Nobody Will Tell You This But Me

by Bess Kalb

  How?

  She was kind to her subjects. She left out their hips.

  FAMILY WEDDING, MID-CEREMONY, 2009

  GRANDMOTHER: Bessie, your shoes!

  GRANDDAUGHTER: What? What’s wrong with my shoes?

  They’re stilts!

  They’re only three-inch heels!

  Six inches.

  Would you like me to stand up and get a cab and go back to the hotel in the middle of the vows and change?

  If I had my way, yes.

  You know what? I have a higher pair.

  Ugh! I don’t know how you walk in those things.

  They make the outfit.

  A good outfit doesn’t make you suffer.

  I’m not suffering. You’re the only one upset by them. Shh. Can we talk about this later?

  Oh, sure. We can talk about it when you’re being carted into an ambulance with a broken ankle.

  I’m not going to break my ankle!

  [WEDDING ATTENDEE TURNS AROUND AND SHUSHES]

  Sorry!

  Don’t apologize to him, Bess. He voted for Bush.

  A LIGHT LUNCH

  HENRY’S CAFÉ, 106TH AND BROADWAY, 2013

  GRANDMOTHER: I’m not hungry.

  GRANDDAUGHTER: Neither am I.

  I think I’ll just have something light.

  Me, too. Probably a salad.

  A salad is a wonderful idea. And maybe a cup of soup.

  They have a tomato soup.

  Perfect.

  WAITER: What can I get you ladies?

  Bessie?

  I’ll have the tomato soup and then a chicken Caesar salad with the dressing on the side.

  And I’ll have the fried calamari and a hamburger medium rare.

  WAITER: French fries or onion rings?

  A salad.

  SHIRLEY TEMPLE

  Bessie, you know I’d drop anything for you. Don’t you remember what we did every Monday when you were in elementary school?

  When you were in the third grade you started getting too nervous to go outside and play with the other children at recess. Every morning at around 11:30, right before lunch, you’d suddenly get a splitting headache and go lie down in the nurse’s office. Eventually the nurse caught on to you and called your mother and refused to let you through the door. You could have been bleeding from the head and she would’ve turned you away.

  You moved on to the librarian, Ms. Kingston. She loved having someone to talk to, I suppose. She’d recommend a book to you and you’d read it in three nights. She let you spend the lunch hour reshelving books. You learned the basics of the Dewey decimal system by age ten. You’d run out of books to organize and you’d move on to other projects. You made a giant banner spelling out READING IS FUN AND FUNDAMENTAL! You picked up on Ms. Kingston’s mannerisms. You started wearing your hair piled high on your head like a Gibson girl and saying “Heavens to Betsy!” and you asked your mother for a fringed suede vest. Ms. Kingston started to feel badly for you. She called your mother and told her what was going on. But what was your mother to do? She was working! By that time she had a private psychiatry practice up and running and she had mental patients of her own to deal with. So you can imagine what happened. I got a call.

  “Mom, Bess is a ball of neuroses. She refuses to go to lunch or recess.”

  “She just hasn’t met the right people.”

  “She needs help.”

  “You’re the psychiatrist.”

  “What am I supposed to do? She’s crying every morning. She’s refusing to go to school. On Sunday nights she can’t sleep. She’s getting these headaches.”

  “Headaches?” I’d heard that one before.

  “Headaches.”

  Your mother and I both remembered how that went for her.

  “Leave her to me. I have a brilliant idea.”

  The next day I showed up to the school at 11:30 a.m. and signed a form letter in the principal’s office and then waited on a bench outside your classroom with The New York Times, just like I did when you were in nursery school. A bell rang at noon and the children filed out of the room and you were dead last, trudging behind the group, staring into the middle distance like a prisoner being sent to the gallows in pink corduroy pants.

  I’ll never forget the look on your face when I called out your name. “Grandma!” You rushed over and threw your arms around my waist, almost knocking me over.

  “Bessie, we’re going out to lunch.”

  We floated down the hallway, out the doors, and into my old Acura, and off we went. You never looked back. You didn’t even ask where we were going. You buckled your seat belt and closed your eyes and inhaled your freedom, the smell of leather seats and my lipstick.

  Ten minutes later we were sitting at café tables at a strip mall restaurant called Trio’s. It was full of women with their baby strollers and middle-aged women drinking wine. There we were, two partners in crime.

  The waiter came over. “What can I get for you ladies?”

  “I’ll have the Trio salad with no blue cheese and extra bacon.”

  You put down your menu. “And I’ll have the same thing.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “And what can I get you to drink?”

  “I’ll have a decaf iced coffee that’s half milk, half coffee.”

  You paused. “Me, too.”

  “Bessie, you’re going to hate it.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  “Your mother will kill us both if she knows I’m letting you drink coffee.”

  “It’s fine. It’s decaf.”

  The waiter brought the salads. You watched me pour the dressing over the whole thing, then take my fork and spoon and mix it all together. So you poured your dressing over the whole thing and mixed it up the same way. Then I took a packet of Equal and dumped it in my iced coffee and mixed the drink with my straw. You did the same.

  I folded my hands in my lap and watched you take a sip. You turned green.

  “Bessie, am I ever wrong?”

  You croaked out no before shoveling some bacon bits into your mouth to ease the agony.

  I waved over the waiter. “She’ll have a Shirley Temple.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Trust me.”

  The waiter brought over a stemmed glass with swirling pink grenadine spirals floating around the bubbles.

  “Grandma?” you said, stabbing at the maraschino cherry with your little red straw.

  “Yes, Bessarabia.”

  “Let’s do this again tomorrow.”

  And we did.

  And the day after that.

  And the day after that.

  Every day for the whole week. After that we went out to lunch and ate Trio salads every Monday for the entire year until you forgot you were afraid to go to school.

  You’re welcome.

  On the day of my memorial service, you and your mother will go to the same shopping center, but Trio’s will be gone. It will be a sushi place. You’ll go in expecting it to look the same, to smell the same. Of course it won’t. You’ll sit down and your eyes will glaze over looking at the menu. Your mother will ask if you want to leave. You’ll insist on staying. When the waitress takes your order, you’ll ask, “Can you guys do a Shirley Temple?” You’ll drink it through a straw in two big gulps.

  THE PLAZA

  Oh, how I loved taking you to Bloomingdale’s when you were a little girl.

  The point was we were going to a Broadway show or the ballet, but the main agenda was the shopping after. For us both. I’d pick you up at your parents’ apartment—the tiny one on Eighty-fourth Street off Columbus. I put the down payment on it for your
mother when she married your father; he was making nothing because he decided to go into research instead of opening a private practice.

  So I’d pick you up and you’d be standing as soon as the buzzer rang. Of course I had the key to that one, too—your father couldn’t stand that—but I’d knock on the door for the ritual of it. “Hello?” “Who is it?” “It’s Grandma!” “Grandma who?” “Grandma Bobby!” “Just a minute!” Then you’d fidget with the lock and the handle, and there you’d be, in your Laura Ashley rosebud print dress.

  It was your special dress. You wore it all the time. You wore it when I took you to the hospital when your brother was born. You wore it when you performed in your first play at your nursery school. All the children were supposed to wear black, and when I picked you up at the apartment, you looked so downcast in your sweatpants and T-shirt. “Bessie, this is your first play! Do you want to look like you’re robbing a bank?” You turned around and stormed into your room. I thought you were furious. You closed the door. Two minutes later, you came out wearing your dress and a pair of white stockings and your white occasion shoes from Harry’s on the Upper West Side. The whole outfit. You were panting, but you spun around and curtsied. I sat in the audience—your parents were working—and I had my wind-up camera and took a picture. Everyone needs the dress that makes her feel like she’s able to do anything she wants.

  On your fifth birthday, before we went to the ballet—it was Swan Lake, and I’ll never forget it because you cried the whole second act—I brought you down to the Plaza for tea. To the Palm Court. The soaring arched glass ceiling and palm trees growing in the middle of the room. You walked through those brass doors, your eyes big as saucers. “Grandma!” was all you said, and I said, “That’s right.”

  You sat in a chair the size of a throne and I ordered a tea service for two. You looked at the sandwiches and you picked up the pink one and your face went green. I’d ordered raw salmon for a five-year-old who survived on nothing but noodles with butter! You looked at the plate on the table next to us. “Maybe we could have that also, please?”

  I waved my hand for the waiter—they wore tuxedo vests, it was very elegant—and in under a minute, he brought a trio of sorbet surrounded by beautifully arranged fruit.

  You ate each berry one by one. You picked up the kiwi and marveled. You’d never seen one! You took a little bite, then ate the whole thing in two mouthfuls. Your eyes teared up—you almost choked. You finished all the sorbet and closed your eyes.

  I told you, “You know, Bessie, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”

  You were flushed from the cold and the excitement and I meant it. That’s when you said it: “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

  And I said it back.

  When I die you’ll go to the Plaza. It will be on March 8, the third day of my shiva and what would have been my birthday. My ninety-first birthday. You’ll have been prepared to cry all day. You’d cried at the funeral so hard you almost made yourself throw up. But on March 8, you’ll wake up in your bed at your parents’ apartment, take a shower, and put on a good silk blouse and a wool skirt and your opaque black tights and some ankle boots that are a little too masculine but at least they give you an inch of height.

  You’ll get dressed and very half-heartedly ask your mother if she needs you, and of course she’ll say to go enjoy yourself. You won’t tell your parents where you’re going because you’ll be vaguely embarrassed but also a little bit thrilled. You’ll take a photograph of me out from one of the albums you took from the apartment after the funeral.

  You’ll put the old picture in your wallet and march down to West End Avenue and hail a cab. For once, you won’t take the subway; you’ll take a cab. Exactly as I’d insist. You’ll walk into the Plaza with your head held high and you’ll ask for “the room with all the palm trees,” and somebody will escort you to the Palm Court. You’ll ask the maître d’, “Do you guys still do the high tea?” “Of course, mademoiselle.” Even though it’s owned by some horrible conglomerate and half the rooms have been turned into condominiums, the Plaza’s staff in the Palm Court will still be very well trained.

  You’ll take a seat and look around—a table of foreign tourists taking cell phone pictures, a few society mothers with their daughters—and you’ll take the old photograph out of your bag very carefully and set it against the blue-and-white teacup on your table. You’ll take a picture of the photograph. You’ll order the tea for two with the Earl Grey and you won’t even look at the price. You’ll eat it all. Every bite. Even the salmon. God knows you don’t need the scones, but you’ll force them down. The waiter will come by to take the tray and the cup and he’ll see you’re crying. “Can I get you something, miss?” he’ll ask. You won’t miss a beat and you’ll tell him, “A Kir Royale.” You’ll drink about half and start to feel nauseated. All those scones.

  You’ll pay the bill, look at the photograph, and say, “Happy birthday, Grandma,” and that will be that.

  VOICE MAIL, MAY 2016

  Yeah, hi—Bessie. It’s Grandma. I’m reading The New York Times and I saw an article about cats. Are you sitting down? There’s a toxin in their feces. It goes directly into your brain and it’s apparently very dangerous. Anyway, they say it’s bad for pregnancy. There are women in Brooklyn giving away their cats to shelters, which is very smart. I know you love the thing, but if you are handling Al’s excrement and changing the litter box, you’re risking all kinds of developmental problems and who knows what. Your mother says you and Charlie aren’t trying to have a baby yet, but you never know how these things go and you don’t want to screw yourself up in advance. Give away the cat. I’ll mail you the article. You know what? I’ll mail it to the cat.

  IN THE CAR, SOUTH OCEAN BOULEVARD, PALM BEACH, 2015

  GRANDMOTHER: You know Miriam’s granddaughter Becky has a night nurse for her baby, but Becky doesn’t even work.

  GRANDDAUGHTER: Well, everyone needs to be rested.

  I didn’t have a night nurse.

  I guess that makes you a better person than Miriam’s granddaughter!

  I don’t know how they get the money—Becky’s husband is a graphic designer. Miriam and Al must pay for it. Which is fine.

  Sure.

  I just don’t see why she can’t be bothered to comfort her own child in the night. It’s not like she has anywhere to be in the morning. Or let the kid cry it out! That’s what I did.

  That explains my mother.

  You’ll keep working after you have a child.

  I don’t know that. Maybe I’ll fall in love with the baby and need to be with it all the time.

  It has nothing to do with loving the baby. It’s about living your life and remaining in the world. You don’t want your child to be bored of you by age five.

  No, I don’t.

  If you ever want a night nurse for your baby, I’ll pay.

  Grandma, by the time I have a baby, I’ll figure out my own child care.

  I’m getting you a night nurse.

  YOUR BONES

  I made you cry twice. It was the loudest and most horrible thing. Like a hyena. Both times, I cried, too.

  The first was when you were a little girl. We were at a manor restaurant up the Hudson River for my birthday—my sixty-something or other. I loved my birthdays, all of them. It’s a shame I died without properly celebrating my ninetieth. I was too ill. What a party that could have been. We’d have flown you all out. Probably the Breakers, like my seventieth. That was a party. Fifty years before that, they wouldn’t have let a Jew set foot in the Breakers. Yet there we were, toasting the daughter of two shtetl immigrants underneath the crystal chandeliers and the ocean out the window.

  So at the manor restaurant after my birthday lunch, we were all taking a family picture. You would always sit on my lap, and so I held o
n to you and the whole family gathered around. All of my children and their children. And I looked behind me and nobody was in the right place—your mother was in the back and I think your father was somewhere outside the frame. I was ordering everyone around and trying to get it arranged, and your mother started going at it with me and you slipped off my lap and walked away. You hated it when we fought. You headed toward the stone wall at the edge of the property, and what you didn’t know—what I knew—was it was a sheer hundred-foot drop off a cliff down to the river. Everyone was settled and it occurred to me you weren’t there, and I saw your white dress disappear across the lawn and got up and ran like a bat out of hell. My shoe got stuck in the grass, and I ran for you with one stocking foot soaking up the mud. “Bessie! Stop!” You turned around, looked right at me, and you just teetered on top of the stone wall, completely expressionless, the river running ten stories under you. You were paralyzed with fear just standing there. I launched at you, grabbed your forearm, and yanked you into me. Your shoulder went pop!

  And you let out a howl. Real, round tears were streaming down your cheeks. You couldn’t believe how much I hurt you. You glared at me so confused and then lay down on the grass in front of the stone wall in shock. Your father reset the bone right then and there—he had come running, too.

  The second time you were much older. It was at the Home Port in Menemsha on the Vineyard. You made it out to the parking lot of the restaurant before you really let yourself go at it. You’d been recently married and were back from your honeymoon in France, where you insisted on staying in rented apartments instead of the great hotels, and we were having salads. It was the first course. You are normally so svelte, so petite, which is smart because you aren’t very tall, but you had an appetite that summer and you were happy and you’d ballooned up. You’d gained probably five, six pounds. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but on your frame…And you knew it. You wore a one-piece bathing suit for the first time since you were a little girl.