Usually after Grandma Gerry ate she fell right asleep again. That’s why Kevin tried to feed her as much as possible. But today she was being exceedingly difficult. She refused to open her mouth and reduced Kevin to prying it open with fingers. She made sure that she slobbered all over his fingers before he jammed the spoon into her mouth.
Pulling the spoon back out was easy, because she didn’t have any teeth anymore, but getting it back in was the hard part. He wished that he could tie her to the bed so that he didn’t have to keep on jumping away when she swiped at him with one of her talons.
“Grandma, please eat,” he begged her. He saw the gleam in her eyes and realized that he had just made it worse. Now she would refuse knowing his desperateness and he would have to stay with her until she actually ate it. Well, not in his lifetime.
“Fine, then don’t eat it. See if I care. I’m going downstairs to eat my lunch and I’m sure as hell not going to starve to death because of you.” He didn’t really need to eat, but he knew that she would keep him up there until he grew red in the face.
To prove his point, he walked over to the door and proceeded to open it. He heard a small clatter behind him and he knew that she had thrown the dish to the floor, trying to get his attention.
“This is the absolute last time I’m going to clean up your mess. Last time!” Kevin turned around and heard her cackle and saw what she had done. Not only had she knocked over the dish, but she also had taken off her shirt, exposing her sunken rib cage. She knew that when Kevin was a kid and he saw her like this, he had nightmares for months. This time it wasn’t that easy.
“Put that damn thing back on right now!” Kevin screamed. She may have acted juvenile, but Kevin knew what her intention was. He picked the baggy shirt off of the ground and threw it in her direction. She struggled with it for a while, until Kevin came and pulled it over her head.
“Now will you listen to me?” She shook her head “no” feverishly. “Fine. Then I guess you won’t be listening when I say that I’m not making food for you anymore. In fact, I may not even come up here anymore.” He saw a tinge of worry in her eyes. “Unless, of course, you leave me alone for the rest of the afternoon.” He saw her silently agree with him and he went back downstairs to make her another bowl of mush. While she ate it, he cleaned up the mess she made. Somehow he always found himself breaking his own promises when he was around her. Nothing ever turned out the way it should.
She fell asleep and Kevin silently thanked an invisible force for the favor. Now maybe he could go out. He was a married man, and he had to call his wife too. If he ignored her for a week, she might just do something drastic. So that was the first thing he did.
He took the cell phone and went out the back door. His grandma was a light sleeper sometime and he had to be careful not to wake her up, even so they had a deal.
There was no answer at her place, so Kevin decided to leave a message on her machine. He converted the time according to the time zones and couldn’t believe that she wasn’t home. Well, he also couldn’t expect her to be home every time he called either.
He wandered around the backyard, thinking about houses, of all things. They just weren’t as sentimental to him as they were when he was a child. When he was younger, it was harder to leave an old house behind. Now that he was older and incredibly famous, he trained himself against feeling sentimental about material things. He had to leave plenty of houses behind when fans found out where he lived; all out of fear of his privacy being bombarded. He loved his fans and all, but there was the line that they sometimes crossed. In the past he even had to exchange a ranch because he was found out. Sometimes even the real estate agents told. It came to a point where they had to sign an agreement about privacy arrangements.
Kevin’s thoughts changed to an entirely different subject, his grandma. He was finally out all by himself and he had to go on and think about her. Deep down inside he wished that he could care about her like most people cared about their grandmothers. But it was the hate and Kevin’s confusion that kept them apart.
In the past, Grandma Gerry had gotten way out of hand for him. His mother insisted that he eat in the same room with her, just to make sure that she would eat and not choke to death on her food. Way back then she could still feed herself.
When Kevin wasn’t looking, she picked up the bread knife that he had carelessly placed on the nightstand and proceeded to stab him with it several times. Kevin had been sitting on the bed with her (upon his mother’s insistence “We can’t make her feel alone can we?”). The knife didn’t do much damage, but it made the young Kevin cry. He couldn’t possibly tell his mom that he had left the knife right where she could grab it. He’d have to lie again about the cuts.
Kevin pried the knife from his grandma’s hands after receiving three deep cuts and cleaned it expertly. He then called his mom and lied about the gashes on his arm. Luckily for him, there were sharp edges on the base of the bed that Kevin lied about falling on. When his mom asked Gerry if he was telling the truth, she nodded and cackled. It made Kevin sick to his stomach.
His mom kissed her mom goodnight and went to dress Kevin’s wounds. “You should appreciate your grandmother more,” she kept telling him, “she’s not as bad as you sometimes make her out to be.” Kevin felt like crying all over again. He’d blame it on the disinfectant, but it was his mother’s words that got to him. Grandma Gerry had power over him even when she was not around.
Part 3
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