- Joined
- Feb 12, 2016
- Messages
- 2
“O.K.,” Myra says in a way that only Myra can say it, “Betty’s no spring chicken but now she is totally plucked!”
“Watch your filthy mouth,” I remind Myra, trying not to be obstinate but sometimes she needs to know firm. Myra’s capable of going over the top real fast.
She squints into the bare room with the painting what looks like dying horses on the wall, spits without spitting, rubs an arthritic knuckle under her chin, and says back, “Just saying what the doctors are saying.”
“The doctor who called didn’t say that. He said come out quick and maybe take Betty home. The disease isn’t fatal. You know she’ll eventually get better.”
“Says you and that stupid doctor. Betty can’t even cook her own food.”
“Betty never cooked her own food. That’s why she’s always broke. She got no respect for hard earned cash.”
“You watch your own filthy mouth, Ted. Talking about money at a time like this. Sheeesh!”
“Sheeeshkabob,” I tell her back. “Sheeeshkabob to you!” Then I go to my corner by the ripped curtain, grab the motel pen attached to the table and work on my crossword.
So there it is. Betty was just stamped with Crohn’s and despite a weak try to get healthy, had to quit her job and dump her boyfriend. Our goal is to have her fly back to Bay Ridge with us. That’s the short version, but it wasn’t the thing that got us in hot water. Our precipitous behavior, first, finding ourselves again thrust into the role of caregivers and, second, finding us dissatisfied with the medical community’s treatments for Crohn’s, was the impetus for two average people to practically go awry of the law and practically each other.
We’ve now been planted in Los Angeles exactly two weeks. I’m not a fan of the city, but it’s growing on me like a fungus. And this isn’t a courtesy call either. The boutique motel costs a fortune, especially at these usurer’s rates, but it’s the closest thing without a long hike to Betty’s dump. What we should be on is on vacation, a little family face time. I just retired from the union after forty years and it should be a celebration. Myra and me, we’re in it for forty years too. And while we’re not bored or anxious that we’ve somehow, mysteriously, without knowing it except for all the commercial reminders, largely passed into what’s commonly known by those experts who know it as late middle age, it still drives me nuts given recent developments.
Such as we got the call from Doctor Who (gives a damn) last month and Bam! So off we went into the wild blue yonder on a not too cheap last minute flight like lunatics, from JFK to LAX in a drug-induced torpor. The flight was fantastically slow for my Melatonin, for Myra’s Dramamine, and in six hours or so of transcontinental hell, the numbness was pretty much gone.
“It’s 86 degrees in Downtown Los Angeles,” says the 42” flat screen with the deep key scratch ripped across the powdered blonde’s face.
Myra grimaces, wrings a towel she dampened in the bathroom sink and goes to sit on what passes for a rocker next to one of the twin beds. “I’ve only been in Los Angeles once before,” she confirms, “long before I met you, Ted.”
“That long? Good memory. I don’t remember a thing since the doctor called and that’s including all the crap I’ll forget today. What’d you do when you were in this stinkhole, anyway?”
“I never been in this motel,” Myra says and wipes her underarms with the towel.
“I mean the city, Myra....this city. Stop being a dope! You know what I mean.”
Me, I been here plenty, maybe eight times on business. I don’t remember much of it because I avoided it soon as I landed, the last few times borrowing back our car from my half-an-actor son and traveling up the coast to San Luis Obispo for a national union convention. Plumbers Unite! and all that garbage. I never stuck around town to really take in the sights. Do I look like I give a rat’s ass about red carpets, cement fingerprints or where Mister Goodbody was caught with his pants down and his jig up?
But now, now after this ninth sojourn, I’m starting to get the big screen picture. It seems Los Angeles, this city of broken dreams, is really an amalgam, a puzzle waiting to be decoded, a crazy crucible stuffed with all the combustibles that would drive one batty. Anyway, it’s all worth another look, another plunge deep into its overworked bowels just to be sure I’m reading things correctly, if you know what I mean. But I’m not altogether here, not totally with the program yet. My two feet aren’t exactly planted on solid terra germa. We’ve been sidetracked by a nightmare and are learning, just like our daughter’s learning, to poorly deal. And then do better.
After two weeks, we’re finally doing better. We finally kicked the asshole boyfriend out and fled the cramped beds of the motel for Betty’s walk-up rat trap. Now, we’re sleeping on a rock hard sofa bed with invisible springs just to reaffirm my faith in a godless universe. Betty can’t travel yet or we’d be gone faster than piss down a urinal. She’d tried cooking her meals herself when first told she wasn’t right, but she didn’t want us here, didn’t want us living with her, or her brother bringing dope, didn’t want for nothing and now she’s done with it, weak and sick and Prednisoned up the you-know-what. Anyway, we’re here so tough noogies on her, and Myra’s cooking now, cooking up a hell storm in a kitchen built for none. But that’s the way it is. When Betty can travel, she’s coming home. I swear to Christ. She already quit her job at the bank. Handling all that cash not being hers probably what got her sick in the first place. It’s too much to ask of anyone not named Trump to dole out and take in cash knowing none of it’ll ever go your way. People are human, they got wants; they got needs. It’s the bosses who rake it in and while I know they mostly don’t contract Crohn’s, I’m betting they got other illnesses come from sick hearts sick with longing for more and more and more.
Last few days, we’ve been reduced to making pilgrimages to the opposite ends of the consumer universe from eco-friendly green retail shops that charge cosmic prices to discount havens that charge sub-atomic prices much like a schizophrenic straight shot from glitz to chintz to shit all in one heaping spoonful. There’s Costco and Sam’s Club, there’s Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods. There’s Gelson’s Supermarket and 99 Cents Only and Ralph’s and Albertson’s and Jon’s and Von’s, all of them mixed up in confusing quadrants from Skid Row to Los Feliz to Santa Monica to Koreatown to West Hollywood and Culver City. And them fucking Hills too. There’s health food stores and mini-markets, and fast food and slow cook and high heat and cool down and fat and thin and innie/outties and salad bars and taco treats and pad Thai, Argentinean steak, hot and sour soup, mung bean delights, gyros, chicken everything, every way, every time, and delicacies: hot, spicy, cheap, oily and refried, from all the nationalities on this big, old Earth blended together deep in the murky miasma of my eclipsed recall that just can’t find the energy to compartmentalize thoughts into a cohesive whole as a consequence and urgent necessity to care give our daughter, Betty, who, at 31, has just been diagnosed with a crippling case of Crohn’s Disease. And who would of ever thought that?
Apart from the day to day grind of visits to the physicians who spring up like cardboard cutouts miming the same cathartic measures, usually involving steroids or biologics which require lifelong transfusions or pills or drips or injections, we’re overwhelmed by bright prognosis after bright prognosis provided we abide by the company format and the latest science, the newest devices, probes, dyes, kamikaze assaults on her colon, and meetings, countless meetings, modern techniques, and more blather squeezed together into nothing more than empty words that, if all collected, still may not be able to properly fit onto the head of a pin but certainly could be pooled into one fireball of a nasty drug.
Myra is all out of whack. The repercussions of Betty’s massive steroid swallows are consuming her and she spends most of her free time, day and night, on Betty’s computer: calculating and culling and discarding all the vast magnitudinal scraps of data at her fingertips. “I certainly would stay away from the internet,” affirmed the young Indian gastroenterologist, “It will upset you and have you go where there’s no point in going.” After all, he’s the expert, the inspired specialist deep in graduate debt and the certainty of his convictions, though he hasn’t convinced Myra of anything other than the answer to Betty’s disease is the dispensation of poisons to subdue and relax her own malfunctioning defense systems that’s all out of whack too. His big mistake at our first big meeting was that he never let go of the knob of the office door. His assessment’s cagey. He wants it both ways. He wants to be listened to but listened to in a hurry. I’m on it like a pro. I understand he’s got other patients, but Myra, she got other ideas. That hand signifies something important to her. One doesn’t go probing her daughter’s insides and then come back with an assessment in one hand and a door knob in the other. Myra wants another sit down, and ten more after that. Myra wants her concerns out in the open. Myra wants certainty. Whether in plumbing or medicine, there’s no such creature as certainty.
My wife knows there’s got to be a better way and won’t quit her query to find forever-lasting alternatives, primarily involving the intake of just that right amount of, just that right kind of, rich, organic, grass fed, free range herb, spice, root, seed, bark, etc., etc., that substantiates remediation. Myra’s at loggerheads with the medical profession, her own maternal instincts clashing violently with the worldly shamans who dish their favorite pharmaceuticals and prized ointments and holy liquids and saintly salves, dishing diatribes and invectives at holistic treatments, in volley after terrific volley in unending streams of contemporary mumbo jumbo because they don’t jive with insurance company principles, overrides and push backs. An iron drip was considered to infuse poor Betty with quick energy, a shock, a jolt, to get her system up and around. All good, but there was no insurance support so she’d have to pay the whole claim, and, really, who has seven hundred clams for a thirty minute transfusion of something that comes in little capsules anyway? In the world of quick-quackery, everything seems to be about acceleration first and foremost. The door knob method!
Screw it, I think, and think Betty will do it the old-fashioned way; she’ll earn her spark, one Herculean second after second. Myra has been adamant since we arrived here on that wet afternoon in January in a city that supposed to be sunny 24/7.
“Why don’t we just knock her out with some barbiturate and then fly her out?” I suggest. “She’ll never know what hit her.”
“Are you an idiot? And what if she gets sick on the plane? Then what?”
“Don’t call me an idiot.”
“Then don’t come up with stupid ideas. Betty’ll go when Betty’ll go. She’s not well enough to fly. Why don’t ‘you’ drop twenty percent of your body weight and then come talk to me.”
“Why don’t you drop you attitude!” I yell back from my new corner in Betty’s place, a corner that has a window with a view of someone else’s corner in the alley.
“Why don’t you drop dead! God knows it wouldn’t hurt you. Might even be good for you, healthwise and all.”
“Don’t tempt me, woman. You’d be a goner without me.”
“We’ll see,” Myra says, and turns the Vitamix to high so she can’t hear me say to her what I’d never say in the second place, but what I know in a heartbeat, “Myra, I’d be a goner without you.”
The next day, or was it, we’re at some Trader Joe’s picking up a pound of something grayish. We shoot down separate aisles looking for it, and though she tells me the name, I forgot and I don’t remember if it came in a can, bottle or bag. I’m drifting, but it doesn’t matter. Myra really wants to find it herself. Everything’s become a national emergency and I’m really here for the scenery and to admire the store’s cool vibe. A minute ago, I heard Brubeck tinkle in the ceiling speakers and now Marley’s on.
Myra and me, we meet back like by accident near the bananas and kiwis. She’s got what she wanted, it came in a yellow box, and I’m really starting to get sick of the runaround. So I say, “Myra, maybe the doctor’s got it right. Maybe she needs a higher dose of the Prednisone to get her over the hump. Maybe sixty milligrams isn’t enough.”
Myra explodes, says, “Maybe you should shut up!” She then grabs a coconut from the bin and threatens to smack me with it if I keep going like I’ve been. We’re both on edge. Every moves a possible false move. We’re in unchartered territory and the roadmap runs through every retail food chain in the city. I step back, the coconut sits heavy in her raised claw.
“Aw, screw it,” I shout quietly to myself, shake my empty head a few times, and walk to the back of the store and pour myself a nice paper cup of some strong Ethiopian coffee.
Back in the apartment, Betty lays in her bed under a white sheet, her face lost in pillows, her calves and feet sticking straight out. Betty’s been confined to the bed for days and lost so much weight so fast I can’t stand it. I come in with a magazine I found at the Laundromat next block. I place it next to her ointments and pills and marijuana pipe on the nightstand. I don’t want to stare at her but I do. Her limbs look thinner than two inch PVC’s and I can’t stand it. She thanks me for the magazine, but she’s so disoriented, I don’t think she even knows who she’s thanking or where she is or what she’s doing. And her voice, her voice sounds like she’s drowning inside her throat. Everything she says now, even that simple “Thank you,” sound more and more like little desperate cries for help. She coughs more than she ought to and whimpers nonstop.
The last few nights, I started hitting the computer too. Myra’s been whipping up some broth and some magic juice to spoon-gag Betty. There’s also some home-made yogurt, that never ending bowl of plain white rice and even something resembling flattened chicken. Whatever the hell stays down and doesn’t hurt when it can’t. Myra’s no French chef, but I got to hand it to her. She’s trying. She’s convinced that if it goes in right, then everything’ll come out right in the long run. Mostly everything she makes looks green and thick like pipe dope and smells overcooked and faintly rotten. I tell Myra I’m going to go out, bring back a pie or some innie/outties, but Myra says, “You’re not going nowhere; we’re in it together. So sit down and shut up!”
It’s like Myra’s getting all religious on me, but for me to buy in like she’s bought in may take a miracle. I don’t know the right answer and Myra’s feeling around in the dark, wholly convinced it’s the only way and there’s no talking with her about it. Long term steroid use has grave consequences, the sites seem to say. The doctors say back, “It’s all fine, not to worry, and tell us to listen, learn, and shut up as well!” Bedside manners, they never were introduced to in medical school.
Betty’s TV doesn’t get a signal anymore cause her subscription expired, and I can’t read or do my crosswords because I’m tired and because of all the racket Myra’s making with the machines, so I say to myself, what the hell. I might as well dig in now that the seat’s empty.
I look for ways to contribute. Timmy did; he brought the bag of weed. Me, I end up with legs. The web sites guarantee that reflexology helps, and after some heartfelt pleading, Betty grants me short term permission to rub her feet and calves. I tell her I’m hitting pressure points with my thumbs, that’s why it hurts a little like it’s supposed to and she’ll feel better and more relaxed by and by. Actually, it feels like I’m squeezing paste out of a tube, and I’m going at it like some mad exorcist goes about squeezing evil out of a tormented soul. My profession makes for strong hands but I’m more used to kneading cast iron than flesh so I try to be gentle. I need Betty to know I’m here for her and although I don’t know what I’m doing playing this stupid footsie, it’s all I can do for now. I feel like crying and won’t, so I bear down and press on her arches hard but not so much that anything comes even close to breaking.
Next morning I practically carry Betty to the Camry I loaned Timmy and now borrowed back so we can go see the doctor again. I feel like a shmuck hoisting Betty to and fro and wonder when the Prednisone will start in or something Myra dished up will work out. In the waiting room, the only magazine with a crossword puzzle already’s been filled in. I check for errors; there are loads. It seems nobody can spell anymore. Even simple and important words like Kardashian and Bouffant. Sheeesh! Betty is slumped like a corpse in one of the dark leather couch seats. Myra’s in the can again. The wait seems interminable. This feels like our one hundredth visit. Today’s the day I hope we can think about booking a flight.
The lady behind the invisible bullet proof screen waves us in, us meaning Betty and Myra only, as most always. I’m left to watch the scenery, ruminate about the gestalt of all the leftovers waiting for help in the crowded office. The old guy next to me, his stomach gurgles. The lady with the coiffed doo opposite me adjusts in her seat, passes gas and wriggles in big discomfort. Everyone’s in some distress, in some silent pain. I feel I’m being given the evil eye all around, perhaps because I’m the only monkey in the room who’s not burping or scratching at sores on my face or behind my knees. They all could use a good plumber, I surmise, and snigger into my green and pink shirt with the parakeets, not meaning to be crude, but recognizing like all new fixtures installed by nature, parts wear out, organs and valves and pumps disassemble.
I’m sweating like a copper pipe in August because the air conditioning works like crap, makes too much noise, and the water fountain in the hall spurts in drips and drabs. I was thinking I should leave a card, but I’m not in the business any more. I got a new job. I’ve been reassigned to the clean up brigade. I make the couch, squeeze the feet, chauffeur the car, throw out the garbage, wipe the dishes, fold the clothes, pay the tab, and say, “Whatever you say,” when I’m forced to say something back. I’m not used to a second round of child rearing. I’m the one on tap to disassemble first, not the kids.
Two hours later they come out from the office. Betty seems to be smiling, the first time I seen her crack one since I’ve been here. Myra’s not which suggests one of two things: either there was a brouhaha in the back or Myra and Betty don’t see eye to eye. I’m betting on the former. Myra goes to the can again. Under my supervision, Betty wobbles to the Camry, oozes into the seat, then changes tune and begins to cry softly like a little kid. “He said I can go to New York if I want, but mom told the doctor he’s an a-hole.”
I grimace and tell her straight out, “Mom’s just being mom. You know how she gets. Still, that’s wonderful news.” The young guy, head deep in a nearby garbage bin, takes notice, looks up and smiles then goes back to his business. That’s two smiles in less than a minute. A record. That’s two more smiles than I’ve seen in about a month. It bodes well. I can survive on little auguries. I tell Betty, “Let’s get to packing.”
In the shadow of the Camry, Betty looks greenish yellow. I close her door, then reach in and pat her forehead, feel the sweat, see the bursting blisters on her chin. Doubts arise. “Are you sure you’ll be able to do this?” I ask, not sure about her being able to do anything but what she’s been doing all along which is mostly puke and bleed and crap. Betty doesn’t answer. She’s in a sort of swoon now and it dawns on me Myra’s probably not in the can like she said but back in the doctor’s face. I see the guy in the bin coming up empty and he moves on. There are dozens of octogenarians slumped over in dozens of car seats waiting to be wheeled in or wheeled home or wheeled wherever sick people go. There are dozens of people my age and Betty’s age and teenagers and even little kids around too. What the hell’s wrong with everybody....high stress, bad food, tainted water, rising temps? Everyone’s got leaky pipes, rusted joints, bad sewage. What the hell’s going on? Either way, it appears safe enough at least here to leave Betty alone. The fact that the parking lot’s packed instills an awkward confidence. It’s mid-morning and all the muggers and car thieves are probably still in their jammies, so I leave the windows open, make sure Betty’s still breathing regular, and stumble back into the doctor’s office before all hell breaks loose.
I can hear the rumble going on soon as I crack open the fancy glass door. I go right in. The secretary at the pay booth behind the bullet-proof screen got nothing to say. She looks at me not nicely. I shoot her a crass look so she knows to stays put. She knows all too well. She’s seen scenes like this before. Money issues mostly though Myra’s on to something way different. I hear Myra blasting away and know she’s beyond herself now. “How dare you tell my daughter she can fly!”
“Look Miss…” I hear the young Indian doctor trying to get a word in edgewise, but he had his say and it’s too late now to take any of it back. I hear his leather chair squeaking around behind his desk and know he’s not getting up for fear of being swatted.
Myra bears down. “It’s been weeks. All you say is be patient. Be patient! The steroid you prescribed is doing nothing but makes her head look like a giant olive with eyeballs. I got no use for you.”
“Please understand....”
I’m storming down the little hallway and crash through the door and into the office where the commotion is in full swing and tell Myra to shut her trap but in the nicest way possible. She looks at me like a traitor. She got no use for me either. “Calm down Myra, please,” I plead, extending my arms, hands up, trying to broker some kind of peace. “This isn’t helping Betty any.”
“You’re not helping! Nothing’s helping!”
“We need to go home, Myra. The doctor says flying won’t kill her, won’t make her sicker...let’s go home.”
Myra looks like she just escaped from a nuthouse. Her mascara’s running and she looks a lot like David Bowie on a bad day. She’s sweating, steaming almost. Her long grey hair is tousled from all the humidity. Some of it pastes to her forehead and drips down her cheeks. Her bra is unangled and the straps and cups show around the cut and shoulders of her blue dress. She’s breathing heavy which means she’s either out of fuel or just priming the pump. I’m hoping the former but I should know better. I don’t know what Myra plans on doing. She surrounded, the doctor, wary and feeble-looking behind the desk. Me, the same by the door. It’s two against one, a fair fight in Myra’s catalogue.
“Do I look like an idiot? I see what’s going on. You’re both giving me the pinch,” Myra bellows.
“Myra, be reasonable,” I beseech again.
Myra’s too far gone. Reasonable’s not on the menu. Bile seems to be the main course. “If you don’t stop giving my daughter these drugs....”
“I think this has gone on far enough.” says the doctor with surprising bravado. “Please leave now or I will call security.” Very stern, good move....more incitement. Just what the doctor ordered....Sheeshkabob!
“Fix Betty now!” Myra screeches, “or you better call an undertaker. No more drugs, you hear me?”
The doctor frowns, sees professional intimidation’s no exit strategy, and finally grabs his prescription pad and starts to scribble. “O.K., O.K, but she has to come out slow. Prednisone is a strong drug. I am writing a new prescription for a different....”
Myra knocks her chair over with a strong boot; that shuts him up fast and he seems frozen, hovering over his pad like he’s confused and can’t figure out what he’d just wrote down and what to write next. Myra snatches at his pen, misses, and accidentally scratches his face leaving a mark that may or may not bleed.
I slide over fast, grab Myra and hold her around the shoulders firm till the doctor dodges round the table. He’s holding his face like he’s been stabbed in the head. I’ve seen mosquitoes handle a slap better than this. I sneer at the doctor as he reaches for the knob with his free hand. “You will be sorry,” he says to me on his way out.
“Beat it, bub!” I say real loud and then in Myra’s ear I whisper, “Look what you just did, Myra....what the hell are you doing?” At that, Myra bursts into tears, leans against me way too hard, then lets go her knees and collapses in a heap to the carpet. “Myra, not here....” I say, knowing here may still be better than at Betty’s place.
After a short while listening to Myra sob, I pick up feet padding large in the hallway. Two securities come in, look around tentatively, see Myra still in her heap, say nothing. Their badges and green uniforms mean nothing to me. If we walk out, walk out now, we’ll be fine. I wave them away. “We’re leaving, gentlemen. My wife had a small episode, if know what I mean.” One nods, the other shrugs. The two men back slowly out the frosted door, close it. I see their shadows holding steady on the other side, waiting.
I carefully piece Myra back together and pick her up. She’s still crying but her knees hold. I put my arm around her shoulder and open the door and we walk out like I’m shielding her from some paparazzi. The two securities actually lead the way, then they stop in the big front room and let us pass. All the clients look dazed. They heard the ruckus going on but couldn’t care less. I see the doctor partially hidden in a secretary’s chair behind the iron maiden at the bulletproof screen. He looks at us in wonder. He’s dabbing at his cheek with a wet towel. His cheek looks pretty fine. I see maybe a dab of blood and sneer at him again. It’s the cost of doing bad business with Myra.
Out in the parking lot, the tarmac sizzles. Myra’s recovering quick. Her breathing comes regular. She sneezes out the filth. Betty’s still out like a light in the front seat of Camry. Myra gets in the back, stretches out like she’s poolside on a chaise lounge and orders an appeal which is damn more insightful than an apology. “I can’t take this no more, Ted. It’s driving me up a wall.”
“How about it driving you onto a plane?” I say the obvious because Myra needs to hear the obvious again. It takes time for things to sink in with her. “We got no more good reasons to be here. Betty’s not getting fixed here. Maybe at home....”
“Always with the maybes, Ted. But I tell you, I’ve given up.”
“Didn’t look like that a second ago.”
“Let’s pack the blenders and get the hell out of here,” Myra says. I rejoice at the faint hope in her voice, the first sign of hope I myself feel in a long time and give my own version of a smile. “Now you’re rockin’, Myra. No one to tell us what to do back in Brooklyn. No sir. We’ll start fresh, see new specialists, sympathetic types only.”
“You think the doctor will have me arrested?”
“No. I think he’ll be happy to have us all out of his life.” Myra remains quiet for the remainder of the ride back to Betty’s to go pack all our stuff and find a last minute flight out of LAX.
When we reach Betty’s place, I reach over and feel her forehead, cooler than before, no sweat, soft even breaths, better than before. Maybe a breakthrough, even more hope. She’s my baby girl and Myra’s my wife and making good decisions even when she makes some bad ones. Her intentions are all that ever mattered to me. We’ll slowly pull Betty off the steroids and get her back to normal.
I have to keep remembering that Crohn’s isn’t fatal, isn’t fatal. That there’s always remission after a flare and always other remediations. I have to keep reminding myself it’s all about the food and about rest and about time and about love. I have to keep reminding myself, reminding myself....
“Watch your filthy mouth,” I remind Myra, trying not to be obstinate but sometimes she needs to know firm. Myra’s capable of going over the top real fast.
She squints into the bare room with the painting what looks like dying horses on the wall, spits without spitting, rubs an arthritic knuckle under her chin, and says back, “Just saying what the doctors are saying.”
“The doctor who called didn’t say that. He said come out quick and maybe take Betty home. The disease isn’t fatal. You know she’ll eventually get better.”
“Says you and that stupid doctor. Betty can’t even cook her own food.”
“Betty never cooked her own food. That’s why she’s always broke. She got no respect for hard earned cash.”
“You watch your own filthy mouth, Ted. Talking about money at a time like this. Sheeesh!”
“Sheeeshkabob,” I tell her back. “Sheeeshkabob to you!” Then I go to my corner by the ripped curtain, grab the motel pen attached to the table and work on my crossword.
So there it is. Betty was just stamped with Crohn’s and despite a weak try to get healthy, had to quit her job and dump her boyfriend. Our goal is to have her fly back to Bay Ridge with us. That’s the short version, but it wasn’t the thing that got us in hot water. Our precipitous behavior, first, finding ourselves again thrust into the role of caregivers and, second, finding us dissatisfied with the medical community’s treatments for Crohn’s, was the impetus for two average people to practically go awry of the law and practically each other.
We’ve now been planted in Los Angeles exactly two weeks. I’m not a fan of the city, but it’s growing on me like a fungus. And this isn’t a courtesy call either. The boutique motel costs a fortune, especially at these usurer’s rates, but it’s the closest thing without a long hike to Betty’s dump. What we should be on is on vacation, a little family face time. I just retired from the union after forty years and it should be a celebration. Myra and me, we’re in it for forty years too. And while we’re not bored or anxious that we’ve somehow, mysteriously, without knowing it except for all the commercial reminders, largely passed into what’s commonly known by those experts who know it as late middle age, it still drives me nuts given recent developments.
Such as we got the call from Doctor Who (gives a damn) last month and Bam! So off we went into the wild blue yonder on a not too cheap last minute flight like lunatics, from JFK to LAX in a drug-induced torpor. The flight was fantastically slow for my Melatonin, for Myra’s Dramamine, and in six hours or so of transcontinental hell, the numbness was pretty much gone.
“It’s 86 degrees in Downtown Los Angeles,” says the 42” flat screen with the deep key scratch ripped across the powdered blonde’s face.
Myra grimaces, wrings a towel she dampened in the bathroom sink and goes to sit on what passes for a rocker next to one of the twin beds. “I’ve only been in Los Angeles once before,” she confirms, “long before I met you, Ted.”
“That long? Good memory. I don’t remember a thing since the doctor called and that’s including all the crap I’ll forget today. What’d you do when you were in this stinkhole, anyway?”
“I never been in this motel,” Myra says and wipes her underarms with the towel.
“I mean the city, Myra....this city. Stop being a dope! You know what I mean.”
Me, I been here plenty, maybe eight times on business. I don’t remember much of it because I avoided it soon as I landed, the last few times borrowing back our car from my half-an-actor son and traveling up the coast to San Luis Obispo for a national union convention. Plumbers Unite! and all that garbage. I never stuck around town to really take in the sights. Do I look like I give a rat’s ass about red carpets, cement fingerprints or where Mister Goodbody was caught with his pants down and his jig up?
But now, now after this ninth sojourn, I’m starting to get the big screen picture. It seems Los Angeles, this city of broken dreams, is really an amalgam, a puzzle waiting to be decoded, a crazy crucible stuffed with all the combustibles that would drive one batty. Anyway, it’s all worth another look, another plunge deep into its overworked bowels just to be sure I’m reading things correctly, if you know what I mean. But I’m not altogether here, not totally with the program yet. My two feet aren’t exactly planted on solid terra germa. We’ve been sidetracked by a nightmare and are learning, just like our daughter’s learning, to poorly deal. And then do better.
After two weeks, we’re finally doing better. We finally kicked the asshole boyfriend out and fled the cramped beds of the motel for Betty’s walk-up rat trap. Now, we’re sleeping on a rock hard sofa bed with invisible springs just to reaffirm my faith in a godless universe. Betty can’t travel yet or we’d be gone faster than piss down a urinal. She’d tried cooking her meals herself when first told she wasn’t right, but she didn’t want us here, didn’t want us living with her, or her brother bringing dope, didn’t want for nothing and now she’s done with it, weak and sick and Prednisoned up the you-know-what. Anyway, we’re here so tough noogies on her, and Myra’s cooking now, cooking up a hell storm in a kitchen built for none. But that’s the way it is. When Betty can travel, she’s coming home. I swear to Christ. She already quit her job at the bank. Handling all that cash not being hers probably what got her sick in the first place. It’s too much to ask of anyone not named Trump to dole out and take in cash knowing none of it’ll ever go your way. People are human, they got wants; they got needs. It’s the bosses who rake it in and while I know they mostly don’t contract Crohn’s, I’m betting they got other illnesses come from sick hearts sick with longing for more and more and more.
Last few days, we’ve been reduced to making pilgrimages to the opposite ends of the consumer universe from eco-friendly green retail shops that charge cosmic prices to discount havens that charge sub-atomic prices much like a schizophrenic straight shot from glitz to chintz to shit all in one heaping spoonful. There’s Costco and Sam’s Club, there’s Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods. There’s Gelson’s Supermarket and 99 Cents Only and Ralph’s and Albertson’s and Jon’s and Von’s, all of them mixed up in confusing quadrants from Skid Row to Los Feliz to Santa Monica to Koreatown to West Hollywood and Culver City. And them fucking Hills too. There’s health food stores and mini-markets, and fast food and slow cook and high heat and cool down and fat and thin and innie/outties and salad bars and taco treats and pad Thai, Argentinean steak, hot and sour soup, mung bean delights, gyros, chicken everything, every way, every time, and delicacies: hot, spicy, cheap, oily and refried, from all the nationalities on this big, old Earth blended together deep in the murky miasma of my eclipsed recall that just can’t find the energy to compartmentalize thoughts into a cohesive whole as a consequence and urgent necessity to care give our daughter, Betty, who, at 31, has just been diagnosed with a crippling case of Crohn’s Disease. And who would of ever thought that?
Apart from the day to day grind of visits to the physicians who spring up like cardboard cutouts miming the same cathartic measures, usually involving steroids or biologics which require lifelong transfusions or pills or drips or injections, we’re overwhelmed by bright prognosis after bright prognosis provided we abide by the company format and the latest science, the newest devices, probes, dyes, kamikaze assaults on her colon, and meetings, countless meetings, modern techniques, and more blather squeezed together into nothing more than empty words that, if all collected, still may not be able to properly fit onto the head of a pin but certainly could be pooled into one fireball of a nasty drug.
Myra is all out of whack. The repercussions of Betty’s massive steroid swallows are consuming her and she spends most of her free time, day and night, on Betty’s computer: calculating and culling and discarding all the vast magnitudinal scraps of data at her fingertips. “I certainly would stay away from the internet,” affirmed the young Indian gastroenterologist, “It will upset you and have you go where there’s no point in going.” After all, he’s the expert, the inspired specialist deep in graduate debt and the certainty of his convictions, though he hasn’t convinced Myra of anything other than the answer to Betty’s disease is the dispensation of poisons to subdue and relax her own malfunctioning defense systems that’s all out of whack too. His big mistake at our first big meeting was that he never let go of the knob of the office door. His assessment’s cagey. He wants it both ways. He wants to be listened to but listened to in a hurry. I’m on it like a pro. I understand he’s got other patients, but Myra, she got other ideas. That hand signifies something important to her. One doesn’t go probing her daughter’s insides and then come back with an assessment in one hand and a door knob in the other. Myra wants another sit down, and ten more after that. Myra wants her concerns out in the open. Myra wants certainty. Whether in plumbing or medicine, there’s no such creature as certainty.
My wife knows there’s got to be a better way and won’t quit her query to find forever-lasting alternatives, primarily involving the intake of just that right amount of, just that right kind of, rich, organic, grass fed, free range herb, spice, root, seed, bark, etc., etc., that substantiates remediation. Myra’s at loggerheads with the medical profession, her own maternal instincts clashing violently with the worldly shamans who dish their favorite pharmaceuticals and prized ointments and holy liquids and saintly salves, dishing diatribes and invectives at holistic treatments, in volley after terrific volley in unending streams of contemporary mumbo jumbo because they don’t jive with insurance company principles, overrides and push backs. An iron drip was considered to infuse poor Betty with quick energy, a shock, a jolt, to get her system up and around. All good, but there was no insurance support so she’d have to pay the whole claim, and, really, who has seven hundred clams for a thirty minute transfusion of something that comes in little capsules anyway? In the world of quick-quackery, everything seems to be about acceleration first and foremost. The door knob method!
Screw it, I think, and think Betty will do it the old-fashioned way; she’ll earn her spark, one Herculean second after second. Myra has been adamant since we arrived here on that wet afternoon in January in a city that supposed to be sunny 24/7.
“Why don’t we just knock her out with some barbiturate and then fly her out?” I suggest. “She’ll never know what hit her.”
“Are you an idiot? And what if she gets sick on the plane? Then what?”
“Don’t call me an idiot.”
“Then don’t come up with stupid ideas. Betty’ll go when Betty’ll go. She’s not well enough to fly. Why don’t ‘you’ drop twenty percent of your body weight and then come talk to me.”
“Why don’t you drop you attitude!” I yell back from my new corner in Betty’s place, a corner that has a window with a view of someone else’s corner in the alley.
“Why don’t you drop dead! God knows it wouldn’t hurt you. Might even be good for you, healthwise and all.”
“Don’t tempt me, woman. You’d be a goner without me.”
“We’ll see,” Myra says, and turns the Vitamix to high so she can’t hear me say to her what I’d never say in the second place, but what I know in a heartbeat, “Myra, I’d be a goner without you.”
The next day, or was it, we’re at some Trader Joe’s picking up a pound of something grayish. We shoot down separate aisles looking for it, and though she tells me the name, I forgot and I don’t remember if it came in a can, bottle or bag. I’m drifting, but it doesn’t matter. Myra really wants to find it herself. Everything’s become a national emergency and I’m really here for the scenery and to admire the store’s cool vibe. A minute ago, I heard Brubeck tinkle in the ceiling speakers and now Marley’s on.
Myra and me, we meet back like by accident near the bananas and kiwis. She’s got what she wanted, it came in a yellow box, and I’m really starting to get sick of the runaround. So I say, “Myra, maybe the doctor’s got it right. Maybe she needs a higher dose of the Prednisone to get her over the hump. Maybe sixty milligrams isn’t enough.”
Myra explodes, says, “Maybe you should shut up!” She then grabs a coconut from the bin and threatens to smack me with it if I keep going like I’ve been. We’re both on edge. Every moves a possible false move. We’re in unchartered territory and the roadmap runs through every retail food chain in the city. I step back, the coconut sits heavy in her raised claw.
“Aw, screw it,” I shout quietly to myself, shake my empty head a few times, and walk to the back of the store and pour myself a nice paper cup of some strong Ethiopian coffee.
Back in the apartment, Betty lays in her bed under a white sheet, her face lost in pillows, her calves and feet sticking straight out. Betty’s been confined to the bed for days and lost so much weight so fast I can’t stand it. I come in with a magazine I found at the Laundromat next block. I place it next to her ointments and pills and marijuana pipe on the nightstand. I don’t want to stare at her but I do. Her limbs look thinner than two inch PVC’s and I can’t stand it. She thanks me for the magazine, but she’s so disoriented, I don’t think she even knows who she’s thanking or where she is or what she’s doing. And her voice, her voice sounds like she’s drowning inside her throat. Everything she says now, even that simple “Thank you,” sound more and more like little desperate cries for help. She coughs more than she ought to and whimpers nonstop.
The last few nights, I started hitting the computer too. Myra’s been whipping up some broth and some magic juice to spoon-gag Betty. There’s also some home-made yogurt, that never ending bowl of plain white rice and even something resembling flattened chicken. Whatever the hell stays down and doesn’t hurt when it can’t. Myra’s no French chef, but I got to hand it to her. She’s trying. She’s convinced that if it goes in right, then everything’ll come out right in the long run. Mostly everything she makes looks green and thick like pipe dope and smells overcooked and faintly rotten. I tell Myra I’m going to go out, bring back a pie or some innie/outties, but Myra says, “You’re not going nowhere; we’re in it together. So sit down and shut up!”
It’s like Myra’s getting all religious on me, but for me to buy in like she’s bought in may take a miracle. I don’t know the right answer and Myra’s feeling around in the dark, wholly convinced it’s the only way and there’s no talking with her about it. Long term steroid use has grave consequences, the sites seem to say. The doctors say back, “It’s all fine, not to worry, and tell us to listen, learn, and shut up as well!” Bedside manners, they never were introduced to in medical school.
Betty’s TV doesn’t get a signal anymore cause her subscription expired, and I can’t read or do my crosswords because I’m tired and because of all the racket Myra’s making with the machines, so I say to myself, what the hell. I might as well dig in now that the seat’s empty.
I look for ways to contribute. Timmy did; he brought the bag of weed. Me, I end up with legs. The web sites guarantee that reflexology helps, and after some heartfelt pleading, Betty grants me short term permission to rub her feet and calves. I tell her I’m hitting pressure points with my thumbs, that’s why it hurts a little like it’s supposed to and she’ll feel better and more relaxed by and by. Actually, it feels like I’m squeezing paste out of a tube, and I’m going at it like some mad exorcist goes about squeezing evil out of a tormented soul. My profession makes for strong hands but I’m more used to kneading cast iron than flesh so I try to be gentle. I need Betty to know I’m here for her and although I don’t know what I’m doing playing this stupid footsie, it’s all I can do for now. I feel like crying and won’t, so I bear down and press on her arches hard but not so much that anything comes even close to breaking.
Next morning I practically carry Betty to the Camry I loaned Timmy and now borrowed back so we can go see the doctor again. I feel like a shmuck hoisting Betty to and fro and wonder when the Prednisone will start in or something Myra dished up will work out. In the waiting room, the only magazine with a crossword puzzle already’s been filled in. I check for errors; there are loads. It seems nobody can spell anymore. Even simple and important words like Kardashian and Bouffant. Sheeesh! Betty is slumped like a corpse in one of the dark leather couch seats. Myra’s in the can again. The wait seems interminable. This feels like our one hundredth visit. Today’s the day I hope we can think about booking a flight.
The lady behind the invisible bullet proof screen waves us in, us meaning Betty and Myra only, as most always. I’m left to watch the scenery, ruminate about the gestalt of all the leftovers waiting for help in the crowded office. The old guy next to me, his stomach gurgles. The lady with the coiffed doo opposite me adjusts in her seat, passes gas and wriggles in big discomfort. Everyone’s in some distress, in some silent pain. I feel I’m being given the evil eye all around, perhaps because I’m the only monkey in the room who’s not burping or scratching at sores on my face or behind my knees. They all could use a good plumber, I surmise, and snigger into my green and pink shirt with the parakeets, not meaning to be crude, but recognizing like all new fixtures installed by nature, parts wear out, organs and valves and pumps disassemble.
I’m sweating like a copper pipe in August because the air conditioning works like crap, makes too much noise, and the water fountain in the hall spurts in drips and drabs. I was thinking I should leave a card, but I’m not in the business any more. I got a new job. I’ve been reassigned to the clean up brigade. I make the couch, squeeze the feet, chauffeur the car, throw out the garbage, wipe the dishes, fold the clothes, pay the tab, and say, “Whatever you say,” when I’m forced to say something back. I’m not used to a second round of child rearing. I’m the one on tap to disassemble first, not the kids.
Two hours later they come out from the office. Betty seems to be smiling, the first time I seen her crack one since I’ve been here. Myra’s not which suggests one of two things: either there was a brouhaha in the back or Myra and Betty don’t see eye to eye. I’m betting on the former. Myra goes to the can again. Under my supervision, Betty wobbles to the Camry, oozes into the seat, then changes tune and begins to cry softly like a little kid. “He said I can go to New York if I want, but mom told the doctor he’s an a-hole.”
I grimace and tell her straight out, “Mom’s just being mom. You know how she gets. Still, that’s wonderful news.” The young guy, head deep in a nearby garbage bin, takes notice, looks up and smiles then goes back to his business. That’s two smiles in less than a minute. A record. That’s two more smiles than I’ve seen in about a month. It bodes well. I can survive on little auguries. I tell Betty, “Let’s get to packing.”
In the shadow of the Camry, Betty looks greenish yellow. I close her door, then reach in and pat her forehead, feel the sweat, see the bursting blisters on her chin. Doubts arise. “Are you sure you’ll be able to do this?” I ask, not sure about her being able to do anything but what she’s been doing all along which is mostly puke and bleed and crap. Betty doesn’t answer. She’s in a sort of swoon now and it dawns on me Myra’s probably not in the can like she said but back in the doctor’s face. I see the guy in the bin coming up empty and he moves on. There are dozens of octogenarians slumped over in dozens of car seats waiting to be wheeled in or wheeled home or wheeled wherever sick people go. There are dozens of people my age and Betty’s age and teenagers and even little kids around too. What the hell’s wrong with everybody....high stress, bad food, tainted water, rising temps? Everyone’s got leaky pipes, rusted joints, bad sewage. What the hell’s going on? Either way, it appears safe enough at least here to leave Betty alone. The fact that the parking lot’s packed instills an awkward confidence. It’s mid-morning and all the muggers and car thieves are probably still in their jammies, so I leave the windows open, make sure Betty’s still breathing regular, and stumble back into the doctor’s office before all hell breaks loose.
I can hear the rumble going on soon as I crack open the fancy glass door. I go right in. The secretary at the pay booth behind the bullet-proof screen got nothing to say. She looks at me not nicely. I shoot her a crass look so she knows to stays put. She knows all too well. She’s seen scenes like this before. Money issues mostly though Myra’s on to something way different. I hear Myra blasting away and know she’s beyond herself now. “How dare you tell my daughter she can fly!”
“Look Miss…” I hear the young Indian doctor trying to get a word in edgewise, but he had his say and it’s too late now to take any of it back. I hear his leather chair squeaking around behind his desk and know he’s not getting up for fear of being swatted.
Myra bears down. “It’s been weeks. All you say is be patient. Be patient! The steroid you prescribed is doing nothing but makes her head look like a giant olive with eyeballs. I got no use for you.”
“Please understand....”
I’m storming down the little hallway and crash through the door and into the office where the commotion is in full swing and tell Myra to shut her trap but in the nicest way possible. She looks at me like a traitor. She got no use for me either. “Calm down Myra, please,” I plead, extending my arms, hands up, trying to broker some kind of peace. “This isn’t helping Betty any.”
“You’re not helping! Nothing’s helping!”
“We need to go home, Myra. The doctor says flying won’t kill her, won’t make her sicker...let’s go home.”
Myra looks like she just escaped from a nuthouse. Her mascara’s running and she looks a lot like David Bowie on a bad day. She’s sweating, steaming almost. Her long grey hair is tousled from all the humidity. Some of it pastes to her forehead and drips down her cheeks. Her bra is unangled and the straps and cups show around the cut and shoulders of her blue dress. She’s breathing heavy which means she’s either out of fuel or just priming the pump. I’m hoping the former but I should know better. I don’t know what Myra plans on doing. She surrounded, the doctor, wary and feeble-looking behind the desk. Me, the same by the door. It’s two against one, a fair fight in Myra’s catalogue.
“Do I look like an idiot? I see what’s going on. You’re both giving me the pinch,” Myra bellows.
“Myra, be reasonable,” I beseech again.
Myra’s too far gone. Reasonable’s not on the menu. Bile seems to be the main course. “If you don’t stop giving my daughter these drugs....”
“I think this has gone on far enough.” says the doctor with surprising bravado. “Please leave now or I will call security.” Very stern, good move....more incitement. Just what the doctor ordered....Sheeshkabob!
“Fix Betty now!” Myra screeches, “or you better call an undertaker. No more drugs, you hear me?”
The doctor frowns, sees professional intimidation’s no exit strategy, and finally grabs his prescription pad and starts to scribble. “O.K., O.K, but she has to come out slow. Prednisone is a strong drug. I am writing a new prescription for a different....”
Myra knocks her chair over with a strong boot; that shuts him up fast and he seems frozen, hovering over his pad like he’s confused and can’t figure out what he’d just wrote down and what to write next. Myra snatches at his pen, misses, and accidentally scratches his face leaving a mark that may or may not bleed.
I slide over fast, grab Myra and hold her around the shoulders firm till the doctor dodges round the table. He’s holding his face like he’s been stabbed in the head. I’ve seen mosquitoes handle a slap better than this. I sneer at the doctor as he reaches for the knob with his free hand. “You will be sorry,” he says to me on his way out.
“Beat it, bub!” I say real loud and then in Myra’s ear I whisper, “Look what you just did, Myra....what the hell are you doing?” At that, Myra bursts into tears, leans against me way too hard, then lets go her knees and collapses in a heap to the carpet. “Myra, not here....” I say, knowing here may still be better than at Betty’s place.
After a short while listening to Myra sob, I pick up feet padding large in the hallway. Two securities come in, look around tentatively, see Myra still in her heap, say nothing. Their badges and green uniforms mean nothing to me. If we walk out, walk out now, we’ll be fine. I wave them away. “We’re leaving, gentlemen. My wife had a small episode, if know what I mean.” One nods, the other shrugs. The two men back slowly out the frosted door, close it. I see their shadows holding steady on the other side, waiting.
I carefully piece Myra back together and pick her up. She’s still crying but her knees hold. I put my arm around her shoulder and open the door and we walk out like I’m shielding her from some paparazzi. The two securities actually lead the way, then they stop in the big front room and let us pass. All the clients look dazed. They heard the ruckus going on but couldn’t care less. I see the doctor partially hidden in a secretary’s chair behind the iron maiden at the bulletproof screen. He looks at us in wonder. He’s dabbing at his cheek with a wet towel. His cheek looks pretty fine. I see maybe a dab of blood and sneer at him again. It’s the cost of doing bad business with Myra.
Out in the parking lot, the tarmac sizzles. Myra’s recovering quick. Her breathing comes regular. She sneezes out the filth. Betty’s still out like a light in the front seat of Camry. Myra gets in the back, stretches out like she’s poolside on a chaise lounge and orders an appeal which is damn more insightful than an apology. “I can’t take this no more, Ted. It’s driving me up a wall.”
“How about it driving you onto a plane?” I say the obvious because Myra needs to hear the obvious again. It takes time for things to sink in with her. “We got no more good reasons to be here. Betty’s not getting fixed here. Maybe at home....”
“Always with the maybes, Ted. But I tell you, I’ve given up.”
“Didn’t look like that a second ago.”
“Let’s pack the blenders and get the hell out of here,” Myra says. I rejoice at the faint hope in her voice, the first sign of hope I myself feel in a long time and give my own version of a smile. “Now you’re rockin’, Myra. No one to tell us what to do back in Brooklyn. No sir. We’ll start fresh, see new specialists, sympathetic types only.”
“You think the doctor will have me arrested?”
“No. I think he’ll be happy to have us all out of his life.” Myra remains quiet for the remainder of the ride back to Betty’s to go pack all our stuff and find a last minute flight out of LAX.
When we reach Betty’s place, I reach over and feel her forehead, cooler than before, no sweat, soft even breaths, better than before. Maybe a breakthrough, even more hope. She’s my baby girl and Myra’s my wife and making good decisions even when she makes some bad ones. Her intentions are all that ever mattered to me. We’ll slowly pull Betty off the steroids and get her back to normal.
I have to keep remembering that Crohn’s isn’t fatal, isn’t fatal. That there’s always remission after a flare and always other remediations. I have to keep reminding myself it’s all about the food and about rest and about time and about love. I have to keep reminding myself, reminding myself....
