Read Online Ellen in Pieces by Caroline Adderson - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Caroline Adderson
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L.A. dressed like a hobo.
She settled on her side and arranged her top so as not to look like a nursing sow. Or a cow. Larry hadn’t specified which farm animal. “How was the trip?”
“Exhausting,” Larry said. He stripped while Ellen watched.
“How’s your mother?”
“Good.”
“It wasn’t broken?”
“What? No. Sprained.”
“Come here,” she said.
“I really need a shower. Where is it?”
“Down the hall.”
How quickly showers became essential when for two winters he had uncomplainingly sponge-bathed in diaper water. When in summer, they’d hooked a hose to a tree.
Larry stepped out of his jeans and there it was, his cock, so longed-for and pink, seemingly innocent, like something you’d cradle in your palm and feed from a dropper. He moved toward the door. Ellen gestured severely to the clean towels folded nearby on a chair and Larry, smiling for the first time, covered his nakedness and left.
And she remembered what was so special about Charles. He had two.
Two cocks.
She got off the bed, cumbersomely, and began to gather Larry’s clothes off the floor, also cumbersomely. She sniffed the T-shirt, but it hadn’t absorbed his scent, not even in the armpits, which smelled like deodorant. Honestly, though, she was weary of pong. She wiped the door handle with a tissue, then tidied the bureau strewn with his passport and wallet and various paper scraps including his boarding pass, which she looked at twice before the inconsistency registered.
He returned, hair dripping, face shiny from Moira’s Lady Schick. Ellen was still holding the boarding pass. Strangely, she wasn’t angry, not yet.
“You didn’t even go to Florida. Is that why you didn’t want me to pick you up?”
Larry, using the towel from around his waist to dry his hair, looked like an abashed schoolboy. “I was going to tell you, babe. Really. I just thought that we should get through this party first. Can we?”
S O for the first time in more than twenty years, Ellen phoned her sister Moira. She phoned in the middle of the day, when everyone was likely to be at work. “The good news is they’ve already moved him to this other ward. For geriatric cases. It’s much, much better.”
In the psychiatric assessment ward all the other patients had been young. Jack McGinty, who would not leave his cupboard, had seemed worse off than them, except when Ellen ventured to theopen kitchen to make herself a cup of tea and saw all the apocalyptic drawings fixed to the fridge door with ladybug magnets.
Someone has spent the last thirty years trying to make me crazy and they have more or less succeeded!!!!
But yesterday the friendly nurse with all the piercings told her Jack McGinty was upstairs in the Geriatric Psychiatric Centre. Ellen found her father there, glassy-eyed but miraculously sitting up.
“Oh!” she said.
“They gave me something last night, I don’t know what. It sure worked.”
For the first time in nine weeks, he’d slept more than two consecutive hours.
When Jack McGinty was better, Ellen told Moira’s voice mail, she would put him on a plane to Calgary, if that was what he wanted. But first she needed to know what had happened to reduce him to such a state. No doubt that would set Moira screeching. She also apprised her sister of the Power of Attorney, the joint accounts, the unchanged will, so Ellen wouldn’t be accused of anything underhanded. It took three calls to say all this because she kept getting cut off.
“What do you mean by accusing us?” Moira called back to yell, not screech. (The hatred in her sister’s voice had diminished several decibels from that first call.) “Who’s been looking after him for the last twenty years? Not
you
, that’s for sure.”
“I would have,” Ellen said meekly, “if someone had told me I was allowed to.”
Moira huffed.
“You can’t have it both ways, Moira. You can’t expel me from the family then say I never helped.”
“We don’t want
She settled on her side and arranged her top so as not to look like a nursing sow. Or a cow. Larry hadn’t specified which farm animal. “How was the trip?”
“Exhausting,” Larry said. He stripped while Ellen watched.
“How’s your mother?”
“Good.”
“It wasn’t broken?”
“What? No. Sprained.”
“Come here,” she said.
“I really need a shower. Where is it?”
“Down the hall.”
How quickly showers became essential when for two winters he had uncomplainingly sponge-bathed in diaper water. When in summer, they’d hooked a hose to a tree.
Larry stepped out of his jeans and there it was, his cock, so longed-for and pink, seemingly innocent, like something you’d cradle in your palm and feed from a dropper. He moved toward the door. Ellen gestured severely to the clean towels folded nearby on a chair and Larry, smiling for the first time, covered his nakedness and left.
And she remembered what was so special about Charles. He had two.
Two cocks.
She got off the bed, cumbersomely, and began to gather Larry’s clothes off the floor, also cumbersomely. She sniffed the T-shirt, but it hadn’t absorbed his scent, not even in the armpits, which smelled like deodorant. Honestly, though, she was weary of pong. She wiped the door handle with a tissue, then tidied the bureau strewn with his passport and wallet and various paper scraps including his boarding pass, which she looked at twice before the inconsistency registered.
He returned, hair dripping, face shiny from Moira’s Lady Schick. Ellen was still holding the boarding pass. Strangely, she wasn’t angry, not yet.
“You didn’t even go to Florida. Is that why you didn’t want me to pick you up?”
Larry, using the towel from around his waist to dry his hair, looked like an abashed schoolboy. “I was going to tell you, babe. Really. I just thought that we should get through this party first. Can we?”
S O for the first time in more than twenty years, Ellen phoned her sister Moira. She phoned in the middle of the day, when everyone was likely to be at work. “The good news is they’ve already moved him to this other ward. For geriatric cases. It’s much, much better.”
In the psychiatric assessment ward all the other patients had been young. Jack McGinty, who would not leave his cupboard, had seemed worse off than them, except when Ellen ventured to theopen kitchen to make herself a cup of tea and saw all the apocalyptic drawings fixed to the fridge door with ladybug magnets.
Someone has spent the last thirty years trying to make me crazy and they have more or less succeeded!!!!
But yesterday the friendly nurse with all the piercings told her Jack McGinty was upstairs in the Geriatric Psychiatric Centre. Ellen found her father there, glassy-eyed but miraculously sitting up.
“Oh!” she said.
“They gave me something last night, I don’t know what. It sure worked.”
For the first time in nine weeks, he’d slept more than two consecutive hours.
When Jack McGinty was better, Ellen told Moira’s voice mail, she would put him on a plane to Calgary, if that was what he wanted. But first she needed to know what had happened to reduce him to such a state. No doubt that would set Moira screeching. She also apprised her sister of the Power of Attorney, the joint accounts, the unchanged will, so Ellen wouldn’t be accused of anything underhanded. It took three calls to say all this because she kept getting cut off.
“What do you mean by accusing us?” Moira called back to yell, not screech. (The hatred in her sister’s voice had diminished several decibels from that first call.) “Who’s been looking after him for the last twenty years? Not
you
, that’s for sure.”
“I would have,” Ellen said meekly, “if someone had told me I was allowed to.”
Moira huffed.
“You can’t have it both ways, Moira. You can’t expel me from the family then say I never helped.”
“We don’t want
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