same as what happens when you ditch your old car and take the license plates and the VIN decal off so the city has to tow it away.
No kidding, but this is called granny dumping, and St. Anthony’s has to take a certain number of dumped grannies and ecstasy-fried street kids and suicidal bag ladies. Only they don’t call them
bag ladies,
or call the street girls
prosti-tots.
My guess is somebody slowed their car down and just shoved Eva out the door and never shed a tear. Kind of what people do with pets they can’t house-train.
Eva still trailing me, I get to my mom’s room and she’s not there. Instead of Mom, her bed’s empty with a big wet dent sunk in the mattress soaked with urine. It’s shower time, I figure. A nurse takes you down the hall to a big tiled room where they can hose you clean.
Here at St. Anthony’s, they show the movie
The Pajama Game
every Friday night, and every Friday all the same patients crowd in to see it for the first time.
They have bingo, crafts, visiting pets.
They have Dr. Paige Marshall. Wherever she’s disappeared to.
They have fireproof bibs that cover you from your neck to your ankles so you don’t set fire to yourself while you smoke. They have Norman Rockwell posters. A hair dresser comes twice a week to do your hair. That costs extra. Incontinence costs extra. Dry cleaning costs extra. Monitoring urine output costs extra. Stomach tubes.
They have lessons every day in how to tie your shoe, how tobutton a button, snap a snap. Buckle a buckle. Someone will demonstrate Velcro. Someone will teach you how to zip your zipper. Every morning, they tell you your name. Friends who’ve known each other sixty years get reintroduced. Every morning.
These are doctors, lawyers, captains of industry, who, day to day, can’t master a zipper anymore. This is less teaching than it is damage control. You might as well try to paint a house that’s on fire.
Here at St. Anthony’s, Tuesday means Salisbury steak. Wednesday means mushroom chicken. Thursday is spaghetti. Friday, baked fish. Saturday, corned beef. Sunday, roast turkey.
They have thousand-piece jigsaw puzzles for you to do while you’re running out the clock. There isn’t a mattress in the place a dozen people haven’t already died on.
Eva’s wheeled her chair up to my mom’s doorway and she’s sitting there, looking pale and wilted, as if she’s a mummy somebody just unwrapped and then set its thin cruddy hair. Her curly blue head never stops bobbing in slow, tight little prizefighter circles.
“Don’t come near me,” Eva says every time I look at her. “Dr. Marshall won’t let you hurt me,” she says.
Until the nurse gets back, I just sit on the edge of my mom’s bed and wait.
My mom has one of those clocks where each hour is marked by the call of a different bird. Prerecorded. One o’clock is the American Robin. Six is the Northern Oriole.
Noon is the House Finch.
The Black-capped Chickadee means eight o’clock. The White-breasted Nuthatch means eleven.
You get the idea.
The problem is, associating birds with specific times can getconfusing. Especially if you’re outside. You turn from a clock watcher to a bird watcher. Every time you hear the lovely trill of the White-throated Sparrow, you think:
Is it ten o’clock already?
Eva wheels a little bit into my mom’s room. “You hurt me,” she says to me. “And I never told Mother.”
These old people. These human ruins.
It’s already half-past the Tufted Titmouse, and I have to catch my bus and be at work by the time the Blue Jay sings.
Eva thinks I’m her big brother who diddled her about a century ago. My mom’s roommate, Mrs. Novak with her horrible big hanging breasts and ears, she thinks I’m her bastard business partner who gypped her out of a patent for the cotton gin or the fountain pen or something.
Here I get to be all things to all women.
“You hurt me,” Eva says and rolls a little closer. “And I’ve never forgotten it
No kidding, but this is called granny dumping, and St. Anthony’s has to take a certain number of dumped grannies and ecstasy-fried street kids and suicidal bag ladies. Only they don’t call them
bag ladies,
or call the street girls
prosti-tots.
My guess is somebody slowed their car down and just shoved Eva out the door and never shed a tear. Kind of what people do with pets they can’t house-train.
Eva still trailing me, I get to my mom’s room and she’s not there. Instead of Mom, her bed’s empty with a big wet dent sunk in the mattress soaked with urine. It’s shower time, I figure. A nurse takes you down the hall to a big tiled room where they can hose you clean.
Here at St. Anthony’s, they show the movie
The Pajama Game
every Friday night, and every Friday all the same patients crowd in to see it for the first time.
They have bingo, crafts, visiting pets.
They have Dr. Paige Marshall. Wherever she’s disappeared to.
They have fireproof bibs that cover you from your neck to your ankles so you don’t set fire to yourself while you smoke. They have Norman Rockwell posters. A hair dresser comes twice a week to do your hair. That costs extra. Incontinence costs extra. Dry cleaning costs extra. Monitoring urine output costs extra. Stomach tubes.
They have lessons every day in how to tie your shoe, how tobutton a button, snap a snap. Buckle a buckle. Someone will demonstrate Velcro. Someone will teach you how to zip your zipper. Every morning, they tell you your name. Friends who’ve known each other sixty years get reintroduced. Every morning.
These are doctors, lawyers, captains of industry, who, day to day, can’t master a zipper anymore. This is less teaching than it is damage control. You might as well try to paint a house that’s on fire.
Here at St. Anthony’s, Tuesday means Salisbury steak. Wednesday means mushroom chicken. Thursday is spaghetti. Friday, baked fish. Saturday, corned beef. Sunday, roast turkey.
They have thousand-piece jigsaw puzzles for you to do while you’re running out the clock. There isn’t a mattress in the place a dozen people haven’t already died on.
Eva’s wheeled her chair up to my mom’s doorway and she’s sitting there, looking pale and wilted, as if she’s a mummy somebody just unwrapped and then set its thin cruddy hair. Her curly blue head never stops bobbing in slow, tight little prizefighter circles.
“Don’t come near me,” Eva says every time I look at her. “Dr. Marshall won’t let you hurt me,” she says.
Until the nurse gets back, I just sit on the edge of my mom’s bed and wait.
My mom has one of those clocks where each hour is marked by the call of a different bird. Prerecorded. One o’clock is the American Robin. Six is the Northern Oriole.
Noon is the House Finch.
The Black-capped Chickadee means eight o’clock. The White-breasted Nuthatch means eleven.
You get the idea.
The problem is, associating birds with specific times can getconfusing. Especially if you’re outside. You turn from a clock watcher to a bird watcher. Every time you hear the lovely trill of the White-throated Sparrow, you think:
Is it ten o’clock already?
Eva wheels a little bit into my mom’s room. “You hurt me,” she says to me. “And I never told Mother.”
These old people. These human ruins.
It’s already half-past the Tufted Titmouse, and I have to catch my bus and be at work by the time the Blue Jay sings.
Eva thinks I’m her big brother who diddled her about a century ago. My mom’s roommate, Mrs. Novak with her horrible big hanging breasts and ears, she thinks I’m her bastard business partner who gypped her out of a patent for the cotton gin or the fountain pen or something.
Here I get to be all things to all women.
“You hurt me,” Eva says and rolls a little closer. “And I’ve never forgotten it
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