Uncle L

My Uncle L is in the rec lounge of the Leafy Cottage rest home -- a narrow room with parrot-poop green walls and a TV turned up nearly to distortion.

He’s slumped in his wheelchair with Mr. Mumps on his lap. Mr. Mumps does all the talking these days, his high-pitched voice still making cracks, my Uncle L behind him moving his lips. A few yards away, two old men are playing cards. “You can’t play that,” one says. “I just did,” the other insists, picking up the card and slapping it down even harder. Mr. Mumps turns and gives them the raspberry.

Since his stroke, Uncle L talks out of one corner of a droopy mouth that looks as if it were made of wax that had melted -- working the controls in Mr. Mumps’ back, making his eyes move, his head swing from side to side, his jaws flap. My uncle has shrunk down even further in his pj’s since I’ve seen him last. I sit in a small plastic chair, thinking how to tell him my dad won’t be visiting any more. That he’s in the ground now with all their other siblings. That Uncle L’s the only one left.

My dad used to come two, three times a week, and they’d sit together. My father always got a kick out of whatever shred of a joke Mr. Mumps came up with. He visited nearly to the end.

“Hi Uncle L,” I say. “I got you some sweets.” I put the big bag of M&Ms on his lap and Mr. Mumps leans forward to look at it. “Did you hear the one about the nun and the talking cucumber?” Mr. Mumps asks in that squeaky voice. “No,” I say, moving my chair closer. Behind me, from the TV, I hear Lucy and Ethel cooking up another harebrained scheme. “Me neither,” the dummy says, his eyebrows bouncing up and down.

“I wanted to talk to you, Uncle L,” I say.

“Who are you?” Mr. Mumps asks, his voice a little raspy.

“I’m your nephew, Al -- your brother Peter’s kid.”

“You got vodka?” it asks, and I find myself talking to the dummy just like I did growing up. Even in his diminished state, Uncle L can still bring the doll to life.

In the old days he played major clubs with his dummies. Even toured Vietnam, with a hippy doll he had, to entertain the troops. And before that was booked to do Sullivan but was bumped, as he liked saying, “By those singing mop-heads from England.” Mr. Mumps was always his favorite.

“They won’t let you have that here,” I say, and Mr. Mumps gives me the raspberry now.

I switch from looking at the doll’s puffy red cheeks into my uncle’s eyes, blank as buttons. “Your brother Peter won’t be able to make it here anymore,” I tell him.

“Who?” The doll’s head swings back and forth.

“But I’ll try and come as often as I can.” I point to the bag in his lap. “You want some M&Ms?”

“Who are you?”

“Al,” I tell him, pulling his afghan up. “Your nephew, Al.”

When I was six he made me a hand puppet using an old sock and my mother’s lipstick to paint a face. I kept it for years, filling our old dog Sudsy’s ears with rambling monologues till the cotton was worn thin. “You look good,” I say.

“One more and I’ll have enough for a golf course,” Mr. Mumps says.

On the TV, Lucy’s face collapses as Ricky stands over her grimacing, his hands on his hips. The room fills with raucous canned laughter.

“Anyway, like I was saying, your brother Peter won’t be able--”

An elderly woman enters then with an armload of magazines. When she bends to place them on the coffee table, Uncle L issues a loud fart sound out of the corner of his mouth, and she straightens.

“Laurence…” she chides, playfully. He always hated the name Laurence. It was his father’s and they never got along.

“Hear the one about the tax collector and the bowl of Jell-O?” Mr. Mumps blares, his eyes jetting in her direction.

“Would you like some Jell-O, Laurence?” she says. “Is that what you’re trying to say? I can get you some.”

“Vodka,” the dummy insists.

“What a kidder,” she says, waving a mock parental finger at Mr. Mumps, smiling on her way out.

I turn back and Mr. Mumps’ head swings around at the same time. “But don’t worry,” I say. “I’ll try and come as--”

“Man walks into a bar with an octopus on his head,” Mr. Mumps rasps now in my uncle’s voice. Both are staring at the TV.

I get up and move his wheelchair over by the couch in front of the set and sit beside him, take the bag of M&Ms from his lap. I open it and pick out the red ones, which were always Uncle L and my favorites. Mr. Mumps rests limply against his chest as my uncle looks down at the bright, sweet beads accumulating in his palm.

It’s an episode of I Love Lucy I vaguely recognize, but I can’t recall how it ends. I lean back and we watch it.

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