1. Luck Be a Lady Named Isla
Luck Be a Lady Named Isla
HENRY
I carried two plates of contraband through the Sunshine Meadows Nursing Home and Care Facility dining room. The steaming meals liberally spread the scent of homemade turkey and stuffing-from-the-bird around, making Great Aunt Isla and me the envy of every resident within a certain radius.
Ahead of us, a piece of computer paper had the words NO OUTSIDE FOOD OR BEVERAGES IN THE DINING ROOM printed on it in red type so big and bright even the most seeing-impaired residents could read it.
“Are you sure we shouldn’t eat these leftovers back in your apartment?” I asked, afraid I was going to get thrown in nursing home jail.
“And miss all the priceless expressions on the faces of my peers? Fat chance,” she said, swanning over to her usual table.
It was a wooden four-top near a big picture window looking out on the barely-cared-for garden.
Every other table in the room was circular and seated eight, which was a ploy to keep the elderly from isolating during meals, but Great Aunt Isla was not one to insert herself.
Great Aunt Isla didn’t go in search of socialization.
Even at the ripe age of eighty-five, socialization fell at her feet.
Illustrated by how as soon as we sat, an older white gentleman named Kent with tufts of hair sprouting out of his ears shuffled over with inquiries.
“I didn’t see that on the menu today.” He eyed the plate I set down in front of Great Aunt Isla, which was overflowing with mashed potatoes and dripping at the edges with cranberry sauce.
Great Aunt Isla’s lips—painted a vibrant red, her signature shade—tipped up into the sweetest of smiles.
“Oh, Kent. Get yourself a grandnephew like Henry, and you’ll never have to eat the so-called food they serve here again.
” With that, she slipped her vintage designer purse onto the seat next to her, a subtle sign that Kent was unwelcome to sit, linger, or share in her meal.
Unfortunately for Kent, he didn’t immediately take the hint. “My grandbabies are all out West. Couldn’t we share young Henry?”
“Hi, Kent,” I greeted amiably, trying to make up for Great Aunt Isla’s slight standoffishness.
She’d spent too many days in her room watching old Greta Garbo movies on TCM and now she carried herself with the air of a studio-system starlet.
You’d have never known her health was anything less than stellar through the veneer of her Oscar-worthy performance.
Great Aunt Isla batted her naturally long eyelashes and said, “I’m selfish. I keep my men to myself.” The irony here being that she was a fierce, femme lesbian. Always had been.
This time, Kent got the memo. “Humph. You wouldn’t want kitchen management getting word that you’re bringing outside food into the dining room, would you?” He pointed a shriveled finger toward the sign.
“Humph,” Great Aunt Isla parroted. “You wouldn’t want Shirley to find out that you went to bingo with Gwen on Tuesday night while she was away visiting her family, would you?”
Bested, Kent sighed. “Enjoy your meal.”
He shuffled away, but very slowly, which made the whole situation more awkward.
It was remarkable how like high school a nursing home could be.
“Speaking of bingo, we’ve got thirty minutes to lick these plates clean before we have to be in the rec room.
Shirley thinks she’s psychic and gets there early to divinate with the cards or some such nonsense.
I want to pick mine out before she communes with them all. ”
I cut up a piece of dark turkey meat and stuffed it in my mouth to keep from commenting. If I constantly chewed, maybe she wouldn’t ask me any questions about Thanksgiving dinner. But I knew better than to assume we needed empty mouths and our words to communicate after all these years.
What happened at Thanksgiving that’s got you so quiet, doll? she asked, using only the upward trajectory of her wispy eyebrows and the piercing gaze of her milky-blue eyes.
I looked down at the fourth finger on my left hand. Despite her age and her backsliding health, Great Aunt Isla read me like a Hollywood gossip rag. “No! Alexa?”
I nodded, unable to look up for fear defeat was standing over our table in black robes with a scythe ready to chop me down to size. My younger cousin’s name brought with it a foreboding rain cloud I never had an umbrella for.
“To Sid the Soap Man?” Great Aunt Isla’s tone toggled downward.
The polite iciness she’d used with Kent blew away on the dense shaft of dry, slightly smelly heat spitting down from the vent directly over my head.
Isla refused to sit on this side of the table ever, and I lived to please her, so I suffered the inevitable chapped lips.
“I guess if they can pass grass off as soap, they can do anything,” she said, referring to their thriving joint business venture.
They ran a soap kiosk at the mall and an online shop.
“It’s hemp. Not grass,” I said, even though I had little reason to defend Alexa. She chose soap and Sid over me, over our lifetime of friendship. Was I doomed to be everyone’s second choice?
“The law may differentiate, doll, but science says otherwise.” She scooped up a forkful of corn, but her hand shook so badly on the way to her mouth that she lost half of it to the floor.
I pretended not to notice. Just like I pretended not to notice how loud and ragged her breathing sounded despite her refusal to go on oxygen as suggested.
“Weren’t you going to propose to Cam on Christmas? ”
“I was,” I said, my heart a torpedo escaping my sternum. My right hand swirled my fork through the soupy potatoes while I bemoaned another relationship lost.
Cam had wavy chestnut-colored hair, one dimple, a high-paying job as a nurse practitioner at a dermatologist’s office, and was about to buy a house. He was about to have a husband, too, until he decided I didn’t fit the bill. Or I did, but only one part of it.
Exactly a month prior, the Tuesday before Halloween, Cam took the day off.
I’d walked upstairs from the shop to surprise Cam with a takeout lunch from the place he liked around the corner only to find him spread-eagle on our sofa with a man named Sam.
Cam and Sam spread-eagling on the sofa in the living room.
It was like the winning combination in a game of perverted Clue, only I was the one who got an axe to the heart.
At first, I backed out of the room hoping they hadn’t heard me, but I shut the door just a tad too hard. Through the door, the unfamiliar voice asked, “What was that?”
Sheepishly, I returned, a fire in my belly but no words to match.
Cam was back in his underwear, saying, “I didn’t expect you so early.”
Sam—a friend of a friend whom we’d had over for a dinner party when Cam moved in with me several months prior—wriggled back into his sweatpants. V lines raced up and away from the waistband, drawing more attention to the marbled perfection of his hairless torso.
I hugged my arms to my soft sides. My body paled in comparison.
I never was mannequin fit, runway ready.
I wore a perpetual work-in-progress sign around my neck, which garnered me stares at the gay bars and pool parties Cam had dragged me to over the summer where I drank too much and talked to no one.
But I thought Cam liked my body and my nerdy side.
I thought he liked my artistry and my awkwardness.
I was a socially anxious tortoise that often slunk into his shell after work hours.
Cam was the sleek, hard-to-get hare—an athletic showoff habitually hunted when we went out on the town by the prime-beef predators above me on the food chain.
I thought he liked that I was different .
Silly me for believing that opposites attract when I’d caught him feasting on more of the same .
The conversation that followed was blotted out in my memory. My brain was a plugged-in hair dryer dropped into the bathtub. Smoke and fire and chaos, but no distinguishable words except—
“I think you’re more interested in perfection than a partner,” he said before following after Sam.
The thwack of the door shutting stilled my heart and started up the tears.
“Beauty, Alexa has in droves. Tact, not so much,” said Great Aunt Isla, snapping me back to the dining room, where college students bustled about clearing plates and refilling glasses of unsweetened iced tea. “I’m sorry you’re going through it, doll.”
I shrugged and stuffed my mouth again even though I had no appetite for the leftovers.
The taste of cranberry sauce churned my stomach and reminded me of the filmy mouthfeel I got when I watched Sid get down on one knee in front of the entire family.
In front of my pumpkin pie, really? I froze, haunted by the unreturnable engagement ring I had buried in the back of my underwear drawer.
“Men suck,” I said.
“That’s certainly why I never liked them,” she said.
It was supposed to be my year. The holiday season where the Aster family singleton brought home a boy.
Somehow, I blew it with weeks left to go.
“Sometimes I wish I were born into a different family. One that didn’t feel like a constant replay of the couples interviews in When Harry Met Sally… ” I bemoaned.
Every Aster had a partner. Every Aster had a sweet, sprawling love story they’d wistfully share over cups of decaf coffee at holiday meals. All I had was a failing vintage store, a cat I’m allergic to, and all the leftover turkey because “you don’t have anyone to cook for you.”
“Don’t say that. If you weren’t an Aster, you wouldn’t have me,” she said.
“Good point. I’ll stay just like you. Single and fabulous until the end.” I flashed her a smile. “By the way, how are you feeling?”