The scene is Mediterranean. Arched adobe wraparound portico lined in durable curtains which billow on high noon breezes. Inside, there are waxed flower arrangements, and cheap lazer-printed, wood-framed attempts at what an invalid might classify as Art, or even decoration, everywhere. A large 20×34 inch print of what I clearly recognise as a “mahogany” particle-board wash basin standing unit, the kind they specialize in at Home Depot; complete with drawers and a hand-towel hanging off the towel rack on its side–the whole thing is effected with the “oil-paint” filter, and also framed in fake mahogany, for example.
You have been granted the window-bed. Thomas and I enjoy your new view of the tight manicured patch of grass which hugs a curvaceously pleasing Olive tree, all of which you block with your mini-moveable plasma 18 inch.
You want your old bed back, the one in the heart of this room, lined on both sides by hospital curtains.
I’m here for my mother. It would hurt her deeply if I neglected you completely to spend one more Saturday in the Art studio. Needless to say, I love you, but, I also carry gnosis of your history in my veins: 7 children with my grandmother, and you cheated, not only on her but on each of your embryo’s as well.
For my fifth birthday you gave me a small girl’s bracelet you’d found in a gutter, in TJ. You had washed it off, carried it in your pocket over three hundred miles to give it to me.
When they found you, your wallet was $150.00 short. You lost it at the Craps table. You travel to the casino, 3 times weekly. Nobody mugged you. You fell down.
You couldn’t make it to Thomas’ birthday party a few weeks before, “to old to travel,” you said.
“I brought you The Swimsuit Edition, The Elizabeth Taylor Memorial Edition, Times, and the regular Sports Illustrated edition.” I also bought you a handheld touchscreen Bicycle Blackjack, and Poker game. I taught your great grand-son how to teach you how to play with them.
“I’d rather watch it on TV.”
All of our conversations today revolved back into how She mistreated you. How selfish She was. How you never did any wrong by Her. She’s gone. They all are. You worked them all like dogs. Not me, Mom kept me away–to this day she can’t figure out why she brought me up so far from this beautiful town, her home, a place I can now only visit. Today, she realized as she watched you talk to me: that you never once have said thank you, for anything.
When your dick and your ability to gamble finally failed you, they took your license away and all that you are left with here are the memories of what you have lived for.
We love you because you are our flesh and blood, and for the good times. We love you for the valuable lesson you leave for us: what to build into our consciousness, which will carry us over on that final stretch between physical mobility and our cohabitance with our everlasting Platinum dreams.
There is nothing, dear Grandfather like the solitary marriage of scents that we each have and will leave you wafting in, daily: soft, brown-boiled broccoli or carrots, convalescence, and the combined, three to a room rages of regret.
I take that back, they weren’t all regretful.
Maybe next time you’ll find it in your heart to be happy to see your true offspring.
Maybe next time it wont be this stench… I’ll be cooking for you, something savory like chicken soup and the hot tortilla’s only Grandma could have taught me to make. No recipe comes close.
