Vivian In Red Read Online Free Page B

out, The way you wear your hat, the way you sip your tea….
    It sounds wrong to me, worse than silence. I stare down at my right hand, frustrated. No one seems to get why I can barely move it. I should be able to do something or other by now, what with the therapy. And my voice, too, that therapy lady Marla keeps encouraging me to make sounds, even sing little nursery tunes like “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” but there’s nothing there. She’s trying her damndest to pretend not to be disappointed, but I’ve spent a lifetime watching people act and she’s no Ethel Barrymore.
    Some of them think I’m exaggerating somehow, or maybe just too depressed to try. I overheard my daughter-in-law Linda mention Prozac and if I could’ve, I would have laughed out loud.
    Ha, Prozac. Please, in my day you felt down you had a belt or two of Scotch and felt calmer, if maybe a headache in the morning.
    Not that Scotch is always the greatest cure, mind you, I know that from up close and personal experience.
    I drop my left hand onto the keys, a soft, pathetic, sick-sounding chord seeping into the air. They’re trying, my family. They really are. The hospital people talked them into putting a genuine hospital bed in here, as if I’m an invalid. My walking’s not so bad, thank you very much, stroke or not. My leg strength came back pretty quick in fact, which is another reason they think I might be malingering about my voice. As if I would do such a thing!
    They brought a TV in from the living room, and the old record player, so I’ve got something to do other than watch the Yankees or cable news. While still in the hospital, I saw my own collapse reported as a quick bit before cutting to commercial: Noted Broadway producer Milo Short collapsed on a Manhattan sidewalk yesterday . That made me imagine the Post headline: “SHORT NOT LONG FOR THIS WORLD?” Those schmucks can’t resist a pun.
    There’s a nurse off in the corner, a rotating clutch of them, all quiet and professional and none too chatty, of course what would I say back anyhow? I scowled and shook my head about the constant nurses, but Paul informed me the hospital wouldn’t spring me unless they knew for sure I was going to be monitored. For how long? I’d like to ask. Forever? Until I kick it? Until another stroke gets me and then I start drooling and stumbling for real, like that poor bastard Marty?
    So I guess it could be worse.
    Except it’s hard to imagine worse just now. I’m beyond mute, I’m rendered wordless entirely: speech, writing, even playing proper music, it’s all gone. Marla the therapy lady gave me a board with pictures and a pointing stick. It’s all I can do not to throw that garbage across the room; it’s infantile, something you’d give a clever chimpanzee, and yet even that seems to confound me, somehow.
    The family has begun to talk past me, over me, as if I’m deaf, for that matter. I saw this with poor Marty after his stroke. He was alert as ever—I could see the spark in his eyes—but he was so impaired they treated him after a while like a potted plant. I never was great at praying, and maybe praying for someone to die is wrong, but I did it anyhow, then. I felt like he wanted me to.
    I put my left hand on the keys again, trying something slower. I hope that he turns out to be…
    “Someone to watch… over me….” Eleanor laughs as her voice cracks over the “watch.” I turn on the piano bench to see her coming over to me. I finish the musical phrase with as much panache as I can.
    “I’m no great singer, am I, Grampa Milo?” She comes to settle next to me on the piano bench. I shrug and wave my hand side to side: eh, not bad. It’s true. All us Shorts have sturdy, serviceable voices with a range of about six notes.
    “Should I play the right hand for you? I think I can manage that.” She looks around a moment and remembers. “Oh, you always play by ear. That’s something I cannot manage, sadly. Maybe we’ll find