The theory was to put his grandmother in a thing called assisted living, but she would not go and it turned out you could not actually drag your grandmother into a building, slam the door, and leave her there. With his sisters’ help and the minister’s, Freddy got power of attorney. It turned out that even with a power of attorney, you could not drag your grandmother into a building, slam the door, and leave her there.
“You have no choice, Freddy,” said his sisters. “You have to move in with her.”
“How come you can’t move in with her?”
They chuckled. Freddy—always so unrealistic.
His sisters did not think of what Freddy did as a career. Making glass beads was just silly. He had a perfectly good head on his shoulders. He should get a real job, pay taxes for a change, and stop being such an adolescent.
And they didn’t even know about the pipes.
And Freddy had, after all, made a deal with his mother.
So Freddy dismantled his glass studio, one of the most painful things he had ever done, because he loved everything about it: the bench, the company of other glass artists, the sunlight, how he had everything stored and cached. He loved the graffiti wall and the sad old broom for sweeping up the daily mess.
And then he took a deep breath and moved across the country to stay with Grandma.
The very first week, he ran into Shawn Aminetti, a classmate of one of his sisters. Shawn had a glass studio right here on the shoreline and offered to share until Freddy got his own studio up and going. Of all things, Shawn was a constable. The villages up and down the shoreline didn’t have police departments exactly, but constables under the supervision of a state trooper. Mainly Shawn drove around town looking for stuff that was different or wrong or walked up and down hallways at the middle school.
Since Shawn was also a stoner and made cheap, amateurish little pipes he sold by the dozen for almost nothing, Freddy thought it was a riot that the guy’s main job was to patrol schools and streets. “I’m good at it,” Shawn would protest. “I like what I do.”
Normally Freddy both hated and feared cops, but Shawn was a partial cop who carried all the equipment but had half the power.
Living with Grandma was so much more awful than Freddy had expected that without George and Lily Burnworth to talk to, Freddy would have bailed. Literally. He would have run. Changed his name. Gone underground.
On the day he had to clean his grandmother’s bottom—and front, which was the truly awful part—when she had a poop accident and couldn’t get her feet out of her soiled panties, Freddy had fought tears for the first time since he was a toddler. Grandma seemed not to notice the hideous situation they were in, which Freddy supposed was a good thing, because in real life, Grandma would have preferred death to this humiliation with her only grandson. Dr. Burnworth used the adjective “undignified” when he talked about dementia, but this was so far beyond undignified that Freddy didn’t even have a word for it. He couldn’t even tell his sisters about it.
After weeks of George and Lily Burnworth searching for a place, his grandmother ended up in Memory Care, which was sort of assisted living for the completely confused. Assisted living for those beyond all personal embarrassment. Assisted living for people you love and cannot take care of anymore.
The first thing Freddy figured out was that every family of every person in Memory Care was riddled with guilt for foisting their loved one off on paid staff. “Loved one” was what the institution called it, which sounded like an ad for coffins.
And meanwhile, faking bead sales had become another nightmare. Extricating himself from the Leper was a lot harder than extricating himself from his grandmother’s bowel care.
Freddy could make only enough product for three shows a year, but the Leper said that Freddy had to do six. He and Freddy would share booths at all of these.
“I can’t make enough beads for three more shows,” Freddy protested.
Gary Leperov replied, “I don’t care if you look like an idiot, sitting behind an empty table. And you shouldn’t care either because I’m fronting your plane tickets, your hotels, your meals, and your rental car. I’m even supplying Freddy T-shirts.”
Freddy didn’t have good judgment when all he was smoking was a cigarette, but when he was high, he felt pretty clever, and he chose a moment when he was higher than two kites to tell the Leper that one year of pretend sales receipts was enough and he wasn’t doing it anymore. The Leper had not taken the news well. And now his muscle, Doc, was right here in Middletown.
Hippie Crime 101 had a rule, which Freddy knew well and had chosen not to think about: You bring a guy in, you keep an eye on him.
Yet another personal flaw to consider: failure to think. Sometimes Freddy imagined all his flaws stacked in a teetering pile, ready to collapse and smash him. As for virtues, he couldn’t think of any right now. He looked at his wonderful grandmother, who was all virtue and didn’t deserve this terrible fate (not that anybody did) and who trusted him to take care of her.
She didn’t even know she was trusting him, which made the situation profoundly more awful. Freddy felt a sort of terror, the kind that MMC often evoked.
It was Doc he should be terrified of, but compared to dementia, Doc seemed more like an annoyance than a nightmare.
Freddy decided to kill some more time at MMC and maybe figure out how to escape his latest major error. “I finally remembered,” he said to Mapes. “I’ve been promising you some of my beads for, like, decades now.”
In fact, they had known each other about six months. In some ways, Freddy had never known another person so intimately. He and Mapes talked about death, the soul, God, bowel movements, music, and cars that were impossible to fit a wheelchair into the trunk of them.
He handed her a small, stapled plastic bag containing five one-inch-diameter beads.
The beads had the watercolor look of a garden in the morning mist: green and gold and vivid blue. The colors spilled differently on each one.
He didn’t usually give away his good stuff because people had no idea what they were getting. They could not grasp the years of learning and experimenting and designing to master the skills of flamework; all they saw was a pretty little round thing.
“Freddy, they are breathtaking,” whispered Mrs. Maple. “A feast for the eyes. Renoir in glass. I’m in love with them. Oh, Freddy, thank you so much! I will take up beading now and turn them into a necklace. Or maybe put them in a little glass bowl on my coffee table where they will catch the sun and make my friends jealous.”
This was one bonus of dealing with the older ladies who were Freddy’s basic customers: they knew how to give a compliment.
Mrs. Maple began another chapter in the book she was reading out loud to Polly, who gave no sign of listening. But Betty stopped singing and came over, entranced. Philip stopped whacking his cane and leaned forward to hear better.
The book was an ancient prairie romance called A Lantern in Her Hand, and Freddy wanted to give Philip a better choice, something manly, but Freddy was not much of a reader himself and had no idea what that book should be.
Heidi herded the residents who could walk back from balloon ball while Grace helped the rest maneuver their walkers and Mary Lou pushed a wheelchair. Half the allotted activity time was spent getting people there and then bringing them back, plus collecting people who wandered away or taking them to the bathroom.
Freddy was abruptly swamped with visit horror. He had to get out of here. He looked at his sweet, destroyed grandmother, thinking of all those after-school hours at Grandma and Grandpa’s house before their mother got home from work and how somebody was always scraping a knee or an elbow, and Grandma would kiss it to make it better. There was no kiss, medicine, or treatment that made dementia better.
He kissed Grandma goodbye anyway, and she smiled in the wrong direction. She didn’t seem to be sure wh
o he was or why he was leaving or, for that matter, why he had come.
Freddy felt as if he had a hole in his heart and was sliding out of it.
Chapter Six
Freddy left by the employees’ door and looked through rhododendron leaves. No white Toyota Corolla in the parking lot, which meant Doc didn’t know about MMC. He didn’t know about Grandma’s house either, or he’d have cornered Freddy there. But he might be circling town, ready to snag Freddy.
The bike was a problem. He’d be exposed and slow. He wasn’t sure how to get home under these circumstances. He couldn’t use Uber because his credit card would be denied. Who might give him a free ride home and ask no questions?
Freddy never let anybody visit his grandmother’s house, an ugly raised ranch with an obnoxious peaky entry. Aesthetics weren’t what stopped him. He had built a glass shop in a neighborhood not zoned for business, never mind this one, and neighbors hardly ever like finding out that the guy next door is playing with fire.
On the main level, Grandma’s furniture was old and clunky but not enough to be stylish. His sisters said to sell it and buy whatever he wanted instead, but aside from the fact that Freddy had no idea what he wanted instead, it seemed grotesque to remove all traces of his grandmother in her house when there was so little trace of her in her own body. Something had to stay.
Mrs. Maple would love to drive him home, but she was all questions. Plus she probably had grown kids like Freddy’s sisters: driven, successful, articulate, well dressed, married—in other words, exhausting to a guy who had his eyes on some other ball entirely. Except when Freddy didn’t have his eyes on anything because he was stoned.
Freddy postponed more thought by taking out his cell phone. He had to keep it silenced and in his back pocket when he was with Grandma, because the desire to escape the dementia situation was so strong, he’d have played games the whole time.
There was a text from the Leper.
I don’t know what ’80s cop movie you think you’re in, but get over it. Talk to Doc.
Freddy didn’t have a handle on his glass future, but faking sales with Gary Leperov wasn’t it. Of course if he refused to fake sales with Gary Leperov, he might not have a future at all.
It was entirely possible that Doc and his passenger in that Toyota did actual drugs. Depending on the drug of choice, neither one of them would necessarily be sane at any given moment, which did not bode well for negotiations. But Freddy didn’t really believe Doc would be armed any more than he really believed that Alice Bell had died in Peru.
He realized suddenly that he didn’t even know if she’d seen Machu Picchu. Had she been coming or going? Had she died without reaching her destination?
Freddy thought more about his mother now that she was dead than he had when she was alive, which was pretty awful. They had never really come to terms. And he was not on any terms to speak of with his sisters. It was only Grandma, with whom there were no terms, just affection.
He shook off a train of thought that could only lead to some dark dead-end of the heart and set out for Main Street.
There was a woman with a shop in Middletown who might drive him part way, although leaving the bike at MMC was a totally lousy option. Auburn lived down in Essex, which was close enough, and she could drop him, say, at the gas station in Haddam. Auburn would want to take him to his own front door, though, because she would want to see where he lived and, most of all, learn his last name.
Freddy focused on the walk instead of his problems. He liked swinging his legs and studying buildings. The works of man were more interesting to Freddy than the works of nature. He found architectural details and the geometry of brick, stone, and concrete endlessly pleasing.
Middletown had survived a lot of bad years and was gentrifying at a great rate, full of restaurants and shops Freddy could not afford. He walked past the police department, well disguised in a charming brick building, and kept going in the direction of the Himalayan gift shop and the Hispanic grocery.
Auburn ran a boutique that sold handmade jewelry hanging on chicken wire, thin cotton skirts from India, candles, incense, Freddy’s beads in a locked glass-top case (where they looked, one customer said, as delicious as candy), and, once you got to know her, pipes.
Auburn considered herself beautiful, but she was way too thin for Freddy. Her hair was jet black, her complexion paper white, and she wore wide-rimmed hats with ribbons and scarves to prevent even the slightest tan. She liked to stand very close to people and flick her pierced tongue like a snake. She’d say, “Come on, Freddy. You can tell me. What’s your actual factual name?”
“I’m planning ahead. I’m going to be very famous and need only one name.”
“Me too,” she told him once. “I’m going to control everybody I meet.”
Freddy had never controlled anybody he met.
Cars were diagonally parked along Main Street, the color choices mainly white, gray, and black. Freddy’s life was color, and he couldn’t fathom choosing a noncolor for something as important as your vehicle. Of course white was anonymous, and Freddy himself was in an anonymous stage, so a plain white sedan—like the one parked in front of Auburn’s—might do.
It was Doc’s car.
Doc was standing in Auburn’s doorway.
Freddy backed into a pizza palace, the last greasy survivor in the midst of yogurt shops and juice bars. Had Doc seen him? Freddy didn’t think so. Doc had been talking to Auburn, not paying attention to approaching pedestrians. Still and all, Doc survived by paying attention.
Freddy slid into a booth. If he slumped against the window and pressed his nose against the glass like a kid, he could just make out Doc’s front fender.
He ordered two pizzas, and when the waitress had left, it crossed his mind that Auburn put his beads on her website. On Etsy, she sold finished necklaces that featured his beads. One Etsy search, he thought, and the Lep finds my beads. One text message, and he finds out I bring Auburn my work in person. Meaning I can’t live that far off. Meaning send Doc to Middletown.
A hamster could have found me in Middletown, he thought. A rodent is smarter than I am.
It was weird, though.
Airfare from Vegas to Hartford was relatively cheap, but a rental car? Hotel? Meals? All to have a conversation with Freddy? But then, Doc also marketed and delivered the Leper’s glass, so maybe the actual reason he was here was selling to Auburn, in which case Freddy was a minor, coincidental side trip.
Freddy found this easy to believe. His whole life was a minor, coincidental side trip for people.
The rented Toyota backed out of its space. Doc and the skinny ponytail guy swung an illegal U-turn and disappeared.
Freddy was a very fast eater of pizza. There was something about the combination of grease, cheese, and tomato that required him to chow down as if he were in a contest. He paid, tipped, went out the back, and walked down the alley to Auburn’s. He knocked on the heavy windowless door. It had a peephole. He stood in front of it. Auburn let him in.
“Hey, Aub,” said Freddy, holding out a pizza box. “Hungry?”
“Freddy, I eat sushi, not pizza. But you may enter, because I have questions.” She swept him in and locked the door after him. “Two men who represent the Leper were here asking after you, and five minutes later, you appear bearing gifts?”
“I’m kind of in a bind.”
“I love men in binds,” she said, leaning too close.
Freddy strolled into the shop to get some space and hardly recognized the place. Gone were the cheap skirts. In their place were supremely ugly handbags that Freddy guessed were also supremely expensive. Fabulous scarves. And where a month ago pathetic little trinkets had been, Leper pendants hung from a wire sculpture. Rotting fingers.
Auburn’s college clientele could afford those?
It was actually good news. Doc had been here for
sales and delivery.
“I’m looking for a more sophisticated customer,” Auburn explained. “My taste and displays are changing. Now meet my good, good friend Danielle.”
Danielle was a very chunky young woman who had nevertheless chosen to wear leggings and a closely fitted long-sleeved tee, making her a painful contrast to Auburn. Danielle knew it too. She had the bitter expression of a person who would always come in second. Or maybe twentieth.
Freddy was sympathetic. He had three sisters who always vied for first place and would certainly not have awarded Freddy second place. Ninetieth, maybe. On a good day.
“I like pizza,” said Danielle. She locked the front door and put the Closed sign in the window. “What toppings did you choose? I hope no anchovies.”
“Never anchovies,” Freddy assured her. He kept his eyes on their cell phones. He didn’t want them texting his location to Doc. They gathered around the tiny table in the tiny back room. There was one stool. Nobody took it.
“The Leper sent Doc and some loser,” said Auburn. “You must be very important to be a two-man errand.”
Freddy handed Danielle paper napkins. Danielle was giggling, like she knew a secret Freddy didn’t. “You’re not having pizza, Freddy?”
“I already had mine, thanks. So what did they want?”
“You,” said Auburn. “I feel the same. Come on home with me.”
Freddy was really glad he hadn’t asked for a ride. He’d walk the nine miles first. In fact, now that he thought of it, he wanted to walk. What a great hike! “Thanks, Aub,” he said, “but I have to feed my cat.” Freddy had no pets.
“I love cats!” cried Danielle. “What’s her name?”
“Vinaigrette,” said Freddy, and the women laughed.
“You know why they call him the Leper, right?” asked Auburn.
Because he was Russian, and his real name was Leperov. But Freddy had learned long ago that girls like knowing more than you do, so he said, “No. Why?”
“Because you only get leprosy after you’ve been near it for years, Freddy, and then you die. That’s the Leper’s theme song. Play my way or die.”
The Grandmother Plot Page 4