“Pops” was back at the Shell station, and the pretty, young black woman was worried again as I was stocking up for my visit to see my longest-tenured newspaperman pal, whether he’d remember my visit or not.
Well, he’s no longer a newspaperman. Nor am I. Jerry Manley -- aka "Chuckles News Brother" (I am "Flapjacks," as you know) and I were stripped of that once-prestigious rank years ago. Age was the
reason. Also, veteran newspapermen and women were sacrificed to make way for
content creators, ideally those who also were willing backstabbers.
Anyway, I smiled across the counter to the kind, young woman
at the gas station.
“You got this, Pops?” she
asked – I couldn’t see her nametag
because I didn’t want to stare at her feminine accoutrements (I do not want to
be a “dirty old Pops”), but I’ll simply ask her name next time. Quinccy, the
manager, must be taking one of his four weeks of vacation. He got in trouble
last year for not taking it. (“I like it here, being around the people,” he
explained last December when I ragged him about not taking his earned days off.
Then I remembered, I never took all mine off either, back when I loved my work.
Before desperadoes like me and Jerry were kicked in the nuts and tossed to the
curb. I don’t know where they kicked the newspaperwomen, but I’m sure it ached.)
“Yeah, I have it OK,” I told the lovely young woman as I
picked up the plastic bag with its two packages of peanut butter crackers (per
Jerry’s request, I opted out of the cheese crackers this week) and the last
Diet SunDrop in the station’s wall-size cooler.
I paid her for the treats as well as $8 for gas – I have a
40-year-old Saab and try to keep the tank topped off, especially in hot
weather, when vapor locks can screw up the fuel injectors – and turned to get
to the door. A line of four Hispanic lawnmower fellers and a country club-looking
white guy in an alligator shirt were waiting for me to get my limping ass out
of the way.
Speaking of which, the young woman’s nicely proportioned
hindquarters suddenly were in front of me, as she ran to hold open the door.
I may not always feel old, but I certainly look the part.
It’s embarrassing, but when nice-looking young women like to tend to my needs,
I’ve never sternly objected, ever, in my life.
I hope they help other old people, those who really can’t carry a
plastic bag 50 feet.
I did my best not to brush against her as I stepped through
the door and out to the pumps where the old Saab, as is per custom, was waiting
at Pump No. 8. I’m a mysteriously superstitious fellow, and I always use the
same gas pump. Although last week, a big box truck toting potato chips was in
my way. So, I had to use Pump No. 6. I haven’t felt right about it ever since.
Outside the facility where Jerry likely is the youngest
Memory Care Ward resident – the woman who walks the halls, complaining about
the knuckleheads and other folks who live here, may be younger – two women in
white summer dresses are leaning back in their white wicker chairs, sipping
from glasses of water with cucumber slices.
On this portico, the nursing home has a huge pickle jar –
the two-gallon size you see on a bar, generally filled with giant dills with
slime covering the top of the brine. This one was sparkling clean, filled with
ice, water and slices of cucumber. These women are enjoying it so much, I stop
and grab a paper cup full. Getting gas on a 100-degree day makes an old, crippled man thirsty for cucumber water.
And crippled is what I am. I finally admit it. I am using my
gnarled old cane -- the one my dead brother made from a lemon bush or
something like that when he was still
alive -- most of the time I’m in public.
It makes it easier to walk and keep my top half from bending
over and watching the concrete. A doctor wants to cut me open and fix my back
soon. I’ll meet with him next week. Since my brother recently went into that
same hospital for dehydration and came out as a corpse a month later, I’m not
sure I want to get surgery there. I’d
rather not be dead, though, I suppose it would be nice to walk again without pain
or the cane. As I tussle with it, I keep remembering the truth Eric taught me: Dehydration
is not as bad as death. It scares me.
I lumber – literally, since the big stick with the Paul
McCartney quote burned into it is a helluva thick piece of wood – through the
front part of the nursing home, where “normal” people live, exchanging
one-liners and dirty limericks starting with lines like “There once was a girl
with a truck….” Or “There was an old maid named Venus ….”
These people on this day are having a discussion with the
social worker about the importance of sex in a marriage and how attitudes
toward sex have changed during the last century.
“I waited until I was 17, when I got married,” said one
woman. “I got married because of the war (WWII? Korea? Even Vietnam?). I didn’t see him for two years after we
married.
“He was in the Navy, and he told me he didn’t have a girl in
every port, that he was all mine.”
“Young
people now just want it too soon. They need to wait until they find the
right person,” added another older woman.
There was a lot of giggling among this group of probably 20,
all-women, who are talking about their desires.
“Man, if I was just 40 years older,” I thought. Not really, but I
figured I’d throw that in.
Vikki, the dietician in the “Memory Care Ward – attached by
double security doors to the “normal” rest home – lets me enter the section
where my friend, Jerry, will live until he dies, or so he tells me.
“Let me see first if he’s in here,” she says, ducking into
the party room.
The folks gathered there, even my pal Milford/Bob and the
guy with the Vanderbilt sweatshirt, are loudly singing some hymn that includes
God, eternal joy, death and weeping willows. I don’t recognize it – I actually
am pretty aware of classic hymns – but I am impressed by the joy and bluster.
Vikki steps away from good Rocky’s revival, or whatever is
going on, and tells me “Jerry must be in his room.’’
When I find him, he is watching some sort of fantasy/horror
film starring three lovely young women – “They’re all witches,” Jerry says, I
think defining the women on screen, but perhaps speaking of the entire gender. Actually, he likes women. Married a couple of
them and even has a daughter, who, he says has not visited him in a long time.
“I didn’t even know last Sunday was Father’s Day,” he says,
when I ask him if he heard from his kids (His daughter lives in Nashville, his
son in the Houston, Texas, area).
Course, even if they had been here, he wouldn’t remember.
Last week there were several greeting cards, most unsigned, on Jerry’s
bureau. One of the signed ones is all
that remains, and it is addressed to “Stan” – a name unclaimed by both living
residents in this room.
I glance at it to see if it applies to either Jerry or Bob.
Nope. It’s a note written to Stan, and “Uncle Milt is out of the hospital and
being taken care of by Aunt Barb.”
I sit down to watch the really stupid witch movie, letting
Jerry enjoy.
I do butt in to ask if anyone has visited him lately – other
than his kids, who he maintains have not.
“No. You’re the last one I’ve seen. Only one who comes. I think John Staed came by once, but that was
a long time ago."
In recent weeks, Jerry has maintained that John has dropped
by recently and maybe often. On this day, John’s single visit was a ways in the
past, in Jerry’s mind. And since John – who really is a nice guy and was one of
the less-famous News Brothers, sort of like Zeppo was to our Groucho, Chico and
Harpo pack of (should-be) committed brothers – has never been here, his ghost
visits have been the source of joy.
“I don’t remember. Maybe he comes by when he visits his
sister,” who lives in Brentwood and like John tries to stay away from a place
like this. I’ve visited a lot of nursing homes in my life – I used to write
about the residents – and the one thing they have in common is that, while
sparkling clean, they all smell like rotting leaves. Or flesh, I suppose.
While Jerry watches the witches cast a spell on him on TV,
dietician Vikki – a really large and warm-hearted woman – comes into the room.
She looks at the empty cracker wrappers and the almost-empty bottle of Diet
SunDrop. She shakes her head at me for my contraband rules violation, but she
smiles.
“I’m just glad Jerry has someone visiting him,” she says,
slicing the end of his “fuck you” finger and taking a blood sample.
“Sugar’s a little high today. I’ll get you before lunch,”
she says.
Before leaving the room, she reminds Jerry it is shower day.
“It’s always too cold,” he says.
“He always says the water is too cold, and so is the room
after,” Vikki says, turning the room thermostat up to 84, “so it will be good
and warm in here after lunch when you take your shower.”
Since I am susceptible to heat and it’s 100 or so outside, I
almost pass out when the hot air starts roaring into the room.
“I need to go, now, Jerry,” I say. “You make sure you let Vikki give you a
shower this afternoon.”
Vikki tells him lunch is being served, so we begin walking,
arm-over-shoulder down to the dining hall/party room.
Vikki leads us first into her office, where she gives him a
half-dozen pills, some cranberry juice and a pair of insulin shots in his gut.
I walk Jerry the rest of the way to the lunchroom.
“Man, you should have been here back around 10:30 or so,
they were singing hymns in here. Something about God and willow trees, or some
such,” I joke my friend.
“I really don’t care that much about religion,’’ he said.
“But I do like some of those songs.”
The stunning nurse with dreadlocks – I don’t know her name –
lets me out the double-locked doors, while Jerry’s “please don’t go” eyes
follow me.
“I’ll be back in a few days,” I say, after turning my head
to see my friend watching my departure. “Hey,
it turns into summer at 3:50 this afternoon.”
“I didn’t know they actually had a time for it to start,” Jerry
answers, seeming confused
Vikki grabs his left arm and leads him into the lunchroom,
where songs about God and willows presided a while before.
The “normal” old people are eating some sort of meat and
potatoes concoction when I pass them by.
Toothless gumming sounds replace all of the talk about sexual healing
I’d heard awhile before.
Out on the porch, old Pops grabs one more paper cup of iced,
cucumber water, and I hit the road.
