Starbucks Toby

Laurie
Starbucks Toby
Barnes and Noble, March 23, 2007

Toby sits across from me at Starbucks, her hair fluffy and white—a color close to the platinum bleach job she wore before the stroke. She’s out of her wheelchair, on a wooden seat, and spooning up a Frappacino mounded with whipped cream. She is licking her lips, saying she never eats between meals—is only doing it to please me—and I broach the subject of money. Usually I don’t ask her for things, but she’s given my sister her diamond ring worth more than $40,000, while I have received nothing. I’m commuting to Arizona because I’ve fallen in love. I am sixty and I want her to be nice to me. We want what we want. Hope dies but not wishing. I propose she give me $5000 a year for four years, half the value of the ring. She narrows her eyes, and her head snaps back. “I won’t give you anything,” she shouts.

She can’t get up, and I feel her entrapment. She’s bellowing, and we’re getting fidgety looks. I suggest we talk about something else—Ellen’s grandchildren or the biography of Harry Truman she’s reading. Why does she admire Truman? I’m not going to get into it. She doesn’t think it matters he dropped the bomb. It wasn’t on her people. She likes talking about money—how much you earn, when it could run out. I like talking about money. Money is desire before it’s transformed into something that can disappoint you. I want her jewelry and the little bowls she sets about. I want her things the way I want her. Toby isn’t surrendering her desires, and neither am I.

She squints, pushing aside her drink and reaching for her walking stick, her good arm shaking, her back twisting into a C shape. I help her stand, and she leans into me with distaste. Because we’re touching? Because she needs help? Because I can still walk? She orders me on how to position my feet, move the chair, and lock the wheels, as if I’ve never performed these tasks before. The chair takes on an alien aspect, and I forget to swing aside the foot rests to allow her a clear path. As she shuffles forward, she nearly falls, and we sway like drunken lovers at the end of a tango—Dean and Jerry, a broken double act, embracing and looking daggers. I laugh. When Toby is tickled, her nostrils quiver and her eyes tear. She once attached her sable scarf to my winter coat, and when I arrived at school and saw the furry snake poking out of a sleeve, I called her and she fell on the floor laughing. She plops her backside onto the seat and squirms. I slip my hands under her armpits, feeling the boneless dough of her, and I hoist her up until she’s settled. All the way back to her apartment, she shouts, chin up, so her voice rains down. Passersby stare. What does she care? I get a helicopter view of us rolling east on 57th Street: a shrunken old woman in a worn brown hat and her sixty-year old daughter in need of Botox. Friends say: You’re a masochist for loving her no matter what. So what else is new?