Roundabout
By Steve Carter (Fiction)
David liked that Emily came with him to visit his grandfather. Or at least what was left of his grandfather, which wasn’t much, at least not from surface appearance. He was, what, 70 now? Yes, he had to be. He had been on his own until almost 68, but then he was really losing it. He had been forgetful before. David would show up for his occasional visits and grandpa would call him “Sam”. Sam was David’s older brother. Sam who, by the way, never visited grandpa. He was too busy, too much of a hotshot business man. Sammy didn’t give a shit about family. But yet David would keep coming and grandpa would keep on with, “Hi, ya, Sammy. So good to see you again.”
“David! I’m David. Sam is my older brother. He never comes to see you grandpa. Too busy making money.”
“Oh, David! Of course, sorry. Money is good. One has to earn a living. I had to. I worked hard all my life. Work’s good for you.”
Of course, David knew from mom, “Your grandfather has always been a bullshit artist. Grandma Lissie was the one who made the money. And not easily either. Dad only worked intermittently, like when he felt like it, or had to, as if he was too good to work. Mom worked at Roland Elementary for 35 years. Third grade, then 2nd grade, then she dropped dead at 60. Didn’t even get to retire. He just sat around the house, or had odd jobs. I mostly remember him sitting around watching Oprah when I got home from school. Drinking a beer. ‘Dad! More beer? It’s 3:30 in the afternoon.’ He would look away from the TV a minute and fill his bong again.” That was mom’s tune about her father. That she got her entire work ethic from her mom who was a great woman and feminist roll model.
“Well, then if she was such a feminist why did she put up with HIM?”
“She loved him and he was a nice guy if he wasn’t too drunk and stoned. Even then he was OK, but kind of pathetic. I don’t know. Maybe she just wanted to keep the family together. Her dad died in Korea and she wanted us to have a father. And we did. Such as he was.”
But all that was in the murky past and grandpa was now stuck in the even murkier present.
So David would show up every week or so at the assisted living, assisted existing, place, and visit him. He missed being called Sam now and going through the identity correction routine because now grandpa usually said nothing. He barely even acknowledged David’s presence. He would look away from the TV for a second when David walked in and say nothing. Not even a change in facial expression. Why did they have the TV always on in there and why did it have to be that station that played Law and Order, reruns all day long? If only he would look at David. He only looked at David when David came in. Maybe it was ancient instinctual stuff. A creature moving toward one could be a threat, so he looked.
That’s why it was nice when Emily came along with him. At least there was someone he could engage with during the visits who was capable of engaging back. Grandpa was flat, the staff on duty “cheerful”, at least when visitors were there, the TV miserable, but Emily was sweet and filled with ideas. She was interested in the challenge of getting through to grandpa.
“They respond to the music of their past.” she said after insisting on bringing the Bluetooth speaker.
Doubtful David, “Is that so?”
“Yes, there was an article in it on Psychology Now.”
“Psychology TODAY?”
“No, NOW. It’s a sort of a blog online thing, I don’t mean the old magazine. I sent you the link. Didn’t you read it? Anyway, I want to try it. It might work. It might be miraculous even.”
Dubious David, “OK, what the hell. We can try it.”
“Yeah, we just sit there otherwise and tolerate too loud Law and Order.”
“It’s impossible that he follows the plots of those anyway. It's just a blinking colorful light to focus on.”
Emily said that she was all prepared. She had loaded up her phone with Boomer hits.
It was the same as always when they entered that day. Grandpa looked up for a second then back to the TV.
“Hi grandpa!”
“Hi grandpa” David thought it was kind of odd that Emily called him that too. But it was nice in a way. They had been together for 3 years and were a sort of little family now. Her parents had been older so she had never met her grandfather. David liked that he could share his grandfather and that she embraced the idea.
They sat down. Silence, other than the TV.
David looked at it. “Hey that’s, that’s, what’s his name?” He was trying to identify the now famous actor who was guest starring in this episode, 15 years ago or more probably. “Geez! Emily. What’s that guy’s name? I'm getting as bad as grandpa.”
“Cut it out, no you're not. I don’t fucking know and it doesn’t matter.” She’s not mad even though she says “fucking”. She is just down-to-earth expressive.
“It’s the guy who does Chucky’s voice in the horror doll movies. I love that guy. Great actor.” He pulls out his phone and looks it up. “Right, Brad Douriff. Of course. He’s great.”
Unimpressed Emily, “Oh right.”
David felt suddenly foolish. But acknowledged how sweet it was of her to play along. He didn’t want to turn her into a long suffering wife of an old fool. But was that even possible to avoid? Was it possible to escape that fate if they stayed together? He looked at her and wondered if they would stay together. Some do, many don’t. Everyone knows that. What would happen to them? Would his insecurity eventually drive her away. She probably would have been better off with Sam, the mover and shaker. Why was he thinking of Sam with her? She had never even MET Sam. And whenever he talked about him she, maybe just playing along again, would say, “Your brother sounds like a jerk.” It was a correct assessment. He was a jerk but at least a self-confident, believing in himself jerk.
They sat in the two other chairs available in the room. One was just a folding chair that would sit folded against the wall most of the time unless there were more than one guest. There were usually no guests other than when David came by and lately, if she was available, Emily came along and he would let her sit in the more comfortable chair that had wooden arms and a cushion. It was the type of chair that one would find in a medical office waiting room. The cushion, a faded and worn avocado. Pre-worn. It wasn’t worn out by the sitting of grandpa’s guests since he had so few. He had inherited it with the room from the previous occupant who had likely left it to hospice, or maybe died in this room. Would grandpa die in this room and miss the end of an episode of Law and Order?
David would take the folding chair and sit it close to grandpa so he could feel a bit more intimate about the visit. It was a rather nice folding chair. That kind that had a built in cushion. David was grateful for that. It was more classy than the bare metal chairs even though one of those would have sufficed since no one stayed that long anyway when visiting grandpa. But really no one else ever came to visit grandpa. When David did he didn’t stay that long. It was dull visiting grandpa especially since he was at the stage now when he could not, or would not, interact. David, of course, like anyone else who tried to visit old people like this couldn’t help but wonder about it all. Why was grandpa like this? Was it all physical, just something that happened in the brain? Sometimes David wondered if there was an element of choice involved with these people. Maybe they just wanted to be left alone, maybe they wanted to not have to deal with other people and the world ever again, not have to tangle with all the issues and problems of modern life. After all, according to what mom used to say, grandpa was the type that wanted to somehow escape into his beer and weed, even in what could have been his vital years. Mom was disappointed in him for that. Not that she ever said he was abusive or anything, but grandma had to handle everything. Grandma would complain to mom. Maybe grandma had made mom her sort of surrogate partner since her husband was mostly missing in inaction. So maybe now it was just more of the same. He could now be gone, not have to deal and live in the comparative comfort of this place that was paid for by a combination of the little bit of social security he got monthly and the good insurance that was part of that era's teaching job benefits. David didn’t like to think about the insurance and all that because he would get to wondering, “What will happen to ME at his age, if I get like that?” There was no way of knowing since it seemed that evening was continuing to a decadent stage of the rich getting richer and everyone else. . .well, “Good luck, you should have worked harder to plan for this” impossible as that really was.
“Grandpa! We brought you some music.” Emily said, eager to begin her experiment. Of course he said nothing and continued to stare at Law and Order with Douriff in some lock-up holding cell. David thought he should look up that episode later since he liked Brad Douriff even though he hated Law and Order.
There was a sort of end table beside grandpa’s chair. It had a water glass on it and one of those pink plastic false tooth containers where grandpa kept his particles.
Emily eye-nodded toward the remote beside the false tooth container. “Maybe you should turn that off.”
“Gee I don’t know. I never tried messing with grandpa’s TV before. . .”
“Maybe that is why all these visits are the same. No one ever wants to try anything different.”
David, cautiously, “Grandpa. Emily wants to play you some great old music.” He reached for the remote. “Mind if I turn off the TV for a few minutes?”
Zero response of course. Until he actually clicked it off and grandpa became visibly agitated. His eyes looking around and head moving back and forth as if he was looking for the blinking colorful light.
David felt bad right away, “Gee, I’m sorry grandpa, but only for a couple minutes and it IS on all day.” He regretted that last phrase right away. Who was he to judge?
Grandpa continued to look distressed, worried, more lost. So David clicked the TV back on.
“Ok then, maybe we could just mute it. It’s always so fucking loud anyway. It's not like he is hard of hearing.”
“Fine” Emily said.
He was not hard of hearing. Actually grandpa was in rather good shape physically. It was just his mind, his dementia, that was the problem. David found the mute on the remote and there was silence. Grandpa seemed content enough with the light, the blinking screen. There was no way he was following the plot anyway. Well maybe he was, but it was doubtful.
Emily had the bluetooth speaker out of her bag. It was small, only a 4 inch square cube, but powerful. She pushed it’s soft plastic button and in a moment it made the beep indicating that it was connected to her iPhone. She had earlier searched the hits of 1968 to 1972 when grandpa was a young man and now had some of them on her phone. Enough for the experiment anyway.
David thought about these post WWII baby boomers, the people born in the very late 1940s and through the early 50s. They were an odd bunch. It seemed from what he had gathered that they all one way or another took advantage of another boom, the economic one of their time. They were part of the winning empire and so there was a lot of easy money, easy life, at least for white people. It seemed like these boomer kids were of two varieties generally. There were those who were motivated enough to build on these advantages and maneuver themselves to positions of power, wealth and control over others. But grandpa was of the other boomers, the ones that turned on, tuned in, and dropped out early on. Some of them dropped back in, but many didn’t and they just seemed to drift through life refusing to build for the future or worry about it much. Grandpa was like that. Always like that. Many of them experimented with drugs in college and then focused on life and careers. They had families and took care of them, bought nice houses and cars. Continued on the same way as their parents had.
When David went to see grandpa, before he was here, in this place lost in his mind, he had seen him as a sort of old hippy. That’s how mom referred to him, David was kind of prepared to see him that way too.
Mom would often complain that grandpa was stoned all the time. That he was a drop out that never dropped back in which would have been fine had he not had children, had not also put himself into a position where other people much younger and vulnerable needed him. She called him “The Dumn Shit Rebel” and complained about his contrary nature. He wouldn't even play along for her sake, his only precious daughter who only wanted a daddy like all the others. But he was not like the others. He wasn’t the worst. She said there were friends of hers who had really drunk, alcoholic fathers who beat their mothers and smashed up the car drunk driving. Grandpa wasn’t like that and knew it. He didn’t drink at all, later, but the marijauna was constant and that caused a lot of problems in itself as well as costing a lot of money that could have gone to other things. Like she had had to take out loans and work her way through school because grandpa smoked up all the money that could have gone to that. Most of that was money her mother made teaching.
David had smoked pot with grandpa. He was still at it in his late years and he often seemed out of it. David would go over to his apartment and grandpa was already stoned. David wondered if he had ever seen his grandpa not stoned. He probably hadn’t. Not until here. The thing was by that time, in his early 60s, grandpa knew it wasn’t a good thing. He would let David smoke with him but at the same time give there warnings, “Watch out for this stuff, especially now that it’s getting to be legal everywhere that implies that it is good and the capitalists are pushing it. It’s not good. I kind of wrecked my life with it and I regret that. But at least it’s better than alcohol. That shit will kill you.” By that time he was totally anti-drinking and was rather proud of himself that he had at least escaped that fate of being alcoholic. Grandpa would say between coughing, “Well at least this shit (cough, cough) isn’t flat out poison.” And he never took other drugs either, maybe some “shrooms” but not heroin, or coke, or speed. Just the hippy drugs of the Woodstock generation.
But David would often notice that he was out of it. Grandpa would repeat the same stories. They would watch movies together. New movies sometimes, but then David would visit again and grandpa would say, “Hey let’s watch EndTimes. I haven’t seen that one yet and heard it’s good.”
“We watched that already grandpa, like two months ago.”
Grandpa would look down like he felt ashamed at his forgetfulness. “We did? Shit. I never remember this crap.” He would justify that by saying that moving image entertaiment wasn’t worthwhile enough for him to remember, or sometimes he would just say, “Well, I guess it’s because I’m high all the time. I’m stoned so I missed it. (Ha Ha)” He was trying to make light of it but David could tell that it really bothered him.
But who knew how these things worked. Maybe he had early onset Alshimers for years, or maybe it was the weed. Maybe it was both. Yet David had read online that cannabis can be protective of the brain and helped people avoid this elder dementia. Did anyone really know, even experts, how these things worked out?
But now there was no marijauna and he was just in this room, unable to care for himself, out of it. Staring at Law & Order which he had never even liked before and would refuse to watch. Maybe that staff just put it on because they thought all these old people liked it.
While David was thinking of all this Emily played A Bridge Over Troubled Water which seemed to go on forever and just felt dreary and sad.
Grandpa stared at the silent screen as if completely unaware of the sound of the music.
“Nothing,” David said. “Maybe it is best to try something, I don’t know, more lively, and not so sad.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Emily looked at her phone and a 60s sounding guitar started was bluesy woman entering, “Well come on, come on, come on come on”
Piece of My Heart. That one sounded old and sad to David too. Kind of desperate. “So in the article about this, did they, the patients, react right away or did it take awhile? These don’t seem to be having any effect on him at all.”
“Well, when he was better, wasn’t he a kind of a cranky contrarian guy? Maybe he never liked these songs.” Emily was feeding back what David had told her about grandpa before. “Let’s keep trying and maybe we will hit on something that will cause a reaction.”
“OK, I guess it doesn’t matter since so far he doesn’t seem to care.” A little louder and directed, “You like music don’t you grandpa?”
“Everyone likes music.” Emily was stating a universally known fact.
David countered, “Yeah, maybe but there are all kinds of music and specific tastes. People can be very particular and exclusive. Maybe he was a jazz fan then and ignored pop junk.”
“Well maybe. He ‘s your grandfather. Didn’t he have old records around when he moved out of his last place.”
“No. All that stuff was gone long ago. All that went with the house that he had to move out of when grandma died. He couldn’t afford that place on his own. His Social Security monthly was and is low because he didn’t work that much, and when he did a lot of it was under the table. At least that’s what mom said.”
“OK, whatever,” Emily said. “Let me just try a couple others, OK?”
“Sure, but maybe we don’t have to listen to the whole song if nothing happens. This old shit kind of gets on my nerves.”
“Cranky contrarian in advancing development?” She said with a grin while choosing another tune.
“Lovely. And here I thought I was good-naturally going along with this idea.”
“Sorry sweetie.” She was just being playful. He knew that and she reassuringly squeezed his thigh with her free hand. “I’ll try just a couple more, OK?”
This one started out slowly with an instrumental, a classical guitar and maybe some old time synthesizer, or was it an organ?
Emily looked at the phone and saw that this one was going to be long, over 8 minutes long.
Soon there was a kind of high pitched singing. When the singing began grandpa began to stir in his chair as an old memory began to emerge through the fog. It was not a memory he wanted. At first his eyes darted back and forth across the room. He didn’t know where he was. He was thrown off balance. Tumbling with the sound into memory. Into a memory he did not want. One he had been avoiding for decades, forever, his entire life.
But he couldn’t stop the slide this time. He closed his eyes not wanting to see what he knew was there but was not at all yet clear and present. As the sound continued he was at a body of water. In and around a lake, but he knew it wasn’t a lake. It was water but not a natural body of water. Nothing was natural about tonight. Tonight was one of horror and he was too young to deal with it, but here he was and he had to go through it.
The full moon was a wobbling reflection in the water down there. The ground below his feet was wobbling too, moving. Everything around him was alive. He heard his friends laughing. Then they stopped. The music made them stop laughing. The music was the soundtrack to a psychedelic horror film. But not one they were watching, one they could not escape, that they could not stop. A TV that could not be turned off. If only someone would turn off the tape it might stop. But no one did. They yelled and cried.
“Jack! Jack!”
“Where is Jack?”
The girls were crying, the boys were crying. He was trying to get it to stop. He wished he could. “Why did I have to come here?” He thought. “No no No, this is all wrong.”
He had to be hallucinating. “Jack” He couldn’t see anything clearly now. He must be peaking. The water, the hills were gathering up into a quivering wad before him and the spreading out again. This was all in time with, connected to, the sounds. If the sound would stop this could stop. If the tape would stop the sound would stop. There would be peaceful night sounds of crickets and the crackle of the fire. But the tape and the music and the sounds and the yelling and the crying girls and the screaming boys wouldn’t stop. It just went on and on forever. This was it, this was hell, there was no backing out. It was his fault coming here. He knew he made all this happen. He was a fuckup and he fucked up good/bad, forever now. A killer.
“Jack, Jack!”
“He’s in the water.”
“He never came up!”
“He never came up!” He never came back.
This can’t be happening. I couldn’t fuck up this bad to kill Jack.
It’s a joke! It’s a joke from hell.”
That sound. It is the sound from hell. If it stops it will be over and Jack will be here. He is really here. He has to be here. He can’t have drowned in sound. That’s not possible. This is impossible. This could not happen to me. Not now. Not AGAIN! This has happened before? Has it happened before? How did I get here? I shouldn't have lied about where we were going. Had I not lied the sound, the music of hell, would never have started and Jack would be here. Can I go back before this? There is nothing before this. Just this. If this is happening I have to be able to go back before. It’s impossible and too horrible to be real. I’m just freaking out. But they are yelling, We are all freaking out. It's just a group freak out. But where is Jack, Jack. JACK!!!!
As the song ended the room was silent. The only sound was the window AC again. David was amazed and pleased with Emily. “Wow sweetie! That really worked. That one really worked.”
“Yeah, but he seemed kind of agitated.”
“Yes, no, but at least he reacted. He was alive again.”
After the song grandpa’s head lowered and he sat quietly slumped in the chair. A tear rolled down his cheek out of his left eye.
“Well he certainly really reacted.” Emily said. “Did you see the way he moved back and forth in the chair?”
“Yes! It was incredible. I haven’t seen him be this reactive in years. He must really love that tune.”
Emily looked at the time on her phone. It was 4pm. Time to go.
“Well, it’s time anyway, but I think that was enough for today.”
David agreed, “Yes, maybe next time we can start with this one. Maybe it reminded him of early love.” He turned on the TV sound, it was a commercial break.
Grandpa slowly looked up.
“Goodbye Grandpa, Em and I have to go now. It seems like you made some progress today. Good work!” He touched his grandfather’s arm.
They both got up!
Emily said, “Goodbye grandpa.” At the door she turned back, “See you Roundabout!”
Pleased with themselves they both chuckled at her little joke and were gone.
Grandpa was at peace in the light of Law and Order.
