So, its 5:25 and -shit- I’m late to pick up my grandmother. Work was a whirlwind again today with no breaks and no relief in sight. I’m spent, physically, emotionally, I’m totally drained. I blubber on the phone to my mother who is pleading with me to pull over if I’m going to have the “ugly cry” in the car. But dammit I’m LATE!
I pick up my Mamama. She wants to drive her car. She’s worried she is going to run out of gas and has been fretting over it since last week. (The woman drives all of five miles every five days, but she is sure she will run out of gas and, never having pumped her own, it is a truly frightful and horrendous prospect.) I go and fetch her car. It is a notch under half a tank. I heave a big sigh, just keep it together girl, keep it together- maybe two more hours then you can drown yourself in chocolate bars if you so desire.
We go to dinner at Chili’s, my first dinner out since the whole mess has gone down. I look around carefully for the people I don’t want to run into (I feel like I’m magnetized and will just be inexplicably drawn to the people I can’t see right now.) But the coast is clear and we like Chili’s, (particularly the wine.) She asks, “Are we going to talk about this?” I say, sure, let’s talk. She pries delicately, then plies me with libations,”Let’s have a second glass” but I don’t relent. She seems satisfied. “He just ran out of time.” Yes I nod (I dare not utter a word.) She speaks of my father, the man whom my mother divorced when I was three. The man that had commitment issues, that partied with friends until all hours- the standard “Peter Pan” syndrome- screw you guys I’m not ever going to grow up. She doesn’t mask her contention that there are some similarities in my present situation and that of my mother, over 27 years ago. She mentions how fond she will always be of my dad. A man you can’t help but be fond of, he is so freaking charming (shit, yet ANOTHER similarity?) She then says the thing that churns my gut. “The only thing I couldn’t forgive in your father was his unfaithfulness.”
I hide behind my menu. I am relieved the waitress arrives at just this opportune moment and I hastily order the first thing I see that looks remotely nourishing (food is still not very fun.) When it comes she takes a look at my plate and thinly veils her disgust. “What is that?” I respond “A Black Bean Burger.” She pauses, “You mean, there’s no meat?.” “No,” I respond, “Just Beans.”
“You aren’t going to become one of those are you?” (I think she means a vegetarian, but hell, she could mean a lesbian, that is the fun that is Mamama, you never really know what she is getting at but you just hang on for the ride.) “No,” I say “Don’t worry.”
After dinner she asks if I want to stagger to the mall with her to buy a “pretty.” I profess that would be nice, because that is what she wants to hear and she is trying to raise my spirits, but my heart wasn’t in shopping. And it doesn’t help that the motivation for the fall line at Belk’s department store is some serious ugly. Since I’ve already lost weight on the misery diet, I opted for a dress that can be cinched in at the waist, with dots on it (because who can be unhappy when they are wearing gigantic polka-dots, right?) I then take her to the grocery store for some “staples” (sherry and wonderbread) before carting her to what she calls “prison.” (She lives in the swankiest retirement community in town, but constantly proclaims to be stifled by their abundant rules and annual physicals.) She teeters into her doorway at which time her neighbors emerge. She introduces me to her neighbor, a delightful elderly man. He walks away and before the door is shut, she mutters “Creep.” I’m amazed and blink at her thusly. She says, “He wants to bond.” … “but I’m unbondable.”
As I leave, she calls out, “Call me when you want to drink dinner again dahlin’, why, what else are grandmother’s for?”
You got that right, sister. No really, I love my grandmother. She is sometimes nasty, often drunk
but always a delight in the way that only she can be.
