by Ann McMan
“Grammy . . .” I tried again.
She ignored me. “Have some of this cornbread, honey.” She plopped a brick-sized hunk of it on the corner of El’s plate. “It’ll soak up some of that gravy.”
I gave up and held out my plate. “Could I have some, too?”
Grammy handed me a slab of the yellow cake without even looking in my direction.
El lifted a forkful of the thick stew to her mouth and tasted it. I thought her eyes were going to roll back into her head.
“Oh my god . . . this is wonderful.”
Grammy beamed.
I stared down at my plank of cornbread. It sat naked on my white, Corelle dinner plate, surrounded by a ring of tiny blue cornflowers.
“Could I have some, too?” I asked again.
Grammy glanced at me this time.
“Pot roast. I’d like some pot roast.” I pointed at the center of my plate. “To soften up this two-by-four.”
Grammy gave me one of those “people in hell want ice water” looks, and shifted the handle of the ladle so it was pointed in my direction.
“Right. Thanks.” I got to my feet. “I’ll help myself. You two just forget I’m here.”
El gave me a look filled with so much affection and amusement that I nearly dropped the ladle.
“So,” Grammy said. “Your people?”
El shifted her attention back to Grammy. “Buffalo. I grew up in Buffalo.”
I could see Grammy trying to mentally plot that location on a map. “Is that where they make those tiny chicken wings in the hot sauce?”
El smiled and nodded at her. “Yes, ma’am. Chicken wings and lots of car parts.” She looked at me. “Not necessarily in that order.”
“Brothers and sisters?” Grammy asked.
“Lots of those, too,” El replied. “I come from a big, loud, blue-collar, Roman Catholic family. I’m the youngest of six—three brothers, two sisters, and one bathroom.” She smiled. “On school days, my mother woke us up in five-minute intervals. We had to learn how to work fast.”
“That has to be a benefit in your profession,” I added.
“It does pay dividends sometimes.” She raised an eyebrow. “I have been known to do some of my best work in bathrooms.”
I cleared my throat. “Anybody want more tea?” I got up and went to the kitchen to retrieve the pitcher.
Grammy ignored me and stayed on task. “Are any of your brothers and sisters married?”
“All of them.” El explained. “At last count, there were eight grandchildren and at least two more on the way.” She glanced at me. “I appear to be the family’s only stalwart when it comes to zero population growth.”
“That’s a shame,” Grammy said. “You’d make beautiful babies.”
I choked on my tea.
Grammy was unfazed. “Where do they all live?”
“Mostly in and around Buffalo.”
“That must be very nice for your folks.”
El nodded. “My mom never misses an opportunity to let me know that my rolling-stone lifestyle is an annoying departure from the family norm. She really wants me to settle someplace and put down some roots.”
“Don’t you like Buffalo?”
El smiled. “Have you ever been to Buffalo, Mrs. Mann?”
Grammy shook her head. “No, honey. I don’t tend to travel much outside the Tri-State. I never did see the reason to go gallivanting all over when everything I need is right here within a stone’s throw. Besides, I can get every place I need to go without ever having to make any left turns. Things are just a whole lot simpler that way.” She looked at me. “Now, Jill, here, seems to get all antsy from time to time. I think it was going away to school did that. And now all that time she spends workin’ on that fancy MBA degree. It puts all kinds of ideas in her head.”
“What ideas?” I asked.
Grammy waved a hand at me but kept her attention focused on El.
I looked down at my plate of food. “What ideas?” I asked the medley of beef, potatoes, and carrots that stared back at me. I knew that I was about as likely to get a response from it as I was from Grammy.
“Your mama is right,” Grammy said to El. “It would do both of you girls good to put down some roots.”
“I have roots,” I tried again. “Lots of them. It’s my roots that get in the way, not my lack of them.”
El seemed interested in that. “Don’t you like living here?”
“I like it okay,” I replied. “Mostly. But I get tired of how . . . unvarying . . . the social aspects of my life can be.”
“Unvarying?” Grammy asked. “What in the world does that mean? If that’s just a highfalutin way to talk about Misty Ann Marks, then I have to agree with you.”
“Grammy . . .”
“Misty Ann Marks?” El asked. I wanted to slide beneath the table. “Who is she?”
“Nobody.” I glared at Grammy.
Grammy clucked her tongue.
“Really?” El looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “Do tell.”
I drummed my fingers against the side of my iced tea glass.
“See?” Grammy chimed in. “Antsy.”
I sighed and pushed my glass away. “How about we change the subject?”
El was chewing on the inside of her cheek.
I tried again. “Tell us about your parents, El. What do they do?”
She made me wait for what felt like an eternity, but finally, took pity on me. “My mother is a retired school teacher. My dad died when I was seventeen—in an accident at work.”
“Bless your heart.” In an instant, Grammy forgot all about Misty Ann and my antsy demeanor. “You poor baby.”
I was shocked. “What happened, El?”
El shrugged. “It was a classic breach of Lockout/Tagout protocol—one hundred percent preventable. Dad was a machinist, doing repairs on a metal stamping machine. The foreman had refused to allow him to properly lock and tagout the unit before he went to work on it. Apparently, that same foreman walked off to tend to something else, and a line supervisor passed by and turned the machine back on without knowing that dad was still servicing it.” She slowly shook her head. “They say he died instantly, but we won’t ever really know what he understood or felt. What we do know is that management in this plant had consistently failed to enforce LoTo procedures.” She looked at me. “And that’s the short version of how I became an agitator.”
“Lord have mercy.” Grammy patted El’s hand. “And there was your poor mama with six children to care for.”
“Well, most of us were already out of the home—working or in college.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that she was left alone with nothing but her memories to keep her warm at night.”
“I’m really sorry, El.”
She looked at me. “It was a long time ago.”
“I know. But I’m still sorry.”
We sat there staring at each other over our half-eaten piles of pot roast and corn bread.
Grammy cleared her throat. “As soon as you girls are finished making cow eyes at each other, we can go out on the porch and have dessert.”
El’s cow eyes quickly filled up with panic. “Dessert?”
“It’s pie. Rhubarb,” Grammy said with pride. “From my own patch out behind the garage. I canned it last spring.”
“Maybe we can share a slice?” I suggested.
Grammy got to her feet and started collecting plates. “Why don’t you two go out for a stroll while I clear these things away? It should’ve cooled off some, and maybe you can work up an appetite.”
I saw Fritz’s ears twitch when he heard the telltale sound of dishes being stacked, a sure fire sign that leftovers were on their way to his food bowl. He lumbered into the dining room with his tail wagging and an expectant look on his face.
“Won’t you let us help you clean up?” El asked.
Grammy was already halfway to the kitchen with Fritz trotting along behind her.
&nb
sp; “I’ll holler for you when the coffee’s ready,” she said over her shoulder.
El looked at me. “Cooled off? She is aware that it’s still about ninety-five degrees out there, isn’t she?”
I glanced over at Grammy’s ancient box fan whirring away from its perch atop an even more ancient console stereo. It had been blowing hot air past us for the last hour.
“Welcome to the Midwest—where winters get colder and summers get hotter.”
“Hotter than what?” El asked.
“I dunno. What’s the hottest thing you can think of?”
“Right now, I’d have to say that it’s probably the way your face looked when Grammy mentioned Misty Ann Marks.”
I rolled my eyes. “Hotter than that.”
“Why on earth would people choose to live in a place where they freeze in the winter and fry in the summer?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it reminds them of their disappointed hopes.”
“Are you talking about them, or about yourself?”
“Yes.”
El laughed and stood up. “Want to show me this famous rhubarb patch?”
I’d been down that road before, but I decided it was in my best interest not to mention it.
“Sure.”
El came around the table and took hold of my arm. We walked back through the house and out onto the front porch. It was already well past nine, but the moon was full, and everything outside looked like it had been dabbed with silver paint.
The fall bugs were kicking up a ruckus. The noise they made slammed into us like a tidal wave as soon as we stepped outside the door. It was pretty impressive. Imagine the sound a couple thousand insects could make if they ran a chorus of tiny power tools at full-tilt boogie. Then multiply that by ten.
El turned toward me. In the silver light, her face was like an etching—one of those really good ones that came on commemorative coins from the Franklin Mint.
“What the hell is that?” she asked
“Fall bugs.”
“What on earth are fall bugs?”
“I think you call them cicadas.”
“Really?” She seemed incredulous. “In Indiana? I thought they generally conducted their high-octane sex romps in the southern states.”
“Nope. We get ’em every year, but usually not this early, and almost never this loud.”
“Hmmm. Isn’t this supposed to be one of the seven plagues of the apocalypse?”
“No.” I shook my head. “I think that’s locusts.”
El smiled at me. “You say tomato . . .”
I became aware of a scuffling noise behind us. Fritz had apparently finished his plate of leftovers and was eager to join us outside. I opened the door, and he pushed past me, gaining momentum as he headed for the steps. He vaulted off the porch in a flash of silver light and bounded across the side yard toward the back of the house.
I nudged El. “Still wanna see the rhubarb patch?”
“Try and stop me.”
We left the porch and followed Fritz, with greater deliberation and less speed.
El looked around. I felt proud of how tidy Grammy kept things. It was a far cry from Doc Baker’s compound across the road. His front yard looked like a cross between a junkyard and a drag strip. Sadly, that approach was more the norm than the exception in these parts.
“I’ve never really thought much about Indiana,” El said. “It always seemed more like a punch line than a place—as if the entire state was an unhappy suburb of Dan Quayle.”
“Dan Quayle? Isn’t he a little before your time?”
“I’ve always been precocious and well-informed.”
“Apparently.”
El was still holding on to my arm, and she gave it a little squeeze. “I’ll be sad to leave here—for more reasons than one.”
Her words siphoned the luster right off the silver night. Rolling farmland that had been looking lush and romantic now just looked lumpy and gray.
“When are you leaving?” I asked. I tried to sound casual, but I knew I wasn’t fooling El. Or myself.
She shrugged. “By the end of next week, probably. Tony says this game is a lot like playing the slots in Vegas. You don’t stay with a cold machine.”
I didn’t know what to feel. In all honesty, I didn’t give two flips about whether or not our plant got a union. But I did care about not seeing El any more. I cared about that a lot.
“I wish you could stay,” I said. I knew it sounded vague and noncommittal. Even now, I was afraid of saying too much. Hell . . . especially now.
We reached the garage and Grammy’s garden. Corn, tomatoes, and peppers spread out before us in tidy rows. Next to the garage wall were several clusters of big, leafy plants. Their thick, woody stalks looked like polished mahogany in the moonlight. I pointed toward them.
“Voila. Behold the fabled rhubarb . . . coming soon to a dessert plate near you.”
“My god. Those things look like shillelaghs.”
“Well. They’re a bit smaller and more tender when you harvest them in the spring.”
“I sure as hell hope so.” El looked back at me. “Did you mean what you said?”
I was confused. “About the rhubarb? Yeah. It’s a lot less tough when you pick it early on.”
El rolled her eyes. “No . . . not the rhubarb. Did you mean what you said about not wanting me to leave?”
“Oh. That.”
“Yes. That.”
I nodded. “I meant it.”
She sighed. “It’s odd. Normally, I can’t wait to see the back end of a small town like this. But Princeton seems like a place I could actually get used to.”
I was surprised. “You like it here?”
“Strange, isn’t it? It surprises the hell out of me, too.”
“Why not stay, then?” I said it like it was the most natural thing in the world. And as soon as the words were out of my mouth, the idea fell into place right alongside those perfect rows of tasseled corn— like it had always been part of this landscape.
“Are you serious?”
I nodded. “Why not?”
El waved a hand. “Well, for one thing, there’s not a lot of demand around here for unemployed agitators.”
That was true. “I suppose there are other things you could do?” I asked, hopefully.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. What did you do in Buffalo before you signed up with the UAW?”
“Signed up? You make it sound like I joined the Army.”
“You say tomato . . .” I quoted.
“Okay, wiseass. How about you guess?”
“Guess?”
“Yeah.” El seemed to be warming to this idea. “Guess what I did before I signed up with the union.”
I knew she was goading me, but I didn’t care. I was determined to get it right. I stepped back and pretended to study her carefully, which was totally unnecessary. I could already draw every part of her perfectly from memory.
“You ran a hookah bar?” I suggested.
She smacked me on the arm. “Be serious.”
I rubbed my arm. “I was being serious.”
“Try again.”
“Okay. Okay.” I thought about it some more. “I think you were a teacher.”
I saw the flicker of surprise cross her face and knew I was right.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” I boasted. “You were a teacher.”
El wagged her finger in front of me—just like every teacher I’d ever had. “Not so fast, Einstein. You’re close, but not close enough to fire up a cigar.”
“Whattaya mean? I guessed it . . . you just don’t want to admit it.”
“Nuh uh. What kind of teacher?”
“Oh, jeez . . . come on, El.”
She stood her ground. “Nope. You started it.”
“I started it? You’re the one who told me I had to guess.”
“Well,” she shrugged, “you’re the one who wants to know.”
This was getting
us no place. “Okay. Um . . . you taught . . . Driver’s Ed.”
“Drivers Ed?”
I nodded.
“This is your guess? Seriously?”
“Well . . . I have seen you parallel park.”
“It’s true that I have unsung talents. However, that skill would not be among them.”
“How about you just tell me?”
“Tell you? What fun would there be in that?”
“El?”
“No. You have to guess.”
“I don’t want to guess. We’ve already established that I suck at guessing.”
“You mean you give up?”
“El . . .”
“No. First you have to say, I give up. Then, I’ll tell you.”
“Are you kidding me?”
She sighed. “It’s easy to see that you didn’t grow up with three brothers.”
“Is everything with you a contest of wills?”
She thought about that. “More or less.”
“Okay, then. I give up.”
El cupped a hand around her ear and leaned toward me. “Excuse me?”
I took a deep breath. “Uncle. I give up. You win. I surrender. If I had a white flag, I’d wave it. If I had a sword, I’d fall on it. If I had milk money, I’d give it to you. Okay?”
She looked unconvinced. “You have to say it like you mean it.”
“You’re killing me here.” I stood there absently tapping my fingertips against my pant leg. El noticed.
“Feeling antsy?” she asked, sweetly.
I looked up at the night sky. The stars were especially bright tonight, and it was worth noting that none of them were aligned in patterns that seemed to be favoring me.
“I give up,” I muttered to any god who might be up there paying attention to my plight.
“See?” El was beaming at me. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“You know,” I glowered at her, “if you taught anything other than showing people how to annoy the piss out of each other, I’d be amazed.”
“Bingo!” El proclaimed. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.”
“What are you talking about?”
“What I taught. You just guessed it.”
I was confused again. “You taught people how to annoy the piss out of each other?”
She nodded. “In a manner of speaking. I taught Industrial and Labor Relations to pimply-faced undergraduates.”