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from Contest #2

All the trouble began when my grandfather died and my grandmother - my father's mother - came to live with us. It didn’t end until they put a man on the moon.

That summer was a magical one they say, though I was unaware of the surrounding upheaval of society. I didn’t have a brother in the war or new-age parents that believed in free love, and I’d never met a real hippie. We were Republicans in a small New England town where time moves a little slower and everyone pauses before they adjust.

 

Grandad’s funeral was in March. The morning after, when everything should have gone back to normal, I sat at the kitchen table in front of my cereal box and bowl watching her glide into the room to take the seat across from me. At sixty-seven years old, she still insisted on gliding.

Grandmother was, well, the type of woman who requests that a nine-year-old refer to her as Grandmother. She wore pearls to accentuate her low hanging waddle and a bright shade of red lipstick (which Mom referred to as Vixen, quietly and to my father’s horror) spread generously over a rough estimation of where her lips had once been. After Grandad died, she only wore black. I never saw her in pajamas.

But I hadn’t yet figured this out while sitting across from her that morning. I just knew that my feet still hurt from my loafers, we had enough lasagna in the refrigerator to last a month, and the woman across the table wouldn’t stop staring at my mother.

Mom was swaying between the fridge, the toaster and frying pan with her hair unraveling and her dressing robe hanging around her, letting her nightgown peak out. She was cooking the eggs and buttering the toast and marinating something for dinner. Because it was never timed correctly, once everything had gotten onto a plate or into the oven, she would bend down in front of the percolator on the counter and watch it, willing it to speed up. It would always perk once dad’s foot hit the bottom stair. This was the routine.

“Grace, if you keep those eggs on any longer they will burn.”

“Yes, Mother Stuart,”

“Are you watching them?”

“Yes ma’am, I am. Do you want some toast?”

“I like to have my full breakfast at once, thank you, dear.”

Polite conversation was not part of the routine. As a result, dad was in the kitchen doorway a full five minutes before his coffee was ready.

He stood for a moment tying his tie and surveying his kingdom. He gave Grandmother a kiss and patted my head before sitting in front of his newspaper. He looked tired, with new deep pockets under his eyes that would remain until the day he died.

I opened my box of cereal and filled my bowl to the brim before the shiny metal lump crashed over the heap. It was a rocket. A silver and white streamline Mercury-Atlas 6 rocket replica, a tiny image of the last thing John Glenn looked at before escaping earth and flying to outer space. I held it up between two fingers to examine it, to imagine the tiniest of men inside it, waiting to blast off, up, out, and away.

“That is filthy,” said Grandmother.

I jumped at her voice, startled at being brought back the world, to a breakfast table where I was a child holding a trinket in the company of un-amused adults.

“They just throw those into boxes? For children to choke or catch disease while eating some trash that hardly constitutes as a breakfast in the first place?”

She really was disgusted, and I felt sorry for her for a moment. She had no idea how exciting a prize in the cereal box was. The sympathy vanished as soon as Dad took my rocket.

“Come on sport, you’re too old for that stuff anyway,” he said, examining the detail of the red tip at the rocket’s nose, “And it is time you started eating real food for breakfast.”

I stared at him in disbelief. He had been my compatriot for years; between games of catch that lasted until nightfall and instructions on proper stone skipping, he’d taught me everything I’d needed in the world. We’d been friends. I looked between him and the woman to his left, trying to understand this new alliance.

At this moment, my mother, my champion, brought his coffee to his place setting. She placed her hand on one shoulder and kissed the opposite cheek and, without any of us seeing how, she suddenly had the rocket in her fingertips.

“Oh, Andy, it’s just a rocket ship, I don’t see the harm-“

She was cut off by Grandmother chortling- or scoffing, some monosyllabic grunt that came from the back of her throat and sounded like a rumbling of all the phlegm inside of her gathering into a ball and escaping as vapor in a heavy sigh.

We all looked over at her, skeptical but afraid, and my father spoke first.

“He’s too old. And tomorrow I want him eating a real breakfast with his family. That’s that.”

I was angry, of course, because my rocket was taken away. But the betrayal I felt was new and more painful than I anything I’d known before that moment. It was like he just didn’t understand me anymore. Like he never would again.

I watched Grandmother staring purposefully at her placemat for a moment with her hands pressed together. I caught her for the instant that her eyes darted up toward my mother with a cold glassy gaze before resting again at a fixed point on the kitchen table. Mom squeezed Dad’s shoulder, where her hand already rested, then relaxed and went back to the stove to serve out the food.

She’d placed the rocket on the counter and I stared at it for the entirety of my last proper meal while shoveling Toastie-os into my mouth.

 

We’d get to know Grandmother’s gurgle well throughout the next four months. It lingered whenever I received a gift more interesting than a sweater, or when Mom and Dad sat too close to each other on the sofa. It loomed over the house along with Grandmother’s shroud of black, reminding everyone of the heavy weight of the bitterness that possesses a person whose only friend in the world was dead.

Grandad’s death had exposed a myriad of long-time admirers of his wherewithal. That is, at the funeral, all anyone talked about was how long he had lasted with “B” (Grandmother’s given name was Dorothy, thus creating many theories as to the origins of the B). No mention of the tragedy of death by trampling, or how greatly he’d be missed by the town that raised up around him, or even the unknown future of his paper company. Just how awful his miserable old wife was. And the occasional comment about the artful hands of the undertaker- as the open casket wasn’t nearly as revolting as it could have been.

For Dad’s part, he’d taken it all very quietly. He responsibly left his job at the bank and oversaw the production of New England’s largest paper mill, fulfilling the prophecy of “Stuart & Son’s.” He kept his tab open at the dressmaker and made sure that Mom and Grandmother’s outings were never marred by monetary disputes. He patted my head upon entering any room. He nodded to Grandmother and soothed mother through pecks on the cheek or hand squeezes. Still, he didn’t talk anymore. In early April I spotted my Mercury Atlas on a high shelf in his study. I remember staring at it as he closed the door in my face. After that, I knew that every time he took his scotch into that back room and shut the door, he was staring at the rocket ship, thinking of the frivolity of his stupid son, wondering whether he’d ever become a man.

As for Mom, well, she handled herself. When Dad wasn’t around, she wore the badge of Mrs. Stuart while she toted around the old Mother. Her skirts got tighter and make-up darker as she went on her in-law outings. The spring had brought torrential rain, and that combined with Grandmother’s presence resulted in me being dragged along for spring season shopping trips instead of baseball and mud fights. I stood on pedestals in short pants and collared shirts while Grandmother nodded and Mom cringed.

“I’m sorry, Mother Stuart; I just don’t think this is what he needs.”

“Every young man needs proper attire for outings.”

“Of course, but we already have a suit for him.”

“The same suit he wore to my husband’s funeral? I just don’t think that’s proper.”

Grandmother evoked Grandad’s funeral often when in private conversation with my mother. It, and the reception after, had been the only event that Mom had been allowed to organize due to Grandmother’s “state.” Food was burned, laughter was prevalent, and mini-hotdogs were served. I had enjoyed the reception because Mom let me go around barefoot. Dad had missed the whole affair, locked away in his study.

“It is a nice suit, Mother Stuart, and I don’t think he needs another one yet. Come down from there, I found a few boy’s leisure suits I want you to try.”

I don’t know how, but I ended up with a baby blue leisure suit that spring, and no short pants. And at the register, I swear I saw my mother’s eyes bat toward Grandmother’s with a familiar icy glare.

I stared into my mirror that night with my greased back hair, donning my powdered blue ensemble, imagining it as my own astronaut suit as I walked down the last aisle into the capsule. I walked downstairs as if floating in space, jumping slowly from step to step until I came down to the living room to display the outfit Mom was so proud of. Dad snickered. It was the biggest reaction I’d gotten from him in months. He curled down his paper, looked me up and down, and laughed in my face. He shook his head and told me to go change. As I turned the corner to climb the stairs, dejected and furious, I heard the women’s claws scraping.

“What a silly thing to own,” murmured Grandmother.

“It was cute!” cried Mom.

“I wanted to get him a suit.”

“He has a suit.”

Andy, do you realize your wife has bought your son only one suit?”

“Andy and I don’t often have occasions for suits.”

Grandmother’s phlegm retorted.

Dad’s paper rattled as I heard him open it to disguise himself.

Mom met me on the stairs, her own eyes filled with pain. She told me I looked handsome, told me I was a little man, and then told me not to pay attention to those two. It was as close as she would come to telling me that my father hated us.

 

The tension escalated with the heat.  The only noises in the house were whirring fans, melting ice cubes, and grandmother’s echoing throat. Her wardrobe didn’t change with the summer, but seemed to get thicker and more morose, with the lipstick melting onto her teeth and the weight of her pearls hunching her neck forward. As she turned into a vulture, Mom was transforming into some sort of poisonous plant. Her blouses were alive with plumage and ruffles as her shorter skirts exposed more of her long, angry vine-like legs. Her grasp got tighter when she dragged me to church, or away from a ball game, or to the supper table. Dad, despite the summer sun, grew more pale by the day.

 

But for one night, we would be a family. That is, the bitterness would hold its breath and we would pleasantly sit in silence and watch as history was made.

The evening had started poorly as Mom had arranged tray tables around the television set and was experimenting with microwave dinners while Grandmother sat fanning herself and watching.  

Father came out of the study at 6 p.m. to a meal in a box in front of the TV set. I sat next to him. We both wore pants that exposed our white knee high socks when we sat down. We both had our hair slicked back, we both hunched over the dinners with forks like shovels in our grip. Neither of us spoke as we watched Neil Armstrong gliding over the surface of the moon. It was perfect.

Grandmother’s grumble interrupted.

“It’s just not natural,” she said.

I choked on a microwaved carrot. I felt it mushed against the corners of my throat, unwilling to budge. I tried to cough it up but I couldn’t get enough air behind it to push it out. I was silent with lack of oxygen and disbelief. I was going to die because of this heartless woman who didn’t understand the very thing that kept the world moving forward. She could never imagine the feeling of floating in the middle of nothingness; of being so small while also the master of your universe.

Dad smacked me on the back and the carrot splatted into chunks on the tray table before me. He broke his fixation from the screen for a second to look down at me and wink.

“Mother, you’re exactly right. It’s totally unnatural. It’s extraordinary.”

 

That moment didn’t change the household. It shut Grandmother up for a few days, and seemed to rekindle Mom’s affection for her husband, but soon enough it was time to go back to school shopping and the curtains needed to be replaced and bickering escalated while Dad disappeared earlier and earlier into his study.  But now I knew that every time he closed that door, which was more and more often as Grandmother’s rasps grew in sound and frequency, he was looking down at the world from a capsule in the stars. And from then on, I disappeared with him, going into my own room to don my powder blue astronaut suit, to lie on the bed and see myself floating in the middle of space, with the grumbles of mothers fading into static from ground control while I faded out into the universe. It was extraordinary.

back to Contest #2