Praying At the Altar of Tropicana
Two soft index finger came at my face and gently landed just under my eyes and above cheekbones. My eyes closed as the fingers landed, and as they pressed down against my mushy sinuses, pressure spread across the mask of my face. I grimaced.
“Yeah, you have a sinus infection,” she said, then swiftly swept her side bangs across her face.
I pressed my bony fingertips against the same place she had did and scowled, “Ah, man.”
She gave me a sympathetic frown and pulled her hoodie sleeves down around her hands. I loved her sweater. I still love her sweater. Faded black and white horizontal strips with a neon pink hood and a fluorescent green band around the hips. It had a dual zipper and I wanted one too. I knew where you could buy it, but my mom really preferred trying “to find something similar at Kohls”. I didn’t want something similar, I wanted that sweater.
Just like today, I don’t want my own hands to press against my sinuses when they’re swollen with fluid, I want it to be 2008 and for her and her heavily mascaraed eyes to look at me with empathy across our 8th grade Social Studies class table. I want Mrs. Loomis to look at us with a dubious glare as our blue nail polished hands pressed our cheekbones. And, then I want to assure her that yes, we had in fact finished our worksheet on the Bill of Rights.
I don’t know that Delaney wanted to be a nurse, but she would’ve made a really good nurse. She would’ve been very good at anything she did. She just cared about people. When I read Never Let Me Go between the summer of my Sophomore and Junior years of high school, I sometimes pictured Delaney when the described the role of ‘carers’. There were ‘donors’ and ‘carers’ and the latter spent their early 20’s offering spiritual sympathy and energy as the former gave their organs, one by one, to the other side of the world they were hidden from. Something about the prominence of Delaney’s cheeks and gentleness of her hooded eyes made me think: carer. I probably should have told her at the time.
Now, at 30, at my desk, without a Mrs. Loomis to tell me to stop pressing on my sinuses, I check them one more time and realize I hadn’t done that in a long while. But, I know that the last time I did, I thought of Delaney and I in 8th grade too.
I set my hands down, deciding that the clogging in my face will probably cease on its own and head to the fridge. Without even closing the refrigerator door or getting a glass, I choke down orange juice and hear an old man’s voice in my head, “You know what you need Marg? Orange juice. Every day, every single day, drink your orange juice.” I know he’s incorrect, orange juice probably does nothing but deliver some glucose and maybe a bit of vitamin C. Nonetheless, I drink it to appease Grandpa Jack’s voice.
A lifelong Catholic, Grandpa Jack did not worship any other God, but he did, purely metaphorically, pray at the altar of Tropicana. Every morning, the man drank a big glass of OJ. Now, every morning his son drinks a big glass of OJ. Now, every morning his grandson drinks a big glass of OJ. Now, every once and a while his great grandson nearly jumps out of his booster seat at the breakfast table for a sippy cup of OJ. They all must be on to something.
Grandpa Jack was not a carer in the way that I pictured one during my summer reading. He did not have soft features – he was angular and masculine. He did not have hooded eyes – he had eyes that were very present on his face. Actually, he didn’t have soft anything; complexion, voice, persona, or even palm to feel your forehead for a fever. Yet, there was a gentle confidence in everything he did that made you certain that if he wasn’t worried you had no reason to be either. If Grandpa Jack said you were okay, you were certainly fine. He was as stable and constant as his morning glass of OJ.
As I take another swig, all alone, discombobulated from an evening nap, and barefoot in my kitchen at 11 p.m. I talk to myself. “You’re okay. You’re alright,” I lean my head forward against the fridge. The pressure drips into the front of my face where two fingers pressed 17 years ago, and earlier today. I look at the bottle of orange juice and speak into it, “You’re okay. You’re alright”, then I drink from it – gulping down the words, the sympathy, and empathy of the carers that grief continues to deliver to me.
