“Okay,” Lala gasped. “Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I’m thinking a pitcher of bone-dry martinis is in order, no? And I’ve got the take-out menu from a fabulous new Chinese place. It is time to celebrate, people! Something. I don’t know what. Life? We’ll celebrate life. Courageous or hermitic or otherwise. L’chaim! Am I right or am I right? L’chaim!”
Okay, Maybe Not Every Cloud
For the next two days, Geraldine joyously displayed her clear hope that the lecture she and Thomas had delivered would result in a positive change in Lala’s behavior.
Geraldine left chirpy messages on Lala’s phone outlining “all kinds of fun plans that I’ve got in mind for us now that you’re not crazy anymore, and you’ll be beginning the fabulous Act Two of your fabulous new life in earnest.”
Sheesh, Lala thought. She was on the couch with her dogs and her laptop. Her new vice, Undercover Boss, was on the TV as Geraldine’s ebullient voice competed with the dialogue between the CEO of a major department store chain, who had disguised himself as a temporary worker and was making a mess of his duties in the men’s shoe department, and the earnest young sales clerk who was trying to help out this poor schlub who was actually his boss.
“I’ve seen this episode,” Lala told Petunia and Yootza and Chester as Geraldine listed grand future activities that included a trip to the Napa wine country and a week in Peru on an ecological safari that she had just discovered on a website that promoted charity via tourism.
“You should see the pictures they’ve got!” Geraldine yelled into the phone. “The guys are adorable, and you know they care about wildlife, so you know you’ll love them and what better way to find new romance than when you’re engaging in activities that genuinely interest you? Are you there? You must be there. Why aren’t you picking up?”
“Sheesh,” Lala said. She picked up Yootza and made his little front paw wave at the television screen. “Anyway, so this episode is maybe my favorite one ever. The CEO learns so much about the people working in the stores. He lost his dad in a terrible car accident, and the young lady he’s going to work with next in their Omaha store? She lost her dad recently, and she’s working full-time to pay for college at night, full-time. So, at the end of the show, the company offers to pay for all her college expenses. So get ready for me to start bawling in approximately fifteen minutes.”
“I think I’ll come up and knock on your door so we can look at this wonderful website together,” Lala heard Geraldine declare with conviction that foreshadowed immediate action on the threat. Lala grabbed the phone and hit “Talk.”
“I’m asleep!” she yelled into the phone. “I’m taking a nap. I love you, and we’ll make plans together tomorrow, okay. It’ll be great! I’ll see you tomorrow!”
At seven o’clock p.m. the next day, a day following an evening and a night and a morning and an entire afternoon during which Lala only left the couch to plod over to the bathroom or to heat up leftover food from previous deliveries, Lala heard Geraldine stomping up the stairs.
Here we go, Lala thought.
Geraldine pounded on Lala’s front door and screamed so she could be heard through the wood and over the banging.
“We’re going to Catalina this weekend! Do you understand me? End of discussion! We’re going to have a fun Gals’ Weekend in beautiful Catalina! We’re going to dance and flirt and drink and gamble, and Monty understands that I’ll be flirting only theoretically, and that is what we’re doing, and, if you don’t come with me, I will sign you up for a six-month charter membership to JDate, and I’m going to fill out your profile, and I’m going to set up coffee dates for you, and I am going to bring you to those coffee dates at gunpoint if I have to! Okay, maybe not gunpoint. Maybe I’ll use one of those lovely antique rapiers Monty collects. Either way, you are not going to be a hermit! I will not allow it!”
Lala heard Geraldine pause to catch her breath and then turn and stomp back down the stairs.
Uh oh, Lala thought. She held Yootza under his furry little armpits and turned him to face her so she could go nose-to-nose with her beloved little hound.
“Uh oh,” Lala said. “Mama’s in trouble. Mama needs a plan.”
After spending the rest of the evening and the night dozing on the couch between writing sessions, Lala woke the next morning with a terrible crick in her neck and a brand new chapter of her novel. She carried her laptop to the kitchen and reread her work while she waited for the ancient coffee, that had been sitting in the fancy coffeemaker Geraldine had given her as a housewarming gift, to reheat.
I can’t believe it, Lala thought. This kinda doesn’t suck.
Lala found her energy and her spirits rising as she continued to read. She even felt a stirring of hope and did her best to ignore it in the hope that it would go away.
“Wow,” she called to the three hounds who were still asleep in the living room. “I don’t think I think this sucks. And don’t you all start thinking that the irony of me being willing to let hope into my heart again long enough to hope that that stirring of hope about my work and my future would leave me the hell alone is lost on me, because it’s not.”
Lala absentmindedly filled a mug and absentmindedly took a big gulp as she read.
“Mother of God!” she yelled. “Which one of you hound bastards put battery acid in the Krups?”
When Lala left the house to go to the gym, she still didn’t have a plan of defense against Geraldine.
Her first stop, after changing in the locker room, was the treadmill. Her routine had always been to work her muscles with machines or free weights and then do some kind of aerobic activity, but on this day she decided to change things a bit.
Because you need a change every now and then, Lala thought. Sometimes, you just need a change.
Lala put her towel and her keys in one of the round cup holders on either side of the imposing treadmill. She punched in all the information for a long session that she would control manually rather than giving her workout over to a predesigned program. She placed her latest issue of The New Yorker on the little reading ledge that bordered the surface of the console and started her warm-up at a low setting on the incline and a comfortable pace on the speed.
Maybe if I tell Geraldine about how I made a big change in my life today by being willing to submit to thoughts of hope, and, of course, I don’t have to tell her the full context of me literally hoping against hope, she’ll back off, Lala thought, as she stared out the bank of floor-to-ceiling windows at the sunny street scene on view below the second floor of the gym.
Lala started to read an article about life in a village in Wales where the inhabitants speak English that is virtually indistinguishable from the way it was spoken in the Middle Ages. She upped the incline on the treadmill at regular intervals and alternated between running for a minute and walking quickly for a minute. She was starting to get that lovely feeling of invigoration and relaxation that exercise almost always brought her, when one of the club’s many adorable young trainers escorted a client to the treadmill that was one removed from hers.
“Okay, Melanie, let’s torch some calories,” the trainer said.
Ohhh, Lala thought. What a great idea. Torch calories. Torch. I like the sound of that. Torch. Was it always a verb and a noun? Who cares?
Lala smiled and nodded at the trainer and the client. Then she hit the up arrow on the incline level for her treadmill until it reached the maximum reading of a bright red “15.” The gears on the treadmill went into action, and in seconds Lala was jogging at an angle that approached the sheer face of a rock-climbing wall.
Yeah! Lala thought. Yeah! Torchin’ those calories! Take that, ass fat.
Lala left the gym feeling more alive than she had in ages. Geraldine was gardening in the courtyard when she opened the front gate to the compound.
Damn, Lala thought. Gotta go to Plan B. I have no Plan
B. I don’t really have a Plan A.
“You went out!” Geraldine said. She stood and rushed toward Lala brandishing her gardening sheers like a weapon. “And you look happy!”
Lala swerved to avoid being stabbed and sprinted up the stairs.
“I sure am happy! Tell you what! I’ll go take a shower and maybe have a little nap, and then we can go out for dinner and maybe go to our favorite karaoke bar.”
As she fumbled for her keys and then thrust her door open, and just as quickly slammed it shut behind her, Lala heard Geraldine happily calling up to her.
“What a delightful idea! Shall I pick you up, or should we meet in the courtyard? Oh I guess either way it will be just delightful to finally . . .”
“Ha ha, sucka!” Lala whispered to Geraldine through her closed front door.
Lala triumphantly bolted the extra locks on her door that she had installed after she moved in over her aunt’s protests that this was an exceptionally safe neighborhood, and, besides, there was also a lock on the gate to the courtyard so what the hell was she being so paranoid about? Which Lala countered by reminding Geraldine that she had lived in New York City for many years, and she just didn’t know how to sleep without multiple locks, and also certainly not without one of those deliciously old-fashioned chain locks that just screamed Manhattan Island to Lala.
Lala got out of the set of sweats she had changed into for the ride home and took a long shower. She wrapped herself in her robe and snuck the dogs out through the back door that led from her kitchen to the alley next to the compound.
“Come on, let’s go, let’s go, pee, pee, poo, now, right now before Auntie Geraldine catches us.”
None of her hounds were willing to be rushed, so nearly a full, fret-filled half hour had to be spent outside with their tracking noses to the ground, and Lala’s eyes darting all around as she stood guard for any Geraldine sightings before she could urge everyone up the stairs and back into the apartment.
Back into the apartment where, four hours later, Lala was stretched out on the couch, asleep and oblivious to the world, when Geraldine was back to pounding on her door.
“I am beginning to resemble a neighborhood character with all this pounding! Someone eccentric and odd and maybe even a little dangerous! Get out here like you said you would, so we can go out like you said we would!”
Oy vey, Lala thought.
She lifted her head and slipped her right arm out from beneath Yootza’s curled up little body. Lala began to swing her legs off the couch. And screamed in agony.
“What the hell?” Geraldine yelled. “Lala? What’s wrong? Lala!”
Omigod, Lala thought. Who’s got a voodoo doll of me? Brenda? Helene? Can I have offended them so deeply? Fuck me, does this hurt.
Pain radiated up and around and through the left half of her body below her waist. She was afraid to breathe, and she was afraid to move. She froze there, leaning on her right leg with her left leg suspended a few inches off the couch.
“Lassie?” Lala bleated almost silently, terrified that the use of any muscles might bring on a fresh wave of torture, but still trying to distract herself from the terror with a steady stream of blather for no one’s benefit but her own. “Lassie, I’m at the bottom of the well, and my leg is broken, girl. Run and get help, Lassie, before I pass out. Good girl, Lassie. Run, Lassie. Run like the wind, noble beast.”
_______________
The gentle, compassionate, and quite young and attractive sports medicine doctor at the emergency room had nodded sympathetically and had said that maybe running on an incline that high wasn’t a great idea for anyone older than a teenager, and it wasn’t actually such a great idea for teenagers either.
Geraldine didn’t say much to Lala while they were waiting in the crowded lobby of the emergency room. She accompanied Lala into the examining room and didn’t say much in there either.
Geraldine held Lala gently by her elbows to keep Lala standing relatively upright while Dr. Pradha gently massaged Lala’s left leg and asked where it hurt.
“Everywhere,” Lala gasped. “It hurts all over. It hurts when you touch my leg. It hurts when you look at my leg. It hurts when you think about my leg.”
“Let’s have you lie down on the table,” Dr. Pradha suggested. Lala winced the moment she heard his words and comprehended their meaning.
“Oh, please, God, no. Please let me stay motionless. Much like my dating life before I met my beloved husband. I am anticipating pain with every move.”
Dr. Pradha established that Lala was not suffering from sciatica, a possibility she had suggested based on what was of course her nearly complete ignorance of what sciatica actually is, a possibility that had come only from “having read something about sciatica somewhere once, maybe it was in a magazine, maybe it was online, I’m not sure, but you never know, I mean, it could be, right? So I just thought I’d bring it up, just in case.”
“It’s not a nerves thing. It’s because you ran like a crazy person on the treadmill,” Geraldine had muttered testily when Lala advanced her theory.
Lala had noticed the edge in her aunt’s voice, but quickly forgot about it when Dr. Pradha used the words “prescribe” and “Tylenol with codeine,” and “Vicodin if that doesn’t work” and “three refills on each” in the same sentence.
Now that she was in the passenger seat of Geraldine’s car, with the first dose of painkiller starting to maybe have some effect, Lala noticed that Geraldine had not said a word to her since the orderly had helped Lala out of a wheelchair and into the Lexus.
Hello? Lala thought. She’s miffed at me?
Lala nervously fiddled with one of her prescription bottles.
“Wow,” Lala said, then giggled. “You’re not supposed to drink alcoholic beverages while taking this medication. Merde. This is going to be a harder recovery than I thought.”
The silence in the car was vicious in its rebuke.
Merde, Lala thought. Why is she miffed at me?
Lala’s thoughts whirred obsessively in her head, and she tried not to blurt out the painful, plaintive question that was shrieking in her brain, the answer to which she desperately feared might be in the affirmative, until she could no longer stand not knowing and, without consciously deciding, decided it would be better to know the awful truth than to endure this soundless unknowing for one more instant.
“Auntie Geraldine, are you pissed off at—”
“Tell me the truth,” Geraldine growled, her eyes on the road, her hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel, her jaw clenched. “Did you do that on purpose?”
Did I do what on purpose? Lala thought.
“What do you mean?” Lala said. “Did I intentionally make a joke about booze and narcotics? I’m sorry if I sounded glib, but I was just trying to lighten—”
“Did you purposely injure yourself?” Geraldine demanded. “So I couldn’t nag you anymore about going outside? So you would have a pathetic excuse, a feeble justification, a sin-against-man-and-nature foundation for your nut-job, giving-up-on-life, squirrelly decision to become a hermit?”
Wow, Lala thought. That is brilliant.
“Did you?” Geraldine asked. This time, her tone sounded almost a little sad to Lala.
“No. Truly. Apparently I’m not nearly as devious or as clever as you are. Because that idea did not occur to me. Certainly not consciously.”
Wow, Lala thought. Did I? Did I subconsciously injure myself so she would be forced to shut her piehole about me starting my flipping sunshine-and-strawberries-and-double-dates-at-the-movies-with-her-and-Monty-and-my-fabulous-new-beau Act Two of my flipping life?
“Gosh, I really don’t think it did occur to me. But don’t quote me on that.”
“Okay, sweetie,” Geraldine said. She nodded in Lala’s direction and quickly patted Lala’s shoulder. “I’m sorry I went there. It’
s just that I love you so much, and I want so much for you, and I do get more than a little frustrated and impatient when you seem to be sabotaging your own happiness.”
“It’s okay, Aunt Geraldine,” Lala said. “I understand your only motivation is care. I appreciate it. Really, I do.”
“I won’t go there again,” Geraldine promised.
Wow, Lala thought, so now she really is going to have to shut her trap, isn’t she? So that give-myself-a-debilitating-injury plan was, in fact, one superbly brilliant idea, wasn’t it? God, I apparently had no concept of how clever I am. And how devious.
_______________
“That was the worst idea I ever didn’t subconsciously have! Ow! Ow! Damn it, owwww!”
Lala writhed on her couch, trying to absolutely no avail, to somehow find a position that might bring the level of pain in her leg down at least one or two notches.
“Damn it! It hurts to yell!” she yelled.
Lala’s apartment was completely empty of fellow sentient beings. Yootza and Petunia and Chester were staying with their Auntie Geraldine for the foreseeable future, or until Lala got her hands on some chemical-warfare-grade morphine, whichever came first.
Despite every effort of stern rebuke and bleated pleading, Yootza could not be persuaded to refrain from jumping on his mama’s lap. Lala had loudly and repeatedly compared the effect of the little beast’s body landing with a thud on her injured leg to having to sit through a marathon performance, in a theater without stadium seating, of a non-union interpretive dance troupe, performing to recordings of the collected radio broadcasts of Rush Limbaugh, without benefit of the anesthetizing effects of buckets of popcorn and tubs of Diet Coke.
So now Lala was completely alone, and she was sounding completely unhinged as she ranted to no one but herself.
This had been happening on a regular basis since Lala had come home from the emergency room, and the full impact of what she had done to herself emerged. The painkillers brought some relief, but the relief was by no means enough to completely remove the pain. Lala slept fitfully, if at all. She had to lie on her right side, which had never been her first choice for sleep positions, with a pillow between her knees to cushion her left leg. Lala couldn’t really get comfortable in bed, so she spent most of her time propped up on the couch with the TV on.
Lala Pettibone's Act Two Page 20
