THE MINUTE I WALK back into Grandma Hildy’s apartment I can tell she’s home. The air has changed. I can’t really explain it, but before the space was still, and quiet, and now it’s just, like, a place that someone has been moving through. The energy is different, and my grandmother’s perfume hangs there.
Also, she is sitting on the couch reading a magazine, so . . . that.
“Hi, Gran.”
“Callie! This is a nice surprise!” She always says that, even though I drop by at least three times a week. “How was school?”
“The usual,” I say, which I assume is true. I feel a little bad about hiding stuff from my grandmother, but mostly I’m just sad that I can’t tell her about the interesting things I discovered in the Met’s Persian collection, which I had not looked at before today, and which I had also never known was the same as Iran, so that was very educational right there. And I can’t tell her about the amazing painting I saw by Kay Sage—it’s called Tomorrow Is Never, and looks like these falling-down towers, or maybe they’re under construction, rising out of some misty water. And I can’t even tell her my new saying (If you’re having an off day, take a day off!), because I can’t really have her knowing that I skipped school. That’s sad, because I think that she might just be a little proud of me—especially since I went to her favorite museum—but she would also tell my parents about it, so that is out.
“How was tennis?” I ask instead. She is wearing her whites and her lucky gold bracelet, which is bright against her tan skin. Grandma Hildy is in good shape and her personal motto is, “Don’t go gray—go blond.” She always wears this pale shade of brown lipstick and a dab of Happy perfume, but she still looks like a grandma. To me, at least, if not to that guy on the street who called her a silver fox last week. It’s a little embarrassing to walk around with your grandma and have her get catcalled. “What was the score?”
“Four to six, six to four, six to love.” She smiles. “If I don’t let Anita win one, she gets cranky. Are you hungry? Do you need a snack?” Grandma Hildy worries a lot about people not eating enough, and also about people eating too much. I think people in her generation thought about food a lot. “Would you like some kourabiedes?”
“Of course!” I say, because I love anything covered in powdered sugar, especially almond cookies, and we head into the kitchen, where Biddy is lounging in the windowsill. I give her a little scritch-scritch behind the ears, and she sticks her head way out, her eyes closed like ahhhh, as my grandmother flips the tape in her cassette player. I told you she likes antiques.
“Don’t give her any treats,” Gran says, and I give her this horrified, innocent look and say, “Me? Never!”
“I can’t figure out why she isn’t losing any weight.”
“Maybe she has, like, a thyroid problem?” And then, thank goodness, the doorbell rings.
Which never happens in New York City, so this is a miracle.
Grandma Hildy goes to answer it and I trail behind her and out in the hall is a tall, leathery man with a silver moustache and a bald head. “You forgot something,” he says to Grandma Hildy and holds out her favorite pink fleece and she blushes and says thank you and I’m like, hm.
He cocks his head for a moment, listening, and then says, “You’re playing the tape!” which makes me realize, aha! The cassette in the plant was from this guy!
Grandma Hildy laughs. “I guess you’re making me nostalgic.”
“That’s what I do.” Then he spots me and says, “Hello there, I’m Earl!” His whole face crinkles with smile lines, even his forehead.
“I’m Callie.”
“My granddaughter,” Grandma Hildy explains.
“Nice to meet you, Callie,” Earl says. Then he peeks out from under his dark eyebrows, gives me a wink, smiles at Gran, and says, “See you later!” before giving a wave and taking off down the hall. “Don’t forget about what I asked you!”
“I won’t,” Gran says. Still smiling, she looks down at the fleece in her hand. Then we spill back into the apartment, and she drapes it over the back of the chair and pauses for a moment, as if she’s thinking of something. And then she heads back toward the kitchen without saying a word.
So now I am getting a little idea, and I ask, “Where were you this morning?”
Gran looks at me, her brown eyes sharp. “Why?”
“I dropped by before school.”
“Oh, well. I was with Earl.” And she smiles in this strange mysterious way that kind of reminds me of the time that Desmond stole Mom’s eyeshadow and gave himself a makeover. He was three years old then, and when I found him in the bathroom, he smiled at me in just exactly that same way and said, “Do you like my glamour?” like he wanted me to see what he had been doing, but also wanted to be casual, like green eyeshadow was something he smeared on his forehead every day.
“That same Earl?” I ask, as though we are falling over Earls in our day-to-day.
“Yes, Mr. Johnson. He lives downstairs.” And then that little smile again.
“I’ve never met him.”
Grandma Hildy lifts her eyebrows. “I don’t introduce you to all of my friends, Calliope.” She laughs and puts two sugary almond cookies on a plate and I go and sit down at her pretty round oak table in the dining room just beyond the kitchen. She hands me a blue linen napkin and sits down beside me. In some ways, Gran is an old-school ladylike lady. She is a major cook and baker and always wears a dress or maybe “slacks” and she actually gets her hair “done” once a week.
Even though her theme song is “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” my gran’s idea of fun is flower arranging and collecting antiques and playing tennis and leading tours at the Met and keeping everything tidy and sparkling clean and her kitchen full of treats, so her apartment is a very nice place to visit.
Grandma Hildy has got it together, is what I am saying.
“So—Mr. Johnson is . . . your friend?” Interesting. My grandfather has been dead for ten years, but Grandma Hildy has never had a boyfriend.
“Yes.” She sips her seltzer delicately, and I know I’m not going to get any more information. This is just exactly how Min is when she talks about a boy she’s into. She’ll mention him five zillion times, but when you’re like, So, Min, what’s up, do you like him?, she’s like, I don’t know what you’re talking about, and giggles and changes the subject.
So there’s my pretty Gran, smiling and drinking a glass of seltzer with a slice of lime, fat with bubbles, floating in it, and I realize something mighty interesting, which is that Gran seems happy and maybe just maybe she is in love with a bald guy who puts 1980s music on tapes. Maybe he is her boyfriend!
It is a funny feeling to maybe kind of know a secret about your grandmother when everybody knows that grandmothers are not supposed to have love lives. It makes me feel happy, in a silly way, like one of the bubbles that is floating up through her seltzer, because I love my grandmother and I want her to be happy.
And it turns out, not all secrets are bad.