by Lisa Lutz
D then stepped on my foot. It didn’t hurt, but I stopped talking.
“Do you want to join us?” Mabel asked.
“I’d love to,” I said.
“But she has a meeting in ten minutes,” D said, consulting his watch.
“Ah, forgot about that,” I said. “Well, it’s been a pleasure. You should come over for dinner sometime.”
“Next,” the barista said politely.
“Next,” D said, not so politely.
“See you soon,” I said, waving good-bye (to Mabel).
Mabel returned to their table. I ordered my coffee, followed by D. While we waited for our respective five-adjectives-and-a-nouns to arrive, I slipped next to Demetrius and said, “That must be one hell of a first date.”
SMOKE FUMES
When I arrived at work, the house was empty except for Grammy Spellman. I found her at the kitchen table, playing a game of solitaire. Grammy has a special talent for driving people away, for never letting anyone past her harsh, judgmental exterior. If there was someone else beneath the surface, I’d never met her. However, watching her play cards by herself, I couldn’t help but feel some regret for not trying a little harder, especially now, in her declining years. Perhaps she was lonely and her misanthropy was merely a mask.
My grandfather was a force of nature—the kind of man who could charm a drug dealer or a debutante; the kind of man who was always on your side even when he wasn’t on your side. Grammy had always been eclipsed by his massive personality. In fact, I have no recollection of her before he died.
Later, she would visit once a year—always under a cloud of dread. We’d phone her on her birthday and Christmas, and pass the receiver from one person to the next, each engaging in a stilted yet mercifully brief discussion.
While Grammy was never my biggest fan,1 she turned against me during my mad adolescence. One night I forgot she was visiting and climbed through the guest room window after curfew, waking her out of a deep sleep. My black silhouette, topped off with a ski cap, resembled that of a home intruder. She screamed and threw her travel alarm clock at me. I turned on the light and identified myself, which didn’t quiet her as much as you’d expect.
She asked me what I was doing and I explained as succinctly as I could, despite being incredibly stoned, that I had lost my house keys and didn’t want to wake anyone. Then she started shouting my dad’s name. Sleepy Mom and Dad quickly entered the room, were apprised of the situation, and groggily grounded me for two months, knowing that the result would simply be that I would be climbing in and out of even more windows over the next two months. During breakfast the following morning, Grammy refused to speak to or make eye contact with me despite the fact that I was the primary topic of conversation. She suggested a military academy and when that idea was shot down, she offered to pay for finishing school.
After much debate, I was given an Emily Post etiquette book and forced to write a ten-page report on what I had learned. I don’t recall much from Post’s seminal work, but the business about writing thank-you notes stuck. In fact, I developed an irksome habit of writing them for wholly inappropriate occasions. My father found them amusing and collected them in a shoe box.
Not too long ago, I came across a six-inch stack wrapped in twine in the garage.
Here’s a brief sampling, circa 1995/1996:
Dear David,
Thank you so much for that zit on your forehead. It’s awesome.
Love,
Isabel
Dear Mom,
Thank you for not cooking tonight and ordering pizza.
Love,
Isabel
Dear Dad,
Thanks for shaving your mustache. I hated it. You look almost normal now.
Your daughter,
Isabel
Dear Rae,
Thank you for letting me eat some of your Halloween candy. I admire your generous spirit.2
Love,
Isabel
Dear Mr. Benjamin,
I am sorry to hear that you were ill yesterday but very grateful to not have the “surprise” quiz, which we seem to have on every Monday. You might want to look up “surprise” in the dictionary. I wish you a speedy recovery but think it would be best if you took a few more days off. Maybe a week.
Thank you for looking after yourself.
Best,
Isabel3
Suffice it to say, there were several dozen of those by the end of the summer, and Grammy Spellman was certainly not excluded from the outpouring of gratitude. If I remember correctly, I thanked her profusely for the panty hose in a plastic egg that she gave me for my eighteenth birthday. I told her how I wore the sliced-up nylon as a mask in a liquor store heist and turned her two-dollar investment into three-hundred-and-seventy-two bucks. Of course, Grammy phoned my father in a panic immediately after receiving the missive to which he explained it was all a silly joke. It was indeed a joke. The panty hose were delivered straight into the trash bin, but I did store my stash of weed for years in that plastic eggshell.4 My point is, on that first night that Grammy came to dinner, when she said, “I never understood this one,” I couldn’t blame her. I never understood that one. But watching her play cards by herself in a home where she clearly was not welcome, I felt something for Grammy. To be honest, I’m not sure what, because I was spending most of my waking hours trying to not feel anything at all. But there I was, maybe for the first time in my existence, seeing a lonely old woman, not my geriatric nemesis.
“Would you like some hot water with lemon?” I asked Grammy. “I’m making some for myself.”5
“Thank you, Isabel. That would be lovely.”
I started the kettle and waited for Grammy to finish her game.
“Do you want to play gin?” I asked.
I’ve watched Grammy and Dad play for hours on end, so I knew this activity was in her comfort zone.
“If you like,” Grammy said, shuffling the deck like a card shark.
As Grammy dealt, I debated whether to throw the game or not and decided I was in favor of it.
We played in silence until Grammy broke it in her famous style.
“Dear, you’re not getting any younger, you know.”
“You and me both,” I said.
“I met your gentleman on my last visit. You were lucky to have him.”
I couldn’t argue with her. “Uh-huh.”
“Women like you can’t be choosy.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said as I choked back a tide of profanity. I could actually feel my body temperature rising.
“In my day you didn’t move in with a man until you had a ring on your finger.”
“In your day, you also thought you could lose weight by standing still with a vibrating band wrapped around your waist,” I replied.
“You could lose a few pounds too.”
“But then we’d have nothing to talk about.”
“Men don’t like women with a sharp tongue.”
“Remind me again why are we talking?”
“Just giving you some grandmotherly advice. You don’t want to spend the rest of your life alone, do you, dear?”
“Gin,” I said.
“Already?” Grammy replied.
“No. I meant I’m going to drink it. As for the game, I forfeit.”
“You never did have any follow-through, did you?” Grammy asked.
Oh, I have follow-through all right. But compared to Mom, I’m an amateur. An hour later, I heard the front door unlock and Mom’s voice shout, “Heel.”
The next thing I knew, a giant mutt with a plethora of sheddable hair preceded my mother into the house. The enormous dog bounded down the hallway, launched up the stairs and then down the stairs, jumped onto the couch, jumped off the couch, raced into the kitchen, and then ran back down the hall, throwing its full weight against my mother, who was approximately the same size. As Mom wrangled the animal with the leash, I approached cautiously. The dog didn’t scare me, but my moth
er did.
“Hey, Mom. What’s this?”
“Izzy, meet the newest member of the Spellman family. I think we’ll call her FourPete. Get it? Named after your father’s bachelor-days dog. Only this Pete is a girl and has four legs. But it’s a dog, so who cares?”
“I’m speechless,” I replied.
“She’s cute, isn’t she?” she said, and then she sneezed three times in a row.
“Gesundheit. You have some explaining to do. For years, David and I begged for a dog. Why now?”
“I had enough animals in the house when you were growing up.”
“But you are severely allergic,” I reminded my mother. Although I doubt she needed any reminding, since she was wheezing and had to take a hit on her inhaler.
“I am,” Mom replied. “I’ll just get some shots. I hear they work, and I’ll try not to pet FourPete.”
“Oh, now I get it,” I said. My mother’s game was suddenly obvious. An ex-con couldn’t do the job, but a dirt-tracking, drooling, untrained eighty-pound mutt just might be the thing to snuff out the old bitch. And I’m not talking about the dog.
Grammy walked into the foyer, where my mother performed formal introductions. “Ruth, please meet FourPete, the newest member of the Spellman family.”
Grammy’s eyes began to water. She looked at FourPete as if she were seeing a ghost. Then she turned to my mother and smiled. “She’s the spitting image of my childhood dog, Perdita,”6 said Grammy. Then she did the oddest thing: She got down on her knees and wrapped her arms around FourPete. “Do you mind if I take her for a walk?”
My mother was too stunned to respond.
She simply passed the leash to Grammy, who clucked a few times and asked FourPete if she wanted to go for a walk, in the same tone that people use on Sydney.
Once Grammy was out the door, Mom dialed Dad on her cell phone. “Al, didn’t you tell me that your mother [sneeze] refused to let you get a dog when you were a child? . . . It doesn’t matter why I’m asking . . . If you could [sneeze] answer the question . . . I see. I see. Thank you. I do have some news. But it can wait.” My mother snapped shut her cell phone and entered the kitchen, defeated. I followed Mom and watched her make a cocktail.
“Your father always told this tragic story about [sneeze] having a golden retriever puppy as a child and his mother forcing [sneeze] them to give it away. I assumed Ruth hated dogs. Turns out, his father had the allergies like me.”
“Just say ‘allergies,’ not ‘the allergies,’” I said.
“For weeks your grandpa tried to live with it for the sake of the children, but it was simply too much for him.”
“You’re usually pretty good at this diabolical stuff. Are you getting soft on me?”
“Nope. I just have to step up my game [sneeze],” Mom said.
HOW TO NEGOTIATE EVERYTHING
My mother wasn’t the only person who had to step up her game.
While I had two domestic mysteries solved and filed away—Rae’s linguistic experiments and Mom’s sudden hobby habit (which for the record did not abate), there remained a litany of unanswered questions that needed answering. I made a list to be sure that none slipped through the cracks.
• Why doesn’t David want revenge?
• Has D been dating the same woman all along? And is it possible that D and Grammy Spellman have forged a friendship?
• Who made toast in Walter’s house and performed the other acts of sabotage?
• What is Meg Cooper planning against Mr. Slayter, and is Adam Cooper in on it?
• Vivien Blake, who are you? And what is your connection to Rae?
• How much longer will Grammy remain in the Spellman household?
Over the next week, I made limited progress on all of the above. I gathered a few shreds of new information, but I only managed to close one “case.”
As you might imagine, living under David’s roof while he was unemployed (I realize that raising a child is a full-time job; I merely mean that he didn’t go into an office for work) afforded me complete access to my brother in unguarded moments. I waited for the perfect time to strike. Sydney had been up all night crying and by morning had still not slept. My brother, showing signs of extreme sleep deprivation—lack of coordination, memory loss (where is the sippy cup? Where’d I put the dishrag?) irritability, etc.—was serving Sydney breakfast when she pulled a diva and demanded “banana,” not oatmeal.
Sydney pushed the oatmeal away and David pushed it back and said, firmly, “Today you are having oatmeal.” Sydney then tossed the oatmeal across the room.
Fortunately the bowl was plastic, but the off-white mud blasted against the wall and splattered like a faded crime scene. David appeared on the verge of tears. I grabbed several dish towels and sponges and gently pushed my brother out of the way. “I got it,” I said. “Go back to bed.”
Sydney started screaming “banana.”
David approached with paper towels and said, “You can’t handle this.”
I grabbed David square in the shoulders and looked deep into his sleep-deprived eyes.
“Actually, I can. Go. To. Bed. I got it.”
While my brother is in general skeptical of my coping skills, my instructions were too inviting to resist. He merely turned around, walked upstairs, and presumably went straight to bed.
I pulled out a bag of that weird pirate-themed snack and tossed it on Sydney’s tray table. She too appeared on the verge of tears.
“You don’t scare me,” I said.
Then I proceeded to clean up the oatmeal, which actually took almost a half hour. Even my eyes glistened by the end. To ensure that David didn’t get it into his head to serve this meal again in the near future, I hid the box in the coat closet.
Four hours later, after Sydney and I had watched eight episodes straight of SpongeBob,1 I put her down for a nap. Conveniently around the time that David woke up from his. He even managed to bathe himself.
“You look like a new man,” I said as he came down the stairs.
“I owe you,” he said.
“Then pay up.”
“What’s your price?”
“It’s a good deal. I suggest you take it.”
“What?”
“I want to know—I need to know. Why have you been so forgiving of the Banana Offensive? While I might find it amusing, I certainly can’t see why you do.”
David poured us both a cup of coffee and then disappeared in the pantry for five minutes looking for something. He used to hide junk food from himself and so I could only conclude he was hunting for a particular item. He returned to the kitchen table with an unopened but battered box of something he called Arnott’s Tim Tams, “mint crisp” flavor.
“Where’d these come from?” I asked. Having Rae as a sibling, I’ve become a kind of expert on sugared delicacies, and this was certainly unfamiliar packaging.
“My friend brought them back from Australia.” David cracked the seal and dunked half his cookie in his coffee.
“How long ago?”
“A few years.”
“You must have some serious guilt to spill.”
“I have a bad feeling in my gut.”
“It will only get worse after you eat these. Have you checked the expiration date?”
“Try one and then you’ll shut up,” he said.
I did and was certainly quiet during the consumption of the exquisite biscuit.2 “I’d keep these away from Rae, if I were you.”
“Not a problem anymore,” David replied.
“Speaking of Rae,” I said.
“Nice transition.”
“Your conscience will feel better if you just come clean.”
“What makes you think my conscience is involved?”
“Sugar consumption and refusal to retaliate against the Banana Offensive. Oh, and that throwaway comment you made the other day when Rae was up a tree. Or had just come down from a tree—”
David swallowed a Tim Tam whole and removed hi
mself from the table as I was still speaking.
“Hello?” I said. Then I snagged another cookie.
A few minutes later, David returned to the kitchen with a plastic binder containing professional (i.e., not by David) black-and-white illustrations. It was a mock-up of a children’s book. I could describe it for you, but it’s better if you see it for yourself.
That wasn’t the end, I’m afraid to admit.3 Suffice it to say that the book does more than suggest that everything can be negotiated.
“You wrote this?” I said to David.
“I’m afraid so,” he replied.
“When?”
“Sophomore year in college.”
“What kind of crazy class were you taking?”
“I had to take a creative writing class—”
“You got away with turning this in? Damn, your looks have gotten you even further than I thought. The illustrations are good. Who is Jaime [I pronounced it “Hymie”]?”
“Jaime [pronounced “Jamie”],” David replied. “My girlfriend for a few weeks.”
“The exact amount of time it might take to illustrate a book?” I asked.
“It was a side project. I was reading about publishing and it seemed like all the money was in children’s books and this was a niche that hadn’t been filled.”
“What niche?” I asked. “Business books for toddlers?”
“Why not teach them how to remain calm under pressure, was what I was thinking at the time,” David said, clearly not thinking that anymore.
“You weren’t teaching them how to use their words, you were providing a play-by-play for deep manipulation.”
“I know that now.”
“I take it you read this book to Rae.”
“That’s an understatement.”
“Excuse me?”
“No. She was my . . . I don’t know what the word for it is . . .”
And then it all became clear to me.
“Rae was your guinea pig,” I said.
“Yes,” David replied.
“Wow.”
“You see my problem.”
“What she did was worse,” I said. “You know that, right?”
