From outside the beige plastic curtain shell I heard Grandma undress as the doctor put on rubber gloves. I recognized the snap as he pulled them down to his wrists from the times I’d used those same gloves to clean ovens.
— We will x-ray the hip, the doctor said to me when he eventually stepped out.
— Do I take her?
— We have a wheelchair. Come back in ten minutes.
— What about her purse?
— Take it with you if you’re worried.
Being outside in the cold was nice until I noticed that I’d become a focus of the waiting room audience. The television was broken and I was there in the large window. Just another screen.
I didn’t want to stand there carrying Grandma’s handbag while people watched me so I patted my suit jacket and pants as if I’d bought cigarettes, but couldn’t find them. I tapped myself harder. I almost hurt myself because the more I acted this way the more people inside the clinic looked at me. That only made me more frantic to seem normal as I slapped myself around looking for a cigarette I never even had in the first place.
I thought of going to the park for a walk to get away a minute, but with my good fortune Grandma would finish up with the doctor, come out to try and find me, wander into the street and get hit by garbage truck.
A woman in white pants and nurse’s shoes came outside. — Why you jumping around out here?
— I was looking for a cigarette.
She had one. A plastic aquamarine lighter too. Coming out to check on me was a good excuse to have some herself.
I didn’t actually know how to use a cigarette.
When I put it in my mouth I put it in too far, choked up on it and got half the thing wet. Then the lady had to give me another. The next one I left hanging so far off my lips that the wind snatched it from me and carried down the block.
— This is the last one, she said.
She brought the lighter close. She had big hands. We were standing outside the clinic on the wheelchair ramp.
— Activate, I said.
I tried hard and pulled properly. A successful blaze. Since this was only my fourth cigarette in twenty-three years I didn’t inhale correctly, but the action itself was well carried out. The woman stubbed out her own cigarette against the railing I leaned on.
I must have looked awful because she treated me so nicely.
She said, — I’m going to tell you, okay? Because I bet you’ll need to know. Don’t ever go to St. Luke’s. If you’re in Manhattan and they pick you up one day. Not St. Luke’s. They’ll strap you down for three days in their psych ward and never let you stand even for a shit.
I was surprised and couldn’t hide it.
— What do I look like to you?
She said, — Sympathy.
While I smoked and coughed with her, five dogs trotted out from the park then ran along 147th Avenue ignoring cars, buses and vans. Their mouths were open. A smug furry procession.
After passing by the nurse and I, the dogs ran across the busy intersection at the corner of Brookville Boulevard. Every driver managed to use the brakes. Lots of people witnessed this, not just me. When the hounds had crossed against the light safely, stopping traffic, they howled. Then went farther down 147th Avenue untethered.
31
Soft in the middle, queasy from the cigarettes, I walked inside the clinic holding my belly. The people sitting and waiting tried to smile at me, but stared. If you’re ever trying not to seem mentally unstable, avoid carrying an old woman’s large pocketbook while taking your first tobacco hit in front of a jury.
I had to knock at the Russian doctor’s office door because it was locked when I got there.
— You came back, Grandma stammered when he let me in. She squinted.
— Of course. I touched her shoulder. I’m not leaving.
She was lying on the examining table with both legs bent at the knees so that her soles were flat and her shins faced the back of the room.
— The hip is fine, he said as he went around the examination table. Deep bruises takes longer to heal at her age.
If he had been speaking with her before I got there he wasn’t doing so anymore. Now I was the authority in the room. — But now we find another problem, he said. I am cutting it off.
— Cutting where?
— From my leg, Grandma muttered.
He had a silver tool that looked like a cookie cutter stubbed into her shin. Blood came out from where the silver plunger hid. Dribbling down my grandmother’s leg.
— Shit! I screamed.
He pulled the cutter out; it had a small cylinder of her flesh in the once-hollow core now. — I will do stitches, he said.
Grandma held her face like she was trying to pull it off.
— Can you feel it through the anesthesia? I asked.
— There is none, the surgeon said.
— Where did it go?
— I didn’t have any, the doctor said. Many people here don’t get any. It is expensive for all sides.
He carried some thin black thread in his palm. — She wanted none, he added.
Grandma rubbed her two thin bent arms together at the elbows, inches above her face.
— How come you’re not screaming? I’ll get the police! There’s blood, Grandma.
She told me, — I had him do it this way.
The Russian stitched the site. Explained that after giving Grandma this punch biopsy he’d send the flesh to test for cancer.
I fell back into a chair clutching my own leg.
— I am sorry, Grandma whispered. To all of you. Many nights I wonder how I brought this sickness to my children.
Instead of running away I pulled the chair closer. The doctor’s needle made no sounds entering her skin except for Grandma’s rasping. She said, — What did I do to you?
— You’ll never be able to move around on that leg, Grandma.
— Why should I be spared?
The doctor must have wanted to be charming. He thought he was making a joke.
The Russian said, — Now your children will have to carry you.
32
I was part of a Current A fair family. The Hard Copy demographic. Rescue 911; Real Life Stories of the Highway Patrol; Unsolved Mysteries starring Mr. Robert Stack. Beginning on November 14 th television news and the reputable papers explained that the entire U.S. Government was shutting down due to budgetary squabbling between Democrats and Republicans, but the effect on us was minimal.
Looming cuts to our national budget were advertised as either a prelude to the Rapture or Satan taking control, depending on your political affiliations. Even atheists and the spare Marxist agreed when allowed a few minutes of punditry on cable stations. The way politicians yelled I expected warlord-supported gangs to commandeer our homes and daughters. Federal Government deadlock was on every major network which meant, of course, that many of us changed the channel.
To programs that were more entertaining. I was a fan of the Morton Downey Jr. show just like Nabisase. When Grandma had finished with the Star I took it to the bathroom and read quietly. One of us was watching television at all times.
Besides, serious news only reported on small lives like ours when they’d been caught in the trajectory of someone’s gun. Other than that it was war crimes, statewide fires and unctuous assemblymen; famine in the hot belt of the planet. More important, I’ll agree.
Call ours minor items then. The shooting of Mary Jo Buttafuoco. A priest who had a sex change. One Hartford man who’d faked more on-the-job injuries than anyone in America. Ordinary epics. Legends are still to be created.