Still no answer at his house. Maybe once again he has pulled wires out of the walls. She hadn’t been there in so long, anyway. She should have figured out an alternative living situation for him long ago – but he had always refused even to consider alternatives, insisted he was perfectly fine and capable on his own – unless she was willing to put him in a nursing home, and there is no way she was going to do that, not knowing what she knows about these places!
“Come on, girls, let’s go visit Grandpa.”
The girls groan. “Aw Ma… the whole day is wrecked, do we have to…”
Once they had adored their grandfather. They thought it was wonderful when he took out his false teeth and snapped them in the air. They thought it was a real talent to be able to crack a hard-boiled egg on his head. What has happened to turn them so mean? She loves her father, she shouldn’t have been so neglectful, it’s just that when they are together he seems to know exactly what to do or say to irritate her…
The last visit, she had the girls take him to lunch at the local diner and as soon as he walked in the door he announced, “Where is my Sports Illustrated from 2019?” which is the one item she dared to toss. He has a sixth sense. An ancient t-shirt with an ad slogan, he hadn’t worn it in eighteen years: how could he have known that was what she chucked?
She tries not to worry. He just probably hasn’t noticed the phone is off the hook. Anyway, she hasn’t seen him in at least a month. The two girls whine and mewl, she wants to smack them. “Aw Ma, do we have to… It’s so boring there! I was supposed to meet Dakota and Robit and Rumsey at the mall…”
“Aw Ma, I’m gonna be carsick…”
For some reason there is no difficulty in driving this day, up the ancient turnpike. Usually this trip of forty miles can take five or six hours, there really isn’t any other way to get there, but today is unbelievable: only two and a half hours later they are there, what luck!
There is no answer when they ring the bell. Now she is fearful. On the way in she opens his mail box. He is probably the last person in existence who gets actual, physical mail, they probably have to keep a postal deliverer just for him… It’s stuffed to overflowing, requests from Boys Town, for Save Mikey, the last wild gorilla (Mikey is the only one left in the wild, so what’s the point?), one with a note printed on it made to look like handwriting: PLEASE HELP I am ninety years old and can’t cook. It’s a little late for you to learn, she thinks grimly, anyway, why should I pay for your cooking lessons? The next: Lose up to Thirty pounds in Thirty Days! Let’s see, she figures, if I lose thirty pounds then in three months time I can weigh seventy pounds! Not bad, I wouldn’t mind weighing seventy pounds. Still nobody comes to the door; she rings again. “Well guys, I hope Grandpa’s okay.”
“Ma, I don’t want to go in.”
“Mom, I’m scared. What if he’s like, lying dead.”
The house really is in a terrible state… “Dad?” The girls huddle at the front door, wrinkling their noses. “Dad, are you here? Girls, go and open the windows, let’s get some fresh air in here.” She has brought trash bags, she always has the girls piling stuff in and secretly taking it down to the basement while she distracts him, in this fashion at least she is sometimes able to keep a path slightly clear or to rid the refrigerator of old rancid and mildewed… socks?
“Help! Help me!” he is calling from the dining room; a bookshelf, crammed with papers, junk and magazines, has toppled over, he is trapped underneath gewgaws, a plastic bowling pin, a twirling snow globe with a statue inside of a peacock, an ashtray made from plaster and painted pink.
“Dad, how long have you been here?”
“Grandpa!” They start to pull the papers off him.
“A couple of days. I’m fine.”
But he can’t get up. “Should I bring some water?” Julie says. He is obviously in shock, Murielle thinks about calling an ambulance but he says he doesn’t hurt anywhere. What would be the use, hours in the ambulance just to get to the emergency room, another six- or eight-hour wait once they were there? She might spend the time here, getting him rehydrated, fed. This will be a good excuse to take out the magazines and books without his notice.
“I’ll get you a glass of water, Gramps,” says Julie.
“Don’t bring him the water,” Murielle says. “Have Tahnee bring him some water, while you get to working trying to clean up.”
“Tahnee’s not here.”
“Where is she?”
“She went out, she said she was going out to look for her dad.”
“Oh feces,” says Murielle. She should never have told the girls that Terry grew up in this neighborhood, even though they didn’t know each other as kids. “Goddamn it. I told her not to go running off. Doesn’t she know this neighborhood is absolutely the worst? She’s not going to find her father, she’s just going to get mugged or raped or worse, who knows.”
“Aw, Ma, Tahnee’s pretty tough you know.”
“Oh, sure. Tahnee doesn’t have a brain in her head when it comes to knowing who’s good or bad.”
By the time Tahnee gets back, still fatherless but now bleary-eyed, it’s time for them to leave, she knows whatever progress has been made will, by the next visit, be undone. “Bye, Dad!” she calls. He is tucked upstairs, in bed, between clean sheets that he will have no doubt soiled by the next morning. “I’ll call you tonight! We’ll be back next week!”
Things with Dad are deteriorating. Dad isn’t even making sense. Dad has hair growing out of his nose and his ears, like some kind of ivy. Every time Murielle sees him she tries to groom him but that hair is the toughest weirdest stuff she has ever seen, more like metal wire than hair, and each week it seems like it has grown four inches, though of course she knows that can’t possibly be; still, here she is on a regular basis snipping the stuff with the wire cutters.
Before she can sweep up, or get one of the girls to, the hairs have side-windered, disappear between the cracks in the floor. She must be over-tired to keep having this hallucination. And her dad yells each time she clips; why would he yell, hair doesn’t have feeling.
“Almost done, Father.”
“Here, take a look at this –” and with such glee he hands over page upon page, printed out… “I received this –” handing her the first pile “– and thereupon decided a reply was in order, tee-hee!”
Murielle frowns. She has come all this way with the kids to try to get the place cleaned up; anyway, she can’t read very quickly, in fact, it’s an effort for her to read, not something pleasurable at all. “Dad, I’m in the middle of –”
“No, no. It will only take a couple of minutes. I think you’ll enjoy it.” And with that he begins:
dearly beloved
It is by the grace of the Lord that I send you this Letter.
My husband worked with cheveron/Texamco in Kenyaka for fifteen years before he died in the year 2001. We were married for ten years without a child. My Husband died after a brief illness that lasted for Only four days. Before his death we were both born again.
Since his death I decided not to re-marry or get a Child outside my matrimonial home which my religion is against.
When my late husband was alive he deposited The sum of US $190,000,008.37 with a Security company in Europe.
The funds where deposited as family valuables / treasures for security reasons. Hence they are not aware of the real contents of the consignment.
Presently, I’m in a hospital in Kenyaka where I have been undergoing treatment for esophageal cancer. I have since lost my ability to talk and my doctors have told me that I have only short time to live. It is my last wish to see this money distributed to charity organizations any where in the World. Because relatives and friends have plundered so much of my wealth since my illness, I cannot live with the agony of entrusting this huge responsibility to any of them for personal reasons.
Please! I beg you in the name of God to help me Stand and collect the Funds from the security company
As soon as I receive your reply I shall give you the contact of a representative who is in Europe as he will be the one to assist you in laying claims for this funds.
Yours Ever.
Sister Melista Pointer
“Oh, Dad. I hope you didn’t answer it.”
“Excuse me. Please allow me to continue, madam.”
dear Sister Melista
thanks for your generous offer; but I really think you should give the money to your relatives, particularly if they are related to your husband. I really don’t think they can be much worse than I! for one thing, I am not a Christian. I am a Jewish person, and about Christianity, I cannot make that leap of faith that would allow me to believe in the Virgin Birth. To look at facts, a young woman – let’s call her Mary – is alone while her husband goes off on a job. And when he comes back she tells him she is pregnant, but there haven’t been ANY guys around. Do you really think that’s what happened? Probably to save face the husband – “Joseph” – said, “Oh, wow, that’s unbelievable, God must have done it.”
Misty, I don’t want to upset you on your death bed. But do you really think God would do that with a young virgin? That is really sick. And there’s something else: don’t you believe, as a Believer in Judas Iscarious as Your Savoir, you should make peace with your relatives, the ones who are robbing you blind? You must TRY at least to forgive them. Why give the money to a complete stranger, one about whom you know Virtually Nothing! I want to tell you, Melista, I would have no problem with Abortion or having a Child out of Wedlock (after all, Mary did, didn’t she? I mean, it is kind of Adultery, right, to get pregnant with someone who’s not your husband!! Or do you think she was raped? Would God rape? My guesstimate would be, yes, because He has also smote people, caused the plagues, a rain of frogs and so forth!).
I do have a problem however with some Jewish guy going around saying he is the ‘son of god’. There are all too many of that type of fellow here in Jersey! It is true that sometimes that is the fault of their Mothers, but a lot of times, it is just these guys who are so stuck on themselves and they want to go out with a woman who is like, thirty years younger than they are – just like G-d with Mary! However, if you feel that even though you are about to die you can’t possibly see your way to forgiveness, how about donating all the money to the charity of your choice? I am sure there is a Ballet or Opera Company in your neck of the woods, or you might like to think about giving money to an Animal Organization. There are a lot of animals who should be Neutered and Spayed to avoid further overpopulation of animals.
Best
Almuncle Antrobus
P.S. I see that your hdg-mail is entitled, ‘trusted assistance needed’. I really wouldn’t trust strangers so readily, Melista. If I get the money i would probably spend it on a little geisha. They are so so so cute and I hear can do amazing things with their mouths!!
Her father looks at her attentively and when she doesn’t laugh begins his own cackling. He has really lost it. What is the use of any of this, surely there has to be a God at work who had long since gotten bored and moved on to another part of the universe helping to improve the lives of some alien species. The captain has abandoned ship!
“But Dad… You’re not Jewish.”
“Oh… My mother was; I could say I am half-Jewish. Just so you know, I’m leaving my money to the state of Israel to plant sequoia trees.”
“Sequoia trees,” she says, aghast.
“Another possibility is Franklinia. This unusual tree discovered by Benjamin Franklin was found in the wild only once. All trees after that are descendents of the original. With its broad glossy dark leaves and fragrance redolent of allspice –”
“Cut it out, will you, Dad!”
“Bear with me, then. Envision, if you will, next to the Mount of Olives, overlooking kol Yerusalem a grove of Bodhi trees, beneath which the young Buddha sat –”
“Dad, they wiped out the Middle East years ago! There’s nothing there that will ever be inhabitable again.”
“What?”
Dad doesn’t even know that nowadays this kind of thing will get him in trouble! Mostly the Jews are gone. Oh, maybe some people with a few drops of Jew blood left, but if he goes around talking like that, or if his letter ever leaks out… Oy, vey.
Two blocks away a sinkhole has mysteriously opened up and according to the local news this sinkhole is growing larger on a daily basis; it has already swallowed two houses with the third almost about to topple in.
It isn’t just that Dad has never thrown out anything; he continues to scour the streets for things. A black and white television with two knobs, UHS and VHF. An AM radio. The rotary phone.
Judas, the place could have been turned into a museum, there are actual books and receipts and magazines, all of which are long obsolete. There are sacks of pennies, which haven’t been a valid currency for fifty years. Vintage cans of food pre-dating when meat was grown from cells in great sheets in hydroponic factories, instead he has “Vienna sausages” and “devilled ham”; “pink salmon”; “artificial crab”. Tins that have to be opened with can openers and – had Murielle done so – probably would have exploded their antique contents into the room.
The kids find him on the street, rummaging through the neatly tied garbage bags each of which is going to cost a hundred bucks to have taken away, and which, if not tied in the correct method, will be tossed back onto the front lawn.
“Ma, you have to stop him, or I’m not going to help any more!”
“Yeah Mom! We’ve been spending every weekend trying to clean up and then he messes it all up and takes everything back in!”
“Plus, Ma, Grandpa smells! I mean, I know he’s old and everything and it isn’t his fault, but can’t you spay him?”
Oh dear, Murielle supposes she will have to take him home to live with them, she has long ago sworn he will never have to go to the Senior Mall! He keeps saying he will never live with her; if he has to live somewhere he wants it to be a Young At Heart Shopping Mall. But there’s no way she can do this to him. No, she can’t envision this.
“Dad, you’ve got to quit taking stuff back in!”
“Who keeps throwing it out? I need all these things. Why don’t you ask me first? Have you seen my Golfer’s Annual from 1997? I’ve been searching everywhere.”
“Dad, every time you rip open one of those garbage bags it costs me twelve dollars, those bags are not cheap! I could be spending the weekends making overtime, instead I’m here throwing out TWELVE ROTARY PHONES when you know anyway, they don’t work any more and I bought you new hologramovision sets. And meanwhile I’m struggling to make ends meet.”
“To make ends meet what?”
“What?”
“To make both ends meet what?” he asks.
Momentarily she is distracted. “Well, I dunno…”
“Do you mean you want them to meet each other? Or the middle?” He seems very angry.
“Dad – your blood pressure!”
“Let me see those checks. Oh, these are my Social Security, the reason I didn’t deposit them is they always bounced and then the bank charged me, so I stopped.”
“Social Security… I know you told me, Dad, but what is it?” Maybe by distracting him he might calm down. How he loves talking about the past, which for him is apparently much more vivid than the present.
“Oh, I must have told you, no? That’s from a long time ago when they thought people weren’t grown up enough and so they wouldn’t be able to manage their own money.”
“Ha! That’s so funny!”
“What’s so funny about it? Nobody has any money now, either.”
“Dad, like the President says, that’s their own fault, they should invest wisely and save.”
Now he is nearly apoplectic. It is all too confusing. Who knows what the heck might set him off? Fortunately just then the girls come in and slump wearily on the couch in the living room. Tahnee is throwing a plastic thing in the air.
&n
bsp; “What have you got there, Tahnee?” says Dad in a calmer tone.
Tahnee doesn’t respond, just sits with her hair over her face.
“Say, is that a lanyard?” He chuckles. “Used to be pretty good at making those things, back when I was a kid. Let me see…” Whatever Tahnee is holding is unspooling, a shiny brown plastic tape; a fight breaks out as Grandfather tries to take it and initially, at least, Tahnee will not release her grasp. “Why, that’s a real old cassette, what they used to call an 8-track.”
“So Grandpa, what’s this?” says Julie, holding up an album cover and removing the record.
“That?” Grandpa grabs it from her hands. “That’s a record; you don’t know what a record is? Back in the old days, you put one of these on a turntable, put the needle on, that’s how you got music.”
Julie laboriously reads the title. “Madonna. Who was that, Grandpa?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t think that’s worth anything much. But I got an old ZVD3 somewhere, that one’s worth plenty. That’ll be your inheritance someday, Julie.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a documentary of the Great Westside Stadium disaster of 2020. The terrorists only got to release a few hundred copies before it was banned.”
“What was the Westside Stadium, Grandpa?”
“Oh, it was a football and baseball stadium on the West Side of Manhattan. Nobody wanted it but every single mayor kept pushing and pushing and finally it went through. After it was built the insurgents occupied the stadium and began slaughtering the people who were there for the game, one by one, in the most horrible ways you can imagine. They murdered one per night just before the evening news and then sent the videos over to the local TV channels.”
“The video of the person being killed?”
They Is Us Page 15
