The ladies are in a mood.
I can see the warning signs immediately, like prickly little flashes of heat lightning: Miss Peggy’s extra-straight posture, Lorna’s anxious hair patting, Harriet’s misapplied makeup, Alice’s inability to make eye contact with anyone or anything other than the floor.
“Hey, everyone!” I say.
“These paintbrushes are dirty,” Miss Peggy says as she sits down, holding up a handful.
“We had a kids’ birthday party in here this morning,” I say, taking them from her and heading to the sink. “I probably didn’t clean this bunch yet.”
“You could have cleaned them yourself, Pegs,” Harriet points out, and I smile since I couldn’t say it myself. But my appreciation for Harriet is short-lived. “Ugh, are we just painting boring old mugs again? I don’t need any more mugs. I have mugs coming out of my ears and mouth and—”
I interrupt before she can name any other body parts. “There are also bowls and plates,” I offer. “And some cat and dog figurines?”
“We’ve painted all those already,” Lorna says. Today she’s decked out in purples—lilacs, lavenders, grapes—with a small delicate violet brooch. “Before you got here. But that’s okay. There’re always new ways to paint old dogs!” She chuckles appreciatively at her joke and grabs one of the dog figurines. “Get it? New ways? Old dogs?”
I smile weakly, but Harriet rolls her eyes and even Miss Peggy seems offended by how bad the joke is. Lorna immediately deflates.
“Boring,” Harriet mumbles, tapping her fingers on the table, and I wonder if she’s always been this rude, or if she’s just letting it all out now that she’s older and no one’s stopping her. “Dying of boredom here.”
“We should only be so lucky,” Miss Peggy declares, snatching the newly cleaned brushes out of my hands.
God, these two are being awful. I suck in my breath, choosing to ignore them, and sit next to Alice instead.
“How about we work on this one?” I ask her, holding up a smiling ceramic flower and grabbing some bright-yellow paint. She looks harder at the floor, but I pick up the brush and start painting the petals anyway.
After ten minutes, the atmosphere in the room has gotten worse. Sure, Lorna is painting, carefully biting her lip as she coats her dog statue in an electric-blue color, but Alice seems to be getting smaller and more withdrawn by the second, actively shrinking from me each time I show her the smiling flower. Harriet has fallen asleep and is loudly snoring. Miss Peggy still hasn’t settled on a paintbrush, drying each one by hand and then holding it up to the light, insisting, “It’s very hard to work with substandard equipment.”
It pretty much stinks.
I scowl at the smiling yellow flower I’m painting and set it down on the table.
Right then, Harriet bolts awake and belts out, loudly and off-key, the opening lyrics to “Piano Man” by Billy Joel.
The interruption startles all of us.
Lorna’s hand jerks in surprise, and blue paint accidentally spatters across the dog’s face. She mutters “Drats!” right as Miss Peggy drops a handful of paintbrushes on the table. Even Alice jumps in place, the outburst is so unexpected.
“. . . play us your songs right now . . .”
“Oh, Harriet, honestly,” Lorna says, looking sadly at her ruined dog.
Miss Peggy shakes her head. “Her voice is going to give me a migraine.”
“Harriet, can you please sing more quietly?” I ask.
She ignores all of us, crooning, “We’re all in the blue for your memories . . .”
“Those aren’t even the right words!” Miss Peggy cries.
“. . . and you left us wanting you all night!” Harriet bellows, sweeping her hand dramatically across the table, knocking my smiling yellow flower onto the floor, where it breaks in half.
“Oh no,” Lorna says, sounding so dismayed as I pick up the pieces, I’m worried she might actually start crying.
Miss Peggy looks smugly at me, like, See? I told you she was trouble.
Harriet seems slightly chagrined. “I can glue it back together—”
“Argh, enough!” I stand, grabbing my phone, and walk hastily over to the stereo. I find a USB cord on the side and plug in my phone.
I can practically feel the ladies watching me through my back, waiting to see what I’m going to do next, but I don’t turn around, instead scrolling through iTunes until I find the playlist I put together for Dad’s birthday last year. It’s big-band music, but as I’m guessing no one in this room is a Taylor Swift fan, it’s the closest thing I have to anything they might like.
I hit play.
“Sing Sing Sing” by Benny Goodman starts playing, punchy and lively. I don’t always love Dad’s eclectic tastes, but this song makes me want to move, to tap and shake my hands and dance.
I turn around. “Paint this.”
“What?” Harriet wrinkles her face.
“You’re bored? Paint this. Paint this music. Go on. Let the music dictate your choices.”
Lorna looks helplessly at her dog. “You can keep painting that, Lorna, if you want. But the two of you?” I point to Harriet and Miss Peggy. “My grandma used to say only boring people get bored.”
As soon as the words leave my mouth, I worry I’ve gone too far. Even though they’re not acting like it, these are grown ladies, not the Delaney boys, and I can’t imagine Carla would take kindly to the rest home withdrawing their business because I’m being a disrespectful jerk.
But then, much to my surprise, Miss Peggy sits up straighter and pushes her sleeves back, like she’s rising to the challenge. She picks out a thin brush and a magenta paint and then begins to sweep lively loops all over a plate.
Lorna returns to painting her dog, contentedly humming as she works the misplaced splash across the face into the design.
Alice has closed her eyes, but there’s a small smile on her face as the music dances through the room.
And then I look over at Harriet, who’s nodding appreciatively at me, tapping her hand on the table with the beat. “Not bad work at all, girl,” she says, before picking up a paintbrush and an empty mug.
I fall back in the chair, exhausted with the close call, but feeling strangely proud of Harriet’s compliment. Not bad work at all.
Thirty
“I’LL TAKE TWO CHEESE Coneys, mustard, but no onions, and water,” Ruby tells the waitress.
“A Three-Way, dry, and a Diet Pepsi,” I add.
Last night, when my parents mentioned that they were attending an outdoor concert of Broadway’s Greatest Hits in Sharon Woods tonight and wouldn’t be home for dinner, I texted Ruby to see if she was free to grab Skyline Chili with me. She texted back with an immediate My parents are going to the same concert and this gives me the perfect reason not to go with them, which is good because Broadway show tunes are so earnest, they make me embarrassed, so YES YES YES!!!
The waitress drops off a bowl of oyster crackers for each of us, and Ruby turns back to me. “Harriet and Miss Peggy both liked the big-band music?”
“Yeah. Turns out I might have accidentally discovered the one thing in the world they agree on. I don’t know if Lorna is as big a fan, but she seemed happy no one was fighting.”
“That’s a really cool idea. How did the lady with Alzheimer’s do? Alice, right?”
“That’s the most amazing part. She actually picked up a paintbrush for the first time since I started! Her hand was shaky, but I helped her steady it, and she made all these tiny dots across a plate.”
“Parker, that’s really cool,” Ruby says, popping an oyster cracker in her mouth.
I try not to grin too hard, but she’s right—it’s the coolest thing I’ve been part of in ages. After the ladies left today, Carla told me, “You have a real knack for working with them, Parker.”
I wish I could tattoo her words on my arm, a reminder for when I’m not sure what I’m doing. Even now, two and a half hours later, my limbs still feel buoyant.
“How was the Float today?” I ask.