Nana is sick. I can't leave, and I don't just mean today. Today, by the way, has already been fired. Hours ago.
The first rude awakening comes some minutes past 7. Nana is tearing around my bedroom, a heap of dressers and bookshelves in the center, odd huddled objects on top of them, and me in the corner curling tighter into the comforter cocoon I construct each night with tossing and turning in search of a warm body. The smell of primer clings to my walls. Nana is looking for something. She can't find it, she says, and her voice is too papery, formidable. I'm having weird dreams lately. Am I even awake? I remember she's been sick. She's talking about some road, shuffling through last night's mess of papers. Searching. There's no road in there. I don't even write about roads except metaphorically. Directions? What's going on here anyway?
"You need directions?" my voice doesn't sound much better than hers.
"I need your car keys!"
"My...? Where's your car?"
"In the driveway- where yours ought to be. They're paving the road and the man says he needs your car off the street!" The way she's raving you'd think I'd been told many times about this paving business. "Your keys, Marisa Lynn!"
"Mmph. Pocketbook." My voice is still heavy.
"And where is that?"
Beats me. I slither half-free of the blankets, but stop. I seem not to have any clothes on. They get tangled in the cocoon and I tear them off in the night, but I don't remember having done so. It's cold. I remember something about September. Vaguely. I hope it isn't true. My pocketbook is beside the bed. I fish out my keys and hand them to her. She goes away. I'm still half-asleep and would drop off directly, but for the sound of my grandfather starting my car. Little Car is carborated, and I don't much like for anyone to drive her because she misbehaves. I know her quirks, and we compromise. Papa forgets to give her gas and so she stalls. Repeatedly. I'm pulling clothes on, pissed off, when I hear him get her going. Papa has only the one eye, and I watch out the big bay window in the living room with Nana, whose skepticism of her husband's ability to park without incident is as apparant as my own. So why had she handed off my keys to him?
I shuffle back to bed: too baffled to sleep, too appalled by my day's beginning to want anything further to do with it. Can't stay in bed all day, huh? Fucking watch me. But a cacophony of mechanical monsters erupt into garish song on the street outside and I realize what "they're paving" means for my morning. If I were sleeping already, I don't think they'd disturb me. We're close to Otis Airforce Base. I'm used to unsettling sounds. The world will be ending and I'll assume it's only The Man flying around up there, playing war. But I'm not sleeping, and underlying my sleepiness is an all-encompassing disdain that nearly cancels it out. I think if I can coax an orgasm out of my shivering body, I can make it sleep afterward, maybe. I'm not in the mood to try for long, but it comes and I pull up the covers in a hood over my eyes and ears. I feel better and I'm ready to sleep. But my phone is ringing...
I won't answer, but I must know who dares call me before 8 AM. Eric Neal. Are you fucking kidding me? I'm tempted to pick up and scream at him, but I went to all that trouble to make myself sleepy again, and I think I can reclaim the post-orgasm lethargy. Yes, there it is. Sleep. And then Nana is calling out Papa's name, and she sounds truly distressed. I know because when she's just regular-mad she calls him Peter. That was his (ornery old) father's name. The way they interact sometimes, you can almost believe they hate one another. She's being especially mean today, from the sound of it. And then I remember that it's their 58th wedding anniversary. "God damn you!" she yells when he doesn't answer, and then, "Will somebody please help me?!" she's moaning and I'm up, out of bed. I find her in her bedroom.
"What is it? What's wrong?" she seems all right, I'd expected blood.
"Alex! I can't find Alex and the door was open just a little ways- just this much- and I don't think he'd go outside, but I can't find him. Help me. Aaaaaalex!" and so on. Alex is a large green buzzard-looking bird with a bright red beak. My brother left Alex with Nana years ago when he moved to Virginia, and she walks around doing housework with the bird on her shoulder, singing. Alex talks, but never when you want him to, never when you're showing a guest the cool talking bird, and never when you're trying to find him. Right now he is silent. He isn't hard to spot though- bright green against the white primer and the remodeling process has driven most of the furniture out into the POD in the front yard. Alex is on top of the fridge in the kitchen. I return him to his cage while Nana scolds, threatens to stuff him and roast him for supper.
I assume that sleep is out of the question now. It's almost 9 anyway. Maybe it's my acceptance that allows me to once again drift off and dream of watching a movie made by a man in Venice whom I've never met, though he's sent it to me on purpose. It's homemade, but the quality is fine. He's waking up, starting his day, the soundtrack is that Beatley song by Olivia Tremor Control that makes me think of the video montage that might open Hollywood's answer to my best-selling autobiography. And then comes Nana's voice again. Can I bring her to the her doctor's office? She says she's too dizzy to drive, and she doesn't trust my goddamned grandfather.
Of course I can, I think she means now. I ask when her appointment is- if I have time to shower. She says she doesn't have an appointment, she doesn't want to call until they're done working on the road because until they're done we're really quite trapped. I'm not sure why she woke me up to tell me that, but I'm waking up today for the last time. I tell Nana to call the office, and when she finally does, she gets the answering service. My cell phone rings again, and it's Aunt Mary calling from Virginia to make sure I get Nana to a doctor. I tell her that they're all at lunch, but Nana's calling back at 12:30. She thinks they'll be able to fit her in. Aunt Mary and I have our doubts. If they can't, we agree that she should go to the ER.
Sure enough, they can't fit her in today. They say she should've called in the morning. Someone else had that idea! I'm standing there while she makes the appointment, shaking my head. She gets off the phone, and I tell her to call Aunt Mary. Aunt Mary is badass by nature, and I'm in one of my self-defeating "omgWHATamIdOINGwithMyLIFE???" moods. I'm not feeling very badass. She refuses. She wants me to drive her to the bank. She needs to deposit a few things. She doesn't feel well enough to attend her 58th anniversary dinner, but she doesn't want to vegetate all day either. I have this idea that I'll just drive to Cape Cod Hospital and to hell with what she wants- she's been sick for days, and I want to cry every time she coughs. She's had pneumonia twice in the last 5 years. She's going to the fucking hospital whether she likes it or not.
There's only one way in or out of this neighborhood, across the pond from the one I grew up in, which is a maze in and of itself. We circumnavigate the whole of said maze to get out onto the main road, which is blocked by Optimus Prime and his Transformer friends, naturally. They saved the most important road for last. So we're not going anywhere. We return home and I seriously consider putting another coat of primer on my walls. Once I paint it, I can start to set up my life again, and I miss my antique mirrors. But I'm feeling sorry for myself and worried about my grandmother. Short of tying her up in the coat closet, I cannot convince her to rest. She's making chocolate chip cookies as I write this, says it makes her feel better. There are NO bartending jobs in the paper, and I think I might pick cranberries for a while. I had an epiphany my first (exceedingly cold) night on the beach. To wit: Extremes... are bad. Balance, on the other hand, is good. I need more of that. Faith is two fishes with their tails ties together and God is what happens when they decide not to struggle. It's unfathomable, I know. I've no idea how to proceed. I am open to suggestion. The defiance that was once independence has melted into helpless terror, and now I want, more than anything else, simple safety- protection- to be held and to be comforted- but I take comfort in so little, never quite shaking the air of impermanence that surround us all, poor mortals!
Christ, but if I start in on this there's no telling what I'll say. It's not all bad. I know that. I just have a better grip on the bad things. They're easier to keep a hold of. When something sucks, there's less thought involved. What's good seems somehow less tangible. When something seems good, I dissect it. I don't trust it. I put it in a cage and study its habits. But I wouldn't do much of anything either if I were stuck in a cage. If I look for sinister undertones in every ray of sunlight, why don't I seek some silver lining when everything turns to shit? There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so. I guess ol' Shakespeare must have thought too much too...
Now hopefully "they" have stopped with the paving.
(Robots in disguise.)
