The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving (9 page)

three feathers

S
haring a barren and seemingly endless parking lot with Target, the Dollar Store, Papa John's, and Office Max, the
Th
ree Feathers Casino projects little in the way of pretense. Its very shape offers no relief from rectangularity beyond a negligible slope in the cedar-shingled awning, and a pair of sad-looking totem poles flanking the entrance like panhandlers. On the outside, the giant gray edifice broadcasts none of the opulence, possesses none of the gaudy flourishes—no fountains, no doormen, no pissing cherubs—that I've come to expect in casinos. Just those hard-luck totem poles looking all the more miserable in the rain and a dented yellow cab idling out front.

Checking my fly and mussing my thinning hair, I enter the lobby, where I'm greeted by the cold stink of conditioned air and stale smoke.
Th
e riotous clanging of a thousand one-armed bandits, the pulse of garish light from all quarters, the muffled protestations of Buffalo Springfield over the house intercom—all of it is an assault on my senses.
Th
e worn carpet is a fussy and overworked pattern somewhere between Mayan petroglyphs and art deco.
Th
e patrons themselves are something out of Nathanael West: a groping horde of doughy Midwesterners, hopeful against all odds as they waddle up and down the aisles with their plastic tumblers heaping with tokens and their colons packed with reasonably priced buffet fare.

Th
e dinner theater is none other than the Bayside Circus, opposite the buffet and behind the dollar slots. Never mind that there's nothing resembling a bay within four miles. Never mind that the place is practically empty. What impresses me the most about the Bayside Circus is how badly the proprietors have botched the circus theme.
Th
is is not the Cirque du Soleil. Not even the Teatro ZinZanni. If Chili's opened a strip club, it might look something like the Bayside Circus.
Th
rough the narrow entrance and past the hostess station I see a slice of tawdry stage, lined with Christmas lights and speckled with glitter. Center stage, in a puddle of murky light, hangs the vacant trapeze bar. Nothing about this place—neither its busy decor nor its high ceilings nor its odor of fried chicken and mop water, nor the fact that it's too dark to see your food—is appetizing. One look at the hostess in her tight pink leggings tells me that she could use a Brazilian. No sooner has this hairy attendant greeted me at the podium than I spot Katya across the dining room in her fringed blue leotard, serving oversized cocktails to a party of revelers.

While there's nothing particularly nimble or athletic in Katya's comportment, she is not without a certain knobby-kneed grace as she circles the table balancing a tray in one hand and dealing out drinks with the other. Her big hair has been wrestled into a knot on the back of her head, presumably to keep it out of people's food and avoid wind drag.
Without that mess of hair to compete with, her dramatic jawline and big avocado eyes are all the more striking, even in this dull light at a distance of forty feet. My instinct is to turn and flee before she sees me. Instead, the hostess leads me the length of the dining room, seating me not ten feet from where Katya is delivering the last of her cocktails. It's still not too late to lower my head and avoid detection, but why come this far? What do I hope to accomplish here? Am I really trying to win a girl or just unraveling my most recent failure to some pitiful conclusion so I can keep feeling sorry for myself?

Th
ough she passes within three feet, her chin held high, Katya does not recognize me. Not until she comes for my drink order. I see at close range that her leotard has a few snags in it and looks worn about the edges.
Th
e low light is agreeable to her complexion. Her crazy hair threatens to explode the little bun on the back of her head.

“Oh. Hey,” she says, almost like a question.

“I tracked you down,” I say, regretting the stalkerish implications immediately. “Don't worry,” I add, in attempt to right my ship. “I'm not stalking you or anything.”

Th
is doesn't seem to ease her mind. “Um, o-kaay,” she says. “Well, that's good. So, can I start you off with something to drink?”

“Just a Coke, I guess.”

“Pepsi okay?”

“Sure.”

She scratches the order out onto the pad.

“So, how have you been?” I venture.

“Not bad. Really busy. My plate's way too full right now, with school and work and everything else.”

“Did you get my note?”

She wants to say no—I can see it in her eyes as she hesitates.

“Oh, yeah, thanks,” she says.

“I hope I didn't scare you off.”

“No, it was sweet, thanks. I'm just really busy.” She steals a glance over her shoulder to the wait station, then toward the stage.

“I didn't know you were in school.
Th
at's cool. What are you studying?”

“Just basic stuff.”

“Math? Lit? What?”

“Yeah,” she says glancing back toward the wait station once more. Her body language is shifty and impatient, her manner slightly hurried—all of it suggesting that she's in the throes of a dinner rush. But the place is dead.
Th
e din of the surrounding casino bleeds in through the false walls, dinging and donging, as Katya awaits my order.

“How come there's no net?” I say, nodding toward the stage.

“Huh?” she says, unable to belie what I'm beginning to suspect is annoyance.

“No safety net, I mean.”

She looks to the stage, then back at the bar. “Yeah, well. It's static. So it's not like I'm flying through the air or anything like that.”

“Did you ever see that movie
Trapeze
?” I venture. (I rented it two nights ago for this very reason.) “With Burt Lancaster? Totally cheesy, but some of the trapeze stuff is—” I stop myself when I see that her body is actually stiffening before my eyes, like she's drawn a deep breath and held it in.

“So, uh, do you need another minute? I can have Misty come by for your order, if—”

“I'll have the fish-and-chips,” I say, without opening the menu.

“Soup or sal—”

“Soup.”

“Okay,” she says, dotting an
i
and turning on her heels. “Right back with that Pepsi.”

What kind of world is it where you write a poem for a girl and she holds it against you? What benevolent God would conceive of a dynamic where the impulse to nurture repels? I had hoped to get beyond her pity, and it looks like I've succeeded, one way or another. It is Misty who delivers my Pepsi as the lights dim.
Th
e party behind me begins to jockey their chairs around and reach for their coats, even as Katya, in her sad garish leotard, takes the stage and approaches the bar.
Th
e wooden stage sounds hollow beneath her steps. When she turns to face the dining room, scrupulously avoiding my gaze, her tenuous beauty fails her beneath the murky glare of the spotlight. Her big eye sockets look alien. Her sloping forehead is freakish. Her bare knees look like frozen game hens. And to think she pitied me.

Katya mounts the bar, swings her legs up, and dangles by her knobby knees for a long moment, as though concentrating her energies. Her spine runs straight and dimpled down the length of her back. Upside down, all the missing sequins of her leotard come to light, exposing little piebald patches like dry skin. Arching her back in a Bird's Nest, clutching the rope a foot above the bar, Katya expertly swings herself headfirst and backward into a shaky handstand. Slowly, she collapses herself like an accordion on the strength of her stomach muscles, splaying her legs in a V as she folds herself nearly in two. By the time she swings her legs out in front of her into an L-sit, we are alone.
Th
e revelers have cleared out. Misty is probably out back smoking a cigarette while my soup grows cold. Katya cannot help but feel me there, folding my arms and hating her, as she swings a seven-twenty, reversing her hands, and comes to an abrupt stop with her back facing me. How can I hurt this woman if I can't even reach her? And why should I want to? We all run hot and cold, so why blame Katya? She spins a quick one-eighty, reversing her hands once more, and comes to rest facing me. I narrow the focus of my hatred right between her hairy eyebrows.
Th
is is for your pity. And this is for withholding it, you crazy bitch. But Katya looks right past me.

I stand, fish out my wallet, drop a twenty on the table, and turn to leave without looking back. When I hit the cold stale air of the casino, all I can feel is shame.

this is not a funeral

B
efore we go feeling sorry for Bob, who flew nearly halfway across the country to make an appearance at the bedside of his ailing son, let's talk about Bob's tactical errors. Number one: flying halfway across the country uninvited (nay, conspicuously discouraged), not to mention totally without warning, is just the sort of flight decision that got Bob in trouble in the first place. Moreover, showing up on the doorstep at 7:50 a.m., five hours before Trev's customary waking time, demonstrates not only a lack of consideration but a complete disregard for the order and routine that Trev stands for. And finally, the flowers.

“Jesus, Bob, it's not a funeral,” says Elsa, who has canceled her lessons again.

“
Th
ey're for you,” he says.

Elsa takes the bouquet and tosses it on the cluttered credenza in the foyer, knocking over a mug full of pens and pencils. “How thoughtful.”

“Well, are you going to let me in?”

Elsa steps aside, and Bob enters the foyer. He's dressed in pale green Dockers and a forgettable dress shirt, and he looks like Al Gore before Al Gore got fat: mild, average, palliative in his dullness. Yet for all this mild-manneredness, there is something distinctly clownish about him. Maybe it's his short legs and long torso or perhaps his oversized dress shoes.
Th
ough I'm predisposed toward not liking Bob (the guy is a deadbeat, after all), I can't help but sympathize with him—perhaps it's because we've both made such a hopeless mess out of fatherhood, or because we're both so well acquainted with rejection, or because we both yearn so badly for forgiveness. Or maybe it's just because his fly is open.

“Bob, this is Ben, Trev's caregiver.”

“Hello, Bob,” I say, from my station on the couch.

Extending a hand, Bob advances two steps, landing squarely on the cat's tail with one of his loafers.
Th
e cat darts behind the entertainment center, a hair-raising caterwaul and a brown blur.

“Bob Conklin,” he says, proffering a business card.
Th
e business card just says Bob Conklin with a phone number, nothing else. “Pleasure to meet you, Ben.” His hand is clammy, his grip a little too firm but not in a confident way.

“Likewise,” I say.

Elsa rolls her eyes for my benefit, then promptly takes leave to alert Trev.

Bob looks around vaguely, as if he might sit down. “I've got a deaf neighbor,” he informs me, apropos of nothing.

“Is that right?”

“Yep.”

“I knew a deaf lady once,” I offer.

“How about that?”

He decides to peruse our giant map, rocking ever so slightly to and fro on his big loafers, furrowing his brow in concentration as though fascinated.

“What do the pins signify, do you know?”

“Muffler Men are red, museums are blue, dead celebrity parts are black, and everything else is green.”

“Hmmph,” says Bob. “Interesting. Elsa did this?”

“Trev.”

“Ahh, I see.” But Bob doesn't really see—he looks downright puzzled. “How does he reach?”

“I do the actual pinning.”

“Ahh, I see, I see. Very interesting.” He runs his flattened hand over Wyoming and Colorado, as though it were a relief map, tilting his head curiously like a golden retriever confronting a quadratic equation. “What does it mean?” he says.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean why does he mark them?”

“I guess I don't have a good answer for that one. It's just something we do. Your, uh, zipper, Bob.”

“Oh, yeah.
Th
anks.” He fastens his zipper about two-thirds of the way and turns his attention back to the map. “So, what's this in Salt Lake City?”

“Virgin Mary in a stump.”

“Ahh. I see.”

As he ponders the map with an expression somewhere between genuine curiosity and mild abdominal cramps, it's hard to resolve Bob with the villain I've come to expect. I expected denim and a five-o'clock shadow. A slight fog of gin, maybe some tattoos. If ever a guy seemed innocuous, if ever a guy seemed benign, it's Bob. Doubtless, he's squashed a few butterflies with those clunky loafers along his life's path, surely he's trampled a few unwitting hearts, not the least of which his son's, but never on purpose, it would seem. To me, he seems no more capable of malice than he seems capable of grace. Here is a man that does not make decisions. Decisions make him.

“So, then, the whole thing is just . . . sort of . . . what, then?”

“Sort of an exercise.”

“But I thought you stuck the pins in?”

“Not a physical exercise, Bob. Just something to do with our time.”

“Ah, I see.” He runs his hand across the mid-Atlantic, over double Dumpsters and mystery houses. Surely, he can hear the low conspiratorial voices from the bedroom, and surely he must know they do not bode well for him. It is an awkward moment. I know he means well, and I believe he's sincere; still I want to shake him by the collar.

“He's a neat kid,” I say. “I wish I had half his guts.”

“Hmph. Me too.”

“And he's really funny. He makes me laugh constantly. ”

Bob turns toward me. He's smiling, and there's nothing mild about it. “Yeah?”

“A couple weeks ago, we're mapping—the four-corners area, actually—and we come across Bingham Canyon, the Biggest Pit in the World, and Trev says, ‘I thought Clifton, New Jersey, was the biggest pit in the world.' ”

Bob takes his smile up a notch just as Elsa reemerges with a businesslike comportment. Why do I feel as though she's caught us in the act of something?

“You'll have to try back at three o'clock, Bob.”

Bob looks at his watch to find he's not wearing one. He looks disappointed, even beaten, but resolved to this setback. At some point during his short visit his shirttail has come untucked.
Th
e cat still eyes him warily from behind the entertainment center.

“Well, then. Uh, I guess it's three o'clock,” he says. “Nice meeting you, Dan.”

“Ben.”

“Right,” he says. “See you at three.” And without further incident, Bob turns and nearly upends a floor lamp. I feel his pain. I've hit that fucking lamp two dozen times—it's misplaced to allow for the wide berth of Trev's wheelchair. Elsa heaves a sigh the minute she shuts the door on him.
Th
rough the window, I watch him bump his head as he climbs into his rental, a gray Taurus coupe, a mild automobile if ever there was one.

TREV CALLS FOR
me, not Elsa, at ten o'clock. It's the first time he's called for me in a week. At this point, I'm grateful to leave the couch.

“You gotta go to the bathroom?”

“Nah. Just ready to get up.”

I pull the covers back, remove the pillow from between his knees, and shift him onto his back.

“How's Jake?” he says, referring to the cat, as I begin to slide his left sock on.

“Oh, he's fine. Just gave him a spook.” Slipping his right sock on, I note that Trev's toenails need to be cut, and the flaky skin around his toes needs to be scrubbed off.
Th
ough completely useless, his feet are nonetheless high maintenance.

“What an idiot,” he complains.

“Your dad?”

“Yeah.”

“Why, because he stepped on the cat?”

“No, because he flew out here.” I see a glint of the evil genius flash in his eyes, a little more pointed than usual. He's back but irritable. Impatient. Ready to complain. Even by Trev standards, his body is stiff and uncooperative as I wrestle his cargo pants over his legs.

“He's a klutz,” I say. “
Th
at's for sure.”

“He's pathetic. Do you know he carries around a little scrap of his baby blanket?”

“What do you mean ‘carries around'?”

“In his pocket.”

“For real?”

“Seriously. His fucking baby blanket.”

“Wow.” I say, hoisting him onto my waiting knee, where I hitch his pants up around his waist, zip the zipper, and snap the button.

“He rubs it when he gets anxious.”

“Rubs it?”

“Yeah, like in his pocket. Sometimes you can see him working at it—it looks like he's scratching his nuts.”

“
Th
at's fucked up,” I say, nestling him into his chair. It's sort of heartbreaking, actually—in a fucked-up way. But now is not the time to pity Bob. “Do you think he jacks off with it?”

“Probably. Or maybe he just sniffs it while he jacks off.”

I lean him forward in the chair and hitch his pants up another inch, tucking the tail of his shirt beneath his nonexistent ass so it won't ball up uncomfortably. I pull the shoulder seams fast and straight, align the crew collar around his thin neck, adjust the fabric around his trunk so that his shirt hangs naturally, and finally, smooth out the breast pocket so it looks crisp. “You ready for some Eggos?”

TREV REMAINS MOSTLY
silent throughout breakfast. He eats impatiently and doesn't finish his flaxseedless Eggos. He hardly drinks any of his Ensure. Beginning our day hours earlier than usual, the morning does not adhere to our standard regimen, though our television menu consists of roughly the same fare. We visit Myrtle Beach. We track tornadoes. We learn how to cook white chicken chili with fried tomatillo salsa. All the while, Trev shifts restlessly in his wheelchair, easily annoyed as afternoon approaches. Nearly every commercial elicits a grumble. In spite of repeated attempts to distract him—everything from idle speculation as to the size of Rachael Ray's taco to the color of Kathy Griffin's bush—he is not interested in childish repartee. After three hours of channel surfing and two trips to the bathroom, Trev decides to take a nap, just in time for Bob's arrival. A minute after I put him down, he calls for Elsa, and they talk in their hushed tones.

When Bob pulls in at 2:54 p.m., I see that the front left wheel of the Taurus is one of those undersized spares.
Th
ough he's managed to muddy the knees of his Dockers, Bob is otherwise intact—shirt freshly tucked, fly tightly secured, as he walks across the yard clutching a giant bag of KFC, the bottom of which nearly gives out halfway across the lawn. Bob manages to get his hands under the bag and stop the breach before the bag ruptures completely but not before the beans start dripping down his shirtsleeve and a side of mashed potatoes tumbles out, bursting open on the lawn. He stands for a moment looking stoic like a clown, though I can feel his frustration. I'll bet he wishes he had a free hand, so he could reach for his pocket and fondle his baby blanket. Instead, he just stands there dripping at the scene of the accident for a good thirty seconds, paralyzed by indecision, looking alternately at the mashed potatoes and the house, wishing, I presume, that the problem would simply disappear. Finally, he abandons the mess and resumes his progress, trailing beans and tomato sauce across the lawn. By the time I hear his steps on the wooden ramp, Elsa is already at the door to greet him, if you could call it a greeting.