Creatures of Habit (16 page)

“Oh please,” Barbara says, so I turn so that I'm not facing her at all. I say, “Dick Van Dyke is the best. That man is still the best.”
Ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching.

I
AM STILL
holding my little stack of grievances— the lovely bottle of chardonnay I had bought for this ritual is gone, as is a cheaper bottle washed down behind it. She has ruined the night. We like to follow the grievances by listing all of the good things in our life. We want to talk about our
children, our home, our life, where we will go on the next family vacation. But none of that is in Barbara's repertoire. She has reminded Will about an outing that took place about this time four years ago, something about a hike and a picnic down near Crescent Lake. He remembers, nodding his head slowly until I say that I don't, and then he's not quite so sure.

“It was really such a blissful perfect day; talk about the
best
,” Barbara says and something in the night—the breeze, Will's silence, the siren of an ambulance out on the highway—makes the hair on my neck stand up.

“Really?” I ask, but I am not looking at her for the answer. I know the answer. What I tell them is that I know all the lyrics to any Carole King or Cat Stevens song they can name. I know Todd Rundgren and Boz Scaggs, the Doobie Brothers, Seals and Crofts, and Loggins and Messina. I know Elton John and Kiki Dee. I can do Steppenwolf's “Magic Carpet Ride” complete with motorcycle sounds, though technically that's late-sixties but how in the hell would Barbara know that?

There is the pop of a firecracker in the woods behind our house, which brings Barbara up and out of her chair. “Neighborhood kids,” I say. “They're practicing for the Fourth of July.”

“Isn't that against the law?” she asks, and after humming a few bars of “I Fought the Law,” I say, “Your point is?” I hold my stare and she has to look away so I let her off the hook, talk about how when I was a kid, we always went to South Carolina and stocked up on firecrackers and sparklers and Roman candles, which were legal there, and hoarded them until the night of the Fourth. “Haven't you ever broken a law of some kind?” I ask and turn to Will.

“What?” His face is hidden in the darkness, the dwindling coals barely illuminating the shape of his body.

“You know,” I say, Barbara's eyes wide and alert. “Haven't you ever done something dishonest?” I stand and walk over to stoke the coals. A Roman candle soars up above the pines with a whistle and a pop. “Sky rockets in flight,” I sing, but Will doesn't join in on this awful seventies tune. He can't remember the words.

“I always hated that song,” I say. “How did it ever make it to number one?” I look at Barbara and wait like she might have the answer. I look at my watch and marvel at how late it is. “And what about ‘I've Been to Paradise but I've Never Been to Me.' How did that song make it? Who listened to that?” I motion for Barbara to rise like I might be the pastor about to deliver the benediction. “Ed is going to be so worried
about you,” I say. “It's really late. It's like ‘Midnight at the Oasis.' ‘It's too late, baby, now it's too late.'” Barbara tries to join in and sing along but she doesn't know the tune or the words. She looks at her watch. “Oh my, it is late. I bet even Ed might be home by now.” She puts her cheek to mine and air kisses. “I left his dinner in the microwave. Delicious veal Parmesan. That's what I need.” She makes lips to cheek contact with Will.

“Veal?” I ask. “A woman to fix your dinner?”

“No, I need to go home,” she says and laughs. “I'm so glad that you all were just sitting around. It's great to have the kind of friends you can just drop in on.” She flips her hair and jingles her keys. “I don't see enough of you two, lately.” We stand and watch her slither down the drive, and then I sing, “Bye, bye, Miss American pie.” I sing, “Evil Woman,” “Witchy Woman,” “The Bitch Is Back.”

We wait until her car door slams and we hear her back up and drive down the street. “So much for the evening as planned,” I say. “Pre-empted by
As Barbara Turns,
the worst soap opera to ever run. She sees more than enough of us, don't you think?

He says, “Oh yeah,” and laughs but his back is to me as he picks up the bottles and empty plates. We promise each other a rain date. We can try again tomorrow if we don't get
a call from camp that someone needs stitches or wet the bed or broke a neck.

We hit the cool clean sheets and I turn out the light. I tell him that my biggest confession (which usually follows grievances) was that I went to the movies instead of getting my tubes tied. He says that he lied earlier today when I asked him to buy salmon steaks for dinner and he came home with T-bones and a story about how the seafood cooler wasn't working and he was afraid to buy spoiled fish. He reminds me that James Garner, aka Bret Maverick and Jim Rockford, another of my favorite men, used to advertise beef, and I remind him that was before the triple bypass. We laugh and then lie there listening to the last sputters of fireworks.

“That's the worst you can do?” I ask. “Would you swear to the god of
I Dream of Jeannie
? Would you vow to never again watch television if you're lying, not even for special events like presidential debates or assassinations or moon landings?” I reach and turn on the lamp over the bed and in that one startled second I see more truth than I wanted. And in that one second, I have to weigh out the good and the bad, the past and the present. I have to think about how easily lives can be poisoned and pulled apart, even those that shouldn't be.

“So,” I finally say. “There are worse things in life.”

“Such as?”

“Transitions. Not knowing what is coming next.” I laugh. “Like if I were in purgatory, I'd beg to go to hell just to get it over with.”

“Yeah, me too. What else?”

“Cannibalism. Serial murdering. Having to eat olive loaf and pickled eggs while wearing a Qiana jumpsuit and watching reruns of
Diff'rent Strokes.

“Or losing what you care about the most.”

“That, too.”

N
OW A FULL
year later, we prepare to burn our grievances again. Joe DiMaggio is dead—lungs. And the Lone Ranger—heart. The second Mrs. Kravitz from
Bewitched—
stroke; and poor Allen Funt—
smile, it's
Candid Camera—stroke. Grandma Walton and Mr. Gianelli from
Bob Newhart
—lungs; and Iron Eyes Cody, the crying Indian from the
KEEP AMERICA BEAUTIFUL
commercial. Dr. McCoy from
Star Trek
and Peggy Cass
To Tell the Truth.
Gene Rayburn from the
Match Game
—heart. And Ed is dead—stroke—something no one was expecting. Another victim of excessive living.

B
ARBARA HASN'T COME
around much since then and I suspect it's because I know too much. I know that she had long wished Ed would die so everything would be easy for her—a large inheritance and an empty bed. I know that she was ready and willing to turn on me if and when it served her purpose. She might even think that I have begged every detail of her slipping from her skintight pants as a means of punishing and humiliating my mate. But Will and I are more evolved than that, which is what I practice saying in case she ever brings it all up.
We have legs to stand on,
I say,
we have spines.

Tonight, content with visions of our children armed with flashlights and bug spray, I take out my piece of paper and write: “the Dark Ages; natural disasters; fallout.” I hold it while Will strikes the match. We are celebrating one more year away from the pull of darkness. We are celebrating honesty. And as we do all of this, we are more vulnerable than ever before. Our planet is one orbit closer to the sun that will eventually consume it. Our lives are one year closer to the end. And though we are grateful and relieved that we still have each other, there in the dwindling light of the fire, we are aware that somewhere someone is dying. Someone within minutes of where we are sitting lies dying on this average summer night.

E
VERYBODY ON THE
east hall at Turtle Bay Nursing Home spends most of the day in the television room. There is nowhere else to go. No doors to outside are left unlocked or unattended. If you want to look at the creatures out in the marshland behind the home (they say big turtles come up and sun themselves all the year round) you have to go to the cafeteria and press your nose up against the glass, which the people who work in there don't seem to like at all. Carly tells them
she
doesn't like the fact that the only big window near her room is made of stained glass and it gives her a dark sad feeling to try and see through it. Jesus is standing in the window with a flock of sheep and it makes her really uncomfortable to press her face up against the robed leg of Jesus in
hopes of seeing some old snapping turtle that would love nothing better than to bite your hand off.

“I've yet to see a turtle of any kind,” Carly tells them. “The brochure made it sound like there was a constant show. The brochure made it sound like someone like me—a little old, a little arthritic, a little hard of hearing and seeing—could have the time of her life.”

“You can, baby,” one of the women says and pats her hand. She is a large woman, a few too many biscuits for sure, hair too dark for her age, but she has a kind face. Not all of them do. “Just not here right before the supper hour when we're so busy.”

“Are there any turtles living out there in that filthy water?” Carly asks. “Or are they kind of like my son, who
almost
appears from time to time.”

“Oh yeah, I've seen a few,” the woman says and leads her back over to the door where, if you can believe it, a line is already forming. Carly skips dinner often and this night is no different. They'll come looking for her but there's a good chance they won't find her until it's bedtime, and if she's lucky, one of the nicer ones will offer to fix her a sandwich. If not, she has a stash of candy under her mattress.

Here at Turtle Bay there's no separation between those
who are perfectly sane and those who are demented. You might live across the hall from somebody who still gets up and drinks coffee and reads the newspaper (like her friend Betty), or you might have a neighbor who doesn't know who she is or where she is and just spends the day washing her hands and toweling them dry or pacing the hall. That last describes Carly's neighbors. She has a wanderer on either side of her.

Here they put the focus on the legs and hands. If you are ambulatory (this includes wheelchairs and walkers) and can feed yourself, you can stay on the east hall even if you can't remember who you are. The way to remember which wing is which is easy enough though: East means you can still rise. West means you are left setting.

If you are an invalid you get sent to the west hall even if you have every particle of your mind intact. It's sad to wander over there and see them all hooked up to machinery, no choice but to wear those diapers like big bedridden babies. Even Homer, the big shaggy mutt who lives here—the latest in pet therapy—is not allowed on the west hall, which is sad for those old souls who would love nothing better than to stare into Homer's kindhearted brown eyes. Carly figures they are afraid that Homer might mess up the equipment.
He might accidentally unplug somebody with his tail, and then where would the poor creature go? Court? Tried for manslaughter? Sent to the chair? Carly worked at the Fulton County Courthouse for forty long years and she knows just about everything there is to know about the law.

On the east hall there are those who walk all day long and then they walk all night long and still they never get where they're going. There's one that's blind and she still keeps walking, tap tap tapping that annoying cane. If Carly wasn't the type to feel guilty for doing unkindnesses to others, she'd trip the old fool and hope a hip might break and land her in the west.

Now that Carly Morgan's whole life is behind her and she is just sitting around waiting to die, she only has two favorite things—other than her son, of course—left in the world. Well, three if you count Court TV, but seeing as how it is rare for her to get to watch something smart, something other than
Wheel of Fortune,
she sticks to two favorites. The first is Homer, the dog who without a doubt loves her the best out of everybody and would sleep right there on the rug by her bed if that one ugly night nurse would stop stealing him. The second favorite thing is Mr. Wilton White (Whitey to those close to him) who has not lived at Turtle Bay long.

He keeps his distance from most everybody. He says he wishes Dr. Kevorkian would stop by just once—that's all it would take—that it's unkind the way that humans are forced to cling and linger. He believes that a man should be able to do what all animals know is the best thing to do— crawl off alone and die in peace.

The nurse says, “Let's not be so gloomy. You are among people who care.”

He says that he is in this hellhole as a last resort; he says that's what the name of the place should be—the Last Resort. His wife died over fifteen years ago and he says that nothing has come even close to being good since.
Since me, that is,
Carly knows that's what he is thinking. One night she got up and crept over to his room. Homer whined and carried on from where she'd tied him to the leg of her dresser while she stood watching Wilton White sleep. He was so handsome she couldn't believe it. She needed to lean in close to hear his breathing, to rub her cheek against his stubble, to press her mouth against his. It scared him good when he opened his eyes and saw her there. He was so frightened he almost rang for somebody but then when he realized it was just Carly—his neighbor and confidante, his secret lover and soul mate—he didn't. He did talk to her in a serious way, though. He told her how when
Elizabeth
(that's the
wife)—when
Elizabeth
died he had to turn out all the lights in his home and watch television in a darkened hallway. He said if word got out to the widow patrol that he was home, then they would all start arriving with pies and symphony tickets.