by Iain Reid
She still loved getting outside and poking around in her flower garden. I’m not sure why, but I knew that nasturtiums (and maybe daisies) were her favourite. She was still living in her own two-storey red-brick house, the same one she’d raised her children in. She still enjoyed going for strolls around the block. I could go on and on. She had even carried the Olympic torch when it came through town. She ran with it in one hand held up over her head, waving to the crowd with the other. It’s more like LeBron James is the NBA’s version of Grandma.
Jimmy and I always enjoy talking about these accomplishments, her joie de vivre, and the good genes we’ve hopefully inherited. But this year we’d noticed a few changes. Grandma was becoming a little more forgetful. She would sometimes repeat a story. She was confusing dates and mixing up times. She would forget the odd meeting. She seemed a little more tired, taking naps most afternoons. She was, in her words, “getting dottled.”
She also refused to do little things like ignore the phone or hang up on assholes, and sometimes would get caught talking to telemarketers for forty minutes at a time. She’d been scammed on the phone and at her door by dodgy salesmen and frauds. She had a hard time declining invitations to play cards, especially bridge (even though she didn’t love it), or invites to lunch. She was attempting to carry on as she always had. But the world was changing at an unfair pace. Time’s performance eventually becomes ineluctable.
Physically, she was still an anomaly, but she also seemed maybe an inch shorter and a little more hunched, like there were invisible weights cinched to each wrist. She couldn’t be much over five feet now. Her walking pace had slowed. Against her best efforts, she might even have developed a slight limp from a sore knee. She had more sun spots on her arms, hands, and face. We agreed these changes weren’t huge, but they were present. We’d noticed. At some point, Grandma had gone from old to older.
“I gotta think of something better this year, nothing practical or cheesy, just something that she’d really like,” I said again, wiping some sweat from just above my nose with my index finger. Whenever I wore this sweater, my body found new places to release perspiration. “But what do you get a ninety-two-year-old? It’s a question as tricky as the nature of infinity.”
“I got her a painting,” said Jimmy. “She’s always loved art.”
Oh, fuck you, Jimmy. “I asked that question rhetorically.”
“Well, think about it. What do you have that you could offer?”
While I thought about this, Jimmy ordered two more beers with a nod of his head.
I finally answered when our refills arrived. “I’m curious, is the point of this to try and think of a gift I can give Grandma, or just to make me feel like shit?”
“Ideally both,” said Jimmy.
“It’s working.”
“Really, though,” he said, “the answer’s easy. It’s time. Just time.”
“Time?” I repeated neutrally, having not yet decided if I was insulted or intrigued. I’d spent the last ten years working a variety of odd jobs, from journalism to putting up drywall. One of those years, I was forced to move home to live with my parents on their farm. For the last while I’d mostly just been writing. So I worked mainly from my apartment. I didn’t have an office to go to, or any co-workers, or work trips to go on, like Jimmy.
“I know you’re working on your writing, but you can also take time off. Time that you could then spend with Grandma. No one else in the family can do that as easily. So maybe I can afford to buy her a painting, but you could spend time with her.” And then, “Actually, you could take her on a trip.”
That was it. That’s where the whole trip thing started. One sip into our second beer.
“What?” I said.
“Seriously, you guys should go on a trip.”
“Jimmy, I’m not even sure I can realistically afford that plastic tablecloth. How’s a trip going to work?”
“Well, you can ask her to pay for it.”
It was morally uplifting to me that I’d never considered this before — convincing the receiver of my gift to pay for it. It somehow seemed — oh, I don’t know — appalling.
“So you think for my gift to my ninety-two-year-old grandma I should offer to take her on a trip. And then tell her she’s paying for it?”
“Exactly. The gift isn’t about the money but, like I said, the time.”
“What kind of trip are we talking about?”
“Well, I don’t know. You could go somewhere warm.”
“Like a spring break–type thing?”
He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. “Not exactly.”
“Does Grandma even like warm?” I asked. Personally I’d always hated heat, sun, and beach vacations. With my fair skin and bony thighs that can’t fill in the tightest spandex, I’m as physically suited to those trips as I am to giving birth.
“I know what you’re thinking, it’s you who hates the idea of going somewhere warm.”
“How dare you! Don’t assume.”
“You could fly out to Winnipeg. She could show you around where she grew up.”
“Winnipeg? You think she’d like that?” Whoa, Winnipeg! Hold on, sir! I didn’t want beach, but I didn’t want the complete lack of any warmth, either. Plus I haven’t taken a trip anywhere in years, and now I’ve ended up in a city with one of the country’s highest crime rates and the nation’s largest mosquitoes? Really?
“She’d probably love it. It’s you who’d hate it.”
“But what about flying? Do you think she wants to go in an airplane?” I’ve never loved flying.
Jimmy rolled his eyes.
“Seriously, you think it would be okay, just the two of us?”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know, I’ve never spent any time with Grandma alone before. What would we do every day? She’d be forced out of her routine.”
“It’s not Grandma and her routine I’d be worried about.”
“I know, I know. But —”
“Stop worrying for three seconds of your life. Get out of your own head.”
“But, I mean, I’m used to being alone all the time. And she’ll be ninety-two!”
“Yeah, so? You’re, what, twenty-eight. It would be great. You could use the company for a few days.”
“Well, do ninety-two-year-olds go on trips?”
“She’s old, she’s not unportable.”
“But she’s slowing down a bit.”
“She’s fine. She’s great.”
“I know, I know.”
I was thinking about the previous August. Grandma had been at a nearby mall, getting her hair done at a generic salon. She still liked to get it done every week. It was a muggy day and she’d been sitting in the stylist’s chair for three-quarters of an hour. The stylist had been chatting the entire time, asking her questions and saying she couldn’t believe Grandma was in her nineties. She wished her own mother was looking as good. She kept talking about her hair too, how beautifully white it was, just like snow. I’m sure Grandma was bashfully shrugging off these compliments the way I’ve seen her do countless times.
After she paid, she walked out into the mall. She was feeling good and, as always, liked her new cut. Several steps outside the stylists’ she fell, inexplicably. When a little old lady with a head of freshly coiffed white hair falls in plain view, dropping her purse, a commotion will ensue. And it did.
That was the worst part for her. She didn’t care about the fall or the sharp pain in her knee. She was embarrassed. She hated attention and fuss more than anything. Although she never mentioned it, the knee that likely caused the fall was still bothering her. It was probably getting worse.
“I think she’s fully recovered,” said Jimmy.
“That’s what she says, but I think her knee still bothers her. You just never know, because it’s p
hysically impossible for her mouth to form a complaint.”
“And that’s why it’ll be such a good match, because you always complain. It’ll balance out on the trip.”
“I don’t know. I’m still thinking about that tablecloth. You really have to see it.”
But by the time we’d finished our third beer, the trip was verging on becoming an interesting possibility. It was still only a possibility. But it was the only possibility. And as much as I didn’t want to admit it, a ninety-two-year-old travelling companion was actually right in my wheelhouse. Lots of strolls, time for reading, cups of tea, ten hours of sleep per night, not too much direct sunlight, three square meals a day. It would be my kind of pace. It would be my kind of trip.
“So how are things in Kingston?” wondered Jimmy. “You doing all right these days? Anything new?”
The past few months, I’ve experienced a growing weariness. A tedium with where I live, with how I make a living, with my routine. I’m growing tired of my city, tired of my street, the trees, the sidewalks. I’m fatigued by the gravel covering my driveway, by the droning fridge in my apartment.
“Kingston? Oh, well, I’m fine,” I said, picking up my empty glass, bringing it to my mouth before setting it back down. “Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know. I’m okay.”
1:32 p.m.
IT FEELS AS if the scene has been eerily duplicated from this morning, from my street. Grandma’s neighbours, a mother with two children, stroll by as we pack the car. They wave first and we reciprocate.
“Where are you off to?” the mother calls. “Looks like you’re going on a trip.”
“Yes, I am. With my grandson.”
“Sounds like fun,” she says. “I could use a trip.”
One of the kids sits down on the curb. He’s holding a stick in his left hand and tracing something hieroglyphic on the pavement.
“I know. I’m lucky, all right. It is going to be fun. I haven’t been on a trip in a while.”
Lucky? Fun? I haven’t considered either of these adjectives in weeks, months. Does Grandma actually believe this, or does she just understand the socially acceptable pre-trip idiom to share with your middle-aged neighbour when your grandson is loading the car within earshot?
I’m still staring, gape-mouthed, into the trunk. I finally look up. “Oh, sorry, Grandma.” She’s waiting at her locked door. Grandma’s even shorter than I remember. But sturdy, not frail. She’s dressed sharply, with a cardinal-red collared blouse and a soft woollen shawl around her shoulders. My cut-off jeans feel more flippant than they did an hour ago.
I finally manoeuvre room for both of Grandma’s bags in front of the duvet and behind the cooler. I slam down the rusty trunk and walk around to her side of the car. “There you go,” I say, opening her door. “Don’t worry, it’s comfy. Well, comfier than it looks.”
She pats my arm. “It looks cozy.”
The door, like the car, is tired. It groans and sags on its greasy hinges. Grandma smiles, lowering herself gradually, carefully. She steadies herself on my left arm all the way onto the low-riding seat.
That’s when I notice my front licence plate is hanging on by a single screw. The left screw is long ago lost. But, as Dad pointed out earlier, I keep it in place with grey duct tape. The most recent strips of tape must have lost their hold. I usually have to re-tape every two weeks or so. I ask Grandma to hand me the roll that I keep on the handbrake.
As I straighten and fasten the dented licence plate, my delicately positive mood disintegrates. With Grandma watching, this act makes me feel much more foolish and unsophisticated than it usually does. And realizing this, that I usually don’t feel any remorse or embarrassment over continuously taping my front plate, fills me with a deep self-directed sourness.
But our endeavour is official now. It’s no longer speculative. It’s real. It’s happening. Grandma’s sitting in my car. I’ve swung her door shut. Even while I drove to her house, part of me still didn’t believe our trip would actually happen. Maybe I’d just pick her up and she’d tell me she’d decided it’d be best not to go away for so long, and we’d go out for a nice lunch and that would be that. Then I could go home to my apartment, to my slippers. The most difficult thing for me might be having constant company for five days, the responsibility to make conversation with another person, to make meals for another person, an older person. I suppose I can cope. I’m hoping she can.
The neighbour is well down the street when Grandma confirms with a smile and nod that both her feet are inside, and I swing her door closed.
For a moment I stand back and look at my old car with my old Grandma encased inside. “So cozy,” she says again from within.
1:39 p.m.
SO FAR, SO good. Our trip is off to a fine start. There have been no significant mishaps. My mood is sweetening.
Granted, we’ve yet to make it out of Ottawa. In fact, we’re just out of Grandma’s neighbourhood. Like Mom predicted, we’ve stopped for something to eat. I pulled out of her driveway, made a total of three turns, drove west to the outskirts of Ottawa, and she made the foreseeable suggestion. It’s conceivable she heard my stomach growl. “I bet you’re hungry. Do you want to stop for some lunch?”
“I could probably eat. But are you hungry?” I never know with old people. Their appetites seem constantly uncertain.
“Up to you, dear.”
“I’m easy, I can always eat. This is your trip. What do you think?”
“I’m happy to stop — if that’s what you want.”
“Well, are you hungry, Grandma?”
“Oh, sure. I could be. And if you’re hungry, then we should stop.”
“How about this place?” I point at a pan-Asian restaurant to our right. I know Grandma loves Vietnamese food. She nods and grins. She’s holding her purse on her lap with both hands.
There’s no parking in front so Grandma directs me to the back through a narrow alley. She’s been here before. There’s only one other car in the spacious rear lot. With plenty of suitable spots to select from, I coast bafflingly over to the far south side and park beside a green dumpster that smells foul. Grandma has about two feet of space to exit the car.
“You’re a good parker,” she comments sincerely after her escape. “It’s so straight, and right between the lines.”
We stand outside the restaurant, trying to decide if it’s too cold for the patio. Grandma comments on the overcast sky. She thinks we could use the rain. She thinks farmers need it for their crops. I tell her it’s not supposed to rain. I think the clouds will pass. Regardless, the breeze has teeth, and I’m shivering in my cotton T-shirt. I wish I had a woollen shawl, too. She scans my protruding goosebumps.
“Okay,” she says, “let’s go inside.”
Once inside, Grandma insists I choose our table. Isn’t she worried I’ll pick the one beside the garbage can? I am.
I think about putting the question back to her. I’m certain she’ll just deflect it back on me. So I flick my head toward a booth on our right. “How ’bout that one?”
“Good choice,” she says, tossing her purse in first. “I’ve sat here with your mom before.”
The bench is low and the table rises to just under Grandma’s chin. She rests her arms on the surface. Kleenex pokes out from one of her red sleeves. Grandma points out some of the other booths she’s sat in; more than half. We wait for service.
Her hands have held on to an elegant toughness. Apart from the odd liver spot or new freckle, they don’t look all that different than when I was a kid. They’re strong, womanly hands. They aren’t delicate. These are hands acquainted with work. Her nails are strong, durable. She has them all trimmed the same length, no chips or broken edges. She wears a thin bracelet on her left wrist and two rings on the same finger — her engagement and wedding rings, I assume. I don’t recall ever seeing her without these rings. It appears
they have become part of her finger, embedded into the skin like the bark of an old tree.
She’s helping me navigate my one-page laminated menu, pointing out options. “Their hot and sour soup is delicious,” she’s saying. “It’s just so different.”
“I think I’ll get a bowl of that.”
“What else?” she says.
We each decide on some soup and to split a couple of meat dishes.
“Now, what else?”
“Oh, mmm,” I mumble. “Hmmm.”
“Maybe we should get some spring rolls.”
“Right,” I say. “I always enjoy a good roll, be it egg or spring.”
“Pardon?”
“Oh, just that I like spring rolls, Grandma.”
“Good. And what about some fried wontons? I love those little wontons.” We’ve just stacked our menus and, I thought, finished compiling our order. “I can never resist those crisp little wontons.”
“Who can?” I say. I’m not sure I’ve ever tasted a wonton before. They sound vaguely familiar.
As we wait for our food, two more duos arrive for lunch. They seem much less interested in the whole dining-out experience and more concerned with basic feeding. Neither table needs menus. Both order instantly. Two men in pastel-coloured golf shirts with black phones fastened to their black belts sit in the booth directly in front of us. They sit silently, waiting for their noodles, and unholster their phones.
I think one of the reasons Grandma fancies this place is not only the authentic fare but also the service. A short, slim Vietnamese lady in plastic sandals, who I presume is the owner, buzzes around all three tables. She moves purposefully, ceaselessly. The second I extract an inch of water, the plastic pitcher attached to her arm is spilling more icy liquid into my glass. She smiles and nods as she does it, as if her wide grin functions symbiotically with the flow of water. Her eyes watch me, not the glass. It’s a strange dynamic, and my instinct is to simply mimic her behaviour. I grin and nod back. We grin and nod together, thanking each other. I think I’ve said thank you forty or so times already.
