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Even though I got in last night, I feel like I’m walking into Grandma’s house for the first time in ten years. I’ve been back here before, of course, but only for a quick visit. Never long enough to really absorb the place. This time, I’ll be here for a whole month, helping set up a new creative office in LA for the graphic novel publisher I work for in New York. I’m not rushed, forced to focus only on Grandma and not the surroundings. I can take it all in.
The living room looks nearly the same as it did growing up. The black leather couch is in the same place, decorated with the same red pillows. The coffee table is new, sure, but it looks just like the old one. A long glass thing that Grandma swears isn’tnineties California bullshiteven though it is.
The TV is bigger. The bookshelf is more stocked. The DVDs are now in storage or in Grandma’s room (the favorites only) because who needs DVDs when you have the Criterion streaming channel, Max, Hulu, Netflix, Paramount+, and Prime?
The backyard is now a succulent garden, no longer a narrow row of grass, and the kitchen is even more pared down, but the rest is the same.
Grandma, too.
Well. Sort of.
She’s still tough and in control and unwilling to talk about the situation.
“Is that you, River?” She stands from her spot on the living room couch. “How about some tea?” She meets me in the kitchen with a smile.
She’s wearing her usual outfit—a silk blouse and wide-leg trousers—and she’s rocking her usual short gray hairstyle. She’s even wearing a little makeup, enough to “bring out her natural beauty.”
Only she’s wearing more than a little now. She’s covering the dark circles and adding color to her face. I see it in the difference in her pallor. It’s not just the sun. It’s her health.
She’s thinner than she was the last time I saw her, too. Almost thin enough she looks frail.
“Earl Grey or English Breakfast?” she asks.
“Either.” I don’t want tea. I don’t want a drink. I want to talk about this. So a choice between two black teas is meaningless.
I’d rather have no choice than a fake choice.
But it’s also meaningless to try to force her into a conversation about something she’s resisting. It has to come up naturally.
“Earl Grey, then,” she says.
“How about cookies, too?” I try to make my voice light and teasing, but I don’t quite get there. That’s the thing about a vivid imagination: it works all the time, not just when you want it to work.
Even the best-case scenario is hard. The loss of her hair, her health, her vitality.
I see the life draining out of her and I hate everything about it.
It hasn’t even happened yet and I hate everything about it.
“I’ll knit you a sweater while I’m at it.” She doesn’t give in to my mood. She motions for me to sit. Once I do, she fills a kettle with water and sets it on the stove. The same gestures as always. The same orange kettle. “Overnight, I transformed into a Hallmark Channel grandma.”
“Are they horny like you, too?”
“It might not be on screen, but it’s there.” She laughs.
I grin. “You think that scares me?”
“I’m sure it takes more to scare you, at this point.”
That’s one of the things about being raised by a grandma who embraces sexual openness. Very little shocks me. Plus, after a decade in New York, I’m shock-proof. “Are you trying?”
“I know you have that idealistic view of sex, River, but it’s not always that way.”
“What way is it?”
“Sometimes you want someone and that’s it,” she says.
“Someone in particular?”
