Linda Lowe

L i n d a   L o w e 

At the Retirement Hotel 

—Talk is, Esther’s never even been to 'Frisco. Yet she keeps singing that song.

—It’s enough to make me batty. She should leave the song in peace with Tony what’s-his-name.

—There is a Martin Tony. But it’s not him. It’s some other Tony.

—To think I’d live to see the day I could not remember that fine singer’s name.

—It’s the Tony that made a big comeback with today’s kids.

—Kids today. They think they own every single star, as if he wasn’t ours first.

—It’s in the rearing. No one home to rear the kids. They pal around with the bad apples and there you go. Selfishness.

—Not to mention dope. Is there a child alive today with a bona fide backbone?

—A child who just says no? No.

—Overdosing right and left. On a Saturday night, who’s in the E.R. but a bunch of kids. And there I was in a bona fide coma, left to rot in the hall.

—A sorry state, this world we live in.

—I couldn’t move a muscle, but I could hear. All those months, the nurses chatting while they changed my diaper. The doctor, always with the "Good morning, So-phi-a.” He said it like I was two years old. “How are you to-day?” I should answer to such a simpleton? If I could speak I should say I’m fine, Dr. Simpleton? Fine with the diaper and the drool and I-can’t-turn-over-fine? Did he know me bone by bone? Joint by joint? When I could speak I said, “Take me to x-ray.”

—Did they find anything? It took a scan to find out about my Fred.

—They found my broken heart.

—I say be glad you’re up and about, you can take the bus to Hallmark, take a stroll in the park—

—Zippety do dah.

—We longed to be retired, Fred and I. We wanted to get in one of those motor homes and go.

—I saw enough of the world in my day.

—We got as far as a map, and then he got the news.

—A Holiday Inn is a Holiday Inn whether it’s in New York or Hooterville.

—Nothing to do but take the chemo, the doctor said. Suffer, suffer, suffer, and then it’s over.

—That’s Dr. Rubbish for you. Does he sing the poison tune, loud and clear. Like the Angel of Death, he sings that song.

—Was it maybe Tony Curtis that sang about ‘Frisco?

—A fine-looking man in his day, but did he sing?

—Come to think of it, it was more like he gallivanted with the ladies across the silver screen.

—Was it maybe Tony Franciosa?

—Tony, Tony, Tony. That’s the Italians for you. They set out to make us all confused.

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