Chapter 10
In the morning, Macallan surfaced in my room, down one sock, the other at her heel. She was wearing the unicorn T-shirt with leggings from the day before. Her hair was this way and that, and I wondered how I would deal with it later. She climbed into the guest room bed and hugged me. That was the great thing about being a grandparent—you collected so much love for so little work.
“Let’s read a book,” she said. “I’ll go get it.”
Callie loved to read. In no time, she returned with a stack of paperbacks. We cuddled in bed, and I read a book to her. Then we traded. We each read a page. The heartwarming experience carried me back to my youth, my thirties, when I read to my children. A tear dropped from my eye.
“Grandma Jo, are you crying?” Macallan asked.
“No. I’m remembering when I read to your mom, Uncle Michael, and Uncle Alex.”
“Mom doesn’t read much, but Dad reads to me a lot. I miss him. I wish he would come home already.”
“Your dad is a wonderful man,” I said.
I closed the book and asked, “Is there something special you’d like to do after school one day?”
“Arcade!” Callie said.
“Your wish is my command.”
“Really? I’ve never been because Mom thinks it’s a waste of money.”
“Do you know who told her that?” I asked.
“Dad?”
“Me,” I said, grinning. “I wouldn’t take her when she was a kid.”
“You never took Mom to an arcade, but you’re taking me?” she asked, confused.
How could I explain to her that as a mother, I was strict, played by all the rules, but as a grandmother, I was a total puff? As a mom, I wanted to be in charge. As a grandma, I wanted to be popular. “Being a grandmother is different than being a mother. Being a grandmother is a lot more fun.”
She smiled. “But you can be a grandmother even if you aren’t a mother. Grannie Annie doesn’t have any kids.”
I went with the flow. “You’ve got a point there.”
She nodded.
“Callie, why do you sleep in your clothes?”
“I don’t know. I just do.”
“I think we should buy you some nice pajamas.”
“Mom sleeps in her clothes.”
Honestly, it had never occurred to me to think about what my daughter slept in. She had left our apartment in New York for college as an eighteen-year-old with matching cotton pajamas. Now I discovered she wore her clothes to bed. What else did she do that I had never thought about? I was sure the list was endless. I was about to shamelessly pump the kid for information, but she continued on her own.
“Lots of times, Mom is too tired to change. Lots of times, she falls asleep on the couch or in bed with me. She says Dad makes too much noise, snoring and farting and all. She calls him a one-man band. You know, he’s like this.” She honked loudly and repeatedly, faked coughs and achoo sneezes, pretended bleeps were coming from her behind. Being eight, she became carried away, stood on the bed, and did it all again.
“Sounds like Dad needs a conductor!” I said as I pulled her back down.
Callie’s comments shed stolen light on my daughter’s current relationship with Brian. I stopped asking questions. I patted Callie’s rear. “Go wash up. Get dressed. I’ll make breakfast.”
“You don’t have to do that. I have a strawberry shake while I wait for the bus.”
“That’s all your mom gives you?”
“She doesn’t give it to me. I take it. A shake is enough for breakfast.”
“Not when Grandma’s here. Pancakes are coming up.”
“I love pancakes. But we’re out of the real maple syrup, the kind that comes from trees. There might not even be pancake dust.”
“Pancake dust. I like that,” I said.
I extracted an open box of mix in a cabinet short of supplies and rummaged until I found honey, a huge bottle with a crusty top from the food co-op. A schmear of honey remained. I hadn’t made pancakes in eons. When I wanted pancakes, I went out.
Because I would do anything for my granddaughter, I gave making flapjacks a try, but, as usual, my efforts fell to pieces. The scrambled pancakes looked pathetic, but, after all, pancakes are pancakes, and I hoped they’d taste delicious. I yelled up to Callie, told her it was time for breakfast. She thumped down the stairs, entered the kitchen in a clean version of what she’d slept in—another unicorn T-shirt, another pair of leggings. I took a sip of my coffee. She scrutinized the pancakes.
“What happened?” she asked about my fiasco.
“You’ve never had scrambled pancakes?” I said, casually as possible. “Everyone orders pancakes scrambled in Florida. In fact, scrambled pancakes cost extra. Like orange juice added to a breakfast platter.”
“Uh-huh,” she said as though she didn’t believe me.
“Really. Ask anyone.”
“Right, Grandma. I bet.”
I pushed the plate closer to her. “Pancakes are pancakes,” I said as she ate.
Once she finished my fine breakfast cuisine, I told her I had to brush her hair before she left for school.
“I don’t let anyone brush my hair except my mother and Grannie Annie. She can do any hairstyle I want. She can wrap a braid around my head.”
I went to the second floor, brought down a paddle brush. I worried I’d pull Callie’s hair, and, in the end, it wouldn’t look better for the pain I’d caused us both.
“Are you good at it?” she asked.
I shrugged.
“Did my mom like it when you did her hair?”
I couldn’t lie. “No. The truth? As soon as she saw me coming, she ran away. She said I used a killer brush. In defense, she learned early how to take care of her hair all by herself.”
“Then I will try myself.”
“Okay, fine with me,” I said.
“Did she really say ‘murder brush’?”
“Killer brush. But she thought it was murder.”
When it was time to catch the bus, Callie grabbed a hot-pink vinyl backpack, slipped on her laced-up sneakers by crushing the heels, waved at me, and skipped off. I watched from the porch as the bus driver waited for her to board.
Then I called Jake. In the past, he would have been at work. Now I imagined him still in bed, down and out.
Jake fumbled with his phone as he answered. “What’s happening there?” he asked.
“First, how are you?”
“I’ll be all right. Dentist today.”
“I have so much news. But the kicker is there’s a twenty-seven-year-old babysitter here that Callie calls grandma. She lives with Brian’s father. The old dog. Her title, get this, is Grannie Annie.”
“Well, it sounds like Callie feels close to her.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Jodi. Callie can call her whatever she wants.”
“Your daughter took off after dinner last night. She couldn’t wait to get to Boston.”
“So, when she leaves too quickly, she is my daughter?”
“I would’ve liked more time to talk. Also, I didn’t think she should drive at night. Whatever. I can’t control the universe.”
“But that doesn’t mean you aren’t going to try.”
“There’s news about Brian. A promotion. He’s heading up the geography department at the university.”
“Nice going.”
I felt anxious because I knew what I said next would aggravate him. The same way it was needling me. Jake alleged separation in a marriage led to, well, separation. “Brian lives in Boston all week. I think he didn’t want to schlep back and forth every day.”
“Uh-huh,” Jake said. “That’s a clever one.”
“You think there’s something more to this?”
“Maybe, maybe not, but do you have any idea how difficult it is to sustain a marriage?”
I wondered if he realized he was talking to a woman who had sustained a decades-long marriage to him.
“Marriage is a tightrope walk,” he said. “Let’s hope he moved for the job, and this isn’t the start of something else.”
When I hung up with Jake, I wondered whether Brian’s move had more to do with his relationship with my daughter than the trudge back and forth to Boston.
I had Lisa etched in my mind. I thought about the day, years ago, when Lisa and I went to a big-name restaurant in Florida. Next to us, at a two-topper, sat a young, beautiful redhead. I couldn’t see her shoes because her feet were under the table. She wore a very little dress, a piece of velvet the size of a napkin cut way off the shoulders.
Opposite her sat a well-dressed man with thin, graying hair. He was wearing loafers too expensive to walk in, a sports coat that was surely made to order, a white dress shirt, and a silk tie. The woman had laughed gaily at everything the man said. He could’ve announced, The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor , and she would’ve giggled. Each time she laughed, her dress slid farther off her shoulders, and soon I could see her nipple.
Lisa had poked me. “Do you see that couple?” she whispered.
“Who doesn’t see them?”
“What do you think their relationship is?” Lisa asked.
“Father-daughter,” I answered sarcastically.
“Did you ever have an affair?”
“Hard to remember,” I joked.
“What about Dad?”
I was surprised by the question, so direct. “Well, let me think.”
“Very funny, Mom. Brian meets a woman in a diner.”
“I had no idea Brian ever ate in a diner.”
“He’s partial to challah French toast.”
I took her hand in mine. “I’m so sorry, Lisa,” I said, reprimanding myself for sky-high naivety. It never occurred to me that my son-in-law would cheat. I tended to think the best of people.
“A friend of mine has seen the two of them during the day at the diner a few times.”
“Maybe your friend misinterpreted the situation.” Live in hope. Die in despair.
“No way.”
“Do you know who she is?” I had asked calmly.
She shook her head. “I don’t want to know.”
“What are you planning to do?”
“Pretend I have no clue until he tells me. Once he tells me, we’ll go for counseling.”
I was surprised that a type A woman like my daughter would plant her head in the sand. I knew I couldn’t. I’d want it out in the open. I’d want to deal with it—or deal Jake out. Just the thought of Jake sleeping with another woman, then coming home to me, was revolting. I’d have to spray him with Lysol. Dip him in acid.
I was amazed how undisturbed Lisa appeared. Maybe it was a generational difference. Or maybe she had cheated on Brian. If so, I didn’t want to know. I simply wished they could work things out. “You appear rather calm about this.”
Lisa shrugged. “How much diner food can this woman eat?”
“Does she like rice pudding?” My favorite dessert in any diner.
“Not as much as you do, Mom.”
“Maybe you should go to a counselor on your own?” I said, attempting to be helpful.
“Oh, come on, Mom.”
I had no idea what a counselor would tell her. I had never been to one. When my children were young, I fought depression with Prozac. The drug, which was new to the market, was prescribed by my general practitioner. In weeks, my mood improved. I was all for Prozac nation. I was for any nation that made anyone feel better.
The conversation stuck with me. A month later, while Lisa and I were on the phone, I asked her if everything was okay with Brian. She claimed all was well; everything had worked out. But had it? It was clear she didn’t want to talk about it, so I never brought it up again, and I tried not to stew. In any case, she was still married, and I took that as a good sign.