The Truth About Luck: What I Learned on My Road Trip with Grandma

by Iain Reid

  “Thank you for the water,” I’m saying again. “It’s very good water. Thank you.”

  For some reason, as I yammer on, I find the palms of my hands coming together and touching my chest like I’m praying. Thankfully, I am able to resist muttering my last florid expression of gratitude without adding a discernible Vietnamese accent.

  Grandma’s knowledge of Vietnamese food is reliable, especially considering she came to it so late in life. She tells me she didn’t start eating it until she was in her eighties. She always loved North American–style Chinese food but now prefers both Vietnamese and Cambodian.

  Our dishes arrive. As declared, the soup is pleasantly hot and sour. The chalky broth is thick, like it’s holding a very fine cloud of sand. The crispy wontons are a deep-fried treat. We secured a bundle of eight with our order, and I’ve already devoured my four. In a resourceful display utterly devoid of dignity and etiquette, I used them as edible spoons to scoop up slippery vermicelli noodles.

  This is what happens when I arrive at this level of hunger, and I don’t realize I’m there until I see and smell the food. I proceed to eat like the meal is a dietary shopping spree of sorts, like I have a brief, finite amount of time to absorb as much of the plate as possible before it’s taken away. It’s glutinously gratifying for me but must be visually offensive for any companion or observer.

  I’ve consumed my half of the pork dish, too, a third of the chicken dish, and my spring roll. The chicken dish contained almond halves, and I’m pretty sure I had most of them (by pure coincidence).

  Grandma is enjoying the food but is advancing at a moderate pace. If I’m sprinting, she’s crab-walking. Grandma’s not yet halfway through her soup. That’s it. She hasn’t made a move for anything else. “It’s so good, so different,” she’s saying, savouring each spoonful. “Better even than last time, I think. I love it here.”

  “Yes, it’s very good, Grandma.”

  I set down my cutlery. I take a breath. Our table is much quieter when I stop my rapid feeding. It permits the adult-contempo’ radio station a more prominent role. This is only our first meal. We’ll have many more on this trip. At least three a day. For a minute I just listen to the Goo Goo Dolls and watch Grandma eventually progress to her chicken. It’s possible this will be our tastiest meal of the trip. She carefully slices an already bite-sized piece of white meat into three smaller pieces. She sets her knife down carefully, impales a single microscopic morsel, and brings it slowly up to her mouth. Her hand shakes marginally. She chews and swallows.

  I make a mental note to start seriously adjusting my consumption speed.

  I wipe my napkin across my hot and sour lips and set it down. It absorbs some of the remaining sauce and sticks to the mostly empty plate. I take another sip of water, attempting to be sly. I don’t want a refill. The owner is behind the counter; her eyes rise up. How does she know? This was a negligible sip. I don’t want any more. I don’t need a full glass. The sip is small enough to fit on the face of a coin without spillage. She’s reaching for something — fuck — her pitcher.

  “It really is very good,” says Grandma.

  The owner approaches, but instead of filling me up, she sits down at the adjacent table. “How you like?” she asks.

  Grandma and I both answer that the food is very good. We thank her. I go a step further and say “delicious.” Grandma echoes my sentiment. The owner is glad but stays where she is. Her shoulders slouch like she’s uninterested in finishing her shift. I’m not sure what else to do, so I ask, “How are you doing?”

  “I have bills.”

  Not the answer I was expecting. “Shucks,” I offer.

  “Very expensive here.”

  Grandma is blowing on a spoonful of soup.

  “Oh, that’s too bad. It’s tough, isn’t it,” I say, my chin down on my chest, restraining a burgeoning burp.

  “And my feet, my feet hurt.” She holds one leg up off the floor. “Both my feet.”

  “It’s not easy.” I’m starting to wish she’d just refill my water.

  “Lots of pain.”

  “Geez.” I’m still peckish and am undressing one of Grandma’s spring rolls with my eyes. It’s still untouched. What do they put in there? Is it meat?

  “The rent here too high.”

  “Well . . .” Sprouts for sure. Are the sprouts washed first?

  “You know how much I pay?”

  I clear my throat. “Hard to say, it’s such a nice spot here . . . it’s so roomy . . .”

  “I pay too much,” she says.

  As if summoned to expand her case, a chef in customary whites surfaces from what appears to be the very depths of the kitchen. One of the other tables still doesn’t have any food. They’re looking concerned as they watch him abandon his post.

  The chef is sweating and could either have just been working hard in a hot kitchen or have put in a few hours on a steeply inclined treadmill while wearing a garbage bag tracksuit. His face is glistening. He doesn’t say anything but puts his hand on Grandma’s back. There’s a beige Band-Aid wrapped around his index finger. She hadn’t seen him approach. It startles her. She sits up bolt-straight, bringing one hand to her chest. “Oh, hello,” she says, resting her spoon on the lip of the bowl.

  “You know,” he says directly to Grandma, ignoring the rest of us, “you know who you remind me of?” His accent is much less pronounced than the server’s; like the Band-Aid, it’s hardly noticeable.

  Grandma looks at me, then to the server, and finally up to the chef. She raises one eyebrow, the way she always does when pondering. “Who?”

  “You. You remind me of my grandmother back in Vietnam.”

  “Oh, really, me?” says Grandma.

  “Oh, yes, it’s amazing.” I assume his grandma back in Vietnam is likely Vietnamese. Not Scottish.

  “That’s nice,” says Grandma.

  “Yes, yes. You remind me so, so much,” he repeats, keeping his hand on her back.

  2:21 p.m.

  GRANDMA INSISTS ON paying. I tried. I said I’d pay. She said she wanted to treat me for picking her up, and shot me her eyebrow. She doesn’t use her eyebrow only when pondering but also subconsciously lifts it as a sign of authority, a facial exclamation point. It’s understood by all of us in the family that when it rises, it’s her little ninety-two-year-old way of visually suggesting, Cut the crap. Do as I say.

  She gives me her credit card and asks me to go up and pay for her. I suspect the machines with tip options and PIN numbers are becoming increasingly difficult for her to navigate. She’ll meet me at the car. It’s okay, this is only day one. We’re starting on a trip. I’ll have plenty of chances to treat her.

  Back inside my car, I’m sucking on my red-striped mint. Grandma is struggling mightily with her seatbelt. The humidity and dew point in here feel analogous to those of an equatorial rainforest. I’m already buckled in. Grandma’s managed to coil the twisted belt around her like a wrinkled beauty pageant sash. She’s found the latch with her free hand but can’t bring the metal ends together. I’ve stopped in the alley. I let her struggle for a moment, unsure how to help, pretending to examine the laces of my left shoe. “Oh, here, Grandma, let me try. That damn seatbelt has a mind of its own.”

  “No, it’s okay,” she’s saying, bracing herself with her right hand on the door. “It’s just so silly. It’s my fault.”

  I lean over the armrest and tug forcefully on her belt. She grunts. Fuck. “I’m sorry,” I say. I can feel my forehead starting to dampen. “Look,” I say, “I think it’s tangled up there, near the top. Let me try this.” I tug harder. She grunts again, louder.

  I’m up kneeling on my own seat. I need the extra leverage. My arms are stretched out in front of Grandma’s face, close enough for her to bite my forearm. The car is idling. She’s tilting back as far as she can, stuck to her seat like an
astronaut at takeoff.

  Finally I’m able to untangle the tangle. I give Grandma the okay, but still the belt needs another inch or two of line before it’ll latch. Maybe it just needs a firmer pull. I try again, more firmly still. A third, more guttural grunt echo­es throughout the car.

  “I’m really sorry about this,” says Grandma. “I know I ate a bit too much, but I couldn’t have grown this much from lunch, could I? I shouldn’t have eaten so much. Sometimes I just can’t resist.” She’s starting to laugh now. “It’s from those little dandies.”

  “Sorry, the what?”

  “Those doohickeys.” I’ve got my right arm all the way behind her seat now and am trying to work the belt from underneath. I can’t see her. “Those silly little wontons. I didn’t need them but I can never resist.”

  She’s giggling hard now; I’m fake-laughing harder. Her twitching torso is making this belt brouhaha worse. Another car has pulled up behind me. I’m getting flustered. “Why don’t you just drive, I’ll be fine,” she says.

  “We better get you buckled in, Grandma.” I peer at the person behind me in the rear-view mirror. They don’t look annoyed or angry, more perplexed at what’s happening in the car in front of them to the little old lady with white hair.

  It’s when Grandma’s laughing subsides that I’m able to latch the belt. “There,” she exclaims, “you got it! Way to go, Iain!”

  Still concerned that she can’t breathe with the restrictive belt, I distractedly turn out into traffic. Grandma is still praising me. Instantly, we’re almost struck. I have no idea how I didn’t see the oncoming car, but I didn’t. It was very close. Maybe I was still thinking about the belt, the car behind me, or the wontons. The encroaching car is able to swerve nimbly into the left lane, narrowly missing the left side of my back bumper. Grandma doesn’t notice the near miss. She hears the horn blast, though. My heart is pumping.

  “What’s their problem? I hate those stupid horns.”

  “I know, eh. Just a jerk, Grandma,” I say. “Clearly he has an axe to grind.”

  “Those people shouldn’t be driving.”

  “You’ve got that right.”

  Arriving at the next traffic light, I timidly pull up alongside the car I almost hit. I’m still rattled by the near miss. I look through my window and through theirs. The jerk with the axe to grind is a middle-aged woman with a deflated perm. She doesn’t look over at us but stares straight ahead pacifistically. She has a plastic yellow air-freshener in the shape of a foot dangling from her rear-view mirror.

  What a bitch.

  3:19 p.m.

  THIS WASN’T PART of the grand plan. We’ve stopped speaking. Not for any discernible reason. We’re just not talking. Silence isn’t usually bad in itself, but this one is uncomfortable. Maybe it’s the heavy lunch. It could be all that greasy food that’s muzzled us. Or the realization that we’ll be spending every minute of every day, for the next five, together. Grandma’s half-whistling, half-humming meekly through her teeth. She’s thinking, Why has my grandson taken me on a trip when he has nothing to say?

  Without the distraction of chatter, my sense of smell has been heightened. I’m holding my nose high like a tentative marsupial. But I can extricate only two smells. My usual car smell: a mix of burning oil and metallic grinding. The second, more unpleasant smell is reminiscent of lunch. I’d been anticipating a third — old lady scent. I have no idea what old lady scent is, but I was legitimately concerned. I feel like most grandmas in their nineties would either smell oddly sour or, if they resorted to perfume, too flowery, too manufactured. Grandma is determinedly scentless.

  “How about a goofball, Grandma? My treat.”

  “What’s that, dear?”

  While driving, even cruising, my car gives off a tremendous groan. The muffler is long-ago shot. I have to speak up.

  “A coffee. Would you like a coffee?”

  “Sure. But what did you call it?”

  “A goofball. I don’t know why, but that’s what I call coffees on road trips.”

  “I like that. Goofballs. Let’s get some goofballs.”

  We pull into a Tim Hortons on the main street of Smiths Falls, a town about an hour or so northeast of Kingston. “What do you want in your goofball, Grandma?”

  “Milk in my goofball, please. And here, take this.”

  Her hand grabs mine. My instinct is to pull away, but she forces a five-dollar bill into my squished palm with unexpected strength. I open my mouth to protest, but only muster, “Okay, be right back.” I push the note into the back pocket of my jeans.

  There’s only a short queue, so I don’t wait long. I order our drinks from a short, chinless man who is more interested in asking about my glasses than handing me our goofballs. They are ready, sitting right beside him on the counter, as we chat about the cost of prescription lenses.

  The coffees are (still) steaming hot when I get back to the car. They taste good. But they do nothing to get us talking. Maybe I should have invited the employee from the coffee shop to join us. It’s tricky to tell how long it’s been since we last spoke. I mean, I’m focused on driving. Other than the Hank Williams tape playing, it’s probably been twenty minutes or so, maybe half an hour, of obtrusive quiet. It’s Grandma who finally breaks it. “Oh, the tape player still works.”

  “Yup,” I answer, turning it up a hair. “Still sounds pretty good.”

  She leans forward and pats the dashboard affectionately.

  “Amazing, you’re still hanging in there,” she says, patting the dash again. “Like me.”

  “Yup, it’s getting up there. About twenty years old now.”

  “Well, I’d say that’s about ninety-two in human years. The old blue bird looks pretty good considering.”

  I’d forgotten; that’s what Grandma has always called this car. Grandma loves nicknames. The blue bird. My ninety-two-year-old car.

  INSTEAD OF THE major four-lane highway, I’ve opted for the slower, more scenic two-lane route. We’re on vacation, and efficiency isn’t our aim. Unlike Highway 401, this track doesn’t bypass each small town. It passes through them. The mention of the radio/tape deck seems to have uninhibited us. Grandma is speaking more freely.

  “That looks like a new house. Over there, is that a new place?”

  As we continue on, Grandma’s interest in the local real estate swells. She mentions several more homes and asks specifically about the newness of three others. It’s always too late when I look, and I can’t confirm or deny their age. Although the vast majority of homes on this stretch of highway are old. “Which one?” I ask again, looking back over my shoulder.

  “We’ve passed it now. But I didn’t recognize it. There seem to be lots of revived properties on this road.”

  Between the new houses in the old towns, there are green meadows and brown fields. Many of both. Some are impressively manicured and await seeding. Family farms still exist in this part of the country, and evidence of their workings is scattered around the fields like children’s toys — wagons and tractors, bales of hay, pickup trucks. Rusty swing sets occupy lawns. Tire swings hang from branches. Other fields are less polished. They are uneven, and instead of equipment are often shaded by groups of trees and bushes. We pass rocks and fences, streams and ponds. We’ve seen varying barns, the most common being the nineteenth-century log variety. There’ve been more farm animals than we could count — lots of cows, horses, sheep, even a donkey or two. Grandma mentions it all, reflecting aloud.

  “It’s so green here,” Grandma says. “So green, especially for this time of year.”

  “You’re right. It is green.”

  “It’s quite . . . moggy.” I’ve never heard Grandma use moggy before. Sometimes she has her own words or pronunciations for things. I know what she’s getting at.

  “Yeah, fairly.”

  “More here than Ottawa.
”

  “Yes.”

  “There are more swamps along this road than I remember.”

  “I guess it is green and swampy and . . . moggy.”

  “Oh, yes.” She’s slanted in her seat, gazing out the window, her right hand up on the glass. “Lovely and moggy.”

  “Nice to still see some of these farms, too, isn’t it?”

  “It is, dear. I can remember when I first came out to Ontario, from the Prairies. I couldn’t believe what they called farms out here. They were so small. You haven’t seen farms until you see what they have in the Prairies.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, Grandma. These are what I think of when I think of a farm.” These small stone houses and scatterings of barns and wood fences. Lots of trees around. A few cattle, maybe a field of a corn. But even these farms, especially closer to Ottawa, are disappearing. “But the land is more valuable as real estate.”

  “Makes you wonder where we’ll grow our food,” she says. “These fields are so nice.”

  Our chatting has grown so continuous I’ve turned the tape down low. It was difficult for Grandma to decipher between me, the speakers, and the engine. She’d either ask me to repeat something or, more commonly, I could just tell by her void expression that she hadn’t caught what was said. We’ve been talking mostly about the scenery around us, which has become very rocky.

  “It’s funny,” she’s saying, “we went for a lot of drives and little trips like this, but we never once went to Kingston.”

  “You mean you and Grandpa?”

  “Yes, George loved going away.”

  “You guys used to take a lot of drives?”

  “Oh, sure, even just for the weekend. We both enjoyed a change of scene.” She’s tacked her focus back inside the car.

  “Did you often go away?”

  “We did, yes. We were just lucky we were able to. Some of my fondest memories are the small trips we made around Ontario.” I’m not sure if this announcement should make me feel more pressure to show Grandma a good time or just reinforce the notion that she enjoys this species of trip. “But,” she continues, “we never went far.”