by John Donovan
When I look back over it now, it must have been pretty rough on Grandmother. I don’t know how old she was, but I guess she was over sixty. And here she was with this boy about to go into school when she must have been getting ready to relax and take things easy for life, as easy as she could anyway. Like I said, everything in her house had a particular spot, and God help anyone who moved it. Me especially. When I was a little kid, I naturally picked up a lot of things to examine them. This used to drive Grandmother buggy, and the buggier she got, the more things I picked up. First it was ashtrays. I figured it didn’t make any difference if I broke one because Grandmother didn’t smoke and always emptied ashtrays at the end of each cigarette when some visitor came. This was her way of curtailing the smoking of a second cigarette. But if that didn’t work, she opened all the windows in the room where the smoker was sitting, and he usually got the hint. Some people didn’t though, and Grandmother caught a few colds as a result.
I liked to pick up a lot of other things too, and it wasn’t long before all her stuff was either locked up or put up so high that I would have needed a ladder to reach it. This is what I mean by how rough it must have been on her. She had laid out her house without kids in mind, then had to lay it out again with me in mind. She didn’t make a great big thing of it though. She just did it. It was only a year or so before she died that she began to bring things out in the open again. I guess she never got a chance to be old in the way most people are.
She always tried to ask me questions about schoolwork and friends. She worked very hard at being a good parent. She never had the pleasure of being a grandparent. Poor good girl. Now she never will.
It was Grandmother who realized first that she was never going to bring it off and that with her and me it would always be a friendly, but awkward situation. When it got close to my eighth birthday, she said, “David, I’m not going to ask what you want this year. Is that all right?” I didn’t know what to make of what she said, so I just nodded. I had gotten a twenty-five-dollar birthday check from my father that morning, so it didn’t make much difference what else I got.
Two days later, on my actual birthday, when I came home from school, I heard a funny noise in the kitchen. I ran back to see what it was. There was Grandmother bending over a box filled with newspapers, stroking about ten inches of black dachshund. It was Fred. She picked him up and handed him to me.
“Happy birthday, David.”
My eyes must have gotten as wide as two tennis balls. I reached over to get Fred. He was wiggling in Grandmother’s hands. As I held him to me he squirted all over my jacket. Grandmother and I laughed. Fred, the nut, he just licked away at my face.
four
I don’t know how long Fred and I have been gone from the house, but it is long enough for there to be tension in the air when we get back. I can see through the front windows that they are sitting around in the living room. Mother has got out of her black dress and is wearing pants. Everyone else looks somber though, so Mother looks funny. I can hear a lot of loud talk long before I reach the house, but it isn’t clear from the street whether there is an argument or a party. It doesn’t take long for me to find out.
“What do you think New York is?” I hear Mother shout. “If you’d come over to see me more than once every five years, you’d know what a perfectly lovely, friendly, marvelous place New York can be!”
I am right outside the door now.
“David isn’t a city boy. It’s unfair to him to make a change now.”
“He won’t be going to Russia!”
I am going to turn away, but Fred is jumping on the door, scratching away, and they hear him. Silence. Then Uncle Jess opens the door.
“Hi,” I say. I try very hard to seem out of breath, as if maybe I had just run up onto the porch. I don’t want any of them to think I stand around listening to their dumb arguments. Personally I couldn’t care one hoot what they argue about. Boy, are they quiet when Fred and I come in. Mother smiles at me as though I’m some object she is thinking of buying in a store. Aunt Louise looks wan and frightened, and my great-aunt looks ossified.
“Have a good run, Davy?” Uncle Jess finally asks.
“Oh, sure.”
Fred lopes around from person to person, gets no encouragement from anyone, and finally throws himself down over my feet. I am standing there, no more than two or three feet inside the door, with Uncle Jess standing next to me, and the quiet is like you can serve it.
“Did I interrupt?” I finally ask.
No, No, No, they all say, and I get the feeling that everyone feels sorry for me, which I don’t like at all. I shift my feet, and Fred looks at me as though I’ve got nerve to disturb him.
“I was thinking,” I begin, “with Grandmother dead, I guess you’re all worried about me. Where I’ll live, I mean.”
They fall all over themselves trying to say No again. I don’t know what makes them so embarrassed. Two minutes ago they were screaming at each other about this very subject, and now they pretend it never crossed their minds. Fred has a great sense of timing. He throws himself over on his back and starts wagging his tail like a madman. This is his sign that he wants his belly rubbed, so I bend down and give his underside a good massage. He acts like a cat again. Usually I say a lot of goofy things to him when I rub him like this, but I don’t do it in front of these people. I used to do it in front of Grandmother. She used to do it too. Fred relaxed her a lot. I look around her living room now and think that there probably isn’t anyone else in the room except maybe my cousin, the warm kisser, who would have even thought of rubbing Fred’s belly. Uncle Bert, Aunt Louise’s husband, was petrified about a million years ago. I smile at Julia a little bit, and she smiles back. She’s OK, I guess.
“That’s good,” I continue, “that you’re not worried. I thought that maybe I could stay on here.”
They all look at me as though I had taken a shot at them.
“It’s my house now, isn’t it? I’d like to take care of it. Grandmother would want it taken care of.”
Mother laughs. She’s always laughing. She has a big laugh. It’s fake. It’s a cover for the fact that she wants to say something sarcastic—not that she’s shy about being sarcastic. She laughs a lot when she’s being sarcastic too.
“Of course it’s your house now, Davy,” Aunt Louise says, “but you can’t live in it.”
“Why not?”
“You’re only a boy. Boys don’t live in houses by themselves.”
“Fred will be here with me.”
Now everyone laughs, and I half laugh. Maybe they buy that, the business about Fred being here. A dog is good protection, and maybe they’re worried that I would get hurt or robbed or something like that.
“Among other things, we’d be arrested for leaving a minor alone in a house like this,” Aunt Louise says. “But that’s not the real problem. It’s you we’re thinking of, Davy. Without Mother, you can’t live here alone. Who would cook your meals, and take care of you when you were sick, and see that you did your homework and went to school?”
It would be great to be in the house alone with Fred. I wouldn’t mess things up. I’d leave everything the way Grandmother wanted it—except that she doesn’t care anymore. I guess I’d make a few changes. I’d take down the curtains. That would be the first thing. And I’d throw away a lot of dishes, especially the ones with the flowers on them.
“David,” Uncle Bert croaks, “your aunt and I would like you to come and live with us. We’d be pleased to have you in our home. You’d be welcome.”
Aunt Louise looks at me anxiously, then at Mother. Uncle Jess looks at the floor very hard. My great-aunt is still looking ossified, but Cousin Julia is smiling in an encouraging way.
“Of course, if you’d like to come to Los Angeles,” Uncle Jess stammers, “there will always be room for you with me, Da
vy. Would you like that?”
That really kills me. Me in California! Uncle Jess looks nervous, as though I might take him up on his invitation.
“I don’t know,” I finally say. “I really like it here.”
Aunt Louise looks cheery, and I look at Mother. She has been smoking cigarettes as if they were going to be outlawed tomorrow and not saying a word. One cigarette is half-finished in the ashtray in front of her, and she is smoking another.
“What do you think, Mother?” I ask.
Everyone turns to Mother, who begins to look like an experiment in a chemistry laboratory. She keeps changing color, from pale white to flush pink and back, and the smoke is pouring out of her mouth and her nose almost at the same time. She takes a big drag on one cigarette and then lights another from it. “You’re getting so many offers of bed and board that I really feel ashamed. You belong with me, David. I am your mother. These other people, they all love you, but it is you and I who are closest. Of course you will come to New York to live with me. I won’t hear of anything else.” She squashes out her cigarette in the ashtray. This one isn’t even one-quarter gone.
Fred whimpers a little bit.
“I guess he wants some water,” I say. I go out to the kitchen. Fred follows along. I toss out his stale water and fill up his bowl again. As soon as the tap is running, there is noise from the living room, but I don’t want to hear it, so I turn the water higher and start singing to myself. Not just to me, but to Fred too. I’m not singing anything special. Sort of a combination of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “Onward Christian Soldiers,” but faster and more up-to-date than they usually sound. I’m a regular hummer when it comes to musical talent, but sometimes even hummers have to sing a song or two. I turn the faucet on and off frantically—on one second, off the next; on one second, off the next—and I’m shouting away so they can all hear: “Onward Christian soldiers, on to victory … on to victory.”
five
My great-aunt and Cousin Julia leave late in the afternoon. Everyone is kissing everyone else. My great-aunt is the last living person in the family who is about Grandmother’s age, so she probably figures that the next time we all get together it will be for her. I feel sorry for her on account of that, so I kind of kid around with her.
“I’ll come to live with you, if you want me to, Auntie,” I tell her.
Auntie almost croaks right there in front of me when I tell her that.
“I’m kidding,” I say.
Auntie still looks like she’s croaking.
“How about you and me?” I say to smoochy Julia. Julia thinks that’s great and gives me one of her warm hugs. Honest to God, she ought to go into the circus as Miss Lovable or something like that.
Mother and Uncle Jess are staying in the house with me. There are four bedrooms. Grandmother’s is up front, right over the porch. You can sit in the window up there and look at everything going on up and down the street. When I was a little kid and had to stay home because I was sick, I used to drag my own chair up to Grandmother’s window and enjoy myself for an hour or two every afternoon. I find that I get a lot out of staring at people, just to see the way they walk, for example. Some women in particular walk like their feet hurt, but if you look at them a long time, from down the street to when they pass out of sight, you can imagine that it isn’t their feet. It’s some terrible thing at home. They don’t have enough money to buy meat for supper, or their kid plays hooky all the time. When men walk down the street, they don’t show you as much about themselves as women do. I think women are more obvious than men. That’s just one thought I have had while sitting at Grandmother’s window, which of course I still do from time to time. It makes me a little scared to think that I may not sit there too many more times. I even think maybe I’ll move into her room tonight, because it’s my house now, so I might as well live in the room where you can see everything. But I decide that I’d better not. I’ll stay in my own room. Mother and Uncle Jess are sleeping in the small bedrooms. I guess it will be uncomfortable for whoever is the first one to sleep in Grandmother’s bed, where she died, even though I think she wouldn’t have minded. She was only sick for a few hours anyway. When you have a heart attack, sometimes they can’t even get you to the hospital.
After my great-aunt and Julia have gone, Aunt Louise says that we’ll all go over to her house for supper. Mother says No, and they have a big dumb argument about who’s going to make the supper and who’s going where to eat it. They begin to yell at each other, so Fred starts to bark. Both Mother and Aunt Louise scream “Shut up!” at Fred, who runs over to hide behind my legs. I don’t blame him. The ladies themselves are surprised at their vehemence, so Uncle Jess steps in to save the day.
“I’ll go buy Chinese and bring it back,” he offers. “How’s that?”
Everyone thinks that’s a great idea, especially me. Grandmother hated Chinese food, but I like it, so this will be a big treat. Uncle Jess piles me and Fred into Uncle Bert’s car, and we zip off to the Chinese restaurant to buy supper. While we’re waiting for the meal in the restaurant, Fred is yelping away out in the car. Uncle Jess and I take turns going out there to shut him up, which is impossible. On one of Uncle Jess’s trips out he stops in the liquor store next to the restaurant. He puts about four bottles into the car with Fred, who has a great time ripping the paper bag to pieces. At least he is quiet until the restaurant cashier has our cartons ready for us. We zip back to the house, where Mother and Aunt Louise are at fever pitch once again.
“They’re arguing about dessert now,” Uncle Jess says.
We both kind of laugh. He’s OK, I guess.
Since they shut up like clams when we open the door, I figure out right away that they’ve been at it about me again. When people try to hide things from you, they shouldn’t be nice to you. They ought to ignore you or throw a pie at you or do something other than smile.
I’m carrying the Chinese food, and Uncle Jess has the bottles. Mother jumps up when she sees Uncle Jess.
“You’re a darling!” she says in this phony way. She takes the bottles to the kitchen, and the next thing I hear is the refrigerator door opening and ice cubes being popped into glasses.
No one pays attention to the food, so I bring it to the kitchen too. I’m not even out of the room before Aunt Louise says, “Jess, how could you?”
“What do you mean, how could I? I want a drink.”
“But, Jess,” Aunt Louise continues, “you know …” She never finishes the sentence.
Mother is bustling around the kitchen. She gives me a big smile, a really friendly one, and I think that she can be a pretty attractive woman when she puts her mind to it.
“What do you have there, darling?” She kind of coos at me.
“Supper,” I answer.
“Of course, dear. Put it over there.” She points to the stove. “We’ll warm it up in a few minutes.” She pokes her head into the living room and sings away, “Scotch or bourbon, friends?” They all say something in answer and Mother comes back to the glasses.
“Very weak, Helen,” Aunt Louise calls. “A lot of water.”
“Yes, dear,” Mother answers. She fills all of them about halfway to the top and pours in tap water. She sees me standing there. “Nothing for you. Not this year, precious.” Everyone is darling and dear and precious, and I’m ready to konk her over the head with the chow mein if she doesn’t shut up. Fred is smelling the food and sitting there on his hind legs, begging for a taste. I stoop down and play around with him for a while. Mother sails off into the living room with the drinks, so I lie on my back and let Fred give my face one of his famous lick jobs since it doesn’t look as though any of us is going to have a taste of the Chinese in the next ten minutes.
Fred and I roll around on the floor for some time, and I must admit I’m getting a little hungry. I open one of the cartons on top of
the stove, and the food has already begun to look as though someone melted a layer of wax paper over it. I turn on the oven, which I always liked to do for Grandmother. It’s a gas oven, and she used to say she got nervous holding the match to the little hole you stick it into, so wouldn’t I do it for her. To tell the truth, I know she didn’t get nervous about this particular thing. She just knew that I liked to hear it go pop when it caught, so she always had me do it. Then one day I read somewhere in a paper or a magazine that the thing to do with a match after you had used it was stick it in water just to make sure it was out before you threw it in the trash, and I told her about this. She said Yes, that was a good idea and she’d try to remember to do it. I somehow got it in my mind that she wouldn’t remember and that if I weren’t there to irrigate her used matches her house would catch fire. She let me be responsible for a lot of things like that, or she let me feel responsible anyway.
Mother comes in from the living room, followed closely by Aunt Louise.
“One is all Bert and I take, Helen,” my aunt says.
“Don’t be silly, darling.” Mother has all the glasses and is popping ice cubes into them so fast that Aunt Louise has a new drink in her hand before she knows what has happened. Mother glides over to the stove and dips her finger into the opened carton.
“Yummy!” she says, then kisses me on the forehead. “It’s yummy, darling. We’ll put it together in a few minutes.” She takes my hand and more or less pulls me into the living room. She steps on Fred’s tail, and he yelps.
“That’s what you get for being so long,” she says to Fred. I can see that Mother and Fred are having the love affair of the century.
