Spoon? by Louis Gallo (Appeared in the January 2010 Issue) I’m trying to repair the light fixture that dangles from the ceiling of my mother’s back shed. I am here on vacation, visiting what little Katrina left of the city and what few relatives and friends remain— and trying to help out my mother by taking on chores long overdue. I arrive each year in June and am always stunned at how a mere twelve moons change reality. My mother can hardly get around with two canes or a walker now. Her widow’s hump has nearly bent her in half. I try not to notice, I try to remember better days, but… This year we have a surprise visitor, my mother’s sister, Aunt Leah, who is ninety-six years old. I haven’t seen her in a decade and didn’t recognize her at first. Oh, the degradations. She has shriveled to half her size, speaks in a cartoon rasp and she too requires a walker. My mother says that Aunt Leah’s children kicked her out of the house in Picayune after a spat, and Mom drove all the way to Mississippi to collect her, Mom, who can hardly walk. Talk about the blind leading the blind. I recall visiting Picayune decades ago to see Aunt Leah, but feeling uncomfortable in her newly refurbished den as we chatted. On the mantle of a fake blond brick fireplace stood two urns, the ashes of her husband in one, those of her son-in-law in the other. At the time, Aunt Leah still seemed human. Nevertheless, she addressed not me when she spoke but one or other of the urns. I respect grief, especially for a spouse, but why the son-in-law, a legendary, adulterous drunk killed on I-10 where he drove in the wrong direction and was decapitated after crashing a truck loaded with chicken crates. The lights of the truck didn’t work, true, and loose chicken feathers enshrouded the road, but still… And now what’s left of her family—dozens of barefoot, filthy grandchildren, the boys all named Harry and the girls Harriet— have kicked her out. Imagine kicking an ancient shrimp out onto the road. Anyway, I have unscrewed the filthy, greasy bulb from its socket and need a new seventy-five watt to test if the fixture is getting juice. I return to the house to find Mom and Aunt Leah slouched over the kitchen table with bowls of fresh figs, oatmeal and two steaming cups of Community Coffee with chicory. The fluorescent light has gone dim and buzzes erratically. Exactly when did age undo them both? I can’t pinpoint the moment. I don’t recall them as wizened crones, and I expect them to emerge rejuvenated at any moment. As they were. As we all were. Who goes unscathed? My good friend Pierre in Virginia groans that, whenever he peers into the mirror, he beholds Colonel Khadafi. When I so peer, I see a shadowy, desolate Nosferatu. I take a deep breath and prepare to ask Mom where she keeps her spare light bulbs. Nothing is ever where it is. You might find light bulbs in the freezer along side a plastic bag of ravioli frozen in 1999. And everything is broken. I rooted through the designated tool drawer this morning, seeking a screwdriver, and found one missing its handle. Ever try using a screwdriver without a handle? I found the handle later, secured to an ice pick with black electrical tape. “Hi, Jake,” Mom laughs, still chipper despite it all. “Want some coffee? Just made it.” Mom remains the most optimistic, cheerful, generous person I've ever known, and, like Richard Nixon’s mother, she is a true saint. She refuses to let infirmity defeat her, and I envy such courage and audacity, mainly because I have inherited none of it. “Mom, do you have a light bulb?” I clear my throat. “So I can tell if it’s the bulb or fixture that’s bad. Well, I know the old bulb is bad.” Both women wear shapeless cotton shifts that drape loosely over their bones. The women in my family are classic lookers—were, that is. My mother cocks an ear. “Ehhhhh?” she says. She is going deaf and sleeps in a rocker before the television set, the volume up to max. My guest bedroom is upstairs and sometimes I hear The Star Spangled Banner blasting through the house as a station signs off for the night. Aunt Leah looks startled, the way really old people often do. She slowly raises her thin, tissuey, onion-skinned arm towards me, a kitchen utensil pinched between her fingers. “You need a spoon?” she croaks. “Light bulb,” I say, ready to both laugh and cry. Globs of slimy oatmeal drip from Aunt Leah’s chin onto the linoleum floor. It dawns that no one in this whole freaking world ever really needs a seventy-five watt light bulb, much less a gooey spoon, and that everything is falling apart and askew and beyond hope. And worse—or better?—it doesn’t matter. The spoon still quivers between Aunt’s Leah’s twig-like fingers. I reach for it. “Thank you so much,” I say. “This will solve the problem. Now I’m off to repair something. I don’t know exactly what, and don’t know if it can be done, or when, so wish me luck.” “Ehhhh?” Mom asks. “You deaf?” Aunt Leah snickers. “Harry’s fixing that light bulb. That boy’s looking too old, you know.”
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