The Day I Took my Mother to her Assisted Living Interview

I got to her apartment at nine. The interview was scheduled for eleven. We had an hour and a half drive ahead of us. She was sitting in front of her make-up mirror putting on lipstick, wearing only shoes, her green sneakers, but no pants. She had become ornery lately, having fallen and broken two ribs the week before while pushing her shopping cart around town. After that, she got a urinary tract infection and became the usual three headed rattlesnake until after the first two doses of Cipro. I was holding my breath that everything would go smoothly that day.

She wasn't budging until she found the right hat and right bag. I'm looking at the clock and holding hats up one by one.

I said, "We better get going." 
"NO!" she bellowed, "I have to decide which bag. Bring me those two. No. Over there, over THERE!" 
She placed both bags across her arm, one after the other, again and again, finally choosing the brown one.
I said, "Good. Let's get going." 
She continued to sit until finished with her explanation as to why she wasn't taking the bigger bag.

I got her in the car and off we went. She seemed better at that point and I began to feel a little more hopeful whereas I hadn't before.

She said, "Now, they are going to ask me what day it is, I know they will. What day is it?" 

"It's Wednesday, September third," I said. "September third," she said, "Now how am I going to remember that?" 

We had been talking about the three sisters that lived near her childhood home in Tennessee. After the middle sister died, the older sister propped her up on their living room couch and apparently forced the younger one to keep feeding her and pretend the middle sister was still alive. A few weeks later the postman smelled something while putting letters in their mailbox and called the Sheriff. 

"Why yes, the three sisters and it's September the third," she said. "I can remember that."

I also told her what they were going to ask on the mini mental status exam, the counting backwards from one hundred by sevens part. She practiced but didn't get too much farther than 93. 

After that, she pulled out her compact mirror, lifted a little tube of brown putty from her purse and began applying that to her face, examining herself from different angles and talking all the while. She was upset she had to rush in applying her makeup. 

She started talking about her own mother, how her mother had been really nasty to her whenever she got her period as a little girl. . .

Then she became a little suspicious of what they might do to her at the assisted living facility. In the Emergency Room that week they started an IV, she yanked it out, threw her hat at the nurse and called her a bitch.

I told her it was going to be like an audition and that she had to be on her best behavior and couldn't start giving them shit until after she was accepted. She changed the subject.

As it turns out, she was accepted. And she really liked the place because there was a Rite Aid pharmacy across the street. 

"Look at that Rite Aid," she'd say, pointing out her window. And she liked the mushroom soup they served her in the restaurant downstairs.

French Quarter, Johnny Whites, '83

One night, during the summer of 1983, Ginger Rose and I visited Johnny White's on St. Peter street, in the French Quarter.
We started out at Tyler's Beer Garden on Magazine where Ginger waitressed. The sun was shining all that afternoon and I was eating fresh oysters and drinking beer out of long neck bottles. They'd shuck you a dozen for three dollars in those days and you could make your own sauce with the horseradish and Worcestershire they had on hand. On that particular afternoon, I found a pearl in an oyster shell and gave it to Ginger Rose.
"Oh my gawwwwd, oh my gawwwwd, oh my gawwwd, I can't believe yew! I want to go to the Quarter, man, and drink Schnapp's," she said. "I want to drink Schnapp's ALL NIGHT LONG, MAN!"
I wanted to drink Schnapps too but, at that moment, I was drinking cold ones and eating oysters. Preoccupied.
After Ginger got off, we had shots of tequila on the house. It turned out Ginger's roommate was the bartender! After that, we headed down to the Quarter, stopping off at a bar below Lee Circle on St. Charles and had Pabst Blue Ribbons and shots of Schnapps.
I was genuinely excited. A week before I had been in Johnny Whites when two men started firing guns at each other, one at the end of the bar by the street, the other all the way down by the telephone booth. The man on the street side owned a bunt revolver line with a foot long barrel. Took him five minutes to pull it out of his holster. I'm exaggerating but it seemed like it took that long before he started firing. The man by the telephone booth shot a 45 caliber. While mirrors and bottles were exploding, I had the crawl out of the bar on my hands and knees and had never been so happy in my entire life.
So after leaving the place on Lower St. Charles, I turned to said to Ginger, 
"Alright. Let's go to Johnny Whites!"
Ginger yelled, "JOHNNY WHITES, MAN!"
So we made our way to Johnny Whites, where all the restaurant people went after work to drink! Ginger Rose and I sat right in the middle of the bar and started drinking tequila and beer and Schnapps! 
WE DRANK TEQUILA, BEER AND SCHNAPPS ALL NIGHT LONG!
The things was, after my second tequila I turned my head and noticed a man staring at me. I didn't recognize the man and he was staring at me for no reason at all.

I didn't like the man looking at me. He didn't look away so I mouthed the words "fuck you" and shot that motherfucking son of a bitch the bird.

Shot that goddamn son of a bitch the motherfucking bird and mouthed the words "fuuuuck you" just for staring at me. 
I was at Johnny Whites drinking tequila! AND AS SOON AS I SHOT THAT SON OF A BITCH THE BIRD AND MOUTHED THE WORDS "FUCK YOU" I FELT A HELL OF LOT BETTER AND FORGOT ALL ABOUT THAT STARING MAN. 
Me and Ginger went on drinking Schnapps and beer and tequila. We talked to everybody around us, talked with each other and talked to the bartender. Everybody.

When the sun was coming up, it was time to go. Ginger had enough Schnapps. I had enough tequila and beer. We had seen the sun come up on a barstool at Johnny Whites! 

But when as we were walking toward the door, WE SUDDENLY WANTED MORE SCHNAPPS AND MORE TEQUILA! IT WAS SAD THE NIGHT WAS OVER. I DIDN'T WANT THE NIGHT TO BE OVER, AND DIDN'T LIKE DAYLIGHT APPEARING IN THE STREET LIKE IT HAD DONE. ASSHOLE!

But it was time to go and we walked down the length of the bar, Ginger Rose saying she wanted more "Shops." She called Schnapps "shops" and she was somewhere behind me saying that when I passed a man I didn't recognize, a man I had forgotten all about!

ALL I HEARD WAS THE BARTENDER SAY WAS,

After that I didn't remember a damn thing until I woke up, sorta, and saw this foot coming up into my face. It came up into my face over and over and over again. I suddenly found myself out on the street, kneeling over, one hand resting on a knee, the other fluttering in front of my face trying to block the foot. The foot was hard to block. 

THEN I LOOKED UP AND THERE WAS GINGER ROSE STANDING THERE POINTING DOWN AT ME!

 "That was the man yew shot the bird at!"

I didn't remember shooting the bird at that man but in a little while DID remember mouthing the words, "fuck you" to some staring man and after a little while longer figured out that that same staring man had waited all night long when I had forgotten all about him then, just as I was walking out of Johnny Whites all happy and wanting more tequila, rammed his can of Dixie into my face and hit me over the head with one of Johnny White's big ole heavy beer mugs!

Turns out the staring man was a goddamn REDNECK!

 To be honest, when I thought about all of it, and I thought about all of it A LOT later,

I REALIZED THAT GODDAMN REDNECK TAUGHT ME A LESSON: TO KEEP YOUR GODDAMN MOUTH SHUT!