Ten-Eighty by Allan Davis

Author:Allan Davis [Davis, Allan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781771805971
Publisher: Iguana Books

Chapter Twenty-Three

She hadn’t thought that Aunt Gizla would collapse in her own all-you-can-eat nuclear-red rhubarb puke on the bathroom floor. But the floor was tiled, there were all kinds of cleaners under the sink, there was a change of clothes in the closet. She threw the pukey clothes into a plastic bag, cleaned her up, and laid her out on the floor in the storage room. She thought maybe she should lay Aunt Gizla’s bible there beside her, in case, in a dying breath, Aunt Gizla wanted to ask Jesus for forgiveness for the way she had treated them. But no, Jesus rose again from the dead after three days, so forget the bible idea. Don’t give Aunt Gizla any ideas about rising again.

First she had painted Aunt Gizla’s toenails black. Then, with Aunt-Gizla correctness, she’d rinsed the vodka glass and placed it upside down in the sink. Then, with Aunt-Gizla incorrectness, she’d unravelled the knitting and bent the needles. Then, with Aunt-Gizla correctness, she’d fed Dr. Goldstein two pinches of fish food. Two pinches, Dearie. No no, no bigger pinches. But my fingers are too little. Too little? Nonsense. And look, you’ve spilled on the carpet so now you have to vacuum and not just where you spilled, the whole carpet and then a good swat and into the storage room you go.

She was at the door, ready to leave, when oh my god, there Aunt Gizla lay, looking kind of loopy, lying on the floor with her cellphone upside down in her right hand. Holy gosh. She had somehow managed to dial 911. And then, holy gosh, the coroner had wanted an autopsy. But, in the end, that had worked out okay. Into the underground storage room Aunt Gizla had gone.

The container for the ten-eighty had to be small enough to fit into her jacket pocket. She wandered up and down the aisle of the supermarket and finally decided on a small jar of mustard. More appropriate than jam. She paid for it and then walked a block to McDonald's and went into the washroom and scooped out all the mustard and rinsed it clean. Then she walked another two blocks to Walmart for more black nail polish.

After her four o’clock Mary Carol program, Nana always set aside her knitting and sat down on the living room chesterfield for two glasses of vodka, pronounced “wodka,” before dinner. Russian custom. On Saturdays, instead of watching the knitting, she turned on the TV to watch the afternoon Hallmark movie. It was always about good people overcoming tragedies. Nana had just turned on today’s movie about a doctor and a nurse. In a Hallmark doctor movie, they would not take off their clothes and do it on the floor of the doctor’s office. They would do things like helping old people with no money get long-term care.

Nana eased her short, fat self into her easy chair. She looked like a Russian peasant woman: plain dress, plain grey hair in a bun, a round face with wire-rimmed glasses.

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