The Playboy

by Alice Ward

  “Can she have a home nurse when you’re ready to release her?” he asked kindly, trying to brighten the mood.

  “Based on what we’ve seen in the past from patients and the fact that Eula is a breast cancer survivor with possible metathesis in both the lungs and brain, I may be inclined to recommend out-of-home hospice care for her,” he said matter-of-factly — like he was reading ingredients in a recipe.

  I gasped for air as tears pressed against my eyes, the corners of my vision growing dim. I stared at Dr. Pushkin’s face, the tiny withered features that constructed his countenance all seemed wizardly to me, like a dark magician who had cast a horrible spell on the one person I loved most on Earth. My heart felt like it was gripped in his claws, pierced by the talons protruding from them as he watched me bleed out on the lobby floor. I could barely breathe, and what felt like hot lava burned down my face. I wanted to be strong but had no strength.

  Tammy put her hand on my knee, giving me a sad smile.

  “Thank you, Dr. Pushkin,” Tammy said for me, keeping herself calm and polite in contrast to the mess I was beside her. “We appreciate any updates you might be able to give us, as soon as you know. If for some reason, we are at the hospice stage of Ms. Darning’s life, she will have it at home. We won’t be considering any out-of-home care, now or anytime in the future. I hope this is perfectly clear. Is there any way we can see her now?”

  “She’s still resting, but I don’t see why you can’t visit with her for a few minutes.”

  “Thank you,” I rasped.

  “I’ll be in touch with you tomorrow, Caitlyn, to give you my update.” I dreaded anymore news, so I just nodded as Tammy and Ricky shuffled me down the hall toward Gran’s room.

  As they guided me down the long corridor, I felt like I weighed a million pounds and my legs somehow had forgotten how to propel me forward. If Tammy or Ricky had let go, I probably would have fallen over. The hospital smelled like alcohol and death. While I had smelled that putrid smell before, it was taunting me now, beckoning me to swallow the bitter pill reality had dispensed. Soon, my Gran would have that same smell, I thought, as we lumbered down the hall to her room, the three of us marching in a thinly veiled parade of death.

  When we walked into her hospital room, I saw someone with my Gran’s face, yet she had a frail birdlike body. It was a shock because she hadn’t looked like that just yesterday. The old woman lying on the precipice of death was not my fire-spirited Gran who caused upheaval wherever she went. The woman struggling to breathe with tubes and wires connecting her pale, emaciated body to one machine or another was not the woman who narrated our Friday night horror fests.

  How had I not seen the woman lying in that bed dying?

  How had I not known she was in this condition?

  I guessed I saw only what I wanted to see. I saw Gran the way I had always remembered her. A warrior, a comedian, and the most loving woman on Earth.

  The three of us stood there, not knowing what to do. It was like we were standing at her funeral, numbed by shock and rendered speechless.

  “I’m going to get another chair,” Ricky said. “You ladies have a seat and wait until Gran wakes up.”

  He made quite a racket bringing the chair back in, clanking and banging as he tried to negotiate it and his portly frame through the door. His labored breathing sounded like Darth Vader was redecorating the hospital, but god bless him, his chair battle woke Gran. The minute those beautiful eyes beheld us, her face became bold and spirited again. While she still looked fragile, at least her face was the one I recognized. Her smile was gracious and loving, and it immediately picked up my mood. I knelt by her side so that our faces were level.

  “We havin’ a party?” she asked feebly.

  “Well, you thought it might be fun to have a sleepover in the hospital, so now it’s a party,” I playfully scolded.

  “Hell, no I didn’t,” she grumbled. “Why would I want to stay here? The food and the cable TV suck. I just watch the Latin channel, see if I can pick up some Spanish while they have me in lockdown. I’ve been kidnapped.”

  “How you feeling?” Tammy asked.

  “Like someone took a baseball bat to my lungs, kiddo,” she answered with a lovely smile.

  I was trying not to cry. “Have you been feeling that way for a while?”

  “Well, sweets, I’m old, so I just figured my insides and all my various innards were getting a little gunked up. But now that you’ve all come to rescue me from this hellhole, I promise to eat more prunes. I hope you brought the getaway car, Ricky. I wanna take that BMW roadster of yours to town and shake her legs, put her top down.” At least she still sounded feisty.

  “I promise that I’ll fire up the roadster and tempt a speeding ticket for your enjoyment,” he said, squeezing her hand. “Today, you gotta brave the liquid diet and the Latino channels. I’ll help you with the Spanish if you want. I can teach you the Puerto Rican dialect, it’s much sexier.”

  Gran winked. “Si, senior.”

  I cradled her head as I ran my fingers through her thinning hair.

  “Sweetie, bring me my cane. I’m ready to get out of here,” her eyes implored me, “you know I go to shit in a hospital. Hospitals freak me out. Saw too many people die in them. They aren’t places for healing, they’re places for torture.”

  I thought she might’ve known what was happening. Maybe when you neared the end of your life, you always knew. I would have busted her out of here, but I needed to know what we were up against. I didn’t want to do something stupid that would end her life prematurely.

  “Dr. Pushkin said you have to stay here tonight, that’s all.” I was being calm, as I could see that she was becoming agitated, the blips on her machines starting to spike.

  “Forget Dr. Pushkin, I’m outta here,” she exclaimed as she sat up and started to get out of bed, sending off a host of screaming alarms. Shit!

  “Come on, Gran, get back in bed. You’re being a crazy girl.” I looked at her and our eyes connected.

  I was speaking to her soul.

  “I’m the batshit, totally messed up variety of crazy right now, but I don’t care. This girl’s gotta motor,” she said, trying to tug herself free of the tubes.

  I panicked. My eyes were begging for her to behave. “You just need to spend one night here, that’s all, and we’ll take you home in the morning.”

  My heart shattered as she continued to struggle to escape.

  “Sweetheart, it smells bad, and the people are morbid. I can’t be in this place anymore. Ricky, get your roadster!”

  The alarms were still blaring as a doctor and nurse rushed into the room. The doctor approached Gran.

  “Ms. Darning, you have to get back into the bed,” he said in a stern, condescending tone.

  “I know my rights. I’m a free woman, I can get the frick outta here if I want.” She was being more obstinate than I’d ever seen her act before.

  I realized that she had to be scared. I would be. Her whole world was crashing in around her. I understood why she would want to go home and escape it. I only had thought about how much losing her would hurt me. I never considered how it would feel for her to face her own death. I leaned in and whispered in her ear as the nurse reset her monitors, and the doctor rattled off the reasons why she was being kept at the hospital.

  “If you really want to go home now, I’ll go apeshit on this place and get you out.” I smiled and reassured her.

  “I would love that.” She seemed dazed and out of focus. “But I’m not feeling up to it just yet. Give me a min...”

  She slunk down on the pillow and quietly lost consciousness. It had all happened so fast. I was confused and scared. Her behavior was way out of focus, even for her.

  “Is she alright?” I asked.

  “She’s very sick,” he said as the nurse continued to check and adjust the drips and cables that hung all about my grandma. “We’ll give her some medication to keep her asleep for the rest of the night. She
needs to rest. You can come back in the morning.”

  “Are you kicking us out?” Tammy asked, incensed.

  “I’m asking you to leave so that Ms. Darning can get some rest. You’re welcome to come back tomorrow during visiting hours.”

  Tammy was ready to have at him, but I touched her arm.

  “Let’s just let Gran sleep and we’ll bring the roadster back tomorrow.” I gave Ricky a nod.

  They understood the code. We would be busting Gran out tomorrow, come hell or high water.

  The three of us headed back to my house. They didn’t want to leave me alone, and I was glad. I really couldn’t be alone. They made themselves at home, and I dumped my stuff on the kitchen table as I always did. There, a stack of bills sat on the dining room table. Gran usually left bills and announcements out for me to see when she found them too overwhelming or was unable to pay. They were old hospital bills for procedures she had done last year. She never paid them, and now the hospital was threatening collections.

  Ironically, the total sum was almost two thousand dollars. My heart sank. At least my ridiculous tip from the overspendy movie billionaire would cover the unpaid amount. I was hoping to put the tip money away for Parsons. I let the disappointment wash over me. I didn’t want bill collectors beating down my door, so I was happy I had the money to pay, despite my disappointment.

  I wasn’t sure what to do next, so I just sat on the couch and stared at the wall. Ricky whipped out his cell phone and ordered pizza. Tammy snooped through our cupboards and found some whiskey.

  “Hey, Ricky, have them send over a six-pack of coke with the pizza,” Tammy yelled.

  “Damn girl, you’re thirsty,” he whisper-shouted while he waited for the person on the other line.

  “It’s not for me, dumbass. I found a whole bottle of Jack, so we’re gonna get our happy on tonight!” She laughed as she waved the mega-sized bottle of Jack Daniels in the air. “What’s Gran doing with a big ol’ bottle of whiskey, Cat?” Tammy’s face was a mix of condemnation and gratitude.

  “It’s good for colds,” I answered in a monotone.

  She snorted. “Oh, I bet it is. It’ll knock a little lady like Gran clean out.”

  “Yeah…two large pepperoni pizzas,” Ricky confirmed.

  “Have them add some jalapenos to one of them,” Tammy yelled to Ricky.

  “Oooh, no,” Ricky refused, then sighed, “add a small pizza with pepperoni and jalapenos. Yeah, that’s all we need. Okay,” he said as he ended the call.

  “I swear you are the least Latino Latin guy I’ve ever known,” Tammy teased. “I thought they put jalapenos in your baby bottles back there in Puerto Rico.”

  Ricky shook his head. “No, jalapenos are way too spicy for me. They give me indigestion.” Ricky rubbed his stomach for emphasis.

  We moved our party out onto the porch, but I still felt like a zombie. Even after the pizza came and we started drinking the whiskey and coke, I couldn’t shake the feeling of numbness. It helped when we began remembering our lives together, each telling fun stories about Gran. Tammy and I spent most of our lives together, and neither of us had left the neighborhood. While she didn’t live with her parents anymore, she had an apartment nearby. She was going to school to become an engineer and worked at a local engineering firm.

  “You remember the day Gran came and got us out of school?” Tammy asked, having already had a few whiskey cokes.

  “Oh my god, we thought we were so busted.” I smiled, remembering back to the day that Gran taught us a lesson we never forgot.

  Tammy feigned hitting a baseball. “Still can’t believe that ball went through Gran’s bedroom window. And that poor frosted-pimple lamp.”

  “I hated that lamp. It was so ugly, like a bulbous mutant from outer space. I swear it was gonna come alive one day and use its bumpy surface to eviscerate me.” It was terrifyingly ugly, but it was Gran’s favorite.

  “We just stashed the broken pieces away, and you came over to my house for dinner.”

  I remembered feeling like Tammy saved my life that day. “Right, we never told her what we did, then Principal Jaffrey calls us into his office and there she is looking all pissed off.”

  Tammy laughed. “She looked like a little red fireball that was about to explode all over us!”

  “We didn’t say a word to each other. She drove us to the train station, and I swore she was gonna just put us on a train going anywhere away from her.” I recalled the panicky feeling of thinking she was sending us away forever.

  “And I was like ‘what’s wrong Ms. Eula, what are we doing? Does my Momma know you got me?’ I was pissing myself,” Tammy recalled.

  I mimicked Gran’s expression. “She was like… ‘oh, she knows.’”

  Tammy held her stomach. “I was shitting.”

  “Then she got on the train with us and just looked out the window and didn’t say anything. I remember feeling so sick I almost threw up.” I took another big swig of whiskey and coke.

  “Didn’t I throw up? I’m pretty sure I did. I went to the bathroom and just puked up my PB&J and chips.” Tammy was starting to slur her words a little.

  “The ride was so long I thought we were going to hell,” I added for dramatic effect.

  “Wait, was this the time Gran took you all to the theater?” Ricky chimed in, also getting a bit drunk.

  “Yup,” Tammy answered, “we ended up at the 72nd Street subway station after, like, hours.”

  “She bought us tickets to Cats, and we sat in almost the back row,” I remembered.

  “Oh my god,” Tammy chimed in, “then…”

  “’MEMORY!’” we said together.

  “She’s like balling her little brains out when this raggedy cat comes out and sings this ‘Memory’ song, and we’re all sitting there just snotting ourselves, crying…” Tammy was tearing up.

  “After the song, Gran emotionally sucker punched us,” I told Ricky. “She told us she found the lamp we broke and wasn’t angry, but the lamp was her memory. Harold, her husband, had bought the lamp for their shitty little dump of an apartment and it was all he could afford, but it made her feel like she was a queen in a castle.”

  “It was from the 1940s, and you know her husband died of this horrible disease, and she felt like he was near her when she turned it on.” Tammy was drunk but trying to sound somber.

  “We just couldn’t stop apologizing to her. She eventually told us that we mattered more than the lamp. Living people were more special than things. She had actually planned on cutting us from school long before we broke the lamp, but she decided to use the lamp as an opportunity to teach us about honesty,” I said quietly.

  “I’m not shitting you, I haven’t lied since,” Tammy confessed.

  “Neither have I.”

  “I remember she got us ice cream on the way to our hotel. God, it was so much fun. Even though the play was a little boring, the whole experience was priceless. We got to sleep in a hotel and had this amazing breakfast at a cafe in New York. Hell, who does that?” Tammy’s voice cracked. “Who the hell does that? I don’t know, Cat. I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to say goodbye to her.”

  I burst into tears. We hugged, our feelings huge and overwhelming. Although Ricky was crying, he was desperately trying to steer us in another direction.

  “Well, I’ve got a story that’ll have you drying up those tears,” Ricky blurted out.

  Even though Ricky had moved next door in the later years of our life, he still knew Gran very well since he visited almost every day.

  “I remember when Gran set up target practice in the backyard because raccoons were coming around and eating up all of her vegetables. She told me she never planned on killing one, but she liked shooting the targets to scare them. Well, one night last summer, it was the first really hot spell of the year. I completely forgot about Grandma Oakley shootin’ the coons. She hadn’t done it in a while, so it was off my radar. It was like three in the morning, and I heard all thi
s shooting and yelling. I thought there was a murderer outside my door, so I came out wielding my broom like that was going to stop a bullet. I had it over my head ready to swing. The minute I saw Gran, I remembered her damn raccoon scare tactics. When Gran saw me, she screamed bloody murder. I felt terrible for startling her. I apologized for scaring her and she yelled at me, ‘Put some damn clothes on,’ then it hit me. Oh my god. I was naked, completely buck-ass naked.” Ricky’s face had turned a brighter shade of red as he laughed. “She was like, ‘I don’t need to be seeing that!’”

  I laughed at the memory. “She told me you were doing a hippy rain dance in your birthday suit.”

  “Well, I thought I was going to confront a murderer. I had to defend my zone, what would you have done?” he questioned sarcastically.

  “Put my damn pants on,” Tammy answered.

  I bobbed my brows at him. “Apparently, you’re hung like a horse.”

  “Why, thank you, Gran,” Ricky blew a kiss out to the sky.

  As we continued to talk and drink whiskey and coke, then just whiskey until the wee hours, I realized that we were a family. When the inevitably horrible day that may be lurking before us came, and Gran was gone, I hoped I would still have them, or I wouldn’t have anyone left.

  “When she’s gone, I’m gonna be an orphan,” I said sadly, completely drunk off my ass.

  “Oh, shut up, drama queen, you’re already my mamma’s daughter. What do you think she’s gonna do, abandon you? Please,” Tammy said with a drunken slur, “you’re her little white baby. We’re always gonna be here for you.” She leaned over and put her arm around me.

  “And Rafael and I aren’t going anywhere. Your gay brothers are always gonna be right here, should anything happen. And, girl, Rafael can bake some mean casserole. You’re gonna be eatin’ good, I promise,” Ricky said as he jiggled his stomach, also pretty inebriated.

  “I love you guys,” I said, my face contorted into an ugly cry.