“Airmen,” I corrected.
With a sandwich in her hand, Grandmother stopped cold, staring me square in the eye. After a long silence I apologized. “Well, anyway, you should take time and visit the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Yes,” Grandmother stated, “you must go and see the chapel. I have a map here somewhere. Now, where did I leave that map?” As she stood up to leave, I accidentally brushed against her arm. “It’s okay,” I said, “we’ll find it later.” In a flash Grandmother pulled away and stomped into the house. From outside I could hear her going through various drawers, searching for the elusive map. Minutes later, Grandmother returned to the patio looking defeated. “We’ll just have to go to AAA. I go there all the time. The girls there are so nice.”
The thought of another drive with Grandmother made my stomach flip. “Grandma, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to have you go through all that trouble, but I’m not going anywhere near the academy. My leave is up in a few days. I’ll have just enough time to make it back to the base.”
“Then you just make time, young man,” Grandmother snapped.
I nearly dropped my sandwich. Looking into her eyes, I was met with another cold, hard stare. It took me an instant to realize my error. I was in no way trying to be impolite or disrespectful. I was only trying to make a point that to me seemed perfectly clear. Traveling over twelve hours a day on a motorcycle on the interstate for three days meant I truly did not have time for any side trips.
Trying to redeem myself, I changed the subject. “Anyway, about two months ago I got a letter from Russell. I hear he’s going to join the marines. You must be so proud—the three of your grand kids in different branches of the service.”
“Russell?” Grandmother exclaimed. “Let me tell you something about Russell! He borrowed my metal chest. I loaned it to him . . . going off with some church group to Hawaii, picking pineapples for the harvest . . . or whatever they do over there. I don’t understand why their people don’t do their own work. If you ask me, it’s nothing but a vacation. Back in my day, when you worked, it certainly wasn’t over there among the palm trees, that I can tell you. It was hard work, all day every day.
“Anyway, ever since he came back—high and mighty, I might add—he comes over telling me that I’ll get my chest next time; he forgot it or he’s too busy. By the time I got the damn thing, it was in terrible condition. That’s not the way I had loaned it to him, I can tell you that!”
I sat with every muscle in my face frozen. I could not believe the floodgates I had opened. Grandmother was on one of her spiteful rolls. With my back against the chair, I asked myself if there was any subject, any person, safe to talk about. She went on. “The chest is useless to me now. You’d think as much as I do, it wouldn’t be too much to ask to have my chest returned in the condition I loaned it to him!”
“Grandma!” I halfheartedly interjected, “you’ve traveled a lot. You know how it is. Things get banged up. You probably had that chest for what, years? I’m sure Russell didn’t know how much it meant to you. Besides”—I shrugged my shoulders—“he can’t help what happens when it’s loaded from plane to plane all over Hawaii.”
“Doesn’t matter!” she huffed. “I paid a great deal for that chest. He should have apologized. I may have accepted that rather than his—his treachery. I can’t and won’t tolerate a liar!”
I wanted to reach over and hug Grandmother’s frustration away. I couldn’t believe that she had become so worked up over something so petty. “Maybe,” I said, “Russell was embarrassed. Maybe he was afraid to bring the chest back to you after he returned from Hawaii. Do you think that might be the reason he might have avoided you?” I delicately asked, trying once again to defuse the situation.
“Doesn’t matter. If you can’t keep your word, then keep your mouth shut!” Grandmother replied, as if telling me a coded message.
I took the hint and sighed, trying to clear my head. “Well,” I smiled, changing the subject, “the place looks great. Did you say Stan keeps it up for you? He does a great—”
“Stan? Let me tell you something about Stan!” Before I could blink, Grandmother launched into another tirade. “I’ve told him to finish school so he can make something of himself. I told him what he needs to do. I’ve offered to help with his reading. If he doesn’t get some schooling, well,” she huffed, “I don’t know what will become of him. You can only be a pizza delivery boy for so long. He needs to go to school and learn a trade. I can tell you what I’m not going to do: I’m not going to be the one responsible for him.”
I had had enough. Without her knowing, I clenched my fist under the table. “Grandma,” I coldly stated, “Stan is mentally retarded. It’s not his fault.”
“I’m well aware of that. Doesn’t mean Stan can go around life looking for a handout,” she retorted. At least she now addressed Stan as a person.
“There’s a limit to his understanding, his comprehension. Can you imagine what it’s like to read something and not only not understand it, but forget whatever you’ve read? Believe me, I know. Some of that stuff can be pretty intimidating. And quite frankly, well, I really think he’s embarrassed. I think he knows he’ll have to break his back and work hard for the rest of his life. I—I . . .” I stammered, “I don’t know him very well, but . . . Stan’s . . . well, he’s too proud to admit it.”
Grandmother’s eyes flashed. “You don’t know a thing about him—or anyone else, for that matter! Like I said, if you don’t know what you’re talking about, then you should keep your trap shut.” She paused for a moment as if for effect. “Besides, he needs to be humbled a peg or two.”
My emotions began to swallow me up. Even though the person in front of me was my relative, an elder whom I respected, I truly detested her vindictiveness. Before I said anything, though, I excused myself to the bathroom, where I splashed cool water on my face. Taking a rare look at myself in the mirror, I saw my eyes were still red from the spine-numbing ride of traveling six hundred miles on a motorcycle with no protection against the wind and rain. As I rubbed the back of my neck with a face cloth, my thoughts returned to Grandmother. I could not understand why nearly everything that spewed from her mouth was filled with malice. The manner in which Grandmother spoke, the tone of her words, was nearly a carbon copy of Mother’s.
A heartbeat later, I made the connection. “Oh, my God!”
Outside the bathroom, I scanned Grandmother’s living room. As meticulous as it was—every item, no matter how small or how many, was placed in such a deliberate fashion—I could not find a single picture of Mother. Besides a few scattered photos of her grandchildren, there were none of Grandmother’s husband, who, I was told when I was a child, had passed away when I was a baby, or any other adult relative. I could not help but think the lack of portraits was just like Mother’s bedroom when I had visited before Father died.
Grandmother startled me as she came through the sliding door. Her look said she did not approve of my snooping. As she sat in a chair, I could tell by her posture she was upset with me. My fingers grazed a photo of Ronald in his uniform—the same picture I had seen at Mother’s years ago. “Tell me about Mom. I mean, as a kid, when she was young. Was she ever happy?”
Grandmother’s head shot up. She sputtered for a second before placing a hand under her chin. “Happy? Well, uhm . . .” Her voice cracked as she struggled to regain control. She cleared her throat. “No one was happy back then,” she said as if I should have known all along. “Things were tough all over. I remember, when I was a young girl . . .”
As she went on, I patiently waited for her to finish. After her ancient clock struck twice, I broke in, “Yes, but, what about Mom? Do you realize I know absolutely nothing about my own mother?”
“Hard to please. Never appreciative. You’d think for once she’d show an act of kindness.” Grandmother paused as she looked upward. “I told her she’d never finish nursing school,” she said in her “I told you so” attitude.
“Never finished? But I thought that’s how she met Dad. I mean, as a nurse.”
“Hell’s bells! She worked at the pharmacy across the street from the fire station. Always been that way, out to impress. Always showing off. Never accepted who she really was. Never sees things as they are,” Grandmother grumbled.
I was completely surprised. It had been ingrained in my memory that “Mommy’s” lifetime dream was becoming a nurse so she could help others in need. As a child, I recalled, whenever a kid scraped their knee or bumped an elbow, Mommy, the neighborhood nurse, was always there. My mind began to reel. Is anything in my life real? Must everything be secrets within secrets? Why are there so many lies?
Grandmother never broke her stride. “I told her—over and over and over again—she would never make it as a nurse. She never listened. Never has, never will. Never appreciated one damn thing I did for her. Even now, all she does is call me, I don’t know how many times a day, drunk as a skunk. Sometimes I just put the phone down and walk off.”
“But why do you think?” I gently probed. “What made Mom become the way she is? Come on, Grandma, something in her past had to—”
“Don’t you even . . . !” Grandmother commanded, shaking a finger at me as she leaned forward. “I never, never abused her! I might have given Roerva a good swat on the behind; she might have gone without a few meals when she didn’t appreciate it, but I never, never abused her!” Grandmother slapped the back of one hand against the palm of the other with such force that I thought her hand would break. “If you ask me, she had it too easy.
“What you people today call abuse . . . times were different back then. Anyway . . .” She began to calm down. She repositioned herself into the rear of the chair. “I have no idea what happened back then. That’s not my affair. What happens in someone’s house stays in their house. It’s no one else’s business. I see no need to open up Pandora’s box. It can’t do anybody any good.” Grandmother regarded me as if I were supposed to obediently agree.
All I could do was nod my head in agreement. I heard. And more important, I understood Grandmother’s message.
After a lapse of silence, she announced to me, “I was the one who called the county’s social services before you were removed.”
I sat dazed by the sudden change of subject. “I don’t understand. I—”
“Don’t act so naive. The woman who visited the house, when your mother dressed you up and paraded you around, I know all about it. And who do you think purchased that bike of yours that last Christmas before you were taken away? Your mother sure as hell didn’t do it, I can tell you that! She had new bicycles for all the boys, except Kevin; he was too young. Your mother said she simply forgot to get one for you, and by the time she remembered, well, she was over budget. Or so she said. I didn’t have to get you one, you know. I paid for it in more ways than you could know.”
I was overcome with shock. Of all people, my grandmother, who had just adamantly stated, “What happens in someone’s house should stay in their house,” was the one who initially called the authorities. As I sat in front of her, I could not believe my ears.
I remembered that bike, too. As a child in Mother’s house, my only possessions were the ragged clothes that I had washed by hand in the basement sink. Even though I was allowed to ride the candy apple red Murray bicycle only a couple of times that winter, the thrill of freedom was still phenomenal. I had no idea; I had always thought, that Christmas of 1972, Mother, out of kindness, had broken down and purchased the bicycle.
I smiled and thanked Grandmother for calling social services. But then Grandmother, like everyone else, had always known how I was treated. On one visit Grandmother found me standing in front of the bedroom mirror yelling at myself, “I’m a bad boy! I’m a bad boy!” over and over again. With tears streaming down my cheeks, I had confessed how sorry I was for making Mommy upset. Another time Grandmother, the overly stern disciplinarian, had cupped my face with both her hands, saying, “You’re the sorriest child I ever met! Quit feeling so sorry for yourself and do something about it!” At the time I didn’t know that what was happening to me was wrong—I simply thought I was a bad boy.
Although I had an impulse to reach out and hug Grandmother for all the times she had silently helped me, I held back. Still not one word of compassion or sorrow had escaped Grandmother’s lips about the past. She never showed or expressed to me any remorse about Father’s death, what my brothers had been put through, or whatever I had suffered by the hands of her own daughter. Maybe, I thought, from Grandmother’s point of view, life was full of suffering. You couldn’t engage in self-pity, but rather had to do whatever you could to get out of bad circumstances, no matter how young. And, I guessed, you became hardened from the process.
What had made Grandmother the way she was? What was it that had hardened her heart? In her day, I assumed, she had to be rigid just to survive the times. However spiteful she may be, at least she was a self-reliant adult.
Maybe after dedicating a majority of her adult life fighting just to survive as a widow, while raising two children, she was worn down and fed up with how hard life could be. Perhaps that was one of the reasons Father advised me, before I enlisted in the air force, when I had brought up my childhood: “You’d be better off forgetting about it. The whole thing. It never happened.” At that time I thought Father was ordering me to sweep the family secret under the rug. But maybe he was protecting me from taking on a lost cause. Maybe that’s why Father had become a broken man. As much as he might have tried, his efforts were futile. That might be the reason, I assumed, why Grandmother always referred to the past as Pandora’s box—once opened, uncontrollable agony of human suffering would follow. And in the end nothing would change. The back of my head began to throb from the overload. Maybe, I told myself, I just think too much.
“Well,” I announced as I stood up, stretching my legs, “I’m off to see Russell. I should only be gone a couple of hours.”
“Oh no, you’re not!” Grandmother said. “You’re not to go there. I don’t want you seeing her.”
“It’s okay, Grandma,” I calmly corrected, thinking she had misunderstood. “I’m not going to see Mother. I’m only going to see Russell. It’s all worked out; Mother won’t know. It’s okay, honest,” I reassured her.
“You’re not to see her. I forbid it!” Grandmother choked up. “You’re not here. Ron’s away. Nobody knows; I’m all alone. All she does is call—all the time, night and day. I’m surprised she hasn’t phoned today. I don’t initiate anything. She’s the one who gets drunk and goes on and on and on. The hell she puts her own mother through. If she catches a whiff of you being here, there’ll be hell to pay, and I’m the one who’ll have to pay the price!”
All I could do was shake my head. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone, but in my short visit here, every move, every intention, was being questioned and scrutinized. Once again, I was caught between pleasing Grandmother or visiting my own brother, whom I had not spoken to in ten years. A familiar wave of guilt came over me.
“Grandma,” I consoled, “don’t put yourself through it. If Mother calls and goes off like she does, hang up. It’s that simple. Don’t let her get your goat. Just hang up the phone and walk away. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but let Mother stay in her own little world. Go out and play golf. You’ll be fine. It’s only a game to Mother, if you play along.”
“You don’t know, no one knows, the hell she puts her own mother through. . . .”
It was then that I felt as if I was being manipulated. As a grown, independent adult, I was growing tired of walking on eggs with every subject that was brought up, constantly smoothing the waves while practically begging for permission to do something any normal person could do freely. “I gave Russell my word,” I said. “I have to see him.”
In a heartbeat Grandmother’s tone changed from utter despair to cold vindictiveness. “Russell, Russell, Russell! He’s not worth the time of day. I don’t see any good
in it. There’s no need to run off all over the place just to see him. Nothing good can become of it. If you ask me, he’s not worth rubbing two pennies together. That’s what I think. I’m not telling you what to do, but if you want my two cents worth . . .”
I stood in front of Grandmother, waiting for her to order me to stay. And I would have. Without hesitation—just as I always had when faced with a confrontation that dealt with others’ feelings—I appeased her by shutting up, swallowing my pride, and forgetting about it. After a lapse of silence, I grabbed my motorcycle helmet, saying, “It’s gonna be all right, Grandma. It’s not the end of the world. It’s only a visit with my brother.”
Minutes later I was guiding my motorcycle through a maze of road construction, freeing my mind of deserting Grandmother. I parked the Honda CBX on Mulberry Way, where, because of Mother, Russell had been recently taken in by friends from his church. I walked up the pathway not knowing what to expect. My heart raced with apprehension until a tall young man with freckles flung open the door and greeted me with a quick hug. After a fast round of introductions, Russell hopped on the back of the motorcycle, and we sped off to find a place to get to know each other.
Less than a mile away I parked my Honda next to a pool hall. Stepping inside such a place with one of my brothers was a fantasy of mine—male bonding. I marched up to the long bar, looked the bartender in the eye, slapped the palm of my hand against the bar showing off a twenty, and bellowed, “A beer for my brother, future marine extraordinaire. In fact, a round’s on me! Set us up!”
Dead silence filled the hall. Not accustomed to social drinking, I thought the response was normal, maybe even a sign of respect. I could feel Russell tugging on the sleeve of my shirt. “Hey, man, relax,” I stated in my “I’m king of the world” attitude. “It’s on me.” In reality I was broke. But this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I smiled, patting Russell on the shoulder, thinking of him as another escapee from the asylum. A prisoner of war repatriated. A young man taking the plunge into adulthood. Yes, indeed, a proud moment.