“There’s no future in plastic,” Dad said to me one day out of the blue.
“Sure there is,” I told him. “People will always need a plastic something or other.”
“We can only hope,” he said.
“What does Mom think?”
“Mom doesn’t work for Pisher.”
I was fishing for news from the battlefront, but he gave me none. The battlefront had become more like a demilitarized zone. They kept this chilly emotional distance. I think I liked it better when they fought.
The thing is, Dad might have built Manny to be indestructible, but he himself was not. Neither was Mom. This was a stress test I wished would just end.
***
I didn’t know what I’d say to Lexie. I was sure to run into her at Crawley’s apartment eventually, but I hoped maybe she would just leave the room and pretend she didn’t know I was there until I had leashed up the dogs and left.
I wasn’t so lucky.
A week after being replaced by the Schwa as her official escort, Lexie herself came to answer the door. She pulled it open wide, letting out four dogs, three of which nuzzled me for affection, but the fourth one, Prudence—who was always a loose cannon—bolted, and headed straight down the stairs. Not the back stairs we always take to get out, the grand staircase that led right down to the middle of the restaurant, where people were eating an early dinner.
“Great,” I said. “She’ll probably pull a lobster right off of someone’s plate.”
“I need your help,” Lexie said. At first I thought she meant to get the dog, but then I heard Crawley shouting and groaning from inside the apartment, over the sound of barking. Lexie’s voice was all warbly, and I could tell she was panicked. “He fell in the shower,” she said. “I think he might have broken his hip again.”
I stepped in, closing the door behind me. Let the waiters deal with Prudence, they were probably used to it. “Did you call 911?”
“They’re sending an ambulance, but he won’t let me near him. He won’t tell me anything. I don’t know what to do.”
I tried to hurry back to the master bathroom with her, but she couldn’t hurry. She moved slowly, and methodically, never bumping into anything, but never quickening her pace. It was the first time I’d ever seen her handicap be a hindrance.
Crawley was sprawled on the shower floor, clutching a towel over himself.
“Get out!” he said when he saw me.
“There’s an ambulance on its way,” I told him.
“I don’t need an ambulance. Just leave me alone.”
It was terrible to see him like this. He had always been such a powerful presence, even in his wheelchair. Kind of like Roosevelt, you know? But lying there on the floor, twisted in that awkward position, he seemed frail and helpless. I reached over to help him shift into a more comfortable position, but he swatted my hand away. “Get your lousy hands away from me, you dumb guinea!”
Whoa.
He had called me lots of things, but never the G-word. I didn’t know what to make of it, but now wasn’t a time I could really get angry. He tried to move by himself, and yowled in pain, letting loose a whole dictionary of cusswords.
Lexie, standing at the door, grimaced. “What happened? Did he fall again? Tell me, Anthony! Tell me everything that’s happening.”
“Nothing’s happening. He tried to move, but couldn’t.”
“Is he bleeding?”
“No.”
Then she hit her eyes with her palms and grunted. It was weird, but I knew exactly why she did it. It was frustration at her own blindness. She was smooth and confident when the world cooperated, but accidents were almost as uncooperative as her grandfather. “Isn’t there something we can do?”
Yes, there was. I went over to the medicine chest and opened it to reveal a whole pharmacy of medication. I quickly scanned the labels.
“What are you doing now?” Crawley asked.
“You need something for pain, and an anti-inflamatory,” I told him. I knew about that from the injuries we’ve had in my own family.
“So you’re my doctor now?”
“Yeah, Dr. DumGuinea, and I’m sending you one helluva bill.” I found what I was looking for, checked the labels for dosage and expiration date, and pulled out a pill from two different vials. Then I filled a glass with water from the sink and cautiously approached Crawley.
“What’s that?”
“Lodine and Vicodin,” I told him. “They prescribed these for you when you first broke your hip, right?”
“I don’t need it!” He pushed the glass away, spilling half the water on my shirtsleeve.
“Fine. Suit yourself.” I put the glass down on the counter with the pills, making sure he could see them. If he looked at them long enough, maybe he’d change his mind.
“They’re coming!” Lexie said. She heard the sirens long before I did. The last time I heard sirens here, it was the police coming for the Schwa and me.
When Crawley heard the approaching sirens, he groaned. “I don’t need this today!”
There was a knock at the door, and I hurried off to let in the paramedics. Instead, it was the Schwa, with an out-of-breath waiter holding Prudence by the collar.
“Hi, Antsy!” the Schwa said brightly, like this was the happiest place on Earth. “What’s up?”
“Don’t ask.”
I ran back to the bathroom, where Lexie still stood by the threshold, her grandfather yelling at her every time she tried to get closer.
“Anthony! Make her get out of here!”
“Lexie, maybe you should just go sit down—at least until he calms down.”
Exasperated, Lexie left for the living room.
“He’s lying on the floor,” the Schwa said, like I didn’t know.
“I’ll have those pills now,” Crawley said.
I handed him the pills and glass. “Careful, that Vicodin can be habit-forming.”
He gave me a nasty glare and took them.
The Schwa was trying to get up to speed, but not quite making it. “Uh—shouldn’t someone help him up?”
As if things weren’t crazy enough, when Lexie let the paramedics in, Prudence bolted again, followed by at least three other dogs.
The paramedics freaked and put their hands in the air, which is the worst thing to do around an excited dog, because it thinks, in its pint-size dog brain, that you have a treat in your hand, and so up the dog goes, planting its paws on your chest. Now imagine that multiplied by ten.
“He’s this way—in the bathroom,” I told them, but they were cornered by the sins and virtues and weren’t going anywhere. “C’mon, haven’t you ever seen Afghans before?” I had to use the old man’s trick of throwing a handful of treats clear across the room to free the paramedics.
When medical professionals took over the situation, I thought I could be out of this little drama. I figured Crawley would go off, complaining all the way, with Lexie in tow, and Schwa and I would be left to walk the dogs. Crawley, however, threw a curveball.
The paramedics got him up onto the gurney, and as they were wheeling him out, he grabbed my arm. “Anthony, you come with me.”
“What, me?”
“Is there another Anthony here?”
“I’ll come, Grandpa,” said Lexie, already getting Moxie ready for the journey.
“No. You will stay here with Calvin and walk the dogs.”
“I want to come with you!”
The paramedics rammed right into the Schwa, knocking him flat on his butt. The dogs, who had been calming down, began barking again.
“Sorry, kid, we didn’t see you.”
“Anthony—come!” said Crawley.
I turned to the Schwa and Lexie, holding back the dogs as they wheeled Crawley out. “I think my job description just changed again.”
***
They let me ride in the back of the ambulance with him as they ran red lights and took the wrong side of the road halfway to Con
ey Island Hospital.
“Why did you want me to come?” I asked Crawley. “Why not Lexie?”
“I don’t want her to see me like this.”
“She can’t.”
“Don’t be a smart-ass, you know what I mean.” He shifted positions and grimaced. “Tell them you’re my grandson at the hospital, and weasel your way into the ICU. You’re good at weaseling.”
“Thanks, I think.”
The paramedic checking Crawley’s blood pressure threw me a quick glance, but didn’t say anything. I guess whatever went on at the hospital wasn’t his business.
Then, when the ambulance pulled to a stop at the emergency room, Crawley grabbed my arm again. His nails dug into my forearm, although I don’t think he did it to hurt me, and he said: “Don’t let them leave me alone.”
***
I sat beside him in a little curtained emergency-room cubicle, listening to him complain about everything from the antiseptic smell to the flickering fluorescent lights that “could send someone into a seizure.” Everything in the hospital was a lawsuit waiting to happen, and he was prepared to bring in his lawyers at any moment.
I called my parents to tell them where I was. Never open up a conversation with your mother with the words, “I’m at the hospital.”
“Oh, my God! Did you get hit by a car? Oh, my God! Is anything broken? Oh, my God, Antsy, oh, my God!”
She was so loud, I had to pull the phone away from my ear, and Crawley could hear every word. It was actually a comfort to hear my mother showing concern, so I let it go on for a moment before I stopped her and told why I was at the hospital.
“Mr. Crawley’s really shaken up. I guess I’ll be here for a while.”
“Is he okay?” Mom asked. “Is he gonna live?”
“Not if I can help it.”
Crawley let out a single loud guffaw at that. It was the first time I had ever made him laugh.
“Call when you need a ride home,” she said.
“Don’t worry, I’ll get a cab.”
At the mention of that, Crawley’s eyes got a little wider, and his lips pursed a little tighter. After I hung up he said, “You leave when I tell you to leave. I’ll pay you time-and-a-half for overtime.”
“Not everyone in the world does things for money, okay?”
“You do.”
“Well, not all the time.”
“Good. Then I won’t pay you.”
“Okay, I’m leaving.”
“Aha!” he said, pointing his finger at me.
Now it was my turn to laugh.
Crawley glanced out the little opening in the curtain. Doctors and nurses whooshed past every minute or so, but never whooshed in. “Hospitals are the greatest failure of civilization,” Crawley proclaimed.
“You’re not the only patient. They’ll get to you eventually.”
“So will the coroner.”
I looked at him for a moment, remembering what he had been like when they wheeled him in. As soon as they had opened the door to the ambulance, he had covered his face with both hands, like a vampire afraid of the light of day, all the while calling to me in a panic.
“Why are you so scared to be alone?” I asked him.
Crawley ignored the question so I tried another.
“Why am I here instead of Lexie?”
Crawley took a long moment to weigh his answer, then sighed. This was a good thing, because when people sigh, it usually means they’re about to tell the truth. A sigh means it’s not worth the energy to lie.
“The more Lexie knows, the more she’ll tell her father—my sson,” Crawley said. (He spat it out, like it was a four-letter word instead of three.) “I don’t want my sson to know anything. He’s already convinced that I need to be in an 'assisted-living facility.’ An old folks’ home.”
“Well, you’re an old folk.”
“I’m venerable, not elderly.” And at my puzzled expression he said, “Look it up.”
“I don’t need to. I’m sure it’s just a word that’s supposed to make 'old’ sound good, like they say 'restroom’ when they really mean 'bathroom,’ and they say 'bathroom’ when they really mean 'toilet’.” Then I added, “It’s called a euphemism. Look it up.”
He waved his hand at me. “I don’t know why I waste my breath. You couldn’t possibly understand what I mean.”
“I think I do.”
I thought he’d just wave his hand at me again, but to my surprise he was actually listening—which meant I had to find a way to put into words what I was thinking. I began slow, just in case I flew into some speed bumps that sunk my train of thought.
“Right now everybody knows you as kooky Old Man Crawley, with fourteen dogs in his window and enough power to shut down the egg supply to half of Brooklyn.”
He grinned. “They still remember the eggs, do they?”
“Who could forget? But once you get put in a rest home, you’ll just be some old fart playing checkers and waiting for the aquacize instructor. You won’t be a mysterious force to be reckoned with anymore. And that’s scary.”
He looked at me for a long time. I figured he was generating a really good insult, but instead he said, “You’re slightly brighter than I gave you credit for.”
“You know, your son will find out about this. Lexie will tell him—she probably already has.”
“Just as long as I’m out of here and back in my apartment when I face him.” Then he added, “I just hope Lexie’s all right with that lackluster friend of yours.”
“I’m sure your granddaughter and the Schwa are having a great time. They probably got their hands all over each other’s faces or something.” The image of that was just too disturbing. I had to stand up and pace in the little space, peering out of the curtains to see if the doctor was coming. The greatest failure of civilization. Maybe Crawley was right.
“My granddaughter is very upset with you.”
This was news to me. “What does she have to be upset about? She was the one who dumped me for the Schwa.”
Crawley looked at me square in the eye. “You’re a moron.”
“I thought you just said I was brighter than you gave me credit for.”
“I stand corrected.”
***
As it turns out, Crawley had fractured his hip again. It wasn’t bad, but a fracture is a fracture. He couldn’t keep the news from his “sson,” but as Lexie’s parents were still in Europe, their war was limited to transatlantic phone calls. They insisted he spend time in a nursing home, and he told them what they could do with their nursing home. In the end, Crawley agreed to hire a full-time nurse, but in the meantime was happy to torment the nurses at the hospital.
From his hospital room, Crawley commanded Lexie to go to school the next day rather than visit him, and he raised such a stink she did as she was told. My parents, on the other hand, let me take off school that day, since I had been up all night with Crawley, and that gave me time to take the subway down to the Academy of the Blind before school let out.
At the end of their school day, the students left with precision and care, unlike the mob scene at most other schools. Many students were escorted by Seeing Eye dogs, parents, or nannies. A few older ones went out alone with white canes tapping the pavement in front of them. Some of Lexie’s schoolmates seemed well accustomed to their state; for others, it was a serious hardship. I never imagined there was such a range in how people handled being blind.
The strangest thing of all was the way drivers used noisemakers to guide their student to the car. Some clicked, some whirred, some whistled—and no two were the same. It was amazing, because every kid found their way to the right car with just a couple of toots or clicks.
Moxie spotted me before I spotted Lexie, and he brought her to me.
“Moxie? What’s wrong, boy?”
“Hi, Lexie.”
It only took an instant for her to recognize my voice. “Anthony, what are you doing here? Is my grandfather all
right?”
“Yeah, yeah, he’s fine. I’m here because I needed to talk to you.”
“So you came all the way here? Couldn’t you wait till I got home?”
“Yeah, I guess, but I didn’t want to.”
Someone pulled up to the curb, rolled down the window, and blew a slide whistle.
“Do they do that at all blind schools?” I asked Lexie.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “This one is just weird.” She turned her head slightly to the side. “I hear my driver further up the street. C’mon, you can ride home with me.”
She led me to a black Lincoln—a car service that the Crawleys had hired to take Lexie to and from school. The driver had a Pakistani look about him, and rather than using a plain old noisemaker, he was playing the harmonica. Badly.
“My father started him off with a kazoo. I gave him the harmonica because it’s so much more dignified. I figure he might actually be able to play by the end of the school year.”
We got in the car and sped off, with Moxie lying across our feet.
“Your grandfather says you’re angry at me.”
“He told you that?”
“Yeah, and I think I’ve got a right to know why. I mean, you dumped me in the middle of a concert, and now you’re the one who’s angry at me?”
Moxie sensed a little anger on my part, and he barked. It was the first time I had ever heard him bark.
“Dumped you? Is that what you think?”
“No, I guess not. I guess you just fired me. That’s just as bad. So now I want to know why you’re the one who’s angry. If anyone should be mad, it’s me.”
“I’m not angry. I’m just... disappointed.”
“Why?”
“Because you dumped me.”
“Now you’re just playing games with me.”
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