Gorgeous Rotten Scoundrel

by Nina G. Jones

  "How can you be so fucking cold?" He yelled out. "You're a fucking coward! You act tough, but you are scared of anything that might make you feel something other than your comfortable bitterness!" This is what Heath did when he felt trapped, he lashed out, just like when he threw that plate against the wall. Hell, maybe he was right, but I'd rather be comfortable and shielded than exposed to heart-wrenching devastation.

  I sped out through the bamboo-stalks of the driveway, clenching the steering wheel as if it would somehow give me strength.

  I made it five minutes down the road before pulling over to stop and collect myself. There was a moment of doubt. Could he be telling me the truth? But I couldn't risk turning around, and I couldn't afford to put my emotional energy into being that paranoid whatever the hell I was to him. My feelings for him were too raw and it terrified me. I would never have pulled out anyone's hair extensions over Kenneth, and look how he had ruined me. I couldn't afford to feel the way I felt about Heath. It was better to sever the ties with him while I still had my sanity.

  My grandmother needed me now, and she was my rock, there were no doubts about her and so I put the car back in drive and headed back home.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  "Your grandmother is very ill," the doctor said to me, as kindly as he could. "She arrived with a shattered pelvis, and after doing a routine physical exam, we noticed some abnormal chest sounds. Blood work came back with some abnormalities as well. Then the chest scans revealed tumors which have metastasized."

  I sighed, feeling newly resolute. I could focus my attention on making her better. "Okay, so what are our options? Chemo? Radiation?"

  "Ma'am, at this point she is very far along. Stage 4. The tumors have spread to her vital organs. If we tried those treatments, they would not add much to extend her time, and would significantly reduce her quality of life. At this point, we recommend that we keep her comfortable and she spends time with family and friends." I am all she has.

  I tried to convey strength by not reacting. "Okay, so how long are we saying here?" I expected months.

  "The level to which she has progressed and the aggressiveness of the disease, we believe she has a couple of weeks."

  "What? Weeks? How could that be? We just found out. How could we not have known?" My body went numb, and it was hard to focus on his words and keep myself on my feet at the same time. I reached out for a seat behind me and the doctor jolted forward a bit to catch me if I needed it.

  "Sometimes the symptoms aren't obvious until it is this far along. It is likely she fell because she became dizzy due to lack of oxygen, which is related to the cancer. Her health aide said she had developed a cough this summer, but so do many elderly people. It doesn't raise a red flag sometimes." The nurse had mentioned it to me, but didn't seem worried. If I had been with her, if I had paid better attention, I would have known.

  He went on for a while about how the pain and difficulty of treatments was not worth it, if she were his grandmother, he would spend time with her and let her live out her last days peacefully.

  And then I was alone.

  When I entered her room, she was sleeping. She looked so weak and frail. Being in bed for the past several days she had already started to lose muscle and the doctor told me her appetite had gone down. So quickly, this strong woman was withering away in front of me. The woman who stoically dealt with the murder of her daughter and the untimely death of her husband, the woman who put on a happy face for me through all of her pain, was vanishing in front of me and there was nothing I could do but be a witness to her demise. I could still touch her, hold her hand, but there would soon be a day where I would reach out for her and she wouldn't be there. No one would.

  Finally she opened her eyes.

  "Hi," she whispered.

  "Hi Nonna," I said, kissing her on the cheek. "How are you feeling?"

  "Tired, but okay." Even if she was in pain, she wouldn't say. "The food here is very bad though. I need your soup."

  "You got it. I'll bring you some every day."

  "What time is it?" she asked.

  I looked down at my phone. Five missed calls from Heath. "It's a little after eleven."

  "See if the Price is Right is on," she faintly gestured to the TV.

  We watched geriatric television for a few hours. Then, I showed her the pictures of the market in Paris, which she loved. My phone buzzed and I sighed, expecting it to be Heath again, but it was Mindy. When I told her what had happened with Nonna, she promised she would come see me that evening. I told her not to bother, but she insisted. Mindy was a good friend. I know I've been hard on her because well, she's Mindy, but she might be the only person other than my grandmother who has remained a fixture. This summer had brought us closer again and I was happy to be in this place with her.

  She came at around seven with Starbucks in hand. That bitch is psychic. My grandmother fell asleep again and she would likely be out the entire night. The pain meds for her hip made her very drowsy.

  Mindy put the drink down and gave me a big warm hug. And usually I roll my eyes at her ostentatious displays of friendship and affection, but this time, I really needed it. I needed that fucking hug and I hugged her back just as hard.

  "Hey sweets, it's gonna be okay," she said when she noticed my tears. Yes, she was still using sweets. Sadie, be easy. "Let's get you home. You need to shower and sleep. She'll be asleep all night. She won't even notice you're gone." I was utterly exhausted and let Mindy take me back to my place.

  ***

  During my time away, my apartment had become somewhat foreign to me. I had become accustomed to living in an opulent house, and not some small apartment in Brooklyn, but it was far more than that. I had become used to having someone to chat with, laugh with, eat meals with, hell even argue with. But now, I was back to the fortress of solitude of my apartment. Luckily, Mindy insisted she stay the night with me during this difficult time.

  "Heath called me. He asked me if I had spoken to you," she said cautiously. I hadn't told her everything that transpired in the recent weeks, after all, I kind of fibbed about ending the affair with Heath and then when it started back up, it happened so fast, I didn't have time to tell her the details. "He seemed really different. Sad."

  "I'll bet," I said, rolled up in a knit throw, cupping a mug of hot tea in my hands.

  "What happened between you two? I need to know because I have a feeling I am somehow going to be caught up in this."

  "I don't even know. We kind of had something, or he wanted something, but then I realized he's Heath and that it was stupid of me to believe that." I tried to play it off by acting casual. Not because I wanted to lie, but because the hurt was still too raw to talk about and I was already in a fragile state. I didn't want to cry about him, he would not get any more of my tears.

  "He told me everything." Of course, Mindy knows all. "He swears up and down to me he didn't lay a finger on Illy. He says she came over and she was bad mouthing you and he was confused because he didn't know what to believe. Then he took a piss and when he came out all hell broke loose. By the way, nice job, Brock Lesnar."

  "Oh god," I buried my head in my hands, embarrassed by my Real Housewives-esque confrontation. "I had just found out about grandma...did you tell him?"

  "I didn't know until after I spoke with him. So no."

  "Okay, good."

  "You two do what you will. After all I am his manager, not his damned therapist, though with my clients I often feel like that latter, but he seemed sincere."

  I snickered. "Sincere? No he's fun and he can be charming. He knows when to tell you what you want to hear. People confuse that with sincere, but it's not the same. He's vain, he's egotistical. The man has a giant fucking neon painting of himself in his living room! I mean, really. Who the fuck does that but him?"

  Mindy perked up a little in her seat. "Wait--you know the story behind that painting, don't you?"

  "That it's his Times Square ad."

  "
No, the story behind the reason it was made?"

  "No...I never asked. I could pretty much assume, knowing him."

  "Have you heard of the artist Talulah Weston-Troy?"

  "Yeah. I think so."

  "She's huuuuge right now. Anyway, he was at an art show in SoHo and she was all over him. It was HER show and she was following him around all night. You know Heath, he's not one to be mean or anything and he loves attention. He was just kind of like whatever about it. And she's really weird. I mean like batshit. She wears these weird drapey shrouds even though she's like not even thirty yet and her hair is all matted in the back."

  "Okay..."

  "So anyway, two weeks later, he's moving into the East Hampton house and a truck shows up and drops off this enormous painting. Guess who it's from?"

  "Talulah..."

  "...Weston-Troy! Yes! She's fucking nuts! She went home and spent several days making him that painting. There was this rambling note attached about how she felt his soul in her and she released it onto the painting. How fucking creepy is that? Can you say restraining order? Anyway, that thing is worth like at least five hundred grand, probably closer to a mil. He didn't know what to do with it, because like you said, it's kind of douchey. So one night while I was visiting, I made a bet that if he couldn't finish five 20-ounce Kombuchas in ten minutes he would have to hang it on his wall for the entire summer." Heath hates Kombucha, he says it tastes like piss and vinegar, but he is also not one to pass up a bet, as we all know. Mindy howled with laughter and clapped to herself recalling that night. "He was gagging. He got down like one and a half and it was game over. He ran to the bathroom to puke. So now it's up there, but he's going to donate it to charity at the end of the summer. A place for foster kids, well because, you know...he was one."

  I feel like a 5'6" asshole.

  "I can't believe he never told you." But I do, because Heath doesn't care what people think of him. He doesn't feel the need to excuse himself. He probably forgot the thing was up there. And he probably thought I should have known better than to think that he would have commissioned that monstrosity. But I always expected the worst from him. I always wrote him off. "I just thought you should know. Yeah he can be an asshat, but that painting, I mean come on, he's not THAT bad."

  My heart softened to him, but I couldn't show that. "Well, that's nice, but I just can't trust him."

  "I get it. He's a model, all the ladies want him. It's intimidating."

  I wasn't a fan of her word choice. Intimidating. It fits right in line with coward and afraid. I wasn't intimidated, I was being perceptive and preemptive. "He's so inappropriate. How could he have Illy over? After saying he wanted to be with me? Didn't he think about how I would feel?"

  "Illy is a total nut job. She's pure evil incarnate. I never got why they hung out. In his defense...you did kind of lie a little...I get why. She's a witch, but he was a little confused when he got her email..."

  "We would never work out and I'm not one of his little playthings."

  "Like I said, I am going to be Switzerland here, but I know he doesn't see you that way. I don't know what you laid down on that boy, but he is not okay right now. Aaaand, if I may be honest here, I like you two together. You balance him out, and you are a sincere person unlike the typical LA to NYC crowd he has to deal with. Albeit you are wound a little tightly at times, but he could use that, someone who whips his ass in line."

  "Heath does what he wants to do. He'll be over me soon enough. I wouldn't be surprised if he's having a threesome as we speak. Being his roomie, I know all about those."

  "I understand, and you have to do what you think is best. I'm just saying, he is a good guy. I've known him for a long time, and he can be silly, and shameless, and lack a filter, but when it comes the the meat and potatoes of a person, the stuff that really matters, he is solid. And he doesn't bullshit, he says what's on his mind. I have never seen him like this over anyone. Like you, I thought he would be incapable of being interested in a woman for longer than it took to bust a nut, but he seems laser-focused on you right now."

  "He's just never been told no. That's why he's calling you. I won't answer his calls and it's probably baffling to him."

  Mindy put her hands up in concession. "You two need to work your shit out. I have said my piece." She placed her thumbs to her index fingers like a yogi.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The weeks after I learned of Nonna's diagnosis seemed to move painstakingly slow and too quickly all at once. There was nothing I could do but be there, talk to her when she was awake, remind her she was loved. I was the only one, I couldn't take shifts with a sibling or parent, or distract myself from my own sorrow by comforting someone else. And yet, while the days were long, it seemed like there was never enough time. She was fading, her glow was dulling. Her once thick and lush snow white hair had thinned and turned brittle. Every day she slept a little longer, the pain became a little stronger, even too strong for her to ignore. Sometimes she would wake up and moan, or say something incoherent, and the nurse would come in and do what she could to make her comfortable.

  Then there were a few moments of astonishing lucidity. She might wake up in the afternoon and converse with me for a few minutes as clearly as she could a couple of months earlier. Then she would drift away again. How could someone fade so fast? It was like her battery was going out, she was expiring right before my very eyes and I could only watch her slip away.

  It was two weeks and two days from the day the doctor told me the prognosis when she and I last spoke. She had withered down to just below one hundred pounds, and had slept for nearly two days straight. When she would wake up she was too tired to speak and I would have to lean in very close just to hear her. But then on the sixteenth day, she woke up, she opened her eyes, and they were the brightest I had seen in weeks. I had dozed off with my hand next to hers as I sat beside the bed. I felt her fingers brush against mine, and jumped out of my slumber.

  "Nonna? How are you feeling?"

  "Water," she asked, weakly motioning to the cup at the bedside table. I carefully put the straw to her mouth as she took tiny sips then stopped.

  "Are you done? Do you want more?"

  She shook her head. I stroked her hand, and she gripped mine. Her hold was far stronger than I thought she was capable of. Then she stared at me, looking me in my eyes, as if she knew she was taking me in for the last time.

  "You're gonna be fine," she whispered.

  Would I? Would I be fine? To be alone in a world so large, so full, and yet have no anchor, no home. After all, that's what Heath understood so clearly: home was not a place, it was a feeling. It was those people who made you feel safe and unconditionally loved. And I did feel like I was home when he was with me, and I know he felt the same way, he tried to tell me that so many times. But I had pushed him away in an attempt to protect myself, from what? I didn't even know anymore, and now I would be floating through this world with no tether. I was so terrified of being hurt and alone, and here I was, hurt and alone. But I knew she was in pain, and I knew I had to let her go, I couldn't greedily keep her to myself. She was a strong, pasta-eating, hearty woman for most of her life, and this is not how she would want to remain on this earth. She had lived her life, she had made her mark on this planet, and I had to let her know I would be okay, because it wasn't fair for me to make her stay. It was the hardest thing I would ever have to do. I lowered my forehead onto the wrinkly skin of her hand, the wrinkles a map of the long life she had lead. She outlived all of her friends, her husband, her only child. It was time for her to go back to them.

  I wept, rubbing my cheek against her hand, knowing it would be one of the last times I would feel the warmth of her skin. It was the hand that held mine at my parents' funeral, it was the hand that wiped my tears away when I skinned my knee, it was the hand that rubbed my tummy when it ached, it took my prom photos, it pointed at me in anger when I missed my curfew, it instructed me and guided me towards my love of cooki
ng.

  When I looked up, her eyes were closed, but I could tell she was still lucid. I knew she could hear me.

  "Nonna, it's okay. I'll be fine. You can go to sleep now. Say hi to grandpa and mommy and daddy for me. Tell them I'm okay and that I love them and I wished I would have had more time with them. You can let go. I love you so much, you can let go. I'm going to be okay."

  She died three and a half hours later in her sleep with me by her side.

  ***

  I sat on the floor next to Nonna's easy chair that night. It was my usual spot, since I was never a fan of her plastic covers. But I would now very much miss those epidermis-peeling furniture shields. The smell of her home comforted me, like she hadn't quite fully left. I grabbed her throw from her chair and wrapped it around my shoulders and if I closed my eyes, it was almost like she was hugging me. She was the Alfred to my Bruce Wayne. I had lost my Alfred, and how does Bruce Wayne go on without Alfred? I know she had to leave, but the grief was so fresh, and I would soon have to put on a strong face to plan her funeral. So, this was my time to just be sad, to feel the melancholy without pretending I was fine. There wouldn't be many people there, most of the important people in her life had already died, but she was traditional and I would make sure she had a traditional funeral.

  Mindy told me she would help me whether I wanted it or not. She knew me well enough to know I wouldn't want to put such an emotional burden on anyone, but thankfully Mindy doesn't take no for an answer. I told her I really wanted to be alone tonight though, and even she knew when not to push it. So she said she would come by in the morning to get me and we could go to the funeral home together and finish the arrangements.

  The place was so quiet: no sounds of cooking in the kitchen, no Drew Carey telling people to "come on down." It was just the sound of emptiness and, of course, my occasional crying. But there did come a point where I was out of tears; my eyes hurt, my head throbbed, and there was just silence. There I was, by myself, and it felt like the world had been wiped out and I was the only person on the planet.