John once told me his mom and dad met in college. They were both studying graphic design at Drexel and planned to start a screen printing business together after graduation. They wanted to produce and sell tee shirts with funny sayings on them. Have kids. Live the dream that all Americans hope to live. Then John made his surprise entrance into the world and things didn’t seem so funny to the Chens anymore.
“My son never plans ahead,” Lily Chen would say. “He didn’t even plan to be born.” John’s lack of planning apparently blew his parents’ business model to smithereens. Now Mrs. Chen stayed at home pruning her roses most of the time and his father, Victor, worked a thousand hours a week for the DuPont company. John never talked much about what he did there. Something about space-aged polymers and ballistic nylons and designing flak jackets for law enforcement professionals. It’s pretty confusing so I’m not even sure if John truly understood the job description. Probably why he was always so quiet about it.
To the untrained eye, Lily Chen may have looked cute and unassuming in her gardening gear, always outside transforming her yard into a botanical wonderland. But I knew better. I knew she was about five feet of fury. And I knew not to mess with her.
She held the nozzle of her hose in the direction of my car, daring me to make one false step on the gas pedal. The sun, sinking on the horizon, outlined her square shoulders and her floppy garden hat in orange flame. If I didn’t know she was John’s mom it would have been terrifying. At the same time, I respected Lily Chen for every ounce of tough love she unleashed on her son, because I knew she was the reason he had become John Chen. He didn’t complain. Never made excuses. He just woke up every day as the most driven and reliable kid in the entire Delaware Valley. In other words, he didn’t turn out like me.
I put the car in park. Let it idle. And I stretched the bill of my Phillies hat down over my eyes so I didn’t have to squint.
“You doing anything tonight?” I asked John.
“Promised my mom I’d throw mulch for her,” he said as he gathered his books. “Should be done later. Around eight, I guess.” Mrs. Chen had her hands on her hips and her head shook slowly, pitifully from side to side. John had about thirty more seconds of chitchat left in him before he’d take a roundhouse kick to the groin.
“Give me a call.”
“Why bother?” he asked. “I’ll just stop by the house when I’m done. Not like you’ll be doing anything.”
“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean? You never know … I might be busy tonight.”
“Doing what? Dressing your body pillow up like Marlie? Dude, I’ve seen her. She’s not that lumpy.”
I wanted to slug him in the arm out of principle, but Mrs. Chen’s shadow loomed over me as she tapped at my window with the blunt steel of the hose nozzle.
“John! That mulch won’t spread itself, you know!”
John slung one strap of his backpack over his shoulder. His eyes swirled in their sockets.
“I’ll see you around nine,” he said. “By then, I’m sure you’ll be three games of Madden in the hole.”
“We’ll see about that,” I told him. But he was probably right.
When I got home, Mom was waiting on the front porch. She had forced at least ten more pounds into her black dress than it could handle. I knew something was up. She only wore that dress when Dad got an idea in his head. The last time she wore it, Garbage Pail Kids were cool.
“Gabriel! Where. Have. You. Been?” She said it in that voice parents use when they want to make it seem like their words should be a headline in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
“I just grabbed a slice at Perdomo’s after school like I always do. Is that a problem?” We used to get along great—Mom and I—before she started ragging on me for every little thing. Is the trash out? Your homework done? Where are you going, Gabriel? How can you sleep until noon, Gabriel? It was like every time she opened her mouth fireballs shot out. And you can only get your eyebrows singed so many times before you start firing back with pre-emptive strikes.
“Do-not-talk-to-me-like-that-young-man.”
I flipped my eyeballs to the sky so hard I thought they’d get lodged in my frontal lobe.
“Or-look-at-me-that-way.”
She smelled like jasmine. The perfume Dad had bought her last Christmas. I knew they must have been primping themselves up for a romantic evening. Yuck. Parents should be banned from doing anything that might lead to sex. Once they have their first kid, their sex cards should be shredded on the spot so nobody ever has to have the nasty thoughts I was having at that moment.
“Your father got us a room at Caesar’s tonight,” she told me. “We’re leaving for Atlantic City in fifteen minutes. I called your pager, but you never respond to the damn thing.”
She was only partially correct. I did respond to the damn thing. Just not when her or Dad’s number popped up in little, pixelated digits. The funny thing was my entire argument for my parents letting me get the damn thing in the first place was: “You can get in touch with me whenever you want. You know, in case of emergency.” Only what they saw as an emergency, I didn’t happen to see. My emergency: Gabe, aliens from the planet Gorgon are firing death rays down our chimney! Mom and Dad’s emergency: Gabe, we’re at Macy’s. Big sale. What size are your underpants? Check the waist band.
“Yeah, well, I was busy,” I told her.
She didn’t respond, which in Mom-speak means don’t push it.
Just then, the front door swung open and Dad popped out like a jolly little squirrel that’d found the motherload of acorns. He was wearing his grey business suit. His only suit. There was a goofy grin plastered on his face, which could only mean one thing: Dad was in the mood to gamble.
He loved to gamble, and he’d bet on just about anything. He wasn’t particular. Football games, golf matches, poker, how long it would take Mom to make dinner (she didn’t like that one). His general rule was: if it happened on this planet, God intended for us to bet on it. Most of the time he’d skip the monetary part of the wager altogether, which was good because teachers don’t get paid in gold. But sometimes he’d get himself in trouble. Tonight appeared to be headed in that direction.
“Marie, you look stunning tonight,” he said as he took Mom by the hand, spun her in some old geezery type of dance step, and moved in for a big, wet kiss. Ugh. The pizza crawled up a little in my throat. “And, Gabe, I must say that you’re looking quite useful this evening.”
“Useful? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re on Grandpa duty,” he told me without even pausing on the old man’s fandango he was trying to pull off with Mom.
This sucked. Friday night and I was stuck home taking care of the hollow shell that used to be my grandfather. Which is completely different than being stuck home for the sole purpose of sitting in front of the TV.
“No. Uh-uh. I have plans tonight.”
“Like what?” Dad said holding back a smile. “A candle lit dinner with your video game controller?” Man, my loser status was really out in the open.
“Not funny,” I said. But it was, and suddenly I was having one of those moments where you try to look all pissed and offended but your eyes and the corners of your mouth betray you.
“Come on, Sport.” Sport? Dad was spreading on the heavy butter now. I was doomed. “You know Grandpa gets freaked out. I can’t leave him with a stranger.”
He was right. It had been more than two years since they’d hired someone to keep an eye on Gramps. Mom and Dad were only going out to dinner for their anniversary. They were gone two hours. That’s all it took. Grandpa locked the caretaker in the bathroom. He was standing sentry with an old Wiffleball bat draped over his shoulder like a rifle when Dad approached him. “Enemy detained, Cap’n,” Grandpa said after a full salute.
“Deee-smisssed!” Dad said. What else could he do? His tactic was weird but effective. Grandpa marched off down the hall to his room and Dad slipped the caretaker an extra fifty
for her troubles. He vowed never to leave Grandpa with a stranger again. He even went one further. “I’ll never put him in one of those places to die alone in an empty hallway,” he said, “He’s here until the end. Give the man his dignity.” And he gave up every waking hour—any spare second away from teaching seventh grade literature at Brandywine Middle—to father the child that had once fathered him.
“Fine,” I said. “It’s not like I have a choice.”
Dad shoved a plastic freezer bag full of pill bottles against my chest.
“You know the drill, Gabe. Keep him on schedule and we’ll be back before you know it. Only gone one night.”
One night. Right. Just one, single night.
After they left, I sat down at the kitchen table and fumbled through the bag of pills. It was a freaking arsenal of pharmaceutical firepower. Razadyne-this, Aricept-that. It was a damn good thing I was such a Latin scholar or I’d have been struck illiterate on the spot.
There was an index card inside the bag. On it, Dad had scribbled Grandpa’s “feeding” schedule like he was a captive in the primate house at the zoo. Two green pills at nine. A red and white at ten. A dose of syrupy, yellow liquid before bed. That was for the cough he’d developed. And a big glass of orange juice spiked with Metamucil at breakfast. I felt like I was back in Mrs. Lockett’s kindergarten class and it was my turn to look after Zeke, the classroom hamster. I sure hoped Grandpa wouldn’t pee on the wall like Zeke had back then. In fact, if I could keep all bodily fluids off Mom’s spotless wallpaper I’d consider the whole matter a success.
John welcomed himself through the door at exactly nine, as he’d predicted. I was in Grandpa’s room with a bowl of chocolate pudding. Two green pills were expertly hidden inside the brown goop.
“Have some dessert,” I told him. My first attempt—simply handing him the pills with a glass of water—was a miserable failure that resulted in a plastic cup being heaved at my face.
“No! No pills!” he shouted, kicking his afghan off the foot of the bed.
“What pills, Gramps? We’re done with those. You already took them, remember?”
It was a dirty trick. I felt guilty pulling one over on a guy with Alzheimer’s, especially since he was my own grandfather. But what could I do?
“Come on. This stuff is delicious. I’ll eat it myself and there won’t be any for you.” I skimmed half a spoonful of pudding off the top of the bowl, careful not to uncover the hidden gems I’d placed inside. John had found his way upstairs and stood in the doorway with his eyes wide and his brow wrinkled.
“Don’t eat my dessert! Don’t. Don’t eat!” Grandpa had fallen for my stone cold logic. If it didn’t feel like I was feeding a toddler, I might have been proud of myself. I held the bowl for him as he eagerly shoveled pudding in his mouth. He didn’t suspect a thing.
John and I headed down to the basement for our weekly Madden marathon. We always fought over who would be the Eagles, our hometown team. Rock, paper, scissors was the decisive vote. John always threw a rock and I’d counter with scissors. Every time. I don’t know why I never changed my strategy.
“Be the Giants,” John said, “so my beat-down of you will be extra sweet.”
“Shut up, John.”
“I’m just saying. When I stomp you, you’ll be able to enjoy it a little. A productive slaughter.”
“Shut up, John.”
And you’re basically looking at one of our Friday nights. We were a couple of Grade A beefcakes, let me tell you. Rock, paper, scissors. A video game bonanza. Drugged pudding. How were the girls not crashing through the windows?
“You smell something?” John asked as he scored on a last second Hail Mary to push the score to 48-0 and cement a third consecutive beat-down.
“Shut up, John.”
“No, I’m serious. It smells like—”
“Shit.”
“Yeah, exactly. And we polished off those frozen burritos like two hours ago.”
“Well, it wasn’t me.” I started sniffing around the house. In the kitchen. Near the sink. Maybe something was lodged in the garbage disposal. John fumbled around in the plastic bag of pills just to keep himself busy. The smell grew stronger. It reached down my throat. It threatened to pull all the food I’d eaten that day directly out of my gut and deposit it on the kitchen table.
“Uh, Gabe?”
“Not now. I’m trying to chew this back.”
I steadied myself on a kitchen chair and pulled my shirt up over my nose. The stench was so strong I could almost smell it through my tear ducts.
“Gabe, seriously.”
“What is it?” I croaked through the thin layer of cotton between my nasal passages and death by odor.
“Did you read the note your dad left in this bag? I mean, the entire note?”
“Uh, yeah. Of course. I mean, most of it.”
“What about this part?” He flashed the card in front of me with his index finger highlighting a tiny star and an inscription on the bottom line:
No dairy. Grandpa is having trouble with lactose this week.
“Oh, shit,” I said. And I meant it literally.
Before I even got to the top of the stairs my senses were on full alert. By the time I pushed through the door at the end of the hall—Grandpa’s room—I thought for sure my house had been transformed into a sewage treatment plant. The man’s sheets, his pillows, and the majority of the headboard were smeared with a network of brown streaks. It was like my grandfather had done some kind of bizarre, fecal-based finger painting. And then my memories of Mrs. Lockett’s class raged through my brain. Only this time they were sullied. Covered in a putrid, brown film. Grandpa was curled up on the very edge of the bed and his eyes were glistening. Tiny sobs wracked his breathing.
“John, I think you should go home,” I said.
“No.” He didn’t blink. His eyes were steely, unmoving. He had no intention of leaving me to deal with the mess alone. It was vintage John. The boy who’d always had my back. When Tony Milletti stole my favorite Matchbox car back in second grade, John reached into his supply box under the guise of snack time to steal it back. When Billy Rasmussen cornered me like a rat in the sixth grade bathroom and threatened to pound the guts out of me, John stood right there beside me and took a rabbit punch himself. And now, with Grandpa’s room looking like a stall down at Penn Station, he was willing to don the latex gloves and answer the call. But this time I wasn’t sure his help was appropriate. I mean, who wants their best friend standing there when you’re changing your grandfather’s diaper?
“Go home, John.” He didn’t respond. He only took another step closer to the bed and removed a soiled pillowcase from one of Grandpa’s pillows. No gloves. All heart.
“You’d do it for me,” he said. And that was the last we spoke of the matter.
I lifted Grandpa out of bed and half-carried, half-dragged him to the bathtub. You never expect an old man to weigh as much as a mule, but Grandpa didn’t make the twenty-foot journey an easy one—especially since I held my breath the whole time. I put the faucet on full blast and hustled back to the bedroom.
John had already stripped the bed and I heard the washing machine filling up with water. He sprayed disinfectant on the headboard and sponged off Grandpa’s artwork with a wad of paper towels. Damn. Lily had trained him well.
I grabbed a few paper towels and joined him, but he stopped and looked me in the eyes. “Dude, go take care of Grandpa Ernie. This is under control.”
Man, how do you ever return a favor to a friend who rolls up his sleeves and cleans your grandfather’s poop fresco off the wall? For a second I just stood there. Visions of a Bruce Lee-style battle between Mrs. Chen and me popped into mind. I could picture John sipping lemonade on his porch and cheering me on as I swung a pair of nunchucks at his mother and she fought me off with kicks, punches, and a pair of garden shears. Even that would fall short.
Grandpa cupped his withered hands and splashed the water around in the bathtu
b. His pajama bottoms ballooned up on the surface, filled with air bubbles and God knows what else. I squeezed at least half a bottle of Mom’s cucumber-melon bubble bath in the mud puddle. Then I started working the buttons on Grandpa’s pajama shirt. “Aaah!”
“Don’t worry, Gramps. We’re gonna get you clean.” I tugged at the shirt and heard a few stitches rip. Grandpa thrashed and kicked. Water splashed in my face and down the front of my shirt. It spread across the tile floor. I sponged the sudsy soup over Grandpa’s head and tugged at the ankles of his pants.
Ugh. The smell. The sights. The wrinkles. My own grandpa. John with brown globs on paper towels. I wasn’t there. I couldn’t be.
The images wafted up like ghosts on a silver screen. The world’s most heinous silent film. I could almost hear the rat-tat-tat of the spool reeling its way through the projector and I wondered: How did it come to this? How did Mom and Dad endure it?
Thank God my duty was only a one-night thing.
One night. Just one night.
I smacked the plunger and watched the brown sludge whirlpool its way down the drain. The bathroom reeked of melon-scented poop. Not a good candidate for Chanel’s fall line of perfume.
I hefted Grandpa out of his swamp and wrapped him in a towel. He just stood there and dripped water on the floor. I’d have to dry him too. Nasty. I started with his white mane. It was shaggy and thin and only partly damp. But it was good enough.
“Aaaah! Unhand me! Urrrghh!”
I didn’t respond. Just tried to mop as much moisture off of him as I could before I puked. Dad’s robe would do the rest. I wrestled Grandpa out of the bathroom like a prisoner of war and lifted him into bed. John had fitted the mattress with a clean, crisp set of sheets. The only sign that anything out of the ordinary had happened in the room was the faint smell of disinfectant in the air.
No Sad Songs Page 2