So much for Jorge not having any family in the area.
10
“PUT ON A SKIRT, MELINA,” NORAH SAID WHEN I WALKED OUT of my bedroom wearing jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt.
I’d taught the afternoon classes at River City, come home and showered again. Wasn’t that enough? “Why? It’s my mother’s house, not a five-star restaurant. I spent most of the time I lived there in sweatpants. Jeans are practically black tie in comparison.”
“You don’t live there anymore and it’s a matter of showing respect by dressing appropriately.” She didn’t budge from the hallway. I wondered if she’d been waiting there for me to come out inappropriately dressed.
I opened my mouth, but before I could get a word out, Norah held up her hand. “I don’t want to hear it. Just go change.”
I made another noise, but she cut me off again. “Enough.” She turned and walked down the hallway, saying, “Talk to the booty ’cuz the hand’s off duty.”
I went back into my bedroom and changed.
I came out a little later in a long black skirt, boots and a top. Norah sighed and put a scarf around my neck and pronounced me suitable. Ted arrived a few minutes later wearing a sport coat and a dress shirt with jeans.
“We look ridiculous,” I complained. “This is not us. It’s like we’re putting on costumes.”
“Yes,” Norah agreed. “You’re wearing a costume. Tonight you will be playing the part of the loving daughter. Do you want me to give you your lines?”
I glared at her. “Let’s go get Grandma.”
NORAH AND TED WAITED WITH THE BUICK WHILE I WENT INTO the Sunshine Assisted Living Facility to pickup Grandma. I signed in at the front desk and dutifully put on a Visitor sticker even though I was only going to be there for about five minutes and I was relatively certain that no one would mistake me for a resident. I look young for my age, and the minimum age for getting into Sunshine was fifty-five and then you had to have a spouse who was over sixty-five. I so did not qualify, although it was tempting sometimes. Grandma Rosie didn’t have to cook anymore; someone came and made her bed every morning; there were art classes and language classes, field trips to museums and weekly buses to the shopping malls. It didn’t sound like a bad life to me at all.
Grandma was already at her door with her coat on when I got to her room. I glanced at my watch. I was not late, for once.
“I would have helped with your coat,” I said. It seems like a little thing, but her having to hold on to her cane and reach up for her coat on the hanger at the same time took a bit of balancing.
She waved me off. “I’m fine. Let’s go. I’m starving.”
They served dinner early at Sunshine. Like five o’clock sharp. Grandma was often headed down to the dining room for dinner by four forty-five. Six o’clock was stretching her appetite a little bit and she didn’t like to snack.
“After you,” I said.
She sailed out as grandly as you can when you have a cane with four feet.
We checked back out at the front desk. I was tempted to put my Visitor sticker somewhere obnoxious, but Grandma was watching and I didn’t want to embarrass her.
“I’m going to my daughter’s for dinner,” she told the girl at the front desk. “I won’t be back until quite late.”
“Have a nice time,” the girl said, and off we went.
I suspect it’s a bit of a status symbol at the assisted-living facility to have your family whisk you away. Grandma makes sure to announce it whenever I come to pick her up.
Ted straightened up from where he was leaning against the car as the doors to the facility whooshed open in front of us and opened the front passenger door of the Buick.
“You took your time in finding one, Melina, but when you did, you picked a fine-looking one,” Grandma said to me.
I’m pretty sure she thought she was whispering, or at least speaking under her breath, but when you’re hard of hearing, those whispers tend to be kind of loud.
Ted fought back a grin. “At least someone in your family likes me,” he whispered in my ear as I helped Grandma into the car. Gone were the days that she hopped in and out of the car without effort. Now it was a laborious affair of careful pivoting and terrifying balancing. I held my breath through most of it. Luckily, she was a tiny little thing, and I was pretty sure that my reflexes were fast enough and that I was strong enough to catch her if she fell.
If she fell on my watch, however, I’m pretty sure I would never be able to set foot in my mother’s home again. I might rail against Friday night dinner, but I didn’t want to be banned from it either. It was kind of like not wanting to be excluded from a club you didn’t want to join. It didn’t have to make sense. It was just human nature.
“Hello, Norah,” Grandma said once she was settled.
“Hello, Ms. Silverstone,” Norah said from the back. “How are you tonight?”
“Sitting up and taking sustenance, dear. Sometimes that’s as good as it gets.”
Amen to that, sister.
NORAH USED TO COME WITH ME OCCASIONALLY ON FRIDAYS, but now that she no longer wants to leave the apartment without a guard or stay in it alone without protection, she almost always comes. That part is actually okay. My mother loves Norah. Norah is the normal girl I’m pretty sure she wishes was her daughter. Norah is an awesome buffer between the two of us. It’s a good thing my mother doesn’t know that Norah is being stalked by a vampire and isn’t entirely sure that she wants it to stop.
We pulled up to the house. My parents live in a Spanish-style stucco house in Land Park. It’s two stories with an enclosed patio in front, a guesthouse over the garage and a pool in the gated backyard. The roof is red-clay tiles, and bougainvillea twines around black iron gates. My mother keeps it immaculate.
From the driveway, I could smell the chicken roasting. It was Friday night, after all. I helped Grandma Rosie out of the Buick and handed her her quad cane. “Ready?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said, but she waited to take Ted’s arm before we walked in. Norah and I marched behind them. Norah elbowed me. “You make it worse than it is. Smile.”
“There are limits to what you can ask of me. If you wanted me to be cheerful, you shouldn’t have insisted on the skirt.” I actually didn’t mind the skirt. It was being told what to wear that rankled, even if Norah was right. My mother would appreciate the effort of dressing appropriately. It would be one less thing for her to sigh over. One of these days, I was going to end up making her hyperventilate and then how would I feel? Supremely successful, I suspect.
We got to the front door, and Ted and Grandma stopped. I slipped around them and opened the door. “Mom! Dad! We’re here!”
Dad met us in the entryway. “Come in, come in.” He kissed my grandmother’s cheek and helped her out of her coat.
“How’s my favorite girl?” he asked, giving me a hug. I may have mentioned I have a very touchy-feely family. It’s one of the reasons I don’t come home more often than I do.
“I’m fine, Daddy.” I handed him my coat, too. Yes. I call him Daddy. Say something about it and feel my wrath.
“Theodore, how are you?” He shook Ted’s hand.
“Fine, sir. And yourself?” Ted smiled down at him. I have no idea how Ted feels about being called Theodore. If it makes him grit his teeth, you’d never know it. If it makes my father grit his teeth that Ted towers over him like a blond Adonis, you’d never know that either.
“Couldn’t be better.” Which was my father’s stock response to everything. According to him, the glass is permanently half full. I’ve never done a DNA test, but I am his daughter. I totally have his nose. I’m just not anything like him on the inside. “Good shabbos, everyone. Theodore, would you care for a beer?”
“Thank you, sir. I’d love one.”
Daddy hung the coats up and we all migrated into my mother’s kitchen. The smells were already making my mouth water. “Can I help with anything, Mama?” I asked as we walked in.
“Yes, dear, make a salad.” I got an air kiss. “The rest of you get out of the way.”
“Even me?” Norah asked.
My mother eyed her. “You should sit down and eat. You’re much too thin. Harold, put out that cheese and crackers. Set it in front of Norah.”
“Yes, dear,” my father said, and winked at me as he went by.
My mother then turned to Grandma Rosie. “Mom, do you want a glass of wine? Some iced tea?”
“Tea would be good, dear.” Grandma Rosie settled herself on one of the bar stools out of the way.
At no point did my mother directly address Ted. I didn’t miss that fact and I doubt he did either, although he never complained about it.
I’m not crazy about cops. They make me nervous. My mother is also not crazy about cops. She hates them.
Okay.
Hate
may be too strong a word, but she’s damn sure suspicious of them. My mother was twelve during the Summer of Love and actually used to take the train into San Francisco to look at the hippies in The Haight.
Cops were the pigs, the fuzz, the enemy, the man.
Having her daughter date a cop was sending my mother into a very unattractive tailspin. On the one hand, she was so grateful that I was actually dating someone that she practically wanted to take out an ad. On the other hand, I was dating a cop, a pig, an enemy. It was pretty much enough to make her head swim.
Of course, if mom knew what I was, her head might well explode.
I grabbed stuff out of the crisper in the refrigerator and took the big wooden bowl out of the cabinet and started chopping and tearing.
“Tear the leaves smaller, Melina. Bite-sized. I don’t like watching people try to stuff oversized leaves into their mouths.” She hadn’t even turned away from the stove. Seriously, how did she know how big the lettuce leaves were?
“Yes, Mama.”
“And not too much cucumber. You know it gives your father indigestion.”
“No problem.”
“Stop bossing the girl around, Elizabeth,” Grandma Rosie said. “She’s nearly thirty years old. She knows how to make a salad.”
Mama turned from the stove, blinked a few times at her mother and said, “Of course. You’re right. Do whatever you feel is best, Melina.”
For a moment I contemplated putting in giant lettuce leaves and filling half the bowl with cucumber, but decided to be the bigger person even if I wasn’t the one who’d been out-mommed.
“Have you been ill, Norah?” my mother, Queen of Tact, asked. “You don’t look well, dear.”
Norah shifted uncomfortably. “No. Not exactly ill, just a little under the weather, I guess.”
“Have you seen a doctor? I’m sure Melina could find you someone at that hospital of hers. She’d know who was good and who wasn’t. What about that emergency room doctor? The handsome one with the dark hair?” My mother had been to the hospital once and had run across Alex. He’d made an impression.
I stiffened. Mom kept whisking the gravy. Sometimes I wondered exactly what my mother knew and didn’t know. After all, I’d thought I’d had Norah fooled for years and hadn’t. Well, I’d had her a little fooled. Just fooled enough so that when she was completely in the know, she went into an emotional nosedive that I wasn’t sure she was ever going to come out of.
I looked over at her now. Her eyes were big as saucers. I certainly could introduce her to a doctor or two. That was exactly what had gotten us into our current problems, after all.
“Where’s Patrick?” I asked, changing the topic. Patrick is my little brother. I use the term
little
loosely. He is around six foot two, which is noticeably taller than me.
“He’ll be here in a few minutes.” Mom glanced at her watch. “His last class gets out at four thirty and you know how traffic on the causeway can be on a Friday.”
My brother attends UC Davis, whose campus is a stone’s throw from Sacramento, if you can throw a stone twenty miles or so. He’s majoring in molecular biology. He hasn’t decided if he’s going to go the PhD doctor route or the MD doctor route. Either way, he’s pretty much the apple of my mother’s eye.
I don’t blame her. Patrick is so incredibly normal. He went to just enough school dances and played on just enough sports teams to reassure my parents that he was well-liked without being one of those too-popular kids that can turn mean. He got great grades and is kind to animals. They caught him smoking weed once, but it was during the Perseids meteor shower, and I think the hardest part for my parents was not asking if they could have a hit and watch the stars fall with him. He doesn’t disappear on inexplicable errands, attract strange phenomena or generally act as a force of chaos in their lives. If he was my kid, he’d be my favorite, too.
He showed up as we were putting things on the table. “You have to help clear because you didn’t help set,” I told him.
“Hey, big sis.” He grabbed me in a hug and nearly squeezed the air out of me.
“Hey, yourself. I wasn’t joking about the clearing,” I wheezed.
“We’ll see about that,” he whispered in my ear.
I glared. I will grant him his role as Golden Boy. He walks the walk, so he deserves it. I despise the fact that he can get out of kitchen chores with a smile and a few flutters of his eyelashes.
Mom herded everyone to the table, lit the candles, circled them with her hands three times, covered her eyes and said the prayers. Then we all dug in. Once we were eating, conversation pretty much stopped. My mother is good with a chicken. She’d stuffed and grilled portobello mushrooms for Norah, and even those smelled and looked tasty.
“So what’s new, Melina?” Patrick asked, as he dished up a third helping of mashed potatoes. Mama pushed the gravy toward him without his even asking.
I smiled. “Not much.” I wondered what everyone would have done if I’d said that I was pretty sure I’d recently been the agent of two men’s deaths and had had to chase a Basajaun out of the dojo. “I’m getting some new mats at the karate studio.”