Granny Olga had a machine in her heart that made her breath keep pace. It beat for her. “It’s like leaning on something every now and again,” Mother explained. Father said Granny Olga had the heart of a mechanic. “It’ll fix itself even in the grave.” In practical terms, the machine in Granny Olga’s heart meant I couldn’t use the microwave when she was in the kitchen. I remember watching Father warm his dinner one night when he was late after work. Granny Olga stood in the doorway to the living room, waiting for the light in the box to go off and the carousel to stop spinning.
“It’s the only time when your Grandmother visits that I can be alone with my meal,” Father had said running the empty machine for another minute while he started in on his food.
Mother disappeared down the stairs to Granny Olga’s room. The basement carpet was a thick brown grosgrain. Utility grade. I knew it shamed Mother to store her mother in such a space. “Basement level,” Father had said. “There could be floods.”
I went to my room.
“Gram’s alright,” Mother said a few minutes later, peeking her head in. “She’s just had one of her spells. I wanted you to know. Let’s all have a lie down. I can see you look comfortable.”
“That’s fine,” I said. It seemed fine. We all seemed fine.
When I woke it was almost evening. There was a breeze coming through the screen in the window. The flies had laid off of their buzzing.
I went downstairs to check on dinner. Mother’s light was on in her room. The door was ajar. I could see the glow of the lamp on her table. One of the shades Ruth had made her.
I didn’t knock. It went against Mother’s rules about modesty. There was no such thing as nudity between women. There was just bodies and this or that mound of flesh.
Mother was sprawled out on top of the covers in her nightdress when I came in. The long thin expanse of her legs where they emerged from the sheets looked wild.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said.
I hesitated to enter. There was an energy in the air I couldn’t identify. Her body was prone and urgent, as though she’d been struggling with something.
“It’s OK,” she said. “I’m almost finished here.”
I sat on the edge of the bed furthest from her body.
“Why did you come back?” I said.
“Oh,” she said. “It was a confluence of things.”
Mother was always saying that. Everything was the fault of various hatreds.
“First off,” she said. “I met a man. I met exactly the kind of man I should have been attracted to but wasn’t.”
“Oh,” I said. “Wasn’t he lovely?”
“He was lovely,” she said. “He was quite fine. Went to Harvard or something in the seventies. Now he makes films.”
Mother had a strange attraction for Harvard men despite the fact that the only one she’d met was Floyd Cutler. Floyd Cutler and his young wife, Joy, had built a home two roads over on Merriam. A large single-story bungalow of Floyd’s design built into the side of a hill. It had a short pitch and three walls constructed entirely of glass. The toilets required small amounts of water and the roof was designed to grow seedlings. From the outside, the house looked like a life-sized terrarium.
Joy had invited Mother and Father to one of their parties. The Cutler’s had strung up a line of old bed linens on the side of the yard that faced the neighbors. Everyone had gone swimming naked in the pool that fed off the stream alongside their property.
“At first it was a bit of a shock,” Mother had said after the party. “And then it was fun and then it was a bit of a shock again seeing everyone wandering around in their bare feet by the edge of the pool. The feet on those people. I remember thinking how ugly they were. The pool was just stinking with them.”
“The whole thing was so damn depressing,” Father had said.
“The way those people got on about jazz.”
“I thought you and Floyd talked about movies?” Mother had said. “Joy said you two had a chat.”
“Silent films,” Father had said. “He wanted to make a silent film about a woman giving birth in his pool.”
“Poor thing too,” Mother had said. “His wife was barren.”
“I didn’t know,” Father had said.
“Joy told me herself,” Mother had said. “One afternoon she invited me for cocktails. It was my turn on the carpool. She suggested we sun ourselves on the patio. The boys were adopted, you know. She said they were used to her going topless in the house. After a few drinks, I asked her where she had adopted them. ‘They look so different from one another,’ I said. She agreed. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘They have different fathers.’ ‘Don’t we all,’ I said.”
“I think she’s lonely,” Father had said. “She must be lonely over there without any real neighbors. Most weekends Floyd’s away at a conference. She’s all alone in that house.”
“How do you know how often Floyd’s away or he isn’t?” Mother had said.
“He told me himself,” Father had said. “He pointed at the house and said, ‘It’s funny, Rick. I built this house but whenever I’m here I feel like I’m on vacation. And yet as soon as I leave, I want to come home again.”
“Poor thing,” Mother had said. “I always knew there was something a tad sick about that man. Handsome people too.”
“You know what they say about handsome types,” Father had said. “They all went to Harvard in the seventies.”
“Not everyone worth hating attended Harvard in the late seventies, Rick,” Mother had said.
“No,” Father had said. “Everyone worth hating leaves their wife alone in a house with a glass wall.”
“You think he means for people to watch her?” Mother had said.
“I don’t think he means anything,” Father had said. “It’s all just a bunch of hot air. That’s just it.”
I thought of this story now as I gazed at Mother in her bed. Her head propped up on a pillow. She scratched the inside of her thigh. When she caught me looking at her, she extended her legs and pointed her toes as though to stretch.
“Oh,” I said. “How did you meet this exactly perfect man?”
“I probably shouldn’t say,” she said.
“Probably not,” I said. “Father might not see any fun in it.”
“I agree with him there,” she said. “It might be inappropriate.”
She stared hard at me as though searching for something. I looked at her naked hand. I thought about taking it in mine. I thought about smelling her fingers. I thought they would smell like something but I didn’t know what.
“Although,” she said, stroking the edge of the bed. “It might be instructive.”
“Sure,” I said.
“He lived down the street,” she started. “His father ran the bakery. He was the oldest of the three boys. All handsome too. Or at least that’s how I remembered them. He was my sister’s age then.”
“And now?” I said.
“Oh,” she said. “Now I suppose we’re the same age. Maybe he’s a few years older. He had some gray in his hair.”
“What does he do?” I said.
“He writes films,” she said. “Or he wrote one film I remember. It was based on a book of his that was optioned for a movie. The book was called Did I Wake You Up?”
“What a title,” I said.
“Well,” she said. “We were in college then.”
“What was he like?” I said.
“That’s the thing,” she said. “He wasn’t. We went to a few diners.
He picked me up in his car. I borrowed your Grandmother’s mink. But after a week, I realized he hadn’t changed any since he’d written that book. He hadn’t expanded.”
“Is he married?” I said.
“No,” she said. “He married young and divorced. He was in town for a few weeks visiting his parents.”