Write me a Letter

downstairs to Feeb’s.
    When she came to her door, I said, ”Feeb, you look lovelier than ever. Do you know how to write?” I gave her crimson rinse a pat.
    ”Now what are you up to?” she said. ”Come on in. Want some date and nut loaf?”
    ”Always,” I said. After I’d taken care of the inner man, I dictated and she wrote in a large, plain notebook: ”Sorry for what I did. I was just trying to get even. You should put a couple of feet of barbed wire on top of that fence, electrified. I feel better now.”
    ”What do I sign it?” was the only question she asked. ‘”Remorseful, San Diego ,”’ I said. ”Thanks, honey, I’ll tell you all about it someday.”
    ”Sure you will,” she said. ”Like you told me all about it that time I pretended to be your grandmother on the phone.”
    ”I’m going out to see Mom tomorrow,” I said hastily. ”Want to come?”
    ”Sure,” she said. ”Just give me five minutes to get ready.” Back upstairs, I regloved, then rewrapped the shoe box, this time with the unhandled-by-me note inside. Why take even a one-in-a-hundred chance and write it myself? And leave my prints all over everything? To purloin a phrase much used by a certain tedious saphead I happen to know, No way, Jose. As I believe I have mentioned before, kids, do cover your stern, especially when all it costs is a modicum of time and a minimum of effort.
    Then I changed my shirt, gave my endearing cowlick a hasty brush, tucked the package under one arm, and ambled down to a post office I didn’t normally patronize. Wherein I nudged, with one knuckle, said package across the counter toward the clerk, and off it went on its registered way. Unbelievably, I had to fork out fourteen dollars and forty-five cents just to do someone else a good turn. Maybe someone would do me one some fine day for a change. Sure, and maybe Hawaiian shirts would be all the rage someday. Well, my joke of a car made it, didn’t it?
    That evening Evonne and I ate Japanese, which she liked to do once in a while although the green horseradish was the only part I really liked. Then we sat in her garden on her swinging sofa and billed and cooed. I am probably better at billing than she is, but she has few if any equals when it comes to cooing.
    The following day, it being a Saturday and thus not one of my regular working days, I didn’t open up the office; we drove out to Manhattan Beach instead, where I did some gingerly paddling, which was supposed to be good for me, while she did some serious swimming. In the early evening she and I and Feeb drove out to the Pasadena Hills to Hilldale, where resided mater. We found her in high spirits in the pool room, kibitzing loudly a game that was in progress between her usual opponent, Erwin, a miniscule but most dapper geezer dressed today in a skin-tight aubergine suit with yellow high-heeled shoes and a taller, older man I didn’t recognize. Erwin was beating the high-cuffed pants off him.
    Mom led the way into the cafeteria, but not before calling out to Erwin, ”You lucky little stiff. You get to live for another day.” Mom was small, attractive, and when in form, full of energy, with curly hair and great legs, both of which she was vain about. I mentioned she suffered from Alzheimer’s disease; the prognosis was a gradual and irreversible decline into increasingly aberrant behavior, with a good chance of pneumonia thrown in. But when she was like she was that day, like she had been up until a few years ago, you couldn’t believe it, you didn’t want to believe it. But when her control slipped or she didn’t recognize you, then you believed it.
    I got us all drinks and told Mom about Canada and watching Les Habitants and eating moose soup and she told us about the latest scandal at Hilldale—two of the residents, both over eighty, one male, one female, had been caught swimming in the nude in the pool at two o’clock in the morning, and with all the lights out, too. Also in the pool at the time were two empty wine bottles. Then Evonne and I took a little stroll through the grounds while Mom and Feeb got caught up to date. On the way we bumped into Dr. Donald Fishbein, the guy in charge of the joint, out for a little stroll himself, only he never strolled, he ran. Doctor Don was half energy, half beard, and half brains. He must have had a little common sense as well, to say nothing of the odd male hormone, because when he caught sight of Evonne’s legs in those