Lunch with Aunt Bea

“Back in my day I was out four or five nights a week,” Bea wheezed through her portable oxygen tank.

We sat on the terrace. Bea, Steven, and me. I positioned her in the shade as it was getting warm in the October desert sun.

“Don’t ever get old, boys,” she reflected. “Old age isn’t for sissies.”

How many times had we heard that line before? She uses it three or four times in every conversation, and we speak with her 4 or 5 days a week.

“I hardly go to the club (her country club) anymore. It’s too difficult, you know. I cannot see. Someone has to feed me,” she lamented. “I mean, I don’t mind going with the two of you, but I hate going with my friends. After all, I am 97…”

“…and a half,” I acknowledged. “It is amazing you have been around as long as you have. In two and a half years you will get your face on a jar of Smuckers and a letter from the President. And it will still be Biden.”

“What?” she asked.

I repeated myself.

“It will? Have you heard the way Bernice speaks about him?” That is her 96-year-old girlfriend who lives in a 5-star assisted living facility a few miles away from Bea’s home. “She could go on and on for hours about how much she hates him.”

“I know,” I reminded her, “…we spoke the other day when she invited all of us to dinner at her place.”

“…Really?” she thought for a long minute as Nova dressed the outdoor dining table with place mats, flatware, and embroidered linen napkins.

“You know boys, ever since Jo Jo died…,” she pondered. “It isn’t the same.”

Dr. Joe was her fourth boyfriend after her third husband although she only admits to being married twice.  

“It was nice having a man on my arm,” she admitted. “He was tall. Good looking… but he didn’t want to marry me.”

That’s after they lived in sin for 10 years. He was 95 and not in the best of health. Stayed in a bed in one of the guest rooms and got around in a wheelchair.

“When I asked him, he said he didn’t want the trouble of a wife. As it turned out I got all the trouble. Getting Boyd to drive him to the doctors. Making certain Vladimir took good care of him. His medicine. Shots. Having proper meals brought in for him…”

Not one of the caregivers cooked.

She paused.

“But I hated that man, Vlad. I used to call him Bad,” she giggled, “but Joe loved him. You know, he lived in, and we still paid him a fortune. There was no discount for his room and board. Almost $130,000 a year. He stole tons of my silver and some of Joe’s best clothes from the house including Jo Jo’s red leather Versace jacket. I couldn’t prove it, but I know…”

She thought she turned to us, but actually she looked away.

“When did he die again?” she asked.

“It was around Thanksgiving of 2019. Before COVID,” I replied.

“I should have done more for him,” she kept beating herself up. It was so sad.

“Bea, there was nothing more you could do. He had kidney failure. Congestive heart failure. And signs of cancer.” I tried to console her. “You brought him home to die in his bed. I am glad we were all here.”

 Oh, that’s right. How long ago is that?” She started counting on her fingers.

“Two years,” she got that right. “And I have already gone through so much money…”

Nova plated the lunch we bought at Gelson’s and served us.

“Where’s my thing...my bib?” she asked her caregiver.

“I think it is in your purse Mrs. Bea,” the dutiful Filipino replied.

“Where is my purse,” she was agitated for no reason. “Where did it go.”

“I put it on the empty chair next to you,” Steven informed her.

“Oh. Okay. Thank you.”

Nova carefully put the pink bib over Bea’s white blouse with pink sequins which went perfectly with her pink pants. Honestly, she looked great. She does not look her age.

The terrace looked great too. Now that Steven was speaking to the gardener in Spanish his work improved. The perfectly manicured Ficus hedges were a great contrast to the potted Pygmy Date Palm trees and Forsythia which just started blooming.

I cut her ham and turkey sandwich made on a fresh egg bagel into pieces and then pierced a piece with her fork. “Are you ready?”

She nodded her head and eagerly opened her mouth.

“You know. Getting old ain’t for sissies.”

I was afraid I would stab her face since I had no depth perception, but she trusted me. She closed her lips around the fork and as I gently pulled at it she smiled.

“I want to thank you boys for bringing lunch. This is so nice. It’s so damn loud in those restaurants on El Paseo. I just don’t enjoy it anymore.”

“It was nothing,” Steven replied. “We love coming to see you.”

“Bea, it’s not good to stay home. Alone,” I had a hard time deciding whether I should keep talking or start eating. My blood glucose was low. “I mean, I know you have Yolanda at night and Nova in the daytime. But it is not the same as getting your hair done, putting on one of your beautiful new outfits, and going out with your friends. It would be good for your mind.”

“But Jon Jon, I am a devout coward. I am so afraid of getting COVID.”

Steven, the one with the medical experience, spoke up. “Bea, you have been vaccinated and received your booster. I think it would be ok for you to go to a restaurant with your vaccinated/boostered friends after the big lunch crowd was done and gone. Or an early dinner when there are fewer people in a restaurant.”

“You think so? But I am so tired when I get home. My friends that are left are so much younger. They can see. They can walk. And still have sex.” She emphasized the word sex.

“Bea,” I shuddered. “Most of them are in their eighties. Some on their way to nineties. None are much younger than you.” I’m not sure I wanted to imagine 80-year-olds going at it. 

“Joe and I used to do it all the time...”

She frowned.

I wanted to stick my finger in my good ear and hum.

“…but it wasn’t that good.”

TMI. But we already knew this. She talks about their sex life all the time.

“You know who was good don’t you was…” how long would it take for his name to come to her?

“One-arm Bob,” I intervened.

Bea’s face lit up.

“Oh. I loved him so. For the years we were together it was magic.”

“But he was married,” I reminded her.

“No, he wasn’t…” she paused thoughtfully.  “Was he?”

Bea didn’t remember nor did she see me nodding my head.

 “Oh, maybe you’re right. I think he was. But they lived apart. Yes. Bob wouldn’t divorce her—there was too much money involved.”

Tada.

The stuff she remembers at ninety-seven and a half! I am sixty-two and can’t remember lots of things. Truth be told I spent a lot of time trying to forget so much.

 “I really loved that man. He was so good to me, and his daughters adored me. Even after he died, they still called me. I told him not to go back to Iowa, but he was starting to sell his real estate, some business…I don’t know. He wanted to live here with me. So, he went home. And he died. A heart attack. I miss him so. He was dynamic and accomplished. You know, he was the first American golfer to win the 24-year-old championship sponsored by the British Society of one-armed golfers.”

“How did he lose his arm?” that was Steven. He didn’t know Bea back then. That was way before we were married.

“He was in a car accident when he was eleven. Somehow a steel beam went through the windshield and hit him just outside his shoulder. He didn’t even have a stump on that side which was great for me. More room in the bed. When he was 13, he began to play tennis and golf.”

I had to look that up on my phone. She was correct. Got every detail right. Well, except for the more room in the bed. That was not on the internet. She asked for another forkful of her sandwich.

But boys, I can’t find words anymore. I will be in the middle of a sentence and all of the sudden I stop,” she paused. “I am afraid I have premature dementia…”

“Bea, it can’t be premature—you’re almost a centenarian,” Steven knew all the big words.

“No,” she shook her head. I wondered if all that blonde hair was hers or hair extensions or a wig. One day I would have to ask her. But not today.

“Bea, you’ve lived an awesome life,” Steven was encouraging.

“What?” she squeaked.

Steven repeated himself.

“Really, you think so?”

“What about your life with Manny?” he asked about her first husband. “That had to be something.”

Bea thought for a moment.

“It was very exciting. We had that fabulous penthouse apartment at 3800. A boat in Florida that we used to take to Cuba. We were there when Castro’s army was in the hills. You could hear the machine guns going off. Manny kept saying “Come on, Bea. We have to get out of here.” But we were at one of those theatres where they had live sex on the stage and I’m telling you…I have never seen a schlong that big in my life!”

That had to be almost seventy years ago but of course she would not forget that!

“Once I had Eddie Fisher on the boat. He had just received that letter from Elizabeth Taylor saying she didn’t want to be married to him anymore. She wrote him a beautiful, sensitive letter but I couldn’t leave him alone. He was in such a state. The captain and I took him to Bimini. Manny was working. I stayed awake all night I was worried he didn’t do anything crazy.”

“But wasn’t Eddie married to Debbie Reynolds?” Steven asked.

“What?” she asked again. And Steven repeated himself again. He had to speak up.

“Yes. And Debbie and Liz were best friends. How’s that?” Bea shook her head.

Spending time with Bea reminded me of those books we read in grade school. We Were There at the Normandy Invasion. We Were There at the Boston Tea Party. We Were There on the Oregon Trail.

“And I oversaw the design of the hotel. Used a lot of Interior Crafts furniture back when Vito and Jerry were just getting started. Bobby Darin opened for us. Everyone performed there. Vic Damone. Keeley Smith. Shecky Greene. In fact, Manny bought Johnny Mathis his first tuxedo. And the very first wedding there was ah…”

Bea, remembered the wedding for my clients’ way before they were my clients, I chimed in. “I think I was two. Your manager asked them for a guest list. They were having three hundred plus people. But they refused. The groom’s father was acting boss of the Genovese family in New York City and some of the other wedding guests worked for him. Security”

“Yes. I think that’s right,” Bea confirmed. “Didn’t he die the same way Manny did.”

“It was only one bullet to his head as he was leaving a girlfriend’s flat. His bodyguard was asleep in the car.”

“Didn’t I speak with her...the bride a couple of years ago?” Bea wasn’t sure.

“Yes.” Steven confirmed. “She was on our terrace and John picked up the phone and dialed your number. The two of you spoke for almost an hour.”

“I remember she was very nice.”

“She is still nice,” I confirmed.

“What?” she asked.

I repeated myself, then “we see her often. Either we go out to the suburbs and spend hours with her talking and eating OR, recently, she came downtown to see our condo and then we walked to this little French restaurant we love. It is like being in the Fourth.”

“You do? That’s nice.”

We nodded our heads.

“Well boys, I have to go to the lady’s room and then I am going to lie down. I’m sorry. You two look great. Jon Jon you never looked better.”

“How can you tell? I thought you were blind?”

“I can see that,” she emphasized.

That and anything over 5 carats I thought.

“Nova!” Bea called. “Nova, where are you?”

From the kitchen Nova responded, “Coming. I’m coming Mrs Bea…” as she hurried through the screen doors.

Steven lifted Bea from the outdoor dining chair to her wheelchair and backed her over the kitchen threshold.

“Thank you. Thank you. You don’t know how much this meant to me. Right Nova?’

“Yes. Mrs. Bea been waiting for you to come to desert. Her doctors tell her she will be better once you get here. I see she is much better.”

“You two are so special to me… I hate good-byes. When are you coming back?”

“We will see you again later this week,” Steven promised.

“I have to meet with the electrician,” I reminded her. I wanted him to install a series of strong LED light boxes in the kitchen and breakfast room to see if that helped her see anything.

“That would be great.” She waived as Nova pushed her to her primary bedroom. “I love you.”

“We love you more,” Steven called out.

Once again, I didn’t sleep well. I kept having that same dream over and over again. I can’t believe she’s gone. My heart will be broken forever.