Vivian In Red (4 page)

Now I’d gone and ripped off this particular scab by calling Daniel because Grampa had a stroke. But else could I do? When everything goes wrong, you reach for those who know you best, who know you at your worst.

Here in my empty, quiet apartment, I stroke the glass of my late father’s watch, torn in two by my equal impulses to fly to Grampa Milo’s side, and to hide under the bed rather than go into another hospital. My father should have died at home, in hospice care, but the cancer played a mean trick and jumped out and got him when we weren’t expecting it. As if cancer wasn’t bad enough all by itself.

“This isn’t the same, and Grampa needs me,” I remind myself out loud, my voice ringing hollow in the still air. And so I am moving with determination and speed now, as if I could outrun the death of my father, as if I wouldn’t carry the memory with me all the way to Lenox Hill.

I stare at the brick across 77
th
Street until the mortar lines start to waver and look like something out of Escher. I half-wish I still smoked so I could have a reason to be out here in the heavy July heat, instead of in the artificial cold next to Grampa Milo’s hospital bed.

But nausea had been crawling through my guts and my hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Clenching or relaxing, either way made it worse. In my twenty-three years, I had plenty of experience with older generations putting a brave spin on things for my benefit, but staring into Grampa Milo’s confused face, I saw this privilege would be afforded me no longer. He was letting me see his fear; he’d never looked so sick and lost. When Naomi and her husband, Joshua, swooped in a few minutes ago, I made a dash for the outside, just for a bit, just to breathe and think.

Over my left shoulder appears a shadow I can’t ignore, so I look up into the soft brown eyes of my cousin Joel, who snuck up on me so quick he might have grown up out of the sidewalk.

“You okay?”

“I guess.”

My doctor-cousin, biggest success story of all the Short progeny, puts on his “reassurance face.” “He’s going to be fine, we think. His vitals are good.”

“I know. You said. So why can’t he talk?”

“The CT scan indicates an embolic stroke, and there’s an area of deficit around the infarct that appears to be causing his expressive aphasia.”

“For God’s sake, Joel.”

“Sorry. He had a stroke which is keeping him from speaking. That’s what aphasia means. He can think of the word but can’t get it out. The stroke also affected motor control; in this case his right hand and leg are weak, especially the hand.”

“Oh, my God. Will he ever be able to write again?”

“We hope so. He’s a tough old gent, and therapy can help him get these things back.”

“Even at eighty-eight?”

“I’ve seen it before.”

“Now what happens?”

“He has to see the neurologist, and all the various therapists will come in to see him. A speech path, physical therapist, occupational therapist, et cetera. They want to evaluate him and determine placement.”

“Placement where? What does that mean?”

“They will likely recommend a nursing home setting for the time being, to keep an eye on him and for therapy, but it sounds like Aunt Rebekah is on the war path about it and he’ll probably come home with twenty-four/seven nursing care.”

“Well, good. Grampa Milo would hate those places.”

I finally look away from the brick to face my cousin, and his shiny forehead is creased. He’s tall and prematurely balding, and the combined effect is to make him look like he’s growing through his own hair.

“There are some excellent facilities with wonderful staff. But yeah, El. I know what you mean.”

A familiar movement in my peripheral vision snags my attention. Before I even turn my head all the way I can tell who it is. Daniel has a distinct, loping gait that I’ve always been able to pick out of a crowd long before I can even read his face.

Joel utters one confused syllable: “Huh.”

“Never mind,” I tell him, my voice full of warning.

By this time, Daniel has approached us. He thrusts out a hand toward Joel, makes his inquiries, and my cousin gives an abbreviated version of what he just told me.

After he sums it all up, and Daniel nods his sad commiseration, Joel doesn’t seem to be leaving, though he must have someplace important to be. I wish for his pager to sound off, to make him stop giving Daniel that “sizing up” look.

Daniel breaks the silence. “So Joel, how are those babies?”

“Hungry, my God. Either Jessica or the nanny are feeding one of them at any given moment. How do the families where kids outnumber the adults ever do it? Oy, I can’t imagine.”

I break in with, “You mean you haven’t heard the Eva Monologues on Proper Parenting?”

“I always make sure I get paged. Look, I better get back in. Hang in there, Ellie. Bye, Daniel.”

And so he’s sucked back into the building, looking at his watch, his white coat flapping away behind him.

Daniel steps closer to me and asks me how I am, and I answer with a shrug.

“So Joel knows? About us?”

“I had to explain why you weren’t at the family dinner. He’s trying to figure out why you’re here now.”

“I told you, I wouldn’t just abandon you at a time like this.”

“Well, he’s going to live, so you’re in the clear now.”

“Don’t do that, El. You called me, I came. I’m not the bad guy. But seriously, are you okay? I can’t tell, when you get like this. When you go all ‘statue’ on me.”

By this time I’m facing him, but he’s enough taller than me it’s easier to focus on the flaking print on his Pearl Jam concert T-shirt than it is to crane my neck to look him in the face. It’s bright, too. The sun is pouring out rivers of heat and light, and my head has begun to throb.

“I’m scared for him. He can’t talk, his right hand is affected, he can’t write. What kind of life is he going to have without words?”

Daniel turns so we’re shoulder-to-shoulder, both staring at the same masonry wall, and he drapes his long arm loosely over me, tucking his hand under my hair. For a moment he’s uncharacteristically still. I almost hate to break the spell.

But in the quiet, I answer my own question: at least it’s life of a sort. At least Grampa Milo is still here.

I reach up to briefly clasp Daniel’s hand where it rests on my shoulder, and step away from him. I lead the way back into the hospital, where my grandfather lies mute and scared, but alive.

A
t my piano, I should be comfortable. It’s the first place I ever felt so, after all, way back in the Bronx days when my father finally made enough money to buy us one. It was meant for Leah, but she never took to it, not like me.

And it shouldn’t be so bad, either, playing one-handed. But it’s my right hand that doesn’t work, leaving only my left for harmony, unless I try to force my left hand fingers into straining awkwardly to play the melodic line.

Haltingly, messing up the phrasing, I plink out,
The way you wear your hat, the way you sip your tea….

It sounds wrong to me, worse than silence. I stare down at my right hand, frustrated. No one seems to get why I can barely move it. I should be able to do something or other by now, what with the therapy. And my voice, too, that therapy lady Marla keeps encouraging me to make sounds, even sing little nursery tunes like “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” but there’s nothing there. She’s trying her damndest to pretend not to be disappointed, but I’ve spent a lifetime watching people act and she’s no Ethel Barrymore.

Some of them think I’m exaggerating somehow, or maybe just too depressed to try. I overheard my daughter-in-law Linda mention Prozac and if I could’ve, I would have laughed out loud.

Ha, Prozac. Please, in my day you felt down you had a belt or two of Scotch and felt calmer, if maybe a headache in the morning.

Not that Scotch is always the greatest cure, mind you, I know that from up close and personal experience.

I drop my left hand onto the keys, a soft, pathetic, sick-sounding chord seeping into the air. They’re trying, my family. They really are. The hospital people talked them into putting a genuine hospital bed in here, as if I’m an invalid. My walking’s not so bad, thank you very much, stroke or not. My leg strength came back pretty quick in fact, which is another reason they think I might be malingering about my voice. As if I would do such a thing!

They brought a TV in from the living room, and the old record player, so I’ve got something to do other than watch the Yankees or cable news. While still in the hospital, I saw my own collapse reported as a quick bit before cutting to commercial:
Noted Broadway producer Milo Short collapsed on a Manhattan sidewalk yesterday
. That made me imagine the
Post
headline: “SHORT NOT LONG FOR THIS WORLD?” Those schmucks can’t resist a pun.

There’s a nurse off in the corner, a rotating clutch of them, all quiet and professional and none too chatty, of course what would I say back anyhow? I scowled and shook my head about the constant nurses, but Paul informed me the hospital wouldn’t spring me unless they knew for sure I was going to be monitored. For how long? I’d like to ask. Forever? Until I kick it? Until another stroke gets me and then I start drooling and stumbling for real, like that poor bastard Marty?

So I guess it could be worse.

Except it’s hard to imagine worse just now. I’m beyond mute, I’m rendered wordless entirely: speech, writing, even playing proper music, it’s all gone. Marla the therapy lady gave me a board with pictures and a pointing stick. It’s all I can do not to throw that garbage across the room; it’s infantile, something you’d give a clever chimpanzee, and yet even that seems to confound me, somehow.

The family has begun to talk past me, over me, as if I’m deaf, for that matter. I saw this with poor Marty after his stroke. He was alert as ever—I could see the spark in his eyes—but he was so impaired they treated him after a while like a potted plant. I never was great at praying, and maybe praying for someone to die is wrong, but I did it anyhow, then. I felt like he wanted me to.

I put my left hand on the keys again, trying something slower.
I hope that he turns out to be…

“Someone to watch… over me….”
Eleanor laughs as her voice cracks over the “watch.” I turn on the piano bench to see her coming over to me. I finish the musical phrase with as much panache as I can.