pulses on the wall next to me,
like the dim tip
of a cigarette,
barely casting enough light
for me to make out
Griffin’s silhouette
as he takes a step closer to me.
I scramble to press the button.
Nothing happens.
I press it again…Nothing.
“Damn it!” I hiss.
“Are you okay?” Griffin asks in a throaty voice.
“No! I am not okay!” I say,
struggling to catch my breath.
“There are so many reasons I am not okay…”
“Don’t worry,” he murmurs, “I’m right here…”
“I know!” I say, “That’s one of the reasons!”
And I guess he thinks that’s pretty funny,
because all of a sudden—
he’s chuckling.
AND AS SOON AS I HEAR IT
That please-God-make-it-stop
chuckle of his—
so shrill, so earsplitting,
so divinely ardor-dampening,
my path
becomes blazingly clear:
if I want to be able
to resist Griffin’s charms
I am going to have to keep him
chuckling.
SO…
Grasping at straws,
I tell him one of the cheesy jokes
the cabbie told me
in the taxi on the way over here—
the one about
what the doctor says
to the invisible man in his waiting room:
“Sorry. I can’t see you now.”
Amazingly, this totally cracks him up!
So I tell him the one about the nurse
who tiptoes past the medicine cabinet because
she doesn’t want to wake the sleeping pills.
And the one about
what one doctor says to the other doctor
when they greet each other in the hall:
“You are fine. How am I?”
But then,
while I’m wracking my brain
to remember more of the cabbie’s jokes—
Griffin. Stops. Chuckling.
AND THAT’S WHEN I NOTICE IT
That’s when I notice
the delicious woodsy scent
of his aftershave…
pine…
and spice…and smoke…
and rum…
and…oh, geez!
He smells exactly
like Peter Levine—
the boy
I had an obsessive crush on
in ninth grade!
GRIFFIN’S SILHOUETTE GLIDES CLOSER
“I love a woman
with a good sense of humor,” he says.
I tell him my husband does too. But this does not deter him.
He comes closer…
And closer still…
And, suddenly,
Griffin’s hands are on my shoulders!
“Aw…” he says. “You’re shaking…
You are claustrophobic.”
My heart’s beating so fast
it could win a world’s record.
“You need a hug…” Griffin says.
“Come here…”
He starts to wrap
his arms around me.
And it would be
so easy…
so easy to just let myself
melt into them
and give in
to this urge…
this wicked urge
to press my lips to his
and devour them
like a prisoner devouring
her last meal…
BUT THEN
I think of Michael…
of his paint-speckled cheeks…
to push Griffin away.
“Please…” I say.
“Don’t.”
But Griffin
doesn’t seem to have heard me.
He reaches for me
again.
“Stop!” I say.
But Griffin doesn’t stop.
He places his hands
back on my shoulders…
and then…
then…
THE LIGHTS FLICKER BACK ON!
And the elevator
lurches to life—
carrying us safely up
to the fifth floor.
When the doors slide open,
I burst through them with my honor,
my self-respect, and my marriage
miraculously intact.
An instant later, I whirl around,
and Griffin’s right behind me.
I stare into his deep brown eyes,
flash him my sultriest smile, and ask,
“What did the woman say to the doctor
after he tried to take advantage of her
while they were trapped together
in an elevator?”
“I don’t know…” he says coyly.
“What did she say?”
I lean in, letting my lips graze his earlobe,
and whisper, “You’re…fired!”
I take a quick step back,
so I can see his jaw drop.
Then I dash down the hall,
yank open the stairwell door,
and chuckle
my way
down all
five flights.
THE REALLY GOOD NEWS:
It turns out that when you
casually mention sexual harassment
to the powers that be in a hospital
it’s shockingly simple
to get your mother transferred
to another wing.
Before the end of the day,
she’s been installed
in a freshly renovated private room
replete with sheer curtains, a flat screen TV,
and wallpaper so flowery
it could give you hay fever.
Now that she has no roommate
chanting “help me, God,”
my mother seems calmer.
Though she also seems bewildered.
“This hotel is trés chic,” she says,
“but why are all the maids dressed like nurses?”
BEFORE I CAN ANSWER HER QUESTION
My mother’s new attending physician,
Dr. Gold, taps on the door,
then steps into the room to introduce himself.
We have to spend a few minutes
convincing my mother that he’s not
the hotel’s general manager.
But once that’s accomplished,
she stops tearing at the hem
of her hospital gown,
and Dr. Gold starts asking her questions:
“How many children do you have, Myra?”
“And how many grandchildren?”
She warms right up to him, telling him
about me and about Sam and about how much
she treasures her Thanksgiving visits with us.
I warm right up to him, too—
he’s at least seventy years old,
short, round, bald:
perfect.
DR. GOLD INVITES ME TO HIS OFFICE TO TALK
And it’s such a relief
to not even have to worry for a split second
about what he really means
by “talk.”
He offers me
a cup of peppermint tea.
And I offer him
one of Samantha’s brownies.
When he takes the first bite,
his whole being lights up.
“Wow…” he says. “If these don’t get
your mother eating again, nothing will.”
but she said…she said she wasn’t hungry.”
And suddenl
y I feel so overwhelmed
that I begin sobbing.
Dr. Gold hands me a box of tissues.
And a moment later, when I glance over at him,
I see that he’s wiping away a tear of his own.
This man isn’t just a doctor—he’s a saint.
ALL THAT GLITTERS IS DR. GOLD
On Sunday morning, I’m trying
to coax my mother into eating a brownie,
when Dr. Gold arrives to examine her.
She regards him warily,
tugging hard
on a strand of her hair.
He asks her to close her eyes
and touch her right forefinger to her nose.
Then, to do the same with her left forefinger.
“Do you know why I’m asking you to do this?” he says.
And when my mother shakes her head,
he tells her he’s checking her brain function.
“Your brain is functioning very well indeed,” he says.
Then he gives her a kindly smile,
and she stops tugging on her hair.
Next, he takes a small hammer out of his pocket
and lightly taps each one of her knees.
“Do you know why I’m doing this?” he asks.
“To test my reflexes?” my mother says.
“That’s exactly right,” he says.
“And your reflexes are perfect.”
Then he places his hand
on her left earlobe and gives it a gentle tug.
“Do you know why I’m doing this?” he asks.
When my mother says she doesn’t,
Dr. Gold shrugs and says,
“Neither do I.”
And when, for the first time all weekend,
my mother bursts out laughing,
I want to fling my arms around
this brilliant little potato dumpling of a man.
AFTER MY MOTHER’S EXAMINATION
Dr. Gold meets with me to discuss her options.
He tells me that the Prozac doesn’t seem to be working.
And that if my mother isn’t eating within two days,
he’s afraid they’ll be forced to insert a feeding tube.
“So,” he says, with a sympathetic smile,
“since we don’t have the time
to try a new antidepressant,
I think we should consider shock treatments.”
“Shock treatments…?!”
An image flashes through my head—
my mother strapped to a table, her eyes bulging,
her body rigid, arching…
“I know people think they’re barbaric,” he says.
“But, really, they’re not anything like in the movies.
And the results can be dramatic—we might even
see some improvement after just one treatment.”
“Are there any side effects?” I ask, swallowing hard.
“Maybe some short-term memory loss,” he says.
“But if all goes well, she’ll be out of here in time
to commandeer your kitchen at Thanksgiving.”
I picture Samantha,
arriving home for the long weekend,
flinging herself into
her beaming grandma’s arms.
And when Dr. Gold
hands me the consent form,
I scribble down my name
before I can change my mind.
HOSPITAL WAITING ROOM HAIKU
Behind that closed door—
a lightning storm is crashing
through my mother’s skull.
AFTERSHOCKS
When they wheel my mother out
and I rush to her side,
her eyes widen and fill with tears.
“Holly?!” she cries. “Why didn’t you tell me
you were coming to Cleveland?
Is it really you?”
“Yes, Mom,” I say,
gathering her into a hug.
“Is it really you?”
I bury my face in her soft neck,
and we hold each other for a moment.
Then she pulls back, and sniffs the air.
“Oh, my…” she says,
a hopeful grin spreading across her face.
“Do I smell…butterscotch?”
I reach into my purse
and pull out one of Samantha’s brownies.
She plucks it from my hand and wolfs it down.
“I have died and gone to brownie heaven,” she sighs.
“Do you have any more of those?
I feel as if I haven’t eaten in days.”
I hand my mother another brownie.
And she’s so busy scarfing it down
that she doesn’t even notice
when Dr. Gold and I exchange a high five.
MY MOTHER TAKES A NAP
When she wakes up,
and sees me sitting next to her bed,
her eyes widen and fill with tears.
“Holly!” she cries. “How wonderful
to see you! Why didn’t you tell me
you were coming to Cleveland?”
I lean in,
giving her a squeeze, and say,
“I…I wanted to surprise you, Mom.”
A few minutes later, I step out of the room
so that I can see what happens
when I come back in.
Sure enough—
my mother’s just as stunned and delighted
when she sees me walk through the door.
And for the next few hours,
I keep finding excuses to leave the room,
so that I can delight my mother upon my return.
I guess
every shock treatment
has a silver lining.
THE SUN PAINTS THE PARKING LOT PINK
While I paint
my mother’s fingernails and toes.
Then, out of the blue, she says,
“That Dr. Hack was a real hunk.
But he had the most god-awful chuckle,
didn’t he?”
It takes me
a few minutes
to stop laughing.
Then my mother says,
“Did you bring any photos of…of…”
She pauses, trying to remember.
“Of…Sabrina?” she finally says.
“You mean Samantha?” I say.
“That’s what I said,” she murmurs.
So I pull out my recent favorite shot—
taken in the backyard
just before Sam left for college.
“Look at those eyes!” she says.
“I swear—one glance from that child
could turn winter into spring…”
But then she peers more closely at the picture,
furrows her brows, and asks,
“Why does your pepper tree look so bare?”
My pepper tree…?
A jolting emptiness fills my chest.
“Oh, Mom…” I say, my voice cracking.
“What is it, dear? What’s the matter?”
She reaches over to circle me with her frail arms.
“It got sick, Mom. We had to cut it down…”
Tears well up in my eyes.
“That must have been hard for you,” she says.
“It was,” I say. “It was so hard…”
My mother pats my back,
rocks me,
lets me cry.
When I finally quiet, she says,
“You need to go home now, Holly.
Go home to Michael and plant a new tree.”
And, of course,
she is exactly
right.
THE NEXT MORNING
I stop in to see Dr. Gold, before
heading down the hall to see my mother.
He sits behind his desk—
his eyes as merry as Christmas.
He tells me that after just one shock treatment
not only has my mother’s appetite returned,
but the physical therapist says she was finally
willing to participate in rehab this morning.
He says he’s confident
that with just a half dozen more treatments
and maybe a month or two of rehab,
he’ll be able to send my mother home.
“How can I ever thank you?” I say.
Dr. Gold smiles at me and says,
“Just send me a batch
of Samantha’s brownies.”
And, as if on cue,
my cell phone rings,
and Samantha’s name
appears on the screen.
I hold up the phone to show the doctor.
He raises an eyebrow and says,
“I hope it was her ears that were burning.