Grandma Giles’ apartment smells like burnt sugar and cat, which anywhere else would be disgusting. There, it’s Divine Bliss. Which means how evolved am I, since Jojo needed Tibet for her db. Anyway, capital-A Abundance. Receptors opened and multiplying.
One of the million fabulous things about Grandma Giles is the way she greets us. ‘Ohhhh,’ she says before the door’s closed. ‘Ohhhhh, my girls.’ It’s the lowest sound possible, the kind of sound for when the world ends and we’re all trapped under rubble taking our last breaths. Ohhhhhh, we’ll all say to each other, as in, Goodbye fellow humans, our species is finished. Louis the cat slaps his tail against our ankles and hopes we’ll put something on the floor for him to pee on.
‘Actually, Grandma,’ Paige says, as Grandma Giles grips her, ‘actually, one full-spectrum bulb is all you need in the living room.’ As usual, the apartment is blindingly bright.
‘Ohhhh,’ Grandma Giles says. ‘Anyway, I don’t drive.’ She wears the magnetic apron I made her, her metal measuring spoons stuck in a perfect row along the waistband into which I skillfully sewed magnetic tape. Paige says ouch as Grandma Giles pulls her in tighter. Then Paige holds the ends of her braids, her latest obsessive-compulsive response to stress. Minor epiphany. Talk about convenient. Paige pulls hair; I think abundance. A piggyback compulsion. Braid/abundance. Perfect.
‘My poor little birthday girl, so exhausted.’ Grandma Giles holds my face and looks deeply into my eyes. ‘I have made fudge.’ Paige sighs in her dietician-to-be way and touches a braid. Abundance.
‘Excellent, Grandma,’ I say. Excellent. Grandma Giles’ hair smells like cigarettes, citrus shampoo and Clairol Nice’n Easy Almond Bliss. I breathe deeply.
‘Grandma, I can’t believe you still have that clay lamp,’ Paige says. Braid. Abundance. Grandma is already in the kitchen, and Paige blocks the hallway. ‘I mean, it’s such a blob.’
‘It’s called Trinity,’ I said. ‘That lampshade rules.’
‘It looks like a UFO.’
‘Exactly.’ My lampshade phase was brief but prolific. I made them after trying to make a lamp, which involved electrocution, which involved bodily fluids, hair loss and so much pain I listened to CBC without changing the channel for an entire day.
‘Have you ever considered sex with aliens, Paige?’
‘I fail to believe you find that funny.’
Abundance.
Look at her, $1,200 sitting in the bank doing nothing, but, no, she can’t stand my crafts in this living room. ‘How about with random strangers? Seriously, Paige, if God gave us hormones – ’
‘Stop.’ Paige holds a braid like it’s a rosary. ‘Number one, as if you’re Ms. Experience. Number two, that frame. It’s like I’m buried under garbage.’
Paige is fixated on the photo frames I made for this year’s mug shots. ‘Collages of found objects, as in art, Paige.’
‘Correction, Dree. Debris. Please tell me you disinfected.’
Interesting. School-photo Paige is surrounded by a teeming mass of pathogens. Replicating themselves like crazy as we stand there. I pick up one of Grandma’s old photos. ‘So, something more classic? Like this?’
‘I am not giving you my money for orphans in Africa.’
‘Jesus would,’ I say. And then Jesus jerks my hand and all the photos crammed onto the TV fall against each other.
Braid. Abundance. Braid.
‘Ohhh,’ GG says, back with a platter of fudge. ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry, get away from there.’
‘Just one that’s broken.’
‘I said, leave them.’ As Grandma grabbed the photo out of my hand, I looked at it, because Grandma never grabs anything. ‘I’ll find a new frame tomorrow,’ I say, but she ignores my outstretched hand. ‘Have some fudge.’ Or else, says the silence that follows. Paige and I stuff big hunks in our mouths and Grandma wraps the broken frame in a tea towel and puts it on her lap. Louis digs his claws into my thigh, his way of saying, Pet me, things are effing tense in here.
‘Actually, Grandma.’ Paige pauses which is not what Paige ever does after actually. ‘Actually, Joan recycles our art projects every six months. So, you don’t have to keep my crafts, it’s just little – ’ Kill me. Paige pulls a recipe box out of her backpack. Stencilled. OMG, with what? Penises? Grandma Giles squints like crazy at the row of tiny phallic whatevers. ‘Actually, Grandma, mushrooms and zucchini have complementary nutrients.’ I slide the photo off Grandma’s lap and under the sofa while she considers the abomination in her hands.
‘Look, Dree, they’re so perfectly spaced.’
‘Wondrous, Grandma. How did she do it.’ Penis penis penis. It’s all I see, which means? Anyway, so what. Why not ornamental genitalia? If sex is so natural, so thousand-thoughts-a-day, why isn’t there wrapping paper, T-shirts and water bottles decorated with happy little vulva et cetera? How come it’s all about cleavage which, hello, is probably about breastfeeding, as in, Where’s my mommy?
‘Well, it’s just beautiful, Paige. I’ll put it right here beside your sister’s lamp.’ I can tell Grandma Giles truly thinks it is beautiful because she’s sad which is Grandma Giles’ version of happy. She loves beautiful things and they make her sad. If the world were fair, Grandma Giles would have enough money to sit and look at sunsets and flowers and feel sad. She clutches the heinous recipe box and stares at the fudge. Fudge used to make her happy as in sad but she can’t eat it anymore with the whole diabetic thing. I take another piece on her behalf.
Maybe it’s Grandma’s sadness, maybe the stencilling, the anti-craft, or maybe it’s my overstuffed manic head. I have to sleep. My body wants to slide right off me and become a puddle. It slides into the chair instead. ‘Pass your sister that blanket,’ says Grandma. ‘My poor little Dree. Worn right out.’
‘And that Rita woman,’ she says to Paige. ‘Your poor mother.’
‘You should have seen what she was wearing at the brunch, Grandma,’ Paige says. Paige is Grandma Giles’ reporter, as in, voice of Joan re: things Grandma can’t ask Joan directly about.
‘Ohhh, poor Joanie. What a service.’
‘Correction. Pancake brunch, Grandma.’
And so on, including the waitress with the low-cut crushed velvet top and big red belt. My mouth can’t move, otherwise I would have defended the belt.
‘Well, maybe it was best I couldn’t come.’
‘Exactly,’ says Paige.
Pause. Meow from Louis. As in, Okay, Grandma, here’s where you can’t avoid saying something.
‘Ohhhh, poor girls. I’m so sorry.’
Bloody hell. She can’t even say his name. Grandma Giles hated Leonard.
‘Someone from Timbley was there.’
‘Who?’ Grandma’s voice jumps.
‘Rose someone. I thought she was a guy at first,’ Paige says. ‘Then Dree threw up so I didn’t have time to talk to her.’
Cow.
I wait for Grandma to answer but hear trees instead, huge shaky evergreens on the hospital grounds. Leonard stands in their shadows waving me over and I stand on the second-floor balcony of the old hospital. There’s no railing and a long long drop. I lose sight of him and wake up to my own shrieking. Actually, no. It’s Grandma’s smoke alarm which means supper’s almost ready. That’s literally the drill every visit because, except for me, Grandma’s smoke alarm is the most sensitive thing on the planet, and it goes off whenever something boils on the stove and every supper she boils potatoes.
Even with the killer beeping, the only part of me reasonably awake is my bottom lip because it’s busily hatching a cold sore. It used to be that Grandma’s was the magic bad-food bubble. I could eat a pound of fudge plus Cheez Whiz plus buttered everything while watching six hours of TV and wake up feeling great. Now I’m one big virus, or maybe my bottom lip is a microcosm of my life or even Edmonton life if possibly the number of viral molecules equals Edmontonians.
‘I dreamt about Dad,’ I say at the table before filling my mouth with mashed potatoes, ultra-creamy because Grandma Giles uses insane amounts of butter.
Grandma hmmms and tells Paige butter is nothing to be afraid of.
‘Correction, Grandma.’
‘My mother put butter in everything, you know.’ Grandma passed me the butter dish, knowing I was her ally in all things high-fat. Strangely, she did not say, as she usually does, ‘Ohhhh, the last piece of Wedgewood, and once I had so much.’ Nor did she list the entire Wedgewood family, the crystal, the silverware or the linens that had kept the butter dish company, all of them wedding presents, all of then trashed when her house burned down. It was a long list and usually took us right through to dessert. Tonight, though, she says nothing, and Paige and I take turns saying, ‘Yum, Grandma, yum. This is great.’ Maybe she’ll tell us the fire story later because, otherwise, the visit will be very weird. She has to tell it over and over like turning compost. When Joan was about five, Grandpa Giles fell asleep on his La-Z-Boy with a cigarette, probably drunk. They lost everything including his job since he was a fireman. From Timbley high society, which is really not too high on the food chain, they went to basically paramecia. ‘“Ben and that poor Rowena,” that’s what they called us,’ Grandma would say.
I open my mouth and hope for the best. ‘So, in the early nineties, you and Joan and Leonard all worked together at the old hospital, right, Grandma, at the old hospital?’ Spontaneity does not work for me. Grandma Giles smooths her hair back and holds her head as if it might blow off. I have too many competing emotions to notice dread.
‘Well, I think it’s time to celebrate our little birthday girl.’
Paige gives me a mechanical pencil wrapped in recycled something while Grandma furiously makes sundae supremes. Slam slam slam. Cupboard doors and jars onto counter.
Oh god. The walnuts.
Grandma has this thing about keeping nuts and raisins way too long and this other thing about not wearing her glasses. These things are not compatible. And I don’t move fast enough.
‘I’m allergic.’ Paige swoops in for the walnut-free ice cream before I’m even standing.
‘My poor little Paige. Well, I don’t suppose you get this at home,’ Grandma Giles says, as she squirts Cool Whip. ‘Poor Joan has no time for this sort of thing.’
I’m all ‘Wow, Grandma, this is fantastic,’ while I watch the brown bits. Yup, those are de finitely legs. Just before sinking into vanilla ice cream, each bug rolls on its back and wriggles its tiny legs. I have to name them as they disappear. Goodbye, Esther. Ivan. Sophie. James.
‘Yummm, Grandma, excellent. Did I tell you about the last letter from my foster child in Zambia, Grandma? Dad said she sounds gifted.’
‘Dad actually said bright,’ I say.
‘Her name’s Amahara.’
‘Poor little thing.’
Dad and hospital keep coming up like the word fat does in a room full of extremely large people. I saw that happen once. This is worse. We finally make it back to the living room where Paige turns on the TV and channel-surfs until I’m sure we’ll all have seizures. Grandma remembers she has a birthday present for me and gives me a basket of baby socks. ‘Brenda brought in this darling little sock creature she made for her granddaughter and the same day I saw all these on sale – ’
‘Wow, Grandma!’ Whew. For a second, I thought she wanted me to reproduce.
They go to bed and I pull out the broken picture, unwrap it and look. It’s Grandma at her job in the old hospital. There are two people standing behind her – smiling nurse, deeply unattractive man in suit. They look possibly familiar, like all people the same age as your parents do. I wrap the picture back up to take to the Sally Ann. Maybe I can find a decent fifty-cent frame.
I lie back down on the couch to consider my position. My Divine Offering idea seems lame, like it needs a night’s rest, and Leonard is de finitely out of range. My T-shirt rides up in front. I flip my navel ring back and forth and leave it straight up – dust mites could shoot through it in a gymnastic event.
Paige has left her backpack on the coffee table, beside Trinity, her yellow wallet poking out like the sun. Talk about abundance. When you’re thinking with your heart, regular rules don’t apply. Jojo Bunting, Spiritual Master, says so. From the heart, you follow guidance from the universe. My heart’s thumping like mad. Yes, it says, do it.
Committing a crime in slow-motion means saying yes to evil about a thousand times instead of ten. That’s how long it takes Grandma’s computer to bring up the Credit Union website. Paige has her recent bank statement folded in her daytimer, so I have the account number and I’m right about her password – Teresa, her confirmation name. Everything works. The cold sore pain helps me rationalize the crime. Suffering’s handy that way. Afterwards I check my blog and there are two messages about the key. Oxymrn says the key is so generic any lock it fits is useless, and Xme says she thinks it maybe belongs to a jewellery box, probably a cheap one, or maybe a kid’s diary. Great. Maybe Leonard has another troubled child somewhere. I disable the internet afterwards. Sorry, Grandma. I’ll call next week to talk her through fixing it.
I have to let my crime breathe, so me and the socks got comfy in Grandma’s armchair. What if someone had said, okay, Dree, for your birthday you can have a new life in Toronto or nine pairs of discounted baby socks with Christmas motifs? Let’s say I said the socks, obviously. What would I have known that I don’t know now? A) The socks were spun from gold. Cliché. B) The socks belong to alien super-babies who will give me anything I want for the rest of my life once they get these socks. Predictable. C) The socks want to be something else, who doesn’t. Okay. C2) The socks can be transformed into a new and useful lifeform but only by moi. D) Who knows, just get out the scissors. It’s not like there’s anything else to do.
The stuffing in Grandma’s sofa is so old it’s clumpy, so my creature’s a bit lopsided. The lips are uneven but mostly smiling. The legs are different sizes and the eyes are too close. He’s round and fairly stable when sitting, sort of Shrek meets Humpty Dumpty. The hat looks kind of construction worker and kind of French-guy. Ah, Dree, merci! What a lovely work you have done. C’est bon!
Maybe the only voice available to my imagination at three a.m. in Timbley is cheesy French guy. Maybe my new father figure is a sock. This is not a time for questions. Bonjour, I say. Bonjour, Marcel.
Do not worry, he tells me. You are doing so well.
Merci, I say and put him on the dresser so he can keep saying so while I sleep.
Who doesn’t need one?
I used baby socks for these and they’re très cute. Bigger socks work fine but the bigger your creature, the lower its cuteness factor. (I’m not saying it’s right.)
Choose a happy sock. The heel will be the bum. The toe will be the hat.
1. Cut about 1/3 up sock.
2. Stuff head but not too much.
3. Pull toe into hat. Tack down hat with a few stitches.
4. Add more stuffing to head, and stretch a bit of sock face into mouth.
5. Add buttons for eyes or make paper eyes. Whatever you use, sew them on. Glue will never last.
6. Add more stuffing for legs and sew them up.
