Full of Grace (10 page)

“Hi, Nonna,” I said. “You’re looking pretty spry for someone with a cracked hip. How are you feeling?”

“I’m going to miss my story and Julie Barr is going to a big party today. I have to see her dress! You understand, don’t you,
bella
? Now fix this for me.
Prego!
”

Even though I never watched the soaps, I knew what she was talking about. Nonna had watched
All My Children
and
General Hospital
since before I was born. I changed the station and Nonna smiled.

“Now give me one of those doughnuts so I can enjoy my story!”

“Okay, okay. Let me get some napkins, Nonna.”

“Wash your hands, Graziana. There are germs everywhere, especially in this filthy place.”

I stepped into Nonna’s little bathroom and I could hear her warming up her rant.

“Your mother wants to put me in the nursing home, Grace! Did you hear me? A nursing home! I knew this would happen! I knew it!”

“Hush, Ma, you know that’s not true,” I heard my mother say.

“You don’t tell me what to do! Where’s your respect? I heard you talking to that nurse!”

I hurried out of the bathroom and back to Nonna’s side and took her hand, patting the back of it.

“Nonna, I think what we have to do is get your doctor and your
physical therapist in here and get the facts, okay? I’ll be right back. You just stay cool for a few minutes, okay? Promise?”

Nonna exhaled the rancid breath of someone who had brushed their teeth hours ago and since then had consumed many cups of strong coffee. The caffeine probably wasn’t helping her mood either and I would bring that up with the doctor. I went to the nurses’ station; there was a zaftig but saintly woman behind the counter who looked up when I approached.

“Francesca Todero’s granddaughter, I presume?”

“Yeah, hi. I’m Grace Russo. Um, listen, is there some way that we could get my grandmother’s doctor and physical therapist together in one room to talk about my grandmother’s rehab?”

“I think our padded room is booked, but I can see about the visitors’ lounge for y’all. How’s that? I’ll be glad to make the phone calls for you. She’s a real spitfire, isn’t she?”

“Is she giving you a hard time?”

“Not me, honey. I’m the nurse that hands out the pain meds. She’s a sweet little lamb when she sees me coming. And when she goes to rehab—and she
will
go—I’ll look out for her there, too. I’m over there on my days off. Two kids in college!”

“Got it! Thanks.”

The nurse, whose name tag read
N. Divine, RN,
gave the half chuckle of one in charge and I smiled and shook my head, knowing exactly what she meant. When you had something Nonna wanted, she was the living embodiment of heaven’s sweetest, most radiant angel, with gossamer wings and the scent of paradise all around her. When you aggravated her and she didn’t want what you were selling—in this case, a short stint of rehab in a dreaded nursing home—she would curse you in Italian and gesture so wildly that you knew your grandchildren would be born with disfiguring warts and uneven limbs. Trolls. Your grandchildren would be trolls. You were well advised to weigh your odds and gauge your battle strategy to minimize your own wounds and those of your progeny. An argument with her was not one to be taken up on a whim. I made my case to Nurse Divine and it was short and sweet.

“Do you have a moment?”

“Sure.”

“Well, here’s the story…”

I told her about Nonna’s phobia regarding, nursing homes…

“She thinks they’re like Roach Motels—the roaches check in but they never check out?”

“I remember that ad,” she said.

I told her about Nonna’s fear of abandonment and that nursing homes just weren’t the old-world Italian way of doing things, that your grandmother stayed in the hospital until she was well. Nursing homes were the biggest
disgrazia
that could happen to an Italian because it meant you had nobody who loved you, and what did it say to live a whole life and have nobody who loved you? That there was something terrible going on, that’s what.

Nurse Divine understood perfectly.

“And your little skinny mother is supposed to bathe her and dress her and perform her physical therapy? And your little skinny mother is supposed to judge how well she’s coming along? I don’t think so.”

“You got it. My father and my grandmother would wear my mother out and never suffer a moment’s guilt about it. It’s a daughter’s duty to take care of her mother even if she’s not qualified and even if it’s not a realistic situation.”

The divine Nurse Divine shook her head. “I hate that attitude, but it happens every day, Grace. However, don’t you worry. I’ll do my best, okay?”

“Good. Thanks. I mean it.”

“Glad to help. Now, did I see a box of Krispy Kremes in your hands?”

“I’ll be right back.”

If all it took was a couple of doughnuts to get my mother off the nursemaid/private-slave hook—no, the giant
flying gaff
my father had her hanging from—then Nurse Divine would be drowning in glaze, sprinkles and cream filling. I made a mental note to tell Mom to buy a box of a dozen bribes for every day Nonna remained in this place.

When I returned with two glazed beauties on a napkin, Nurse Divine was on the phone. “Hold on,” she said, and smiled from ear to ear
when she saw what I had for her. She whispered, “I’m on the phone with her caseworker.”

We gave each other the okay signal and I went back to Nonna’s room.

Nonna wasn’t going to be completely happy about it, but she wasn’t going to terrorize my mother. She was going to a nursing home just for rehabilitation, not forever.

T
he sprinkler company had come, done their work, left a detailed bill in the mailbox and gone on to their next job. Mom was a little bit amazed that she hadn’t had to sit there and hold a vigil until they showed up and then stand over them to ensure that they did the job right.

“If they didn’t really, really clean the sprinkler heads, Al will throw a fit,” she said in a worried voice.

“Well, then, let’s go have a look and see,” I said.

It was noon and we had come home for a bite of lunch and planned to go back to see Nonna around two.

“I’ll get us a glass of tea,” she said.

We walked around the yard inspecting the work, and overall the crew had done a fine job, only missing one or two sprinkler heads that we simply cleaned ourselves with the toothpicks Mom produced from her pocket. I had to admire her advance tactical thinking—she wasn’t going to take any more grief than was absolutely necessary. There had been a broken pipe in one zone, but that was all fixed, too. She evened out the dirt around it with her hands and spread the ground cover here and there to disguise the fact that a little surgery had been performed in the area of Big Al’s blue myrtle.

“You worry too much, Mom,” I said. “Let’s go make some tomato sandwiches.”

We were sitting at the kitchen table eating and I was fooling around with her new cell phone.

“Ma, look. Here’s the ring tone for Dad.” I pressed a button and it played “That’s Amore.” “And here’s mine.” It played the same song I had for her when she called me: “Over the Rainbow.” “So every time you hear this coming out of your purse, you’ll know it’s me. And if it plays Italian music, you’ll know it’s Dad. It’s simple, really.”

“And all I have to do is recharge it on this gizmo?” She held up the long wire.

“Yeah, but you gotta
remember
to recharge it, so let’s find a place where you can leave it. Where do you put your purse when you come in the house?”

“In my bedroom, on my dresser.”

I found a plug behind her dresser and plugged it in, anchoring the plug around the bottom of a statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

“That’s sacrilegious,” Connie said.

“Oh, it is not,” I said, and smiled. “For all the statues you have in this house, at least let one of them do a little something to help you out.”

My mother gasped and then she looked sheepish.

“What?” I said.

“Nonna would never approve,” she said, and attempted to hide the wire.

“Can I ask you a question without you thinking that I’m being fresh?”

“Sure.”

“How old do you have to be before you can stop living your life trying to please your mother?”

“I guess it depends on who the mother is.”

“Good answer, but in this case, you
do
realize that you will
never
please Nonna, don’t you?”

“It’s the price I pay for being the one she lives with, I guess. Familiarity breeds contempt.”

“That’s pretty lame, don’t you think? I mean, you take care of her, and that gives her the right to pick at you all the time? Mom, we have
to talk about this. I thought the Fourth of July was completely out of control.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Mom, Nonna and Dad act like they own you for the pleasure of kicking you around. I mean, maybe you’re just so used to it you don’t notice it anymore, but everyone else does.”

“Oh, honey, I don’t care…”

“Even Frank and Regina had a few words to say about how Dad and Nonna acted toward you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look, let’s start with this whole thing about Nonna’s hip. You wash the floor every Monday and Thursday night after supper since I can remember, right?”

“Well, sometimes there’s a special novena on the first Thursday of the month. I go down to St. Francis—”

“Okay, okay. But
usually
the world can set its watch by when Connie Russo’s kitchen floor is wet, correct?”

“Except now I have this Swiffer—”

“Yeah, I got one, too. So it’s actually less wet, right?”

“Yeah, maybe. So?”

“So she
knew
the floor would be damp or wet! How is that
your
fault?”

“She says I should’ve told her to watch where she was walking. I mean, she’s probably right. I heard her coming and I didn’t say anything.”

I could hardly believe my ears. It was so completely ridiculous.

“You know what? I think it is incredibly frustrating to be you, Mom. Because you can’t win. If the floor is wet and you do warn her, Nonna could say she didn’t hear you because she’s deaf. We all know she’s capable of throwing blame your way for any and everything. If she had slipped in the bathroom, she might have said you put the wrong bath mat down and it wasn’t flat enough or something—it had a wrinkle. She’s got you reduced to something like a punching bag. She sits in Dad’s chair, barks orders to you and you hop.”

“Oh, come on. Listen, Grace, the worst thing is for an old person to
feel like a burden. She’s my mother, you know? I mean, I want her to feel like this is her house, and yes, I know she’s a little overbearing. And I know that she’s very critical of me. But you have to understand, Grace, she comes from another world, where the mother is the queen of the family and her word is law. And I honestly think she just wants me to be the best wife and mother that I can be.”

“Sorry, Connie. I’m not buying that.” I searched my mother’s face and got the same placid look she always had—her shield. “There’s something else between you two and I don’t know what it is, but it’s not good. It’s almost like she doesn’t trust you to choose which tomato to pick from the garden.”

My mother became tense and I could tell from her voice and from the position of her shoulders that she was going to tell me the least amount possible to get through this conversation. “Oh, it’s not so bad. Really. It’s not.”

“Mom, can I ask you something else?” Not that I thought she had the slightest intention of giving me a truthful answer or that she would share a confidence with me.

“Of course.”

“Are you and Daddy happy? I mean, are you in love with each other?”

At the moment it seemed like the most outrageous question anyone had ever asked her. Without warning, there came forth the greatest sigh of all Connie Russo’s sighs, which no doubt whooshed the butterflies on the west coast of Africa all the way to Beijing. We looked at each other for a moment and then we laughed, each of us for a litany of our own reasons.

“He’s impossible,” I said, realizing that whether she and my father were in love or not was a matter of no consequence.

“Of course I love him, Grace!”

“He means well,” I said, knowing that they loved each other in a way that was enough for them. Needless to say, it was a love that never would have been enough for me.

“He’s a devil, you know.”

“Mom? Are you about to reveal something I don’t know?”

“Listen, you tell this and I’ll never tell you another thing.”

“Pinkies to the sky, Ma. Spill it.”

“Okay. You know that gentlemen’s club over near the border of South Carolina and Georgia? Oh, I guess it was early last December. I was on the way to Savannah for a holiday house-and-garden tour and I saw his truck and two other trucks of his in the parking lot.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

“Nope. It was payday.”

“Wait a minute. Are you telling me that my holier-than-thou father, Big Al, takes the guys to a titty bar on payday?”

“Watch your mouth! But yep. Isn’t that nasty?”

“Oh, great! Yeah, it’s nasty, but it’s also pretty juvenile! What are they doing…looking at a bunch of crackhead losers pole-dancing in their skanky thongs? It reminds me of when Nicky was little and he used to watch reruns of
I Dream of Jeannie
! You had to peel him off the television.”

“Right?”

“The perfect woman with a gorgeous body who calls you ‘master’ and never disagrees with you about anything. And when you get tired of her you can stick her back in a bottle.”

“Oh, well. Look, your father was good to marry me and all these years we’ve had a good life. He’s nice to my mother and I never had to work…what more could I want?”

I looked at my watch. It was almost two.

“I don’t know.”
A lot,
I thought,
you could’ve wanted and probably had a lot more
. Like some respect for starters. But there was no point in bringing that up then. “We had better get going. I told the head nurse we wanted to talk to Nonna’s doctors and her physical therapist or whoever she could produce this afternoon, so we had better get moving. I don’t want to miss them.” I took our plates and glasses and put them in the dishwasher.

Mom put her new cell phone in her purse and stood. “Grace. We have to talk about this. Nonna is not going to go to a nursing home.”

“Mom, here’s the plan. The medical team is going to make that decision right in front of all of us. You are not going to be the bad guy on
this one. We are going to listen to them tell all of us what Nonna needs and then we will all decide what is in Nonna’s best interest, okay?”

“Oh, Lord. I wish Al was going to be there.”

“No, you don’t. Because he would just bulldoze them and dump the whole thing in your lap and I really think—no, I
know
that this is too big for you to handle. So let’s go.”

We took separate cars because I fully intended to drive back to Charleston after we had thoroughly investigated Nonna’s options and hopefully drawn some conclusions. It didn’t go as easily as I had hoped it would.

When we arrived, Nonna’s caseworker was standing by her bed with her physical therapist. Her surgeon wasn’t available, so these two had to suffice for the moment. The caseworker was holding Nonna’s hand and her therapist was rubbing her feet.

“See? Here’s my granddaughter and her mother now!” Nonna said.

And her mother
? It didn’t ring right to my ears. But many things they said to each other didn’t sound right to me. Nonna had fallen into a kind of broken English, an indicator of her distress.

“I tell this nice ladies that I no need no more exercise. No more! Today I walked a little bit with her and I’ll be fine when I get home. See my strong daughter?” My mom cringed and never looked more like a ninety-six-pound weakling. “She can help me! I no need nobody, no strangers pushing my poor legs up and down. They working just fine. I just need some of those nice pills.”

“Hi!” I said. “I’m Grace Russo and this is my mother, Connie.”

“Pleased to meet you, Grace,” the caseworker said. “We’ve met your mother. It’s nice to see you again, Mrs. Russo.”

“Thanks,” Mom said.

“Well, how’s my grandmother doing?”

“She’s doing really well, but she’s going to need physical therapy and I’m afraid she doesn’t want it.”

“That’s right,” Nonna said, wagging her finger. “I really told them—”

I politely put my finger up to my lips with a polite smile directed at Nonna to politely shut the hell up. Politely.

“So what would happen if she didn’t have any physical therapy and we just took her home?”

“Well, that’s hard to say, but I don’t think that’s a good idea,” the therapist said.

“You don’t?” Mom said. I could see the edges of relief in Mom’s jaw muscles.

“Yeah, because no matter how well intentioned the family is, the exercises the patient needs…well, they just never happen. I mean, your mother doesn’t want to do them now. If you take her home, you can forget about it ever happening.”

“What if we took her to therapy? What’s that like?”

“Well, here’s how therapy usually goes. We’re probably going to start with crutches and move up to a walker as quickly as possible.”

“Oh, no! I’m not gonna be one of those pity old people with the walker! I no want to be no cripple!” Nonna was getting agitated.

“Mrs. Todero, you won’t be! That’s the promise of therapy!”

“I’m no gonna do this! Where’s my Al?”

Nonna’s voice was about two octaves too loud.

“Shh. He’s working, Ma,” Mom said to her. “He’ll be here later.”

“We just want to be sure she has her bearings and that she’s steady on her feet. Then we do exercises to regain flexibility in the hip and build stamina. The therapist will help you navigate going up and down steps, get in and out of a car, the shower—those kinds of things.”

“My daughter will do this for me!”

My mother turned away from her mother’s face and looked anxiously at me and then the caseworker.

“Nonna, please let us hear what they have to say, okay?” I said. “Nobody is deciding anything this minute. I promise.”

“Gesú Cristo, I think I’m gonna die right here, right now! I saw Nonno last night! He was right where you’re standing, Connie! He’s coming for me! I know it! Oh! I can’t breathe…ah! Ah!” She began to hyperventilate.

Nonna was surely going to get a nomination for best actress of the year. The therapist and caseworker rang for the nurse and tried to get her to calm down. When the nurse arrived almost immediately and saw
what was happening, she gave Nonna a little shot of something that calmed her in no time. Personally, I think she’d had the syringe prepared from the minute we passed her desk. In fact, she would be well advised to keep one loaded for the duration of Nonna’s stay.

We made the smart decision to move our summit to the guest lounge.

“She is really terrified of nursing homes, isn’t she?” the caseworker said.

“She thinks that’s where old people go to die,” Mom said.

“Well, some do,” the therapist said, “but I suspect she’ll put you in your early grave if you take her home. Unless you’re a nurse and a therapist, I don’t know how you could possibly begin to handle the care she’s going to need. And still, she’s not exactly as light as a feather, is she?”

“What are our options?” I said.

“Well, she can be moved to our rehab facility on Lamotte Drive, which is absolutely brand-new, and in ninety days they’ll have your grandmother dancing. Or you can take her home and bring in private nurses and health-care aides and bring her to see the physical therapists at the Life Care Center on an outpatient basis with one of those little ambulances to trot her back and forth. Expensive, and for a whole host of reasons, it never really works out as well for the patient. Or you can take her home and try to do this yourself, which would not be the best choice for her sake or yours.”