After dinner, me and Grandma helped Mom with her lines which made Mom laugh so hard she peed a small amount, a teaspoonful. Grandma drank two glasses of William’s homemade plonk. I was nervous that it would make her start talking about the doctors killing everyone but it just made her dramatic. When she read Jack’s lines she stood up from the table while Mom was laughing her head off to say: “I kiss you, but it’s as though my kisses hurtle off a cliff. You take off your clothes, but you’re not naked. What can we do, then? What will happen?”
Then Grandma said, Oh that reminds me, that reminds me! She had another story of epic nudity. One Christmas centuries ago Grandma was young and squatting on the sixth floor of an auto parts warehouse in West Berlin that was right beside the Wall. You know the Wall, Swiv, the Wall! （No, I don’t.） And she looked out the window into East Berlin and saw a young German soldier all by himself marching around with this giant coat that was too big for him and his giant rifle dangling awkwardly off his little shoulder. Grandma watched him for a while until she could get his attention and then she waved and he waved back and smiled and stopped marching. Grandma breathed on the glass and wrote Fr?hilche Weihnachten in the steam backwards for the soldier to read and then the soldier hastily spelled out a message of his own to Grandma in the snow which was Ich bin ein Gefangener des Staates and then she slowly took off all her clothes while he stood there by himself in the dusky square with light snow falling and all his heavy artillery and coat and little shoulders. When she was totally naked she curtsied, and then the soldier blew her kisses and clapped and they waved goodbye. Mom said, Oh my god, that is INSANE! I thought so too but not in the way the two of them thought it was but in the way you go to a locked-up hospital with guards. Well, I was young, said Grandma. I’m young and I don’t do that, I said. Not yet, said Grandma. It’s a memory now. I wonder if the soldier remembers that night. Mom got up and hugged Grandma. I’m sure he does, she said.
2.
This morning the curtain to Mom’s bedroom, which is really a living room, which is why there isn’t a normal door, was torn off the curtain rod. The curtain rod was torn off the wall, the remote control was smashed and the battery was gone, the hairbrush handle was broken from being thrown at the cutlery thing in the kitchen, the cutlery thing in the kitchen was chipped from having the hairbrush thrown at it and the necklace that you gave her with our initials on it was ripped into a million pieces which in addition to hearing aid batteries, Grandma’s pills, Amish farm puzzle pieces and conchigliettes I now have to crawl around and pick up. It’s a good thing I can’t go to school anymore so I have all day for picking up everybody’s shit.
Before Mom went to rehearsal she grabbed me and pinned my head to her rib cage. I couldn’t escape. She said I’m sorry! I’m sorry! It was about her rampage. I made a joke but she wanted me to take it all seriously. It was too disturbing to take seriously. You’re up the stump, Mom, I said, you’re on an emotional rollercoaster! Were you talking to dad? I asked. Something like that, she said. Something like dad or something like talking, I said. She said, Something like all of that.
Mom told me and Grandma that she was going to a Russian spa and teahouse with someone in the cast after rehearsal today where she would be whipped with branches to get her blood flowing. Jack? I said. No, not Jack, she said. Jack is a character, Swiv! Be careful, Gord, I said silently. Mom said she wouldn’t sit in the hot tub because of Gord. Grandma said it was funny that a hundred years ago we—which doesn’t mean we—had narrowly escaped getting whipped and murdered by Russians and now Mom was voluntarily paying big bucks to get whipped and murdered by Russians. But she gets tea afterwards, I said. Mom said she’d prefer hot vodka although not this time because of Gord, who gets blamed for preventing Mom from doing every fun thing in life. Don’t smoke! I yelled at her. Then Mom opened the door and said what the hell is this? Grandma and I yelled RAIN at the same time. Mom stomped around looking for an umbrella that wasn’t broke to shit and Grandma called out, Bye! See you in the funny papers!
Today Grandma is feeling dizzy when she bends over. So don’t bend over! I said. She said she finally had an excellent bowel movement. It’s been six days. It’s not a record. What’s your record, Grandma? Ecuador in ’74 was a record. She asked me if I’d heard anything about the divine feminine. She said she should bring her crossword puzzle into the washroom with her more often. She couldn’t find her glasses or her address book. I held them up to her face. They were on the table in front of her. Well, of all things! I’m not with it today!