“Out with the Old" by Richard Yates is a New Year's Eve story.
It's set on December 31, 1950, in the tuberculosis ward of Mulloy’s Veterans Hospital in New York.
Tiny and Jones are patients in the ward — of building seven, to be specific. And it's worth noting. They are in a building that's set apart from the other veterans.
In the hospital where each day is like the next, they want to break up the monotony of things during the holiday season.
At the appointed time, Tiny (whose nickname is ironic) will come out in only a towel made to look like a diaper and parade around looking like Baby New Year.
But they need someone to look like Father Time.
One patient they settle on is McIntyre. And even though he’s only 41 years old, he looks the part — gaunt, grey-haired and haggard. The problem is — he won’t do it.
And then we learn about his recent visit home. The complicated reentry for him is compounded by the fact that he has been in the hospital a long time — years, in fact.
The alienation from the family, the isolation that the hospital engenders — along with the fact that he seems to know he is quite ill — combine to make him want to keep to himself.
He is also consumed with the idea of writing a letter to his daughter — the objective for which is not certain. And when the mystery of this particular activity grows, an unexpected shift occurs in the story.
New Year’s Eve can be a fraught time in the best of circumstances. For McIntyre — as aloof as he is in the hospital, as distant as he is from his family, and as squarely he is coming to terms with the facts of his life — it becomes an opportunity that no one really expected.
Richard Yates is the author of "Out with the Old." It can be found in the collection "Eleven Kinds of Loneliness."
