Shaken and Stirred

by Joan Opyr

  “We all tried to tell him,” Nana said, “but he would never listen to anyone. I said, ‘Hunter, if you keep drinking, you’ll wind up dead in a ditch.’ But he knew better. He said we were crazy. One time . . .”

  “Abby knows all of this, Nana. The only part of my life she’s missed was that locked in the playpen bit.”

  “Don’t you wonder if alcoholism is an allergy, like they say? Do you know anything about that, Abby? You’re a nurse, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know anything about it, I’m af raid.”

  “I think it’s a form of narcissism,” my mother said. “It’s about wanting to be the center of attention. No one could be sick in our house, except him. I remember one time when I had bronchitis. He laid down on the floor next to my bed and wheezed louder than I did. It was ridiculous.”

  “Have you thought any about the funeral arrangements?” Nana asked. “We could ask my preacher. He’s such a nice man.”

  My mother sighed. “I don’t know. I suppose we might could.”

  “Do we have to talk about this in the Kanki?” I said. Everyone looked at me as if I’d ordered a second martini. “It’s just . . . I don’t know. He’s not dead yet, and here we are.” I pointed to the station next to us, where the chef’s show had just started. “That guy is balancing an egg on a spatula, and we’re talking about Hunter’s funeral. And besides, what would your preacher say about him? Hunter never went to church. He said God was a son of a bitch.”

  “Wash your mouth out with soap,” Nana said.

  “You know what he thought of God,” I continued. “I don’t want to hear a sermon from someone who didn’t even know him. Who would do the eulogy? What would they say?”

  “He liked wine, women, and song?” my mother suggested.

  “He liked beer, whores, and the Wurlitzer organ.”

  “We couldn’t say that,” my mother agreed. “You can’t tell the truth at a funeral.”

  “Well, we have to do something,” Nana said. “He had a lot of friends.”

  “Most of whom are dead.”

  “A lot of them are doing just fine. And the people he worked with—they’ll be expecting something,” she went on. “And his family. Dot and Lucy and Allard . . .”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, we don’t have to have Lucy, do we? And Nancy and Jake and their nasty little weasel children.”

  “Don’t forget Fred,” my mother said. “I suppose someone will have to get him out of the nursing home in Selma. Maybe Dot can do that. Or Linda.” She giggled. “Definitely Linda, having to show up there and tell everyone that Fred’s her uncle.”

  Abby cleared her throat. “This is none of my business,” she said, “but you might want to call a funeral home. They could take care of the arrangements for you. You’d just need to give them a general idea of what you want.”

  “He wants to be cremated,” my mother said. “He left a note somewhere about it. I found it in his papers when we emptied out the trailer. It was in a strong box along with his will.”

  “Hunter had a will?”

  “Yes. He wrote it a few years before he ran off with Jean. I thought he’d probably changed it, but there wasn’t anything more recent. He left you and me everything.”

  “And what about Nana? If they were still married when he wrote it . . .”lay

  “I had everything I wanted,” Nana said. “I got the house after the first divorce, and I kept it in my name, even after we remarried.”

  “I didn’t know that. I’ll bet he didn’t like it.”

  “He said something to me one time, but I set him straight, and he never said another word about it.”

  I stared at her in amazement. Nana could be stubborn, but I’d never known her to stand up to my grandfather so firmly that he backed down.

  “I had no intention of giving him back his half of the house,” she said. “I had to fight for it the first time. He wanted to sell it out from under me and buy something nice for him and that little miss he married. Once bitten, twice shy is what I say. I learned my lesson.”

  Abby brought us back to the point. “Why don’t Poppy and I call around to funeral homes tomorrow morning?”

  “Would you?” My mother looked relieved. “That would be so nice of you, Abby. I’ve been worried about what to do. I just hate this sort of thing.”

  “We’ll take care of it,” Abby said. “We’ll see what’s available and find out what your options are.”

  “And what it costs,” said my mother.

  I opened my mouth to say I didn’t care what it cost. Abby put her hand on my leg again. She shook her head slightly.

  “Of course,” she said. “That’s certainly important, although since he’s being cremated, I don’t think it’ll be too outrageous.”

  “He has a five thousand dollar burial policy,” my mother said. “That’s it. We had to cash out every one of his life insurance policies and use up all but ten thousand dollars of his savings when he went into the nursing home. We had to spend his assets before the government would pay for anything. It doesn’t seem right, does it? But I didn’t know how to work the system.”

  Ordinarily, this would be the point where Nana said, “Well, some do. The blacks know how to get all of the money. They know how to work it.” I’d heard her say it a dozen times, whenever my mother told the story of having to spend Hunter’s savings. It was an automatic response, like the dogs drooling when Pavlov rang his bell. I felt myself tensing up.

  “Brace yourself,” I whispered to Abby.

  Nana pursed her lips. “I wonder what’s in this sauce,” she said, gazing at the again empty container. “It’s a little bit sweet, isn’t it? I believe I could drink it with a straw.”

  Hunter died while we sat in the Kanki Japanese Steak House, watching the chef at the next station flip the egg he’d balanced on his spatula into his hat.

  That was my estimate of the time, anyway. When we left the restaurant, my mother suggested we stop by the hospital.

  “I have a funny feeling,” she said. “I think we’d better check.”

  We got to the hospital just after ten. One look at the face of the nurse on duty and I knew. Abby knew, too. She reached out and took my hand.

  “Are you Mr. Bartholomew’s family?” the nurse asked. He was a short, fat man with a neat black goatee.

  “Yes,” my mother said. “His room is dark and the monitor over the door—you’ve turned it off.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Mr. Bartholomew died about an hour ago. We called you at home, but there was no answer.”

  “We went to dinner,” my mother said. She shook her head. “What should I do?”

  Abby stepped forward. “You should go see him, Ms. Koslowski. All of you, Poppy, Ms. Bartholomew—go be with him. I’ll stay here and talk to . . .” She glanced at the nurse’s nametag. “Steve. Y’all take as long as you need.”

  “No. I’ll stay with you,” I said.

  Abby looked at me carefully, assessing. “Okay.”

  When my mother and Nana had gone in, Abby turned to Steve. “We haven’t made any arrangements yet. We’re going to call around to funeral homes tomorrow morning. We’ll have one of them pick him up as soon as possible.”

  “Okay,” he said, and, to me, “I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks.”

  Abby and I stood outside the door. I could hear my mother and Nana inside, talking. I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to go in?” Abby asked. “You could wait until your mother and grandmother came out and go in by yourself.”

  “No. I don’t want to see him like this.”

  “Okay.”

  “He’d be pissed that we were at the Kanki.”

  “From what you’ve told me, I think he probably would.”

  “He’d have wanted a death bed vigil. He’d want the world to stop turning.”

  “It stops turning one person at a time,” she said.

  “As soon as we�
��ve dropped Mama and Nana back at the house, I want to go for a walk. Is that all right with you?”

  “Sure. Where would you like to go?”

  “Shelley Lake.”

  She frowned. “It’s dark,” she said.

  “We always walk there in the dark, Abby. It’s a tradition.”

  She sighed resignedly. “Why don’t we ask your grandmother if we can borrow a flashlight? I’ve reached the age now where I’d like to make our traditions a little safer.”

  Abby had never been enthusiastic about any of my girlfriends. She liked Susan “well enough,” as she put it, and one or two others also fell into this category. Most she merely tolerated, and the rest she actively despised. Not that she was ever rude to any of them; she was just rude on the subject of them. She mocked their charms and berated my tastes. She shook her head or rolled her eyes and, invariably, we both agreed that the relationship wasn’t serious and that I needed to figure out just what it was that I wanted.

  I depended on Abby’s disapproval. It ensured that I’d never commit to anyone else. No more Susans, just safe Susan look-alikes. Abby would be the great constant in my life, and I’d be content with that. The only thing that could have come between us was Rosalyn. It never occurred to me that I might come between them, not until my grandfather had to be involuntarily committed to Dorothea Dix Hospital.

  Two years after Jean died, he was still living in the trailer they’d shared. Fred had moved into the trailer directly across the road, a run-down silver Airstream that looked like a relic from the Apollo space program. Fred wasn’t old enough to retire, but he’d been unable to hang onto his job at Bloom’s after Hunter left. He took a series of low-paying jobs—attendant at a car wash, janitor for a company that sold restaurant supplies—and was fired in turn from each and every one. He carried on in this fashion until Miss Agnes died. The family farm was sold and the proceeds were divided more or less evenly among all of her children. Fred took his thirty thousand dollars and disappeared on the bender of a lifetime. By the time Hunter located him two months later, he was down to exactly nine thousand five hundred. Under pressure from my grandfather, he used it to buy the Airstream, and he became the trailer park’s maintenance man. He mowed grass, trimmed hedges, and reported park violations to the management, stuff like abandoned cars or residents allowing their dogs to run loose.

  It was Fred who called my mother the night Hunter slipped off the deep end. By that time, my grandfather’s drinking had gone unchecked for seven years. He and Jean were rarely sober, and once she was gone, the occasions when he was unimpaired disappeared altogether. I stopped checking on him or answering his phone calls. So did my mother. There was no living with what he’d become.

  Fred intervened only because my grandfather tried to kill him. The position of trailer park maintenance man didn’t pay especially well, so Fred supplemented his income by noticing when residents were absent or inattentive and helping himself to a few of their belongings. He stole the occasional lawnmower or television set and sold it down at the pawn shop. One night, my grandfather caught him out in the shed stealing his lawnmower. Hunter went back inside, loaded up his shotgun, and blew half a dozen holes in Fred’s Airstream. He missed Fred, but only just.

  The police were called, and they found Hunter sitting in the middle of his living room. He’d drunk two bottles of Aqua Velva aftershave and taken apart a plastic razor, using the blade to slash his wrists. The police called an ambulance, Fred called my mother, and she called me.

  I called Abby. She and Rosalyn were moving to Cleveland, Ohio the next day, and I was due to move to Columbus exactly one week after that. When I told her what had happened, she said she’d be right over. We went together to the emergency room. She waited in the lobby while my mother and I consulted with the ER physician. The commitment wasn’t an easy process, and Abby decided that she’d stay the extra week and drive up to Ohio with me. She said Rosalyn didn’t need her—Case Western was paying for her relocation, and they’d hired professional movers to transport their stuff—and Vivian was planning to drive up with them to see them settled into their new apartment. Rosalyn and Vivian could go, and Abby would stay.

  It all made perfect sense. Abby went back to Chapel Hill the next morning to pack a suitcase, and she met me at my apartment that afternoon. As soon as she stepped in the door, I could see she’d been crying.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “It’s nothing. Are you ready? You said you’d meet your mother there at three.”

  “We’ve got time. What’s the matter?”

  I took her suitcase and made her sit down on the couch. She wouldn’t tell me what it was for a long time. I had to guess.

  “Rosalyn?” I said finally. I’d exhausted all of the obvious choices—death, illness, and catastrophe.

  “She has a problem with you,” Abby said. “She has a problem with us. She always has. I know, she hides it well, and she likes you, she really does. But . . .” she sighed and looked away. “Rosalyn’s not perfect. Sometimes she’s jealous.”

  “Abby . . . why? You love her. She knows that. We’ve been friends for a long time, but I don’t flatter myself. If she gave you an ultimatum, I know who you’d pick. That’s how it should be.”

  “Maybe that’s how it should be,” she said. “But that’s not how it’s going to be.” She looked up then and her eyes were bright. “She’ll never make me choose because I won’t stand for it. I won’t be controlled, not by anyone. Not because they love me or because I love them. I was my own woman before I met Rosalyn Bodie, and I’m my own woman now.”

  “I can’t do this,” I said. “Abby, go back. I can take care of this problem on my own. I shouldn’t have called you in the first place. I panicked. A suicide attempt . . .”

  “Listen to me.” She took my face between her hands and held it firmly. “You should always call me because I always want to be able to call you. I rely on you. You’ve never let me down. I’m not going to let you down now. Rosalyn has got to understand that this is who I am. If she can’t accept that, then she doesn’t want me, not the real me. Lovers change. Sometimes, they walk out on you.”

  “You learned that from me,” I observed dryly.

  She let go of me and sat back. “I learned that from my aunt Pearl, and Kim DiMarco, and Rosalyn herself. Do you know how many women she’s loved and lost? Until I came along, she was worse than you.”

  “Rosalyn?”

  “Rosalyn. It’s not that I don’t trust her; I do. And I love her. But I need you, too. We’ll work it out. It was just an argument, and we’ve had plenty of those before. Don’t look like that—they weren’t all about you.”

  “Thanks. I feel so much better.”

  “That’s nice. You’re supposed to be making me feel better.”

  I stood up and held out my hand. “Come on,” I said, pulling her up. “We’ve got half an hour to spare before we have to put my grandfather in the booby hatch. Let’s go to the Char-grill. I’ll buy you a Hamburger Steak and a strawberry shake.”

  “Excellent idea, but first, I want to do this.” She wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled me close. I held her tightly for a moment, and then we both pulled away.

  “What was that for?” I asked.

  “It’s been about eight years since the last time I hugged you. I thought you were due.”

  “If you’re this stingy with Rosalyn, no wonder she’s pissed.”

  “Asshole,” she laughed. “The shit I go through for a damn crazy white girl.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The flashlight Nana loaned us was a tiny penlight she kept in her pocketbook. Every other flashlight in the house—and there were six of them—had dead batteries. It took us half an hour to establish that none of them worked and another fifteen minutes to convince her that I wasn’t going to lose her penlight.

  She said, “I keep that in my purse in case we get home after dark and someone has unscrewed the porch light.”

&n
bsp; “Why would anyone unscrew the porch light?”

  “Because,” she said knowingly. “You don’t know what all is out there.”

  “That is so paranoid.”

  “You think you know everything, but you don’t live here. There are gangs roaming the streets at all hours of the night. Robbers, rapists. A woman just over on Glascock Street had her house broken into not three weeks ago. She was there all by herself and . . .”

  I interrupted. “I won’t lose your penlight. If I break it, I’ll buy you a new one. In fact, as soon as the Wal-Mart opens tomorrow morning, I’ll buy you six brand new flashlights. I’ll buy you a lifetime’s supply of batteries. I’ll buy you a burglar alarm and a stun gun. Just let me borrow that damn penlight for tonight.”

  “I don’t know why in the world you want to go to Shelley Lake,” she said. “Not in the dark. You don’t know who you’re going to run up on out there, a killer, maybe—what will you do if you run up on someone like that?”

  “I’ll throw the penlight at him.”

  “I don’t think that’s funny. It’s not funny, is it, Barbara? Why don’t you talk some sense into these girls? They don’t know how dangerous it’s gotten here. They live way out there in Oregon . . .”lay

  “We have crime in Portland,” I said. “It’s a city, not a logging camp.”

  “Then you ought to know better. Barbara . . .”

  “They’re grown women,” my mother replied. “You’ve warned them. They’re going to do what they want to do. Be careful,” she said to me, “and call us when you get back to the hotel. It doesn’t matter how late it is. We’ll be up.”

  “You have until exactly one a.m.,” my grandmother said. “One minute after that and I’m calling the police.”

  I kissed her on the cheek. “You do that,” I said. I kissed my mother as well. “I’ll see you both tomorrow, just as soon as we’ve made the arrangements. Don’t worry about a thing. We’ll take care of it.”

  “Thank you,” my mother said. “And thank you, Abby. You don’t know how much I appreciate this.”