Queen Bee Goes Home Again (3 page)

The city had rerouted all the traffic between the tracks and the back of the amphitheater's wall, making the whole thing look backwards to me, so I'd immediately dubbed it Backwards Park. And sure enough, there it was, presenting its bare curved brick wall to me as I passed, all the trees and flowers on the other side, a disturbing metaphor for my life.

Almost home.

Four more restored houses/offices sported
FOR SALE
or
FOR LEASE
signs, even Mrs. Duckett's fancifully redone Victorian. The bank had taken it over from the developer who'd done a green-stick restoration, updating the wiring, plumbing, and insulation. Poor guy. He'd spent so much restoring it, yet ended up with
nada.

Across the side street from Mrs. Duckett's, our house loomed ahead, unchanged, at 1431 Green Street, one of the few remaining residences amid the commercially zoned houses that faced our side of the tracks. The verandah still anchored the sides and front of our sturdy foursquare Victorian colonial revival.

Miss Mamie's porch, all eighty feet of it, was her claim to fame. That, and her shoulder-high hedge of pale pink gumpos that bloomed all summer, to the envy and bafflement of the entire garden club and the county extension agent.

Miss Mamie's claim to infamy still sat by the front door as it had for the past twenty years: a cast-iron bathtub painted deep purple on the outside, perched on gilded ball-and-claw feet, and brimming with dark pink dragon-wing begonias, our shiny brass house numbers glued to the side.

It still reminded me of an ancient belle in her underwear, stretched out on a swooning couch for all to see, but I filed my opinions away in the
Let go and let God
drawer.

Tommy and I had long since given up trying to get our parents to have somebody haul the bathtub away for scrap. Daddy had protested that it would end up costing too much money, but that was before metal salvage paid so much.

Now that Daddy was in the Home, I think Miss Mamie held on to the tub out of misplaced loyalty for him, too guilty about having him committed to get rid of it.

When I looked closer, I saw that my childhood home was showing its age, and I couldn't help wondering what it cost Miss Mamie to keep it up. Had to be a small fortune.

The neglect was a disturbing clue that my mother might be hard up financially. But she'd never allowed us to discuss her finances, and at ninety, I doubted she would surrender that final bastion of control without a fight.

Miss Mamie wouldn't even tell us what it cost to keep Daddy in the Alzheimer's wing at the Home. Had to be at least three thousand a month, a major financial hemorrhage.

Not your business,
the voice of my 12-step enabler's group chided.
You've got enough problems of your own to deal with.

Not my business. For the moment, anyway.

Still, as I passed the historical marker that declared the accomplishments of our Breedlove ancestors, I felt a sudden spike of panic, and my arms refused to turn in at either entrance of our crushed-gravel circular drive.

I just couldn't do it.

So I deflected the inevitable by going to see Daddy at the Home, something I'd put off for months.

You've got to know it's bad when you'd rather go to a nursing home to see your crazy father than officially announce another failure by moving back in with your mother. Again.

 

Three

I took the crossing gently, hearing a few ominous clinks from my cargo and clanks from the U-Haul as I did.

Shoot. Shoot, shoot, shoot. Did I break anything?

I pulled past the taqueria and the Exxon station to the light, then turned left on the highway for half a block before entering the sizzling parking lot of the Home.

Of course, the only place I could park with the trailer was half a block from the door, and thanks to the heat inversion, the air was hazy with pollution. I locked my car, then hiked inside to be met by the odor of urine, stale sweat, overcooked food, and despair.

As usual, they kept the thermostat at eighty-five. I breathed through my mouth and tried not to think what germs Daddy and Uncle Bedford were exposed to daily from the overbooked, underpaid nursing assistants.

The Home had remained perpetually understaffed through four owners, and it didn't take a genius to know why. With only a few exceptions, they'd never paid the aides enough to keep anybody decent, so turnover was brisk, and most of the ones they hired came from the dregs of the work pool.

And as usual, there was nobody at the nurses' station when I passed it on the way to Daddy and Uncle Bedford's room in the Alzheimer's wing. At the security door to the wing, I punched in the daily access code written on a Post-it note stuck to the wall above the keypad, then went inside.

Halfway down the hall, I found Daddy's door slightly ajar, so I knocked softly as I opened it. “Hey. It's Lin.”

What I found inside took me aback. Clothes and bed linens had been hurled every which way. Uncle Bedford's bare mattress was on the floor (the bed frame wasn't even in the room), and he and Daddy were lying on their exposed plastic mattresses, butt naked except for the sheets that covered them!

Daddy looked awful, but Uncle Bedford was a waxy yellow and didn't even seem to be breathing. Alarmed, I went over and shook him, hard. “Uncle Bedford,” I shouted. “Wake up!”

He didn't budge. “Uncle Bedford!” I yelled into his ear.

Of course, he was stone deaf without his hearing aids, as was Daddy. The two of them carried on totally separate demented conversations at the top of their lungs all the time, but Uncle Bedford now gave off an unfamiliar sour smell and still didn't respond to my vigorous shaking.

As pitiful as their lives had become, I panicked at the thought that either of them might be dead. I'd prayed for God to take them both from their misery, but that didn't mean I was ready for it to happen that day.

To my relief, Daddy let out a rasping gasp, his jaw dropping, then started sawing logs, which at least told me he was still alive.

I grabbed the call button from his bed and punched it again and again, but nobody answered.

Frantic, I hurried out into the hall, where I spotted one of the few longtime nursing assistants emerging at a snail's pace from the Alzheimer's dining area at the far end of the corridor. “Shalayne!” I called to her. “Hurry! Something's wrong with Uncle Bedford.”

“Hold yer horses,” she said, clearly unimpressed. Her progress didn't speed up one whit. “I'm a-comin'. These blessed bunions is killin' me. Just hang on. It's all good.”

Frustrated beyond endurance, I went back into Daddy's room and tried to rouse Uncle Bedford again, with no success.

My Aunt Glory would never forgive me if I simply stood there and did nothing. She felt guilty enough as it was, for finally throwing in the towel and committing him.

The General hadn't been in the Home for two weeks before Aunt Glory gave in to Uncle B's constant agitated demands that we find his brother. So she'd had her husband of fifty-seven years declared incompetent (duh!), then committed him to the Home on the condition that Uncle B and Daddy could be roommates, bless her heart.

Free at last, she'd fled Mimosa Branch in Uncle Bedford's red Corvette, to live with my cousin Susan in Alpharetta, where she had central air-conditioning, her own bathroom, peace and quiet, and mahjong groups aplenty.

My cousins Susan and Laura took turns coming up to check on Uncle Bedford, but only once a week.

Not that I could throw stones. I'd been avoiding the Home for months, since Daddy had stopped recognizing me.

I looked down at my uncle, who lay there like a corpse.

Should I do CPR? Mouth-to-mouth?

Would that even work, without his teeth?

Oh,
yuk
!

Should I just stand there and let him go?

Sensible though that was, I couldn't, so I started chest compressions.

Why didn't that woman
hurry
?

Shalayne finally shuffled in. “Now, Miz Scott, you can quit that CPR. They's no cause to go gittin' so upset. Last night yer daddy and yer uncle took off all they clothes and was packin' to leave. All night, hollerin' away at each other the whole time, as usual.” She cracked a broken-toothed grin. “They was havin' such a good time, we just left 'em to it. They didn't git to sleep till an hour ago, so I'm not surprised you cain't rouse 'em.” She smiled again. “We just covered them as they lay, for modesty, don't you know.”

Uncle Bedford finally let out a strangled snore.

I wanted to be stern with Shalayne, but the picture she conjured made me laugh instead, washing away my fear.

I was grateful that the staff had let Daddy and Uncle Bedford keep doing what they'd been doing as long as they were having a good time.

When I collected myself, I asked her, “What happened to Uncle Bedford's hospital bed?”

Shalayne shook her head, exhaling. “He kept climbin' out of it and fallin', so we just put the mattress on the floor. Safer, and a lot less trouble than restraints.”

She pursed her lips with a knowing nod. “We tried restrainin' him once, and he like to tore the whole bed apart. I's afraid he'd break his wrists, fightin' like he was.” She leaned closer. “They's strong as a WWE rassler with 'roid rage when they have them psychotic spells, don't you know.”

She looked back down at my uncle. “So far, puttin' Mr. B's mattress on the floor seems to work just fine.”

Uncle Bedford took a long, blessed breath, then blasted out a barely intelligible hunk of vitriol on the exhale, still asleep.

His prejudices had come back to haunt him in the form of an armless little black man who bit him on the knees (unless you sprayed him away with Windex), phantom Japanese soldiers who sat on the furniture unless he covered it with sheets, and his wife Aunt Glory, who had turned into “that gay guy” who'd kept “stealing” his shoes (probably to put them where they belonged).

That gay guy. Please. My father and all three of his brothers had grown up so homophobic, they were probably repressed gays themselves.

As usual when confronted by the bizarre Southern gothic elements of my family, I tried to laugh it off.

Lying there, Daddy and Uncle B looked so frail and harmless.

As if she'd read my mind, Shalayne frowned. “Mr. Bedford's dangerous, don't you know? Coldcocked that new boy we hired last week. Thought he was gay, when all the boy was doin' was trying to git Mr. B's unmentionables clean in the shower.”

Shalayne went on in her monotone with, “We had to give Mr. B a hypo of Haldol ta git him settled down, and that new boy quit right there on the spot. But that's all past, now we went back to lettin' the women bathe 'em both.”

Nothing like a woman with a warm, soapy rag in the shower, regardless of what she looked like.

Men. I mean, really.

Shalayne pulled the sheet over Daddy's feet. “They seem to like that.” She crossed her thin arms at her waist in satisfaction. “I tell ya, these old men is still randy, even when they cain't hardly breathe.”

But looking at the two of them lying there, wasted and helpless, my heart broke for my sole surviving uncle and my father. And their genes within me.

Please, God, I beg you not to let me get to this state. Take me home now, if you have to, but don't let me come to this.

Then I flashed on the two of them, naked and hollering and flinging clothes and sheets, and I chuckled in spite of myself.

The only positive thing about visiting the nursing home was, it certainly gave me a proper sense of perspective.

At least I had my mind, and so did Miss Mamie.

I could start over, as long as I had my mind.

Heck, I might even go back and finish college, so I could get a decent job teaching. That sounded like a plan. I loved teaching things, and the vacations would be great. All I had to do was figure out how to pay for my degree.

“C'mon, Miss Lin.” Shalayne beckoned me to the door. “They's out cold. You go home and come back another time, when they's better.”

Better
was definitely a relative term, pun intended.

So I went back out into the searing parking lot, then headed home to face the music, Lord help me.

 

Four

Turning in at the crushed-granite drive of my childhood home, I decided to park in the shade of the porte cochere beside the dining room, then hunt for my brother Tommy to help me unload and carry my stuff up the rickety stairway to the tiny apartment that had once housed the full-time gardener.

But Tommy's truck wasn't in the garage beneath the apartment, nor anywhere on the grounds. As usual, he'd managed to be elsewhere when he was needed.

I was unbuckling my seat belt when I heard the screen door to the dining room
skreek
open, then slam. I looked that way to see Miss Mamie's lower legs march out onto the smoke-gray floorboards of the verandah, half a flight above me.

“Oh, my Lins-a-pin, you're finally back home where you belong!” my mother declared, finishing with a self-satisfied, “I knew you'd come. I need you. Things have been so hard since your Aunt Glory flew the coop.”

Leaving Miss Mamie alone and lonely.

My fingers locking on the steering wheel, I closed my eyes and bent my forehead to the rim. My life was Cinderella, in reverse.
Again
.

Help me do this. Please.

“Yoo-hoo, Lin,” Miss Mamie called again, bending down so low to see me that her hem grazed her swollen ankles and sensible, lace-up Clarks. “Are you all right?”

No. I was a total failure, and ticked, ticked, ticked about the whole thing.

It didn't matter that the entire country was in a depression (except those lucky ducks who got unemployment), I took this personally.