i was trying so hard to be a good granddaughter. i bought tickets to see the paul mccartney concert and wanted to take gramma with me. the problem is that she is suffering from dementia and is confused, flustered and frustrated most of the time. she kept forgetting who i was and where i was taking her.
she also likes to sleep until 2 or 3 o'clock in the afternoon most days, so i found myself puttering around the huge old house she was in (never been there before...my imagination must have conjured it up) until she got up. i realized as i looked out the living room window that we were situated across the street from a busy little city park. i could see my mister romping around in the field with the kids, and decided to join them while gramma slept.
playing was fun. we were falling all over ourselves, getting grass-stained knees, tackling each other and gasping into each other's faces, tickling and teasing and being crazy-mad in love. then i heard the planes.
we looked up into the sky to see four or six blue planes come swooping down over the park, spraying everything with some kind of blue misty stuff. i panicked and tried to cover my nose and mouth with my shirt, and keep the kids' noses and mouths covered too. mister was laughing at me, saying they were only spraying the park to combat the scourge of the asian gypsy moth, but i knew better. it was some sort of bio-chemical warfare being waged against us. i started to argue with him, when suddenly the planes proved my point for me, as they turned around, came back, and opened fire on the people in the park.
bodies were being riddled with bullets indiscriminately. little kids, moms in their keds and white shorts, dads carrying frisbees, everyone, falling all over the grass and playground, bleeding and screaming and the sound of gunfire deafening and cruel. i was weeping, thinking about how little my kids had gotten to experience, how i'd never taken gramma to that concert, and now it was going to be all over for us. if we weren't hit with gunfire, we'd be dead in a matter of days from the chemicals they sprayed on us.
mister grabbed julian and began running for the house while i dashed behind him with the baby inside my shirt. she was crying, clawing at my breasts, and no matter how i tried to soothe her with gasping noises of mama-ness, she wouldn't calm down. i was sure that at any moment the planes would come back and claim us as victims. instead, we made it back to house, and just as we slammed the door shut, we heard the first explosion. within miliseconds, the shockwave pushed the glass in the windows inwards, bending, swelling, groaning, but not breaking.
'holy shit,' said my mister, 'they got the oil refinary.'
'we'd better get gramma, and go into the basement,' i said. 'you get some water and food to take down there. i'll keep the kids and gramma with me.'
we split up, and i gathered a confused gramma up out of her bed. she wanted to keep her quilts and pillows around her which made it difficult for me to help her navigate her way down the rickety stairs into the cellar, but we managed.
another explosion nearby rocked the house around us. i heard glass breaking breaking somewhere. my mister never made it to the basement. i tried to not think about it.
you can imagine my surprise when, after i got my gramma and kids snuggled in together, i looked up to see paul mccartney and a huge entourage of his people also hiding in our basement. he looked sheepish.
"hello," he said. "i hope you don't mind, but we were on our way to the stadium when all this happened. we needed somewhere to hide out."
"uh...yeah. no problem," i replied.
he was wearing jeans and a worn-out old black t-shirt that said '103.7 FM'. he didn't look all that old. i wondered where his wife was.
"can i...uh...have your autograph?" i asked.
"least i can do," he said, smiling. he signed an old yellowed crinkly newspaper that he found on the basement floor. as he handed it to me, another explosion caused the house to tremble around us. my kids and gramma all started crying. i hugged paul mccartney and then went to be with them.
we were huddled in two groups, paul's entourage of body guards and personal assistants and friends, me and my demented gramma and weeping kids. some of the body guards tried to keep my kids entertained by making silly faces and folding origami animals out of the labels off of the cans of beans and fruit i had stored down there. i was getting sleepy, when i realized that one of the guys in paul's entourage was lou reed. a huge stone formed in my throat. he was wearing a porkpie hat and big, thick-lensed glasses, and leather vest over a short-sleeved button-up shirt. he looked as though he was getting off on what was happening. every time we heard an explosion, he'd grin.
i knew i was being inappropriate, but i couldn't help myself. i left my kids and gramma again, and wandered over to the rock stars' side of the basement. "you're lou reed," i said.
"yep."
i put my arms around him, and held him for a moment. he put his arms around me, too. when we released each other, i kept my hands on his arms and just stared and stared. i couldn't think of one thing to say. i wanted to talk to him about his album 'songs for drella' and his relationship with andy warhol. i wanted to ask him to have sex with me. i wanted to explain to him how much his music had meant to me over the years. how it had affected me. how it had made me feel joyful, angst-ridden, angry, humorous. none of that came out, though.
"give me something," i said to him, finally. "give me something of yours."
he looked mildly amused. "i don't have anything, really," he said, holding out his hands. "i only brought my smokes and some money and stuff." i kept looking at him, kept my hands on him. finally he started digging around in his pockets. from one of his front jeans pockets he pulled out a mass of paper and money and lint.
"here," he said, handing it to me. "you can have this."
i went back to the corner where my family was huddled and started sorting through the treasures he'd given me. two $20 bills. some reciepts. a soda pop can tab. a carbon copied sheet of something official looking.
it was tom waits' draft notice.
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