Obdurate

Obdurate
Stubborn (adj.) Monday
Julia wobbles down the hallway and her hearing aid squeals in her ear. She takes it out of her ear and the world sounds like the inside of a conch shell, full of vague shuffles and whispers. She twists a small knob and it stops squealing and she puts it back in her ear.
She enters the kitchen and sits across from her husband Tommy. Marie, their live-in nurse, brings a plate of turkey and boiled peas to the table and she uncovers the white plastic dish and steam goes upward into the light over the table.
"I want to throw you a party," Tommy says.
"I don't want a party."
"But you should have a party."
"I said I don't want one."
Tommy looks at his wife. The wrinkles on her face run like highways across her cheeks and her head is shaking back and forth from palsy.
"You're going to be ninety, that's a big..."
"Don't."
"Its cause for celebration, I think, I'm..."
He reaches for her hand but she takes it away before he can touch it. Instead she takes up her fork and spears some peas. She lifts the fork and the peas to her mouth with her shaking hand and a few peas falling into her lap on the way up. Tuesday
Julia shuffles down the hallway to dinner. Again her hearing aid whines in her ear and she stops walking and fixes it. For a second the world sounds like shuffles and whispers. She sits at the table across from Tommy sitting and Marie brings a plastic dish of salmon and salad to the table and lifts a cover off the plastic white dish so steam wafts into light above the table.
"Thank you, Marie," she says. Tommy waits as she tucks a napkin into her collar. “Jules…”
“No,” she says.
“But I didn’t…” Julia looks at him and her cataracts wander around his face. Then she untucks the napkin that she had tucked into her collar.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm not hungry anymore," she says.
And her hand flutters down with the napkin in it to the surface of the table. Wednesday
Julia hobbles down the hallway toward the kitchen for dinner. Again, she hears a squeal from her hearing aid and she removes it from her ear to turn the volume down. For a moment she hears the empty shuffles and whispers of the world without her hearing aid. Then she replaces it and continues walking. But the shuffles and whispers don’t go away when she puts it back. She stops again and removes the hearing aid and shakes it up and down. She puts it back in again and makes goes to the kitchen.
When she arrives she has to squint to see. There’s a group of people turned toward her. She recognizes Bob and Theresa from the community center and Beth, her daughter, with her two children Bernie and Gabby, who are sitting on the floor playing Patti cake. And she sees Tommy standing in the center of the little crowd holding a cake with nine little candles. Marie is holding his elbow. When Julia sees them all together her hand flutters up to her face like a butterfly and rests on her cheek. The highways of wrinkles on her face lift into a smile. "Oh my," she says. With Marie's help Tommy walks over with the cake. He stretches his neck over the candles and kisses his wife.
"I threw you a party anyway," he says.