Chrysalis: The Second Transformation

Voyageur IV by Michel Henricot

This is Part 2 of a vignette I wrote a few weeks ago. If you would like to read Part 1 you can read it here.

* * * * * * * * *

He has never told her, Every time I meet you, I arrive expecting to find not you, but another woman asking me: Who are you?

He has never asked her, Do you feel the weight of prison bars on open, exposed flesh?

He has never told her, I feel oppression taking hold of your heart. And your eternity.

He has never asked her, Do you hear my muted wish?

He has never told. He has never asked. Because. Of Pride.

Besides, he has always believed that truly significant things are not meant to be said. Are unspeakable. Unutterable.

Words… no matter how beautiful… are treasons… to the Self. He has always believed.

And her beauty… like words… when expressed… creates pain. He has always told himself.

Is this pain a definition of love? Is it the treasonous words unsaid? He does not say this to her.

She is wearing her other face. The one he does not recognize. Yet, it is always there. That other face. As a determined yearning in her eyes. As a loneliness that refuses despair.

Will you ever find what you are searching for? He does not say this to her.

He sees what others cannot see: the white waves of fixed time. Her lips: delicate. soft. primitive. unspoiled. By spoken treasons to the Self.

My love, how lonely you are. He does not say this to her.

At the end of a day that crashed them into one another through: passion. tears. frustration. pain. She says to him only these words: Tell me a story. And don’t stop until I fall asleep.

Her fragile voice, wounding in its fragility, is powerless before the boundless expanse of loneliness.

Now. He wants to tell her things. To ask her things. And she wants to ask him things, too.

But.

She says to him only these words: Tell me a story. And don’t stop until I fall asleep.

He tells her a story. A fairy tale. Of a butterfly who one day finds her voice. And as he fumbles with his own words, he enjoys yet derides the new adventure.

Once upon a time, he begins.

And she says, Don’t stop until I fall asleep.

There was a butterfly, he says.

And she says, Don’t stop until I fall asleep.

And the sun sets. And the night comes. Always, the night. Like black death on a white steed.

The night. And his treasons. And her silence.

that intimacy

Hole No. 2 by Emily Eveleth

how does the question go when you ask it of yourself? what if i am not who i think i am? what if, without my knowing it, i am another? somebody dark? and bad? followed by the crushing understanding that, because you were creepy enough to even think these thoughts, you are already dark. and bad. i didn’t want to ask. i didn’t want to think about it. but you can’t undo a thought that happened inside your head. it already happened. and you are already damned. completely. utterly. in your head. in your gut. in your heart.

a moment: i am standing in front of a sheet of glass with a sheet of silver paper on its back. and i am afraid. of who? of the person that is not a person. of the human that is not human. such malheur… that i do not recognize myself. you do not recognize me, either. you can see the obliviousness in my face that is not a face that is looking at you from across the sheet of glass with a sheet of silver paper on its back so for me there is no plunging inside and trying to find an alternate reality because even if i crash the glass once i hit that silver paper i am stuck. and i. am. damned.

we become friends. through this glass window with a sheet of silver paper on its back. for days, we look at each other. size one another up. from different angles. perspectives. with the usual trepidation. and venom. and angst. you invite me over. i invite you over. a simple hand gesture. no words necessary. we know each other too well.

a memory: there was a day. i was walking around. looked to the side. over my shoulder. and someone looked back. but i didn’t stop. i kept walking, and – oh! – who was that? who was that looking at me with as much curiosity as only i have for myself? and that was when i realized it was me. it lasted a split moment… this obliviousness to myself… this lack of recognition. i had to think before i understood. before i realized. and i said to myself, i shouldn’t be looking at myself. and you said, because that is how you become dark.

you try to disengage yourself. from the image. from the darkness that lies inside it… behind it… beyond it. the silver paper is only silver on the side facing you. but it is black on the other side… where you don’t look. it’s like a scary dream where the walls are fluid and the floors are hilly and there are no holes or vents anywhere and you want to breathe but can’t and you want to scream but your lips are sewn together and you try to decipher but there is a coating of glue over your eyes and there is a shadow that you cannot see and a voice that you cannot hear and both of them are in your gut and are screaming run! and you know that that would be futile because there. are. no. outs.

you see yourself. and you don’t know. that you know. it’s you.

i make a game of it. i stand to the side of the glass window. you stand to the side. i stretch out my hand. you stretch out your hand. i steal a glance from the front… then check the back. you ditto. what am i looking for? stop fucking with me. but i must look. there is nothing there. only the black back of the silver paper. i pull myself away. i forget this thing. or try to forget it. dismiss it as folly. and imagination. but it is quite the game, isn’t it? a very clever game… like a twisted arithmetic… and it is not to be dismissed. why don’t you play it, then? i say. you have a glass window, too. meet with your glass window. but these meetings are sudden encounters… where something happens… something you had not counted on. you see something. something you know you can’t unsee. you can’t undo a thought that happened inside your head, remember? no. you can’t. it is there. and if you tell yourself it isn’t, you have already started to lie.

i lie. and i am good at it. you don’t catch on. and you won’t. because just as realization is beginning to paint your eyes, my eyes trick with a look that will make you change your mind… SNAP! just like that. i play the innocent so well. don’t you know me, by now?

i remember everything. that is why i am bad. no. not because i remember. but because i pretend to forget. i tell myself i don’t believe what my eyes are telling me. but i live with the memory of what my eyes saw on the other side. what i saw when i said that there was nothing there. the memory: it crashes into me like a train… and smears bits of me everywhere… like stains.

but i forget one thing: that i lied. if you tell the same lie enough times, even you start to believe it.

i keep forgetting to shut the fuck up. i keep forgetting to swallow my words. but even when i think silently, i think with my lips open. and the words slip out… from inside my gut… and disappear in the air… but not before they have tainted me… stained me… and you… forever.

i don’t dare move. i don’t dare. if i move… i will thrash and kick and scream… like a crazed animal… like an infant who has been wronged but can’t express that anguish. if i thrash… i might come closer. and, then… you will come closer, too. we will be together in a unique way… a way that only you and i can be together. but. you know. there is no coming back from that intimacy.

Chrysalis

Voyageur I by Michel Henricot

He does not say to her, The air is charged with alarms, with metallic clangs rising. I know. And I know of the fragments of sky exploding in silence.

He does not say to her, This quiet house is locked tight, but fragile at night. I know. And I know of the heart of the storm, soft-crusted in flight.

He does not say to her, My love is sacred and intimate, offered to twisted intangibles. I know. And I know I dwell behind fences while smiling at you. 


He does not say to her, I suffer. I suffer for you.

If it is a consolation, I suffer no less, she says.

He closes his eyes. Tries to evoke her face. He does not see it. He thinks he will not see it again.

In the turbulent dream, he screams with shut mouth, his soul exuding a foul odor, the stench of buried emotion in an inverse way you are purifying me

liberating the serene-eyed serpents inside me

if not for you they would have writhed forever

within the bars of my living veins

with you between my arms

the dam stalling the stream of my life crumbles

in the delicacy of your flesh

demolished

destroyed

without sound

i fill my heart with your tender eyes

are there eyes more beautiful

your warmth melts this iceberg at last

and at last i taste the heat of your lips

my strange and beautiful love

i can hardly believe my hands

your face

my heart

at last i can hold you and you me

inside myself i think

what is happening is exceptional

has never happened before

can never happen again

a call rising within me

your name stirring the waves

in this motionless river

making my body run

is this sadness

this plummeting

falling

loss of the sense of time

i am responding to you

can you see it in my face

my eyes the climax my eyes the climax

you know i can’t fake it

like you sometimes do

Her eyes. They widen. Her crisis is about to come crashing down. He feels he has her completely. Now.

Now.

Her eyes. They see him. He has her as much as a man can have a woman. Her eyes are as wide as eyes can go.

Her crisis crests. Her eyes close.

Close him out.

Discard him.

The air reeks of her last word lesslesslesslessless. The specter of it curls like an ancient cipher – solid inside, brittle edges – that cuts into his delirious elation.

He closes his eyes, tries to evoke her face. He does not see it. He knows he will not see it again.

He does not say to her, There is power in darkness concealed, in secrets kept close. I know. And I know of the freedom of butterflies emerging from repose.

She does not say to him, I devour your flesh when you are here, and when you are gone I choke on your ghost.

Missing

Hands by unknown artist

I was eight. And he was dead. He might as well have been, anyway. He didn’t seem like the rest of us living humans. Blue lips, heavy and uneven. Yellow eyes, with the skin around them in folds and creases. White hair – not “old” white; just “tired” white. White and long and shaggy – like the rest of him.

Everything about him elicited thoughts of decay and erosion.

He walked out of the bushes in the cruel heat of one midsummer afternoon. I sat on a bench in the park, beside a bronze statue of a horse, with my tongue almost stuck to the roof of my mouth from thirst. And, carefully hiding his face behind a right hand riddled with liver spots and scars, he came and sat beside me. He seemed self-conscious. Embarrassed. And I didn’t know it then, but he also seemed weighed down – like he had a burden on his shoulders. I sat still and observed him. And I wondered how old he could be.

“Do you have kids?” I asked. But he gave no answer, shrugged his shoulders, and looked out at the park.

“What’s your name?”

“I don’t have one,” he said.

I didn’t know whether to think that wonderful or terrible. And I couldn’t figure him out because he wouldn’t say anything about himself. He could’ve been homeless, or an escaped convict, or a lunatic, or anything else. I didn’t know.

But I felt no fear of him.

And every afternoon, when the sun was like a big blazing hole in the endless blue sky, I would go to the park and sit at my bench, and he would come out of the bushes with his right hand over his face and sit beside me.

One day, he came to the bench and just stood to the side. There was a flock of geese circling the air above the pond amidst a chattering commotion. A group of teenagers sitting on the grass leaned back their heads and called out to the geese. Other kids crowded around the pond, enticing the geese with bits of bread thrown into the water. But I stayed at my bench and watched in silence. I don’t know why I felt compelled to sit there. I don’t know why I didn’t go claim my own place at the pond.

When the geese landed, he sat. And he lowered his right hand.

I stared at his face, unable to help my gawking curiosity. Five days he had sat with me and kept his face hidden. Now, suddenly, it was in full view. Now, suddenly, I could see, in profile, the blue lips, the yellow eyes, the wild mane of white hair. He held a book in his left hand, and with both hands, he opened the book and started to read aloud. He read to me like we’d known each other forever. And I stopped staring when his voice began to tremble. I listened while he read, drawing circles with my fingers on the empty bench space between us. And he knew I was listening, so he kept reading.

He read to me for many days. His voice was a spider web that, with its threads, created a haven for my wonder. I lived inside that voice, inside the stories it told. At a certain point, it started to feel like he and I were the only two people alive. And I couldn’t bear the thought of being alone with him. It spooked me.

That was when I started to want for him to disappear.

I imagined closing my eyes and opening them to find him gone. I imagined him being hit by a truck and dying because nobody wanted to save such a hideous person. I imagined hurting him, throwing rocks and pebbles at him, making him cry. I imagined telling him he was a freak. “No wonder you have no name,” I imagined saying. “Even your mom didn’t love you enough to give you one.” I imagined telling him I hated his voice, hated his stupid stories, hated him. I’d picture his voice breaking and his shoulders heaving as he sobbed quietly while hiding his ugly face behind his mottled right hand. And for some time, these imaginings were my biggest comfort. The thought of his agony soothed my anxiety.

But I continued to go to the park. And I continued to listen as he read to me. And after a while, my hatred was reversed. I began to realize that, despite his seeming differences, he was ordinary – just like the rest of us living humans. And I also began to realize that I no longer wanted for him to disappear. In fact, I wanted to let him know that I acknowledged his ordinariness. And so, one afternoon, while he held the book in his left hand and read to me, I reached out my fingers that were drawing circles on the empty bench space between us, and placed them over his right hand that idled beside him. He paused – but only for a flicker. Had I been a less perceptive child, I wouldn’t have even noticed. But he paused. And anything else would have been better. He could’ve called out, shouted at me, slapped my hand away. But he did none of those things. He just paused – and in that moment my hand jerked back like I’d touched a red-hot stove burner. Small rivers of perspiration flowed down my skinny legs and pooled around my ankles and beneath my heels. But I didn’t move a muscle. And he continued to read.

The next day, he wasn’t there. I sat on our bench by the bronze horse and waited for him, feeling an immense disquiet building inside me, and all around me. Somehow, inside my eight-year-old heart, I knew I would never see him again. And I blamed myself, even as I hoped that my feelings were deceiving me. I don’t know why this happens, but when someone we care for is no longer there, our hearts are constantly on the prowl for them. It is as if we are in denial, unable to resist the gravity of their absence. Maybe I was in denial, then, as I sat in my tight corner of bench. I think I imagined him hiding behind his bushes and watching me. I imagined him leaping out and saying “Surprise!” But my heart was true. He didn’t come. Not that day. Or the next. Or the next. And I kept going to the park. Sitting on the bench we had shared for days. Waiting for him. Waiting for him to return so I could reverse things and bring them back to our pre-ordinary days. And again, I imagined telling him I hated his voice, hated his stupid stories, hated him. But beneath the surface of my sinister daydreams was a sorrow as vibrant as the blazing hole in the sky.

Card VIII

Card VIII from the Rorschach Inkblot Test

You’ll have to sit down. This may take a while.  He lowers his gaze. Shuffles some papers. You know that every few months I have to re-administer your tests. He pauses. Then. We’ll start with vocabulary. I’ll say the word. You’ll say what you think it means. Here we go:

MELANCHOLIA            and she says a sad indisposition?

Indisposition? he says. You meant ‘disposition,’ maybe? Indisposition is wrong. Incorrect.

But she believes she has a right to her incorrectness. On some level. It is hers to defend. She feels that when one is sad, one is INDISPOSED.

IMAGINATION, he says.                        and she says bright?

But, why the question in her voice? Though he doesn’t interrupt her this time. He is getting lost in his thoughts of how he had labeled her on the last battery of tests he had administered – NO AFFECT. ANTISOCIAL. ANOMIC. APHASIC. DEPRESSED. DISSOCIATED. HALLUCINATING. INSOMNIAC. LETHARGIC. etc. etc. – and of how it is all applying beautifully to what he’s doing now. No. Not APPLYING. CONFIRMING. Ah, yes. That’s the correct word.

            a blooming flower, she’s saying

     but not fully bloomed      ‘cause then she’d be dying

              just a little bit       every moment that passes

And he has to look back down at his test manual to remember the last word he had read to her: IMAGINATION. And what else? he says. And she says

            a change            but a good one                       

                  like sun after rain

And he says, How about a specific example? SPECIFIC. Like a geographical exactness. Like a point where latitude and longitude cross. But he is speaking inside her head. It is one thing to speak about what is misfiring inside someone’s head. To speak so clinically. So whitely. So crisply. But it is quite another to pinpoint the actual location of that

misfiring

            to go deep

                         inside that deep winding deep winding

                grey organ

                              deep and riddled with networks

only half able to

                        contemplate

or even function on a superficial level and

             how

                    how would he determine the dosage of

poison

     how

             would he know how much of it would be needed

          for her to begin to redistribute her

ANIMATE OBJECT              is that the person that lives inside me?

INANIMATE OBJECT            is that the same person but quieted by meds? the one that is like a wild animal hunted and stuffed and mounted on a wall?

GENE                                    is that the legacy of my parents? is it the kingdom of my diseased mind? am i answering the questions correctly? am i giving you what you want? are you happy? am i happy? can one emote with a diseased mind? and is it the heart or the mind that feels emotion? or is it the soul? is the soul an organ? can they EXCISE it? EXORCISE it?

DIRT                                    filth            squalor            

            a skeleton in a closet

                        a dirty skeleton         dirty bones

Her mind is porous. But she knows this much: if a surgeon were to open up her skull, her brain could possibly. potentially. disintegrate. in a zap. if her brain were to lose its container. if touched. it could fragment. just like that. fragment and become fragmented grey slop. but if handled carefully. with caution. it would be kept all fresh and beautiful. intact. like a peach with its skin still on. like a relic. preserved. FORMALDEHYDE. then. later. when they were good and ready. they would take it out of that fluid. slice into the grey matter and take a SPECIMEN that they would then MOUNT on a GLASS SLIDE and STAIN so they can see it clearly and they would cover it with a COVER SLIP and shoop they would whisk it under the MICROSCOPE and all of a sudden a piece of her brain would be captured like a photo. EXPOSURE. but how would they then reconnect all that dead tissue? SPLICE.

And he says, I’d like for you to look at a few images. Look at each one and tell me what you see. Card III. What do you see? And she says

      two people?      tearing a brain apart?

            tearing a heart apart?

                                   with blood?

           blood between them?

                        blood behind them?

And he says, Card IV. What do you see? And she says

         a huge beast?       with the biggest feet ever?

And he says, All right, then. Card VIII. And she says

               an animal?        and its mirror image?

     looking into a pond?       so sparkling and clean?

Interesting, he says. But why do you say your answers like you’re asking a question? Are you unsure of your responses? But she doesn’t answer that question. And his eyes are fixed. Fixed on her unmoving lips. Now unmoving, now trembling. Fixed on the shiny sweat pouring off the side of her face. And her eyes are fixed, too. Fixed on the image in Card VIII. It

                        leaps

                                off her eyes

into the back of her head

        into her throat her breath

                                              that catches with

muffled cries she wants to both

             inhibit and inhabit

    and the dream enters her and she

enters the dream

           and they take her back

           to Ward 9 on Floor 6 along with

      all the others that are like her and they

give her 30 mg of Oxazepam

                                30 mg crushed and placed

            on her tongue

the bitterness covering her eyes

         in floods of oblivion

delaying thoughts

               delaying the world as unchaos

so the excess of it seeps onto her pillow as

         vomit blood phlegm bile

and though she sleeps she sleeps

                    the sleep of the troubled

and her dreams form lesions in her

      gut

           that she dresses with

     maternal coos

                          cushioned by the

darkness

         because she knows the light would blind her

with the brutality of its unbearable reality

and

DESIRE            he fires at her in her dreams. And she says, Something I will never feel. But this time the vocal inflection suggesting a question is gone. And she says, You can take that word off my vocabulary list. You can use NEED or NECESSITY or even WANT. Just not DESIRE. And can I ask you a question? When I am old, she says. When I am very very very old… will I still be here?

Panem et Circenses

Love is bullshit. Emotion is bullshit.

I am a rock. A jerk. I'm an uncaring

asshole and proud of it.

                                    ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Thank you, but I don’t need anyone to stay the night, you try to say. They’ve come to visit. To pay our respects, they tell you. It’s the least we can do, they tell one another. And you hear their crude and distasteful whispers. And you see the gleam of burdensome, self-inflicted responsibility on their faces. They’ve brought flowers and cards and casseroles. Just a little something to help out, they say. And you try to smile. To pretend like nothing has changed. But you had never asked for Graham’s brain to have a short and bleed without stopping until his heart had stopped, too.

Take a few days, Nadia, your boss tells you. As long as you need. And just as you’re thinking, As long as I need might be forever, Dr. Becker arrives. Late. As usual. He had arrived too late to save Graham the night his head had gone haywire, too. And he can’t seem to explain exactly what had happened that night. Cerebral aneurism is all he has to offer. And he doesn’t want you asking any questions, so he’s avoiding the subject, and he’s avoiding you like the plague. Life is complicated enough when it’s simple, right?

But nature has its secrets. And it has its ordinances, too. And today, Murphy’s Law has ordained that Dr. Becker be sitting right next to you on the ungenerously sized loveseat you and Graham had once shared for countless movies with countless bowls of buttered popcorn. And while small talk dribbles from one pair of lips to the other, Dr. Becker thinks to himself, somewhere in the back of his head, that by the time he sees you again (and he’s hoping that won’t be anytime soon) he will have found a slightly more detailed explanation for the death of your husband. But Dr. Becker's main focus is on something else. He tries, out of the corner of his right eye, to see the mark of Graham’s loss on your face, and in your body language. This is alternated with quick glances at his wife, Veronica, who is sitting across the coffee table from both of you. Would she be so “business as usual” if I suffered an aneurism and met my Maker? He wonders.

And you’re seeing all of it and hearing everything in between. Especially the quietly whispered conversation between Veronica and Frieda. I didn’t know what to write on the card, says Veronica. I feel so awkward. And Frieda says, It’s like being in a third world country and trying to communicate with the locals, right? And Veronica says, I just signed a condolence card from me and Charlie. I think she’ll appreciate that, don’t you? And Frieda says, Oh, definitely. How did he die, anyway? And Veronica says, An aneurism. And Frieda says, An aneurism? What’s that? And Veronica says, A fatal disease, I guess. I never did get around to asking Charlie. And the tears start to brew in your throat. But your eyes are dry. You don’t want to show them that what they just said has affected you so violently, or that you even heard it; that would be humiliating. You don’t want to show them that they matter so much.

And though it’s a strange evening, it passes. And over the following days they invite you over for dinner or snacks – the Mortons and the Dyers and the Taylors. And you accept their invitations – every time; you don’t want to start a domino effect of rejections. But one evening, as you’re driving to dinner with the Shermans, you make a U-turn and go back home. You call and apologize to Mandy. And Mandy says, Rain check, hon? You can hear the sigh of relief in her voice. And you say, Of course. I’ll call you. But you don’t call Mandy. And she doesn’t call you. Life is a lot easier without her having to deal with Nadia’s Curse, right? It’s as if your widowhood is contagious. Not to mention the insecurity. You’re a widow. Your husband is dead. You’re available. Oh! You’re available! All of a sudden, you’re a threat. You’re not to be trusted. You’re not to be left alone in a room with their husbands. You’re a bitch in heat and there is no man in your life to quench the fiery thirst between your legs. You want to be fucked, and any man will do. And they think about their potential future grief from another dimension – they might lose their men, not only to Nadia’s Curse, but to Nadia Herself. All of a sudden, you’re right up there with dangerous bodily malfunctions and death. You’re a probable contagion. And you’re lethal.

But over the following weeks, you start to tell yourself to mellow out. You start to tell yourself that it was all in your head – the whispers and the looks and the sighs. So you call. And they all come over to visit – only the ladies, of course. And they all act like they’re competing to help you. Their faces are understanding and patient and kind. So you begin to feel comfortable. Comfortable enough to talk about the dry bone in your throat. About the lack of appetite. About the apathy. About the anomie. About the zombie days and the comatose nights. But their faces don’t fool you. They savor every word like it’s caviar on white bread, listening closely to the parts of your “confession” that confirm to them you really are a curse. You can smell the condescension for your misfortune oozing like unwanted sweat out of their pores. You can see the gratitude for the normalcy of their lives shining like a wet lust in their eyes. And it hits you like a plane falling out of the sky hits the ground.

In your throat, that dry bone begins to moisten. And you dare a swallow – maybe this time it will cooperate and slide down, disappearing for good. But the bone digs deeper into your throat, and you choke on the tears in your chest and behind your eyes. You just want to curl up in a fetal position on that ungenerously sized loveseat you and Graham had once shared. You want to curl up and become comatose all over again, just like you’d been those first couple of weeks after Graham’s head had imploded. And they start to get uncomfortable because they see it in your eyes… that you’re on to them… that you get it.

And now, when they see you somewhere, they start to glide against the walls, trying to get as far away from where you’re sitting, or standing, or might possibly move – as far away from you – as they possibly can.

Newton's Third Law

“Étude pour Poe” by Leonor Fini

Grab your book and sit down, kid. You’re not going anywhere any time soon. They’ve got you practically locked up with Grandma at home. And you didn’t understand what was happening at first, but the truth is slowly showing its hideous face.

Grandma’s dying.

And they’re not doing anything to stop it. Not only that – they’re “helping her” to die faster. They’ve got her stashed away in the coldest, darkest room in the house – the one with no windows. And they’re not feeding her, anymore. They do it to you all the time – send you to your room with no dinner. Just so they can “teach you a lesson.” If they can do it to you, they can do it to her. Nothing to eat. Nothing to drink. Starve. Dry out and shrivel like a snail pulled out of its shell and slammed on the pavement.

Your. Mom. Is. Killing. Her. Mom. And you wonder if you’ll have to do the same to her, one day. Kill her by starving her. I’d never do that, I hear you thinking. But never say never. Life has a way of making us do the unspeakable, kid. If push comes to shove you’ll do it. And push will come to shove when your future wife tells you she’s had it with wheeling your mom around everywhere and taking her out to the park and taking her out to the clinic and taking her out so she can fill her prescriptions and cleaning up her shit and yadda yadda yadda. You’ll be up against the wall. And you’ll know your mom will be gone soon anyway, and that she’s nothing but a bag of bones with a persistent heart, so you’ll figure you might as well take everyone out of their misery and pull the plug. Not that you’ll literally pull the plug. Or maybe you will. If there’s a plug to pull, you’ll pull it. Like I said, life has a way…

But that’s not the problem, right now. The problem is that Grandma is confined to her bed and you know she doesn’t like it one bit. You know she can hear them whispering about her in the hall. She breathes through a tube and pees into a bag but she can still hear like a barn owl. And most of the time they don’t even bother to step out in the hall and do their talking. They just stand right in front of her and talk about her in the third person like she’s already dead. The will and the estate and the dwindling health insurance and the deed for the house and so on. And she can’t talk back because she’s got that damned tube stuck down her throat. And you always happen to be in the room when they do that. And it spooks the hell out of you when they start with it because Grandma always sticks out her little hand that looks like onion skin speckled with brown polka dots glued around a handful of bones and clutches your wrist. And she looks at you with a tear beading in the corner of her left eye like she’s saying You won’t let them do this to me, will you, Mikey? Remember all the good times we had when you were a little boy? Remember when your mom had to pack you out of your house because you were moving and you stayed with me for ten days and I baked for you and we sat out on the porch and had cookies and milk?

And sure. You do remember. You remember Grandma’s house that looked like an illustration out of a fairytale book with her white lace curtains and her French windows and her rose bushes and the sound of the straining hinges on the swing on her porch and the ladybugs that liked to hang out at her windowsills and mushroom quiche for breakfast. And you remember Grandma tucking you in at night because you were afraid of the monsters under the bed. She’d tucked you in without making fun of you and told you she was going to sit right there until you fell asleep. No monster will ever come near you as long as I’m alive, she’d said.

But, nothing lasts forever, kid.

Sometimes we have to make tough decisions about people we love, they tell you. It’s one of those hard facts of life. And they always make it a point to add, Grandma can’t make decisions for herself, anymore.

You’re only fourteen but you know all the hard facts already, because you’re always the one that ends up with Grandma while they’re all out "taking care of business." And it’s not like you hate having to babysit Grandma, because you do remember all the times you’d been a bad boy and Grandma had never said a word to your mom. So you don’t mind it in the least. You don’t even really mind the smell of disinfectant that’s supposed to mask the smell of human waste but ends up smelling like disinfectant trying to mask human waste. It’s just that when you’re hanging out with Grandma, you always feel like you want to try and explain your mom’s behavior, or justify it, maybe. Or something. You know. Just to clear your conscience. And maybe help Grandma to feel a little better. But you know, deep inside yourself, that your grandma knows everything that’s going on, already. That Alzheimer’s may be creeping in and licking away small slivers of her mind, and she may be as ancient as a mummy, but her gut is as alive as it’s ever been. And your grandma’s gut is telling her some pretty evil shit about her daughter. Your mother. That woman who lectures you about morals. Ha – what a laugh! She lectures you about doing your chores so you can "earn your allowance," and then she turns around and starves her mother so she can get on with her own life. Sometimes we have to make tough decisions about people we love.

And so you sit there with Grandma. And you wet her dry lips with a damp sponge because you know she's thirsty but they tell you she can't drink. And sometimes you read to her from Kidnapped while she stares at that right angle that connects the ceiling to the wall in front of her. And you don’t know if she’s really listening to you, but you keep reading, anyway. I’m doing my part of the deal, you say to yourself. And while you’re reading to Grandma, they’re at the bank or at the store or at the attorney’s office. And sometimes they all decide to go out and "do something social." Together. Your mom and her one sister and her one brother. And their spouses. And this is what happens today.

They decide they all want to go out and eat. And they decide they’re taking you with them. And you start to protest and make excuses. I’m not hungry and Who’s going to take care of Grandma? But they’re not listening to you. As usual. And you’re seriously worried about Grandma, because you know that she's terrified of being alone. But they’re worried about the fact that they’ve let you watch them for too long without stepping in and trying to explain what’s going on. And this lunch is their way of ganging up on you and “presenting the facts” in one whopping session.

They’ll start with the usual Sometimes we have to make tough decisions about people we love. And then they’ll move on to Grandma can’t make decisions for herself, anymore. This will be followed by Grandma’s going to be moving on to a better place. And then they’ll start to explain about God and Heaven and all those other words that you never hear them say except when someone’s pissed off at someone or something and they say Goddammit! or  Oh my God, I can’t believe this! or Good Heavens! Yes. It’s always exclamatory. But this time they’ll speak calmly. And they’ll tell you Grandma is unhappy but when she dies she’ll be happy again. And they’ll expect that to make you feel okay about what they’re doing.

So, you’ll all go to a burger joint. And everyone will place their order. Mom and Dad and Aunt Lisa and Uncle Brad and Jim and Alice. And then it’ll be your turn. And you’ll think about saying you’re not hungry, again. But you might as well order yourself a burger and some fries and keep them quiet. You’re going to have to learn to be wiley around wiley people if you’re going to make it in this big jungle, kid. The rules of the game are simple: Order burger and fries lunch with ice-cold coke. Make small talk with family members while awaiting order. Make eye contact with each person with whom you speak. Speak with confidence. When food arrives, pick up burger. Take one bite and chew well. Swallow down with ice-cold coke. Eat French fry. Make small talk. Take another bite of burger and chew. And so on and so forth. And then when they start talking about the whole Grandma business, which will probably come around your second or third bite, once they know they’ve got you stuck, you’ll want to tell them, “Grandma might smell like decaying skin and concentrated urine. But you guys stink to high heaven!” But don’t! Just nod your head like you’re saying, “I understand what you’re saying completely.”

Play the game, kid. And don’t let on. You haven't learned about Newton's Third Law yet, have you? The one that says that for every action there's an equal reaction? It's about matter, but the truth is, it works for humans, too. So just think about that every time you consider not going with the flow. These are some pretty messed up people. And you already know that they’ll do to Grandma what they do to you. So the opposite should be no news – they’ll do to you what they do to Grandma. And you sure as hell don’t want them thinking you can’t make decisions for yourself.