Short Fiction

Issue III | Contents | Fiction

Arielle Angel

New York University

A month from now, while my grandfather is still lying in the hospital, twig legs hidden under white sheets, I will break down onto the cold tile in my kitchen in New York.  I will lie there in fetal position on the floor and wail like an elephant while my eggs turn black and burn in the pan, until my roommate comes home to put out my fire and to lift me up.  And I will cry, loudly, and breathe fast and short, and say, “everyone is sad everyone is sad and I want to sleep all week I can’t do anything all I ever do is sleep and everyone is sad,” over and over until the words become tiny units of sound and they don’t mean anything anymore.           

But, right now, I am at my mother’s dinner party, sitting aloof as plump silver-haired women sip apple martinis from plastic glasses and speak in hushed voices about “putting things in perspective.”  Their husbands are gathered around the big screen TV, watching the Ohio State game fixedly, bellies round and full, eyes glazed over.  They move only slightly, grunt softly, at every new turn of events, as if they sense the inappropriateness of too amplified a display.  

I sit at the dinner table, pretending to be engrossed in my pasta.  This weekend has been catered event after catered event; it makes me feel as though someone has died. 

One of my great aunts sits across from me.

            “So how do you like it in New York?” she asks.

            “I like it,” I say in a manner that ensures the end of the conversation. 

I’ve been allowed all kinds of anti-social behavior this weekend; they sympathize with me.  It’s perfectly normal, considering… they say to one another while they pick at h’our derves.

            My mother is standing directly behind me, talking to cousin Bette.  Bette flew in from Los Angeles for my little sister’s wedding.

            “We didn’t want to do the surgery before the wedding, but they told us there was very little chance of anything going wrong.  And his quality of life was suffering so greatly…we thought it would be wonderful if he could dance at the wedding, you know?  How were we supposed to know?” my mother says emphatically. 

She and my grandmother have been rationalizing their decision in much the same manner all weekend.  It was a mistake, they realize now, to schedule my grandfather’s surgery two weeks before the wedding.  Granted, it wasn’t supposed to happen this way.  He should be here tonight.  Instead, he is lying in a hospital bed across the railroad tracks, his brain swollen with blood.

I scan the room.  My brother Benny is watching the game.  Every once in a while, he’ll say something to irritate my great-uncles-- the two of us are Miami fans and are disgusted with our family’s treasonous allegiance. 

My grandmother is in her wheelchair at the end of the table, next to her brother-in-law.  They don’t appear to be speaking, just looking at one another solemnly.  I assume they are talking about Poppy. 

My father and his new wife sit uncomfortably at a separate table in our L-shaped living room.  Mom did not want to invite them to her house, but Evie, my sister, insisted that they be a part of all the wedding festivities.  Members of my mother’s side politely, nervously, take their turns at long-time-no-sees and kisses on the cheek, while my evil stepmother rolls her eyes.  Dad’s expression is dull on his skinny, sallow face as he answers them; he always gets skinny when he’s depressed. 

The only gaiety in the room is coming from Evie.  She seems unaffected: showing a circle of relatives her ring, smiling, talking about her dress, laughing, shoving her fiancÈ affectionately, baby this, baby that, smiling.  He stands by her side obediently.  He is more economical with his joy, has noticed the tone of the party, though he still appears genuinely pleased to be with my sister.  He is better than her, I think to myself, and hope that, for her sake, he never notices.

I stand to go speak with my grandmother.  I stand close to her; she puts her arm around my thighs. 

“Look at my beautiful grandchild,” she tries to gather a smile.  “Have you ever seen something so beautiful?” she says to her brother.  He smiles at me.  “You going to go see your Poppy later, baby?” my grandmother asks as she pulls at the wrinkles in my top.

“Yea, looking forward to it,” I lie.  I haven’t yet seen my grandfather.  I only flew in from New York last night. 

The men let out a collective sigh to signal halftime.  They rise and stretch, slowly.

My mother walks past the table and the couch and stands in front of the TV.  She taps a wine bottle with a spoon to get everyone’s attention.  “I have a video to show all of you and since we’re all together I thought it would be a good time,” she announces.  The family turns towards the television expectantly while my mother fiddles with the VCR. 

The footage is from a family reunion in Columbus over 25 years ago.  I was a curly-headed toddler at the time.  I don’t really remember it, but I recognize my own baby face flash sporadically at the corner of the screen. 

The reunion was in a hotel banquet room.  The camera first moves over the tables, pausing on the elderly- now all dead- who are chatting with one another and smiling.  Everyone else is on the dance floor, my great aunts and uncles, cousins-- everyone is dancing.  Some acknowledge the camera and wave.  Everyone in the movie looks very young; it intensifies the fact that everyone watching it looks very old.  When one of my relatives’ faces pops up on screen, everyone says their name in unison.

“Oh my god, Lorrie, look at your hair!” one will say.  Or “Wow, Bernie, you look so skinny.”  Scattered laughter, commentary. 

Suddenly, the audio blows out.  The cameraman finds my grandparents.  They are dancing.  Poppy is spinning my grandmother, who is wearing a deep red, 50s-style dress.  The skirt, which flows out from above her hips, spins as she spins, threatening to expose her undergarments.  She looks so classically dramatic.  Poppy seems to notice that they are being filmed and dips my grandma, clearly meaning to impress the camera but all the while pretending not to know it is there.  The camera stays there, fixed on them.  My grandparents were great dancers. 

Nobody says a word, just watches my grandparents, and the flow of that red skirt, the fluid force creating a ruffled circle to a silent beat. 

Poppy pulls my grandmother close to his chest and whispers something in her ear, then flings her back so both of their arms are outstretched, connected at the fingertips.  Her head is tilted back in laughter.

I realize that there is something eerie about watching dance without music.  The forms loose their meaning and become so alien, so confusing.  Every movement is out of place and surprising.  My grandparents float across the dance floor. I am struck by their mobility, their happiness.  I don’t remember them that way.

Silence.  My grandfather’s absence, previously a mosquito buzzing meekly in our ears, is growing large and confrontational-- an elephant, usurping our space.

The dance ends, and Poppy looks mischievously into the lens and tips an invisible hat.

And then, a low moan; my uncle is crying…and a sniff from the other side of the room.  I look around.  Many faces are wet.  My mother gets up quickly and shuts off the TV.  She wrinkles her brow; this was not what she intended at all.

I feel my own tears rise and collect below my eyes and I walk swiftly to the front door and out into the driveway.  My aunt is already out there, leaning against the garage door.  I did not see her leave.   

“Is it over?” she asks.  I nod.  “Man, as soon as Jay started crying, I lost it.  I couldn’t stay and watch the rest of that,” she says.  Her face and eyes are red.

“It was a bad idea,” I say, “to put on that video.”

“Oh, your mother didn’t realize it would go that way,” she says.  She puts a hand on mine.  I love her.  She’s one of the few family members I think I would love even if I didn’t have to.  I feel compelled to tell her this now, but I don't.

I shove some crumbling grout from the cracks in the driveway with my foot.  “Didn’t it…didn’t it almost feel like he was already, well…”

“Dead?” she finishes.

“Yea.”

“Yea, it did,” she says.

“That’s a strange feeling,” I say.

We stand enveloped in the darkness of the driveway for a moment, listening to the crickets and our own breathing, until my aunt straightens up a bit.

“Do you want me to drive you to the hospital?” she asks.

“Yea,” I say. “Let me get my purse.”

My aunt drops us off in front of the ICU, Evie and Benny and me.  The two of them already have visitor stickers, but I have to stop at security and get my picture taken. 

The guard tells me to look straight into the camera, but an old woman is moaning in the waiting room to the left of us.  I’m looking off at her when the guard snaps the picture.

“Not one of your finest moments,” Evie giggles when she sees my face appear on the screen.  We wait there for a moment while the picture prints out into a slick little sticker that says “EMERGENCY, Visitor” in bold.  My picture looks sad, and I shudder a little when I have to stick it to my dress

Evie leads the way to the elevator and up to the ICU.  She stops in front of two heavy wooden doors that extend up to the ceiling.

“This is it,” she says.  She presses a button on the wall next to the door and there is a little buzzing noise.  Benny pushes the door open.  There is a long hallway ahead of us, and I follow my siblings.  There is a quietude that lies heavily in the hall as we pass dimly lit rooms occupied by the sedated elderly.  There aren’t any doors, so we can see right inside of them.  I am struck with how much some of them look like animals and I say so in a hushed voice, to no one in particular.  Evie’s eyes flicker.

“Wait ‘till you see Poppy!  He looks like an owl,” she says with a smile.  We pass one room with a warthog-looking woman sitting straight up, alert, but doing nothing.  Then, Evie makes a sharp left and we are in Poppy’s room.

“Hi Poppy,” she says and leans down to kiss him on the cheek.  “Do you know who we are?”  She’s talking to him like one would to a small child.

“Well you must be someone ‘cuz you’re here to see me,” he says hoarsely. He doesn’t remember any of us; it’s because of the pressure on his brain.  The doctors say that’ll pass.  Eventually.

“Yea we’re someone.  We’re your grandchildren,” Evie says.  “And look, Helen’s come down from New York to see you.”  I step forward meekly and kiss him on the cheek.

“Hi Poppy,” I say.  His expression doesn’t change.  I suddenly don’t want to be there at all.

I step back from the hospital bed and sit down in a chair in the corner of the room.  I’m trying to think of the right thing to say, but instead I just sit there and look at him.  Half of his head is covered in long, unkempt white hair; the other half is shaved completely.  On the shaved half there is a three-quarter-moon shaped incision with thick industrial staples apparently holding it all together.  Something juts out from the quarter where there are no staples-inferably some hardware of modern surgical technology-but still I can’t quite grasp what I’m looking at.  It looks as though there is a medium-sized garden snake nestled tightly under the skin of his scalp; it clearly protrudes from it.  Its head wraps from the center of the moon around the side of Poppy’s shaven head and disappears around the back.  Poppy is sitting up in the bed, and though he is skinny, his torso looks erect.  His legs, however, wane under the asphyxiating white of the sheet.  I wonder if they were always that small and realize that I can’t remember the last time I saw them exposed.

Evie sits in a chair directly to the left of the bed and is holding Poppy’s hand in hers.  Benny is standing at the foot of the bed, studying the jumpy patterns of the vital screen as though he can’t believe they are coming from Poppy.  I wonder if my grandfather, a former ER surgeon, still follows them himself, instinctively, constantly processing his own diagnosis as if it were someone else’s.  I vaguely remember my mother telling cousin Bette that surgery is the only thing he’s been able to speak coherently about.

It is quiet in the room, oppressively quiet, save the rhythmic beeping of the monitors.  I want to break the silence.

            “So how are you?” I ask.  That seems a valid question.

            “Oh, I’m alright…alright,” he says.

            “Doesn’t he look like an owl?”  Evie asks me, amused.

            “He looks more like a turtle to me,” says Benny.

            “Poppy, you look like a turtle,” laughs Evie. 

            “Oh…do I?” Poppy asks weakly.  

Evie strokes his hand.  “Poppy, who is Shirley?” she asks.

            “Oh not this game again,” Benny grumbles.

            “Shut-up Benny,” says Evie.  She turns to my grandfather and repeats, sweetly, “Poppy, who is Shirley?”  Shirley is my grandmother.  They have been married for almost 60 years. 

            “Is that my daughter?”

            “Nooooo. Try again,” Evie is smiling insane like she’s some cheesy host on children’s programming. 

            “Gosh, Evie.  He doesn’t know.  Leave it,” my brother says.

            “It’s good for him, Benny.  It exercises his brain.  Should I just mope around like the two of you?”  Benny and I don’t reply.  Evie turns again to Poppy.  “It’s your wife, Poppy.  Do you know your wife?  She’s beautiful,” she says, undeterred by Benny’s petulance.  Whether its good for him or not, her tone bothers me.  “Watch, Helen.  He always knows this one,” she says to me.  “Poppy, who’s Max?”  Max is my grandfather’s old dog, a shaggy little mutt.  The day he died was one of the only times I ever saw my grandfather cry.

            “Max is my dog,” says Poppy.  “I made him up.”

            “Nooo.  You didn’t make him up.  He was real.  But he died,” says Evie matter-of-factly. 

            I am all of a sudden crying, and as if to convince my grandfather that I am not, I decide to make a joke.  “Poppy, you look like a punk rocker with that hairdo.  You should join a band.  You’d get all the girls.”  My voice is all choked up.

            “Like Elvis?  Like Elvis the Pelvis?” Poppy says.  He sounds serious.

            “Yea,” I chuckle a little.

            “Oh…I wish I could move like that,” he says.  We all laugh, genuinely, even Poppy. 

And then he starts to hum.  I can’t make out the tune, but I assume it’s something old.  The only song I ever really remember him singing to me as a kid was “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” but it isn’t that.  It surprises me.  I’ve never heard him hum before.  My siblings look just as struck-even Evie is quiet while he hums.

“Has he been doing that a lot?” I ask Evie.

“Yea, isn’t it creepy?” she says.

“I don’t know.  I kind of like it,” Benny says.  I gather that it’s ok to talk about Poppy like he’s not there; the doctors tell us he’s in sort of a dreamlike state, he fades in and out of coherence.  And besides, he’s not listening to us anyway; he’s busy humming.

And while he hums he starts reaching out at something to the left of Evie’s head.  I’ve been told he does that now too, hallucinates, cause of the pressure on his brain. 

Evie takes his hand and pulls it back down to his side.  “There’s nothing there, Poppy.”  He stops humming and looks down at his hand, covered in Evie’s. 

We sit there quiet for a little and stare at Poppy, fixed there as if nailed down by the white of the sheets.  He looks blank and I am sort of crying again.

Evie’s phone rings.  “It’s Mom,” she says and then says to my grandfather, “It’s Jeri.  Do you want to talk to your daughter Jeri?”

“Does she have all five of her knuckles?” he asks.

Evie picks up the phone and tells my mom that we should be leaving soon, that Poppy’s fading out of it, but that he looks better.  Better than what, I’d like to know.

We sit in the deafening quiet for a few more minutes, the hum and beep of the monitor marking the passage of time.  Then Evie stands up to signal to Benny and I that we are leaving.  I go to kiss Poppy goodbye.

“I love you,” I say, because it seems like the right thing to say.

“Well, I appreciate that,” he says.

 “Do you think he’s going to get better?”  I ask Benny this in our mother’s kitchen that night while the rest of the house sleeps.

“I don’t know,” he sighs.  Then, a long pause.  And he says, “Well, it seems like…like you got to have a will to get better, you got to have it somewhere in you.  And he didn’t have the will before, so what’s gonna change that now?”  It is a valid point, and it momentarily intrigues me to think that perhaps it is positive that Poppy has forgotten who he is; perhaps he has also forgotten that he had previously wanted to die, that he was bored with being elderly.  But something tells me no-- that stays with you.

            During the night, I dream that all my teeth are falling out one by one.  It’s one of those dreams that feels fantastically real, so that when I wake up the next morning I remember what my toothless gums felt like.  They felt like a cob with the corn ripped out of it, shredded sinews hanging from vacant sockets.

*

The wedding was nice, I guess.  Evie said I do, and Craig said I do, and Mom cried and Grandma looked like if her hand wasn’t holding up the left side of her face, she would fall over or fall right asleep, and Dad did nothing, but looked like he was very far away.  And I spent the whole time in the first pew, because I wasn’t a bridesmaid, and just looked down at the floor, hunched over with my elbows on my knees until I realized that people must be watching me look indifferent, so I straightened up.  I leaned a little on Benny who smiled only when he had to, when he thought that people might be watching him for a reaction.

Now we’re at the reception and I am sitting at a round table with a white tablecloth.  Most of the guests are on the dance floor, except my father who is across the room with his side of the family, still looking skinny and far away.  And except for my grandmother, who can’t walk, and my mother, sitting beside her, who looks tired.  We are all stationed at different tables, forming a Bermuda triangle of lethargy.  Evie doesn’t seem to notice.  She hasn’t spoken a word to any of us.  She’s happy to see her friends and to celebrate with them. She’s happy to be married.  I don’t blame her.  Craig’s family looks nice.  They are all dancing.

I go over to my father and sit next to him.

"What did you think of the service?" I ask him.

"It was nice," he says.  He doesn't look at me.  "It's a shame Evie didn't ask you to be a bridesmaid.  She's so thoughtless," he says.  He is watching her embrace a girlfriend of hers while he says this.

"I don't care.  I don't think I should've been one anyway."

"You two don't talk much when you're in New York, do you?" he asks.

"No."

I fiddle with the tablecloth and we watch the dance floor.  And then I say, "Are you having a good time?" I see his facial expression contort as though I just smacked him in the face with a frying pan and I instantly regret that I asked.

"You know I always liked your mother's family and everything.  It's nice to see them...And of course I'm happy for Evie.  But, truthfully," he turned to me, "I'll be happy when it's all over."

I am afraid of where this conversation is going.  I don't know whether he is going to make a snide remark about my mother (this weekend together has intensified their conflict) so I excuse myself, walk toward the heavy double doors, and push them open.  The music is muffled and suffocating as the doors close behind me.  I head out onto the hotel balcony.  Benny is already out there.  He shrivels up a little when he hears someone approaching, and quickly relaxes when he sees that it’s me.  I see he’s got a joint pressed between his fingers.  I reach out my hand and he passes it to me.

“Thought you quit,” he says.

“I did,” I say, as I raise it to my lips.

“It’s rough in there,” he says.  I lean over the balcony.  It is warm out.  I wish I were somewhere else.

And I say, “I just can’t bring myself to feel anything.  Is that bad?”

Benny takes a drag and exhales off the balcony.  He doesn’t look at me.  “Yea, I think that’s bad,” he says, “but I feel the same way…detached, or something.”

I nod, “Yes, this is bad.  Poppy is sick, and grandma is sad and old, and Mom and Dad are sad.”

“And what about you?” he asks.

“I’m sad, too, I think. You?”

“Yea.”  The joint is short now and burns my fingertips.  I lift it to Benny and he motions for me to throw it away.  We watch it float off the balcony and disappear into the bushes below.

“What do you think about Evie?” he asks.

“She’s fine,” I say.

“She’s dumb.  It’s easy to be fine when you’re dumb.”  He turns around and leans on the railing.  We don’t look at one another. “We should go back in,” he says.

“This is bad, Benny.  It’s really bad.”

“I know.  But we should go back in.  We should pretend.”  He touches my shoulder lightly.  On impulse I recoil from his touch, and then feel guilty about it.  He turns to leave and opens the door.

"I do love you, Helen," he says as he stands in the doorway.  He says this as though he thinks it is the right thing to say, as though it will offer both of us supreme comfort.

I nod.  “Go," I say, " I’m staying out here for a little.” And he leaves me there.