Unmentionables

Where do we want to eat?—the first words L says upon opening the door, before we can see her, before she can see us or even know if we are home.

D is in his downstairs bedroom, playing a computer game.  I’m in the den playing the same game.  Neither of us answer.

Outside, the grass is eight inches too high.

Through an open doorway I see L’s keys arc to the couch, strike the cushion with a muted rattle.  Following the keys, the clean steel of a stethoscope glints in the window light, lands on the adjacent cushion.  Its black tubing uncoils, slumps over the edge.  L’s footsteps thud up the out-of-sight stairway.  Again she asks where we want to eat, shouts it this time, feigning indignation.

D wants to eat on the moon, he shouts.  I yell pizza, take a sip of my soda, lean to my left and readjust the box fan on the floor.  It’s no use, only swampy air.

My t-shirt peels from the black desk chair.  I stand and stretch.  L retreats back down the stairway, cursing at the heat, still in her bright blue scrubs.

At the restaurant we split a fourteen inch.  D pays and picks off the pepperoni.

L shouldn’t talk about them, but she does.  She calls them Georgie, Grab-Ass, Old Sandra.  Ginger, Larry-B, and Witch.  All of them, residents at the Crestfield Home where L works nights as a nurse.  All of them, disabled in some way.  All of them, without family to care.

L shouldn’t talk about them, but she tells us how Witch punched one of the aides and claimed L had done it.  How Larry-B wanders from his room at night, screaming, begging for someone to call his long-dead wife, to tell her he’s ready to go home, then pees in the hallway.  How Grab-Ass has no legs past the knee, open wounds where they had carved out gangrene all the way to the patella—and how, whenever the nurses roll him to clean or change bandages, his nubby fingers slide up between their legs.

It’s not like he’s dangerous, though, L tells us.  She shakes her head.  We would be aching for sexual connection, too, in that condition, she says.

Grab-Ass is thirty-seven years old.  At least twenty years younger than any other resident.  Most suffer dementia, Alzheimer’s, age-related disabilities—but Grab-Ass has his marbles and some measure of youth, L says—just hasn’t got legs, or teeth, or a penis.  L says it’s the strangest thing, to have testicles with no apparent penis, some developmental disorder she hasn’t learned the name of yet.

I finish my third slice of pizza and slurp down the last of my soda.
L tips, leaves a few crumpled ones from her pocket, and I drive us home.
In our driveway, an orange cat with bobbed tail sits, blocks my parking spot.  D points his finger out the passenger window, hand in the shape of a gun, yells “Bang, Bang, Bang, Kitty!” but it isn’t intimidated.  It takes the car horn and few engine revs before the cat saunters out of the way.  D and I complain about the cat on and off until nightfall.

Upstairs in my bedroom, the air has cooled.  East-facing windows ensure that in the morning, the sheets will be heavy with sweat, and I will spend another day in escape of circumstance, bent in front of my computer screen, chugging soda, box fan at my side.  D will tell me his plans to mow the yard, that it will cool down tomorrow, it’ll be the best time to do it.

I sneak a cigarette, perched on the widow sill, breathing smoke into the dark air.

I sleep—and I shouldn’t talk about them—but in my dreams, soft gaunt hands fall upon my chest, young women with thin red hair lean down and drift over me, whisper that it’s ok—and my fingers slip between their legs—and their faces, in changeless granite smiles, welcome me.