Transparent Tuesdays

Issue 249

You guys,

There’s something about the holidays that brings out the retelling of familiar family stories—the old stories that never get old—like when my brother was two years old and fell out of a three-story building.

But every once in a while I hear a story I’ve never heard before, as I did two weeks before Christmas when I was at my parents’ house, surrounded by my dad’s side of the family that I see once every two years, at most. We get together for funerals, weddings, my great aunt’s eightieth birthday, and this time, for my dad’s retirement party.

My Aunt Linda is the oldest, at 76 years old. My cousins, or rather, the kids of my cousins, which I’m still not sure what that makes them—cousins once removed? Second cousins?—are in high school and college. We’re a family of strangers that hug when we see each other and ask polite questions—How are the kids? How’s school? How’s everything else? And then we all nod and say good.

Everyone clustered into small groups until for a moment, they all migrated to the living room—my mom had kicked them out of the kitchen to prep dinner—and the family sat in a big circle on couches and chairs. I entered the room and said, “What, are we going around the room and saying what we love about Chaz?”

The high school and college cousins shouted out things like, “I like his sweater!” and “I like his shoes!” My dad sat in a comfy chair, wearing a T-shirt that my mom had made—a picture of him on a boat in Puerto Rico with the caption: “Chaz—The Man, The Myth, The Legend Has Retired.” Over top, he wore a soft blue cardigan, which my mom also bought him, and which he called an old man sweater. “Stop,” he demanded of the compliments to his outfit. There was some light laughter and then silence.

“Wait, are we really doing this?” Aunt Linda asked.

“No!” my dad said. He’s the baby in his family, and even in his late 60s the sibling dynamic still exists.

I plopped down in a chair and figured the conversation would break up into small groups again, but then my aunt began to tell a story about my grandmother.

I never really knew my grandma. She died when I was in fifth grade. Before that, we traveled the two hours up to her house mostly for Easter and Christmas, and at the end, when she was sick, we went more. Entering her old, green house I was always smacked in the face with a fog of cigarette smoke. I mostly remember her sitting on the couch with a martini glass on the coffee table in front of her, right next to a big bowl of nuts and a silver nutcracker that resembled a wrench beside it. Grandma liked to play cards and she kept chocolate in her bedside drawer. She had a raspy voice, and her hands shook, and she had a big smile and an easy laugh. She was the oldest person I’d ever seen. She reminded me of a skeleton. She had real silver silverware, and the spoons had black spots all over them. I thought the inside of her mouth stained them that way—I never wanted to use them.

As we sat around the living room at my parents’ house, Aunt Linda confirmed the way I had felt—”Grandma was the oldest-looking 74-year-old.” I’d heard her say it before, as I’d heard lots of things about Grandma, but then, with everyone’s eyes on her, Aunt Linda told a story about Grandma I’d never heard, of when she was in her mid-60s, before I was born.

It was a humid summer day in New Jersey when Grandma got home from work, not too far from her house. By now she had lived alone for many years—she was a widow, with four children grown and out of the house, and a fifth son who died of cancer in his 20s.

It was a typical Friday evening as Grandma drank two vodka martinis, smoked cigarettes, ate a Stouffers frozen dinner, and went to bed at 7:00pm. The next day she had a standing weekly hair appointment at 9:00am.

I interrupted my aunt here. A weekly hair appointment? She got her hair done every week? My aunt replied yes, as if this was obvious, and went back to the story. When I retold the story to my mother-in-law she said that back then all the ladies would get their hair done like this, sprayed hard with hair spray, and then they wouldn’t touch it for a week.

Grandma woke up at 8:45, looked at the clock, and thought she’d overslept. She called her hair stylist and told her she was running late for her appointment, and her hair stylist responded that it was no problem.

Grandma showered, came downstairs, made a cup of instant coffee with powdered creamer and ate a piece of coffee cake—she always ate breakfast. Then she got in her car and started driving. She noticed the sky was getting darker and thought a storm was coming in. She turned on the radio to her favorite talk show and it wasn’t on. This was her first clue that something was wrong.

She drove further, the sky getting darker, and finally realized she was doing two things she swore she’d never do: drink and drive, and drive at night.

She turned the car around, went home, and called her hair stylist. “Actually, I’ll be on time tomorrow,” she said.

The hair stylist replied, “I was wondering how you already knew you’d be running late.”

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Until next week,

Charlie