Chapter 15
Except for leftover spaghetti and meatballs, yogurt, and liquor, Lisa’s refrigerator was empty. I had always been a full-fridge person. At home in Florida, I went to the fridge many times a day to make sure it was still there. My friend Suzy has always advised me not to get out of bed at night and open the fridge. Here’s my thinking about that: if you aren’t supposed to go to the fridge when it’s dark, why is there a light in it?
It upset me that Lisa didn’t seem to care if my granddaughter had enough to sustain her. How could Lisa have grown up in my home and not know how to keep food on hand? Then I realized she was doing the opposite of what I’d done. And it wasn’t only about food, but about a lot of things. I had married right out of college. She had traveled. We had lived in the big city, and she had settled in a small town. I had done what I thought my parents wanted me to do. My daughter was unencumbered by our expectations. She lived her own way. We had sent her to religious school, taken her to synagogue, enrolled her in Jewish sleepaway camps. She adhered to no religion at all. I was the center of my extended family, radiating out to all points; she didn’t call her brothers unless they called her first. Jake and I never lived apart. She was fine with Brian in Boston. I thought about that last one. Perhaps it was generational. It was easier to travel to and from places now, to communicate from one end of the globe to the other.
When I had asked Callie what Lisa usually made for dinner, she said, “Whatever she brings from the restaurant. We like apps. We’re slap app happy. That’s what Mom says.”
“Appetizers—like what?”
“Escargot. I love escargot.”
I imagined the child with five snails in black shells on a white plate in front of her.
“Delicious,” I said, so it wouldn’t seem like I was judging. I never judge. Ahem.
“Grandma Jo, do you want to hear my joke? Well, it’s Mom’s. She made it up.”
“Of course.”
“I like to eat escargot at a snail’s pace.”
I grinned. “Pretty good.”
“Mom also brings eel in sauce.”
Sounded like cat food to me. “Eel makes a great meal.”
“I’d eat it off my heel,” she said, launching our poetry game.
“And what about lunch?”
“I get lunch at school. It’s awful. Smells like pee soup.”
“Grandpa loves pea soup. Split-pea soup can be delicious,” I said.
“Not ‘pea’ as in the vegetable. ‘Pee’ as in the toilet.”
Going to the general store would not suffice. While Callie was in school, I drove to the supermarket. Outside were displays of autumn blooms—scarlet sage, zinnias, cold-hardy petunias. Baskets of apples, gourds, Indian corn. Scarecrows, rakes. Wooden signs that said HOME SWEET HOME and IT ’ S FIVE O ’ CLOCK SOMEWHERE .
Once inside, I took a steel cart and opened the seat to store my shoulder bag while shopping. And there—there on the seat—was the face of Diandra Summer Lake. First name in second homes. The navy blazer. The red headband. I couldn’t get away from her. I returned to where the carts were shoved together. I raised one seat after another—Di, Di, Di. At last, I came to one promoting a competitor, Live Here Now Realty, which employed the tippy-top agents in the area—or so it said on the grocery cart, and would a grocery cart lie? I went with Live Here Now and proceeded to shop.
In the bread aisle, I selected hamburger rolls, whole wheat bread. Lisa rang. I hurried to catch her call.
“Everything okay, Mom?”
“Great. Fantastic.” I knew better than to say anything of concern to my daughter. She was lax about her child, and I wanted this gig again. Sometimes as a mother and mother-in-law, I felt as though I was walking on eggshells—because I was. It wasn’t only me. I’d noticed my friends Suzy and Amy soften when interacting with grown-and-flown children. Relationship preservation.
Also, I didn’t want to kvetch to Lisa, but I did by starting in about Di.
“I think Di is following me.”
“What?”
“She has a billboard on the road. Last night, I was watching TV when Nicki Nussbaum promoted a segment about her. Now I’m in the grocery store. And she’s here too. Advertising on the shopping carts.”
She chuckled, which was annoying.
“You must understand, Mom. Di is excellent at what she does. She receives a lot of acclaim and does a load of advertising.”
“Lisa, I’ve noticed.”
“Mom, Di’s like the mayor. In fact, people call her the mayor. Di talks to everyone. She knows everything. Pick any person you see in town, and she can tell you when that person wakes up each morning. Now that I think about it, maybe she’s not mayor, maybe she’s governor. But, Mom, she’s had a tough go of it.”
“Who hasn’t?”
“You.”
Oh, yes, how could I forget my entire life had been a piece of pie, a bowl of cherries? That every day had been a skip in the park? Did she not know how I struggled to get past my armed-guard upbringing by two people mired in xenophobia on a farm in Colchester, Connecticut, then West Hartford, where everyone seemed to play by the same rules? That my twin sons were born a frightening three months early, and I had lost my father in an automobile accident while my babies were in the ICU. That my aunt, my father’s sister, was driving the car that day and was institutionalized because she couldn’t recover from what had happened. That I couldn’t bring myself to visit my aunt, even though the other driver was drunk—pickled in alcohol on his way home from an office party—and the accident was not her fault?
Had she not noticed I suffered from depression while she was growing up? (Is it still considered postpartum depression when your youngest child is ten years old?) That I had to force myself out of bed every morning to get my three kids to school and miraculously arrive at work with my head still on my shoulders. And go home in the evenings wanting to relax for a few moments, but instead supervised homework, served a home-cooked dinner (is it home cooked if it comes in a package and needs to be boiled?), and gave each child a bath before Jake came home—his drink at the ready—because in those early days he toiled at his father’s mattress empire until nine o’clock each night. Then— hallelujah —Prozac, and I was able to find relief.
That I sold my practice, forfeited Manhattan, relocated to Sweat, Florida, for Jake. And now, Jake had been let go and needed to turn that around.
Pickleball, my tuchas —meaning “my ass.” My bubbe always told me, “With one tuchas , you can’t dance at two weddings.” And she was right. No way to be in Florida with Jake and in Massachusetts with my granddaughter.
But I wasn’t going to share any of the rant in my head with my daughter, or anyone else. No one wants to hear such a compilation of upper-middle-class complaints and old grievances. Besides, I survived it all. And it made me stronger.
I’d had enough of Lisa carrying Di’s flag on horseback. “How’s it going in Boston?”
“It’s going.”
“What does that mean?”
“Oh, you know,” Lisa said. “I’m meeting with a few suppliers.”
“How’s Brian?” I asked.
“Okay. He misses Callie. Oh, and Mom, be sure Callie has a slice of avocado every day.”
She had changed the conversation too fast to avocado. I guessed I’d find out what was going on with Brian when she returned. Not that I could do anything about it, a sad revelation I took a long time in coming to: what happened to my grown children was out of my control.
After saying goodbye to Lisa, I was debating which brand of eggs to choose when a person behind me said, “No, no, no. We buy eggs at the farmers’ market.” I swiveled. And there was Annie.
Di was plastered on the shopping carts while Grannie Annie stood in front of me in red high-top sneakers, a coat, a sweater, and a jumper that ended where her vagina began. I couldn’t help staring at the crimson-and-purple tattoo on her thigh. What was it? Was it an M ? An M for “Milton”?
“What are you doing here?” I blurted.
Annie stared at me as though I’d asked which planet we were on. “I’m grocery shopping? For food.”
“Of course.”
“When you’re ready to check out, go to my friend, the tall cashier with the dreadlocks. The other cashiers are slow. The ice cream melts in their lines. Also, they pile too many groceries in each bag. And skip the one on the far left because she overcharges customers, then keeps the cash at the end of the day. But don’t tell anyone. I don’t want to get her in trouble. She’s single, has four kids to feed.”
Would Annie stop to breathe?
“Got it,” I said.
She went on. “Milton wants lamb chops. Can you believe he devours those little babies? Likes them almost raw. I’m secretly praying the store is all out. But if they have them, I’ll get them. Because Milton, you know? I’m a vegetarian except when I really want a hamburger. And if I go to a ball game, I’ll have a hot dog. I tried being a vegan for a bit, but I missed the dairy. And eggs. Do you like lamb chops? Tell me you don’t like lamb chops.”
I lied. “I don’t like lamb chops.” The truth is I savor lamb chops with applesauce. If I go to a wedding where they serve lamb lollipops during cocktail hour, I stalk the server, hunt him down.
“Did you hear about Di’s sister?” Annie asked.
“That she has cancer?”
She shook her head sympathetically, “Cancer and now pneumonia. Doubleheader. You know her sister is her mother.”
Wasn’t that one of the secrets Di warned me not to tell Annie?
“Di’s been married four times,” Annie continued. “But she always blames men for her failures. She told me Milton left her for a phlebotomist. But Milton swears she was only studying to become one. Don’t tell Di I clued you in.”
“Never,” I promised.
“The trick to getting along with Diandra Summer Lake—that’s not her real name—is to mind your own business. I’ve tried to be nice to her, but it’s a waste of time. All she cares about is business. She’d kill her own sister-mother for a listing.”
It was tempting, but I wasn’t going to say anything lousy about Di to Annie. “I won’t let her get my goat.”
“What goat?” Annie said.
I guessed I had dated myself. “It’s a saying.”
“You mean from the old days?”
“Yes. From the war.”
“Vietnam?” Annie said.
“War of 1812. I was there.”
When Annie vanished to find the chops, I pushed my cart to the middle of the store, where snacks were found. I knew that because every article about staying healthy said to avoid the center of the supermarket.
My role as a grandmother, as I figured it, was to make my granddaughter happy. This was, of course, out of my bounty of love for her. But there was more: When I was gone, I wanted her to recall what an ace I was. Buying the things she liked was a way to accomplish this. So, I found the cookies. I snapped up a bag of chips. I chose Lucky Charms. I stocked up on pancake mix and some real maple syrup. I chose regular milk, chocolate as well. Skim milk for me.
I waited until I thought Annie had left the meat department and wandered over to pick up ground beef for hamburgers. Also, Callie was mad for mac and cheese, so I found the Kraft. I swore to myself that it was all for Callie. I wouldn’t touch a thing. I’d take Annie’s suggestion and stop at the Hello Apple Farm for a variety of cukes, romaine, peppers, tomatoes, broccoli. It would be salad days for me. I backtracked to pick up some zero-calorie, zero-taste salad dressing.
At checkout, I joined the shortest line, manned by a dour senior with gray poodle hair and out-of-date gold glasses. A cashier with dreadlocks one aisle over waved to me. “Come here,” he signaled. I assumed Annie had mentioned me. I wondered how she described me. Was I middle aged to Annie or over the hill? I glanced at the long line for the cashier with dreadlocks. His customers had overfilled carts, loaded as if in anticipation of a snowstorm. I remained where I was.
Annie came up beside me. “The one with dreadlocks,” she whispered. “Do you have bags?”
I forgot to bring bags, only because bags were free for thousands of years, so it never occurred to me to carry my own into a store. At checkout, I’d buy paper bags, which the bagger would overload to save me the cost of one or two more. The heaviest would split. Blueberries rolling on the floor. A bottle of juice busted.
“No. I don’t.”
“Here,” she said, setting several reusables atop my groceries.
“Thank you, Annie.”
She meant well. I couldn’t say the same for Di.