Car shrieks, startling me. Pedestrian almost hit. Leg inches away from the bumper, exhibiting her fist. Standing in front of the cab at the corner, fist shaking, pigtails waving, boot raised to boot the bumper, stumps the ground. “You shit.” Cabby waits, seems to me resignedly. No fare in the cab, for her to finish and go away. Sits back, pushes his hat back, scratches his back, ah that felt good, tugs on his nose and looks behind him, can’t back up and then go around her because a truck’s there. “You goon,” she says. Records on his clipboard. Let me see: Fiftieth to Broome and West Broadway, next pickup on Prince to Greenwich and Sixth — Truck honks, he points in front and honks back. You back up, then I can back up, because she won’t back up, and we can both go. “You dope. Yes, dopo, moronico, maniaco, cause you won’t be happy till you run over some poor dildo which you’ve no doubt done a hundred and 0 times before. At least say the fuck you’re sorry.” It’d seem he was in the right, had the light, maybe driving too fast, that I didn’t see, but she was walking against it. Light turns red for him. “Suck,” and smacks his hood and crosses the street. He opens his window, wouldn’t I love to with you honey, hell with her, closes it, truck and cars behind him honk. Raises his arms without turning around: what do you want me to do, be as dumb as that broad and run the light? Lights up a pipe and puffs on it. Match must have stayed lit where he threw it on the floor, for he suddenly ducks below the dashboard. Green, cars honk, trucker just shakes his head not believing this, cabby pops up, oh the light, what do you think but the light? honks, beeps, from farther down the street my dog has fleas, makes a left, truck and cars behind him, where was I? Woman seems stoned. Nursing home. Don’t want my mom in one. Shaking her fist or waving a kerchief at the cab as it passes, for my eyes can’t focalize from so far. Her getting chronically sicker and weaker, one of my worst fears. Like my dad his last two years: incontinent, sometimes defecating in bed, “Looked like afterbirth,” my mother once said, “Bedsores muffins could fit in,” nothing she or the visiting nurses could do about them, her worst fears too. How could we afford it for one thing? Not foremost but one. For another I just don’t want her in one of those homes even if we could afford it or through Medicare or — card, whichever gives the applicable aid, not do I ever want to visit her in one, though if she had to be there I of course would. But what would we do or say? Walk her around the halls, sit in the solarium sun, how’s the food, what’d you do today? Me, what could I be doing here that’s new? Nothing’s new. Please drop me in the nearest grave. “Whatever you do,” she once told me, “don’t stick me in one of those old-age places. I didn’t to your father, and he never even asked me not to. Fact is he told me to do what was easiest for me with him, but what could I do but help while I still had my strength and health, and taking care of him I also have to admit gave me something very useful and engrossing to do and improve on. The second most urgent thing I’m asking you to do if you can’t the first is just before you send me to one, give me all the sleeping pills you can lay your hands on that it’ll take to kill me in one night. You won’t have to be home. Just give me them and say goodnight and I’ll take them alone.” I told her not to think or say such things and she almost screamed at me that she was serious so what was I going to do? I told her I’d have to think it over and she said “Think about it quick — one never knows.” I said “Why, is there something about your health you just found out that I don’t know?” and she said “No, it’s up and down as ever, but let’s be realistic — at my age and condition anything can go to pot overnight,” and a week later phoned and said “You remember what I asked you about promising me something extremely important to do?” and I said “No, wait, what, afraid I forgot, sorry, but how are you?” and she said “You remember — you got a head screwed on you tighter than a vise and certainly for something like that, but maybe we should drop it till you tell me you remember or want me to help retrieve your memory for you — do you?” and I said “Sure, if that’s what you want, but better another day, because right now — well, I had to have a translation in by noon if I wanted to get paid, so I stayed up all night and am now feeling sick from it besides very tired — anyway, how are you?” and she told me how she was and Goldie and Ray and that was the last time she spoke to me about sleeping pills.
I wait for the light. Other night I dreamed. Car beeps, big-dog barks from far off, someone scraping a metal garbage can along the sidewalk, waterlogged car transmission squeaks. Of my mother and jarring that dream, as I start to cross the street.
“Watch it,” a man says, Walkman wires in his ears, running against traffic and nearly clipping me.
