Twice a Child Page 15

  It’s okay here. They treat me nice at this hotel. Problem is I can’t tell anyone where I’m staying.

  thirty two

  The blood stain had soaked into the carpeting and turned brown so that it appeared to belong there, another blemish in an apartment so overrun with imperfection it made no difference.

  Tina walked from room to room making sure nothing was left behind. It was only yesterday they discharged her. She stayed with her mother at her Courtyard Suite, Joshua, too. Everything that she had taken for granted, like how much time it took to buy groceries or keeping to the baby’s schedule, seemed to take twice as long and tired her easily.

  “You’re healing,” Mom would say. “You need to allow yourself that time.”

  But how could she when she knew that Grandpa was in a nursing home and had to be wondering what the hell had happened to her and the baby.

  Eddie handled all that now. And for the first time in her life she was okay with that. Something about him felt different. He had stayed with her in the hospital long after her mother left to go back to the hotel each night. They’d sit together and watch television shows Eddie would call stupid, “a sure sign of decline of intelligent life on planet Earth,” he said. She’d kid him that the movies he made were certainly way above the intellectual capacity of shows like these, and he would laugh. He would actually laugh.

  He’d fix the covers and hand the baby to her. That was the best part. It made her smile just to think about it: Joshua curled up in Eddie’s arms as if he belonged there. In fact, when it was time to nurse him, Tina sensed Eddie’s reluctance to give him up.

  Because she couldn’t nurse Joshua for several days after the “incident” (if she thought of it as a shooting her legs would go weak and her brain would fog over), the nursing staff mixed up formula and any breast milk she was able to express from her good side with rice cereal. So now he was officially broken into solid foods and that left her a little sad, as if she had missed his first step.

  As she looked around the apartment she thought of Grandpa’s wandering, venturing into unknown territory to find his family. When Grandma died, something inside her grandfather died, too.

  When she had visited him in rehab at Cedars-Sinai the first time after the incident, he recoiled from her. She recognized the terror in his eyes; it was the look of vulnerability, a pervasive mask worn by many patients she had encountered that day. Arms as brittle as twigs, and purpled with veins, reached out to her. “Take me home,” the dominant plea. Others simply stared ahead, reaching for something only they could see. Grandpa rested in his Durawalker, another old man bewildered by his surroundings.

  “Grandpa, it’s Tina. And Joshua—say hi to Grandpa—your great-grandson. You remember Joshua, don’t you? We all traveled out here together.”

  The old man studied them, decided they weren’t really there, and turned his walker away from them, shuffling crablike up the hall toward the nurses’ station.

  “Just keep trying, dear. If he hasn’t seen you in a while, he won’t remember.” An aide took her aside to explain. “He’s a dear old gentleman, Frank. We just love him. Always a smile. On good days, a twinkle in his eye. He’s never any trouble.”

  When she did catch up to him, Grandpa played more with the Durawalker, and no matter how many times she tried to get him to turn and face forward in it, he would forget and travel sideways. Behind him, the baby sat in his umbrella stroller smiling and cooing at everyone.

  “Look at him, Grandpa. Throwing his arms out like that, like he owns the place. He thinks everyone has been put on this planet just for his pleasure.”

  She held a straw to his lips so he could sip his cup of decaf, and broke off a piece of an ice cream sandwich and fed it to him. Joshua whimpered for some, and she obliged. He was becoming a solid little boy, as happy and easy as he had always been. In many ways, he reminded her of Quincy, but she immediately dismissed any more thoughts of him. She didn’t need to add to her already heavy heart.

  “You say you’re my granddaughter?” Grandpa’s voice had diminished considerably. He sounded like a radio station that couldn’t completely connect with its frequency.

  “That’s right,” Tina answered, popping another piece of ice cream sandwich into Grandpa’s mouth.

  He chewed with great consideration. “Then I can tell you something.”

  Tina leaned in.

  “I’ve been looking around and seeing all these poor people in wheelchairs. Some of them have their feet wrapped and some of them stare at a wall all day long. So I got to wondering,” he said as he paused to bring a hand to his mouth as if taking a drag off a cigarette, which he blew out in a way that was at once calculating and satisfying. “I’m thinking I must be here to teach them the new equipment.” He sat back, completely satisfied with his assessment.

  Work and family, the two components of Grandpa’s world that made sense because they connected to the great love of his life: Grandma.

  And now, all of it vanished like one of those rides where you grab onto handlebars and stand up and as it begins to spin, growing faster and faster, the floor drops out from under you, but you’re still going and the only thing that keeps you from falling is the power of centrifugal force.

  Grandpa’s world now revolved around three meals a day, a good shit every other day, and a perpetual search for the job he believed, or wanted to believe, that he had taken at a new plant where he was having trouble finding his office.

  As she walked out the door of the apartment, Tina knew she had already crossed the threshold into an undiscovered part of her own life, one she could not have imagined only a year ago.

  One year ago.

  Grandma was alive, bustling about, getting ready for the baby, securing an apartment for her in the same complex. So full of life, loaded with plans for her great-grandchild. She had never seen them happier. Grandpa whistled all the time; Grandma loved washing and folding the sleepers and the onesies and the cloth diapers, stacking everything so neatly in the baby’s room. She’d let herself into the new apartment to prepare for the baby’s arrival as Tina finished her classes and started her new job at the hospital.

  By the time Tina moved in, Grandma had arranged the furniture, stocked the kitchen cabinets with dishware and cookware, cleaning supplies and canned goods. The bed had been made and the crib assembled, right down to the mobile of stars and moons and the black and white panels on washable vinyl, perched in the corner of the crib. “I read that infants can focus and strengthen their eyes if you put this sort of thing in their crib,” she explained.

  At least Grandma got to see the baby, knew that her efforts at setting up a home for the two of them were welcomed, needed.

  “Ah, Grandma. You wouldn’t believe how fast he’s growing.” Tina wiped the tears from her eyes.

  A little girl with a ponytail stopped her scooter in front of Tina, surveyed her before speaking. “Someone got shot in there. Is that why you’re crying?”

  Tina smiled and motioned toward her shoulder, which was covered by a large white gauze pad.

  The girl’s eyes widened with fear.

  “I’ll be okay.”

  As the girl pumped her right leg, propelling her flight away from the stoop, Tina sat wondering, of all things, if she had really meant it.

  She found Eddie and Joshua on the beach when she arrived at the bungalow, the two of them standing by the edge of the ocean silhouetted against the pink western sky. It looked like a Hallmark card: Eddie holding Joshua high on his chest, two heads—large and small—contemplating life from different perspectives. One wonder and the other, Tina decided, the other must be wonder as well, as in wonder how I’m holding this baby in my arms right now.

  She placed the Thai she had picked up on the table and started pulling dishes from the cabinets. For a guy’s place, Eddie kept it clean and tidy, a trait inherited from Grandma. She had that, too. Couldn’t go a week without straightening things, putting everything back in its place. Grand
ma’s house was always spotless and when she had died, Grandpa tried to keep it that way, but the apartment quickly fell into disarray. He had been so disoriented, she recalled. Always asking her which eyeglasses were which, constantly mixing up his reading with his long-distance frames. He had been in the throes of losing his mental faculties for some time, even before Grandma passed, but it was passed off as old age.

  The bungalow eased into a quiet grace, the setting sun casting a rose-hued tint over the living room. One beam of light split a solitary crystal Eddie had placed in the window into a fragmented rainbow across the dining room table.

  That’s how it must be for Grandpa, Tina thought. Words emerged in fits and starts for him now, and while he tried to harness his mind to form them, some of his best attempts came out scattered or scrambled like the beams of light now projected on her hand. She studied the prism of color, turning her palm up, over, forming a karate chop, then a fist, catching the light the way she’d allow a lady bug or firefly to travel on her hand until they tired and flew away.

  Her shoulder smarted. The day she was shot life flipped inside out, and as she stared at the brilliant light above her while doctors cut off her shirt and rushed to fix her, she thought only of Joshua. For all she knew, he could have been lying, alone, on the floor of the apartment. The pain of imagining this was nearly too much for her to bear, and it was what kept her from giving in totally to the anesthesia, the doctor later told her.

  When the police asked if she wanted to press charges, she knew it would mean finding the boy and, more than likely, discovering far more when they served a warrant to the family. The child was young enough to be rehabilitated, placed in a foster setting.

  As she recalled the events of that night, looked again into the eyes of the boy who realized the instant he pulled the trigger that this was no game, something shifted inside. None of us are in control. She could plan, interview, schedule every waking hour, and life could cruise along that way for quite a while.

  It’s all when you least expect it, isn’t it?

  Eddie and the baby made their way across the sand, Joshua now riding on his grandfather’s shoulders. If someone were to tell her this day would arrive, when her father would welcome her and her baby into his home, no matter how temporary, she would have told them they were full of it.

  And while it felt right and good for now, she knew she’d have to move on, decide whether to bring Grandpa back home with her or simply put down roots here in southern California where she could be near Eddie, visit Grandpa as he slipped deeper into his mind, establish a career, and make a life for Joshua.

  “Gorgeous sunset.” Eddie lifted the baby from his shoulders and handed him to her. “That smells great! Thai?”

  “Green bean and tofu curry, some Pad Thai. I found this great little place, something Bangkok—”

  “House of Bangkok,” Eddie said, coaxing Joshua to pick up a small square of grilled cheese from the sandwich Tina had placed on his high chair tray.

  “What? No tofu curry for the kid?”

  “Eddie,” Tina began to protest, knowing he’d feed him jellybeans if she’d allow it, until she realized he was teasing her and that was certainly a new development in their fragile relationship.

  “Sure, sure, I planned on breaking him in right. Let him munch on cayenne pepper first.”

  “Touché.”

  The curry was outstanding, Joshua had a great time forming his thumb and forefinger into a tiny claw to pick up each square of his sandwich, and now the moon shone over the ocean and penetrated the bungalow as a soft, yellow haze.

  “Do you ever wish you could have had more time with Grandpa? I mean, when he was thinking straight?”

  Eddie chewed slowly. He pushed his plate away and stretched like a big, gruff bear, a gesture that ended in a “boo” to his grandson. Always a deflection on the hard stuff.

  “I know you think I left and never looked back—”

  “I’m not talking about Mom or me. I’ll save that for another day.” The look on her father’s face told her that day would remain suspended in time. “You and Grandpa.”

  “We had plenty of time together. And now, I’m doing what every good son does. Making sure the old man’s got what he needs, right?” He rose, carried his plate to the kitchen. Joshua followed him with his eyes.

  “That kid doesn’t miss anything, does he?” He rubbed his head and kissed him on the forehead.

  “I’ve got to check on the edits. Ricki told me they were closing in on them and needed some guidance on one of the scenes. It’ll be late.”

  thirty three

  His father greeted him at rehab as if no time had passed between them, as if he lived down the street and popped in every day. He was lucid, even joking around. It made the whole ordeal seem normal, not the bizarre twist of events that led to his incarceration, as Pop himself referred to it. “I started to see stuff when I first became incarcerated” and “Why is incarceration necessary? I just want to go home” and “This is a jail. I don’t need incarceration.”

  Funny, Eddie thought, how he could forget what he had eaten five minutes ago, but not a word like incarceration.

  On the trip from the rehab center to Golden Hills Rest Home, Pop relaxed, dozing in his wheelchair as Eddie rode in the van with him. As he surveyed the mass of humanity moving along the 405, he realized that the old man hadn’t a clue as to what was happening. His father’s only connection to a grounding force was his son, now squirming on a vinyl jump seat in a transport van because the spring beneath him threatened to break through and skewer his butt.

  “Pop?”

  He stirred, one eyelid fluttering open.

  “I didn’t hurt Rosemary. She was like that when I found her, when I got back to the family room.”

  Both eyes opened now, staring ahead at the parking lot of cars. His father’s gaze held some life in it, not the blank stare Eddie was becoming accustomed to.

  “What?”

  He looked directly at him. Eddie couldn’t tell if he recognized him, his patterns changed from moment to moment. “When Rosemary . . . died.”

  “Oh. Well.” He lowered his head and closed his eyes, the rhythm of the van lulling him to sleep.

  They sat like that the rest of the trip, Eddie and an old man who could still shut out the worst moment of his life, who refused to acknowledge that it happened.

  When they arrived at Golden Hills, Eddie thought the driver had made a wrong turn. The place resembled more of a residence than an institution. A white picket fence surrounded a stately brick home where old people rocked on cane-backed chairs, staring out at soybean fields across the road from various spots along the wrap-around porch.

  “There she is!” As he emerged from the van, Pop’s gaze fixated on a kindly-looking old woman knitting and rocking on the porch.

  ”When did you start knitting?” The woman shot him a look that fractured any sense of kindness. “Boy, she sure got mad at me.”

  The lobby resembled a well-kept living room where even the receptionist’s desk blended with the Queen Anne wingback chairs and plump, cabbage rose design sofas. The day was bright, sunny, mid-70s. Air billowed the golden sheers of each floor-to-ceiling window in the adjacent Florida room, which Eddie later learned was called the Residents’ Rec Room or the Triple R as in “I’ll see you in the Triple R!” or “You’ll find me in the Triple R.”

  He relaxed; the decision to place Pop here settled better. It was everything he had read about Green Housing: a more home-like atmosphere than an institution. It was still a nursing home no matter how fancy the name and how many doilies and vases of fresh flowers adorned the living room. And it was an hour away from the beach, but after awhile, Eddie knew the old man wouldn’t even remember he had a son who lived at the beach.

  Eddie realized he had been staring at the same frame of Riley Andrews’ naked buttocks dissolving into white light for at least a half hour.

  The scene needed old-fashioned, gut-wrenching
heartache. Even vampires felt that, at least in Eddie Lillo movies. Riley’s character was pulling a fucking John Wayne, riding off into the sunset.

  “Ricki! Come in here!”

  Eddie scanned the editing room for his assistant. He reluctantly got up to see if she may have gone outside.

  No Ricki, her car gone.

  Just a few weeks ago, this mutiny would have greatly disturbed him. It would have occupied all corners of his mind and by now he’d be plotting his favorite assistant’s fate with his company, finding ways to relegate her to obscure tasks, maybe even force her out of the industry. This oversight on a critical scene would not have been tolerated and her walking away from it like this? Instant dismissal.

  He steadied himself against the doorway. What the hell did it matter? He’d just sealed the fate of his father. Yeah, he needed the care, the guidance of someone every day to tell him where his room was located, help with the basics of living.

  Eddie returned to his desk and sat back down in front of the same glaringly white scene. All he could see was his father’s face.

  “Looks like a nice room, Pop.”

  Eddie unpacked the suitcase: sweats, running pants, t-shirts, a baseball cap, those wraparound sunglasses old people wear. He made a mental note to pick up a few more sweatshirts; Pop complained of being cold all the time.

  As he unpacked, he kept his back toward Pop, figuring he was either sleeping in his wheelchair or out exploring the hallway. When he turned to where he had left him, his father’s expression surprised him. It was as if Makeup had snuck into the room and replaced Pop’s kindly eyes with glass beads, his genial smile with a straight, taut line, a brow etched with worry.

  “This is not my home. You said we were going home.”

  Eddie’s first instinct was to leave his father to the good nurses and doctors and scoot. Pop would forget all about him once he got acclimated and started to attend activities like—what? Bingo and sing-alongs?