Chapter 8
PATTY
He came in and stood in the kitchen doorway with his hat still on, which he never does.
"Sit down."
"I'd rather stand."
"Then stand."
I got a glass of water I didn't want, just to have thirty seconds, drank about an inch of it, and set it down on the mail pile, which is not where a glass goes.
Then I sat at the table. After a minute he took the hat off and sat down too, because Jack cannot stay standing while I'm sitting.
That's one of about forty small good things about him.
"I need you to hear the actual shape of this," I said. "Not the version where I'm hurt about a word."
"Okay."
"Because you're going to want to make it about the word, and the word is the smallest part of it."
"Okay."
I put my hands flat on the table. "If you call Emily and Rose in here, what exactly are you asking them?"
"I'd be telling them, not asking."
"Telling them what?"
He opened his mouth, and I watched him get to the end of that sentence in his head before he said it.
"That from now on it's okay if the kids call you Grandma."
"Okay if."
"That's not — "
"That's the sentence, Jack. That's the actual sentence. You'd be going around the family getting permission for me. You'd be taking a vote."
"I'd be fixing something I broke."
"You'd be fixing it in the same currency you broke it with. You broke it by deciding who I'm allowed to be to those kids, then managing everybody's feelings about it. Your solution is to go decide it again, in a nicer direction, and manage everybody's feelings about it."
He sat back.
"I'm fifty-four years old," I said. "I have never once asked a child to call me anything. I'm not going to start now, and I'm not going to have my husband go door to door with a petition so a six-year-old can be issued a permit."
"That's not what I meant."
"I know it isn't. That's the problem with you.
" I pushed the glass a few inches away. "You never mean it.
Every single piece of this was well meant, which is why it took me fifteen years to see it — there was never one bad day I could point at, never a night you came home and did something cruel.
It was always a small kindness aimed at somebody who wasn't in the room. "
"Patty — "
"Let me get through it. Here's what a committee does. Say you call them. Say it goes perfectly. Say Rose is gracious, because she probably would be — she'd be gracious, Jack, and that's the thing nobody in this house has ever tested. Say Emily cries a little and says of course. Say everybody hugs."
"That'd be good."
"Then what am I?"
He didn't answer.
"And if it doesn't go perfectly," I said, "if Rose says the wrong thing, or the right thing in the wrong voice, then what? Then you spend Thanksgiving watching her face, and I spend Thanksgiving watching you watch her face."
"That's not — "
"You know it is. I'm a woman who got voted in.
Every Christmas for the rest of my life I'd be standing in a kitchen knowing there'd been a meeting about me.
And if Rose ever had a hard day and went quiet I'd think, well, she agreed to it, she said it was fine at the meeting.
That's not belonging. That's a permit, and permits get reviewed. "
"I believe you."
"Then what do you want?" And he wasn't being sharp about it. He said it plainly, hands open on the table, a man waiting for a number he could write down. "Tell me what you want and I'll do it."
And I couldn't say it.
Four days. A drive home the long way past the car wash. A night of lying there doing sentences in the dark. The man finally asked me the question and I had nothing ready.
"I want you to stop," I said.
"Stop what."
"Correcting."
"Correcting what?"
"People."
"Which people?"
And that's where it came apart, because the true answer was all of them, for a dozen years, including the ones I never heard about, and what came out of me was, "The dentist. That kind of thing."
He nodded. Relief came up on his face like heat, and I understood I'd just handed him something small enough to carry.
He picked the hat up off the table, looked at it, put it down again.
"Okay," he said. "So the paperwork."
"No."
"You said the dentist."
"I know what I said."
"Then help me. I'm not being smart with you. I genuinely do not have it."
I got up. There was nothing in that kitchen I needed. I stood at the counter with my back to him, which is his move, not mine.
"Two years ago. The Christmas program."
"What about it."
"You saved me a seat in the back row."
He straightened up, which is what he does when he's being accused of something he can account for. "I sat with you."
"I know you did."
"Emily saved four down front. Four seats, five people." He wasn't shouting. He was being reasonable, which was worse. "I gave mine up. I came back and sat in the back with you. I'd do it again tomorrow."
"I know."
"So what's the complaint?"
And I didn't have it. It was right there, the way a word you can't get to is right there, and it had to do with him never once asking why there was a back row for me in the first place.
But every version of that sentence I tried on, standing at my own counter, came out sounding like a woman who wanted to be thanked for being sad at a Christmas concert.
"Nothing," I said. "Forget it."
"Patty."
"It was a nice thing you did. I'm not — " I turned around. "Never mind."
That's what I had. Fifteen years, and at the moment of asking: never mind.
He rubbed his jaw. "Give me something I can use."
"Last November. Noah had strep, Emily was at that conference, he was here four days."
"I remember."
"Tuesday I took him in for the recheck. The girl at the desk said, and Grandma's signing today?"
He shut his eyes. He knew the rest before I got to it, which meant he'd known at the time.
"I said family friend," he said.
"You said family friend."
"Patty — "
"I had his medication written on my hand." I held the hand up, stupidly, five months late, like there'd be something on it. "In pen. Because he wouldn't let me put it in the phone. He wanted to watch me write it down."
He didn't say anything.
"That's the one I keep. Not the parking lot. That one."
"Why that one?"
"Because I signed the form anyway. She let me sign it.
Nobody stopped anything, nobody made a scene, the boy got his antibiotic.
" I'd got hold of the counter again. "It went fine.
Everything has always gone fine, Jack, and that's the part I need you to hear.
There has never once been a scene. I've been handing the world that sentence for a dozen years and the world takes it every time, because why wouldn't it. "
"That's what you've been trained to say," he said.
"Don't."
"What?"
"Don't say it back to me like you've got it. You don't have it. You've got a sentence you can repeat."
He put his hands flat on the table and looked at them. "I'm trying."
"I know you are."
"That's not a thing people say when they mean it."
"No," I said. "It isn't."
The furnace came on, and we sat in it. He picked the hat up off the table, put it back down crown-down, moved it two inches, moved it back.
"Then tell me the rule. I'm not being smart. I'm asking for the rule, because if there isn't one I'm going to get it wrong."
"There isn't a rule."
"There's got to be something."
"There's got to be nothing," I said. "That's the problem. The minute you've got a rule you're administering it, and you've been administering it since 2013. I'm not handing you a new one so you can do the same job in a nicer direction."
"So I'm supposed to guess."
"You're supposed to not be involved."
"In what?"
"In what a six-year-old calls me." I sat back down, because standing had stopped being useful. "If he says Patty, he says Patty. That's my name. I've answered to it my whole life, there's nothing wrong with it, and if he calls me that till he's forty I'll be — "
I stopped, because the rest of the sentence was because he's my grandson, and I could not get that out of my mouth in my own kitchen, in front of my own husband, at fifty-four years old.
"You'll be what," Jack said.
"Fine. I'll be fine."
He looked at me. I have never known how much he sees. The window over the sink had gone dark while we sat there and I could see the pair of us in it, him at the table, me at the counter with my arms crossed.
He sat with it a while. Then he said, carefully, "And what if he gets it wrong?"
I heard it. He heard it about half a second after I did, which is the only reason I didn't throw something.
"Wrong," I said.
"That's not — "
"Say it again."
"I didn't mean wrong like that."
"You've meant wrong like that for a dozen years."
He didn't answer.
"I spent fifteen years proving I wouldn't take anybody's place," I said, "and somewhere in there you decided that meant I wasn't allowed to have one."
That one I had. I'd been carrying it up the stairs and down the stairs for four days.
He looked at the table a long time. "Okay."
"Okay what?"
"I don't know yet."
"That's the most honest thing you've said all week."
"It's not much good to you."
"No," I said. "It isn't."
He picked his hat up, turned it around by the brim a few times, hung it on the hook by the door. Then he went out to see about the storm windows, which did not need seeing about in September.
I stood in the kitchen with the rice not started. Through the window I could see him out by the garage with his hands on his hips, looking up at a window that has been fine since 2009.
For about a minute I wished I'd let him make his phone calls. The committee. Rose, Emily, everybody around a table being kind at me. At least it was a plan. At least somebody would have known what came next.
The calendar was on the side of the refrigerator where it always is, with GRANDPARENTS DAY 9:30 written in blue in the square for the tenth. Sixteen days.
I didn't know what I wanted to happen in that room. All I knew was what I was afraid of, which was that it would go the way every other room has gone, and that this time I'd have to watch it knowing I'd had my chance at the table to say so.