It wasn’t the first time that Steven’s white shirt had been stained beige by the clinging cigarette smoke, and he waited while Grandma rummaged through the attic for old newspaper articles about the dangers of smoking. He sighed and dashed out the remaining embers of burning nicotine against the side of the large tin candy dish turned ashtray that Grandma had set aside for him. The TV across the room had been blaring for the hour that he had been babysitting the old hag, and he fumbled through a crumpled pack for one more cigarette to keep him company next to the soothing neon glow. No sooner had he managed to dig out a crooked butt and press it underneath his patchy teenage mustache than he heard Grandma’s careful footsteps hobble down the noisy and obstinate staircase. She inched her way down the steps, pausing with each footfall, mumbling to herself and clutching a few pieces of newsprint between her arthritic fingers. For a moment Steven wondered if he should help her down the stairs. Instead he resigned himself to a struggle with his nearly empty lighter in an attempt to soothe the lonely piece of pleasure screwed securely between his lips. It wasn’t his job to watch after the old woman; his parents had stuck him with her hoping that they could spend some bonding time before she finally kicked the bucket.
He had been coming here for over a year now, ever since his parents’ jobs pulled them away from Grandma. Lucky them. Steven was supposed to be taking care of her, keeping her company while she finished out the remainder of her years in this lonely, indifferent world. He had looked forward to it at first, remembering the fun he had at her home as a child, playing with the toothless Chihuahua next door and climbing the rickety old tree house out back. Unfortunately, he had forgotten that his nostalgia came from the excited mind of a 10 year old. Now he was 18, the Chihuahua had long since died, and he had grown too old to play in the crook of a rotting old tree anyway. Whether they had meant it or not, Steven’s parents had lured him into a trap, forcing him to waste his afternoons in Grandma’s antiquated home. Just him, the old lady, and her one-woman anti-smoking campaign.
“There,” she said as she finally lowered herself to the bottom of the staircase, “these are what I wanted to show you.”
Steven didn’t move from the soft leather chair, waiting for the half-senile old woman to stagger the fifteen steps between the stairs and the living room. When she finally made it and rested her weary bottom on the nearby ottoman, Steven snatched the clippings from her, taking another drag on his cigarette, filling his senses with enough thick gray smoke to cover his grandmother’s mothballs and stale fart smell. God he hated the smell of death.
The newspaper clippings came from three local papers, all on the same day. “Man Dies in Fire,” read the Bugle. “Local Writer Dead at 53,” said the Tribune. The less tasteful and now defunct Daily Eagle read, “Senior Citizen Smoked Out.”
It was always the same thing. Every few days Grandma would try to show him these same articles in a vain attempt to make him change his ways. Steven thought of the phrase “Change your ways” and almost spat. She was treating him as though he were some sort of villain, as though each of his half-smoked cigarettes had been tossed into Grandpa’s home decades earlier, with the murder weapon still proudly protruding from his lips. Whatever. He was of legal age now. Not a kid anymore, able to drive a car and buy his smokes legally at any convenience store. In a few months he’d be out of high school and making his way in this same world that his grandfather couldn’t manage to stay in. And instead of being treated like the man he was, he had to listen to this same old anti-smoking rhetoric, the same nuggets of information. Quitting smoking will add years to your life. You don’t want lung cancer, do you? Emphysema? A Tracheotomy? Quit now before you end up like Grandpa…or worse.
“What the hell is this Grandma?”
“It should be obvious, even to a youngster like you. They’re three obituaries for your grandfather Cassius.”
“Yeah, I know that. But what the hell is it with you showing me these all the time?”
She looked at him, sleepily, as though the truth of her senility was about to knock her unconscious. Deep down, Steven had wondered whether or not she actually remembered his visits. Usually he just sat curled up in his cloud of carcinogens, idling his time and nodding wearily when Grandma tried to coax him away from his habit. But today was different. He wasn’t a kid anymore, hadn’t been for almost a week now. He wasn’t about to let anyone tell him how to run his life, especially not someone who couldn’t even remember how to run her own half the time.
“You don’t understand. Your grandfather Cassius…”
“Yeah, you’ve told me before. He fell asleep smoking a cigarette and got caught in a fire. It must have been terrible for you.” He leaned in close to her, pulling the cigarette away from his lips for a moment and giving her a patronizing kiss on the forehead. That’s right, he thought, I’m the real adult here. I’ve got all my wits about me and you’re really just a child, and infant trapped in this old body and tired mind. I know what I’m talking about; you only have a few misremembered facts and experiences to go off.
Steven leaned back, placing the cigarette back in his mouth and allowing himself a content smile. He would handle her like an adult; show everyone that he could be an adult as well. He would take care of Grandma, protect her from herself. What was more, he would finally convince her to stop this anti-smoking propaganda that she had raised against him like a shield and get her to finally focus her life around something else, something useful.
Steven’s smile faded away as he glanced back at Grandma. He frowned a little, letting the cigarette droop from the corner of his mouth as he saw her, not with a sense of relief as she realized how wise her grandson was, but with dead, angry eyes. The white-haired old woman glared at Steven over her steel-rimmed spectacles, then plucked the half-burned cigarette from his mouth with more speed than he believed anyone in their 80s could muster. Her face flushed and her breath sped up as she dashed out the butt on her candy dish. “He was smoking one of these God awful things and fell asleep. Our house caught on fire while I was out shopping.” She said the words triumphantly, as though she had finally remembered them after long years of struggle rather than spewing them out at him every few days. Grandma stood up in a fury, knocking over the candy tray and spilling ashes and soot all over her white carpet.
“Calm down Grandma…”
“No, I won’t! You young punks think that you’re all immortal and that nothing bad will ever happen to you, but it’s just a matter of time. You sit there thinking about how sad it must be for a lonely old bag like myself who’s too stupid to realize that she’s alone and dying, laughing at me because you think you’ll never be like this! Well I’ll tell you something mister,” her arms trembled with the strain of her outburst, “if you don’t watch yourself, you won’t be lucky enough to get to my age.”
Steven cast a sidelong glance at his precious cigarette, not quite extinguished and smoldering on the rug. His mouth felt empty, his body insecure, as he realized exactly how awry his little slice of parenting was going. Then he turned back to Grandma in an attempt to meet her anger with some of his own, determined not to allow her to walk all over him. After all, that’s what adults did when someone talked back to them: they scolded. “Now you listen, you old bag, just because someone else screwed up doesn’t mean that you have to take it out on me. Smoking didn’t kill grandpa, stupidity did. If he had a little bit of foresight, he’d still be here today, and I’d say that he got what he deserved!”
The last line lingered in the air for what seemed like hours, as Steven withdrew in shock at the words that had come out of his mouth, unstopped by a cigarette, and Grandma stood trembling, tears of frustration welling up, her quaking lips turning blue with vehemence. They stood there until the clock chimed four, at which point Steven made a feeble attempt at breaking their silence.
“Grandma, I’m so—”
His words were cut off as she collapsed to the ground, falling next to the still smoldering cigarette as its embers spread their way across the rug.
“Grandma?”
She didn’t move, except to clutch her arm and give a slight tremble, and Steven dashed across the room to the phone on the wall. There were three numbers, three simple numbers that he was supposed to remember, but for the life of him they wouldn’t form in his mind. After a bout of indecision, he finally called his parents, resigning himself back to his life as a child as the last four digits of their phone, 9112, rang as the only though in his mind.
“Mom, something happened to Grandma...”
* * *
The rest of the day went by in a blur. Steven sat in the hospital waiting room, fumbling with the tinfoil wrapping of his cigarettes. His parents had remembered those three numbers for him, and the EMTs brought Grandma to the hospital with a comforting sense of routine. In an attempt to avoid any undue conflict later on, Steven explained that he and Grandma had been watching The Price is Right when Grandma just keeled over when it came time to spin the wheel. He figured to himself that he was too old to get a beating from Dad anyway.
Or was he? It had been a week since he was given this new age, this license of adulthood, and he had failed to use it effectively. All he had to show for his newly gained level of maturity was a grandmother hovering on death’s door, a teenage mustache that looked like someone had glued some pubic hair to his upper lip, and two packs of legal, store bought cigarettes that he had purchased yesterday, proud that he no longer had to hide in an alley while his older friends helped him get his fix. And now he was down to his last cig, having resorted to irresponsible chain-smoking while he was waiting outside the building for someone to fill him in on what was happening to Grandma, the elderly child that had been left in his care.
“Are you okay?” An orderly in a sterile white jacket laid a soothing hand on Steven’s shoulder, bringing him out of his numb shock.
“Yeah,” said Steven as he screwed another cigarette into his lips, “my dad should be by any minute now.”
“I’m sorry, but you can’t smoke in here,” the young man pointed to a No Smoking sign just as Steven lit up. “You’ll have to wait outside.”
Steven nodded and wandered outside, telling himself that there wasn’t anything that he could do for Grandma right now anyway.
You’re just a kid.
He took a soothing drag off of his cigarette and had just begun to forget his problems when he saw a fire engine scream its way across the east side of town.
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