by Melissa Bank
I tried to speed things up: I said, “He was a beau,” using her terminology.
She allowed this.
I said, “And?”
“Grandmom didn’t like him.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I’m not sure she ever said why.”
I said, “And you just stopped seeing him?”
She said, “My generation was more obedient than yours.”
“Why do you think Grandmom didn’t like him?”
“He wasn’t marriageable, I guess.”
I looked at her: Marriageable?
“He didn’t make a good living,” she said. “Grandmom didn’t want me to waste time.” Then she remembered: “And she didn’t like his beard.”
I said, “Too Jewish?”
“She used to say, ‘It would be one thing if he kept it neat.’ ”
“She just wanted what was best for you,” I said, my mother’s standard defense of both my grandmothers. Then, seriously, I said, “Thanks for never talking to me about wasting my time.”
“You’re welcome,” she said. “I was just afraid.”
It was a nice surprise to hear her say the truth. But right away the public-relations part of her brain rushed in with a revised press release: “I trust you to make the decisions that are best for you.”
I got up for wine refills, and when I placed our glasses on the coffee table, I asked if she’d written back to Lev Polikoff.
“No.”
I said, “So there was just the one note?”
She said, “He called me.”
“Joyce,” I said.
“I’ve talked to him quite a few times,” she said. “He’s very nice.”
I said, “That’s great,” and it did seem great.
She put on a tape Lev Polikoff had sent her; it was Cuban music, and listening to it she became not so much listless as relaxed, less wan than Juanita. Her dark eyes had something new in them—I couldn’t say what, just that they seemed to see more than what was in front of them.
I would have asked more questions about Lev Polikoff, but we heard the back door open and Jack call out: “Surprise,” like the one-man birthday party he was.
. . . . .
My brother brought excitement and direction to the evening; he got our show on the road. Lights, Camera, Action: My mother tossed the salad; I set the table; Jack got himself a beer.
Jack always managed to arrive home with news, and at dinner he delivered tonight’s lead story: JACK HAS MEETING IN LOS ANGELES ABOUT TURNING SCREENPLAY INTO SCRIPT FOR TV PILOT; PRODUCERS PAY FOR FLIGHT AND HOTEL.
My mother beamed; she seemed to see Jack’s meeting as an award or prize she’d never doubted he’d win.
I was a little more skeptical: So far, the many meetings he’d told me about had led only to more meetings. Once, when he’d gotten discouraged, he’d said that he was less a screenwriter than a professional meeter; but then he’d reminded himself and me that only one in a zillion scripts were ever produced, a statistic he seemed to forget now. “I’m setting the show in New York,” he said, “so I won’t have to move to L.A.”
Everyone I knew called Los Angeles “L.A.,” and yet when Jack did, I remembered the father of one of my college roommates telling us that abbreviations were slick and lazy and indicative of bad character.
I said, “I didn’t know you wanted to write for TV.”
“It’s a lot of money,” he said. “If the pilot gets picked up, I’ll be the executive producer.”
My mother said, “The executive producer!”
I got up to clear the table and bring in the birthday cake. I lit candles. We sang. She made a wish and blew.
I gave my mother her present, an old photograph I’d had restored and framed of her as a little girl on the lap of the grandmother she’d adored.
Jack himself hadn’t brought a present; as my mother told him and might have cross-stitched: “Your presence is my present.”
. . . . .
On Sunday, after brunch, Jack looked at the weekend section of The Philadelphia Inquirer. “What about the Rodin?”
My mother looked over his shoulder and pointed to another listing.
They didn’t ask my opinion. They knew that I didn’t want to look at art; I’d go wherever they went and endure whatever exhibit they chose. In this way, I was the new Dad.
“I was thinking about ‘Intimates,’ ” she said.
I said, “Lingerie?”
“They’re portraits.”
Portraits were my mother’s big interest. She’d commissioned the portraits of several judges, including my father, and curated the exhibit in the lobby of the criminal courts building.
She told my brother that “Intimates” was around the corner from a building she thought he’d want to see. We’d go after we visited her mother, she said.
Jack shook his head. “ ‘Intimates’ closes at five,” he said. “Grandmom’s is always open.”
. . . . .
My mother and Jack hardly talked while they looked at the paintings in the gallery, which made them seem closer to each other than I was to either of them.
I lingered over each picture as they did, but I didn’t see what they saw. The paintings were just people posed, which seemed like the opposite of intimacy.
I went up to my mother, who’d been standing at one picture for a long time. “What makes these intimate?” I asked.
She explained that the painters were called Intimists because they painted their models in context. I nodded to keep her talking; I liked hearing the authority in her voice.
“Thanks,” I said, once she’d finished. “I’ll be in Sleepwear.”
As we were walking out, I said, “I think galleries should have gift shops.”
Jack said, “Galleries are gift shops.”
The building we went to see was designed by an architect Jack had worked for. He walked around the building, looking up.
I thought the building was ugly, and said so.
My mother, ever the diplomat, half agreed: “It is radical.”
. . . . .
When we got to my grandmother’s block, I pictured what it would be like up in her apartment. I told Jack and my mother that I needed to stop at the deli.
She said, “We’re already late.”
“Come on,” Jack said.
“Oh, now you’re in a hurry,” I said. “I went to your art gallery and your building; now here’s something I’m interested in.”
I tried not to let them rush me. I studied the sandwiches listed on the board, and the per-pound price of lunch meats. I looked at the potato salad and coleslaw in the case.
My mother said, “Grandmom can give you something to eat upstairs.”
I told her I was just admiring the composition in the deli case. “I like the way the cellophane catches the light.”
I would never bring food to my grandmother’s—it would be bad manners—but I was already getting that deprived feeling that would come on full strength as soon as we got to her apartment, where nothing tasted good.
I went over to the flowers. All together they looked colorful and pretty, but if I looked at any one bunch, I noticed brown or missing petals. If I could spot a flaw, I knew my grandmother would spot a hundred; she had a gift for flaw-finding.
I picked the most robust bunch, big yellow mums.
Sounding dubious, my mother said, “That’s a nice idea.”
. . . . .
As we walked into my grandmother’s building, I said, “I think this is going to be a really good visit.”
The guard called my grandmother on the house phone. “Mrs. Parker?” he said, and announced our arrival.
On the elevator, I said, “I think we’re going to get really close this time.”
I watched my mother steel herself.
I said, “I just have this feeling.”
. . . . .
My grandmother was annoyed that we’d gone to the exhibit first and annoyed that we’
d arrived late; my grandmother was annoyed because annoyed was her resting state.
She was in great shape, very thin but not haggard, and she wore a red cashmere sweater with a red-and-white silk scarf tied at her neck and white pants you’d call slacks; she looked better than we did, and you could tell she thought so, too.
She ushered Jack in first, like he was the guest and my mother and I the help.
My brother said, “Hello, Steeny,” which was short for Bernstein, her maiden name, and what her friends still called her.
When I handed her the bouquet her eyes widened, which made me feel bad for not giving her flowers more often.
She asked my mother what they were called.
“Chrysanthemums,” my mother said. “Mums.”
“That’s right,” my grandmother said. “I’ve never liked mums.” She stuffed the paper into the garbage, complaining about how much waste there was in the world today.
The bad feeling was coming on, so I said, “I was going to get roses, but Jack thought you’d like mums better.”
My mother and Jack turned to me, but I kept my eyes on my grandmother.
“Roses are too expensive,” she said, cutting the stems.
“What flowers do you like?” I asked.
She said that all flowers were too expensive.
“Let’s say all flowers cost a penny,” I said. “Then what would your favorites be?”
“A penny?” she said.
“Okay,” I said. “Fifty cents.”
“I do like roses,” she said.
“I told you!” I said to Jack. “What color?”
“Yellow,” she said.
“I knew it!”
“Little ones,” she said. “Sweetheart roses.”
“Good,” I said. “Next time we’ll bring little yellow roses.”
“No,” she said. “They’re too expensive.” Then she asked what she could give us; she never offered a specific beverage or food, which seemed like inviting someone to your house without mentioning a specific date.
To me, she said, “You look like you’ve put on weight.”
I hadn’t, but my grandmother had the ability to fatten me up just by looking at me. “Thank you,” I said. “You know, I think maybe I’d like a scotch.”
She glared at me.
I toned myself down. “Or sherry,” I said. “Mom, would you like a glass of sherry?”
“That sounds wonderful,” my mother said.
I’d gained ten pounds since our arrival, and my mother had aged at least as many years; her roots were suddenly visible, an unbroken white line dividing her brown-hair highway.
I saw my grandmother notice and whisper to my mother, who aged another year or two.
“Sherry?” I asked Jack, a little louder than necessary.
“I’ll have a pink squirrel,” he said, for his own amusement.
“You’ll have to fix that one yourself,” my grandmother said.
Instead, he helped himself to an already-open family-size bottle of diet Coke, long since fizzless.
My grandmother headed to the den for sherry. I followed her as far as the living room. It was a room you’d call grand, with floor-length curtains and velvet armchairs, everything big and matching, chintz and mahogany and brass. The only difference—and it took me a second to see it because it was such a surprise—was a teddy bear on the pristine yellow sofa I hadn’t sat on since I’d been forbidden to as a child. My grandmother had said, “The grease in your hair will stain the fabric,” and I’d thought, I have grease in my hair?
My mother looked at the bear only for a second and then seemed to decide it wasn’t there after all. Her eyes moved to the painting above its head, a gold-framed portrait of a woman in an ivory satin evening gown, one strap off her shoulder. My mother told me that the painter had been a student of John Singer Sargent. She said, “This is a great portrait.”
“What makes it great?”
“See the flesh tones?” my mother said. “And the way the hands are painted?” One criterion for a portrait, she told me, was whether the artist could paint hands or had to hide them.
I’d taken an art class a few years ago, and the hands I’d painted had looked like birds. I said, “Hands are hard.”
My mother was still describing the portrait’s greatness when my grandmother returned with three tiny glasses of sherry on a silver tray.
As my mother and I took ours, my grandmother said, “Pay attention,” and, “Be careful,” as though we’d already spilled a first glass of sherry and giving us a second was against her better judgment.
It was then that I decided to sit on the forbidden yellow sofa. “Scoot over,” I said to the bear.
I asked if there was a story behind the portrait, and my grandmother said, “It was in the attic on Welland Road.”
It was nice to have some new information. “Finders keepers?”
“No, no,” she said. “I called the people we’d bought the house from—the Biddles—and it was too much trouble for them to pick it up.”
Of greater interest to her was whether we’d run into traffic on the expressway.
Somehow, I couldn’t bear the answer. “Do you have a cracker, by any chance?” I only half stood because even if my grandmother was entertaining stuffed animals I knew she’d never allow me to go into her kitchen alone; she didn’t like anyone going through anything of hers, even her saltines. This made me want to go through everything, from her impressive paper-bag collection to the jewelry boxes she triple-bound with rubber bands.
“I’ll see what I have,” she said.
My grandmother returned with a plate of saltines and Ritz crackers. She placed them on the coffee table. Now everyone wanted crackers; my mother, Jack, and even my grandmother took one.
We all crunched, and that was the only sound until my grandmother said that we’d just missed a call from my mother’s brother.
My grandmother said, “I told Dan that you’d be here,” as though his call from Chicago had required special planning and hard-to-find equipment, as though his call was a special favor that we hadn’t been gracious enough to receive.
I had a brainstorm: “We could call him back.”
My grandmother seemed not to hear; her point was not that we talk to my uncle but that we’d missed talking to him.
My mother said, “I spoke to him yesterday.”
I turned to my grandmother and said, “You know what I’d like to hear about?”
Her eyes widened; she still saw me as a child, as in, Children are to be seen and not heard, and, Children are to speak only when spoken to.
Still, I went on: “I’d like to hear what my mom was like when she was younger. Before she met my dad.”
My mother gave me a warning look, and I realized that she thought I was going to ask about Lev Polikoff. This hadn’t occurred to me, but I was often the last to know my own mind.
My grandmother said, “There isn’t much to tell.”
My mother said, “Thanks.”
I laughed—it was a thrill to hear my mother make a joke—and Jack laughed, too.
“What about you, Granny?” I said. “What were you like when you were younger?”
She said, “What’s this about, Sophie?”
I wasn’t sure myself. “Well,” I said. “I was thinking that we could get to know each other better.”
No one said anything.
I turned to my grandmother. “So,” I said weakly, “do you want to tell me anything . . . or no?”
Her eyes narrowed, possibly with the strain of trying to think of something to tell me.
“You know what I’d like to hear about?” Jack said, teasing me and entertaining himself. “I’d like to hear about how Grandpop got you to marry him.”
She began as she always did, with her parents saying he was too old for her and she was too young to get married.
“How old were you?” my brother asked, looking at me.
I mouthed, Seventeen?
/> “Seventeen,” she said. “I already had lots of suitors.”
On cue, my mother said, “Your grandmother was a very beautiful young woman.”
“Grandpop was very jealous,” she said. “He even followed me on a date once. He sat in the row behind us at the movies. Can you imagine?”
“He was in love with you,” my mother said.
“He said he couldn’t stand to see me with other boys.”
My mother said, “How many years did you make Daddy wait?”
Five? I mouthed to my mother.
“Five,” my grandmother said. “By then, he really was desperate. I felt sorry for him,” she said. “I really did.”
My mother asked, “What did you do?”
“I told him to write my parents a letter. And that won them over.”
“What did the letter say?” my brother asked.
“Mostly it was about what a good husband he would be.”
I waited a moment before I said, “Do you still have the letter?”
“Of course I do.”
I said, “Can I read it?”
“I have no idea where it is,” she said.
I asked my mother if she’d ever read the letter.
“I don’t think I ever did,” she said. “I love that story.”
“Now I’d like to ask you something,” my grandmother said to Jack.
“Lay it on me.”
“How’s . . . what’s her name . . . Nora’s child?”
Nora was my mother’s oldest friend, but when she said, “Rebecca,” my grandmother seemed not to hear.
“Rebecca,” my brother said.
“That’s right,” my grandmother said.
“She’s great,” Jack said. “She has a new boyfriend.”
According to Jack, all of Rebecca’s boyfriends were black, which seemed, if not racist, race-ish, and I wondered, Why the black guys, Becky? just as I wondered in the case of my friend Alex, Why the Asian women? Or in my own case, Why the pirates?
My grandmother said, “Oh, that’s a shame.”
Jack laughed. “I think she really likes him.”
“I meant for you.”
My mother said, “Jack has a girlfriend.”
“You met Mindy,” he said. “Blond. Bossy.”
My grandmother said, “She’s no Rebecca.”