Barry chose to stay up and drive through the night. I figured he didn’t want any distractions that might shift us from the plan. Use Grandma Bernice as a roof while we plotted our next score. All I saw of South Carolina and Georgia was the highway. Steph and Jenny were asleep, but I snuck into the glove compartment where Barry’s coke vial had been hidden. Once we reached Grandma’s, he might choose a different hiding place, so I needed to maximize my potential last toots.
Ah, the familiar drip. I wiggled my nose and watched the headlights of cars give off their own laser show. We hit Florida before dawn. The sun purple, like a bruise peering over the edge of the highway. Jacksonville and St. Augustine, on to Daytona Beach, and a turnoff to Orlando that we didn’t take. Years ago, we’d done a fam trip to Disney World. I was about seven, Steph, already twelve and too cool for school, Jenny, just out of diapers. We had a nanny at the time. A rotund woman who was all bosoms with a monk’s haircut. She smiled a lot, called us “sugar boogers.” She always smelled like pies, her whole face eaten up by rosacea. Barry and Mom, disappearing for most of it, leaving the nanny with her hands full. God knows where they went. Why they chose a family trip to Disney World when they weren’t even gonna show up for most of it was beyond me. But that was typical of them. They likely figured we’d be too distracted by Mickey and Minnie to care. I had a little arcade football game that bleeped and blooped, tiny little dots in place of the players, and all I remember on that trip was playing it while on one of the many lines. And Jenny getting an ear infection. Even then, Barry and Mom didn’t return from their own vacation. When they finally did at the end, tanned in a way that seemed as if they laid on a beach for four days, I broke my football game in front of them. I had no interest in ever playing it again.
Melbourne to Port St. Lucie, and then to West Palm Beach. With the window cracked, I could smell the salt, taste it on my tongue (although that might’ve still been the coke drip). Jenny and Steph had woken, fighting in their quarters over some inane thing. I heard Seymour’s name spoken as a hiss from Steph. Johnny Cash started howling. I heard Mom coo-cooing the dog, asking Barry if we could stop so he could relieve himself. But Barry wasn’t having it.
“We’re making great time,” he said. “Just a few more miles to Grandma Bernice.”
This elicited a groan/shrug from everyone. The threat of Grandma Bernice more palpable the closer we got. Her evil little pinches. Only matzo in the cupboards. The never-ending parade of cats licking their own assholes. The creepy shrine to her late husband, Herb. The fact she was the only woman in all of Florida not to use air conditioning. Fans swirling dust around and little else. The varicose veins mapping her legs. Her Nescafe breath.
We’d been to Boca a few times over the years. Palm trees and pink condos. The depressing Boca Town Center mall. Sleepy Atlantic Avenue. Just breathing made you sweat fountains. Old Jewish ladies with fanny packs and tracksuits power walking. Grandma Bernice lived in the Boca Jewish Center condominiums, the hub of the Orthodox community with a supermarket, restaurants, and bakery, all within a mile or two. A tiny white bus would chauffeur around the men and women of the community a few times throughout the day. There was a pool with scattered lounge chairs in the center of the condominiums. Sometimes, the women did calisthenics, wearing ridiculous amounts of clothing for swimming. When we pulled up, it was still early in the morning, and the pool was being attended by a pool boy with his shirt off.
“Hubba hubba,” I heard Jenny say. I left my cordoned-off area and saw her sticking her face against the window, licking the glass.
“Jenny, stop,” Steph said, but she lingered to watch, tugging on her bottom lip with a fang tooth. The further we got away from Kent, the more she seemed to forget God-boy. The pool boy, as if he knew he was being drooled over, shook the water out of his floppy hair and went back to retrieving dead bugs with his net.
We parked the RV and stretched as we exited, the sun hot and pools of sweat already oozing from our pores. Jenny was pulling Johnny Cash’s tail, and he was snapping at her playfully. Steph still had eyes on the pool boy, who hadn’t taken his laser focus off the bugs. Barry and Mom were psyching each other up for the inevitable Grandma Bernice onslaught, the woman like a Yiddish freight train. He was whispering in her ear, nibbling on the lobe, while she pushed him away and then brought him back for an embrace. Colors were dancing in front of my eyes, and I realized I was still high on coke.
Grandma Bernice lived on the second floor in a three-bedroom, two-bathroom spread. A pink door with a doormat that said, Hashem Sleeps Here. The doorbell played a rollicking version of the Dreidel Song. We had to listen to it three times in a row before the door swung open, whapped us with a kiss of soupy heat, and Grandma Bernice stood there in her housecoat and fuzzy slippers, curlers in her hair, makeup half on, the saggy skin on her legs melting like a candle.
“You’re here already?” she shouted, hands on hips, lips twisted into a grimace.
“We made good time, Ma,” Mom said, moving toward her herky-jerky for a hug that Grandma Bernice welcomed with a quick pat on the back.
“I just didn’t expect you so early,” Grandma Bernice said, as if she wanted to close the door on this reunion before it even began.
“We made great time, Bernice,” Barry said, even more herky-jerky as he danced toward her for a kiss on the cheek that she seemed like she wanted to wipe off with varnish.
“Can we come in, Ma?” Mom asked in a baby voice. She always diminished around Grandma Bernice, turning into a child again, seeking her own mother’s love and affection that the woman never gave.
“If you must.”
She waved and directed us inside a dark, dank room where fans coughed and whirred, sending dust particles up our noses. Jenny let out an achoo that Grandma Bernice responded to with an even more twisted grimace.
Like we were in the musical Cats—which my parents took us to last year, giving me nightmares ever since—Grandma Bernice’s feline brood made their entrance like they were fighting to be the star of the next Jellicle Ball. A fat orange tabby rolled around and showed off its stomach. An uppity white one curled against my leg and gave it a shock. A black-and-white shot one foot in the air and proceeded to lick itself clean. A Siamese followed suit by licking itself even harder.
“Pussies,” Grandma Bernice said, causing Jenny to snicker as all the cats took in their new roommates.
“Ma, open some shades,” Mom said as she pulled up the shades, and the yellow eyes of the cats disappeared in the light. They hissed at the sun like vampires and darted into the other room.
“It’s just early for guests,” Grandma Bernice said. “Let me get myself presentable.”
She vanished into the bathroom as we reconvened in her kitchen. A floral Formica table and chairs made for a child. The soup smell, the strongest. I opened the cabinets to find only egg matzo.
“Yuck,” I said, closing the cabinets and opening the refrigerator. I was thirsty as ever. Sure enough, I found a pitcher of cold Nescafe and poured out glasses for everyone.
“We can still make a run for it,” Barry said, peering through the blinds at the street outside. Two Grandma Bernice lookalikes power walking away.
“Can I shower?” Steph said, pinching her split ends. “The thought of using shampoo with hot water…”
“Mmmm,” Mom said, like we’d been stranded on a deserted island for months. “Nana’s in her bathroom, so use the hallway one.”
“I never need to shower,” Jenny boasted.
“We know,” Steph said, hitting her on the back of the head as she skipped off.
“Jenny, why don’t you walk Johnny Cash?” Barry asked.
Johnny Cash had taken to mewling in the middle of the linoleum floor, a trickle of pee left in his wake.
“C’mon,” Jenny said, tapping her thigh. She grabbed the leash and left with the dog.
“Not too far,” Mom yelled as the front door slammed.
Grandma Bernice emerged in the foyer looking like she’d dipped her face in even more makeup, the oldest living hooker. Her wig crooked until she fixed it by pinching it down, the curlers removed. She wore a black top that appeared to be made of felt and a black skirt with stockings and hard shoes, dressed for the coal mines.
“Bernice, aren’t you hot?” Barry asked.
“Feh, it’s good to be hot,” she replied. “You want me to be cold and catch my death?”
“It’s actually refreshing,” Mom said, always trying to keep everything nicey-nice between Barry and Grandma Bernice. “We had our heat turned off back…home.”
She struggled with the last word, knowing that home didn’t exist for us anymore. A twinge of regret. This would be the closest thing we had to a home now, a hot-as-Hades-abode with licking cats aplenty.
“A bi gezunt, as long as you’re healthy,” Grandma Bernice said. “Me, I have Raynaud’s disease; blood doesn’t go to the tips of my fingers. Look,” she said, displaying her fingernails. “They’re white and blue, the color of the Israeli flag. That was a joke, Barry.”
Barry gave a solid bark of a laugh.
“Still got it, Bernice.”
“Let me see my boychick,” she said, directing her glasses to the tip of her nose. “So thin. He has no tuchus.” She pointed to my backside and gave it a gruesome pinch. “You need to feed the boy!”
“Ma, we do.”
“You’re far from a berryer. Very little homemaking skills. I failed you at that. The last roast you made tasted like a leather suitcase.”
“That is true, Judith,” Barry said.
“Such a punim,” Grandma Bernice said, pinching Barry on the cheek and leaving it reddened. “But not a lot else.”
We followed her out of the kitchen into the living area, where couches and chairs were covered in plastic wrap and squeaked when you sat on them. Steph danced out of the shower in a towel up to her boobs and came over to kiss Grandma Bernice on the cheek.
“Hi, Nana.”
“This one,” Grandma Bernice said and then erupted into a coughing fit. “Comes bouncing in like a nafka.”
“What’s that?” Steph asked.
“Snow-white breasts out for show,” Grandma Bernice said. “I have neighbors!”
Steph retreated to the kitchen.
“Ma, you can’t call our daughter a whore.”
“Feh, she’ll be knocked up within the year, I guarantee. Hashem whispered it to me in my sleep.”
She lay back in her Barcalounger and kicked up her feet. Two cats fought to be the one to nestle in her lap. She welcomed each by kissing them on the nose.
Jenny returned with Johnny Cash, causing the cats to fly off Grandma Bernice, likely smushing her groin area. She responded with a tired moan.
“Oh no, not a mutt,” she said. “He’ll have to stay in that RV you clanged up in.”
Jenny growled in contempt.
“Jenny, could you take the dog out?” Barry said, rubbing his eyes. I bet he could use a bump like I’d had. It definitely made Grandma Bernice easier to absorb at such an early hour.
Jenny continued growling, dragging Johnny Cash out of the condo. We could still hear her outside.
“Ma, be a little kinder to the kids,” Mom said as Grandma Bernice waved her away. “They’ve been through a lot.”
“Feh, so they had to move from New Jersey. Did they lose their husband to pancreatic cancer? Did they come from the old country with nothing but a pair of stockings and dried beef in their suitcase? Or get whooping cough that almost put them in the ground—God bless Hashem for saving me.”
“Just mind yourself,” Barry said, still rubbing the hell out of his eyes. Driving through the night couldn’t have been easy. Nor agreeing to stop in Boca and deal with his monster-in-law.
“You’re careless,” Grandma Bernice said, almost spitting in his direction. “No savings, no nothing. I know where all your money goes. On narrishkeit, foolishness. Pastel suits like on TV and flashy cars. Pish. In my time, we saved for inevitable tragedies. We prepared.”
“Well, they cracked the mold when they made you, Bernice,” Barry said, squeezing his fist.
“All right,” Mom declared. “Barry needs his nap. He’s been driving through the night.”
“Your bedroom is made up,” Grandma Bernice said, not even deigning them with a look.
Mom lifted Barry from his chair and directed him down the hallway with his arm around her neck like he was a wounded soldier.
Now, I was left alone with Grandma Bernice, staring each other down like mortal adversaries.
“Too, too thin,” she chided with a tsk tsk. “Bubbe will fatten you up.”
“Okay, where’s my room?”
She tittered. “The girls will be sharing the third bedroom.” She glanced at the plastic couch. “You’ll have the couch.”
Not much different from the RV. I’d almost rather hole up with Johnny Cash in there.
“And don’t scratch the plastic,” she said, with a blue-and-white finger in my face.