I hung up as soon as I realized my mistake and redialed. There, that was right, and I got her machine again. No wait. It was her.
"Krishna?"
"Yeah?"
"It's Jane."
Silence. That silence was deafening.
"The reason I'm calling is to tell you something important, so just listen okay? I can't talk right now. But I need to tell you something. I'll call you back."
"What?” I heard her say as I put the phone back on its cradle as the door to the room opened. Francine put her head around the curtain.
"Was that you talking?"
"No. I mean yes. I was just telling Mrs. Taylor something. I like to talk to her, even though she can't talk back. I'm sure it helps her."
Francine eyed me suspiciously. Then she opened Mrs. Taylor's curtains.
"Goldie needs you to go in there and help her get to the bathroom. Then we need to get them to dinner."
"I thought I was doing feeding tubes this evening."
"You still need to help with dinner."
6
Bringing the old folks to dinner meant the overwhelming smell of institutional food. The noxious blend of brown, unidentifiable mush, corn, always corn, chocolate pudding sitting way too close to some kind of stew, or cooked carrots, and always those segregated trays, those school-lunch trays. Those pale pink or light tan or dull yellow, ugly, depressing things. Look, just cause they're old do their lives have to lack any vibrancy whatsoever?
I fed Mr. Morgan. I put a spoonful of mush into his mouth, which could barely chew anymore, and smelled the smell of oldness and bland food. No air circulated in the cafeteria.
"Can't they feed us anything better'n this?” old, fat Helen said from across the table. She was able to feed herself and talk to me, but she was so cranky all the time. Plus she said it like I'd designed the menu, and scowled at me when she spoke, scrunched up her eyes and squinted.
"I don't pick the food Mrs. St. James. I just serve it."
"Oh,” she said, and looked like she was getting ready to rebut me, but then feeble-minded staring took its place.
"I was in the war you know,” Mr. Morgan began.
"I didn't know that, Mr. Morgan."
"Hank. Mr. Morgan is my father.” He laughed a bit at this.
"Which war were you in, Hank?"
"The last war to end all wars."
His eyes were sunken in, and I don't know why he wore glasses. I knew he couldn't see me. His shirt was indistinguishable from a bathrobe. His hands were gnarled fists, and his legs were crossed and revealed that yes, his shirt must be a bathrobe. And what was the color—faded brownish green—like the mush. And there was some of that on his bathrobe too, even though I didn't remember spilling any.
I spooned it up to him.
"Don’t give me any more of that."
I set it back down.
"This food tastes like they poisoned it.” Helen perked back up and scowled at me again.
I don't know how she could have known that, though. She hadn't taken a single bite.
"How about some of this applesauce?"
"Is that what the hell you call that?"
I looked deeply into the applesauce. It was the least noxious-looking thing there. It looked like applesauce. How do you mess up applesauce?
"My husband poisoned our dog,” Helen began.
"Now come on, Hank, you have to eat something.” I turned to my chart, ready to mark his dinner amount at 'little.' I noticed his breakfast and lunch marked that way too.
"I never had to eat anything that tasted that bad in the war."
"Dog just up and died one night after he fed him."
"I faced bullets flying, bombs exploding around me, blood and guts everywhere, but nothing that tasted this bad."
"He denied it. Denied it till the day he died. But you know,” her eyes got real squinty and she balled up her fist, still not having taken a single bite, "he never liked that dog."
"Helen, I will have to mark you as 'little' too if you don't eat something."
"What the hell does that mean?” she asked.
"I never got wounded anywhere, except right here.” He pointed toward his heart.
When I checked on him later that night, I asked him again about the war and which one was it and what was he, soldier on the ground or a perhaps a pilot? Was he in Germany? France? Did he storm the beaches at Normandy? He didn't answer, just stared off. At night a lot of them just stared.
I got him ready for bed, helped him brush his teeth and take his medicines. I did it for all the patients. I charted them and watched over them and tucked them in. I rubbed lotion on old fat Helen's back. I poured water over the mentally alert, diabetic woman's withered vagina while she peed, so it wouldn't sting. I changed a colostomy bag. And when the coast was clear, I went back to Mrs. Taylor's room and called Krishna again, just before my shift was over.
She didn't answer again. And when I hung up the phone and left for the night, I found myself wandering the streets of Oshkosh.
Downtown Oshkosh has more bars per street corner than any other town in the country, I have heard. More than any in the world except for Dublin, Ireland, I remember someone saying. I walked past them, watching the teenagers spill out of them, and the late-twenties crowd. People my age in there were usually tethered to the bar, and you didn't see much of them until close. The ones who went to the nice bars weren't to be found on Main Street. They mostly went clubbing at places like the Pioneer Inn or the Ritz. I think I must have walked the whole length of Main Street.
What was I doing here? Cruisin' for a bruisin'?
"Jane! Is that you?” I looked into the face but felt no sense of recognition.
"Yeah, it's me.” I feigned a smile.
"Well hell, where've you been? I thought you were dead!"
I still couldn’t place the face. It was pudgy and freckled. Her hair was mouse brown and too curly. She had fat hips, and dressed as if she were the hottest thing in town.
"I'm trying to remember …"
"It's Lisa.” She nodded, knowing that I couldn't remember her.
"I'm so embarrassed. I should know you, shouldn't I?"
"Well, maybe not. Everybody knows you.” She started laughing. "Hell, everybody knows who you are!"
I looked inside the smoky bar.
"Are you going home?” I asked her.
I was beginning to finally place her. She was the short, stubby, fat girl we all made fun of. She was the girl who sat stunned in her car that night. She gaped at me with a look on her face that said, "You've got to be kidding."
***
"What?” I say, honestly forgetting that I am wearing black and white checked shorts, a purse over my shoulder, and no top.
“I’ll give you a quarter to walk naked from here to High Street,” Ziggy had dared us. Well, who could say no to a deal like that?
Ziggy rides along beside us on a ten-speed bike, fully clothed in his famous, tattered jeans and long-sleeved, white, button-down, Oxford shirt. He is on summer break, home from his Ivy League college.
"Nice tits, Gay!"
"What the hell does he mean by that?” she yells, ready to fight.
Gay wears boy shirts and button-down, bowling shirts, and dresses like a boy all the time and hell, we thought she was a boy. Perhaps we had all been in denial and refused to see them. We had just been humoring her. We clearly see now what she’s been hiding all along.
She’s no boy. All of us stare at them. All of us including pudgy, freckle-face Lisa, who has pulled up in her car and popped her eyes open says, “What the hell are you doing?”
We all had obviously forgotten what we were doing, because all three of us stand there puzzled as to why Lisa seems so shocked.
"Well … you're naked!” she exclaims.
Ziggy had ridden a block ahead of us, hiding fits of laughter.
We stand there confused, and then look down at ourselves. Krishna doesn’t, though. She ambles over to a pho
ne pole and is leaning against it, still somehow managing to be smoking that mandatory clove cig. How was she still carrying her purse, or one of her fancy cases? Perhaps it mysteriously floats beside her. She stumbles and steps off the curb and bends over laughing, and falls into the grass and lies there holding her dark-skinned, naked sides, complaining, "My stomach hurts, I can't breathe, I can't stop laughing." Then she eventually gets up, sometime after we had left her there, and hovers alongside us like a wayward bee, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind, sometimes fallen again, giggling on some stranger’s terrace.
Meanwhile, Gay and I walk with purpose. Eyes set straight ahead, bound and determined to get our quarters. The night grew quiet and peaceful, punctuated only with crickets and, “What the hell's wrong with my tits?"
***
"No, I'm going back in. I just came out here to smoke a cigarette."
"What, there's no smoking in there?” I asked, looking inside at the smoke that was so thick you could barely see customers.
"No, there is. You going in?"
I walked into the void of smoke, colored lights, blaring music, and intoxication. I could see no faces. Oh wait, yes I could. One or two bleary-eyed stares out of the darkness.
I sat on a stool at the bar. I could think of nothing else to do.
The bartender came over and stared expectantly, annoyed.
"Um …” I knew I had to order something. A soft drink would just annoy him further. "Vodka gimlet?” That’s Krishna's favorite drink.
I would just sit and fondle it with my forefingers, slide them around the rim suggestively. That way I would have somewhere to belong, somewhere I could sit and fit in and be part of. I hadn't done that in so long. I could sit at the edge of the bar like the edge of a pool. Feet in, but I don't have to swim.
"You gonna drink that thing or just sit and stare at it?” I looked over. It was one of those guys you have to talk to because they insist on talking to you and staring.
"Mm.” I laughed. "I suppose so."
I took one sip to show I would. There. You happy now, asshole?
But instead I smiled and looked coy.
7
How I ended up on the water with him—me holding sandy oars in tight hands and feeling the cold, gritty metal against my butt under the wet, dirty cutoffs, feeling the hard, cold ridges of the side of the boat—is anybody's guess. But I did.
The stupid sap across from me looked ready to vomit into the lake. His dirty-blond mustache made me sick. He looked … ordinary.
What I had let him do on the island out in the middle of the dark lake was a dim, forgettable memory already: the mosquito bites on my ass and the sand and dirt up my back the only evidence. I wished he would just jump in the water and drown, but I think it was his boat.
At least he wasn't talking to me anymore. He looked ready to pass out. He was rowing, but I don't think we were rowing in the right direction. I don't even think we were rowing in unison. After a while we both gave up; he, lost in his silent stupor, sitting far enough across from me that I didn't have to look at him. I was free to just stare into the water.
It was right around here, I think.
Never trust that the ice will hold, hadn't we heard that a million times?
It wasn't such a big deal, really. Every year there were at least two drownings in the summer, and even more in the winter from idiots driving on the ice.
"Did you see that thing in the paper?" I shouted across the boat to him.
"Wha-?" He stared at me with that passed-out, drunken look of confusion.
"Never mind."
I stared into the water.
***
We take turns playing songs. For every charming Beatles love song I play, she plays a randy Rolling Stones sex song. It is the mistake I made, when I let her trick me into going first.
I remember going back and forth to the kitchen for Krishna's brother's Long Island Iced teas, again and again—after seven I lose count.
Krishna grabs the microphone and screams, "I was drowned; I was washed up and left for dead!”
She stands up and screams in my face along to the loud, insistent, driving, rhythm of “Jumping Jack Flash.”
"Some challenge on the drums—Charlie Watts could just sleep through it," Ziggy'd once said, mocking the simplistic beat of his favorite song.
I remember something had happened that day. For some reason I was upset.
I know it wasn’t just the fact that she kept winning the contest. Yet, I certainly did feel the rage building when, after every lighthearted love song, she played something jaded. I hadn’t expected this. I should have. After the innocent “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” she played “Let's Spend The Night Together.” After “Let It Be,” she snickered and played “Let It Bleed.” She had the whole damn room laughing hysterically.
I was laughing too, of course; it was all fun and games, though for some reason this is when things began to change inside my mind and body. I was becoming unreasonably angry. And, coincidentally, it was also long after I'd lost track of how many Long Island Iced teas I'd had.
But then there was a moment when I got so angry and grabbed the keys. But something else happened at that same time. Somebody else was angry—somebody who hadn’t been there at the party. It was all jumbled together.
"Oh, she can't drive…”
"I'm sick. I'm really sick. I'm throwing up all over the place. You want me to come in to work like that?”
I barely even hold the phone to my ear.
There was a deep sigh on the other end of the phone and then a resigned, "Okay. You need to call and find a replacement, then, from your list."
"You've got to be kidding.” I dropped the phone over the cradle but it didn't hang up; it just sort of sat there on top of it, and after a while it began to make that ugly, loud, beeping noise that sounded like such a dire emergency when in reality all it meant was that the phone was off the hook. It barely even caused me to open my eyes.
I had the dry heaves every fifteen minutes. Hugging the porcelain was comforting. It felt cool and soothing against my wretchedness, like something holy and merciful.
"I think I'm going to die,” I said to the 911 operator.
"Ma'am, what you have is a really bad hangover."
"I can't stop throwing up."
"You're not going to die."
"Maybe I have alcohol poisoning though.” I breathed heavy into the phone. I thought I might throw up into it. Then maybe they'd believe me.
"Don't drink any water; you'll just throw that up. Chew some ice cubes."
I was still talking when they hung up.
I was unconscious for the rest of the day. I missed my therapy appointment, and was unable to even take the call from Miriam wondering where I was.
My mom poured ice water on me at one point, and all I did was give her a glazed stare. She huffed out of the room and slammed the door, saying something about to hell with me. Miriam called again later that evening, and this time I was able to take the call.
We scheduled an emergency appointment for 7:00 that evening. I showered, just sat on the tub floor and let the hot water run on my back, and then I'd tilt up my face and let it run on my forehead. It was soothing.
I kept drinking glass after glass of tomato juice. I had begged and begged my mom to go and get me some, and when she refused, I threatened to quit my job. That made her go.
Oh don't look at me like that. I was sick as a dog and it was the least she could do. Something anybody would do for another person, and she just hated me.
My dad would have done it for me no problem, but he wasn't home.
I sat across from her at the rippled, glass table and clanked my glass down hard at one point. I had asked her to sit there or you can be sure she wouldn't have. I wanted to talk to somebody, and it had to be her. But she gave me the same cold, indifferent stare, and looked as if she were afraid to move.
"It's one day. I'm sick. People do get sick you know."
; She sat, hands folded in lap.
"What are you so angry about?" I asked her.
She pursed her lips in the face she usually saved for angry vacuuming. If vacuums had been invented two hundred years before, that's what witches would have been stereotyped with, and I understood the broom connection better.
Once when she had been vacuuming with that particular angry face on, Krishna and Gay were passed out on my living-room floor. I can't remember where I fell, but wherever it was, I remained there till I heard the loud, angry whirring. When I opened my eyes, I saw her actually trying to vacuum up my friends. She just kept banging into one of them till they got up and hightailed it into my bedroom, which sectioned off to the side. Gay ran laughing, junk flying toward her, including an old-fashioned film projector that barely missed her head. It was an old thing my dad had let us use the night before to watch silent Bela Lugosi movies.
The vacuum had then continued banging into the door: bang, bang, bang. I guess she had a problem with us, and our party.
"Well if it makes you feel any better, I feel terrible about myself,” I finally said.
"No, that doesn't make me feel better," my mom said.
"Look, I just don't want to make a big deal about this. I know you think I'm going to … I don't know what … look I'm trying to …” I faltered. "I have a therapy appointment later today."
"Okay, well that's good,” she said, with an upturn on the word good making it sound vaguely like a question.
"Did you see the newspaper?” I asked her.
She shrugged. "What about it?"
"Nothing."
"What time is your therapy tonight?"
"It's in about two hours."
The Oshkosh Trilogy 01 - The Dark Lake Page 4