ninety-nine cent flowers

I wonder if she’s put flowers on his grave. I’m not so bold as to ask her. I’m not up to the heavy sighs, the tears, or the rhetoric on what a fine man my grandfather was. I don’t celebrate death. Not like she does.

She sits slouched in her chair, wearing three layers of mumus ranging in pattern from floral to plaid. Beside her on a tiny end table sits a stack of Kleenex, a Coke, a barrage of prescription bottles, and a pack of Capris Lights. This chair has been her bed for the past 8 years. Everything she requires sits comfortably beside her, except for a box of donuts and the occasional orange.

“How ya do?” she says to me glancing up only momentarily from the television screen that stands a few feet in front of her.

“Ehh , Fine. You?” I say sitting down on the untouched sofa across from her.

“I’m here…” She sighs, begging me to ask her to elaborate.

My entrance in the room has triggered her manic channel changing. Her arthritic thumb enters in number after number. I can’t tell if this is an attempt to entertain, antagonize, or just fill up the silence. She does hate silence.

I turn the page of my book as Bill O’Reilly screams “THAT’S UNAMERICAN, SIR!!!”

“He always gets ‘em,” she nods to me, pointing the remote to the TV.

“MMhmmm”

She flips back and forth between four different channels. I hear a barrage of information that I can’t contextualize with what I’m reading. ‘There’s a 85% chance of snow tomorrow”, “TYRAAAA MAIL!” and finally, Bruce Willis mumbling something irritably from within a ventilation shaft.

She decides to stop with Bruce Willis, for the moment, anyway. She tells me how she doesn’t trust one of the many thin blonde girls on America’s Next Top Model.

“The one with the crazy eyes,” she explains, “She’s REAL weird. Somethin’s wrong with her. She told Tyra that she loves blood. That she’s jealous of people with nosebleeds”

“Well that is kinda weird,” I admit.

“Whatcha readin’?’ she breaks her gaze from the television to examine the book resting in my hands.

“Nietzsche”

“Who?”

“Friedrich Nietzsche”

“Wait, who?”

“FREE-DRIK NEE-CHEEEE.”

“Oh.” She says finally.

She waits a moment before retorting, “Well, he wasn’t AROUND when I was young.”

“Actually, I think he was.”

“No, he wasn’t”

“I’m fairly sure that—“

“WELL THEY DIDN’T TEACH NEE-CHEE WHEN I WAS IN SCHOOL!”

She turns back to Bill O’Reilly now, as if she’s looking for some kind of reinforcement from him on this matter. But she seems disappointed to find that’s he’s too busy for her, he’s talking to Dennis Miller. He can’t be bothered.

I suddenly hear Sara Mclachlan’s voice, and I know before I look up that’s it’s that goddamned commercial for the humane society. I glance up to see a one eyed cat, followed by a hairless dog, while Sara Mclachlan sings ‘Innn the aaarmms of an AaAAngeeel’

My grandmother is sniffing, grabbing for the Kleenex beside her.

“It’s so sad,” she says, dabbing gently under her thick glasses.

“I know it is,” I say, unsure of how to protect her from the horrors of eye-less cats.

Her crying increases. It goes past the hairless, legless dogs, and the cats that need a bath. She grabs more Kleenex, taking little gasps of breath. Her cheeks break out in large splotches of rouge.

“They’ll find homes,” I tell her.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “They’ll never be the same”

“Why don’t we watch that Bruce Willis movie?” I suggest

“What channel was it on?” she says sniffing, “Oh wait, I can press ‘recall.’”

We sit entranced as Bruce Willis walks on glass, shoots terrorists, and rattles off a slew of one-liners. We comment from time to time on the film. “He’s completely bald now, you know?” she tells me.

I’ve decided I’ll put the flowers on his grave. They will be cheap, fake, and from Wal-Mart. He would appreciate that; he was practical. Economical, even. I will drive her by the cemetery, so she can see them. She’ll weep again, at his death, and at the cheap flowers that I’ve chosen. We will both resent the fact that we are trapped in a silent car.