A Festerive Occasion

I'd just taken my friend Ruth to the doctor's office for a routine appointment. She emerged apologetic. "I know you don't have all day," she said. "But the doctor wants me to get an X-ray. He's hearing something in my chest he doesn't like, and my left arm feels funny."

Ruth is 93, in honkin' good health. I was alarmed. While she was in X-ray, I thought about my other friend who's sick. And my other other friend who's even sicker. Suddenly I felt like I was in danger of being pulled underwater. I decided to call my friend to see how she was faring. My phone didn't work.

That snapped it. I felt tears pushing up. Which is ridiculous. I'm upset because my phone is balky? It's like I'd been jumping from stone to stone over a surging sea and lost it because my socks got wet. Get a grip, dude. Quit feeling sorry for yourself.

That's when I saw the man looming over the horizon and headed my way. There's no one else around. Oh no. He's going to be a talker. I am not ready for a talker.

There's this one old guy over in Dermatology who prowls the waiting room looking for veterans to talk to. He's a Korean War vet and he wants to relive it all day long. He'll talk to me for a little while but neither of us is into it, and after I thankhimforhisservice he's off to find a fresh mark. I went to the dermatologist three widely-spaced times and he was there every one of them. I don't know if you count as homeless if you live in Dermatology.

This other man--I'll call him "Clyde," because that's what the nurse called him--has now wheeled himself over and is pointing at his knee, which is just visible under his belly. He is enormous. Planetary. He explains that he can't walk because his knee is a mess. He gestures at the knee in question with his coffee-cup hand and sloshes coffee onto his sweatsuit.

"They won't give me a new knee until I lose all this weight," he explains cheerfully, "but I can't lose weight if I can't even walk, can I?" He's grinning.

Ruth is back now and we nod in sympathy.

"And even if they do replace that knee, this one is about to go too," he goes on, launching coffee at the other knee. "It's had all that work to do to make up for the other one. Plus it hasn't been right since I got that massive open sore on my thigh. Went to sepsis, that did."

Clyde is clearly in a pickle, but I'm still not sure I want to hear about it, and I glance away. You're never sure how long this is going to go on. Ruth is much nicer. She wants to know if he's in here for the knee.

"Oh no. I'm going to have them check on this." He holds up a fatly bandaged finger. "Took the tip off with a table saw," he said. We were horrified. He shrugged. "I don't even feel it much.  I have diabetes." He gestured at his purple toes and a bit more coffee set sail.

"So I see it got some of your middle finger too."

"Naw. That one was years ago."

Oh. So were they able to reattach the finger this time?

"Yeah. But that's the thing. They don't know if it will stay on. And I'd like to know, because if it isn't going to take, I'd just as soon they leave it off. You know? Like when a woman is raped, she ought to be able to have an abortion, if she wants one. It's a matter of choice."

I'm perking up. "So you'd like the freedom to choose whether or not to keep your fingertip?"

"Sure. It's not a big deal. I've been fine without these--"

He waggled the fingers of his other hand, three of which were shorter than the original set.

"Table saw?" Ruth asked.

"Naw. Got 'em caught in a hoist chain at work. I heard them coming off, and I thought: oh, brother, not again. I knew just what it was."

"Maybe you should stay away from heavy machinery," Ruth said.

At least until you've mastered the coffee cup, I thought.

Suddenly I realized I'd cheered right up. After all, this fellow was jolly enough. Sometimes that's what  it takes. Sometimes it takes hearing about someone else's troubles so that you can appreciate your own good fortune. Sometimes you need to get that different perspective, consider the wider world. This is what the mature person is able to do.

Naturally, that's not what I did. I started visualizing what would happen if our new friend sticks around any longer. Things are going to start flying off him like Jiffy Pop. Boop! Boop! He'll go off like a grenade. Things are going to cave in, bubble up, plink off. There'll be Clyde shrapnel everywhere! It'll be awesome.

Remember, it's Ruth who's the nice one, not me.

The Spring Hat Party

The Slut

The invitation came handwritten on a tiny card via US Mail, as God and Benjamin Franklin intended. It was from my neighbor Gayle: bane of the medical establishment, terror of the customer service department ("I'm retired, honey. I can stay on this phone all damn day"), official neighborhood hoot, pushing seventy--behind her. She throws parties at random times of the year and invites all her girlfriends. There's always a Slut, and always a theme, and the subtext is always I'll be damned, I'm still alive. The theme this time was Wear A Spring Hat.

That was easy. I already have a Spring Hat left over from when my friends the Ms (Margaret, Margaret, Mary Ann, and Me) showed up for Margaret's wedding in pink thrift store dresses and flowered hats.  The marriage foundered, but I still have my hat. Usually if I plan to dress up for anything, the wardrobe falls apart in one way or another. I didn't get the segment of my X-chromosome devoted to shoes, so even if I have a skirt and matching blouse, I won't have proper footwear. Or if I go with long pants that will obscure my shoe choices, I don't have a coat that works. None of it matters at Gayle's parties. If you make an effort with the hat, you're golden.

Everyone looked terrific. Edith couldn't take her hat off because she was incubating robin eggs on the top of it, and Gladys couldn't get hers to stay on because her head didn't clear the back of the sofa and the petunias kept pushing against the upholstery. The Slut looked particularly fine, undressed to the nines as always.

This isn't a group of kids with cell phones and excuses. I was two minutes late and everyone was already there, on time. "I don't know how to kill him," Gloria was saying as I walked in. "I'm in a ranch house."

I can get up to speed in no time. Gloria was referring to Gayle's famous dictum: never live with a man in a house with no stairs. "Gravity is your friend," she always says. "If you're going to have an argument, make sure you have it at the top of the stairs." Gayle has handily outlived two husbands, so far.

Gloria went on. "So I don't have any stairs, and we only have the one car, and he's always driving it. If I drive, he's in it."

Allene piped up. "You can always ask him to check the headlights," she pointed out. Heads nodded. "People's feet slip on the pedals all the time." There was more general discussion. The consensus was you could expect to run through a number of men before you find one you didn't want to kill, or became too tired to care. Allene herself had racked up 42 years with just the one, and things are going pretty smoothly now. It's all a matter of adjustment. She'd had to make one not that long ago, when her husband finally got hearing aids. "Now I have to be careful what I say," she said. "I need another outlet."

It's great to catch up with people you only see a couple times a year. There's the grandchildren and son-in-law roster and the associated meth report. Bernie listened for a while and became exasperated. "Why do they have to do all that meth stuff? When there's perfectly good alcohol." Allene began to rhapsodize about lemon-drop martinis, her eyes rolling back in a parody of ecstasy, I hope. Over half the women at the party are diabetic, and some could keel over at any time if fed the wrong ingredient. It's part of the party atmosphere. Edith is lactose-intolerant but assured us all that she doesn't have a seizure or anything, she only gets diarrhea. We were cool with that.

Bernie, Gladys, and Edith

But it did serve to change the subject. I mentioned the trouble I have peeing in the woods because when I try to pull up my pants fast enough to catch the last drip, I keep getting my binoculars stuck in my underpants. None of the other women could manage to pee in the woods at all. "I have to have a seat, a seat with a hole in it," Allene said firmly. "And it has to be in my house," she added. Allene will drive  home in the middle of a shopping expedition if she has to. We briefly discussed the possibility of wearing our spring hats and marching across the alley to my house, knocking on the door, and filing in to use the bathroom, but I was a little nervous for Dave.

Gayle's son Ken made a brief appearance on his way to his quarters in the basement. Ken has always been a polite and deferential lad. These are the women he grew up with, and he's not stupid.

Allene had to go home early.