by Iain Reid
After using her piece of toast as an edible J Cloth to wipe her plate clean, Grandma finally asks me what she’s been wanting to ask all morning (and potentially all night). “Do you have Kleenex, dear?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Grandma. Yes, of course, my God, I should have thought of that,” I say, jumping up out of my chair.
“That’s fine. I usually have some on me.”
I run back to my room. I look everywhere. I throw my pillows onto the floor and knock a stack of books off my desk. I ransack the bathroom. I can’t find Kleenex anywhere. Plan B (which really should have been more like plan Q): I wrap a generous bundle of toilet paper around my hand and rip it from its roll. I sheepishly lay it on the table in front of Grandma.
“Very sorry, Grandma. I actually don’t have any real Kleenex. But I have lots of toilet paper, so feel free to go to town.” Go to town? On the toilet paper? I want to grab the words out of the air as I’m saying them, wrap them in the toilet paper, and flush them away.
“Oh, this will do fine.” She picks it up immediately and does what she’s been wanting to do all morning — give her nose a hearty blow.
I decide, under the shameless protection of the blowing-her-nose din, that now’s the time to mention my morning plans. “I hope you don’t mind, but we have to wait for these water guys to get here.” I say it quickly to finish at the same time as her blowing.
“Who are the water guys?” wonders Grandma as she takes the remainder of the toilet paper and slides it up under her shirt sleeve. I can still see it, hanging from her forearm like a white tail.
“I mean the guys who are going to fix the hot water tank.”
“Oh, okay. Yes, that’s fine. The hot water tank is broken?”
For the first time I realize Grandma hasn’t mentioned the lack of hot water. She’s been here for two nights. She hasn’t said a word about it. How could that be? Is this because she hasn’t required any hot water? Or because she didn’t want to say anything because she didn’t want me to feel bad?
“Yeah, sorry, I thought I told you, Grandma.” Maybe I did tell her? It’s possible she just forgot. “They said they’d be here sometime this morning. They didn’t have an exact time.”
“Fine, dear. That’s just fine.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to go back to bed? We have to stick around anyway.”
“No, I’m fine.”
“Well, then, what do you feel like doing? We can’t really go anywhere until they get here.” We’ve become like two children sitting in a basement on a Saturday afternoon with nowhere to go. And nothing to do.
“Whatever you think. But first, could you do me a favour?”
“Sure, anything.”
I’m assuming she’s going to ask me to pop out and obtain some cold medication. Maybe some chicken soup and Kleenex. “Would you mind just opening the cupboard there, under the sink?”
“Oh, okay. Sure.” I stand and do as requested. I watch Grandma ball up her used squares of toilet paper. She steadies her hand and lets the paper fly like a mini mucus basketball. Her form is pristine. It lands in the rubbish bin square in the middle. Swish. She smiles.
I’m wide-eyed in approval and surprised at her shot. “Hey, how would you like to see my desk?” This is a release of uncensored verbal cogitation. I’m impressed by her trash-basket shot, but instead of saying so have brought up my desk. I don’t know why.
Maybe it’s because subconsciously I’m aware they have something in common, Grandma and my desk. Both are sturdy and have lived in several different places, in different homes. And both are very old. I would say both are reliable. I’ve been getting to know each one better, the older they get.
Without asking me to repeat the question or taking a moment to consider this new topic, she answers, “Yes, I’d love to see it. I know how much you like your desk.”
Without another word, I lead her to my room. There isn’t much to see. I have a reading chair, a record player, some bookcases. I have a bed without a frame. It sits on the floor. I hastily make my bed, which I’d neglected to do, as Grandma peers around.
“This is a cozy room. It’s so nice that you have some plants.” She’s talking about my aloe vera plant sitting on the window ledge. It’s an insignificant plant, my only one, and could probably fit in a medium-sized coffee cup. But by definition it is a plant. It is green. And both Grandma and I appreciate greenery.
“Yeah, I like having something alive in here to keep me company. But the best part, Grandma, take at look at this.” I take her by the arm over to my desk. I pull out the chair and take the hoodie off the back.
“Oh, my. Wow. Look at this,” she says, seating herself.
My desk is the best desk in the world. It’s solid oak. It’s sturdy. And it’s ancient. There are scratches on it, not all over it, and the drawers are a bit sticky. It really is perfect. Grandma delicately runs her hand over the top. Like her, it has a past that reveals itself every time I find another scratch or set of initials scraped onto its surface.
“I just love it,” she says. “It’s exactly what I pictured.”
I consider it priceless, but I actually got my desk for free. When I first moved to Kingston, I was in need of a desk. Any desk. I’d been writing on the tiny space atop a broken sewing machine from the 1970s. There was no room for any papers, so I had to scatter any notes over the floor and my neighbouring bed. I would have settled for any salvageable horizontal working surface.
I’d been browsing online, but nothing in my price range was significantly better than the blasted sewing machine. One morning I happened to take a stroll down a neighbouring street. It was early. I came across my desk sitting at the end of a driveway. It wasn’t my desk yet but was about to be. It had a handwritten note Scotch-taped to the front: “FREE.” The drawers were all out and sitting on top as if proving it had nothing to hide.
“I guess it was meant to be. That’s so lucky,” she says, swivelling around to face me again.
“Do you think you’re lucky?” I ask.
“Absolutely. I am. I’ve always been lucky.”
“Really? You mean, when you look back at things that have happened to you?”
“I mean now. I think feeling lucky is really only important, really only helpful, in the present. It seems tempting to wait for perspective, perspective gained by time. But it becomes irrelevant in the past. Luck doesn’t really mean the same thing if it’s only understood through memory, is what I’m trying to say.”
She stands again and pushes the chair back under the desk. She walks over to my bookcase. “You sure like books, don’t you.”
“I like to read . . .”
She pulls the odd one out, reading the spine before sliding it back in. “I should borrow a couple from you. You know, new ones. It’s hard for me to know what new books to pick.”
“Did your parents read much when you were young?”
“I don’t think so, not much. The papers maybe, but not books so much.”
She walks over to my hi-fi sitting on its stand by the wall. “Is that an old record player?” she asks.
“Yeah, it is.”
“We used to have a gramophone that was built into a large armoire. We really only had Scottish music, though.”
“I have some records in my closet.”
“Really? I’d love to see some. Would you mind?”
“No, not at all.”
I scurry into my closet and retrieve two of my milk crates of albums. I lug one and drag the other over to Grandma. I tell her to sit in the comfy chair beside the bookcase. She does and folds her hands together on her lap. I sit down on the floor. “I think there’ll be a few in here you’ll remember.”
I start flipping through the collection. When I come across those I think she’ll remember, I pass them to her. Some sleeves are quite damaged and ripped, an
d I have to be careful to ensure a delicate hand-off: quarterback to running back without fumble.
“You probably used to listen to this,” I say.
She receives each and examines it closely. After we’ve isolated five or six, I suggest maybe we put one on. “What do you think, Grandma? Do you want to listen to some of these while we wait?”
“I’d love that. Let’s start with this one,” she says. She hands me the Ink Spots.
“Grandma,” I say, nodding, “great choice.”
I put it on. The speakers spit and crackle and then go quiet before the music starts. We listen to the first two tracks entirely without speaking. Neither of us makes any noise, no coughing or sniffing. We’re like two audio sponges, soaking up the resonance equally. I’m lying on the floor, my hands under my head. Grandma puts her feet up on the stool and leans back.
She’s listening with strict attention. She even closes her eyes. I furtively watch as her face goes from resolute pleasure to careful regard. She’s thinking about something and wants to talk. She shifts forward.
“I do love the old records,” she says, opening her eyes. “It’s a different sound.”
“It’s nice, isn’t it?”
“We’ve always listened to music in our family, haven’t we.”
“Yeah, we always did growing up.”
“My dad loved music. And, like your grandpa, he loved to dance.”
“Was he good?”
“My dad was a wonderful dancer. That’s how I learned. He taught me. But it wasn’t like you see in the movies, when a child is learning to dance and they stand on the feet of their much older partner. No, it was real dancing we did.” She pauses. “At least it seemed like it to me. I just know I didn’t do anything silly like stand on his feet.”
“What kind of music did you listen to then?”
“Mostly whatever was on the radio. We always had the radio on after supper . . .” She turns away and brings a hand up to her mouth.
“What is it?”
“Oh, nothing. Sorry, just thinking about all these old stories. I haven’t thought about these things in such a long time.” She faces me again. “You know, my dad was never a letter writer. But when he was back fighting in France, not long after I was born, he wrote a letter home to Scotland. It was for me. I still remember how it started: ‘Dear Sweetheart.’ I kept it for a long time, but I’m not sure what happened to it. I’ve kept a lot of things over the years, but I’ve probably lost just as many.”
“Your memory is excellent. That’s what I have to worry about. I can’t remember very much from my childhood and it wasn’t all that long ago.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. You told me some stories yesterday.”
“I guess.” Although I’d be just as happy to forget about that diaper episode.
“Anyway, my sisters were often around, and my brother Pat loved music, too.”
“I’m not sure I know much about Pat.”
“Pat and I got along very well. I can remember him rubbing my back if I couldn’t sleep. We were all different, but a close family. And because there was such an age difference between myself and the older siblings, they were almost like parents.”
“What happened to Pat?”
“He died young. He had a heart attack shovelling snow. We were in Canada when it happened, and I can remember my mom getting the phone call.”
“What about your sisters, what happened to them?”
“Which ones?”
“How many did you have again?” I think there were a lot of them.
“Sisters?”
“Well, brothers and sisters. There were quite a few of you, right?”
Grandma knows everything about my tiny family. I have only two siblings and no cousins. I know very little about hers. I know more today than I did three days ago. Still, I don’t even know exactly how many siblings she had. I do know she’s the only one left.
“There were seven of us. Well, really there were eight. Chinsy was the oldest. Her real name was Johanne, but we only ever called her Chinsy. Then Pat, whose real name was Peter. Lottie was next. She was Charlotte, but we called her Lottie.”
“Huh, Lottie from Charlotte. I like that.”
Grandma starts laughing and closes her eyes. “It’s actually quite ridiculous when I think about it now. We had nicknames for everyone.”
“I like it.”
“I suppose if you use a nickname to someone’s face it means you like them.”
“True.”
“Anyway, after Lottie was Jean. Her actual name was Jane. She was a real ham, a joker. She loved to tease and laugh. Next was Della. Her full name was Donnella. Okay, so after those five there was a fourteen-year gap before the next baby. And that was me. And then the youngest, Donald. Donald was four years younger than me. My only younger sibling, my baby brother. That’s seven, right?”
“Yup.”
“The eighth wasn’t my parents’ baby. But they raised him. That was Dean. He was just a baby when he came to live with us.”
“Yeah, I remember hearing that name, Dean. But I can’t remember who he was.”
“He also died quite young, during surgery.”
The record stops abruptly. I hear the needle lift and return to its resting position. “Should we listen to another one?” asks Grandma, interrupting herself.
“Yeah, sure. Which one?”
“You pick this time.” I roll over onto my stomach and flip through a few. “How about this one?” I ask, holding up an Artie Shaw album.
“Yeah,” she says.
“Or maybe . . .” I flip through a few more. “How about this, Grandma: Lee Morgan.”
“Yes, fine.”
As I change the record, Grandma continues where she left off. “Dean was my sister’s son. Chinsy’s third child. She died right after he was born.”
“What happened?”
“In those days, after women gave birth they were told to stay in bed. That was the thing to do. They called it bedrest. And she was still on bedrest when something happened, I can’t quite remember exactly what . . .” She trails off and looks down at the floor.
“Well, it’s so long ago . . .”
“But in any case she stood up or got up too quickly to try do something, and must have had a blood clot, or stroke. She died. It was very quick.”
“Pretty terrible.”
“Those types of things were much more common then.”
“So was having such a big family.”
“Really, it was almost like Donald and I had a whole bunch of aunts and uncles. Our siblings were almost a generation older than we were. In some ways they were.”
“How so?”
“Well, you know my dad fought in the First World War, but Chinsy also left home and went to Edinburgh to nurse. Jean was too young to train as a nurse during the war but still volunteered in the city. And Pat joined the navy. So for them, they’d all been through a world war. The war to end all wars.”
“It sounds like you’re describing a novel to me or something.”
“No, really? You think? I’m sorry to be going on like this. I shouldn’t be going on and on.” She shakes her head. “I never talk about all this stuff.”
“I’m glad you can remember. I don’t know much about your family. Did everyone move out to Canada, or did any of them stay in Scotland?”
“We all went out, except for Jean. She’d already married a Scottish fellow. But it wasn’t too long after we left that her husband died. So she left Scotland, too. She followed us out to Canada,” she says. “Did you ever hear about Chinsy and her husband?”
“No.”
“Before Jean married, or any of us children in the family, Chinsy married. She was only eighteen. And she eloped.”
“Really? Did that happen a lot
back then?”
“No, I don’t think so. But yes, she eloped. My parents didn’t want her to get married. They told her no. You see, she met this fellow right when the war was breaking out. And he got called up to go over to France. So they decided they would get married before he left.”
“See, this sounds like a movie.”
“It does a bit, I guess. But it happened. So because he was going off to war, my parents didn’t want Chinsy to marry him. They wanted her to wait.”
“Why?”
“Because of the war. Who knew what was going to happen? Of course, that was also what made them want to marry as soon as possible.”
“Yeah, I can see that.”
“And she did. That was Chinsy. She actually climbed out her window.”
“Come on . . .”
“Yes, he’d put a ladder up to the second floor and off they went. A week later he was off to France.”
“And what happened?”
“He lasted a few months before he was killed.”
“Unbelievable.”
“She remarried in Canada. In fact, Jean and Chinsy married brothers. They were farmers and lived in Saskatchewan.”
“Do you remember them, the brothers?”
“Oh, yes. They were hard workers. Neither was born a farmer; they both did it out of necessity. Farming is tough work when it doesn’t come naturally. I liked them. I always tried to get along with everyone, I guess. In a family that size, there’s always so many different personalities. So it can be pretty easy for things to get complicated. But we tried to be close. I never had to try hard to be close with Donald. I think because we were so near in age. And because, let’s face it, it was Donald. He was always very good to me.”
“It seems like you guys all did stuff.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure. It’s just, this is interesting for me to hear about your family. Seems like lots of stories there. Lots of intriguing, complicated lives.”
“Well, come to think of it, all the women in my family worked. Chinsy was a nurse, Lottie taught primary school, and Della taught at business college. Even my mom worked. She kept the store and rooms. That was our connection with the Old Country. My mom was a businesswoman. She knew what she was doing. It was rare in those days.”
