Page 7 of Say Yes to the Hot Mess

“Hello,” I say, louder this time.

That does it. Six pairs of geriatric eyes swing in my direction, and the room falls into sudden silence.

“Well, well, well,” says one of the women after a few seconds of quiet, looking me over with a keen gaze. Her hair is gray, but I can tell it was black at one point. She’s dressed in bright colors, and her cat-eye glasses are neon pink.

She stands with apparent ease and approaches me, her hands on her hips. When she reaches me, she thrusts out one hand. “Geraldine Delgado,” she says in some sort of thick, East coast accent.

I shake her hand hesitantly. “Dex Anthony,” I say, looking down at her. Granted, I’m taller than most at six-four, but she barely reaches my shoulder.

“Mmm,” she says, raising one eyebrow and looking me over in a way that could only be described as interested. “You’re a tall drink of water, aren’t you?”

I honestly do not know how to reply to that, so I just give her what I hope is a friendly smile.

“Come here, sugar plum,” she says, giving my hand a solid tug. I jerk forward, surprised by the force of the pull, and she chuckles. “Let’s introduce everyone. You know Josephine, of course”—Josephine gives me an unenthusiastic nod—“and this here is Elmer Sweeney”—she gestures to a bald, bespectacled little man with tufts of white hair on either side of his head—“and then Agnes and Clarence Bartleby.” She gestures to a woman and a man—a married couple, I think, not siblings, because she’s Black while he looks Caucasian.

“And I’m Wilhelm,” says the last man, his voice high-pitched, his smile friendly. He gestures out the door with one thumb. “I work just down the hall. I expect we’ll be seeing each other every now and then.”

“Right,” I say, nodding. “Nice to meet you all.” I remember at the last second to speak up so they can all hear me.

“Sit, sit!” Geraldine says, waving vigorously to the empty spot on the couch next to where she plops herself down.

I give her another benign smile. “Oh, I really had better—”

“Sit,” she commands loudly, pointing to the couch.

I sit.

“Elmer was just about to tell us what’s got him so out of sorts,” she says, gesturing to Elmer—who, now that I look more closely, does indeed look like he’s having a rough go of things.

“My granddaughter called me a boomer,” he says with a little frown. His face is so lined with age that it’s hard to say for certain, but I think that frown lends even more wrinkles to his skin. “She said it like it was a horrific thing.” He looks around at his friends, his eyes sad, entreating. “What’s a boomer?”

“Heck if I know,” one of the women—Agnes, I think?—says, glancing at Josephine. With one shaky, wrinkled hand, she points at the computer behind the front desk. “Josephine, look it up. Look it up on the Google.”

On. The. Google.

I rub the back of my neck, debating whether to tell Elmer what “boomer” means, but he looks so forlorn that I can’t bring myself to inform him. Instead I wait for Josephine to make her way to the computer—which is not supposed to be used for casual Google searches, by the way—and look it up.

She settles into her chair comfortably, and her fingers are surprisingly dexterous as they fly over the keyboard, especially considering how slowly the rest of her moves. “Boomer, boomer, boomer,” she mutters under her breath as she types. “Ah, here we go! ‘Boomer: a catch-all term for an older person who…” She trails off, looking suddenly awkward.

“What?” Elmer says. His voice is croaky, and he sounds like he may have been a smoker at one point in his life. “What does it say?”

Josephine clears her throat and goes on. “‘An older person who is closed-minded and resistant to change.’”

An uncomfortable silence descends over the rest of them as everyone turns to look at Elmer. His expression has fallen, I see, disappointment etched into every line of his face. And he looks so sad, so down, that I find myself speaking up.

“If it helps,” I say, “I don’t think you’re technically a boomer. It comes from ‘baby boomer,’ which I think was after your time. When were you born?”

“1933,” he says faintly, looking at me with these big, sad, puppy dog eyes.

I nod, pulling out my phone and doing a quick search. “The baby boom was…here it is. The baby boom was from 1946 to 1964. So really…” But I trail off when I realize I’m not helping; Elmer still looks crestfallen, and Josephine is now giving me the stink eye. I shut my mouth at once.

Clarence, who until now has been watching silently from his spot next to Agnes, finally speaks. “Now listen, Elmer. That granddaughter of yours is a little brat sometimes, but her mama is a good woman.”

“She is,” Elmer says, nodding exuberantly. “The best. I’ve always said so. My son married up.”

“See? She’s just going through a phase, that’s all—that rebellious phase when they think they know everything,” Clarence says, his voice consoling. “She’ll come around.”

Elmer fidgets with his glasses, which pushes his ears out further so that they look floppier and droopier. “I just asked her why her hair was purple,” he says sadly. “That’s all.”

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