My nerves were shot. My ears were ringing.
Something had to be done.
And no one wanted to do it.
So it was up to me.
Funny, though, how I thought the problem was you.
Well, that’s what it looked like. I mean, she was a pain, but she didn’t really start up till they dumped you out here next to my door. So, what else could I think?
And the idiots, the staff? No help there. Every time one of them moseyed in with my pills, or to drag a mop around, or to grab my clicker and change the channel to one of their “stories,” or any of the things they do when they’re really just taking inventory of what you didn’t have a chance to nail down yet? I’d try to talk to them about it. But what did I get?
Faces and head shakes. And variations-on-the-theme of “English.”
“It flower, Mistah Dubbah-Ewe, how it problem?” Or, “You’re not Shady Dunes’ only resident, William, the flowers are here for everyone.” Or “Would ye’s like me ta’ have Inez tell yer girl ta’ bring ye’s some ear plugs, Mister Whortleberry?”
What did I get? Crap. ‘Cause what do they care? They aren’t stuck in tiny little rooms with nowhere to go to get away from crazy old bats screeching outside their doors every day, all day.
So, ha ha, too bad for me, y’know?
And Brenda. Another big help.
“Oh, Papa, not again!” she whined at me when I told her “Don’t start, not here! Shady Dunes Retirement is the last nice place that’ll take you. For the money. After this, it’s out of my bracket, Papa. And you know what that means -- a state nursing facility. You don’t want to have to go live in a state nursing facility, do you, Papa?”
“So, if they don’t want me here, I’ll just move in with you,” I said.
Y’know, I never cared for all that “family photo” crap. I mean, except for Brenda’s mother -- when she made the effort -- there isn’t much worth taking pictures of on either side of the Whortleberry-Vetiver fence.
But, if you could have seen Brenda’s face when I pretended I wanted to move in with her... well, you’d know why I’d wished I’d had a camera right then.
Anyway, so, she sat there for a second looking like someone just ran in and smacked her in the kisser with a sack of flour and, then, just as I knew she would -- off she went.
“Papa, you know you can’t live with me. You know Mama’s living with me, now. You know she doesn’t want to have anything to do with you....”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, I know,” I said. “I don’t need a damned ‘State of the Union’ address. Have a sense of humor, will you? Chrissakes, I was just joking.”
'Cause I was.
Really -- I was.
Well, that calmed her down. Too much, obviously, ‘cause, then, suddenly, she goes:
“Anyway, I think it’s kind of cute that she talks to it. Your neighbor.”
Just like her mother. Taking everyone’s side but mine.
“’Cute?’ What’s ‘cute’ about a crazy old bat screeching at an ugly old weed?
No offense.
Well, Brenda bugged her eyes at me like I was another bug she just ran into under the kitchen sink. Another bug of an inferior type, of course. Just like her mother always did. And said, “It’s not an ‘ugly old weed.” It’s a beautiful flower, Papa. A ‘Jack in the Pulpit,’”
Then, before I could say, “Who gives a crap?” she continued, “So if she’s talking to it, she must be seeing what the flower’s named for. The little man in the pulpit. ‘Jack.’ Which, come on, you have to admit, is kind of cute.”
Well, Brenda was talking like an idiot, now, and that reminded me the news was coming on soon, so I started fishing around under me in the chair cushion for the TV clicker and, while I was doing that, I said, “So the crazy old bat is screeching at a flower outside my door 'cause she thinks it’s a person, and this is ‘cute?’ And not loony-toons?”
“Almost ‘adorable,’ Papa,” she said, smiling.
“Then you’re as loony-toons as she is.”
Well, that wiped the smile off of her. She didn’t like hearing that no more than her mother ever did.
“Loony-toons” never do.
So, then -- nothing on the TV yet -- I had to watch her sitting there sulking and picking at her fingers till, finally, out of nowhere, she goes, “Look, Papa, how about... I mean... have you talked to her about this?”
“Of COURSE I talked to her!” I said. “Every time she’s out there screeching at that damned flower about butterflies on the window sill singing “Goodnight, Irene’ to her, or spiders blowing kisses at her from over the bathroom sink, or how she’s missing her teeth 'cause ‘the pixies’ wanted to give them a proper spit-shine – I stick my head out and tell her, ‘Shut the heck up, you crazy old bat.’ But she just shows me her gums and starts screeching about how she hears “Claire de Lune” every time she has a bowel movement. So what’s the use?”
Well, y'know, instead of feeling sorry for me and asking me what she could do to make my life a little less miserable, the way she should have done, she just grinned and said, “Well, that sounds like she might be sweet on you, Papa, if she’s smiling at you.”
Then – I knew it was coming -- “So, how about, instead of letting her get to you like this, you make friends with her? Maybe if you made friends with her you’d both have someone to talk to, and she won’t be outside your door every day talking to flowers. She could be in here, talking to you. Or you could be in her room, talking to her. More flies get caught with honey, you know, Papa.”
I knew what it would start, but I couldn’t stop myself, I had to say it.
“More flies get caught with shit, you mean.”
Well, that did it.
“PAPA!”
“What?”
“The language on you!”
Let me tell you something. Between you and me, normally I wouldn’t wish bad on any man who didn’t do me wrong first but, y’know, at this point? I hope one of those newspaper ads she’s always answering works out and she finally tricks some poor slob into marrying her big, fat, ass. Soon. So she’ll have something else to do outside of turning into her mother as fast as she can, the way she’s doing.
So anyway, I just shrugged and said, “Don’t look at me. That’s what we used to say at work.”
Well, just as I knew she would, she put on this big smirk and said, “I sincerely doubt that. And I doubt any of the other teachers ever said anything like that, either. Really, Papa, I don’t know what gets into you sometimes. Saying such things.”
Y’know where she gets that from? Her mother. Yeah, Brenda’s mother’s like that. Allergic to reality. Entire time we were together, had her head shoved so far up her ass looking for flowers and candy and all that lovey-dovey fairy tale crap, that she never even knew who she was married to. Not a clue. Not till the day I finally decided, y’know: I’m retired, now. I took care of everyone I was supposed to, everyone got theirs, I don’t owe anyone anything... it was time I got to live my own life my own way. Time to be myself.
Yeah, well. That’s what I thought, anyway. Brenda’s mother didn’t think so. Said she already knew exactly who I was, thank you very much. A ‘cold, demeaning, bastard,’ is how she put it. And she’d had enough of me. So I could take my “I gotta’ be me” crappola somewhere else.
So... here I am.
You’d think living with someone -- no matter what you thought of them -- for forty-three years would count for something.
Apparently not. Not with Brenda’s mother, anyway.
So.
Where was I?
Oh, yeah. So, like I said, I’d had enough of that flaky crap from Brenda’s loony-toons mother.
“‘What gets into me?’ I said, ‘What gets into me?’ What gets into me is that, just to save you a little money, you want me to kiss that old bat’s ass for being a pain in mine.”
She just sat there bugging her eyes at me, again, so I decided to spell it out for her.
“Look, Brenda,” I said, “I didn’t piss away thirty-five years of my life slaving like an idiot in the public school system, shoveling Keats and Blake and Baudelaire and all that other useless crap down the ungrateful gullets of snot-nosed kids who barely knew what language they were speaking... and -- till I couldn’t take it any more -- shoveling hearts and flowers crap to your wacko mother so she could live in her precious little fantasy world... just so I could spend my last few miserable years alone with a bunch of thieving immigrants and pissy geezers, shoveling crap to some screechy old bat in hopes that, maybe -- maybe -- I might be able to take a decent crap once in a while without being startled right off the bowl by her crazy screeching coming through my door out of nowhere!”
Yeah, that’s what I told her. The truth.
And, y’know what she had to say to that?
“Calm down, Papa, before the attendants come in here and write you up.”
Yeah. Didn’t hear a thing I said.
So, I figured, to hell with it, why was I wasting my time trying to be diplomatic? So, I shook her off where she grabbed hold of my arm to stop me from banging the table and I was just about to really let her have it when, lucky for her, I smelled laundry.
Of course, y’know, laundry means dinner Yeah, meatloaf or stuffed cabbage.
Between you and me, I always hope for the stuffed cabbage. ‘Cause at least you know a cabbage leaf when you choke it down. That meatloaf, though... who the hell knows?
Anyway, ‘laundry” also means visiting hours were over, so it was time for her to pack up her crap and haul ass. Thank God. So she started digging through her bags, pulling out newspapers, shaving cream, the latest Tom Clancy– things I’d told her to bring me last time she came.
And one thing I hadn’t told her to bring me.
Yeah. In the middle of everything she plopped down an old cigar box and, when I opened it up, in it was a little tray and some sand and a handful of different-shaped and sized rocks, and a tiny little wooden rake.
My “Zen” garden.
Yeah, “my little garden.” I got that for Brenda’s mother, a couple years back. Valentine’s Day present. She was always yammering about how much she loves flowers and how she wished she had a garden, and blah-dee-blah. Of course, that was her hinting around for me to buy her a house but, y’know, no thanks, Didn’t need the aggravation of ownership. Lawns to mow. Flowers to water. Nah, not for me.
And, considering how things worked out, y’know, with me ending up here... just as well, right?
Anyway, she just kept nagging at me about it, wouldn’t stop, so one day I thought it would be funny, y’know, to finally, shut her the hell up and give her her damned garden.
Only not a regular-type garden, but a tiny one made of sand and rocks. Still a garden -- just not the kind she was angling for. Which was the joke.
Funny, huh?
Yeah, well, she didn’t think so. Didn’t even read what I wrote in the card:
“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
That’s Proust, y’know.
Well, SHE didn’t know. Didn’t care, either. Just left everything there on the kitchen table and stomped off to sulk. Like always.
So, anyway, that’s how it ended up MY little garden.
But, you know what? I got a lot of use out of that thing, a LOT of use. Yeah, every time she’d start sniveling about something, I’d just go pull out the little tray and arrange the little rocks in it and dump the sand around them and take the little rake and make patterns in it. You’d be surprised how much time and concentration it takes to get it looking the way it should.
Helped me tune her right out. For hours.
Couldn’t have worked any better if I’d poured the sand straight into my ears.
Not to mention, there’s something about concentrating so hard on nothing that helps you get your thoughts straightened out. Truth told, it’s what helped me finally realize that it was time to stop being “Mister Nice-Guy.” Everyone’s patsy. Time to stop shoveling crap – to her, particularly – and just be me.
Yeah, so I was kind of wondering what happened to the thing. All those months I’d thought -- since she’d just dumped my stuff out there on the sidewalk in shopping bags that day -- it must have “walked off” in the same direction as my bowling trophies and my shoe trees and my good suit.
According to Brenda, though, she came home and found it in the trash and sneaked it out when her mother was in the bathroom, soaking her bunions.
Kind of funny how both me and my little garden got here the same way: chucked out like garbage by Brenda’s miserable mother.
Anyway, didn’t matter how it got here, having it back made me feel about a million percent better. Like, now that I had it, everything was going to be okay, y’know? So, when she’d got her coat on and was hanging over me, like a vulture, getting ready to give me her usual peck on the head and “see you next week, Papa,” I decided to have a little fun with her, so I said, “Say hello to your mother for me.”
Well, you should have seen how she almost gave herself whiplash jumping back, screeching about how “Papa! You know I can’t do that! You know how Mama is about me visiting you!” and all the usual crap.
And then -- well, you saw how she practically ran out of here. Couldn’t wait to get home and back up her mother’s ass.
And, y’know? Good riddance. The faster she was gone, the faster I could set up my little garden.
And let me tell you, it was just like I said: with all the smoothing and leveling and raking, I so completely lost track of time, I actually missed dinner.
Turned out it was the meatloaf, so, no big deal, y’know? I just had some of the pound cake and a can of the Coke Brenda left for me.
Anyway, once my little garden was set up just right, I sat there and looked at it and looked at it and looked at it till -- just like back when looking at it made me realize it was time for me to put my foot down with Brenda’s mother -- I realized it was time for me to put my foot down here, too.
Yeah, time for me to stick up for myself. Since no one else was going to do it.
And, looking at my little garden, I figured out just how I was going to do it, too.
And then I realized the nightly news idiots were signing off, so I turned off the TV and went to bed.
Funny thing, though -- the whole time I was looking at my little garden and thinking, I remember hearing the crazy old bat screeching outside my door, just like always. But it never once bothered me.
I guess I knew it wasn’t going to be bothering me for much longer, so it didn’t matter any more.
Anyway, after that - well, you saw the rest. No? Oh, right – you don’t get a really good view from here, do you? Want me to fill you in on what you missed? Sure, no problem.
Okay, so remember how, yesterday evening, after Inez got on the loudspeaker and all the geezers creaked downstairs to the Dining Room for Bingo? And, then, a few minutes later I came out of my room, real quiet, and went down the stairs, too?
Well, I didn’t go all the way down. No, what I did was I went down only to the mid-landing. Yeah, I stopped there 'cause the carpet on the first couple of steps after the landing is kind of stained. Almost just like the little rocks from my little garden. Similar color, too. So they’d blend right in. No one would even notice them on those steps. Not unless they were looking for them.
So I arranged them there. Like I would do with them in the tray, with the sand.
Okay, so, then you remember, I came back up -- still real quiet -- and went into my room? And right after, the crazy old bat came flying out of her room and scurried down the stairs, screeching, “Wait, wait, don’t start without me?”
You’ve been here only, what is it, now, a week and an half? So you don’t know she was ALWAYS late for Bingo. Yeah, Friday nights there’s a TV show on with some character -- Bruno or Gino or something -- that she, apparently, thought was whispering sweet nothings at her. So she always stayed put to yammer back at him. I know this 'cause I heard her through the walls - they’re paper-thin, y’know - telling him she’d love to, but she couldn’t marry him ‘cause she was a “tea-cup poodle” and he was a “German Elk Hound” or something.
I don’t know.
Like I said -- crazy old bat.
Anyway, which is why it had to be “Bingo Night.” And not “Old Maid” or “Dominos Night.”
“Bingo Night’s” the night “Bruno the German Elk Hound” was on.
So, anyway, like I said, you remember how she came flying out and, luckily, she did just what I’d hoped she’d do: she didn’t look at the stairs, she just stepped.
Right on the rocks from my little garden.
And after that... well, you heard her.
Went down those stairs like a crazy old screeching sack of potatoes.
And that’s when you saw me run out of my room and down the stairs again. Yeah, I wanted to get my little rocks back into my room and their little tray. Before someone found her and started noseying around the stairs to see what had sent her flying.
But, turned out there was a problem with that. Y’see, once I got them back in my room and started setting them up in their little tray, I realized one of the little rocks-- the biggest one, wouldn’t you know it – was missing.
That’s when you saw ME come flying out of my room and down the stairs.
Let me tell you something: thank God I’ve still got my eyesight, or I’d never have seen that rock all tangled up and matted in the crazy old bat’s hair the way it was.
Yeah, that was a close call. A really close call.
Which brings me to why I’m out here telling you all this: I want to thank you for helping me out, there, when that happened. ‘Cause if it wasn’t for you being here, well, frankly, I’d probably be on my way to a state nursing facility right now.
Or maybe somewhere else entirely.
Really, I hate to even think what would have happened if you hadn’t been here when Inez came out of the office and found the crazy old bat laying there at the bottom of the stairs. Followed by all the geezers, come creaking out of their rooms to see what the screaming was about.
I mean, really -- there I was, just coming back up the stairs with that last little rock in my hand and, suddenly, there’s all these geezers shuffling around, babbling, crying, shaking, wheezing.
Getting in the way. So I couldn’t get back to my room.
But, I guess I can’t really blame them. That’s what happens when geezers see blood. They panic. They palpitate.
They pee on the floor.
But, y’know, in my defense -- who could have imagined the crazy old bat had such a thin skull? As non-stop loony-toons as she was, can’t blame me for thinking it was actually made of reinforced concrete.
Yeah, so the crazy old bat got blood all over the stairs and the wall and, it figures, on my little rock, too.
And that’s when God or fortune or whatever smiled down on me -- that’s where you came in. Even now that it’s over, I can just imagine the looks on the detectives’ faces if, there I’d been, standing around with a bloody little rock in my hand when it was my turn to go into the office and tell them I was in my room watching TV the whole time and didn’t see a thing.
So it was really very... I don’t know what to call it... “neighborly”... of you to let me stash my little rock behind you, there, in your “pulpit,” while the detectives were all over the place.
As I said, I’m grateful as hell.
And I hope you weren’t put out too much having it in there with you all night, either. But the detectives took their sweet-ass time deciding it was an accident, and then they stayed for coffee and doughnuts. So I couldn’t come get the little rock out from behind you till now.
Okay, so, anyway, that’s pretty much what I wanted to say. Y’know... thanks. So, let me go wash this off and get it back where it belongs, back in its little garden. In its little “Eden.” Ha ha. And, and leave you to your peace and quiet. To your “solitude.”
“The thoughtful soul to solitude retires.”
That’s Omar Khayyam, y’know.
Y’know something? I’ll bet you DO know. You’re quiet, but I can tell -- you’re shrewd. You know what’s what. You get what I’m talking about. Not like all these others. All these idiot daughters and head-shaking foreigners and loony-toon old geezers that I’m surrounded by, here. Not a single one of them knows how to just listen. Just plain old listen.
Not like you do.
Well, look, y’know, it’s been good talking to you. Real good. We should do it again some time. Soon. As a matter of fact, I’m planning on it.
So, hey -- forget that “Mister Whortleberry” crap. That’s for strangers. My friends... well, I’ve always preferred to be called “Bill.”
And you -- what should I call you? Hah, of course. What else?
Okay, then. You have a good evening. And I’ll talk to you later.
Jack.
Copyright ©2006, Morrison Tucker All Rights Reserved