Hal and the White Wine Incident

Hal was rooted in the grocery store aisle, considering  his options: Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Viognier. She had insisted — no, she had demanded, imagine that, a demand after only a second date — that he produce a white wine with supper. Berringer’’s Founders Estate ($11 a bottle). A Robert Mondavi Moscato d’Orpo Napa Valley, twenty bucks, described on the label as a lovely, sweet dessert wine with white peach, green apple, and tropical fuit flavors. And here was a 2004 Elkcove Williamette Valley Riesling for seventeen bucks a bottle. He recalled seeing on the cooking channel that Rielsing works well with almost any dish.

The choices went on and on into some kind of white wine infinitum illuminated by the harsh buzzing glare of the halogen tubes concealed behind the ceiling tiles overhead. Were those ceiling tiles made of asbestos? Asbestos causes cancer. He should know. His grandfather died from painful asbestosis, six years after he gave up smoking. Working in Navy shipyards for three decades had done more to his lungs than tobacco ever did.

Hal finally settled on a Sonoma Valley Chardonnay. It was a random selection; he was always being told that he had poor instincts so any choice he made was bound to be wrong anyway.

The Happy Time Popcorn Incident

“You have got to work on Mom’s garage this week,” Hal’s sister, Beth, said with a hint of reprimand. “Have you looked in there lately?”

“I can’t look,” Hal said, chewing on a hangnail on his thumb. “It’s too scary. She saves everything. I don’t think she’s ever been familiar with a garbage can in her life.”

“Just do it,” Beth insisted. “It’s your week to take care of her and I need you to do more than just mow the lawn and go grocery shopping … speaking of which, you better take a look through the fridge and the kitchen cabinets, too. Check for expiration dates. You know how she is about that.”

Long before the insidious tentacles of Alzheimer’s disease reached out to Hal and Beth’s mother, the woman had displayed an odd assortment of psychological tics. For one thing, she was a classic hoarder. Doctor Kane told Hal that this was a symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder and should probably be kept in check as her already unbalanced mind slipped further into dementia.

Swallowing the fear of being buried in an avalanche of junk, and an even greater fear of getting on his sister’s bad side, Hal accepted the task on a Thursday afternoon after his daily jog around the Hollywood Reservoir.

Stepping into the dark cave of the garage, Hal didn’t know what smelled worse: his perspiration-stained running outfit or the depository for mom’s moldy junk. It would not have surprised him if he found a dead body nestled behind the Bekins Movers boxes full of old yellow newspapers and junk mail and Home and Garden magazines from 1990, the year Pop died, that she simply could not toss into the trash. And then there were the unopened boxes of crap that mom compulsively ordered late at night from QVC and the Home Shopping Network: kitchen gadgets, for instance, two waffle makers and a machine for producing homemade pasta. She had ceased cooking years ago and relied solely on microwaveable foods yet she continued to collect new kitchenware.

A complete collection of Benny Goodman CDs, still in their wrapping. A boxed set of John Wayne movies on VHS. Mounds of forgotten family photos intermingled in boxes stuffed full of ten-year old grocery coupons and dusty paperback romance novels that she never read. Calendars and Day Runners from a decade in the past. He found three boxes of old shoes.

And secrets. There were plenty of secrets to be found in those boxes in the garage, Hal discovered. Lately mom had been complaining that her eyes hurt. She claimed that she didn’t know why. Hal found the answer in a shoebox stuffed full of correspondence. A letter from her health care provider dated one year ago:

Dear Mrs. Callahan,

Our records indicate that you are diabetic and due for a dilated eye exam. Annual eye examinations are an important part of your diabetes care. Elevated blood sugar levels can cause damage to the retina over time, thus affecting your ability to see well. Significant vision-threatening diabetic retinopathy can be present even if you have no visual symptoms. If you have not had a diabetic eye examination over the last year …

Hal folded the letter and stuffed it into his hip pocket. He would have to share this information with Beth. He continued rummaging through the shoebox. Unpaid bills. Collection notices. Some kind of business correspondence from The Happy Time Popcorn Company in Sioux City, Iowa. Hal sat down on a rickety lawn chair to read the letter.

Dear Mrs. Callahan,

Thank you for your telephone call regarding the problem you experienced with two cartons of HAPPY TIME Blast O Butter Ultimate Theatre Style Butter Microwave Popcorn you purchased at Von’s on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles. We are sorry to learn the corn did not pop properly and apologize for the inconvenience this caused you.

The production code #4225-A7 indicates the product was packed in August 2004 so this corn is over two years old. Normal shelf life for microwave cartons is approximately 12-18 months, and it is possible the corn has dried down below the proper moisture level for popping. You will want to check the code date on your future purchases of HAPPY TIME to make sure you are purchasing fresh corn. The first number in the code indicates the year, and the last three numbers indicate the day of the year the product was packed.

We value your patronage and greatly appreciate you bringing this to our attention and giving us the opportunity to respond. If you have any further problems, please let us hear from you.

Suzanne McClarty, the Vice President of Consumer Affairs, had signed the letter and enclosed coupons for two free cartons of Happy Time Popcorn.

Hal sighed, pocketed the letter, and continued pawing through the shoebox.

The Incident With The Steak

Hal could not have known that his dinner date was a vegan, though he did note that Suzanne was scowling as she surveyed the menu. When he recounted the incident to his sister the following day she used it as an instrument to bludgeon him with.

“Good God, Hal,” Beth remonstrated her older brother. “When’re you going to learn to reveal your personality to strangers in layers? You know, feel ‘em out, discover what kind of person they are before giving them a full blast of Hal.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that it’s not so much that you ordered a steak that upset Suzanne.”

Hal fussed and fidgeted in the overstuffed armchair. “She seemed awfully goddamn upset to me.”

“It was the way you went about it, Hal,” Beth countered, sneaking a small measure of patience into her tone. “You told the waitress you wanted the steak prepared rare.”

“Yeah. That’s how I like it.”

“You said — and I quote — ‘So rare that the cow’s still moving on the plate and if I don’t hear it moo when I bite into it I’ll be asking for a refund’.”

Hal sat quietly in the chair for a moment, chewing his lower lip. “You’re saying that wasn’t funny?”

Beth settled her yarn and knitting needles in her lap. “No, sweetheart. It wasn’t funny.” She reached across the gulf between them and took one of his hands into her own, patting him reassuringly.

“Aw, Jeez, Beth, you’re so good to me.” After a pause he added: “Mom’s right. I should have married you.”

Beth blinked and exhaled audibly. “Maybe you should take up another language, Hal, perhaps Swahili, so the rest of us don’t have to hear what you’re saying.”

The Incident With Gregory Peck’s Cigarette Case

An evening at the theater, for Hal, represented two hours better spent in a creaky dentist’s chair or under the scrutiny of a constipated IRS auditor. But since mother was a dues-paying patron of the Pasadena Playhouse and because this was his week to look after mom, he found himself suffering through a production of Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” one Tuesday night. This is about what mom needs, he kept reminding himself, Not about what I need. Doctor Kane told Hal that with pre-Alzheimers patients it was important to “take their minds out for a walk frequently”, keep their gray matter humming and buzzing and engaged.

Hal squirmed in his seat during the entire 90-minute show like a child with an overactive bladder, brooding and petulant, even though he did think that the actor playing Lenny was quite believable and that the young actor portraying George — he was fairly certain he saw the guy in a Hanes underwear ad recently — had just the right measure of compassion and something else that Hal couldn’t name.

After the play they had pie and coffee at Marie Callender’s in Glendale. Mother reached into her purse, an ancient fake alligator skin bag that he remembered her buying at Bullocks on Wilshire when he was fifteen-years old, and extracted a small silver tin that she extended to him with a palsied hand. He wondered if that tremor was related to the approaching Alzheimer’s.

“I’ve been saving this to give to you on a special occasion,” she said. “And since you somewhat gallantly sat through the play, I think tonight’s the night.”

Hal turned the 3×4 inch object in his hands. It was old and the silver was scuffed and nicked.

“It’s an old cigarette case,” his mother explained. “I bought this at an auction house in Beverly Hills, oh, I don’t know, maybe thirty years ago. Look inside. Look at the initials.”

Hal opened the slender case, manufactured to house cigarettes when the deadly little sticks were two-inches in length and unfiltered, and read the initials engraved into the silver: G.P.

“Do you know whose initials those are?” Mother said excitedly, her eyes dancing. “Gregory Peck! Yessiree! That’s Gregory Peck’s cigarette case. Nice, isn’t it?”

Hal nodded, smiled, and slipped the case into his jacket pocket. He resumed eating his blackberry pie and wondered where the waitress was with the coffee refill.

Later that night, after dropping mom off at home and seeing her to the door, he called his sister Beth, who shared “Mom Time” with him every other week, which mostly consisted of making sure the fragile old woman’s bills were paid, sometimes entertaining her, and buying all of her groceries and, most importantly, ensuring that she ate the groceries because if left to her own druthers mother would opt to survive on Nestle’s Quik and Lucky Charms.

“Mom gave me a cigarette case tonight,” Hal told Beth. “The initials are G.P. You know what she tells me?”

“I couldn’t imagine.”

“She says she bought it at an auction house in Beverly Hills a coon’s age ago and that it belonged to Gregory Peck.”

“And do you believe her?” Beth scoffed, almost mockingly.

Hal paused. “Well, I want to believe that she believes it.”

Beth’s laughter pealed over the phone line.

“What?” Hal pleaded. “What’re you laughing about? If she believes it, then it’s true, right?”

Beth ended the call abruptly but not without mentioning — as always because they had to encourage each other through these difficult days – that she was glad mom had a pleasant evening out on the town. Hal hung up the phone and lingered for an hour in bed, with the lights still blazing and the radio humming softly to NPR, contemplating the cigarette case.

What the hell, he finally decided, this was Gregory Peck’s cigarette case.

The Incident With The Cat

 Hal punched the button and impatiently waited for the elevator to arrive at the fourteenth floor. He drummed his nervous fingers on the elevator doors while the torturous strains of “It’s A Small World” played in a maddening endless loop in his head. He had taken his ten-year old niece to Disneyland over the weekend and the song stuck to him like a blood-sucking leech.

When the elevator finally arrived, Hal was startled to see that the lone occupant was Daniel Day-Lewis. Hal immediately threw his glance to the floor and hesitantly stepped into the carriage. The two men rode in uncomfortable silence. Hal quietly hummed “It’s A Small World”, eliciting a punishing glance from the British actor. Hal cleared his throat and spoke while staring at the elevator doors.

“I finally caught ‘There Will Be Blood’ a few days ago. Terrific performance.”

“Thank you,” Day-Lewis uttered reflexively.

“Oscar buzz. That’s what everyone says. Roger Ebert said in his column this morning that there is no dark horse contender in this year’s Best Actor race. You are the man, he says.”

Daniel Day-Lewis examined a hangnail on his right index finger.

Hal sighed and turned to face the man. “Look, I –”

“Don’t say it.”

Hal frowned and persisted. “I’m sorry about the incident with the cat. Okay? Jesus.”

The elevator reached the garage level and the doors whooshed open. Daniel Day-Lewis passed through the doors and shook his head sadly.