Chapter 54
“Homemade Ice Cream, With a Side
of putrescent, possibly lethal germs.”
I think, because of the bread experiment, I guilted one of the PT guys into “interacting” more with the inmates, because one day he showed up with an electric ice cream machine, four boxes of “ice cream salt” (salt is salt, people. Don't buy “special salt” at a higher price just because it has some “special” quality the salt sellers put on the box. I hate those guys. Salt is salt is salt. Sea salt, Dead Sea Salt, Salton Sea Salt: it's all salt), lots of cream and three baskets of fresh strawberries.
“Karl”, the PT set up his machine on the same table we'd kneaded (in some cases just smacked around, which was fine), and stashed the cream and fruit in the fridge. Then he found the bowls I had had the ladies let their bread rise in, and distributed them around the table.
I was curious about the process, so I sat in because I had heard tales from the 'rents about their childhoods in the Depression (again, I was adopted when they were well over 40) and those tales nearly always had to do with putting cream, some sort of flavor or fruit, into an ice cream holder thingie, and then the parents would pour salt in the space between the holder and the outer wall, and let the cranking begin.
According to my parents, it was always the kid who cranked, and it took 17 hours to crank that crap into actual ice cream.
That's some arm strength builder, eh?)
So, Karl shepherded in about 10 of the Asylum dwellers who weren't at PT or OT or chasing nurses around and poking them (or trying to break out: they were the ones who had the most sense, if you ask me) and they all clapped gnarled hands at the idea of homemade ice cream. And not ONE of them neglected to tell their own youthful story of cranking for days to make ice cream.
But this ice cream maker was electric. No cranking. Same process, cream, fruit, salt, but the machine turned the little ice cream holder by itself, and all we had to do was sit around and stare at the thing for about 20 minutes. (It's amazing how many “hand cranked ice cream” stories can get crammed into 20 minutes.)
But, after those 20 minutes, the machine slowed down (as the instructions said it would, as the ice cream thickened) and then stopped and made a “beeeeeeep” noise and it was cake. I mean, ice cream.
And it was good. It made about a pint, and Karl plopped a dollop into each inmates bowls, he passed out spoons and everyone dived into their homemade strawberry ice cream.
It was good! It was no Hagen Dazs (or the gelato you can get from a tiny little kiosk in Florence, Italy: the ice cream there would make you give up sex for several eternities. If that was the choice you had to make. Fortunately, all you had to do in Florence was have Italian money.)
Kimit was sitting next to a much older woman, who was in a wheelchair, and he looked very satisfied at the taste of his ice cream, but he'd only asked for and eaten a tiny bit (weight watching).
So, the little woman in the wheelchair decided she was going to give Kimit some more ice cream... from her bowl... and from HER spoon. I watched, and then my very tired eyes and itchy brain (I might have meant the reverse) said, “Schmuck! You don't know why she's here! She could be the Typhoid Mary of Hellcare for all you know! MOVE!”
But, I wasn't quick enough. I lunged across the table, making every effort to knock the spoon out of her hand before it went into K's mouth, but I was off by three or four seconds. I saw his lips, as if in slow motion, close on her spoon, which she had already been eating ice cream off of, and gulp, down went the ice cream that wasn't K's, but Possibly Cholera Kate's ice cream. And, since I had already sequenced and delivered the launch code for the missile that was me, I was still lunging, and my hand was already there, and I did knock the spoon from Cholera Kate's hand, across the room and landing under a non-working air conditioner.
I was not well pleased. K didn't looked perplexed at my action, and then my anger, which was getting angrier byt the second.
The woman in the wheel chair?
Hoo boy: Did she lay into me! She squawked when I slapped the spoon away, and began making strangled, soon-to-be-ex-friend of Tony Soprano (sorry, Mr. Gandolfini) noises, and barked, “Whadja do that fer? I ain't got nothin' wrong in here with me, ya stupit idjit!" (thanks, Mr. Beaver. No, really. Beaver. Watch old “Supernaturals”: he's in the credits.)
And now, if my Alsatian hearing is working, I hear you saying [please be saying it] "Why should Possibly Cholera Kate feeding Kimit ice cream from a spoon she had ALREADY used, be angry at Sam?”
Here's why: SHE WAS A FREAKING GOONY BIRD.
There. I said it. I feel better.
The freaking goony bird got hideously offended, and wheeled herself out of the room. Kimit looked at me with much concern, but I was... livid? Furious?
Terrified? Yep. That's the one. Shaking with terror. We didn't know this woman. We'd never even met her before the Great Ice Cream Tasting Debacle. She could be laced with influenza or undiagnosed scabies. (Around that place? Many, many misdiagnoses were made. I had actually diagnosed one man, who was scratching the right side of his right leg, so continuously that blood was seeping through his trousers. I told his nurse that she had best be looking at his leg, because he either had Venerian [it's “venerian”, really, when referring to something from Venus, not “Venusian”) knee crabs, or shingles.
A bit later, when I saw that she had done precisely nothing about the man's condition, I told the head nurse, but added to that head nurse that if the poor man's condition was not reported to the MD RIGHT THE FUCK NOW, and treated, and the man be given pain killers [shingles is possibly the most painful condition human beings can get, aside from delivering a baby, and I think that man's baby delivery days were long over] I was going to be making some phone calls to some agencies who would be happy to toddle on in and make bad, bad things happen to the administration and garner bagsful of shekels in fines.
The head nurse saw to the man immediately after my threat. So, ya see what I mean? You had to be on your guard in these places, and you needed to be informed. And he wasn't even my husband! I didn't even know his name.)
When we were back in K's room, and alone, I tried to explain my actions and worry, what with the spoon and the Possibly Cholera Kate incident, but it was mid-afternoon, and he had taken his Vicodin, and he was being carried off into the gentle, cradling arms of whatever Roman God is responsible for sleep.
I watched some TV, did some embroidery (I think I forgot to tell you that I embroider: it's how I quit smoking when I was 31. I took an ancient pair of jeans of mine, and instead of smoking, I'd get my emboidery kit out and sew like I was a little old woman, parked in a rocking chair, next to the gallows [or was it a guillotine?], rocking and tatting, rocking and tatting. Eesh. That comparison scared ME.
Kimit's was incredibly supportive [he'd walk me, mentally, to the store, buy me fictional cigarettes, have me strike up a moke, and calm me unutterably]. When that didn't work: embroidery.
I think I put flowers and smiley faces and guys with scythes [that rhymes!] and hearts and dozens of other designs over every square inch of those jeans which I owned back when I was a size 2 and weighed about 95 pounds [No, really] when I was done with the embroidery, and, after two of the worst weeks of Kimit's life, [just because I was embroidering didn't mean I wasn't having withdrawal snarling] I was done with the smoking.
And it was all because of Terry. Terry was a kid I worked with at a plant nursery far too many moons ago, and he was the grandson of the Diplomat who signed the Peace Accord in WWII in the Pacific. Terry Shigamitsu. I wished, and still do, nothing but the best for Terry. I hope he got it.
Anyway, Terry was watching me smoke one day (back when one could smoke at work) and he said, in a plain, non-dramatic way, “If you don't stop doing that, it's going to kill you.” I looked back at him, dropped the cig on the concrete floor, stepped on it, picked it up, dropped it in the toilet, and flushed it away. With K's help (see above) and Terry's plain, non-whiney statement, I quit smoking. They say the hardest things to do quit are smoking, or heroin. Having never even seen heroin, I can't attest to that, but I still do have dreams now and then about smoking.
But, as my pal Bill Clinton once famously said, I did not inhale), the dinner service was rolling around.
(My God, that might have been the longest paranthetical aside I've ever written. So far.)
So, I watched my beloved eat, made him promise not to lick anyone else's utensils, and went home to feed the cat and the birds.
The birds! I will tell you of Marco and Sophie in the next chapter.
Because I think we're closing in on the end of this particular tale. Oh, I've got some more Administrative spanking to write about, so don't go too far.
As my favorite uncle used to say, “Go slowly, but come back quickly.”
Hal. A truly nice man, for whom I would come quickly for any reason at all. Goddess bless and keep him.
Aaaaaand... everyone.
(By the way... the ice cream? Ended up costing about 12 dollars a pint. Even B&J's doesn't cost that much.)