfactory reason. (After a bit of research, I think we finally decided that the color is due to diet and that it changes with the seasons.)
And so began a nightly tradition of Sibyl asking Dwight questions before supper. He was the perfect foil for her: physically imposing (there was something of the Buddha about him in the benign welcome of his gaze as well as his large physique) as against her waif-like delicacy. She would humorously place two fingers to her lips and raise her eyes heavenward as if in deep thought; then she would ask such questions as: "What use is the Moon?"
(This was a very interesting question and it provoked much discussion. Dwight at first responded that it has no use whatsoever. I interposed that throughout history the Moon has been employed as a romantic symbol. "And then more recently it has found a very concrete use, namely as the only natural extra-terrestrial body that man has visited." Dwight then added that the Moon's gravitational pull creates the tides.)
In such a way did we mull over a typical question by Sibyl.
After a few evenings of this sort of thing, I remarked to Dwight in private, "She's the Ideal Student -- and everyone's idea of the perfect offspring." Indeed, not only did Sibyl appear to be no more than 16 years old, she was finally asking the questions she had never asked when she was actually that age.
I began to refer to the group gathered around Sibyl and Dwight as 'Our Little Academy'.
Last summer one of Sibyl's daughters was married. Sibyl attended (with the help of an aide) and had a marvelous time. Of course the father of her daughter -- her ex-husband -- was there. At one point, having no doubt fortified himself with drink, he approached her with a brave smile and asked, "Hi -- do you remember me?"
She looked at him in puzzlement and then replied in all sincerity: "No."
It was the ultimate smack down; and the fact that it was done with all her innocence made it doubly delightful to hear.
Recently I asked Dwight whether he could account for her singular fascination?
Dwight smiled. "All I know is, she is one of life's peculiar pleasures."
(30 November 2008)
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