Vivian In Red Read Online Free

so get to it already.”
    Daniel had already taken his things, which we’d arranged in one brief, brittle phone conversation. I’d arranged to be out at a show so he’d have several hours. When I came back to the apartment—really Uncle Paul’s place, he lets me live here at a laughably low token rent—and saw it denuded of my ex’s scripts, leather jacket, books, and vinyl records he never played but liked to thumb through, I sighed, dusted my hands, and thought, that’s that. This wasn’t painless for me, of course, but had anyone seen me, they might have thought so. Daniel has accused me more than once of too easily shutting down. I could never convince him that some people—those of us not actors, those of us not show-offy hams who advertise every fleeting emotion to the world—feel things quietly, internally. I feel plenty, I just don’t feel it’s everybody’s goddamn business.
    Now I’d gone and ripped off this particular scab by calling Daniel because Grampa had a stroke. But else could I do? When everything goes wrong, you reach for those who know you best, who know you at your worst.
    Here in my empty, quiet apartment, I stroke the glass of my late father’s watch, torn in two by my equal impulses to fly to Grampa Milo’s side, and to hide under the bed rather than go into another hospital. My father should have died at home, in hospice care, but the cancer played a mean trick and jumped out and got him when we weren’t expecting it. As if cancer wasn’t bad enough all by itself.
    “This isn’t the same, and Grampa needs me,” I remind myself out loud, my voice ringing hollow in the still air. And so I am moving with determination and speed now, as if I could outrun the death of my father, as if I wouldn’t carry the memory with me all the way to Lenox Hill.

    I stare at the brick across 77 th Street until the mortar lines start to waver and look like something out of Escher. I half-wish I still smoked so I could have a reason to be out here in the heavy July heat, instead of in the artificial cold next to Grampa Milo’s hospital bed.
    But nausea had been crawling through my guts and my hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Clenching or relaxing, either way made it worse. In my twenty-three years, I had plenty of experience with older generations putting a brave spin on things for my benefit, but staring into Grampa Milo’s confused face, I saw this privilege would be afforded me no longer. He was letting me see his fear; he’d never looked so sick and lost. When Naomi and her husband, Joshua, swooped in a few minutes ago, I made a dash for the outside, just for a bit, just to breathe and think.
    Over my left shoulder appears a shadow I can’t ignore, so I look up into the soft brown eyes of my cousin Joel, who snuck up on me so quick he might have grown up out of the sidewalk.
    “You okay?”
    “I guess.”
    My doctor-cousin, biggest success story of all the Short progeny, puts on his “reassurance face.” “He’s going to be fine, we think. His vitals are good.”
    “I know. You said. So why can’t he talk?”
    “The CT scan indicates an embolic stroke, and there’s an area of deficit around the infarct that appears to be causing his expressive aphasia.”
    “For God’s sake, Joel.”
    “Sorry. He had a stroke which is keeping him from speaking. That’s what aphasia means. He can think of the word but can’t get it out. The stroke also affected motor control; in this case his right hand and leg are weak, especially the hand.”
    “Oh, my God. Will he ever be able to write again?”
    “We hope so. He’s a tough old gent, and therapy can help him get these things back.”
    “Even at eighty-eight?”
    “I’ve seen it before.”
    “Now what happens?”
    “He has to see the neurologist, and all the various therapists will come in to see him. A speech path, physical therapist, occupational therapist, et cetera. They want to evaluate him and determine placement.”
    “Placement