Second Helpings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [27]
We never, ever talk about it. Never will, either. It is extremely unhealthy.
Is this how it’s going to be next year? My parents will save all their bad news for when I come home for breaks from whatever the hell college I’ll be attending since they probably won’t let me attend Columbia even after I get accepted because it is absolutely impossible for me to feign perfection in their presence, as my next comment proves.
“Would you have told us if she died? Or would you have buried her without us and waited for a more ‘appropriate time’?”
My mother placed her hands over her eyes for a few seconds, reluctant to even look at me. I wasn’t sure who she was more ashamed of, me for the comment, or herself for the truth in it. I found out soon enough.
“Jessica Lynn Darling,” she said in her best Because-I’m-Your-Mother-and-I-Say-So tone. “Just for that, I insist you go over there and visit Gladdie today.”
“Will she even remember it afterward? I mean, will I get credit for going?”
Another scornful look.
“What? You said she’d lost her memory! So why bother going if she’s going to forget I was even there as soon as I leave?”
“Because it will make her happy while you’re there. And it will make your father happy. By the way, try to be a little nicer to him, okay?”
“Okay,” I said, with a heavy, stereotypically adolescent sigh.
So that’s how I ended up spending my afternoon at Silver Meadows Assisted Living Facility.
To its credit, the place wasn’t nearly as depressing as I thought it would be. It looked more like a well-appointed hotel than a hospital where the elderly go to die. There were lots of fresh flowers, which thankfully made the joint smell like potpourri, not pee. Bandstand music piped through the speakers. A chanteuse crooned about all the things that she didn’t get a kick out of: champagne, cocaine, a plane. “But I get a kick out of you . . .”
I had no problem finding Gladdie. She was sitting in an overstuffed chintz chair, holding court in the Silver Lounge, located directly across from the front lobby. She was in the middle of one of her famous stories, surrounded by no fewer than a dozen men and women who all looked as old as she did, but with far less flair. Gladdie was looking as lovely as a nonagenarian stroke victim with two artificial hips could. She was wearing a lavender pantsuit with a matching beret perched atop her salonpoofy white hair. Always color-coordinated, she had her walker done up for the day with ribbons in light and dark shades of purple. She seemed virtually unchanged from my memory. She’d been ancient my whole life.
“And so I said to the fella, ‘That old gray mare ain’t never been what she used to be!’ ”
The crowd howled with phlegm-filled, ragged, lung-rattling laughter.
“Hey, Grandma,” I began cautiously, well aware that I’d have to break in before she launched into her next tale. “It’s me, Jessica.”
She fixed her eyes on me and there was an instant flash of recognition.
“Hey, guys and dolls!” she brayed. “It’s J.D.! The one I told you about!”
Twenty-four quad-focaled, cataracted eyes turned toward me. So Gladdie seemed to know me, but why did she refer to me as J.D.? No one had ever called me that in my life. Even so, I pretended that it was a nickname Gladdie had given me years ago.
“This one here has to beat ’em off with a stick, I tell ya!”
Not true at all, obviously, but it’s in line with Gladdie’s usual delusional view of me.
“Like grandmother, like granddaughter!” shouted a liver-spotty man in a plaid sport coat.
The crowd went into more spasms of laughter, but I clearly saw a hint of blush show through Gladdie’s heavy “cheek rouge,” as she calls it.
Later, when we were alone in her room, Gladdie told me that this twice-widowed charmer is Maurice, but everyone calls him Moe.
“He has a car!”
Gladdie’s driver’s license