Sylvie shakes her head. “You are such a boy, Richard. I’m here to shop, not buy. This is the closest thing I’ve got to the mall. I’m shopping.” So she rolls me in there and parks me in a far corner, and I sit for what seems like three or four days while she browses around, picking up and putting down every object in the place, sweartogod. She’s humming and she touches every last thing. Every package of gum, every magazine, every potted plant, every stuffed animal, each and every card. The old lady with a pink volunteer smock behind the counter smiles at Sylvie—for a while. Then she starts to tap her fingers on the cash register. “May I help you, dear?” she says. “Are you looking for anything special?”
Sylvie flashes me a sharp-toothed smile. But to the woman at the counter, she gives a shy little nod. “Oh thank you, ma’am. Yes, I am. I’d like something for my sister. She just had a baby.”
The woman narrows her eyes. “Your sister?”
“Oh, yes. My older sister.” She leans over the counter and smiles like an angel. “She married our minister’s son last year, and now the Lord has blessed them with a daughter. Do you have any really cute stuffed seals? My sister’s crazy about seals.”
The woman smiles and pats Sylvie’s hand. “How sweet you are. Let me check. I do remember that we had a baby seal once. It was white, with blue eyes. Maybe in the back.” And she scoots behind a curtain.
In the fifteen or so seconds that the volunteer lady’s gone, Sylvie lifts, like, eight packs of gum and whooshes me out of there. We sit in the ER waiting room for a while, chewing. Well, she’s chewing. I just sort of suck on my gum; I wouldn’t ever tell her, but my teeth are all kind of loose, and gum isn’t exactly my thing these days. When she’s not looking, I take the gum out of my mouth and toss it in an ashtray. Then she spits her big glob into a plastic plant and says, “Okay, enough stalling. We need to get outside, into the air. Ready?”
I am so ready.
The sun is bright and the sky is blue. But the wind, which of course we couldn’t see from the inside, is a bitch. It’s cold and sharp and full of city grit. Sylvie can’t push me into it for more than five feet at a time, it’s so strong. We make it as far as the little glass smoking shelter outside the ER. And I have to wheel myself the last ten yards, because Sylvie is breathing so hard and her legs are shaking.
Once we get inside there, though, it’s not so bad. Nobody else is in here—who would be crazy enough to brave hurricane winds just for a smoke? But inside, we’re out of the wind and it’s bearable. Sylvie’s shivering all over. She climbs into my lap, and I wrap the blanket around her. She tucks her head onto my shoulder, and we both look out through the smudgy glass walls. At least we can see something different from here. Sure, it’s mostly the ER parking lot and three houses across the street and, if we lean, a tiny bit of the river, way off down the hill. It stinks of smoke and wet butts piled in the metal ashtray thing. That’s okay, too—I mean, those are smells you just don’t get around hospice. Even the stink lets us know we’re somewhere else, that we got out. “I want you to appreciate that I take you to only the best places,” I say, putting my lips right against her neck.
She laughs. “Yes, indeed.” She wriggles around on my lap, getting more comfortable. Her sharp hip bones kind of hurt, but it’s a nice kind of hurt, and I tighten my arms around her. She points at one of the houses across the street. It’s just a typical Hudson house, three stories, town house sort of thing, kind of old and made of brick painted white, with black shutters. The paint is peeling, and the whole thing looks kind of saggy. But it’s got a big front porch and the people haven’t moved the summer chairs inside yet. There’s still a little bit of green on the square front lawn and a few brown leaves on the oak tree to the side. “Let’s live there, Richard,” she says, “when we get married. Okay? I mean, just as a starter house. Before we move to a much nicer place, outside of town.”
My throat gets tight, just picturing it. “Sure,” I say. “You got it.”
She nods. “The living room has a fireplace. There’s the chimney. See? So on a cold day like today, you’ll make a fire, right? Well, not until the evening, when we’re both home from our jobs and can sit on the couch and put our feet up and drink our wine and talk about our days. And you’ll keep it going all evening, until it’s really late and we’re sleepy and warm and ready to go to bed. Okay?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say. “I’ll keep that fire going as long as you want. But when it’s time to go to bed . . . ? Tell me about that.”
She slaps a hand on my chest. “Oh, sure. That’s all you men think about. Going to bed.” She squiggles her hips a little more and then laughs when she feels Bingo rising up against her bottom. Her voice drops into a sexy whisper. “Well, Richard. Let me start by saying that our bed is very large. King-size. Four-poster, with one of those big lace canopies on top, going from post to post. And it’s got tons of pillows—all the best down—and six-hundred-count cotton sheets and a fluffy down duvet and—”
“Six hundred what? And what the hell is a duvet?”
She slaps me again. “Ignorant male. It’s a comforter. And the sheets are very smooth. Shut up. Let me talk.” She presses against me. “So, we take off our clothes and that makes us shiver a little, because it’s chilly upstairs, right? And then we rush to get under the covers, and we both—quick, quick, quick—we slide right to the center of that big old bed, where we meet. Actually, there’s this little dip in the mattress, right in the center, because that’s where we always meet, you know? When we’re naked and in our bed. And, well, let’s just say that the bedsprings there are a little worn down, from all the bouncing, and—”
“We bounce?” I push myself up against her and close my eyes.
“Oh, yeah, we do. Sometimes, mister, you bounce so hard that I think I’m going to fly up into that lace canopy, and I have to hang on really tight and I have to, like, clench my legs around you and—”
“You’re on top?”
She almost purrs. “Of course I’m on top, Richard. I’m in charge.” She turns herself around on my lap so that she’s straddling me. She pulls up her skirt and puts a knee on each side of my hips. Then she reaches in and shoves down my sweatpants. Now when she settles herself, I find the warm, damp spot I’m dying for, just the other side of her panties. I wrap my arms and the blanket around us, holding on tight, so she’s invisible under there, her head tucked into my chest. “So,” she says, and now her voice is kind of rough. “So there we are. I tease you, a little bit, by moving away.” She pulls her hips away for a second, then she brings them down against me again, firm. She’s warmer, and the panties are slipping, slipping to one side. “And then I come back,” she says.
I am that close. That close to being inside her. There are circles of light pressed against my eyelids and every muscle in my body is straining toward her.
The air in the glass enclosure changes and I can tell someone’s come in, even before I hear the voice say, “Richie. My god, Richie. What are you doing out here?”
Sylvie goes still and then she pulls away. Her hands reach down and arrange her panties. She grabs my sweatpants and hauls them up. Then she takes her hands away and she puts her head up through the opening in the blanket. “Hey,” she says. “Can’t you see we’d like a little privacy here? Who are you?”
But I already know who it is: I recognized the voice and I opened my eyes the minute I heard it. I look at the tall woman with the bright red hair and a cigarette dangling from bright red lips. I say, “Hi, Grandma.”
And Sylvie goes, “Jesus H. Christ,” and climbs out of my lap.
There’s a long sort of silence, and then Grandma bends down and picks up Sylvie’s beret from the dirty cement floor of the shelter. “You dropped this, sweetie,” she says. “Sorry to interrupt.”
Sylvie pulls the beret over her fuzzy head. She waves a hand, like Queen Elizabeth dismissing a clumsy footman. “No problem,” she says. “Can I have a smoke?”
I’m kind of choking
over that “no problem” since I am, wilted or not, still on fire. But no one’s paying any attention to me, none whatsoever. These girls are bonding and I’m no one, I can tell.
Grandma pulls out a pack of Marlboros and hands one to Sylvie, even lights it for her, with a bright green plastic Bic lighter.
Sylvie sucks in smoke, long and hard. I watch her eyes close and her throat work. This is clearly not a novice smoker; this is a hardcore addict if I ever saw one. When she opens her eyes, she smiles. “God, that’s better than sex, anyway.” She pats my head, like I’m three years old. “Oh, don’t look so miserable, Richard. That’s what adolescent sex is all about, right? Ninety-five percent frustration. Totally normal teenage encounter, incomplete and unsatisfying. You’ll live.”
Grandma gives a snort and bends to kiss the top of my head. “It’s so good to see you, sweetheart,” she says. “And your girlfriend is right. No one ever died from frustration.” She takes a long drag from her cigarette and smiles at Sylvie.
They are ganging up on me, totally. Girls against boy. Smokers vs. nonsmoker. I roll my eyes. “Maybe not. But some people might die before they ever get laid.” I put my hands on my wheels. “It’s cold. I’m going in. Excuse me, please.” I roll between them and out into the wind. I can hear them clucking as I fight my way back inside the building, slowly. By the time I make it through the sliding glass doors, Grandma is right behind me.
She grabs the handles and starts pushing. She turns back to Sylvie. “Hop on, honey,” she says. “You look beat.”
Sylvie does hop on, but it’s nothing like before. Now she perches on my bony knees, facing forward, like she’s some sort of figurehead woman on the prow of a ship. Like she’s that wooden and that hard. She glares at people as we go by. Totally against hospital rules, she’s still got her cigarette in her mouth and she’s blowing smoke all the way. And no one dares to say a word.
Until we get to the hospice floor. Grandma has given one good shriek at the sight of the harpy and hustled us right onto the floor. Mrs. Lee, the floor clerk, the one who ate the Good & Plenty on Halloween, she leaps from behind her desk and grabs the cigarette out of Sylvie’s mouth. “What are you thinking?” she gasps, wrapping the still-burning butt in her hand and throwing it on the floor, where she stamps it into oblivion. “Good lord, girl, there are people on oxygen here. Do you want to blow us all sky-high?”
That’s a question I’m afraid that Sylvie might actually answer. She’s holding on to my kneecaps with both hands and I can feel her trembling. I smile nicely at Mrs. Lee. “Sorry,” I say. “Foolish of us. Kids today! What are you going to do?”
She does not smile back. She glares at Grandma. “You, presumably, are an adult, ma’am. Although one wouldn’t think so. Do you have permission to visit this floor? May I see your visitor’s pass?”
I start to say, “Hey, that’s my grandmother,” but Grandma’s got it covered.
“Richard Casey is my grandson,” she says, tapping her bright red fingernails on Mrs. Lee’s desk. “And this lovely child is his friend, who we are returning to her room, safe and sound. No harm done. Surely you can just give me a pass. Grandmothers are always allowed. Right, sweetheart?” She winks at me.
Mrs. Lee’s eyes shoot daggers, but she hands a bright orange visitor’s pass to Grandma and off we go. We bring Sylvie to her room, and Grandma has to help her into her bed. Sylvie looks floppy now, like a rag doll dressed in a school uniform. Grandma pulls the curtains and I hear her sort of murmuring to Sylvie and I hear the sounds of clothes being slipped off and sheets being pulled up. I just sit there, feeling pretty damn unneeded. “Hey, ladies,” I say after a while. “I’m going to split. See you around.” And I roll back to my room, where I’m not sure I can get myself into bed, either. But I’ve learned some tricks of the trade and I manage to haul myself from the chair by hanging on to the side of the bed and using the railings like a stepladder to climb in. I’m so sleepy that there’s not three seconds between hitting the sheets and unconsciousness.
***
When I come to, Grandma is sitting in the chair by my bed, her hands over her eyes. I take a minute to look over her while she’s not looking at me. I figure out how old she is: Mom was seventeen when I was born and Grandma was sixteen when Mom was born. And I’m seventeen now. Do a little addition in the head: Grandma must be fifty! But she’s still got tons of orangey-red hair and she’s still skinny and she’s still wearing high heels and tight black pants. Her shirt is bright green and shiny and unbuttoned three buttons down, and there’s plenty of freckled, wrinkly cleavage there. She’s got about a hundred chains and beads and whatnot around her neck and about a hundred more around each wrist. Fifteen rings on bony fingers. Grandma’s been a hostess at a club in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, forever, and she dresses pretty much the same, on the job or off. I’ve got to smile: the difference between my mom and her mom is just amazing. My mom, she’s got blonde hair that she wears straight and plain, to her shoulders. Never seen her in makeup or heels. She wears longish cotton skirts to work, with crisp button-down shirts and cardigan sweaters. I heard one of her friends once tell her how pretty she’d be if she made an effort, and I heard Mom tell her to buzz off. Grandma’s always after her to brighten up, too. “You look like you took a vow of chastity, honey,” I once heard Grandma say. “Like you’re packed and ready for the nunnery.” And Mom only smiled. “I did,” she said. “Day Richie was born, I took that vow. I’m too busy for all that nonsense. So leave me alone.”
Grandma drops her hands and I see that her eye makeup is runny and that she’s been crying. When she sees me awake, she quickly grabs a handful of Kleenex from her pocket and blows her nose. She dabs under her eyes, and the Kleenex come back all black. She stands up and kisses me on the head. “Hey, there, Richie Rich.” She leans over and hugs my head to her chest. I smell perfume and hair spray, cigarettes and a little bit of sweat.
Richie Rich. This is a name she always called me. Some kid from an old comic, I understand. Real rich kid. She always said I’d have millions myself, someday, smart as I was. Seemed cute, once upon a time. Seems like a stupid joke now. I weasel my head out of her grip. “Hey. How’s Mom?”
She sits back down and shakes her head. “Feverish. Coughing. Cranky. Crazy to get in here. Worried nearly to death about you. Total pain in the ass. Otherwise, she’s okay.”
“Oh.” I realize that I don’t want to hear, really, about how my mom is. It’s too sad. “So,” I say, “when’d you arrive?”
“Last night, late. I’ve been packed for weeks, waiting for her to call. Grabbed the bus from Plainfield to the city, then the train up here. Got here, took a cab straight to the house. She was a tiny bit glad to see me, I think.” She smiles, showing yellow crooked teeth. “Mostly so I could check up on you, young man. She thinks you might get up to something while she’s not here. Get in trouble. What a silly thought, huh?” She pokes a sharp red nail into my leg.
I shrug. “Phil get home?” I ask.
“No. I haven’t a clue where your uncle is at the moment. Par for the course.” She sits up straight and looks around the room. “So, what do you do for fun around here? Besides trying to get in that pretty little girl’s pants, I mean?”
“Not a lot,” I say. “Pretty quiet around here.”
“Huh. I’d go out of my gourd. Well, let’s see what’s on TV, okay?” She clicks on the set and then settles down with Oprah. Perfect cue for Richie Rich to drop back to sleep—and so I do.
***
When I wake up again, the sky outside my window is dark. The wind is still out there, though—I can hear it howling, even through the glass, and every once in a while something smooches against the window, some leaves or plastic bag or something. Wild night. I sit up. The TV is now burbling on about bridezillas and Grandma is sound asleep, all scrunched up in the chair. I got to pee and I try to get out of bed without waking her, but she sits straight up the second my feet hit the floor.
She groans,
holding her back and trying to stretch out. “Jesus,” she says. “I am too old to sleep like that. Hey, kiddo, you need any help?”
I hate to think that I’ve gotten to the point of asking my grandmother to help me pee. “No, thanks,” I say. I pause on my way to the bathroom, hanging on to the back of her chair for balance. “Why don’t you go on home, Grandma? See how Mom’s doing? I’m worried about her.”
She shakes her head. “Nope. I got my orders. She told me to park my ass right here, watch over you like a hawk. Not to leave you alone for five seconds. She said she’d skin me alive if you got into any more trouble on my watch.” She stands up and puts both hands at her back, moaning. “Sorry—I know you’d like privacy, Richard. I really do understand, and I sympathize. But I’m just following orders here, son. Following orders.”
I give her a sarcastic salute. “Yes, sir, ma’am. Ma’am. Permission to pee, ma’am?”
She laughs, then goes into a hawking, smoky cough. “Granted,” she wheezes out. “Go for it.”
When I get back and sit on the edge of the bed, she’s got cards spread out on the bed table, solitaire formation. She’s turning and slapping cards down so fast that it makes me dizzy to watch. Her hands fly, and she gives little grunts whenever a card she’s been looking for comes up.
I sit for a while, quiet, and then I say what I’ve been thinking about. It’s funny, because I don’t even know that I’ve been thinking about this, really, until the words come out of my mouth. “Hey, Grandma,” I go. “Do you think my father might want to know about me?” Her eyes come up so fast and so wide that I have to rush on with what, suddenly, I know that I want to say. “I mean, maybe? I don’t know who the guy is, even; you know Mom, she won’t say a word about it, but I figure you might. I was going to ask Phil, but we got all involved in other stuff and I don’t know if he even knows. But I always got the feeling that you do know, and I thought that . . .” I run out of breath.
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