by Cyn Vargas
“I want you kids to know I tried,” Dad said. “I know you love your mom. But I need you to know I really tried to keep us together. Your mom, she just...sometimes.... I didn’t give up first. Just remember that.”
Manny and I kept eating.
In the parking lot, Dad said, “Your grandma had short hair just like you, Anna. She was a beautiful woman.” He sighed and pulled out of the lot. “Hair’s something that actually comes back.”
When Dad dropped us off at home, he and Mom didn’t say anything to each other at all.
That night, I ran the hot water in the sink and watched the steam rise in the mirror and before my reflection completely disappeared, I grabbed my brush and ran it over my scalp.
THE VISIT
When Alex told me he had kissed someone else, we were at our favorite 24-hour diner, the one near our place. The one that we had been going to for hash browns and omelets since we had started dating over two years ago.
“Emily, I didn’t mean for it to happen. I’m sorry,” he said as the waitress came and put the plates of food in front of us. She darted her eyes between us, threw two straws on the table, and hurried away.
I think he expected me to yell or to cry, but instead I reached for the hot sauce and shook bright orange drops onto the food.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Alex’s hand slid towards mine, but then he took it back.
I didn’t know what to say. It’s not like I was purely innocent either, but was now the time to tell him? Hey, Alex. You know a couple of months ago when I went to that conference in San Diego? I fucked my counterpart from Tucson, the one that I had never met in person before.
“It didn’t mean anything. It just happened.” He tapped his fingers against the tabletop. My water quaked inside the glass.
“Maybe we’ve hit our max,” I said, putting butter on my toast.
“Max?”
“You should eat. It’s getting cold,” I pointed to his plate with my fork.
“Why are you being like this? Can’t you have some kind of reaction?” Alex leaned over the table and put his hands flat in front of me, but didn’t try to touch me.
“I need time to think. I don’t know about us.”
“It was just a kiss,” he said, but I wasn’t referring to that. I didn’t know where Alex and I had gone wrong. I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to fix it.
The next day we rode the train to the airport. It was packed with travelers and suitcases, all piled in tightly like toys in a chest. I knew Grandma Helen was going to ask where Alex was. He’d come with me the last two summers to visit her and Grandpa Edmond.
Alex and I decided that if I could get over his indiscretion, as he put it, then I would call him to join me. If not, that would mean the end of us.
“Know that I want you to call me and tell me to come,” Alex said, holding my carry-on bag over his shoulder as he leaned against the train door. I pointed to my ear and shook my head, pretending I couldn’t hear him over the all the conversations and the loud roar of the train.
We didn’t speak the rest of the way and when we got to the terminal, we did not hug. I took my bag from him.
“I’m sorry,” Alex said.
“I’ll call you by six o’clock and let you know,” I replied, and made my way to security.
I got to Grandma Helen’s ranch house on Montrose Avenue at two o’clock in the afternoon. I stood on the sidewalk in front of the house, my feet planted on top of my own initials, which I’d etched into the sidewalk when I was a kid. I still wasn’t sure if I was going to tell Alex to come or not. At that point, all I knew was that I needed to talk to Grandma Helen about it. She’d give it to me straight.
The gnomes that lined the walkway to Grandma’s house seemed to sweat in the broiling sun as I made my way up the walkway to the door. I hadn’t seen her since Grandpa Edmond’s funeral nearly a year before, when the house was full of people and casseroles.
Grandma opened the door before I even had a chance to ring the bell. A blast of cold air pulled me inside. Grandma Helen stood almost as high as the side table, her hair puffed up like a croissant. Her two Great Danes trotted up to me, sniffing my knees as if they were biscuits.
After several minutes of hugs, Grandma led me into the house. It was the same as it had always been—plants on every shelf of the bookcase, the green couch covered in plastic that pulled at your skin when you sat on it. When my grandparents had watched me when I was a child, I’d learned to sneak in some cookies to Grandpa to snack on while we watched horror movies on that very couch. I watched the scary parts through the gaps of my fingers as I covered my eyes.
“Emily, dear, it’s Grandpa’s Santa suit. Put it on.” Grandma said, coming into the room. She placed a wad of red cloth into my bare arms. Immediately, my white tank was covered in red fibers.
“It’s August, Grandma. And I wanted to talk about something.”
“What? We can only celebrate the birth of Jesus once a year? C’mon, dear. Your Grandpa Edmond and I would always do a test run of the Christmas card this time of year.”
I recalled all the various cards I had received, each with Grandpa Edmond in a Santa suit and Grandma Helen dressed like Mrs. Claus or a snowman. Once she was even an elf. Grandpa had filled out the suit early on, but it sagged more and more as the years went by and he became sicker. Then one of the dogs came along a couple years ago, and a reindeer started appearing in the cards, too.
“But I don’t want to, Grandma,” I said, sounding more like I was four instead of thirty-four.
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to. I mean, I’m all alone now. Your grandpa is gone. Your dad’s off in Alaska and you, so many states away....” Grandma let go of Grandpa Edmond’s Santa suit. It fell to the rug.
She began to tremble. “I don’t feel well. Oh, Lawd, my dear Jesus,” she moaned.
Dad had warned me that Grandma Helen had started acting sick when she didn’t get her way. Now that Grandpa was in an urn on top of the kitchen table, she didn’t have anyone to pay attention to her anymore.
“Fine. fine. I’ll put on the suit.” I trudged over and scooped it up. Grandma immediately stopped moaning.
“Oh, such a sweetheart, so unlike your father,” she chirped. Dad was her only child. “Let me go get the camera he sent me for Mother’s Day, since he just couldn’t bring himself to come see me.”
“Mom and Dad are in Alaska because of his job, remember?” I yelled after her.
“What’s a little plane ride from Alaska to Chicago?” she said, her voice fading.
I plopped on the couch, the plastic crinkling beneath me. During one visit Alex had fallen asleep on it, and his face had stuck to the plastic. One of the Great Danes pranced over to me, light on his feet compared to his gigantic size.
“How you doing, Oscar?” I said, petting him behind his ear. It was still odd for me to call the dog Oscar, as it was named after my dad. They both did have slightly tilted ears. The other Dane strolled over to me. He was leaner; his shoulders moved back and forth like oars.
“And how are you, Edmond?” I said. I scratched him on the top of his head. Grandma had gotten him after Grandpa died.
The dogs sat next to each other, gazing at me, the sunlight from the open blinds shining over their charcoal fur.
On the table, which Grandpa had made himself, stood a nearly empty spray bottle with a picture of a Labrador wearing sunglasses sitting underneath a palm tree. I bent down and sniffed Edmond’s head. He smelled like coconuts.
“Smell like Hawaii, don’t they?” Grandma said, coming back into the room. “They say dogs and coconuts are good for arthritis.”
“I didn’t know you had arthritis.”
“I don’t. It’s a preventative measure.”
She raised her furry brows at me. At 86, Grandma Helen was still pretty sharp. She remembered when her soap operas were on, and how she met Grandpa Edmond in the fifties, an
d when others forgot her birthday.
“Well, are you going to put it on or what?” she asked me.
Grandpa Edmond was such a tall man that my little five-foot-flat grandma never had to climb a ladder or a step stool in her married life. She’d just scream, “Edmond!” and he’d get whatever she wanted from the top shelf. Grandpa had to bend over to kiss her on the top of her head.
I glanced at my watch. Time was ticking away and I was still not sure what I was going to do about Alex. I slid the Santa pants on over my own without removing my shoes. I kept tugging and tugging and my shoes never seemed to peek out. There were suspenders on the waistband that I hung over my shoulders.
I imagined Grandpa laughing at me as I struggled. When I was little he’d sneak me candy before bed and after bed, before dinner and after dinner, and sometimes during dinner. I missed him immensely and could almost smell the Old Spice within the fibers of the Santa suit.
Alex had taken the phone call when he died.
“My poor grandma. They’ve been together for so long,” I cried.
“I’m lucky to have you,” Alex had said.
The great Danes studied me, turning their heads slightly. The coat alone was almost at my knees and it itched like crazy over my tank top. The coat fibers were prickling my skin and I began to squirm.
“Oh, how I wish your grandpa was here.”
“Me too.”
“You look beautiful, Emily. Now just sit down. No. No. In his chair,” Grandma Helen pointed to Grandpa Edmond’s chair. I hadn’t laid my eyes on it since I came in and now when I noticed it, I saw that his urn had moved from the kitchen to the dented plush cushion.
“It was next to the camera, dear,” Grandma said. “Look, just sit there and put the urn in your lap.”
“You want me to put Grandpa on my lap?”
I didn’t mean to laugh, but I did. When I was a kid and sat on his lap, I never fathomed that I would be returning the favor.
Grandma began to cry, an all-out groaning, hyperventilating, chest-heaving, denture-quaking kind of a cry.
“I’m all alone,” she moaned. The only other time I had seen Grandma so upset was at the funeral. Alex had held her, rubbing her back, telling me later that he could feel her spine as she curled into him. I was shaking hands and trying to get people through the house. How was I supposed to talk to her now? Hey, Grandma. Sorry you’re depressed, but let me tell you about my problem, so you can help me.
The guilt started to shoot up my spine. I picked up the urn. Underneath my fingers it was cool and smooth. I sat in the recliner and sunk into the dent of the cushion. The Danes instantly began to bark and trotted toward me. Edmond sat to my left and rested his massive head on my thigh and Oscar laid right smack on top of my feet. Grandma Helen yelped in delight and wiped the tears with the back of her hand.
“Thank you, Emily. Now the hat, dear.” I scanned the room and didn’t see a hat. Grandma Helen pointed to the coat.
“In the right pocket,” she said.
I reached inside and pulled out a stiff stick of licorice covered in dog hair.
“My dear heavens, that man,” she shook her head. “He shouldn’t have been eating sweets because of his diabetes! They cut off his leg, you know.”
“They didn’t cut off his leg, Grandma.”
“Well, they would’ve cut it off if it wasn’t for me who stopped him from eating sweets.” She turned her focus to the camera.
It occurred to me to tell her that the dogs didn’t stop her from having arthritis, that Grandpa’s leg didn’t stay attached to his body because she monitored his sugar intake, but then she said, “Oh, wait. Didn’t you want to talk about something? Is Alex on a later flight?”
I dropped the licorice to the floor and Oscar started sniffing it. Edmond seemed to want an answer to the question and peered up at me. I ran my hands through my hair.
“Grandma, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” I said. I reached into the pocket again and felt a crumpled felt ball. I yanked the hat out. Edmond was written in glitter across the white rim, the last d almost completely worn away. I threw it on my head and it slid below my eyes. Grandma rolled up the rim of the hat until it squeezed my forehead.
“Let me just get one quick photo. Smile, dear. Oscar. Edmond. Look over here.” The dogs turned their heads. I grinned, but I was thinking of Alex.
After the funeral, he had held Grandma’s hand as she told him the story of how she and Grandpa Edmond first met, of when she had first seen him at the candy factory, and how she’d known she wasn’t in love. They just got married because she had nothing else to do, but then she grew to love him. Alex joked about it later. Told me that we had it all backwards. We got together for love and that maybe it meant we’d end up apart.
“So, dear. Why didn’t Alex come with you?” Grandma snapped a picture, but the camera was facing her, not me. She flipped it around.
“Because I need some time to think.”
“Think about what?”
Snap. Oscar yawned.
“I need some time to figure things out.”
“Words, dear. Words.”
Another snap. This time Oscar’s head was facing the door. Grandma Helen clicked her tongue and his head snapped toward her.
“Sometimes relationships aren’t that easy, I guess.”
“You’re talking, but telling me nothing. I’m going to make us some tea, dear. That will help loosen your tongue.”
And then, while wearing an itchy Santa suit, sitting on Grandpa’s recliner, flanked by a pair of Great Danes, I told Grandma Helen about Alex.
“The butterflies are gone,” I said as I came to the end. I had told her everything, even the cheating. She didn’t ask for details and I was grateful for that.
“You sound like such a girl, Emily. Butterflies aren’t forever. They fly and it feels fine and then they die.” She sipped her tea.
“I love him. I do. I just am like this with him,” I raised my hand and then swiped it straight across in the air.
“And you want this,” she said, raising her free hand upward, like before the drop in a roller coaster. I nodded.
“Grandma, I don’t want you to think I’m a bad person.”
“Emily, look at me. You’re my favorite grandchild.”
“I’m your only grandchild.”
“Still, I don’t have to like you, dear, but I do. We’re human. You just need to figure out what you want for yourself. I loved your grandpa more than anyone, but if I wasn’t happy I would’ve left. Love isn’t everything.”
I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to sink into the Santa suit even more, shrink until I was cocooned in it.
“Dear, your tea is getting cold.” Grandma Helen pointed to my mug, then straightened out her skirt, pulling it over the dark veins that branched under her nude tights.
One of the dogs began to snore. The air conditioner blasted through the house, but sweat formed over my body.
“Your grandpa and I were together for forty-three years. We had an understanding. We were together because we wanted to be, not because we needed to. I don’t believe in soul mates, dear and I don’t think you do, either. It’s foolish to think there is only one person out there that you can be happy with. You need to figure that part out. Are you with Alex because you want to be, or do you feel that it’s the right thing to do? There’s nothing wrong with him, so why shouldn’t I stay? If you’re thinking like that, it’s not fair for either of you. Love is the foundation, but it’s not the entire house. You need to ask yourself whether you want to spend the time and energy building it with him. It’s a matter of not being scared and living, whether that means staying with Alex or moving on.”
I rubbed my hands on my thighs. I still had the urn cradled upright in one arm. Both Danes were snoring at my feet.
“Things happen, dear, and not always in the way that you expect. Usually, never.” She put the cup of tea down on
the table and pushed herself up with the help of the recliner’s arms. Her feet were silent on the carpet as she made her way to me. She put her hands on my face, warm and soft, and her eyes met mine.
“He was with someone else. You were with someone else. Make it work or walk away. It’s your responsibility to make yourself happy, not someone else’s.”
“I know.”
“Alex’s not in this urn, Emily,” she said, taking it from me and rubbing it like a genie’s lamp. “Now, just a few more pictures, Emily dear. Let’s wake up the dogs.”
An hour later, after I had taken off the Santa suit and put it back in the closet, while Grandma prepared her famous potato salad and the Danes gnawed on bones that looked like they’d once belonged to dinosaurs, I called Alex.
After I hung up, I made my way into the kitchen. The Danes trailed behind me.
“Will Alex be joining us?” Grandma asked, putting a glass of lemonade in front of me.
The ice clinked. The glass sweated. The dogs sat on either side of my chair.
“It’s just you and me, Grandma.”
She said nothing and kissed the top of my head.
We lounged on the deck and watched the Danes play in the backyard. The sun slowly descended behind the fence until it disappeared.
TIO PANZÓN
I stood there alone just inside the doorway of the hospital floor hall. It was a Saturday, the busiest visiting day, the nurse said to me as a man hurried around me, carrying flowers, and another nurse pushed a cart of covered plates. Lunch.
“I am here to see… ” I started in my broken Spanish to the nurse next to me. Her nametag read Adelina. She wore a little pink paper hat.
“You’re Elizabeth, yes? Your Uncle Esteban told me you would arrive today. Let me show you where he is,” she said in Spanish. She walked toward the big round desk in the center of the hall, signaling for me to follow her.
The hospital was only half finished and composed of a labyrinth of halls. Only a few halls even had roofs, which meant the air was humid and damp. There wasn’t enough money to complete the building. There was barely enough money to take care of the patients. As I walked behind Adelina, I looked up at a clear blue sky.