“It's such a tricky spot, you're doing great,” she's saying.
My wheels â or the steering column, or whatever it is â are squeaking piercingly. I'm moving very slowly. The smoker is unimpressed. “Your left tire is right up on the friggin' curb, man,” I hear through my open window.
“Right,” I say. “Thanks.”
“This might be the best parking job I've ever seen,” Grandma adds.
“Right,” I say. “Thanks.”
Grandma can't hear him. He can't hear Grandma. There is a mere five or six feet separating them. Perspective is everything.
Out on the sidewalk I take a moment and admire my handiwork while I wait for Grandma to make her way around the car. We both thank the smoker for his friggin' help.
The rain has let up but is still keeping non-smokers indoors. Kingston is not a big city like Toronto or Montreal, where regardless of weather, the streets are continually busy. The earlier rain has chased everyone away, or inside. On these nights Kingston feels hollow, like the set of a film that's done shooting for the day.
It's a short walk, a couple of blocks to the restaurant. We stroll slowly. No cars pass us. I ask Grandma if she wants me to carry her purse. She smiles but says no, almost defensively, slinging the strap up higher on her shoulder.
“AND THE ONLY
thing we had was an icebox.”
“Sorry, Grandma?”
“An icebox. That was all.”
“You mean in your house?”
“Yup, that was it.”
“How did that work?”
The restaurant feels empty enough to make me feel guilty for taking us here. I know it's raining, but people still have to eat, right? Before the parking circus, we had driven farther out of the city, toward the suburbs, but the restaurant I had in mind there was already closed. So we got back in my car and returned downtown.
The young hostess seemed surprised we wanted a table. She was standing at her post, wiping down the laminated floor plan in front of her. She was using a white paper towel, which was stained with blue marker. She regarded me incriminatingly, leading the way without a word. Grandma doesn't appear concerned.
“It was just what it sounds like. A wooden box, and we would put a large chunk of ice in the back.”
“To keep your food from spoiling?”
“Yup, obviously we didn't have a fridge or freezer in those days, just the icebox.”
“Imagine trying to live without a fridge or freezer now. Or imagine trying to run this restaurant with a bloody icebox!”
After scanning the large room I realize only one other table is occupied. It's a large group. There are a few bottles of wine on the tables, which have been pushed together. By the way they sit, and their messy table full of crumpled napkins, I assume they're on the back nine of their meal. Probably graduate students on one of their weekly celebrations. In grad school, unlike life, it's always someone's birthday. The hostess drops off some water and our menus, and tells us our server will be by shortly.
“Nothing was ever wasted. I can't remember ever throwing anything away because it had spoiled.” A wooden chair is tipped over at the table of students. “Never, not once.” No one is in the chair, but the empty thud and the resulting laughter cause Grandma to look over.
I'm categorically leery of refrigerated leftovers older than forty-eight hours. That's typically my cutoff. I find them intimidating. Conversely, this morning I watched in sheer disgust as Grandma plunged her face into a Tupperware of week-old spaghetti sauce for a whiff. Later she dipped a finger into some antediluvian ranch salad dressing. Food age is irrelevant to her. She judges strictly with her senses.
When it comes to aging food, I avoid reason and rely on imagination. Once I ate a crumb of green mould the size of a sunflower seed that was growing on a piece of mildly stale bread. I was living in Toronto at the time and was alone when it happened. I'd been famished and had eaten half a slice before doing my standard physical examination of the loaf to ensure no signs of discolouration. I saw the mould, post-swallow, on the rest of the loaf that I had put down on the counter. I remember immediately calling my Aunt Charlotte, an emergency physician.
“What should I do now?” I asked. “Just wait out the storm, or toss a finger down my throat?”
“What? No, no, you're fine.”
“Fine? Didn't you hear what I said?”
“I think I did.”
“I ate mould.”
She laughed at me â
directly at me
â and eventually talked me off the ledge. I woke up once or twice in the night with belly cramps.
“You know, I could eat a steak tonight,” Grandma says. I hadn't noticed her pick up her menu. She's not looking at it, just holding it.
“Yeah, that does sound pretty good.”
I'm not sure if it's because we're here so late, or if this is just a restaurant that purposefully keeps its lighting dim. It's dark. We have two tea lights on our table. They aren't lit. It's dark enough that even the light provided by two small candles would help. I don't mind it, but it can't be easy for Grandma's eyes.
“Can you see steak anywhere on the menu?” Grandma is holding her menu with both hands. She's still not looking at it.
“There's a steak sandwich here,” I point out, “with onion rings and horseradish mayo.”
“That's what I'm getting,” she says, closing her menu determinedly. “I don't even have to look at anything else.”
“And it comes with blackened potato salad.”
“With what?”
“Oh, blackened potato salad.”
“Sorry, dear, I didn't hear that . . .” She leans closer.
“It's
POTATO SALAD
. . .
BLACKENED
. . .”
“Potato . . . sala'blacken . . . I've never had that.”
“Yeah, well, it's very good.”
“It sounds pretty good.”
We order our sandwiches. I ask for well done. Grandma does the same, an unexpected surprise. I hate when I'm with people (usually my dad) who tell me how I'm ruining my meat by asking for well done. A steak has to be rare, they say. I say meat should be cooked through. How does the presence of blood on your plate increase the level of enjoyment? I feel like me, Stonewall Jackson, and now Grandma are the only people in history who appreciate grey, dry steak.
I also ask for a half-litre of house red, first confirming Grandma will share. “Oh, why not,” she says. “I'm not driving.”
When the wine arrives, our indifferent server pours Grandma's first. Isn't she curious why I'm here with an old lady? Doesn't she want to ask why Grandma is up so late? We “cheers” and touch glasses. I sip mine. Grandma sniffs hers. The server's already gone.
“I can still remember when slacks came into style for women. Before, it was all dresses and skirts.” I didn't see this topic coming. Our server is wearing a pair of blue pants that somehow look tighter than her skin. “Imagine that, only wearing dresses every day.”
“No, I can't.”
“What I think I'll always remember is my very first pair of slacks. My mom bought them for me. I loved them. They were called whoopie pants.”
I rise in my chair, shifting my weight to the opposite buttock. “Whoopie pants, okay.”
“Yes, they were great. I can still remember them vividly. You see, I was just lucky, no one else I knew had whoopies. I was the only one.”
“I'd like to see a pair of these whoopie pants, Grandma. I can't picture them.” I look up toward the ceiling as if a replica of the pants has been stencilled there. Instead, in the dim light I can make out what appears to be a large yellow stain in the shape of a chubby wiener dog.
Grandma takes a few minutes to explain the nuts and bolts, the structural makeup of the pants. I'm finding it difficult to imagine the unusual garment. I've cobbled together a murky image. I'm seeing a pair of trousers that are essentially the opposite of bell-bottoms; tight near the bottom and loose from the knees up, almost MC Hammerâish or Elizabethan.
“What are the women your age wearing, dear? I try, but it's hard for me to keep up.”
I sip my wine, more generously this time, and cross my legs. “Styles seem to come and go so quickly, don't they?” I say expertly. I realize I don't have any authority when it comes to fashion, especially women's fashion. I still wear the grey toque I wore in middle school, and trousers cut into shorts with white tube socks in the summer. “I guess I usually just try to predict to myself which trends will become reviled the quickest.”
“That will what?” Grandma leans in again over the table.
“Like, I mean, which styles will be out of fashion the soonest.”
“Oh,” she says.
“For example, Grandma, have you noticed those
gladiator
-style sandals that a lot of women are wearing these days?” Our server is currently sporting a pair. Grandma doesn't say anything but looks at me and smiles. “Well, there are several different styles of these sandals but I find them all unbecoming. I don't know why. Too many straps and buckles and leather. Especially because flats, like the ballet slipper style” â which our hostess is wearing â “are still popular and, I think, much more flattering.” I look up from my plate to see Grandma smoothing out her napkin over her legs, which I've noticed she likes to do. Over and over. I've lost her. “Anyway, getting back to the whoopies, I would love to see them.”
“Yes, the whoopie pants. I wonder if anyone still has a pair locked away in some closet. Iain, dear, I never knew you had such an interest in women's fashion. It's great,” she says, reaching across the table, putting her hand on mine. It's the first time she's done something like this. “I've known you all these years and there's still so much I'm learning about you.”
WE'RE ONLY BITES
â me many and Grandma two â into our meal when I detect that her sandwich is missing the promised horseradish mayo. She doesn't seem bothered by the miscue. But I am. It's a worthy addition.
“Here, Grandma, take some of this sauce, it's pretty good.”
“No, no, that's yours. I'm fine, really.”
I beckon the sandalled waitress over with a hand wave. “Um, sorry, but you guys forget the horseradish sauce for her steak.” I also want to suggest that covering her diaphoretic feet while she's serving food isn't a dreadful idea.
“Okay.” She offers her watch a tiny glance, surely for our benefit â a quick visual memo of how late it is. “I'll be right back.”
I don't know why, but before she walks away I blurt that Grandma is ninety-two. The server freezes, takes a step back, looks over Grandma, and declares, “Amazing.” Her delivery is too actressy, and the word is laced with a car-salesman panache. I immediately regret saying anything.
For a while we refocus on our fare. We're hungry. We eat and drink. And then Grandma sets her cutlery down on the sides of her plate like the oars of a boat. She carefully wipes both sides of her mouth and swallows before speaking. “It was my dad who came out to Canada first, you know, before the rest of the family.”
“No, I didn't know that.” I set my own fork down.
“Oh, sure. I suppose the plan was to get settled with a job and such. And then we would come after. I never asked him why Canada or even why they decided we should leave Scotland.”
“They must have had a reason.”
“He didn't have much training for work. He'd been a baker in the Old Country. But when he got to Canada, the only work he could get was as a labourer. He looked after horses, because his father had had a horse-and-cart business back in Scotland. They transported fish to London. Anyway, it wasn't long then, before any of the rest of us came over, that the war broke out in Europe and he signed up with the Canadian army.”
“First World War?”
“Yup. He fought overseas. And luckily, he survived. We all moved out to the Prairies after the war. He started working as a custodian in a school. We really got on well. I got along best with my dad, I think. He'd tease me all the time. Once, I fell asleep after dinner and he took some ash from the fireplace and smudged a dark mustache above my lip. He'd also do things like, if we were all sitting at the table for tea, he'd just take his spoon out of his hot tea after stirring it and without saying anything place it down on my hand.” Grandma puts her index finger onto the back of my hand in place of a hot spoon. “Just like that. I'd always make a big fuss, like I was completely shocked, like it really burned. But I always knew it was coming. That was the whole thing.”
Grandma starts to cough as if the memory has dislodged a small piece of food in the back of her throat. She holds her hand up to say she's okay, but takes a sip of her water, then her wine. Her face is still red from coughing when she continues.
“He fought at Vimy. But he couldn't talk about it.”
“Ever?”
“No, never. And after the war he always got tight on Christmas Day and Remembrance Day. Other than that he never drank.”
“Really?”
“Yup. Maybe he told my mother everything that happened, I don't know, but not us kids. I just know the way he was and his personality and I know it would have been very hard on him, seeing all the things he saw. When I got older and read about what happened at Vimy and in the trenches and what he would have seen . . .”
She pauses. It's difficult to tell if she's going to cough again. Her eyes are full of life and expression and are going on without her, trying to finish her story non-verbally. I have to look away.
I wonder how I would do in war. How I would cope with life in a foxhole or trench? I grew up on a small farm, played sports, studied at university, and then started working. The idea of being engaged in active combat, sleeping in mud with fleas and rats, eating limited rations, and seeing my friends injured and killed seems almost beyond comprehension to me.