That Show You Love

The sixties were not kind to me, and my eighties aren’t much better.
When you get to be my age, which happens to be the ripe one of eighty-two (and four months, but who’s counting?), you begin to realize that you only have a limited number of things to actually do, and despite all that money you stockpiled up like those bunker-nuts during the Cold War, and all that social “security,” your money really isn’t worth jack shit.
Right now, I’m sitting on a mound of cold, hard cash and, despite how sweet that may sound to a younger, less “advanced” (as they’re calling us), person, I still have sores up and down my ass. I’ll spare you the details but again, when you’re my age, you can only spend those dollars coming out of your crack in a few, select places: gambling on “bingo night” (Tuesdays and Thursdays), the tithing plate of the religious organization (or denomination) of your choice, scratch-off lottery tickets and a microwaved hot dog from the local gas station (if the bus makes a pitstop), or buying superfluous knickknacks off those home shopping channels with your husband’s credit card. Personally, I’m sick of the bingos, just fine with Father Myer's biweekly visits, prefer the microwaved junk from the cafeteria, and don’t have a husband, or a wife (anymore), and also don’t bother ordering from the television — I simply just watch it.
Or, at least, I used to watch it. You would think that you’d never see the day that your “television privileges” were taken away after the age of, say, six, but That Show You Love changes things, doesn’t it?
The first time I remember it coming on was the night of August 28th. It was a Thursday, and it was bingo night — again, if memory serves (we’ll get to that in a bit). I had just lost twenty-eight bucks to Dan Rosenberg from room 94 and was sitting on my bed wondering why the hell I allowed myself to bet with a former attorney-at-law. The rule was unwritten, but we shook on it: no winning the easy way — free space. Ol’ Danny Boy swore up and down that we never agreed on such a term and, even though the man’s mind wasn’t what it used to be, the wheelchair-bound shyster knew full well that he didn’t have a leg to stand on.
Unfortunately, I didn’t either — and technically “B12” (just like the vitamin) did complete his diagonal down.
Suffice it to say I was heated when I got back to my room, so much so that when the tv began blaring that crappy old music you’d hear if a tin can could whistle Three’s Company, I immediately fumbled for the remote. The set itself is and was ancient by today’s standards: a CRT “boob tube” that would zap ya if you tapped the screen complete with rabbit ears so tall, you’d think you were seeing the friggin’ Easter Bunny in late summertime. No matter what you played on the dopey thing, everything from those sleek cell phone commercials to The Godfather looked like a 70s porno (not that I would know, of course).
I was about to shut the hunk of junk off when the face of a gorgeous, young woman (at least, young to me — probably in her late 30s) caught my eye, and then the rest of her. She was folding the laundry and whistling something I couldn’t quite make out, and as the machine beneath her leaning tower of clothes wobbled and shook a fresh load, the one on top of it did the same before the upper six-odd shirts and blouses tumbled to the floor. I chuckled to myself as the laugh track played and I leaned back onto my pillow. Being a somewhat easy man to entertain — especially considering these days I only watch the news and traffic report (knowing full well my license is well-past expired, mind you) — I crossed my legs and turned up the volume. She was whistling Sharp Dressed Man by ZZ Top, a song choice that slowly began to make sense as soon as a casually dressed one, presumably her husband, entered the room in his boxer briefs. In one hand, he held a toothbrush that danced around between his lips. The other was empty, and he used it to slap the woman on the ass.
I hate to date myself more than I already have, but back in my day Lucy and Ricky slept in separate beds ‘til ’55, and then the Flintstones did it, and then, if a cartoon could, the rest would. And they did. Point being, watching a woman’s ass get slapped on national television was something I never dreamed of seeing all those years of staring at reruns of Lash Larue. But an old boy can dream, can’t he?
-----
Apparently, I must’ve been — because the next thing I knew, I was seated upright with a pool of drool in my lap, staining my own boxers with saliva.
“How’d we sleep last night, Mr. Benson?” the youthful voice of my nurse rang out and interrupted my thoughts. I couldn’t see her, but if it were a day that ended in ‘y,’ she was stirring my crushed-up pills into a cup of applesauce.
I thought about her question and my lips parted into a grin, “Who’s this ‘we,’ Jessica? ‘Cause I slept like a baby.”
“That makes one of us,” she said, puffing up my pillow and handing me the cup.
“You still in that…’honors’ class?”
She shook her head, turning down the television. I watched as the toothpaste commercial ended, and That Show You Love started up again.
“I am but…well, not for long,” she said, setting the remote on the nightstand with a little clack. The show was mid-episode, it seemed, and the wifely woman, her hair bunched up from bedhead, was kissing her husband goodbye as he lifted a briefcase and straightened his tie. Typical Americana.
My eyes then snapped back to Nurse Jessica — back to reality — and there was the faintest look on her face that, maybe, old man Benson was finally losing it.
“Y-you shouldn’t quit so soon,” I said, “it’s only been a week.”
“A terrible week, Mr. Benson,” she said as she approached me, “but don’t you worry about that,” she smiled, “I’ll be fine.”
The woman on the tv over her shoulder was brushing her teeth in her pajamas now, the shower beside her running hot water as evident by the fog coating the mirror glass. She dropped the brush and it tumbled into the sink. I couldn’t help but smirk at the slapstick and envision the Stooges doing the same, a laugh-track echoing inside my head as if on-cue at the fumble. I then turned my still-grinning gaze back to Jessica.
“I know you will,” I said, and she took my expression as a sign of goodwill. Good.
Nurse Jessica cleared her throat, “As for you, Mr. Benson,” she began — but that’s as much as I heard. Behind her, the woman on the boxed-in screen had taken off her pajama shirt, likely an oversized t-shirt of her husbands. She then began to pull the plush pajama pants down to her ankles and, clear as day, despite my cataracts, I could see her pale white ass and breasts in the mirror.
“-and that means a minimum of eight hours of sleep-“ Jessica continued. I grabbed the remote she had placed onto the nearby nightstand and clicked the tv off in a scramble. She spun around, looking at her own reflection in the window-lit black void, and then turned back to me on her heel.
“I, uh,” I said, “I can’t get eight hours with the set on.”
The nurse wagged her head and continued. I didn’t hear a word of it.
When Jessica finally left, which was after a grueling fifteen more minutes (that felt more like four hours), I lifted the remote from my lap and pressed my thumb to the little, red button.
The woman appeared on-screen again, only now she was fully clothed and standing in the kitchen, her hair still wet from the shower. Nearby, a television of her own was playing, though it was far nicer than the quite-literal boob tube that stood before me. I turned it up.
“-that’s what I said,” a woman’s voice faded in, “but y’know he didn’t listen.” I knew right away it wasn’t the showered woman’s voice, hers was too busy laughing at the voice coming from her flat-screened tv. They were both in their respective kitchens, cutting some kind of leafy green on a chopping board — she was watching a cooking show.
“I told him that,” the woman on the cooking show continued. I now noticed there was a cell phone wedged between her shoulder and her ear, and the wet-haired wife listened along as she sliced the vegetable. This went on for a good twenty-or-so minutes until, again, I fell asleep.
-----
When I finally opened my crusted-over eyes, Nurse Jessica was standing over me with a dinner plate. It was dark outside the window just to the left of the tv and, on its screen, the woman and her husband were watching something themselves, though the angle was on them, and I couldn’t see what it was.
“Got your eight hours in, Mr. Benson?” Jessica asked with a grin, setting the plate on the little swiveling tray before me — meatloaf and corn.
“W-what time is it?” I groaned, sitting up a little. I hated corn, it always came out whole.
“Half past eight.”
I sighed, “That’s nine hours today,” I said, “a new record.”
Jessica shook her head as she salted the meatloaf (I did need my sodium, after all), “If all I did was watch this all day,” she said, her eyes lifting to the image of the couple on the couch, “I’d sleep for nine hours, too, Mr. Benson.”
She wished me a goodnight and, as soon as she shut the door, I turned up the volume which she had taken the liberty of turning down, though there wasn’t much to listen to. It was some kind of show that they were watching. None of the voices in it sounded familiar but it sure kept their attention. I watched on as I forked down the meatloaf, avoiding that pesky, yellow corn, until the couple stood, clicked off the program, and made their way off screen. There was a good twenty seconds where I simply stared at the empty living room. At first, I thought the cable box might’ve given out, or maybe there was a glitch. But before I had time to do anything about it (which wouldn’t’ve been much) a new shot appeared.
It was of their apparent bedroom and Mrs. whatever-her-name-was was waltzing through the doorway seductively in some kind of lingerie. Her husband, in his boxers again, sat on the edge of the bed before standing up and approaching her. It was at that point when the two began passionately kissing, and the same point when I wondered what the hell kind of “late-night” channel I had accidentally been watching for the past two days. I hit the guide and was presented with, perhaps, an even stranger sight: the channel wasn’t listed, but instead I was taken to the list of programs playing on channels one through five with the weather report in the corner. I clicked back on the show, and now the couple was on the bed, making out like bandits. I’ll spare the details but let me just say that it was the first time I had a stiffie since Janet Jackson’s little “wardrobe malfunction” at the ’04 Superbowl.
Despite my little “excitement,” however, I figured it was neither the time nor place to be watching the “after hours” channel, much like when Mom would catch Harry and I on the living room rug watching The Twilight Zone instead of Captain Kangaroo when he was six. God forbid that snoop Dan Rosenberg should point his pointy-little nose through the crack in my door and see me watching this, not to mention Nurse Jessica. So, I turned off That Show You Love, shook my head, and leaned back onto my pillow. The image of the couple never left me that night, and I couldn’t fully tell if what I was feeling was a bit of libido, a bit of the creeps, or something in-between.
Regardless of my feelings, however, the show had me hooked — line and sinker. I didn’t even know the character’s names or any of the plot but, still, I felt compelled to watch it. It was that “slice of life” bullshit that Amy always loved. Of course, minus the gratuitous sex.
It truly was That Show You Love — that show that I now loved.
After indecisively rolling back and forth beneath the covers, I grabbed the remote between my legs and clicked the little, red button again. Immediately, my finger dashed to the volume control, pressing it until the number in the upper right-hand corner virtually became zero, but the effort was of little need: the couple was asleep, and not a sound emanated from the television other than the white noise that scratched at my ears. I stared on like a voyeuristic swine for a good three, confused minutes until I, myself, drifted off into dreamland.
-----
When I came to, again with a streak of spit along my chin, Nurse Jessica was hoisting me up and onto the bus. It was Saturday, which meant “activity” day, and for a group of geezers that could barely walk not to mention sit-up straight, the outings usually included bowling (if we were feeling frisky), the local indoor shopping mall (and by mall, I mean food court), or the grocery store. You wouldn’t think that putting a box of Raisin Bran into a wheeled, steel cage would classify as a “fun Saturday outing,” but the alternative, watching The Price is Right for eight hours while thinking about all the grandkids you comparatively didn’t have, paled in comparison.
Before Jessica escorted me to the bus, however, in that half-awake-half-asleep twilight that a yawn usually snaps you right out of, I watched as the woman on That Show You Love kissed her husband goodbye, only this time it was she that leaving the house in a bright, yellow blouse, purse hung from her shoulder. The next shot, which looked to be about the same from the intro of the show with that jolly jingle, was of the house itself as the woman shut the front door and strut to her car. As the shot slowly widened, the stark, white mailbox drifted into view reading, plainly, “Johnson.”
“Finally,” I thought, “I have a name.”
I continued thinking about the show all the way to the mall and, when we had finished eating in the food court, many of us (especially Fat Joe, as we called him) got the hankering for the supermarket. So, we went — at least, the bus went — and as it pulled up, like a shot out of Night of the Living Dead (another program Mom rang my neck for watching), we shuffled into the florescent gleam of aisles upon aisles of processed junk food: Heaven for those of us that weren’t quite there yet.
As I spun my cart into aisle three to grab myself a handful of cheesy puffs in that ten-gallon drum, my feet squeaked to a stop faster than my brain ever could’ve. Standing at the end of the aisle and reaching for a jar of peanut butter on her toes was the woman from That Show You Love — that same, wifely woman. Of the few times I had seen it, I had never suspected the show to be that of a local broadcast, not to mention that members of the cast were actually residents of Des Plaines, Illinois.
I had never met anyone famous in my life up to that point, maybe besides sharing a connecting flight with one of the members of Frankie Valli’s Four Seasons, and because of that I had also never felt that, as they call it, “butterflies” feeling — that feeling when you get starstruck. While my stomach wasn’t exactly fluttering at that moment in time, it was, in some manner, a bit uneasy (and it probably wasn’t the food court, either). I couldn’t help my cold feet as I approached her, but maybe due to the intimacy I had seen her in on-screen, I felt somewhat comfortable tapping the stranger on the shoulder with my brittle fingers. She spun around, clutching the last jar, and I extended a warm smile.
“Hello, young lady,” I said, nodding my head. She was more stunning in person.
“H-hello,” she replied, mirroring my same gesture. We stood silently as the hum of the overhead speakers played some kind of saxophone crap. I cleared my throat, but before I could speak, she continued, “W-were you looking for this, sir?” I followed her eyes down to the peanut butter.
“No,” I said, “no ma’am.”
She nodded silently at me. For a starlet, she was rather shy.
“I just wanted to say that I’m a big fan.”
Her eyes narrowed and brows furrowed, looking at me as if I were bug-eyed, “A big fan?” she asked, shaking her head, “Of?”
I chuckled, “Your show.”
The woman, smile faded from her cheeks, continued to shake her noggin, “I’m sorry, sir…you must have the wrong woman.”
“You don’t have to be coy,” I said, raising a hand, realizing her in person modesty, “I just wanted to tell you that your work has made an old man…very entertained,” I nervously huffed.
The woman looked down the aisle to either side and, when she saw that no one was around, stepped a bit closer to me, “What ‘work’?”
Now my smile was gone too, and my voice deepened, “You play Mrs. Johnson on That Show You Love.”
The woman’s face drained of all its color and her cheeks hallowed out. She just stared at me for a good thirty seconds in that aisle, the jar of peanut butter close to bursting between her fingers.
“Mister,” she finally said in a hushed, low tone, “I am Mrs. Johnson.”
I licked my lips and started to shake my head, “But you’re-“
She stopped me, “I’m not on tv.”
We stood silently across from one another until she set the jar back on the shelf and paced down the aisle, occasionally looking over her cold shoulder at me until she disappeared behind a wall of marshmallow bags.
Then it hit me in her absence: she had been wearing the same, yellow blouse and shoulder-hung purse from this morning’s episode.
Perhaps I was having an episode of my own.
-----
That night I simply stared at the black-void screen of the television set, never once turning it on. I couldn’t sleep, even despite the warm milk Nurse Jessica had given me. I was chilled to the brittle bone.
Eventually, when the darkness outside faded into the glow of an orange-yellow sunrise through the curtains, I mustered up the strength to press, once again, that little, red button — the button my finger had been resting on all night but was too timid to dare push.
The tv flashed on. I had winced in expectation to see the woman and her husband, perhaps in bed or making an early breakfast. Instead, the shot was of their bedroom, yes, but on top of their covers, as opposed to the couple being under them, were two thick suitcases. Mr. Johnson, as he might’ve been called, was continually looking around the house, back and forth, and tossing clothes and neckties and black suit pants into the zippered bag. At times, he stared straight into the camera, which was apparently, and in some way, hidden from his view. Mrs. Johnson, indeed the woman I had seen in that aisle at the grocer, was frantically yelling something at him. I cautiously turned up the volume,
“-I just don’t know how it’s possible, honey,” her husband said, flailing his arms, “I looked all night — couldn’t find a single one-”
“I know what he said,” she snapped back, “it’s completely crazy b-but how the hell did he know?”
“He was probably just an old pervert,” her husband replied, shoving something into a bag. “I think I’ll give that Sunny Gardens a call. That’s what it said on the bus, right?”
“Right.”
“Oh shit,” I thought to myself.
And that shit, which proverbially hit the fan that night, came in the form of that single, solitary word that none of us here at Sunny Gardens ever wanted to hear, not even Dan Rosenberg next door — no, not even him. It was a word that meant those funny looks in the lobby, the extra pills to swallow and the rigid visitation rights (not that anyone was visiting me anyway).
“Dementia.”
-----
“It’s just a precaution,” Nurse Jessica said as she crushed the new medication into my applesauce, stirring it alongside the others. She probably thought I was crazy just like everyone else, not only for the phone call that the home had anonymously received about a certain “old man” in a “stained wife-beater,” but also because I had requested her to close the curtains and keep them shut, even during the day. The sunlight would still bleed into the room but, without the glow of the tv, who’s remote was now hidden from me, the only other source of light was that of the lamp on the nightstand.
She handed me the cup and I instinctively lifted the cold steel of the spoon, “Do you think I’m nuts, Jessica?”
“Of course not,” she shook, but I could tell she was lying. “You just need a little extra care right now, Mr. Benson.”
I thanked Jessica, unable to convince her that I wasn’t loony, and let her wrap-up her shift for the night. About an hour later, just as I was about to sit silently and stare into the voided screen that reflected my face back to me, there was a knock at my door.
“Come in,” I said with a strained voice, and in-stepped one of the assistant nurses, Nurse Becky, if memory serves. She smiled, but it was a nervous one. Everyone around here thought I had, somehow, fled my covers by the cover of night and went to play “peeping Tom” down the street (come to find out the Johnson’s had only lived a couple of blocks from the home).
“M-Mr. Benson,” she said, somewhat clunkily, “you have a visitor.”
I snapped my head to face her, “I do?”
She nodded, and from behind her stepped in a woman I had never seen before: a smiling, brunette woman.
“I’ll let you two be alone,” she said, and ducked into the hallway. The woman approached my bed, and I sat up hastily, pulling the covers up to my chest.
“Do, uh,” I stuttered, “do I know you?”
She extended a pink envelope and a pink gift baggie toward me in either hand, “Probably not,” she said in a tired voice, but she wasn’t right. Though I had never met this woman, that voice of hers sounded eerily familiar. As I watched her hands tremble, still upholding the gifts, suddenly it clicked: she was the woman on Mrs. Johnson’s tv in her kitchen. I had done a lot of cheap dope in my heyday but this — this was way worse.
“Wait,” I said, gruffly, “don’t you run a cooking show?”
She shook her head, and then shook the gifts in her hands. I took the card and unwrapped it. It was one of those “Get Well Soon” ones with a little puppy on the front, a thermometer in its mouth. I looked at the woman as I opened it and could see, in the lamplight, that she must’ve recently been crying. Her eyes were sunken and puffy red.
Inside the card, written in black ink, was a note. It read, rather bluntly:
“Stop looking through windows, Roger.”
The woman then set the baggie on my lap and, without another word, left the room. I sat in silence for a moment, the opened card still in my hands, and then placed the card on my stomach and lifted the little baggie, opening it. Inside, there was a television remote wrapped in a newspaper — another television remote, strikingly similar to the one the home had hidden from me. I aimed it at the box and pressed the same-colored, red button.
That Show You Love, rather, that show I once loved, came on and, onscreen, was a different sight: a different house entirely, as a matter of fact. Seated at a desk and punching something into a laptop was a young woman with long, wet, jet-black hair. I immediately clicked the set off again with a quivering hand. I didn’t even need to see her face to know who it was: it was Nurse Jessica.
-----
I still haven’t told her. See, that newspaper that wrapped the remote in the baggie — it wasn’t only there for “fluffs” sake. Come to find out, on the page stamped with the number 16, at the very tip top with all the other classifieds, was an advertisement for a modest, suburban home, one that looked all-too familiar. But that wasn’t all. On the back page, at the very bottom, were two “Have You Seen Me?” bulletins.
I think you can figure out whose faces were in those pictures.
I keep my curtains drawn, even now, unless I want it to be “curtains” for me, too. If the woman who had stood in this very room that night, holding that card and baggie in her hands, had been being watched by Mrs. Johnson, and I had been watching her…
…then who the hell’s been watching me?
-----
I got that answer last night. I was up in bed and reading an Agatha Christie novel — all I can do now without the company of the “boob tube” (not that I want it anymore) — when there was a knocking at my door. It was Nurse Jessica. Just as I had every time since I saw her black locks on that damned screen, I winced and curbed that reaction into a smile.
“Mr. Benson?”
“Yes, Jess?”
She smiled and extended an envelope, “Looks like someone’s a very popular person here at Sunny Gardens.”
If only she knew.
I forced a smile and took it from her. She bid me goodnight and I did the same, ever-so desperately waiting for her to leave. When she finally did, I tore it open, and this is what was written inside on a sheet of white paper:
“Dear Mr. Benson,
You don’t know me, but I’d like to think that I know you. Call me your secret admirer, although I suppose I’m not so ‘secret’ anymore.
You have given me a lot of joy these past few weeks. When you got that unsightly boner in your bed, I laughed just about as hard as I did when I first watched Blazing Saddles on Turner Classics. My father passed away back in June, and he and I used to watch that channel all the time, before I found this one. I’d like to think that your presence with me, day, and night, has been something of a comfort in these trying times of mine. You remind me of my father.
I noticed that there is a lump on your lower back on your right (my left) hand side, a marking that unfortunately reminds me of Dad’s appointments of late. It is a shame that Jessica never caught it, especially considering how hard she’s been studying.
I hope you’ll tell her about it — just don’t tell her about the show. I miss the Johnsons, and I’m sure you do, too.
Sincerely yours,
Your Biggest Fan.”
Category:RTWC23
Category:Television
Category:MakRalston
Category:Disappearances
Category:Mental Illness