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And though they may blow up our planet
and kill every creature living on it
Like Leia and Han, in the stars above,
they can never destroy our love—
Like the Millennium Falcon in hyperdrive
our love will continue to thrive and thrive.
Thursday, January 22, limo on way home from Grandmère’s
It takes a big person to admit she’s wrong—Grandmère is the one who taught me that.
And if it’s true, then I must be even bigger than my five feet nine inches. Because I’ve been wrong. I’ve been wrong about Grandmère. All this time, when I thought she was inhuman and perhaps even sent down from an alien mothership to observe life on this planet and then report back to her superiors? Yeah, turns out Grandmère really is human, just like me.
How did I find this out? How did I discover that the dowager princess of Genovia did not, after all, sell her soul to the Prince of Darkness as I have often surmised?
I learned it today when I walked into Grandmère’s suite at the Plaza, fully prepared to do battle with her over the whole Contessa Trevanni thing. I was going to be all, “Grandmère, Dad says I don’t have to go, and guess what, I’m not going to.”
That’s what I was going to say, anyway.
Except that when I walked in and saw her, the words practically died on my lips. Because Grandmère looked as if someone had run over her with a truck! Seriously. She was sitting there in the dark—she had had these purple scarves thrown over the lampshades because she said the light was hurting her eyes—and she wasn’t even dressed properly. She had on a velvet lounging robe and some slippers and had a cashmere throw blanket covering her lap and that was it, and her hair was all in curlers and if her eyeliner hadn’t been tattooed on, I swear it would have been all smeared. She wasn’t even enjoying a Sidecar, her favorite refreshment, or anything. She was just sitting there, with Rommel trembling on her lap, looking like death warmed over. Grandmère, not the dog.
“Grandmère,” I couldn’t help crying out, when I saw her. “Are you all right? Are you sick or something?”
But all Grandmère said was, in a voice so unlike her own normally quite strident one that I could barely believe it belonged to the same woman, “No, I’m fine. At least I will be. Once I get over the humiliation.”
“Humiliation? What humiliation?” I went over to kneel by her chair. “Grandmère, are you sure you aren’t sick? You aren’t even smoking!”
“I’ll be all right,” she said, weakly. “It will be weeks before I’ll be able to show my face in public. But I’m a Renaldo. I’m strong. I will recover.”
Actually Grandmère is technically only a Renaldo by marriage, but at that point I wasn’t going to argue with her, because I thought there was something genuinely wrong, like her uterus had fallen out in the shower or something (this happened to one of the women in the condo community down in Boca where Lilly and Michael’s grandmother lives. Also it happens a lot to the cows in All Creatures Great and Small ).
“Grandmère,” I said, kind of looking around, in case her uterus was lying on the floor somewhere or whatever. “Do you want me to call a doctor?”
“No doctor can cure what is wrong with me,” Grandmère assured me. “I am only suffering from the mortification of having a granddaughter who doesn’t love me.”
I had no idea what she was talking about. Sure, I don’t like Grandmère so much sometimes. Sometimes I even think I hate her. But I don’t not love her. I guess. At least I’ve never said so, to her face.
“Grandmère, what are you talking about? Of course I love you—”
“Then why won’t you come with me to the Contessa Trevanni’s black-and-white ball?” Grandmère wailed.
Blinking rapidly, I could only stammer, “Wh-what?”
“Your father says you will not go to the ball,” Grandmère said. “He says you have no wish to go!”
“Grandmère,” I said. “You know I don’t want to go. You know that Michael and I—”
“That boy!” Grandmère cried. “That boy again!”
“Grandmère, stop calling him that,” I said. “You know his name perfectly well.”
“And I suppose this Michael—” Grandmère sniffed “—is more important to you than I am. I suppose you consider his fe
elings over mine in this case.”
