by Andy Schell
Her friend Louise came to visit us during the second week of my stay. Louise was married to a man much like Grammie’s husband, my grandfather. They were stern men, not overly comfortable around their wives, and they liked to go hunting together in Wyo ming and drink rye straight from the bottle. I loved Louise nearly as much as my grandmother. She was risque, as my mother said, and wore loose fitting dresses that were always revealing a shoulder or half a bosom. Long earrings dangled from her pierced ears, and by the time she started in on her second martini, those earrings Would begin to dance and slap her in the face as she moved her head to laugh and tell stories of her hapless year at the helm of the Women’ sLeague of Denver, where she was the only president ever to be impeached for refusing to honor the mayor with a luncheon. “He was a politically racist son of a bitch who just happened to
be sleeping with his adorable black maid,” she said, offering me a sip of her martini. Grammie would scold Louise for using profanity in my company, but I could tell she loved the wild delivery Louise’s stories as much as I. Together, Louise and Grammie finished stitching that cover during the second week of my visit, taking turns as one the other tired of the detail. Upon my departure, they handed it me at the airport, wrapped in paper printed with cowboys and to give to my mother. And when I cried as they put me on plane to fly home, Louise said, “Buck up, Harry. I’ll take care your grandmother,” as if I was worried to leave her alone, of the truth that I was sad to leave them both.
Outside the sliding glass doors, I watch a fierce north wind in and push the cold rain to the freezing point. Everything to be icing over in front of my eyes. In the yard, skeletons of oaks stand shaking, their bare arms raised, as if Donald has open the door and yelled, “Don’t move or I’ll shoot!” Beyond yard, the brown dormant fairway grasses of the golf course like huge straw mats large enough for Donald to wipe his big feet on. I can’t help wonder how much money Donald will from my dead father.
The moment is dying for conversation, so I tell them both my horrific flight into Wichita today. “The turbulence was so that the flight attendant was knocking into seats and s against the sides of the overhead bins, but she refused to sit She just kept serving watery drinks and those Hello Kitty-size of peanuts. I was waiting for her head to hit the ceiling and off and go rolling down the aisle, smiling.”
Donald doesn’t understand my sense of humor and looks at as if I’m callous.
“They shot three approaches,” I continue, “before they able to land the plane. Every time they tried a different the wind would change again. I thought we were going to
into bits and pieces in some wheat field bordering the airport. And stewardess was so perky, I’ll bet she would have trudged through the rubble with a beverage tray embedded in her forehead while she offered decks of playing cards to the survivors.”
“It couldn’t have been that bad, or they wouldn’t have landed the plane,” Donald says staunchly, a glass of Glenlivet dwarfed in his simian hands. The TV is broadcasting the Olympics in Sarajevo.
At the moment, no one is watching.
Curling competition.
“It was the worst flight I’ve ever been on,” I state emphatically, feeling my status as an airline attendant gives me authority.
“I’ll tell you about a scary flight,” he says, stretching out, more comfortable still.
Here we go. A war story. I’ve only met this guy twice, but both times he was full of war lore. The first day we met, my mother insisted he tell his land mine story. The one where a recruit gets his arm blown through the air, and when it lands in the tree, it salutes the guy’s own dying body. The curling competition is starting to look good.
” “Nam,” he says, shaking his head. “It was mission number 742. Hying out of Vung Tau.”
“You go ahead with your story,” my mother says to Donald. “Harry and I will be listening from the kitchen.” She nods for me to follow her.
I’m shocked. The other two times I was around them, she doted on him relentlessly and hung on his every word …. even when he was reading closing shares from the New York Stock Exchange aloud.
“Just another ordinary day for a Caribou pilot…” I hear him say as my mother and I step into the kitchen. His voice is muted by the TV.
“I want to tell you, I’ve got a little lump,” my mother says,
adding more vodka to her gimlet with one hand, patting her with the other. “And I’m going in next week to have it looked at.,
Oh, my God, I survived my flight, and now it’s my mother, feet on the ground, who’s in danger. “What do you think, I ask, knowing she must have some kind of intuition.
“It was June. The Tet Offensive, which had started in was over. The flight was routine to Saigon…” Donald from the living room.
“Yes,” my mother calls to Donald, “The Tet Offensive!” if it’s a wonderful Broadway play. She whispers to me, “I told Donald. He’s been through so much, losing his wife
I’m sure he’s had enough cancer for one year. Besides, it’s a job having to step into the shoes of your father and all. Botter has completely snubbed him. She won’t even mention in her column nothing about us as a couple either.”
Barbie Botter is the society columnist for the local paper. married to a banking executive who’s been having a Ion affair with a blond TV news anchor from a local affiliate of of the national broadcasting companies. Barbie and the news were once pictured at a Wichita charity event giving each kisses, and if you looked close you could see Barbie’s fingers around the anchor’s waist, were curled back and positioned so Barbie was flipping her the bird. “Forget about Barbie Botter. what do you think?”
“I’ve had lumps before. Many times,” she says, sipping drink. But then her brow wrinkles and she looks slightly a terrible sign coming from my mother because she’s the woman who’s cheerful even during televised executions and tornadoes. “This time, I don’t know.”
“The commander said they wouldn’t last another night.
all be killed if we didn’t scoop ‘em up,” Donald proclaims.
“So what did you do?” my mother calls out, before turning ll me and saying, “This really is one of his best stories.”
“Mom,” I tell her, reaching out for her tight-skinned hand, “I can’t believe you’re telling me this. What if you have cancer?”
I’ll beat it!” she sings as if it’s as simple as beating an egg. “Your father wasn’t right to do what he did,” she adds with very little judgment.
“I agree,” I say, smiling gently. “Are you going to tell the general about the lump?”
“When we landed on that little dirt airstrip, those young Vietnamese boys were waiting for us proud little shits, they were.”
“Well, Donald!” my mother yells, pulling her hand from mine and putting it to her throat. She keeps it there to cover the wrinkles. “Of course I’ll tell him,” she quietly tells me. “But let’s have a nice visit while you’re here. I’ll tell him after you go.”
Donald’s voice grows louder. “… catastrophic left engine failure!”
It makes me sad to see her nirvana shaken, to see her faced with a decision she cannot surrender to Donald. “Mom, I love you,” I tell her.
“And I love you,” she says, setting her vodka gimlet down. She pulls me to her damaged breast and hugs me close, whispering in my ear, “Right or wrong, I have to carry out your father’s wishes, follow the codicil in the will. You understand, don’t you?”
I hold tight, afraid to let go, but don’t understand. Why won’t my mother just negate the whole thing and set me free? She has a sense of duty to my father, but what about her sense of duty to me? He’s dead, I’m alive. I can’t help but think she’s using my father’s instructions as a last resort for her own attempt to straighten -me out and send me off into the sunset with a wife. It makes me angry that my mother would do this. But now she may possibly have cancer. And I love every little nip and tuck of her. I want her to feel better, to heal, to li
ve. I almost tell her about Amity. how nay feelings for her are more genuine than they’ve been for anyone Outside of the family. That, believe it or not, I very well may feel
love for a girl. But caution tells me to say nothing, for it would too big an opening for my mother, and she would thrust me a stage that had no exit. “Yes, Mother,” I whisper back. “I stand.” ‘
“I feathered the engine, and we were slowly inching down, barely above the treetops, and the Mekong River was out in of us a little ways,” Donald says with dramatic warning.
“Come on,” my mother says, trying to pull me back out to living room.
I resist. “Wait. Have you told Winston?”
“Oh, heavens, no. He doesn’t understand these things the w you do. I’ll only tell him if it’s malignant. Promise you mention it to him.”
I can hardly bear to speak to him. “Of course,” I tell her.
“Good. Now come on,” she says, dragging me toward the room. “Donald’s about to land the plane!”
“Anyways,” Donald says, as if we’ve never left, “we brought her in and set her down, and just as we rolled out and turned the runway, we lost the other engine. If it had happened two earlier in the air, we’d have crashed and burned.”
My mother looks at me like, “See?” She is fully smitten this general from Georgia, who impresses her with his and heroism. And I see that she’s happy and taken care of. in a way she never was before.
Grammie answers the door herself. She’s almost eighty old now, and years of riding horses and other athletic have taken their toll. She walks with a lame gait, supported cane, and her hands are riddled with arthritis, but she’s still trustworthy and regal matriarch of the Ford family, and her and carriage, though painful, still reflect it.
“Hey, Grammie.”
She smiles. Laughs. “Harry.” We embrace, and she fills senses with the scent of childhood, the same citrus-and-spice
ture from the cologne bottles she has ordered from California since I was a child. “Come in. Marzetta is making sandwiches.” Grammie explains that she has inherited Marzetta almost full-time since Donald has reduced her hours, and she loves Marzetta so much she hired someone else to do most of the work, so Marzetta is free to enjoy life. “What’s it like being a poor airline attendant?” Grammie asks.
“Oh, well,” I laugh, while following her into the kitchen, “it’s great. You only have to pay half the rent, because you’re forced to have a roommate. You never have to worry about your car being stolen, because nobody wants it. And you never have to worry about shopping for clothes just throw on a uniform. Hey!” I say, seeing Marzetta. “How’s my real mother?”
“She’s proud,” Marzetta beams. “I hear you’re an airline steward, son. That’s the job I always wanted. I used to dream about flying the troops to Europe during the Second World War. “Course, they didn’t let colored girls like me be stewardesses back then. So it was just a nice dream.”
I’ll tell you what,” I say. “I like flying with black girls most of all. They don’t take any guff from anyone. The passengers behave better when a sister is on board. Us white women get no respect.” “Oooh!” she laughs.
“Come on. Let’s sit,” Grammie commands. She sees the two sandwich plates Marzetta puts before us and asks, “Where’s yours?”
Marzetta shakes her head. “I’m off to the drugstore. I’m needing some foot cream.” She waves goodbye, grabs the keys to the car Grammie bought her, and heads out the door.
My grandmother nods. “Drive on.” She takes a bite of her sandwich. “So who is this girl your mother wants to meet?” “Amity?”
Grammie is silent for a moment, then smiles. “You know, the
word amity is often used when describing peaceful relations between two nations. Have you two made a pact? Like two nations?” “Meaning?”
My grandmother quickly gives up on the chicken sandwich and makes for the chocolate-covered graham cookies. “Do you plan to marry her for your inheritance?”
I frown while biting into my sandwich. “No.”
“Does she know you’re gay?” she asks, picking up a piece chocolate that has broken off her cookie and fallen on her plate.
It’s amazing to me that my grandmother is perfectly c saying the word gay, but my mother can’t utter it. “Sure,
We have no secrets, Amity and I.”
“Good. We have too many secrets in this family already.” “Like what?” I ask.
She lifts her finger to her mouth and presses the little piece chocolate to her lips, then licks it away. “If I told, they be secrets,” she answers, winking. “Harry,” she continues,
her head, thinking, “how come you’ve never asked me for money “I don’t know,” I tell her. “Your money is your money.” “But I have an abundance of it.”
“That’s true. OK, Gram, since you brought it up, how you’ve never offered me any?”
“Because I’ve had no greater pleasure than watching you some of this family’s rustiest old chains. I like what you’ve Harry. For now, I’m afraid money might rock your boat, even tip it over.”
“I can swim,” I tell her confidently. “Don’t worry. I’ll mine. ‘
“Be careful, my boy. Just make sure you get it the old-fashioned way.”
“Inherit it?” I ask, a devilish smile on my face. “I intend to,
, ,
“Not at the expense of your self, she cautions. “I see
mother pushing you. Donald too. I imagine your father is still pushing you, even though he’s gone. But I’m telling you not to make decisions to please other people. Please yourself. Be yourself.”
“Don’t worry, Gram. I’m hopelessly born to the breed it’s just not the same breed as the rest of my family. Which means I’ll probably have a life of blissful poverty while remaining my own man—whatever the heck that means.”
“You’re anything but hopeless, kid. I wish I’d had a life like yours.”
I tease her. “You wish you were born a gay guy?”
“Not exactly,” she laughs. “Listen. Forget about the money, Harry. Everything will fall into place. Just promise me you’ll be honest with yourself. The word amity also means friendship.”
“And that’s what we have. Don’t worry about Amity and me. We won’t do anything foolish.”
“Good. Because that would suck.”
“Suck?” Now I pick up a cookie. “Grammie, who taught you the word suck?”
“TV.”
“My Grammie? My Steinbeck and Stegner Grammie? What’s going on?”
“I’m old now, honey. Can’t read. My eyes don’t work on the page. I watch TV and eat candy. That’s it. I’m done with marriage, horses, travel, and even philanthropy. I gave them my all for most of my life. Put up with a cold husband. Loved those horses as much as my children. Traveled the world in order to learn about people. And donated millions of dollars plus my own two hands to every charity that crossed my heart. But my life is near its end, and I’m stupid and sweet with TV and candy.”
“Hey, whatever works. To thine own self be true,” I say, squeezing her hand.
“Precisely what I’m saying to you, my boy.”
It’s not a week later that I come home from the gym to find message on my answering machine from my mother. She has cancer. She’s already had a modified radical mastectomy, she ” daintily informs me, and the doctor believes that he’s gotten all cancer. The good news is that while she was in the hospital got Bud Orenstein to come in and give her a tummy tuck and soon she’ll be able to have her breasts reconstructed to nice and perky, but don’t tell anyone. And not to worry, she doe have to do chemotherapy, but simply has to endure a little which she intends to look upon as a quick trip to the tanning Beep. End of message.
I’ve never blamed my mother for cutting me off financially. know that it was my father’s doing and that she’s of a generation and feminine ilk that acquiesces to all demands line. And though I think she’s often shallow and ridiculous
words, I love her and I’m scared that she has cancer so soon losing my father. I call her and tell her I’ll be on a flight to that day. She says there’s no reason to come the general is care of her every need. I refuse to believe that I, her son of three years, can be replaced by her husband of three months.
The airline gives me a leave of absence and I go to When I bring her flowers, she says, “Put them over by the the general gave me.” When I bring her the morning paper, says, “Oh, honey, thanks, but the general brought the already.” When I bring her favorite candy bar, a Heath bar, says, “The general made me homemade toffee.” A general makes toffee? Forget it. I’m glad she’s happy and taken but I decide to head back to Dallas, where at least someone hates me.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
“I on’t fuck with me!”
It’s late at night. It can’t be one of Amity’s nightmares because it’s a man’s voice. It sounds as if he’s outside the house, but I can’t be sure. I sit up in bed, hear Amity say something in a hushed tone.
“Don’t fuck with me, Amity!”
I get out of bed and step into the hall. Amity sounds strained, but controlled. I can’t really tell what she is saying. The man interrupts her. Angry. Accusing. Shouting something. I know who it is: Troy. He’s finally confronting her for leaving him. I step into her room.
“Is everything OK?”
“Yes, Harry!” She is at her window, a few feet from her bed, wearing nothing but a man’s dress shirt.
Outside the window is a Latin guy with glasses, not Troy. He looks at me, doesn’t give a shit who I am. “I mean it,” he warns, looking back at Amity.
“I think you need to go,” she says, nervous but in command.
The guy slams his fist against the frame of the window and takes off.
“Who was that, Amity?”