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Requited

Visiting my grandfather in the hospital. He just had surgery to replace his artificial hips. That’s right. He’s eight-two years old, and he just got his second set of artificial hips installed.

“Gramps,” I ask him. “What is it with you and hips?”

“Too much screwin’,” he says.

It’s true. The man has had a very busy sex life. Hundreds of women. Maybe more than a thousand. When gramps retired, he burned through his 401k with a month of lapdances at the Foxy Lady. He’s like that.

“You take it easy with these new hips,” I say. “Leave the ladies alone.”

Gramps nods in the direction of the nurse tending to his roommate. Gramps makes a clicking sound with his false teeth and winks.

“No,” I say.

Gramps says, “Yup. Last night after my sponge bath.”

Grandma looks up from her knitting. She considers the nurse, a stocky woman with a gray buzzcut—the drill sergeant type—in her early-fifties. Grandma says, “Yup.”

+

My grandparents divorced about forty years ago. They’ve reconciled a few times over the years, never for more than a month or two, but more frequently in the past few years.

My grandmother always has a smile on her face. She’s had no other man in her life besides gramps and she seems to be happy about that. She likes to knit sweaters for everybody, she likes to sew quilts, she likes to read thick books from the library, and she likes to watch weepy old movies.

I ask her why she put up with Gramps all these years. She tells me she’s never let him get the better of her. She says she’s in charge, but she lets him stick around because she has a soft spot for the old fool.

Grandma says, “One time I came home and caught him sound asleep in our bed with one of his whores. I hustled her out of the bed, careful not to wake him. Then I sewed the blanket to the bedspread with him stuck inside. Got a broom from the kitchen and beat him with the handle.”

“Actually, Grandma, that’s something that one of Willie Nelson’s wives did to him.”

“Shit,” says Grandma. “You sure about that?”

+

Walking the shiny halls of the hospital with Gramps.

“Look at this, Peter.”

I turn to see Gramps swiveling his hips, hula style. It was a bit obscene.

“These new hips are going to suit me just fine,” he says. “You should get yourself a pair.”

“I plan to get a lifetime out of the original set that God gave me,” I say.

“You ought to be out there screwing through those hips,” he says. “Break your hips, not your heart.”

Our walk takes us outside, into a shady courtyard. Gramps speaks my ex-wife’s name. Since we’re outside, I spit on the ground, just to get a laugh out of Gramps.

“I had a wife but couldn’t keep her,” I say. “She wanted babies, and I couldn’t give her any.”

Gramps says, “Then you go find a woman who wants what you can give her.”

I make a remark about what he’s given my grandmother over the years—heartache.

“Your grandmother isn’t as innocent as she seems,” says Gramps.

“Oh, is that right?” I say.

“Once, she had relations with a man she knew to have syphilis just so she could pass it on to me!”

“Actually, Gramps, that’s something that Hillary Clinton did to Bill back when he was Governor of Arkansas.”

“You sure about that?”

+

I pick up Gramps when he’s discharged from the hospital the next day.

“Where to?” I ask him.

“Your grandmother’s place.”

“What about your nurse?”

He makes a sour face, says an expletive quietly. “I could move in with her so long as I resigned myself to a lifetime of foreplay consisting of me moving my bowels in a bedpan and then submitting to a rough sponge bath. That’s not for me.”

“Enough.”

Gramps says I could take him to Grace Herot’s house. “If I only knew where she lived today.”

“Is she your one unrequited love, Gramps?”

“Hell,” says Gramps. “I requited Grace Herot. I requited her a dozen times the summer we were sixteen.”

He goes on to name a few places where he and Grace did their requiting. Then he suddenly begins crying. I think the tears are for Grace Herot. But no. Gramps has fallen in love with my Grandmother again.

“I’m dedicating these new hips to your grandmother,” he says.

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