PEPPER

Jackie is at the sink doing dishes.

I'm fully naked on my new wheelchair (recently borrowed from the local ALS chapter) - a red throw pillow on my lap. The borrowed wheelchair has a joystick on it's left arm. This reactive devise allows me to race forward and backwards on the bare parquet floors without intention. I am an unfocused boy.
By holding the joystick down to a hard left, I spin elegant and mindless three hundred and sixty degrees.

Jackie is saying,

"I think I upset Pepper." Jackie is working her extreme anguish expressions.  "I told Pepper that my daughter didn't want to be alone with Eddie (Jackie's brother, Pepper's husband) because she's afraid that Eddie will get violent. See Charlie, we know this other man that has Alzheimer's, just like Eddie's, and this other man with Alzheimer's, woke up one morning - this is RECENT Charlie, this other other man woke up one morning and said, 'Who are you?' and beat his wife, Charlie! So now my daughter is afraid to be alone with my brother - because of the Alzheimer's!" And when Jackie says this last phrase, she slows it down and pitches it up, like a polished Dramatic Soprano finishing off a tragic aria.

I spin in my electric chair. I go back and forth on the banal parquet floor. Jackie entertains me. Don't get me wrong, I respect Jackie, but she can often soothe as a TV would, only this TV allows for a dialectic.

"What did she say Jackie, when you told her that?"

"Charlie" she whipers, " I don't think she liked it, because she got real quiet and said she had to get off the phone, and Pepper's not like that, Charlie. And now I feel tear- rib - bull."

I stop my puerile maneuvering and consider Jackie's situation. Jackie focuses on the dishes.

After a six count I say, " Jackie, you need to be generous, and kind, and patient, and very, very brave."

"Charlie, I am kind. I go over there. I sit in that studio apartment on Barrow they've lived in for the past forty years. I go and sometimes Pepper goes out for food. But Charlie it's scary! He jumps back and forth from the present to past. And what if he starts in on me? What if he starts lecturing for my youth. I was different forty years, Charlie, but Eddie forgets that."

"Let him say what he wants Jackie, he can't get to you. You're clearly not that person anymore."

"But why must the past always be drudged up? Why can't I get away from my past? I know I did some bad things, but why must I always be forced to look at it. What is G-d doing? What is G-d up to? I just don't know Charlie, but I can't take it."

Jackie (once again) channels Blanche Dubois. She's in pain, but her love for "Street Car" is coloring her delivery.

"Jackie, if you feel bad about Pepper, call her up. Tell her how much you love and appreciate her taking care of your brother. Tell her how lucky you are to have such a good sister in law."

Jackie takes my counsel like I'm the Dalai Lama or Doctor Phil, all wide eyed and still.
(I feel like a faker - I can dish it out but I can't take it).

_______________

Jackie and I scoot around my apartment making plans for it's new no-nonsense design. I show her pictures on the web of the the ten foot long desk I'll buy. Jackie is big on not owning a thing. She recommends I get rid of the scooter, "you have a wheel chair, do you need both?" and my homely breathing machine, "do you ever use that thing? Get rid of it, you don't need it."

But in the midst of our happy planning, Jackie stops short.

"I gotta go Charlie, I gotta call Pepper."