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When I enter, the cashier’s eyes follow me carefully. Some blond scruffy guy wearing a hoodie advertising some app I’ve never heard of frowns at me as I consider the varied cheese selection, as if I’m the one out of place in the neighborhood where I went to high school.
The apples are all organic, and the bread bears the logo of some fancy bakery. I shake my head and get them anyway. I add a few things for dinner tonight, and we’re set.
I return to my grandmother’s apartment, put the groceries away, set the table, and, on further contemplation, start cleaning the bathroom.
When the light starts to fade, I turn on the light in the living room. She still doesn’t seem to notice that I’ve arrived.
Nana’s ability to concentrate is incredible. There’s a reason she’s one of the best trial attorneys in her office. She can shut out everything except her work for weeks on end. The sofa has a permanent indentation where she sits and works. She’s one of the leading experts on fair housing law. From what I’ve been reading in the papers, she’s about to bring one of the city’s largest landlords to trial.
She puts the folder she’s working on back in the box, reaches for the next, realizes she’s come to the end of the box, and finally looks up.
“Oh.” She stretches and blinks, as if the bright light of reality is blinding. “Maria. What time is it?”
“Seven thirty-six.”
“You’ve been here an hour already?”
More like an hour and a half at this point.
“One day,” I tell her, “someone is going to break into your apartment and steal everything. You’ll be home, but you won’t even notice they’re here.”
She smiles. “As long as they don’t take my notes, I really don’t care. And on the bright side, I won’t get shot confronting them.”
“I got dinner.”
She frowns and peers in the direction of the kitchen over the edge of her reading glasses. “That looks nice. Did I have chicken in the house?”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I didn’t trust anything in the fridge. It was sketchy as hell.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
I don’t say anything to that. The truth is, she took me in when I most needed her. Being useful is the least I can do after that.
“You went shopping.” She stands up, her eyes narrowing. “Maria, you’re a college student. You shouldn’t be buying me groceries. That is exactly backward.”
“It’s nothing.”
It is, really. The truth is, at this point, the ads and affiliate payments from my blog generate a little over a thousand dollars every month. Add in the fact that Blake Reynolds owns the house where I live and refuses to accept rent. I don’t make enough to repay student loans or manage all the other adult bills I might otherwise have to deal with. But I still feel rich as hell.
She glares at me. “How much did you spend?”
“Thirty dollars.”
“I’ll pay you back.” She glances around the living room. I hadn’t gotten to the living room yet. It’s littered with paper, boxes of evidence, a suit jacket, three blouses still in plastic dry cleaning, a take-out bag from a local Chinese restaurant, used wooden chopsticks…
“I’ll pay you back,” she amends, “when I find my purse.”
“You mean you’ll pay me back when pigs fly.”
She sticks her tongue out at me, glances at the next box of evidence, and then stands.
“Oooh.” She sets her hand on her stomach.
“Are you okay?”
She winces. “Fine. I just think I was sitting too long.”
My grandmother is usually an excellent conversationalist. She’s one of those people who can talk intelligently about everything. She can ask insightful, interesting questions about anything anyone can throw at her. She’s bright, funny, and intelligent…except when she’s about to go to trial. Then, her brain gets so crammed with the record from whatever case she’s working on that there’s no space for anything else. She sits at the table, in front of the plate I’ve made for her, and stares blankly at the setting as if she’s forgotten what a fork is for.
“So. When does trial start?”
“Tuesday.” She’s still distracted. “I’m going to have nine days of witnesses.” Her hand goes again to her abdomen. I translate this into lay person terms. With interruptions and bar conferences, with presentations from the other side, opening and closing arguments, drafting instructions to the jury… I can expect Nana to be completely out of commission for almost a month.
“Expecting anything good to come out at trial?”
“I don’t expect. I know.” She taps her fork against her plate. “And yes, it will all come out about as I expect. There are always a few surprises, but it’s not television. I can’t tell you anything else about it.”
I understand that. She’s scrupulous about her ethical duties. She’ll tell me all about cases after they’ve happened and everything becomes public; before trial, though, she just stares straight ahead like she’s a zombie.
“You should eat,” I point out.
She jumps and blinks, and then carefully takes a bite of the chicken that I have so carefully obtained from the market.
“I was thinking,” she says slowly.
“Yes?”
“You’re graduating in…” Doing math overtaxes her current brain capacity.
“Four months,” I supply.
“Four months.” She nods. “I can arrange things, I think. Take a vacation. I have…a lot of vacation days saved up. We should do something to celebrate.”
I’m not sure if we’re celebrating my graduation or my impending desce
nt into the drudgery of full-time work.
“What do you want to do?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. Go somewhere?” She picks up a roll and rips a piece off. “Somewhere that has never heard of section 3604. You know. I’ll do a brain dump or something.”
“That’s most of the world outside a courtroom.”
“Then let’s not go to a courtroom,” she says. “You decide.”
I look over at her. She appears to be serious. “Antarctica.”
“Sure.”
“It’ll be winter there that time of year,” I point out.
“Mittens,” she says distractedly.
“Norway,” I counter. “Everyone there is white. They don’t have to worry about racial discrimination in housing rentals.”
She smiles hopefully at nothing across the room. “Perfect. Although at the rate things are going, San Francisco will turn into entirely on-demand short-term housing in three years anyway. Just in time for me to retire.”
I sigh and set a reminder on my phone to ask her whether she actually means this vacation talk when she’s finished with her trial. She’s probably serious about the vacation; she definitely would not want me to decide it all on my own. She is a woman of decided opinions. Or rather, she will have decided opinions. In a few weeks, when the trial is over.
I look over at her. She’s eaten half her roll, a few bites of chicken, and no salad. She’s already looking yearningly at the next box back in the room.
“I’ll go get your box if you finish what’s on your plate,” I tell her.
Nana blinks and looks over at me. “Oh.” She considers this. Her eyes slip back to the box, and then she shakes her head. “No, no. I’m being a bad grandmother. I should ask you what’s going on in your life. Have you decided on a job yet after graduation? Are you seeing anyone?” She frowns. “I don’t think I know the answer to any of these questions.”
I take her hand. “You could never be a bad grandmother,” I say. “Never, ever.”
