Inaudible

Can’t anyone just give us a straight answer?
He rambles, doctor.
It’s dementia, isn’t it?
I see no signs…
Here we go.
I see no signs of…
Here we go… ‘no one can say for sure.’
I see no apparent signs of…
It gets on our nerves, doctor.
…no apparent signs of…
He just rambles, doctor.
Meaningless.
On and on.

Too much light in my eyes. Snatch the Ray-Bans off the dash. Right foot heavy on the pedal and a cloud of gravel in my rear-view mirror. Top down on the MGB. A hot, dry breeze tumbles the hair across my forehead. Sweat begins but never fully forms.

Separated from me by the bug-spattered windshield is the sunset. It’s that moment just before the sun nestles behind the hills for the night and all those wonderful reds and purples slip through the clouds and make their final glorious appearance.

I pull my car to the side of the road, get out, walk up the grassy embankment and stop when I reach a thick, leaning oak. I press my back against the side facing the sun. I close my eyes and breathe in early October. When I open my eyes again I am no longer the passive viewer I was in the car. I am part of this sunset. It’s one of those perfect and impermanent moments that painters wait for, long for, dream of. I have nothing to capture it with. I close my eyes again for a moment. Just long enough to Kodachrome the image in my mind.

A new breeze checks in, signaling the onset of a cool evening. I make a dash for the car, start it up and punch the gas pedal again. I’m chasing the sunset now, which is threatening to disappear beyond the hills. I have to catch it. I have to see it one more time. It has to be the most beautiful sunset I’ll ever see. I will chase it as long as I can. Long shadows for a stretch. Then I reach the top of a hill and the light hits my eyes again.

What is he saying?
I wasn’t listening.
He’s rambling again.
What is he talking about?
Who knows.
Is he making it up?
Of course.
He’s rambling.
Just talking.
Doesn’t make sense.
Do you want to take him to a specialist?
Another specialist.
Always the same thing.
I don’t know when we’ll find the time.
I’m worried about Elliot.
Really likes his grandfather.
I don’t want him filling Elliot’s head with a lot of nonsense.
I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.
It’s getting on my nerves.
It’s just rambling.
Just talking.

A lone melody is floating above an indifferent San Francisco at midnight. I’m reeling through the streets, pulled by a sound. Someone is playing a saxophone. Catch it. Catch it before it gets away. It’s there. Not on this block. It has to be the next. Block after block of throbbing neon lights are reflected against old rain on the streets. Dim Sum. Package Goods. All Nude.

I stop in front of a bar next to an alley. Bell’s. No marquee, no sign announcing live music, but I hear it, so I duck inside. It’s warm for April. The joint is musty and humid from the rain. But the sound grows faint then stops as I push my way through the bar. Night owls. Drinking, bragging, lamenting their jobs and flirting. Desperate abandon. I don’t want any part of it. I just want to find that sound.

I go back out into the street, but it’s gone. I’ve lost it. I enter Bell’s again and screw myself onto a stool at the bar. Am I the only one who heard a saxophone? Should I ask the bartender? No. Shut up. Have a beer and get out of town. She’s not in this city. San Francisco was never her scene.

Then it starts again. It’s something by Bird, isn’t it? Ornithology. No. Now’s the Time. But yeah, that’s Parker. The bartender keeps wiping glasses and doesn’t say anything about it. I ask him if he hears what I hear and he points to a door in the back. I pay for the unfinished beer, tip him for the information and head for a doorway that leads into an alley.

A heavy man sits parked on some empty creates, a saxophone sitting under a pair of dark shades and his thick ebony fingers working magic on the keys. His lips are dry and brittle, but the tone is fluid and soulful. When I ask him if that’s Bird he’s playing, his eyes don’t move from under those dark shades. For all I know, this sad man is Parker. He stops, wets his lips, replaces them on the reed and begins again.

April in Paris.

Then I realize it doesn’t matter if it’s Bird he’s playing or even if he’s Bird or not. It’s the most incredible, passionate thing I’ve ever heard. When he finishes the tune again he lowers his head. I can’t see his eyes but I feel them close. I sit down and wait. After a moment he wets his lips once more, puts the sax to his mouth and plays again. Another ballad. Lover Man.

A battered Folger’s can by his shoes. He doesn’t care if he’s Bird or not either. He just wants something shiny in his coffee can to get him through to tomorrow. I reach into my pocket and take out all the money I have in my wallet. It’s not much, so I count out enough so that I can make it back to LA. The rest I drop into his coffee can. He gives a hint of a nod and keeps playing. I don’t say anything because he’s saying everything. I walk, but not too quickly, out of the alley and into the streets. The sound grows more faint as I head for home. But I never stop hearing it. I still hear it now.

No place call Bell’s?
Not that I can find.
Where was he that year?
Working on a farm.
Nowhere near Frisco.
You’re certain?
Of course we’re certain.
What do you think?
Is it dementia, doctor?
I don’t see any evidence of…
Dear God.
Here we go again.
Same as before.
Perhaps a different medication?
Which one?
He just rambles.
Talks and talks.

It came down heavy, more than had been predicted. Big wet flakes. Somewhere underneath all that late November snow is her old Pontiac Bonneville, stuck in my driveway at midnight. She is in the car, bundled inside her red knit hat and parka, cranking the ignition while I make a valiant attempt to scrape and scoop the heavy snow away with my arms and hands. The engine catches. A cloud of exhaust vrooms from the rear of the vehicle. I put my thumb up. Not sure she can see it.

Try the wipers, I tell her.

I see the wipers ache and strain and finally push their way along the length of the windshield. The right side does a fair job, but the left wiper is impossibly ineffective. I nod my head anyway, as if this is the best we could hope for.

Then comes the push. I brace myself against the hood of her car, plant my feet and strain. Wheels spin, but the car goes nowhere.

You have to rock it, I say.

She rocks it.

Now throw it in reverse, I say.

Then with one more great Herculean effort, putting my upper body, back and shoulders into it, the car lurches free from its slippery burrow. The Bonneville rolls back, leaving a deep groove in my driveway as the car finally arrives in the street. The roads are rough, but salted. Another thumbs up from me.

I go out into the street and approach her side of the car. The driver’s window rolls down laboriously, an inch or so at a time, until I can see the top of her red knit hat, her moist eyelashes, red cheeks. Then her soft, quivering lips. The window is halfway down.

That’s it?

She nods.

Is the heat working? She shrugs.

And the wipers?

She turns the wipers on then turns them off again, because the smearing on the left side is only making it worse.

I take off my left glove and fit it over the what’s left of her worn wiper blade. Try it again, I say.

The glove works remarkably well, pushing away the snow and providing her with what looks to me to be an adequate view of what’s in front of her.
She tells me she can’t take my glove.

Keep it, I say. You can return it when I see you again.

I stand in front of the car and make mock gestures of an air traffic controller and wave her past me. I think I catch her smile through the half open driver’s window. Not sure. Then she pulls away and I watch the glove wave goodbye.

He rambles, doctor.
Can’t anyone just give us a straight answer?
It’s dementia, isn’t it?
Actually, I see no signs…
Here we go. Same runaround.
‘No one can say for sure.’
Jesus, it never ends.
It gets on our nerves.
What about Elliot?
Elliot?
Our son. What do we do with our son?
I don’t see…
Elliot likes to listen to him.
We’re worried he’ll hear something that he shouldn’t.
I don’t find anything problematic in the fact that…
He can’t just be allowed to talk like this.
How do we handle this?
He just rambles.
Just talks.

When she smiles her cheeks scramble upward and direct you to a pair of deep-set green eyes. This summer, I feel like I’m the only person who can make her smile this way, no one else in my high school comes close. And when I make her smile, I melt like ice cream into the warm cracks of the sidewalk. I’m sitting on the back porch with her. Holding hands on her big swinging rocker chair. My arms around her. No parents anywhere in sight.

I smell her neck. No perfume, just a fresh, morning smell, as though she’d just stepped out of the bathtub. Even on the hottest days she remains pleasantly fragrant. Sweat never thinks to form on her body.

She’s wearing a starched white blouse with little fake pearl buttons up the front. There’s maybe eight or nine buttons holding her in. In March, she began to leave her top button open. As the weather got warmer, another month passed, another button would come undone. Unfortunately, there were more buttons on the blouse than there were warm months, so the blouse may never open completely. In early September, she’ll start going the other way until, by December, she’ll be all sealed up again in high neck sweaters and turtlenecks. But this was May, which meant that the first, second, and all-important third button were open. The third button was the one that would get me in. Not my whole hand, but three fingers. Just enough.

By the time I decide to make my move, I can’t concentrate. My heart is beating so hard that all I can think about is whether or not she can hear it. I free my hand from hers with a little pop, caused by all the sweat, all mine, in her palm.

After my palm is air-dried to my satisfaction, my hand begins its slow journey. And suddenly, after a tortuous route over her shoulder and then southbound, my hand is there, decidedly where it shouldn’t be. Physically it doesn’t feel like anything because, at sixteen, her chest doesn’t protrude any farther than any of her ribs. Anyway, it doesn’t matter if I’m in exactly the right area of her anatomy. I’m inside her blouse. Even if it’s not the forbidden-place-where-my-hand-shouldn’t-be, it’s darn close.

She’s not moving, and more importantly, she’s not stopping me. She’s letting my hand remain exactly where I parked it and best of all, she’s still smiling. If it wants to, my hand can stay there all summer. I look down her blouse again and count the buttons. June is just around the corner.

You doctors all say the same thing.
But you can’t say what’s wrong with him.
It’s dementia, isn’t it?
Actually…
Oh lord, here it comes again.
He just rambles.
Just talks and talks
We can’t handle him.
We’re very concerned about Elliot.
He’s very impressionable.
It’s inappropriate.
Not to mention ridiculous.
We’ve checked a few facilities already.
Highly recommended.
Can’t handle it.
No choice anymore.

Ankle deep. That’s as far as I’ll go in. Mid-July, the water’s warm enough. Never been in the ocean before. The cuffs of my jeans are rolled up for my own good by grandma, but they keep creeping down and getting wet and heavy. The shore is alive underneath me. A crab, hiding underfoot, scuttles through the sand and enters the water near me. A wave reaches in, plucks it off the shore and it disappears into the swell.

The sand sinks where my toes curl into it. Making fossils that won’t last. Never mind. As I move they turn into muddy swirls. With a flit and a bubble a fish nips at the back of my ankle. I head not for land, but for deeper waters. Deeper yet. I’m in past my thighs. Taking small steps I slowly move farther out. The wind is up now and I hear the sound of the waves on the rocks. I’m listening to the waves. Before I know it, the water is up to my waist. I’ve saturated the stick of Juicy Fruit that’s in my front pocket. Never mind. Grandma’s always got more gum.

We’re going to be late.
Hurry up.
Where’s Elliot?
Do we still have more forms to sign?
What time is it?
We’re late.
What time is your appointment?
Seven.
Elliot wants to see him again.
It’s six-thirty already.
Do you think we should let Elliot see him again?
I don’t know.
How many more forms are there?
We’re running late.
Can you do it?
Elliot?
Tell him he can see his grandfather.
For five minutes, young man.
Then you come right back here.
Don’t keep your father waiting.
We’re late as it is.
What else do we have to do?
Where’s that pen?
Where do we sign?
Best for all concerned.

You’ve kept me waiting, young man. Always kept everyone waiting. The longest I ever waited for you was on the night you were born. Did I ever tell you that story?
A warm Thursday in April. I’ve just arrived at the hospital to wait for a child to be born. My first grandchild. I don’t care much whether it’s going to be a boy or girl, or what it looks like, or how much it weighs. Let his parents fuss over that. Just let it be healthy and let it be soon.

But it isn’t soon. The child is taking its time. I’m anxious to tell the child that everything is good out here. I want to get a chance to tell it all the reasons it should be born, all the wonderful things waiting for it, but it can’t hear me. So all night I pace the lobby of the hospital waiting for this child to decide if it wants to come out or not. I yawn. Sit. Stretch. I close my eyes. But I don’t sleep. I don’t dare. If I sleep I could miss the sound of the doctor’s footsteps on the stairs.

Five in the morning and I’m still waiting. I feel the need to stretch again so I step outside the hospital and walk the grounds in the silence of the dawn. The grass is moist. Cool with dew. I reach down, collect a few drops. Run my fingertips across my eyelids. My vision brightens. A sliver of light slips over the horizon and morning is created. As if on cue, magpies sing from their perches in the trees surrounding the hospital.

Before long the sun is full and the dew on the grass glares brightly in my eyes. Can’t find my Ray-Bans. Sun. Glare. I suddenly become more aware of the time and start back for the hospital. I begin to fear that the time has passed more quickly than I realized and I begin to run. Several times I lose my footing on the wet grass but I keep moving. Faster.

Back inside the hospital I find an empty waiting room. I’m out of breath and can barely speak, but I have to know what’s going on. I close my eyes and gasp in huge gulps of air. I stop breathing.

Now’s the Time.

The doctor is coming upstairs.