Chapter 9
Callie helped prepare dinner, calling herself the sous chef. I asked if she wanted to be a chef when she grew up. She said she’d rather be the person who eats the food. I agreed. We were rhyming when I heard someone at the door.
“Callie, go see who’s here.”
“It’s probably Grannie.”
Confused, I went to look.
Annie stood in the entryway. Knee-high auburn boots, tattered jeans, a too-short kid’s-size sweater. Her tattooed midriff on display. I tried to figure out exactly what that artwork was. A bird. A plane. Not Superman.
“Annie,” Callie shrieked as though she hadn’t seen Annie in months, when the sitter had been planted on the couch just a few hours before. Callie leaped into Annie’s open arms, an action that would bowl me over, and said, “Grannie Annie is here!”
“Grannie?” I said. “That’s funny, Callie.”
Callie regarded me oddly. “Why? Annie is my grandma. Just like you.”
What?
“Callie, Annie is your babysitter,” I said sweetly, unsure of what was going on.
Annie intervened and explained, too slowly, for me. “Mac has been calling me Grannie Annie since the day we met. Everyone thinks it’s so cute. Because I’m twenty-seven.”
I didn’t think it was cute. And how could she be twenty-seven? I had assumed she was seventeen. Worse was the name Grannie Annie. I was elated to be Grandma, and here was this young girl of no relation called Grannie—a title bestowed on her by Macallan, who considered her a grandmother. My last meal threatened to come up.
“You’ve met Milton Robertson, Brian’s dad. The cardiologist. I’m his life partner.”
If I recalled correctly from Lisa’s engagement party years ago, Milton was older than me. Making him sixty-eight or, more likely, 101. She was his life partner. How long did she think he was going to live? I also recalled that Milton was no longer a doctor because his license had been revoked. A matter of medical insurance fraud. Last I heard, Milton taught biology at a private school for boys over the New York border. I wondered if he was now retired.
“I live with him,” she said.
As what? His nurse? No wonder Lisa didn’t pay her.
“We met at bingo,” she said proudly, as though that was a major achievement. “He had a come-on line. He told me G-fifty was his favorite call because he’s never been with a girl over fifty. Girl over fifty, G-fifty.”
What a brain trust. And she played bingo. What girl with tattoos and piercings in her late twenties went to bingo? Bingo was played at churches, firehouses, senior centers. There wasn’t a thing worth eating at bingo unless you yearned for stale popcorn, flat soda, and a steamed wiener dwarfed by a split-top roll. I’ve never understood why New Englanders like hot dog rolls cut open on top.
Okay, none of that mattered. The only thing I cared about was that Callie considered Annie a legitimate grandma. But I supposed I had it coming to me. It’s what I deserved for living far away, for keeping my sights set on my own life instead of being involved day to day with my offspring.
Annie continued, “I was the caller. You know B-one, G-fifty-four. My favorite call is B-four. I say B-four, then I say ‘after.’ Get it? Bingo is every Wednesday night at the Unitarian church in Pinecone. It’s Unitarian—for all denominations. There’s one player who wins so frequently, the joke is that she practices playing bingo at home.”
Ignore her, I reasoned. She’s a kid living with an old man, overjoyed to be called Grannie. She’s wacked out. Irreparably. I stared at her. What had led her to shack up with Milton Robertson? Did they still call it “shacking up”? Or was that phrase currently socially incorrect? Did shacking up now imply the person shacking up lived in a shack? Who could keep up? Apparently charisma had been shortened to “rizz”—a word that had no charisma at all. In any case, it wasn’t as though Milton was a stable choice. He had checked out on Di when she was pregnant with Brian’s younger brother, Lucky, and took off with Debbie, a phlebotomist.
“Milton is set in his ways. He refuses to have a television in the house. I could watch on my laptop, but I like the large screen here. I just ran into Lisa,” Annie continued. “She said she’s leaving for Boston right after dinner. I think I’ll hang out here and watch my series tonight.”
“Can I watch?” Callie asked.
“Not really for kids,” Annie said. “Next time, Mac!”
Again, with the Mac . Also, I was amazed at how easily Annie got away with saying “next time.” If I had said “next time,” Callie and I would enter lengthy negotiations—until I agreed on Matilda or Annie .
“No. You’re wrong. Lisa’s leaving tomorrow morning,” I said knowingly. She wouldn’t run off so soon after I arrived. We needed more time to catch up.
“No. No. No. She said tonight.”
Grannie Annie followed me into Lisa’s country kitchen, where pots and pans hung from the ceiling, the plank floor was dark wood, green backboards made of tile sat over the farm-style sink, and appliances were top of the line. When my kids were young, I had taped certificates, report cards, quizzes, and other kvell -worthy paraphernalia on my refrigerator door. But the front of Lisa’s fridge was bare.
Annie took a tomato from the counter and bit into it. Did she even know where that tomato had been?
“Do you want to wash that?” I said like somebody’s mother.
“It’s the fruit of the earth.”
So that meant she had to eat the earth?
This babysitter was Milton’s lover. Callie referred to her as Grannie Annie. She as good as lived in Lisa’s house. I had assumed I’d be one on one with Callie. I didn’t need an assistant. I had rescheduled bunions and hammertoes for this gig, abandoning a man in need—my bitter, banged-up Jake.
I deliberated gifting Annie a large-screen TV and a subscription to Netflix, so she wouldn’t come by and I could have the moments I craved with my granddaughter. I coveted time alone. When her parents were around, Callie paid little attention to me. She kept her eyes on Lisa and Brian, turning to one or the other for anything she needed. I felt like an accessory, one that was out of season. Worse, I could tell that Lisa and Brian passed judgment on me, knitting their brows together if I didn’t handle a situation exactly as they would. I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said that, on occasion, they came just short of poking each other in the ribs. One time, after we returned from a day at the lake, I suggested Callie take a shower. Brian said, “Not necessary. She bathed two nights ago.” When Lisa and Callie visited us in Florida during school breaks, I warned Callie not to swim immediately after lunch. Lisa informed me that was an old wives’ tale. I said, “Are you calling me an old wife?”
“Just the tale, Mom. Just the tale,” she said.
I couldn’t get past the very idea of Annie, the juvenile bubbe . My grandmother, my mom’s mom, was in her seventies when I was born. I had called her Bubbe, the affectionate Yiddish term for grandmother. My bubbe had five children and a slew of grandkids. She lived on the Lower East Side of Manhattan—on Seventh Street, where my grandfather had died suddenly on his way home from synagogue—but she spent summers with us in a room set aside for her on the poultry farm in Connecticut. After my father sold the rocky acreage and we settled in suburban West Hartford, he became a successful food wholesaler, and Bubbe visited regularly—laden with apple cake and cinnamon and chocolate babkas . Bubbe was tough. She came to America on a boat alone when she was sixteen, but she hovered over me protectively, as if she thought I’d melt in the rain. She spoke English (mixed with Yiddish) but couldn’t read it. Still, she understood the language of love. I could imagine what she’d have to say about Annie: “A beautiful girl throws her life away for an alte kaaker ?” Despite what it sounds like, alte kaaker doesn’t mean “old cock” in Yiddish. But it might as well.
The truth was I was thinking like my bubbe . What could Annie possibly see in Milton? Was it dollar signs? I doubted it. According to Lisa, Milton lived in a squat, aluminum-sided ranch in Hilltop—without a fireplace or a garage, two necessities for the long winters. Maybe Annie liked his looks. Milton was an exceptionally handsome man. He resembled the actor Paul Newman—shot to hell. Could Annie be attracted to Milton? What was the story? I wondered as I got back to preparing dinner.
Lisa returned an hour or so later. “Dinnertime?” she asked as she breezed into the kitchen.
Before she ran her errand, Lisa had set the table with woven place mats, matching napkins, colorful silverware, and plates for four. We all settled in. Callie took the spot next to Annie, which didn’t make me smile.
“Are you leaving tonight?” Annie asked Lisa. She wanted to show me who was in the know and who was not.
“If it’s okay with you, Mom, I plan to check out after supper.”
What was she thinking? “Do you have a reservation in a hotel for tonight?” I asked, knowing it was fine for a friend to ask such a benign question, but from a parent, it sounded like an inquisition. “Isn’t it better to drive in the morning, in daylight?”
“Mom . . .”
Amazing how that one word, “Mom,” can mean so many different things, depending on the tone of voice. Lisa said it as though I had breached a border when I was simply expressing concern about her sudden decision to drive to Boston alone in the dark.
“I’ll take it slow. And I’m driving with a friend, so I won’t be alone.”
Annie glanced at me as if to say I told you so. Her expression clearly said, You are unaware of what goes down here. Apparently a young know-it-all I had never seen before ruled the roost. Grannie Annie, my foot.
So, I was being left with two kids. One I loved, and the other I could do without.
While the rest of us ate pie, Lisa trotted upstairs to pack. She kissed Annie goodbye. (I would’ve liked to kiss Annie goodbye myself and send her out the door.) Lisa hugged me and said, “Mom, don’t worry.”
“I’m not concerned at all,” I said. “Be careful on the turnpike in the dark. And don’t fall asleep at the wheel. And text me so I know you arrived safely.”
Lisa laughed. She scooped Callie into her arms, squeezed her tight. “You are my perfect person. I’ll miss you every minute of every day. Be good for Grandma Jo. Don’t make her worry because she already worries too much.”
“Kiss Daddy for me,” Callie said. “Tell him I miss him, and bring him home with you.”
“Of course I will,” Lisa said, which was reassuring to me.
Once I did the dishes, helped Callie with homework, and tucked her in, I called Jake to see how he was doing and to tell him about Grannie Annie, who was curled in front of the TV watching season two of a hospital series that ran for ten years. The point was that Annie wasn’t leaving soon. Jake didn’t answer.
I felt I needed to describe the situation to someone. I tried Rizzo at home.
“How’s it going?” she asked.
“I’m so glad to be here.”
“No complaints yet?”
“There’s a twenty-seven-year-old sitter Callie calls Grannie Annie!”
“Why? Does she look that old?”
“It appears she’s around all the time.”
“So why did Lisa need you to come?” Rizzo asked.
“I’m her mother, maybe? I didn’t have time to ask her. She’s already gone. Brian was promoted and is now working out of Boston, which is where she went.”
“Maybe it’s a second honeymoon? On the other hand, it could be they weren’t getting along. You never know what goes on in another person’s marriage. My mother worshipped my ex-husband. She called him her ‘favorite son,’ which was saying a lot because she had two real sons. After we divorced, she still drove to where he worked and left sandwiches for lunch in his truck. I could have throttled her.”
I didn’t pay much attention to what she was saying. I had consoled her during her wretched divorce, had heard it many times before, and I was thinking about Lisa.
“No need to ruminate about the office. I’ll remind Slivovitz to smile.”