Laz-E-Boy

Sheila Swan Laufer

     
     
        We were sitting around one night with the last bottle of wine finished when I remembered there was one in the freezer. Ray was eating nuts. But we've got this kid and she needs to have dinner. Ray fancies himself as a worker of words when he isn't pounding nails. I'm not saying he isn't just because he chooses carpentry instead of working on that, it's just that he could better himself. I am taking computer classes myself.

        "You could go to night classes, Ray, why not?" He just says he's tired at night and what the hell. Besides we've got this kid now who was passed on to us when our friend Carolina died. Nothing formal, who knows what will happen if Carolina's mother ever thinks straight about her granddaughter.

        The kid is pretty good with words too. But she's not doing well in school and I personally think that she and Ray eating nuts before dinner is not good for either of them. We got them for Christmas from some cousin who always sends us unhealthy things such as these fried salty nut mixes and strange cheeses in little pots.

        Carolina was not a good mother although I liked her very much and when she got sick which happened pretty fast, boom, one day she doesn't feel well, a week later they tell her she has two months to live. Just like that. Akita (that's the kid's name) was freaked because Carolina just came home and told her she was going to die. There was never a father in the picture there at all, just the two of them in that trailer with three cats, a labrador stupid as hell and some finicky dog called a saluki someone laid on them. That dog had already broken two windows out that Ray repaired with plywood since Carolina didn't have money for windows and God knows those owners of the trailer park are never going to fork out a dime to fix anything.

         I'm a pretty good manager of this park. Worked hard to clean up the drug problems here, plant some flowers. I got the women into a sewing group so we make a little money at Christmas. That's how I met Carolina when she was first here. She was hot to learn how to sew and the rest of us could teach her.

        Carolina had just come down to the California coast from some barren desert town in Nevada. Had enough of being hot and dry and cold and dry. Here we deal with mold. But she didn't mind that so much now because Akita had kids to play with while she cleaned houses for the rich folks on the other side of town. The trouble with Carolina was mainly she came home real tired smelling like cleaning products, those kind that just get into your clothes and I guess her lungs. She had a hard time breathing some nights when Akita would come over to our place scared and say, "Mommy's sick, Marie, can you please come over?"

        So I'd bring over the vapor machine, which of course wasn't going to do anything to help the mold, put some Vick's Vapo Rub in the water which seemed to help Carolina a little. She'd start to breathe a little easier while we had a little glass of wine and then we could even share a smoke. She smoked those heavy Marlboros, but I'd get her to be happy with my light Merits on those nights.

         Akita started to come over and hang out with us a lot. My house is always filled with folks and action what with my brother coming here on the lam bringing his wife and kids too not to mention all the other people who come and go. We've got a few transients here, Mexicans who I know are illegal, and retired people who bring their big RVs in for the men to fish and the women who hang out in the rec room. I make it real nice. Some nights we sit around and do a whole picture puzzle, or almost most of it.

            Anyhow Akita and Ray started playing around with words. Like they were poets or something. I did study some poetry in high school, before I had to drop out.  My mama died too, when I was older than Akita, she's only eleven.

       So this one night Ray and Akita started making poems out of anything, something I said or a something on the T.V. any old thing they picked up from the mail or a flyer from the paper. They started to write them down but then said it all out loud and laughed.

             —  Registrar of Voters.

             — Start to reverse 20 years of illness in just 2 weeks.

             — Quiet you guys.

             — And now from the all star reporters at CBS hear this.

             — The apple blossom fair will have many craft items from pottery . . . .

             — And don't forget to change your clocks back tonight for tomorrow.

              — It will be yesterday for an hour she shouted and pipe down.

        As you can imagine this began to get on my nerves. There was plenty enough going on around this place and when I just wanted to sit and watch the damn T.V in peace, they were driving me nuts. I don't have kids for a reason, well, I guess I was about to say they all are too much trouble, the truth is it's all because of a botched abortion. Right then after my mother died I went to find boys to love me. How was I supposed to know about the difference between somebody wanting to screw you and love? My father -- boom -- took me to the hospital.  When the blood was all over the car, he said, "Don't you come home Marie, don't you ever show your face to me again."

        I almost died, and when they let me out the doctor said, "You will never have children because of what you did."  So now I have Akita, so much for that idea, and I vote Republican every time because they are against abortion.

        Ray didn't mind when I told him we could never have kids, he said he didn't think much about that anyway. But now he was having so much of a great time with Akita, then Carolina got sick. So I decided to take care of them, told everyone to clear out and let them be here. The whole thing would have been harder except who knows how things happen, Carolina was real pretty, with a ton of black hair and the biggest brown eyes that somehow got smaller the sicker she got. I took her to the hospital where they fitted her up with an oxygen machine so she could breathe better. And then she, instead of feeling sorrier for herself, joined in on the poetry game.

            — Under penalty of law this tag not to be removed.

            — Who's going to wash the dishes?

            — And now this.

            — Tibet's stolen child.

            — Call now only 39.95.

            — Global warming and the extinction of species.

            — White sale, start the new year right.

            — Coming soon to a theater near you.

        Carolina began to laugh so much she could hardly breathe. Akita, stick of a girl that she is, ran to her mother. "I'm okay, honey, this is good."

        I never heard her call that girl anything but shit for brains or lazy before that. I guess when a person is dying they change their minds a little about being mean. Not that she was always mean, I knew she loved her in some crazy way, but she sure didn't say anything good before that. My mother only said you'll be sorry when I'm dead. But I wasn't.

        That night they were eating the cousin nuts, just as the other night, Ray and Akita. There was a bottle of wine in the freezer then too. Carolina was breathing so low it was hard to know if she was breathing at all. All of us were pretty on-edge except for Carolina. She sat straight up from the bed when I started complaining about the nuts-eating. Said right out -- "A bunch of nuts is not dinner!"

         "There's a wine in the freezer," I said.

          Akita said. "What's the next line?"

          I picked up the paper to the want ads. "Laz-E-Boy. $75. It's in fair condition."

          Carolina whispered, "Write that down, Akita, it's our poetry."

          Ray wrote it fast. My chicken and noodles was almost done.

          So there it sits on our refrigerator with a magnet holding it up. Ray found an old printing press that he and Akita play with. They got it on paper all mucked up with ink. Just like we said it.      

            — A bunch of nuts is not dinner!

            — There's a wine in the freezer.

            — What's the next line?

            — Laz-E-Boy. $75.

            — (It's in fair condition.)

         I pick up Carolina's mail now, what's left of it. One thing that keeps coming is a paper from that desert town. Under stuff for sale today there was this: Lazy Boy Rocker. Fair Condition. $75.

         I always wanted one, maybe it's time.