Something She's Not Telling Us - Darcey Bell Page 0,21
only time I ever heard them argue. Granny asked if he did it on purpose. He’d always hated the cat. Grandpa cried until Granny hugged him and said it wasn’t his fault. A lover’s quarrel, but shocking. I knew my grandpa would never do something like that.
Grandpa Frank still drives the 2009 Cadillac they garage behind their house. It gets eight miles a gallon, which is fortunate. Driving is expensive, and Grandpa Frank is no longer the greatest driver.
For a while, he was always losing their car keys, and we’d search the whole house every time. Now he always keeps them on a little ebony table in the front hall, near the door. He picks up the keys, shakes them three times—jingle, jingle, jingle—and off we go.
In case he ever forgets to leave them there, I’ve bought them a GPS tracker so they can find the keys on their cell phone, which I bought them too.
Granny Edith ties on a scarf with rabbit ears under her chin and tops it off with the ultra-dark glasses she wears because of her macular degeneration. Grandpa Frank wears a fedora in summer, a wool Tyrolean in winter. With a feather! An elderly couple so striking they could get away with anything. Rob banks, swindle pensioners. That’s how adorable they are, with their picnic hamper and the road map they never consult.
They turn on the classical station. Loud. And Grandpa Frank floors it through Hoboken and onto the Palisades. There’s a landing they like, over the Hudson, with a cute picnic table where they share Granny Edith’s fried chicken, coleslaw, homemade lemonade. Willows dip their branches into the water, and at the edge of the clearing are a few apple trees left from an orchard that the highway authority couldn’t bear to cut down.
When I ask Grandpa Frank to let me drive, he recites the only poem he knows:
James James
Morrison Morrison
Weatherby George Dupree
Took great
Care of his Mother
Though he was only three.
James James
Said to his Mother,
“Mother,” he said, said he:
“You must never go down to the end of the town, if you don’t go down with me.”
James James
Morrison’s Mother
Put on a golden gown,
James James
Morrison’s Mother
Drove to the end of the town.
James James
Morrison’s Mother
Said to herself, said she:
“I can get right down to the end of the town and be back in time for tea.”
“Stop it, Grandpa Frank,” I say. “You know I hate that poem—”
But he goes right on:
King John
Put up a notice,
“Lost or stolen or strayed!
James James
Morrison’s Mother
Seems to have been mislaid.
Last seen
Wandering vaguely:
Quite of her own accord,
She tried to get down to the end of the town—forty shillings reward!”
James James
Morrison’s Mother
Hasn’t been heard of since.
King John
Said he was sorry,
So did the Queen and Prince—
“Okay,” I say, “you have to stop now!”
Having tortured me enough, Grandpa Frank chuckles and falls silent. A few times he’s gone on to the last verse, the scariest of all, because he whispers the letters that begin the words, J. J. M. M. W. G. Du P. It’s the creepiest thing ever because I know what the letters mean. And because he’s whispering.
I guess he thinks it’s funny, three-year-old James James bossing his disobedient mom. Did something happen to Grandpa’s mother? Did she leave him, like Mom left me? I never thought it was funny. What is James James supposed to do now that Mother is gone forever?
But I put up with it. Forcing me to listen to every maddening line is the only annoying thing Grandpa Frank does. It’s his brilliant way of stopping me from bossing him around. Because whenever he recites it, I think: Okay, if he remembers all that, he’s probably good to drive.
I sleep in my old bedroom, which has become my grandparents’ shrine to me, crammed with relics: my high school spelling trophy, my college degree, school portraits of me grinning as if I’m in pain. Recent photos too: A shot of me on the red carpet with the Baroness Frieda. My certificate from the cooking school. And pictures (I beg Granny to ditch them) of me with various boyfriends.
I sleep like a baby in that room. No insomnia, no Ambien. No nightmares. Every so often I have this recurring dream that I have a pretty little daughter. We love each other more than anything in the world. I promise I will be good to her, treat her better than Mom treated me. Maybe I’m dreaming about myself at that age. I don’t care. The dream makes me happy.