The Spectacular Simon Burchwood

by Scott Semegran

  "Can I help you?" she asked. She looked at me like I was a vacuum salesman or the UPS man or some shit like that. It's true.

  "Uh..." I said. I was speechless. I was caught off-guard by this strange, little old lady. I thought for a quick second that maybe I was at the wrong house. I stepped back and found the street number by the door. It was the correct number. "I'm looking for my grandparents. I know it's been a long time but I'm pretty certain this is their house."

  "Well," she said, opening the door some more. "Are you looking for the Paulsons?"

  "Yes, I am." Paulson was my mother's maiden name, you dummies. She took the great name Burchwood when she married my dad. She was a Paulson until she was 25 years old, 25 years too long. It's true. "The Paulsons are my grandparents."

  She opened the door and invited me in. I immediately noticed that the house didn't smell like I remembered it. Like I said, my grandmother usually had something delicious in the oven. The house now smelled like mothballs, urine, and that sour old-people smell. It was absolutely disgusting. It's true. It took a lot of courage for me not to pinch my nose in disgust in front of this old lady. I had a hard time breathing without wanting to vomit. That was really tough. She guided me to a sofa in the den next to a coffee table with a bowl of hard candy on it. The candy was covered with dust. She sat in a chair across from me.

  "I'm surprised you don't know this but your grandparents moved to the nursing home down near the military base."

  "What?!" I asked. Nursing home? Near the military base? Did I just step into The Twilight Zone? What the fuck?! "When?"

  "Oh, let me see. My grandchildren bought me this house about a year ago so I guess they moved there... about a year ago."

  "Why?"

  "I'm sorry dear. I do not know. But I remember them telling me at the closing that they were getting old and rundown and they didn't have anyone to take care of them. They just had themselves. But they needed help. So they sold this house and moved to the nursing home together."

  "Where is the nursing home again?"

  "Here, dear. Let me write it down for you." She slowly got up and hobbled to the kitchen. While she was gone, I had the pleasure of inhaling the house stench, trying my hardest to keep the bile down. It was horrendous, absolutely disgusting. She came back with a piece of paper in her shaky hand. "Here you go. I wrote down the address for you."

  "Thank you," I said, standing up.

  "Would you like some hard candy?" she asked, lifting the dusty candy bowl.

  "Oh, no thank you. I really have to go."

  "Well, I'm glad you stopped by. You know, I rarely get any visits from anyone anymore. My grandchildren bought me this house but they never come to see me. They are too busy with their own lives to worry about their old grandmother. It's a real shame, you know?"

  "Yes, I know."

  "Are you sure you don't want a cup of coffee or some tea? I can make some hot tea for you."

  "I appreciate that but I have to go see my grandparents. I came all the way from Austin and I don't have much time."

  "Well, that's very sweet of you. I'm sure they will be glad to see you."

  She walked me to the door. I opened it and the fresh, clean air came in. I walked to my car as I heard her say something about coming to visit again but I knew I would never be visiting that house again. Never.

  Like I said, my divorce put me in a hole so deep that I didn't even know how deep I was in it. So deep, apparently, that life had passed me by. I felt like a real asshole. How this ever could have happened without me knowing was a real goddamn shame. I was a really shameful, goddamn, worthless bastard grandson. It's true.

  21.

  One of my favorite memories involving my grandfather (in addition to sitting with him and his buddies listening to their advice about life) was playing golf with him during my summer visits to Oklahoma. Now here's the thing: Golf, to me, is one of the most goddamn boring sports I have ever played in my ENTIRE life. But, when I was a kid, playing golf with my grandfather meant spending time with my grandfather and I enjoyed spending time with him. My grandfather had this sweet, affable demeanor that was impervious to the hyperactive, annoying, and often detestable nature of a young child around the age of 10 or 11. I mean, I love kids, don't get me wrong but kids can also be annoying little fuckers and I was no different. I was a hyperactive kid with boundless energy and a propensity to get bored quite easily but that didn't faze my grandfather one bit. He always had shit to do, errands or card games or bowling games or golf games or chores and he always invited me along with him. I liked that. In contrast, my father was a workaholic and had quite a few hobbies to take up his time when he wasn't working and there wasn't a place for me plus I didn't care much to join in helping with the hobbies he enjoyed. I liked playing games and my grandfather did too, even if it was goddamn golf.

  I remember during one visit that my grandfather asked me if I wanted to learn how to play golf. I didn't know just how boring golf was at age 10 but the invitation was enough for me. My grandfather had an old women's set that had rather short clubs and he sized me up to them and they seemed to fit my arms' length quite nicely so he called the golf course and reserved a spot for us. We hopped in his little old Ford pickup truck, throwing our clubs and a cooler of beer and sodas in the back, and we drove across town. On the way, I would always take these cassette tapes that I had, cassettes of God-awful music from the 80s, and he didn't mind that I took control of the pickup truck stereo and played this music while we rode to the golf course. He always got a kick out of the goddamn crap I played and would tell me how funny the music sounded to him. "You call that music?" he would say, laughing. I mean, how would Quiet Riot or Michael Jackson or Van Halen or Journey or any of the other crap I played sound to a man in his early 70s who had survived the Great Depression and World War II? It sounded like shit to him but he let me play it anyway. He was sweet that way. We would haul ass in his little truck, my crappy music playing, the windows rolled down, the hot Oklahoma wind blowing through the pickup cab, all the way to the course.

  When we got there, he gloated to all of the other retired officers about how I was his grandson and that he was going to teach me to be the next fucking Jack Nicklaus. They would all laugh and toast and drink beer together while I chugged root beer and putzed around the club house, looking at golf gear and shit. When he was finished with his buddies, the two of us hopped into a golf cart and zoom around the course. He always let me drive and got a kick out of watching me destroy that golf cart. When we reached the tee box, he showed me how to swing and let me go at it until I hit a decent shot, all the while giving me mulligan after mulligan, never letting my shanked shots get me down. When it was his turn, there was always a loud crack and the ball would sail WAY past my ball. We'd hop in the cart and zoom after them, a beer in his hand, a big smile on my face.

  Later that that week, after quite a few shanked balls and quite a few beers and sodas, we pulled up to a hole with a rather short fairway to the green with an insanely low par like 2 or 3 or some shit like that. He leaned over to me and said, "Now, Simon, you got a pretty good swing on you now and that fairway is pretty short. I imagine you can hit that sucker right on the green, yessir. You can do it," he said to me. He smiled and patted me on the back and gave me a little shove. I sized up that ball, extending my arms the way he taught me, gripping the club just like he showed me, and I gave him a glance. He nodded and that was all he had to do. I knew, deep in my little heart, that if he said I could do then I could do it. So I stared that ball down, lifted my club, and swung hard, missing the ball badly. He told me not to worry about it and to try again. He placed a new golf ball on the tee and smiled at me. So I setup again. I imagined hitting the ball on the green in my mind. I closed my eyes and swung hard. I heard the ball crack and watched it sail through the air, high above, shooting to the clouds. When it came down, it landed about two feet behind the hole. I jumped and cheered for joy, dancing a little jig in the tee box. But then he p
atted my shoulder and pointed to the green, stunned. The ball started to roll backwards toward the hole. It inched and inched its way down the incline and plopped into that unsuspecting hole. With a mulligan to aid me, I had scored a hole-in-one. I was elated. My grandfather beamed at me. He was rather proud of his good ol' grandson. It's true.

  The funny thing was, he wasn't really my grandfather. He was my step-grandfather. My grandmother had remarried after her first husband, my natural grandfather, died of a heart attack at a young age. But for all intensive purposes, he was MY grandfather. I didn't know any different. He was good to me and I knew it. I loved him with all of my heart.

  My grandmother was a pretty unique person in her own right. She was an independent sort that probably didn't fit well into the mold of the 1940s and 50s and 60s, doing what she damned-well pleased and not caring what others thought of her one bit. I remember vividly that she liked to cuss and drink and smoke in front of me because that was what she liked to do in front of anybody, whether young or old, friend or stranger. That was her thing. When I would visit, she threw these parties for her friends and they would all come over and smoke and drink and cuss and play cards, hooting and hollering all over the goddamn place like a bunch of senior party animals. It was a stark contrast to my parents who didn't do any of that, no smoking, no drinking, no partying, no card playing. She was a very social creature and my grandfather appeased her. He was a social creature too although he didn't smoke. His first wife had died from cancer from smoking but he didn't seem to mind that my grandmother smoked, at least I never heard him say anything about it. He was cool like that. It's true.

  When I would visit, my grandmother made a point of setting me up with girls that were the granddaughters of her friends, girls that were too young to date no matter how you looked at it, and so was I. She would always tell me, "My friend so and so has a beautiful granddaughter. She would be good for you," she would say to me. I remembered my ten-year-old mind being puzzled by that. "Good for what?" I would think to myself. "Good for a game of Battleship?" This particular summer, the hole-in-one summer, she told me that she had arranged a goddamn movie date with me and a girl named Samantha. Samantha was a ten-year-old girl who was the granddaughter of a neighbor down the street. She was blond and supposedly cute, whatever that meant. The only thing ten-year-old boys thought were cute were small cups of bubble gum ice cream from Baskin Robbins Ice Cream shops. Girls were yucky. It's true.

  My grandmother would tell me to get gussied up, which meant putting on shorts, a t-shirt, and Reebok tennis shoes. She drove me to the theater in her big ass white Oldsmobile with a big ass back seat like a couch. She pulled up to the movie theater and there little ol' Samantha was, looking something like a young Jodie Foster, in her shorts, t-shirt, and Keds tennis shoes, standing next to her grandmother. After an awkward introduction to her grandmother, the two grandmas bought us tickets and shoved cash in our hands, pushing us into the theater, then probably off to bowl a few games or drink scotch or whatever it was grandmothers did while their grandchildren were on a "date." I didn't know Samantha from shit but we were both kids with wads of cash in our pockets in a movie theater by ourselves. We bought all of the junk food we could hold, large popcorns, candies, sodas, whatever, and found seats in the back of the theater. It was a strange thing being unaccompanied by adults but we managed, shoving food in our little faces while watching the previews. We both had ants in our pants so sitting for too long wasn't an option. We ran around the theater like wild animals, playing Asteroids in the lobby, running in and out of the other movie theaters without a care in the world. It wasn't a date. It was an excuse to act like little brats and we did it like pros.

  When our grandmothers finally showed up, they were drunk, three sheets to the wind, scotch in their tanks, laughter in their hearts. They asked us how our date went. Samantha and I looked at each other and giggled. If a date meant acting like heathens on a sugar high, playing all of the video games, and not watching a bit of the movie, then I guess you could say we had a great date. But if what they really meant was if we kissed and made plans to get married when we were 18, then they were WAY off. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. It's true.

  Those were good times. Good times. The best. Now, the thought of my grandparents selling their house and moving to a nursing home just killed me. Absolutely slayed my heart and soul. It's true. They were a fun couple, no doubt. I wasn't sure what to expect at the nursing home but I prepared myself for the worst. How good could living in a nursing home be good? Not good, I tell you. Sounds like a bunch of shit to me. I couldn't imagine they would be drinking and partying and playing cards like I remembered them doing when I was a kid. I couldn't imagine at all what they would be doing. What the hell were they thinking?

  ***

  The nursing home was worse than I expected. When I walked in, the smell of stale urine and misery and lingering death and heartache and loneliness was in the air. It was a miserable smell. Mostly, I could sense the sadness of dying alone. Old folks were usually put in these places because they became too much for their families to bear or they had absolutely no place else to go with no one to help them. It was a sad state of affairs. It's true. My grandparents, on the other hand, moved here of their own free will, at least that's what the old lady living in my grandparents' home had me believe. It was absolutely hard to believe that anyone would move here of their own free will. Something serious must have gone wrong. Why didn't anyone tell me? It was a goddamn mess. It's true.

  At the reception desk sat a chubby, middle-aged woman wearing pink scrubs, reading a gossip magazine, looking bored to death. Rolls of body fat were giving the cotton fibers of her outfit a run for their money. I could sense that she hated her job. Her evenings were probably filled with drunken binges and packs of cigarettes inhaled into her lungs, the only way she could cope with a job that constantly had death waiting in the next room. She was just as sad and miserable as the place she worked. It's true. She had a name tag on her pink blouse. It read, "Myrtle." I decided to give Myrtle something to do.

  "Can you tell me where the Paulsons' room is, please?" I asked. It seemed at that moment I was disturbing her. She abruptly dropped her magazine and started typing something into her computer. She was pissed, I could tell.

  "They are in room 325. Third floor, out the elevator, to the right," she said, picking up her magazine, drifting back into oblivion.

  "Thanks."

  "Mmm hmm."

  "Can you tell me where the elevator is?" She pointed behind her, not looking at me. What a bitch! Hospitality was not in her job description. It's true. "Thanks."

  Behind the desk was a sign with an arrow and the word "Elevator" on it, pointing toward a hallway to the right. I followed its direction. The hallway seemed like a mile long, stretching the full length of the building, no doubt. I could see the elevator way at the other end of the hallway, the long walkway lined with elderly folks slumped in their rickety wheel chairs, babbling to themselves, slobbering about this or that or something unintelligible. As I walked down the hallway, they noticed me as I walked by, extending their hands to touch me, calling me Jack or Phil or Steven or some shit like that, hoping or imagining I was their son or grandson or nephew coming to get them out of this shithole. It was a goddamn shame. It's true. A little part of me felt sorry for them and wanted to extend my hand back but I knew deep down that would be cruel. I wasn't who they thought or hoped I was and I had my own grandparents to see so I kept on.

  Halfway down the hall was an old lady slumped over in her wheelchair facing the wall, her torso laying flat on the top of her skinny legs, her head hanging over her knees like it was about to pop off, mumbling something. She looked extremely uncomfortable. Who in their right mind would sit like that? Right then and there I decided to ask her if she needed help or at least to be turned away from the wall. I knelt down next to her, placing my hand on her shoulder, and I whispered to her.

  "Do you want me to turn yo
ur wheel chair around?"

  My touch must have startled her because she started yelling, cussing and screaming all over the goddamn place, cursing the goddamn floor. She surprised the shit out of me, enough to make me jump back and question why I did that in the first place. I decided to leave her be. It was for the best. It's true.

  I hurried to the end of the hall and got in the elevator. I pushed the number three button and the doors closed, sealing off the stench of the hallway. The elevator smelled of bleach and Lysol, the floor stained with splotches of red and brown. I didn't know what was worse, the stench of the hallway or the stench of disinfectant. Both were pretty goddamn tough to take.

  When the elevator dinged at the third floor, I got out and immediately looked for room 325. Room 325. Room 325. Why did that sound so familiar? I found room 325 halfway down the hall. I slowly peeked in and found my grandfather sitting in a twin hospital bed, propped up, watching golf on a TV mounted to the wall on the other side of the room. He had a big goddamn smile on his face, the kind of smile I remembered he had when we went golfing together when I was a kid. He looked as happy as a goddamn clam. It's true. The window curtains were open, the sunlight pouring in. The room was sparsely furnished with a few family photos and a chair in the corner. Another twin bed sat next to his, the sheets and blanket tightly tucked in, and it looked unused. A photo of my grandmother sat on a table between the two beds. I thought for one quick moment to walk away and leave him be. He did look pretty happy sitting there watching golf on TV but I wanted to see him. So I went in.

  "Hi grandpa," I said. He looked at me with a surprise looked. He was genuinely surprised to see me. It's true.

  "Well, I'll be. If it isn't good ol' Simon. Simon Burchwood. What are you doing here, my boy?"

  "I came to see you and grandma."

  "Well, I'm glad you did. It's been a long time. Your grandmother will be pleased to see you."