Lemon (28 page)

‘These croquettes certainly are delicious,' I say. I can't remember the last time one of my mothers cooked me a meal. Mrs. Barnfield strokes Rossi's hair, which hasn't been brushed in days.

‘I'll just go sit with Lemon,' Mrs. Barnfield says, ‘and you come join us if you feel like it.' She swallows some gruel out of a can. She looks worried out of her mind, her eyes flitting back and forth between Ross and me. I get the feeling she's hoping I'll make conversation.

‘One of my customers,' I say, ‘is a total Nazi freak. He likes talking about the bunker, and Hitler having strokes and ranting about vegetarianism and all that. Apparently old Adolf had this German shepherd called Blondi he was always talking to. Eva Braun hated the dog, was always kicking it when lover-boy wasn't looking. The hound would start whining and Adolf would get all concerned, trying to figure out what was wrong with the mutt. He poisoned Blondi before he poisoned himself and Eva.'

‘Isn't that interesting,' Mrs. Barnfield says, watching Rossi staring at the model types stitching up gunshot wounds.

I eat more mini carrots. ‘These carrots are delicious,' I say in Rossi's direction. ‘There's nothing like butter swirls on steamed carrots.'

An ad for a fabric softener comes on. A damsel in a negligee rolls around in sheets like she's getting off on it.

‘I'm not sure I buy that vegetarian stuff,' I say. ‘I heard that old Adolf had some chef from Vienna cook him Wiener schnitzel.' I smear a butter swirl on one of the Pillsbury dinner rolls Mrs. Barnfield's just baked. ‘I've never been able to figure out how anybody could eat baby cows. They chain their feet together so the calves can't walk. It keeps the meat tender.'

On the wire wave communicator a happy family is chow-ing down at Red Lobster. The Ken-doll dad ruffles his shrimp-eating daughter's hair.

‘Why is your friend so interested in Nazis?' Mrs. Barnfield asks.

‘He's not my friend, actually, just some weirdo. He
told me Mrs. Goebbels killed her children in the bunker. I always thought Mr. Goebbels did it, but apparently the frau drugged them unconscious then shoved cyanide capsules down their throats. Old Joseph wasn't even in the room, couldn't handle it, was off diddling some starlet.'

A couple of the model types start swapping spit in a stairwell.

‘If you think about it,' I say, ‘Mrs. Goebbels was saving them. What with old Adolf dead and the Russkies barking at the door, she knew she'd be separated from her kids and her husband would be executed. She figured a world without National Socialism wouldn't be exactly friendly to her Aryan spawn. It wasn't like the Commies would be too thrilled to hear the Nazi anthems she was always getting her kiddies to croon for Uncle Adolf. Offing them was an act of love. She figured she'd meet them in heaven.'

‘Did she take a capsule too then?'

‘Nah. She made hubby shoot her before he shot himself. She played a game of solitaire first though. I don't think she was that wild about old Joseph, probably because he was always off banging demoiselles.'

Mrs. Barnfield swallows more gruel. ‘I don't know what kind of mother could poison her own children.'

‘A courageous one. Or crazy, depending on how you look at it.'

The girly in scrubs who was swapping spit in the stairwell is being stalked by a former patient who wants her to give him a rectal or something. He charges around Emerg in a New York Yankees cap.

‘A lot of bunker Nazis blew their brains out,' I say. ‘At the end. There they'd been snug as bugs while civilians were being bombed. Old Adolf didn't give a buzzard's ass about the German people getting blasted, no way was he going to surrender.'

Mrs. Barnfield pushes some lettuce around on her plate, pretending she's going to eat it, and I get the feeling this isn't the kind of conversation she was hoping for but I can't think of another topic. ‘“Ze broad mass of a nation,”' I say, doing my Hitler impression, ‘“vill more easily fall victim to a big lie zan to a small one.” Adolf's exact words.'

Mrs. Barnfield fiddles with the tassels on her placemat. A gaggle of orderlies swarm the stalker in the Yankees cap. The girly gasps in a corner while the brawny lad she was swapping spit with comforts her.

‘A lot of those Nazis lived into their nineties,' I say, ‘which makes you wonder about conscience, how you live longer if you don't have one.'

‘Could you shut up for
one minute?
' Rossi says, actually facing me for the first time in days. Her eyes look uninhabited.

‘She speaks,' I say.

‘Who asked you to talk about that shit? Nobody wants to know about that shit. You think my mother needs to hear that?'

‘I don't mind,' Mrs. Barnfield says.

‘You
do
mind, Mother, you're just too polite to say anything. Lemon's a fucking psycho. Any sick topic out there, she reads up on it. Don't even get her started on animal testing.'

I look down at the melted butter hardening around my carrots.

‘You're sick, Lemon, you should get help and stop hanging around my mother, she's got enough problems.'

‘It's nice to have company,' Mrs. Barnfield says.

‘You call her company? She wrote a sick play. She made people audition for it by fake-fucking doggy-style on her couch.'

Mrs. Barnfield looks at me the way she'd have looked at Frau Goebbels.

‘Did it ever occur to you,' Rossi spits at me, ‘that what happened to me might have something to do with what you did?'

‘What happened to you, angel?' Mrs. Barnfield asks.

‘You fucked everything up,' Rossi hisses, getting off the couch and heading unsteadily toward me. ‘They went at me because of what
you
did, your sick, fucking non-existent play.' She already looks thinner, weaker. I know she's planning to starve herself so she'll die before her mother. ‘Now get out and leave us alone.' She yanks on the back of my chair. ‘You're not welcome here.'

‘You can't blame me for what happened,' I say, knowing she can.

‘What happened?' Mrs. Barnfield pleads. ‘Please, girls, tell me what's going on.' She grasps at Rossi's arm.

‘Why won't you tell her?' I ask.

‘None of your business.'

‘What's none of her business, please, tell me, angel?'

Rossi jerks the door open and stands with her hand on her bony hip, waiting for me to exit. Everything in the apartment that I have known since kindergarten, the figurines, the china plates, the kitten paintings, have turned hostile. All those days sitting here drinking Kool-Aid, feeling safe. I am no longer welcome.

‘Where's Bradley?'

Brenda stares at the monitor. ‘He's been transferred.'

‘Why?'

‘Is that your concern, Limone?'

‘Where are they taking him?'

‘What parents decide to do with patients is none of your business.'

‘He can't travel, he's too frail.' I picture him being bounced around in planes, trains and automobiles, with no one to play Nerf ball with.

‘He'll be fine,' Brenda says to the monitor and I can't believe she thinks I'm stupid enough to believe her. This has happened before, when parents with cash don't like what the doctors are telling them. They outsource their kid to the States or India or somewhere and pay doctors to tell them what they want to hear. I'm used to kids coming and going when I'm not on watch, but it's worse with Bradley. I stand outside Kadylak's room waiting for my blood to start moving again, clutching the grapes I bought him, seeing his wise eyes looking at me. He'll be so lonely. He won't understand why I'm not there.

Kadylak refuses the grapes but gets pretty excited when old Clive, the master, hires Tilly to be his housekeeper. Kadylak hasn't figured out that Clive wants to stuff the young lass, even though he's in a wheelchair. On the news they showed some sick creep in a wheelchair who gave his three-year-old daughter gonorrhea. Explain that to a teenager. You're sterile because your father raped you when you were three. You've forgotten the incident but fortunately he posted it on YouTube.

There I go with those Sick Topics again.

‘Why are the other servants so mean to Tilly?' Kadylak asks.

‘Because she's got the top job. They don't want to take orders from some coal miner.'

‘But she's nice.'

‘Since when does being nice make you popular?'

I can't shake Bradley, can't believe I won't be able to pick him up again, jostle him, make him belly laugh.

Kadylak grabs hold of Sweetheart the penguin and strokes her wings. ‘I think they should be nice to her because she isn't bossy.'

‘I agree. Unfortunately, that's not how the world ticks.'

She kisses Sweetheart's head and tucks her under her covers. She's lost so much weight the veins stick out on her temples and neck. ‘A lady my mother cleans for is always telling my mother what she did wrong. No matter how hard Mama works, Mrs. Bandakar finds something wrong.'

‘Which proves my point because your mother's nice.'

Kadylak looks at me for a long time. The blue of her eyes looks darker, deeper, full of shadows. ‘My parents wish they never came to Canada.'

‘They told you that?'

She shakes her head. I try to straighten her scarf.

‘I don't remember my grandmother,' she says. ‘Mama tells me about her because she doesn't want me to forget her. I pretend to remember.' She rolls on her side. I untangle her lines and adjust the bed to the horizontal. I kiss her cheek, feeling chemo heat against my lips.

‘Can you spin the tops again?' she asks.

I slide the table close to the bed and spin the tops until she goes unconscious. Her breathing sounds a bit raspy but I don't want to call anybody because they'll wake her and shove instruments at her. I lie on the sofa bed. There's no way another kid is disappearing on my watch.

Brenda's nudging me. ‘You can't sleep here.'

‘I wasn't sleeping.'

‘You were most definitely sleeping. I've just about had it with your antics.' Her breath stinks of tuna.

‘I'm sorry, I didn't mean to fall asleep.'

‘Go home now, please.'

‘What if she wakes up?'

‘You are not family, Limone. The sofa bed is for family.'

‘Her family has to work all the time.'

‘We all know that she is attached to you, and for that reason we have been tolerant of your behaviour. But we have our limits. You are not being professional.'

‘I'm not a professional.'

‘Even volunteers should not get emotionally involved with the patients.' She holds the door open for me. I think of kicking it shut, fighting the old catfish, but she'd just call security and ban me from the ward. I walk out of there feeling the air being sucked out of me.

The subway's full of zombies. Some Korean guy in dark glasses stands by the doors with his arms crossed and his index fingers pointed like guns. I change trains, glad to be free of him, but sure enough he shows up in my car, still by the doors with his arms crossed and his fingers pointed like guns. A leering lubber in a track suit parks across from me. Sphincter-loosening anxiety is becoming chronic with me in public places. Some woman was raped on a cruise by a security guard. Her cabin door didn't have a peephole so she opened it, thinking it was her friend. The security guard says it was consensual sex. The fbi aren't pressing charges because they say it's a ‘she said, he said' case, meaning no evidence. The rape victim was on the radio crying about it. She said the fact that nobody believes her feels like being violated all over again.

Sick Topics.

I get off the train and walk, inhaling car exhaust, and check out recycling bins to find out how the normal people are getting by. Lots of wine bottles and pizza boxes, Bagel Bites, sugared cereals, mini Danishes, frozen lasagna, fries, pop cans, chip packets. When in doubt they reach for junk and booze. I step in dog shit and spend an hour trying to get it off my boot with a twig. How did they do it in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? Or did they just buck up and get used to having shit on their shoes? They had to get used to shit on their houses because they dumped it out the windows. During the rain the drainage ditches were bunged up with shit, slop and dead babies. Things are supposed to be better now because we've got plumbing and no bugs in our beds, and light bulbs instead of tallow candles made from sheep's hooves. We feel superior, showered and shaved in our shit-free Nikes, sucking back CO
₂
s.

The worst part about the nervous woman in the hat is that she's torpedoed Mutti. Even though I suspected my mother was trailer trash, I'm not willing to let go of Mutti. She's been living with me for years; I can almost touch her, smell the potato latkes on her. I mix her up with Anne Frank's mother who, even after she was separated from her daughters in the camp, managed to smuggle food scraps to them. The nervous woman in the hat sat watching me for months, folding her napkins into little squares, making dents in her Styrofoam cups with her thumbnail. Once I saw her break a Styrofoam cup into little pieces. I've done this. Without even realizing it, suddenly there's a pile of Styrofoam bits in front of me. It's just a question of time before I start wearing hats. Already my hands are starting to look witchy, don't feel like my hands. I don't want them on me.

Some creep's following me. When I cross to the other side of the street, so does he. I cross back. So does he. I hightail it down a side street and look for a house with an open-door policy, or a kind pedestrian. There's nothing, just the racket of my boots and breathing. Turning a corner, I smash into a shopping cart and hear a yowl as plastic bags fly in all directions. I fall hard on a patch of grass and just lie there with my face in the dirt.

‘What did you do that for?' a homeless man wearing a hat with flaps demands. ‘Can't you at least say you're sorry?' he demands.