Crow Jazz

by Linda Rogers

  From that moment, everything changed. We planted and weeded. The Dees, God’s gaga gardeners, got high on flowers. When the days got shorter, we had a great Indian summer and the petunias, marguerites, geraniums and pansies I got with the five-finger discount sailed into fall with all their flags flying.

  Most days, the ladies stayed outside in Canada and fussed over their plants. When it rained, Daisy cranked up her headset and danced in the dayroom, and they boogied with her, waving their watering cans. Could’ve been a zombie jamboree.

  “You believe in zombies?” I asked Matt.

  “I believe everything I see, brother.”

  “I think there is life after death.”

  “You might be right.”

  “Maybe reincarnation. My mother tells me I’m going to come back as a cockroach.”

  “Could be worse.” He moved off with his smooth smile and a basket of squeezie balls for arthritis exercises, leaving me with my cranky criminal, wondering what worse might be.

  “You shouldn’t have cut my hair, Daisy. It’s a boundary violation. I have an oc problem: No wrinkles in my bed and every hair in place.” I patted my head to make the point.

  She wasn’t listening, and her eyes were one hundred percent pupil, black holes of forgetfulness you wouldn’t want to fall into. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she’d had a bad dose. Just when I peered into the void, she reached right in my pocket and clawed back the scissors. Then she took off for Canada.

  I got up real slow. I was afraid to run after her in case she tripped and fell on the blades. Freaky samurai. Read the headline, “Ginger stalks sweet old lady with scissors.”

  While I was walking on eggs, the Dees lined up at the window. It was lunchtime, but they were more interested in watching Daisy snip. Who cared if the soup got cold? By the time I tiptoed close enough to hear what she was saying, she’d ripped off half the petals, “He loves me/He loves me not.”

  “Give me the scissors, please.” I put my hand out.

  “He loves me not.” She shouted, “Off with their heads,” and I didn’t know what to do. Daisy was fully armed, and I was scared to death she was going to hurt herself. Snip. Snip. Petals fell like infantry.

  At the picture windows, the Dees clapped and cheered, their mouths and eyes as blank and psycho as the characters in Japanese comics. This gave her more energy. She was a human smart bomb, taking everything down.

  “Please.”

  “Party’s over,” Matt said. He came up so quietly behind her, his white hospital shoes could’ve been moccasins.

  “You’re damn right.” Daisy turned, handed over her weapon of mass destruction and announced, “Time for a time-out.”

  Matt put her hand in the crook of his elbow and guided her down the hall, singing, “Daisy, Daisy, Give me your answer do,” but she wasn’t having any of it. She stuck out her foot and delivered all two hundred pounds of Matt meat straight to the floor. He didn’t see it coming. The Dees, afraid of reprisals, I guess, an extra dose of the prune goo, poo on a spoon, after lunch, slunk toward the dining room, and I stayed put.

  “Give her time,” Matt said when he came back, limping slightly but looking brave. “They’re serving shrimp salad sandwiches with the soup. She loves shrimp day.”

  I knew what he meant. Like a dog, Daisy can smell chocolate in my pocket.

  “OK. I’ll give it a couple of days.” It was time for me to shuffle off to the candy store. Daisy’d hid a twenty in my book before she cut me. The Dees aren’t supposed to give us tips, but it wasn’t for me, not all of it. She rewards me for bringing in contraband. Daisy has a sweet tooth, but she isn’t allowed candy because of the diabetes. Heck, she’s ninety. Why not die happy with a wad of toffee stuck to your false teeth?

  Reprisal time, I got high on her dime and ate most of the candy myself, and now, after waiting three days, I’m dropping in with a bag of gummy bears and a new library book, The Edge of Physics, a journey to Earth’s extremes to unlock the secrets of the universe. That should challenge both of us. I can’t even pronounce the writer’s last name.

  Zippety doo dah, it’s an awesome morning. When I punch in my numbers and tiptoe into the dayroom (I was going to come up behind her and put my hands over her eyes), Daisy’s nowhere to be seen. I look out the window at Canada, and she isn’t there either. There are no new faces on the flowers. It looks like the grim reaper’s been out there.

  “Where’s Daisy?” I ask, but the Dementia Ladies give me their who-are-you looks. I undertake a search.

  She’s in her room. Matt is sitting beside her bed, one of her manicured hands in his brown one, the other gripping the keepsake she took without permission.

  “It’s closing time,” he says. “Daisy’s decided.” He says this like she still gets to and lets me take it all in for a minute: the stuffed animals, the dead violets, the black-and-white photos on her table and Our Lady of the Deadheads herself lying there quiet and pale.

  “She got into bed after you left the other day, and she’s refusing to eat or drink. Not your fault. This is what they do when they’re done.”

  Then we’re quiet. I hear rubber soles in the hall and shallow breathing. The nurses come by and take her pulse. One of them shows me the blood pooling at her knees, and I notice her toenails are painted bright pink. Day turns into night. After forever, I hear Daisy go “Oh!” letting go of a surprised little puff of air, and Matt stands up.

  “Time’s up,” he says, stretching, watching with me as her fingers stiffen around the curl she stole.

  He gives me a big man hug and says, “Her son was a redhead, Darling Boy.”

  DEADHEAD: WHAT GOES AROUND

  She’s heavy because she’s not helping, her eyes focused beyond the garden, the blossoming Japanese cherries, the camellias and snowdrops poking their heads up, dear companions, tired old bulbs, those resilient ladies past dissembling, Botox and dye, which she would notice if she were paying attention.

  “Way past her stale date,” her older one, twin born first, turns her face, but not enough, and mutters because she is deaf, but not so deaf she can’t read lips.

  “Lips” is a trigger. She experiences a tremour in the earthquake zone.

  It’s her birthday, and she can safely predict they have brought the usual beautifully wrapped gifts, probably scarves, socks or gloves, but what she really wants is to get laid, probably not by their angel-faced gaily attentive Hispanic waiter, nor any of her co-resident foggy old men with their John Henrys sauntering out of the nether plackets in their pajamas, sometimes shooting to attention when a nurse bends over, when they catch their scent, and certainly not by a banana. Do not, daughters of Satan, order me a banana split and giggle. Of course, they won’t; this is a proper restaurant.

  She’s looking past the grunting team lifting her out of her wheelchair and onto her favourite bench on the terrace facing the sea, sailboats, the San Juan Islands, where her grandmother’s rum-running coolies, clandestine pirates, delivered opium then whiskey during the Prohibition.

  It’s too predictable. They will order for her: soup, crab bisque, easy to swallow, and crème caramel. She does not want crème caramel. Yes, it has been her favourite; the egg is a perfect shape, it’s function oval, made for simple delivery, so handy the way the cloaca turns inside out and keeps it clean. Beautiful. She admires hens for everything but their congress with roosters. That is humiliating, especially now that a rooster has taken over the free world.

  One interesting fact that she knows and her daughters might not is that roosters do not have penises. Just little holes. They grab, line up the holes and squirt. No please, no thank you, no handshake.

  She won’t touch her dessert today, and her daughters will fuss. They will fill the spoon and poke it in her mouth; and she will keep her mouth shut. Tight. She keeps up her Kegel exercises, both ends, both velvet creases sharp.

  The crab bisque she will eat. And when she lifts the shaking spoon to her lips, they will watch. They will gi
ve one another the look, almost the eye roll they perfected as teenagers. Look what’s happening. We’ll have to send that lovely dress to the dry cleaners….again. Sigh.

  The girls take all her laundry home. There’s pilfering at the home, and voilà, one wash and a Simon Chang turns into MADE IN TAIWAN. The dementia club laundry has ruined her 800 thread count Egyptian sheets and a number of pleated scarves. DO NOT LAUNDER ANYTHING, one daughter left the note on her closet door after taking down a favourite drawing of Besus, the crucified Easter rabbit, by her great-grand-niece, replacing it with the laundry notice and DRESS (not please, just “Dress, capitol D”) MOTHER IN THE CLOTHES WE LEAVE ON THE HANGER. Nothing else. Every day is perfectly coordinated: slacks, blouse, sweater and scarf, all from a soft garden palette, dusty rose with the palest greens, olive and aubergine, blue and gold. God help her mix-and-match nurse’s aide, a Filipina putting several children through med school.

  She is their doll. They dress her up, give her manicures, feed her and then abandon her to medicated sleep. It is lovely when they tiptoe away. She doesn’t tell them about her dreams, about the delicate arousals, men she has known and imagined, suppressed moans. That is what she keeps for herself. Private. None of their damn business.

  They order martinis for themselves. Doubles, three olives. The olives are their food. “We would like a cup of the crab bisque and a custard for dessert,” her eldest daughter by twenty-three minutes tells the waiter, her aha moment. “We.” They are so predictable. The waiter winks at her, and she understands that he gets it. He too may be in some sort of prison. What for, maybe the crime of being gay or not getting the part in the television series, or not being helped through school by a bed-making, diaper-changing mother?

  She likes him. He is attractive in a millennial metro-sexual biracial way, helpful with a touch of irony, an alluring accent and no sycophancy. She will slip him a bill when they look away, if they do look away. Her girls have the focus and ferocity of eagles circling fields teeming with mice. They dislike it when she rewards people for kindness, staff and street people who wish her a good day, a little flirtation, her pleasure. She has a stack of twenties stashed in her bra.

  What she sees in the foreground now is something like that, the hotel garden, circles of Hell on Earth, eggs, yes, half-naked women by the glass-covered pool, tempting men: pool cleaners, dreamers, serpents, garden snakes and toads, the old story, leering oligarchs, their chest hair glittering with gold man-chains.

  Above and beyond is the beckoning tunnel, clouds, bright light, that blazing star, Lucifer, and seagulls singing, ocean filling up with human abuse, the bodies of discarded coolies and plastic bags. She lowers her glasses for a moment, watches the hard edges smooth out, cloud on cloud, light on light, a perfect platform for a diabolical angel, the one who might fuck her on the way out, or in.

  “The pool is full of piss,” she says, settled now, oily old man pee. “They never admit it. Everyone does it.” Her daughters smirk. They know about the diapers, of course they do, the bitches. They have no idea how hard she works to avoid accidents, the Kegels, morning, afternoon and night.

  She loves these bitches. Or she did. Once they were babies, adorable sausages with pinched wrists and dimpled elbows, crushable fairies in party dresses with layers and layers of ruffles, but that is over. Now she’s working through the third stage of grief, letting them go. Phase one she almost missed, making excuses for the lapses in respect, the missed appointments punctuated by regular appeals for financial assistance, the houses, the holidays, the divorces. How long did it take to see the insides of those houses, always under renovation, not appropriate for entertaining, not even a cup of tea?

  Stage two was the worst, giving up her house, her car, her financial freedom, all because she occasionally forgot to turn off a tap or the stove. Everyone makes mistakes now and then. What is a mistake or two compared to a life sentence? Let the punishment fit the crime. She will never adjust to the loss of freedom, her studio, the smell of paint, and incarceration in the pink prison, smooth food, pureed vegetables, drinks with a straw and sandwiches with the crust cut off. The crust is the best part, for God’s sake. It makes your hair curl.

  “Your glasses, Mum,” Number Two tries to rescue them and almost puts her finger in her eye.

  “I’m having an impressionist moment,” she says, not angrily but firm enough. She likes the colours running together, her theory of the universe, everything indivisible, one. Three cheers for myopia.

  “No walls,” Number One says, agreeably. They agree, in principle. One is a follower of the Dalai Lama. Two is more practical, more attached to the phenomenal world by virtue of coming into it almost a half hour later, and always worried she has missed something.

  The drinks have come: two martinis with three olives and a glass of water floating a forlorn lemon slice. No straw though. It’s her birthday.

  “I would like a martini too.”

  “Oh Mum,” Two says, “Remember the last time?”

  “Of course not. I have pre-dementia. Remember? You made it up to get power of attorney.” In fact, she is an attorney. One is a photographer, and that should be common ground, but obviously isn’t. Her statement, “I’m not an artist. It’s just a living,” the stake in her heart.

  “Last time, Mum, you asked the waiter if he was going to serve sex on a platter.”

  “Did I? How adorable. Was he pleased?”

  “No, he was amused, but definitely not into it. Also you yelled. The whole restaurant stopped dead.”

  “Not the whole restaurant, surely? We always sit on the terrace. That is only PART of the restaurant.”

  “The whole terrace.”

  “How embarrassing for you.”

  “Well, you are not getting one this time.” She closes her fists with the thumb sticking up and holds them close to her side. That began when she was two. There is a certain advantage to being an elder. Elders remember everything from before, until they don’t. And then it hardly matters.

  “Would you like your gifts before or after you eat?” One lurches after a distraction.

  “After.” She reminds herself “gift” means poison in German.

  She would like to take out her hearing aids and just watch the two of them opening and closing their mouths, obsessively checking their phones.

  “It’s like watching fish in a tank,” she says.

  “What?” Unison.

  “Deafness,” she says. “It’s like being in space or under the sea.” She is, if anything, faster than they are, a real improviser. Their mouths hang open. She could swim right into them.

  “Here’s your soup, Mum. Two more martinis please.”

  “Three.”

  “Two.”

  Their waiter falters and smiles. “Three,” he says, exploding the adorable folds in his cheeks where the fairies kissed him.

  “You are an angel.”

  “That is my name.”

  Yes, she can read the embroidery on his shirt, but he says, “On Hell,” and that pleases her. That fits the theme of her day.

  “I like your dimples, On Hell,” she says as he walks away in the shoes of the fisherman.

  “What’s my name,” Two asks, hungrily, she thinks.

  “Does it matter?”

  “She’s losing it.” One agrees.

  “It’s my birthday,” and, she taps one of the four hands lunging at her spoon, “I will feed myself.”

  The soup is very good, tender scallops and baby clams in a creamed potato and oyster base. Yum! The focaccia is good too, just the right amount of rosemary, not overwhelming. Nothing is overwhelming.

  “Dessert is on the house for the birthday senorita,” On Hell, her Hispanic prospect, says, serving their drinks. Hers has seven olives, one she assumes for each angel of the apocalypse, and is in a bigger glass. Good boy. She could take a bath in that glass.

  “I don’t want dessert,” she says, “unless you have a bag of Cheetos and a match.”

&nbs
p; “Been there, done that,” he says in his charming accent, exposing his dimples again. “Pow!” Maybe that is the real reason why he left home and the mother who can’t help him become a neurosurgeon, a trail of arson, blowing up overprivileged daughters. She finds that possibility strangely erotic.

  And they laugh. Or he does. And she does, confirming On Hell is her angel of light.

  Daughter One furiously inhales her martini and begins to choke.

  On Hell moves to save her with the Heimlich, a chance to practice.

  “Leave her,” she snaps, watching One’s face turn blue and then Two, at long last, thumping her back until she spits up the olive.

  “You two should be in a rest home. Where are my presents before you are too senile to remember where you put them?”

  “Mum, you are supposed to be happy. It’s your birthday.”

  “I am happy.”

  “What’s with the Cheetos?” Two asks, hauling something out of her purse.

  “It’s political,” she answers.” Cheetos are code for anarchy. They’re made of petroleum, and they blow up.”

  “So you want to blow us up?”

  “Not really. I just like to start fires.”

  “As in unfriending every Trump supporter on Facebook, even the ones you’ve known since the Stone Age?”

  “And the Bernies. Alt Right, Alt Left, no difference. It’s all about oil, but somehow it boiled down to misogyny.”

  “So what does that have to do with us, right here, right now?”

  “I am not the enemy. You are supposed to be my allies.”

  “Who said we weren’t?” Two’s eyes the colour of sage at sunrise fill with tears. Two is the daughter of what used to be called miscegenation, a sensational mix of Northern European and East African. One is the spawn of an Irish poet. It took her no time at all to figure that out. Although born twenty-three minutes apart, they were conceived on separate occasions. Maybe today she will tell them exactly how it happened and dispel their misguided belief that they were, contrary to her assertions, adopted separately.