Every once in a while Grandma came over to see how he was doing. Marian knew that her grandparents had not been married for a long time, but never asked anyone how come, or why Mom seemed to be made at Grampa about something, or why Grampa was doing all these things for them.
Winter rolled in and Mom rented Grampa a hospital bed from the drug store. Grampa seemed happy when it arrived because, he said, the sofa was starting to get to his back. When the checks came he insisted on paying the rental fee for the bed, but because of that he couldn’t buy Marian and Alan anything. But they didn’t mind that at all.
It was the first of December when things started going sour. Marian hadn’t realized how sick Grampa was until then; he dropped several pounds in a short period of time and began spending more time in bed. He always kept apologizing to Marian and Alan because he didn’t feel well.
One afternoon Marian and Alan came home after doing a little Christmas shopping, loaded down with presents from a small curiosity shop two blocks away. Both Mom and Dad were working extra shifts for the overtime, so the only person home was Grampa. They came through the door, set down the presents, and were just heading up stairs to get the wrapping paper and tape they’d stashed earlier when Marian heard Grampa call her name. He was in the bathroom, which was just off the kitchen, so Marian came back down and stood by the closed door.
“What is it?” she said.
“Could you...?” His voice trailed off and a terrible sound came from him. The closest Marian had ever heard to that sound was from a small child down the block who once fell on the sidewalk in front of their house and scraped his knee badly; the child fell, rolled over, took in a sharp mouthful of air and held it until he was shaking from head to heel, his face turning red, his veins pounding in his head, but then he finally released the scream—
—but not before he let out one hideous little squeak! before the cries exploded. That little squeak was the sound that followed Grampa’s “Could you...?” “Grampa?” said Marian. No answer. She knocked on the door. “Grampa? Do you need some help with something?”
Squeak!
Marian pounded on the door with her fist. “Grampa! Grampa do you need—”
And from the other side of the door, so quietly she almost mistook it for the sound of her own breath leaving her throat and nose, Marian heard Grampa say one word: “...help.”
She tried to yank open the door but Grampa had used the little eye-hook on the other side, and try as she did, pulling with all of her strength, Marian could not get the door to open, so she ran over and pulled open the cutlery drawer and took out Mom’s biggest cutting knife and jammed it deep inside the crack beside the door and pulled it upward, then had to turn it around so that she was pushing it upward, instead, and somewhere she could hear Alan calling for her, asking what’s wrong sis what is it but she couldn’t answer him, she needed to hold her breath and answering him would mean she’d have to let her breath out and if she did that she’d never get the door opened and if she never got the door opened then Grampa might die, so she closed her eyes and gritted her teeth and pushed up with knife as hard as she could, making sure to wiggle it from side to side as much as she could (a villain on The Green Hornet had done something like this once) and just when her arms were throbbing and her shoulders were screaming and she felt like she was going to pass out from being so dizzy, three things happened: she felt the hook wrench from the eye, heard the thwack! of the metal against the doorjamb, and released her breath it one massive puff; then she threw down the knife and threw open the bathroom door and saw that Grampa leaning against the sink, shaking, his face so red and sweaty Marian thought he might scream, but he never did, not once, not ever, because he was too busy gripping the sides of the sink, his wrinkly old arms looking like old sticks you used for kindling in the fireplace, and she realized that Grampa had been trying to sit down on the toilet when he got sick or felt the pain or whatever it was that happened to him, because the toilet seat was up and his pants were halfway down his legs but his underwear had gotten stuck and they had a big red stain spreading all over them and the more the blood spread the more Grampa shook and squeaked, and he pulled away one hand and said ... “...these damned underpants, I can’t never...ohgod...” and he tried to grab hold of them with one shuddering hand but he couldn’t reach them, it hurt him too much, but then Alan was there, on his knees next to Grampa, grabbing the ruined shorts and pulling them down so they could get him on the toilet, and they did, she and Alan, Marian holding him around the waist while Alan took hold of his legs and they eased him down onto the toilet seat and all the time Marian just wanted to cry for how much Grampa was hurting, but Alan was being the big cry baby, whining over and over Grampa I’m so sorry you’re so sick I love you I don’t want you to die, but then Grampa was on the toilet and breathing okay, his face wasn’t as red now, that was good, and Marian almost smiled when he looked up and winked at her.
“Got it that time, didn’t we?” he said. He reached out with an unsteady hand and grasped Marian’s arm.
“Thank you both very much,” he said. “Now go.” There was a hideous sound from below his waist as his ruined bowels exploded.
Marian grabbed Alan and went back out, closing the door behind them. They stood there for a moment listening for him in case he needed more help.
“You two can go about your Christmas wrappin’ business,” he said. “I’m almost eighty years old and I been in worse situations than this. I got me no intention of dying on a goddamned toilet seat. Now move along.” They were heading back upstairs for the paper and the tape when Alan squeezed her hand and said, “He’s so sad.” “He’s just sick,” replied Marian. “He’ll be better.” “I don’t want him to feel sad. I love him.” Marian looked at her brother and shook her head. “I love him, too. But I don’t think that’s enough to make him not sad anymore.” Alan looked heartbroken. “Not even a little?”
Marian shrugged. “Maybe a little. But what good’s that, what good is a little?”
A few days later Grampa insisted that he was well enough to go do his own Christmas shopping, and Marian’s mother made no attempt to stop him. When he came back with all the presents his check allowed him to afford he told everyone that he’d bought himself— of all
things— a 45 r.p.m. record of some Neil Diamond song.
“I never bought a record before, but they was playing’ this in the store where I was shopping and it was kinda pretty (which he pronounced ‘purdy’) so I bought it.” After dinner when Mom was doing the dishes he went into the front room and put the record on Mom’s old table-top hi-fi, then sat in the reading chair and listened to it. Marian stood in the doorway and watched Grampa as he closed his eyes and leaned back in the chair and seemed to...deflate like a balloon, sort-of, just a little bit.
She didn’t say anything because he looked tired, so she just stood there and listened to the record. It was a song called “Morningside” and it was about this old man who lived alone and had no friends and when he died no one cried, and then people went to collect his things and they found this table he’d been building for a long time, and it was a beautiful table, the most beautiful table any of them had ever seen, and when they were moving it, they turned it upside-down and saw that he’d written a message underneath it that said for my children.
It was the saddest and most awful depressing song Marian had ever heard; sadder even more than “Puff, the Magic Dragon.”
When the record was over the arm lifted up and swung back and set itself back down, the needle easing into the grooves with a brief clikkity-click before the song started again.
Grampa opened his eyes and rolled his head over and saw Marian standing there.
“That’s kinda pretty in a...in a way, ain’t it?” he asked, gesturing for her to climb up on his knee.