Story 11 Summary

"Beverly Home" This story begins with a selection of vignettes - of the narrator's regular lunchtime visits to a nursery across the street from his place of employment, of his experience of sudden desert storms, of his ambivalence about having a job (see "Quotes," p. 116), and of his reflections on the "beautiful, sonorous name" Beverly. This, he writes, was the name of the "turquoise blue hospital for the aged" where he worked - the Beverly Home. The home, he says, was where all sorts of mentally and/or emotionally and/or physically compromised people lived out their lives in an environment where someone other than their families looked after them.

The narrator describes how, one day when he was walking home, he heard a woman singing, followed the sound, and saw the woman getting out of her shower, drying off, and dressing. He...