by Jayne Allen
Chapter Four
“Tabby Cat! I thought you’d be calling just about now.” My mother’s voice caroused over my car’s sound system. “The General and I just came back from a lovely afternoon walk. Didn’t we Sweetheart? Yes. Tabby, Nate says to tell you hi!” When my mother told me that she met the General Nathaniel Williams a year after she and my father divorced, I breathed a sign of relief. He seemed perfect for her. He had translated his career in the military to a defense contracting business that was very lucrative and built a beautiful home in Potomac, Maryland. A while after they met, my mother’s long-distance visits with him gradually increased in frequency and duration until one day, just before the end of my 8th grade year, she asked me to sit down for what I could tell would be a serious conversation in our living room. The General had asked her to marry him and my mother wanted to say yes. To her credit, she left that gigantic diamond all the way in DC so that she could fly back and talk to me first before giving her answer. I was happy for her, but all I wanted to know was if I was going to have to move. It took two full weeks of negotiation, but eventually an arrangement was made. My mother would move to DC, but I would stay in LA. I would move in and live with Granny Tab for high school to graduation. There were tears upon tears, and wringing hands and furrowed brows. There were “I don’t knows,” followed by “It doesn’t feel rights,” but eventually, she left and collected that ring. My mother was ecstatic about marrying General Nathaniel Williams, and certainly about the “Williams,” because that meant that she could keep her monogrammed items with her new married name.
“Hi Nate,” I said, dutifully through my car system.
“I feel like I haven’t talked to you in forever!” My mother said, continuing with her familiar refrain. “You know since we don’t live close, we just have to talk more, right?”
“I know Mom,” I said. “It’s just been…a busy week.”
“Oh, let’s see—what did you have this week…” my mom said, pausing to recall our last conversation. I halfway hoped she’d forget about the doctor and I could push off the inevitable for just a little longer. “Oh! That’s right, the doctor’s visit. How was that? Everything turn out ok?” Crap.
“Well, the good news is..I’m perfectly healthy,” I started explaining. “And…” I paused, trying to find the least inciting words to describe the questionable fate of her grandchildren.
“And what Tab? My mother said, her voice clearly demonstrating concern. “Good news…you said there’s good news…is there…bad news?”
“Well, it depends on what you mean by bad,” I said. Ugh, mistake. Better words, Tabby, I told myself. Find better words. “I just have to freeze my eggs, in the next few months, that’s all. I have less eggs at my age than other people.” There, that should help us transition off this topic.
“Freeze your eggs?!? And do what with them?,” my mother shrieked, her tone becoming increasingly shrill. “Tabby, that’s expensive—and it doesn’t even work!”
“Mom, it does work,” I said. “At least, that’s what the doctor said. Plus, it’s just for options, ok? I guess I have to do it to maintain my options in the future.” I tried my best to stay as calm as possible, even though I felt the panic start to rise again in my chest.
“I don’t understand you girls,” my mom replied. “You get all deep in your careers, miss the marriage window and then have to resort to all kinds of unproven unnecessary procedures—expensive procedures! Doctors will tell you anything these days…” I could feel my blood pressure going up.
“Mom!” I tried to hold back from shouting. “Stop, it’s fine. I’ll be fine. It’s not about my career—it’s about…”
“Is it Marc? Is he pressuring you to do this? I honestly don’t know what you two are waiting on.” What we were waiting on? Hearing what my mother said, I couldn’t help but laugh and felt like crying. I reminded myself that she meant well.
“Nooooo…it’s not coming from Marc.” I said, in a fully fake half-laugh. “And I don’t know when or if Marc wants to get married. He hasn’t asked me. You know you’d be the first to know if he did!” I could swear that my mom’s timer on my romantic relationships registered by the millisecond.
“Well Tabby, maybe if you put less focus on your career for a second and more focus on him, he would!” My breath caught in my throat. Was she right? Was that it? Was my career really stalling my relationship? I couldn’t imagine how so. Marc always told me how he liked that I was independent and had my own ambitions. Sure, we didn’t see each other much during the week, but the weekends we made the most of for certain. Plus, there were far fewer times that he wanted to see me that I was unavailable than the other way around.
“Marc likes that I work, Mom,” I said, sounding only partially defensive. “And I like it too.” I let those words hang in the air. The weight of memories that my mother and I shared in the “dark years” after my parents’ split wove its way into the space between us—even across the miles. The silence spoke volumes of words far too painful for either of us to voice ourselves.
“Well, just don’t let him drag his feet, Tabby.” My mom broke the silence. “You let him know that you’re ready. And that’s coming from the General.” My mom always brought Nate into it when she wanted to emphasize a point.
“I got it Mom, nothing to worry about,” I said. I was glad to see the turn for my destination ahead as I was driving. It was the perfect excuse to end the inquiry. “Ok, I’ve gotta go—I’m at Granny Tab’s.”
“That’s so good that you make it every week to see her,” my mom said. She was right, I did go every week to see my grandmother, no matter what else I had going on. I just made the time. After a hip injury and a congestive heart failure condition, she had to leave her apartment for an assisted living facility. She chose one in Glendale near her best friend Ms. Gretchen. After meeting Ms. Gretchen, I understood why Granny Tab would want to stay close—she reminded me of a much older Laila. My mom continued, “Tell her hello for me and let me know how she’s adjusting. Let’s talk sooner than soon! “
I breathed a deep sigh of relief after we said our goodbyes. I loved my mom, but her world and my world were universes apart. There was no way to make her understand that the expectations she was taught in her generation didn’t seem to exist anywhere anymore. Other than Alexis, I couldn’t think of any of my friends who were married, let alone had kids. We did want to focus on our careers first—that seemed like the obvious route. No man these days was looking to take care of a woman. Working women were the new housewives as far as we all knew. And single was becoming the new married.
I really loved pulling up on Crestmire, my Grandmother’s fancy assisted living residence. The outside had the look of a ritzy New England seaside inn, right in the middle of Glendale, California. You could have easily mistaken it for a high-end apartment building for a bunch of young successful professionals. That is, until you walked inside. And there everywhere, were grey-haired people, sitting in chairs, walking with walkers, playing cards and board games at tables, all with the quiet hum of chatter in the background.
I stopped at the front desk to check in as a visitor. I hadn’t expected to see a new face. I wondered if that meant I would have to explain. “I’m here to see Mrs. Walker—Mrs. Tabitha Walker,” I said to the aide seated behind the curved wood station.
She looked at me for a moment with a look of slight confusion. “And you are…..?” she asked, searching my now frowning brown face for an explanation.
“I’m Tabitha Walker—Tabby, her granddaughter. I’m named after her.” I forced a smile to show my trustworthiness, observing the look of bewilderment on the face in front of me. I assumed that she had seen my grandmother and was having trouble putting two and two together.
“Um…um…ok, just sign in here,” she said pushing the book toward me. “Unit 1265” she said as I started to turn in the direction of my grandmother’s hallway.
&nb
sp; “I know!” I called back to her. “I’m here every Saturday!” It felt ridiculous to me, but I couldn’t blame her for being slightly befuddled. That questioning look, the moments of confusion, when it came to me and my grandmother, it’s what we’d dealt with practically my entire life, so we did as much as we could to try to find some kind of humor in it, at least most of the time.
I walked into my grandmother’s unit and was happy to see that the curtains had been opened and that bright sunlight was tiptoeing through the entire abbreviated apartment space. I knocked on the door as I pushed it further open.
“Granny Tab?” I called out, hoping not to startle her.
“I’m in the bedroom, Sweetie! Coming right out!” echoed back the voice of my grandmother.
I made my way into the living room area. Familiar furniture greeted me from my grandmother’s old place in the Fairfax district where I used to live with her. Moving here, she had to downsize and get rid of a lot of things. Here, at least she kept the brown chenille fabric sofa that had hosted so many memories of my youth, not to mention my very first makeout session as a teenager. This sofa has seen better days…I thought to myself as I sat down on my usual side of it, my hips fitting neatly into the corner like a hug. I ran my hand across the adjacent cushion, feeling the soft texture underneath my palm. In spite of love and care, the worn areas showed, but the couch still worked “for what it was made for,” as my grandmother would say about so many things, including herself. She came to assisted living last year after she fell and hurt her hip. Congestive heart failure caused her to become dizzy from time to time, so she agreed with my dad and me that it was time for her to let go of just a small bit of her independence so she wouldn’t be living alone. She refused my offer to move into my loft in downtown LA, and instead chose to move to Crestmire with Ms. Gretchen.
Granny Tab and Ms. Gretchen knew each other from teaching in the LA Unified School District. Sometimes Ms. Gretchen would be around when I visited, sitting at Granny Tab’s kitchen table, pretending not to listen to our conversation, but interjecting all the while. She was a spitfire kind of woman, and at 92 years old, she had more energy than Granny Tab and me, combined. I looked up just in time to see my grandmother emerging in one of her many flower print dress and cardigan sweater combinations. The oranges in the print of this one reminded me of wildflowers and set off the blue of her eyes.
“So good to see you today, Two!” My grandmother said as a welcome exclamation as she made her way through her small apartment space to the kitchenette. Amongst my other nicknames, Two was a special one used only between my dad, my grandmother and I these days. I’m told it came about when I was somewhere around two years old and just learning to form coherent phrases. The story was that once I realized that my grandmother’s name was Tabitha and that mine was also Tabitha, I ran around in my diapers for a week proclaiming, “I’m Tabitha Too! I’m Tabitha Too!” In this limited circle, the “Too” stuck, and Tabitha, became “Tabby” to most others.
“Looks like you’re moving around pretty well, Granny Tab,” I said in the most encouraging tone that I could muster.
“Oh, not so bad for an old woman past her prime,” my grandmother said with a wink as she tinkered with her whistling teapot and pulled down two mugs from the cabinet. We would be having Lipton tea today—it was the only thing that my grandmother drank in the mornings and into the early afternoon. She told me that when she was little, Lipton tea was a luxury that her family couldn’t afford, growing up poor in the hills of West Virginia. So, once he started making money, my grandfather would buy it for her and fancy teacups when he could, as promises of a better life to come. She always said that tea made her think of possibilities and new beginnings. Given my situation, I’d better have two cups today. I got up to help her bring our mugs over to the small kitchen table, where we sat with our hands around the steaming cylinders. “So, how are things at work? Did you get your promotion yet?” she asked.
“Not yet,” I said. “There’s an unofficial competition between me and—you know that reporter, Scott Stone?” She nodded. “ Well, he keeps cutting me off in meetings and warping my ideas. I’ve got to find a way to move past him.”
“I know you will, Two,” she said, putting her pale hand covered with cascading wrinkles on top of my brown one. “You’re strong. Like me. I know you’ll figure out a way. And if not, he better watch out—I’ll crack his cranium!” my Grandmother said, cracking herself up while shaking a feeble fist in the air. We both laughed.
“Well, I need that promotion, so I’m going to get it,” I said, as reassuringly as I could. “As it turns out, I have to do a procedure where they take out some of my eggs and freeze them for later. That’s going to take some money.”
“Well, why don’t you ask your dad to help you?” Granny Tab asked sincerely.
“No way,” I said. “I don’t want to feel obligated to him, and especially not to Diane. No way.” Plus, they’d never offered anything up to then, no help with school, nothing. In comments made after their girls were born, it seemed pretty clear to me how their resources were directed. I spared Granny Tab that, holding it in to myself as I did with as much as I could these days.
“I know the situation didn’t start out the best, Two, but I really wish you’d give it a chance,” my grandmother said, searching my eyes. “Go have dinner with your dad sometimes. They’re picking me up tonight—and the little girls. Diane always tries to make a meal as big as Christmas!” This issue was a sore spot, and just about the only topic where my grandmother and I didn’t see eye to eye. She’d long ago forgiven Diane for the affair, especially after the arrival of more grandchildren. It wasn’t that I never felt pangs of guilt for not knowing them well or seeing my half-sisters grow up, but the price of having to put up with Diane was too much to bear. Even after all this time, I still remembered the incident at their wedding as clear as if it had happened yesterday.
I was 13 years old, then, and attending my father’s wedding as a guest, not as any part of the ceremony and barely an acknowledgement. Just before the reception, Diane took time away from her obsession with pictures and guests and gloating through her walk of victory in the irony of a white wedding dress to pull me aside, delivering the only words she had for me. “Well, I guess you’ll have to stop calling Paul ‘my dad’ after today,” she said glibly, not even registering any recognition of the look of appalled shock that I was only thinly concealing. “Now he’s Tanner’s dad too!” Bitch—I remember thinking—that was my name for Diane in my mind. And not “bitch” like the friendly and fierce way exchanged between me and my girlfriends and my gayfriends. When I got back home, I hesitated to even tell my mother what happened, but I did. “That bitccchhhh!” my mom hissed, the next morning while she made us breakfast, breaking wide from her usual composure, at least when it came to cursing. “She has got some nerve telling my child what to do, and what to say to her own father.” I caught my breath as her hand hovered over the knife drawer, letting her fingers encircle the drawer handle to pull it toward her. From the inside, her hand returned to the counter gripping the end of a spatula that she slammed down on the counter, making a hard plastic clack for emphasis. “Next time you see her, you tell Diane that your Momma said…” She whipped her head around from the scrambling eggs to look me directly in my eyes. Hers were pitch black and now dancing with fire. Suddenly, abruptly, she caught herself in the moment, and paused. I could almost see her mind change its course as her body straightened upward at least an inch. “Nevermind,” she continued, almost cheerfully, “…I’ll tell her myself. ” Then she turned to me fully and pointed right at me with the orange spatula, as if there was a target for her, right between my eyes. “And don’t you dare let that,” she paused so that she could emphasize the ‘w’ in her next phrase, “…whh-oman tell you what to do, beyond what your father says is respectful. You hear me?” For a second, I just knew that she was going to say “white wo
man,” bringing up the injury that hung silently in the air, but she didn’t. I nodded quickly to signify that I did understand, and with that, the conversation was over. I knew better than to push that kind of issue with my mother, or to ask her what she was really going to do. For weeks after that moment, I actually waited for the news about Diane’s mysterious and untimely demise. In the end, on the few and far between times that I did see them, first the three of them (Diane was intact), then four, and eventually the five new Walkers, I continued to reference my dad as my dad, just like I had always done, and there was no one that said anything else to me about it ever again. Since not much had changed about Diane, as she had often been similarly insensitive even in later years, I just decided that it was who she was, at least to me, and chose to cope best by keeping my distance.
“Maybe, one of these days,” I said snapping my mind back to Granny Tab’s suggestion of joining them for dinner. “But tonight, I can’t. Tonight, I have a date—with Marc,” I said with a teasing smile.
“Oh yes, your beau Marc,” Granny Tab teased back. “Well, now I know why your hair looks so pretty! Now you just need to put on your leep-stick!” I laughed. She was making another reference to the younger me who would always ask if I could put on her red “leeep-stick.” She was the keeper of all my memories.
We were startled out of our reverie by the simultaneous sound of a knock on the door and the door swinging open. There was Ms. Gretchen, in all of her blonde glory, 92years-young in a bubble-gum pink leisure suit, wearing matching Nike Air Max sneakers.
“Tabitha,” she said, addressing my grandmother. “I need you to come and tell this new girl about me going to the mall. She’s trying to stop me Honey!” Ms. Gretchen said with good-natured intensity. “Hey Tab! Looking good girl!” she said, turning her attention to me. “I’m going to have to catch up with you next time—I have things to do! Come on Tabitha!” She said, grabbing my grandmother’s hand. My grandmother smiled and started the process of getting up so that she could accompany her friend. “Now, I’m gonna try to walk real slow wit’cha, but you got to try to speed it up. My Uber is coming and I can’t afford to have my rating go down!” Good Lord, what is this 92-year-old woman doing worried about her Uber rating? I thought.