SCREWED

By my sixth birthday, I could cry on command. The trick, I learned, was not to blink, to let the dry air wash over your slick marbles until a blurry wall welled up and over and down the sides of your face. One thing I learned from my grandmother was how to lie. There was no better place to test my abilities than when visiting with her – my senses were on edge, my skin vibrating, primed for perfect posture and politeness; a complete contradiction of myself. Not only was I dishonest to her, donning false manners and feigning interests, but I was lying to myself about who I wanted to be. 

I first noticed my grandmother’s discontent with me on a family trip to Las Vegas. We were running late to see David Copperfield at the MGM Grand when she threw my favorite stuffed animal from the hotel balcony in a teaching moment, informing me that it was unladylike to lug around my beloved pink doggy under my arm, especially now that I was seven. When I looked over the railing and started to cry, she told me to “be-HAVE,” and I did. 

My grandmother belonged to a worldly and well-mannered era. She had managed her way into a marriage to a well-to-do construction man from St. Louis and had spent a great deal of both her young life and early years of motherhood abroad; the evidence of her voyages—36 cooking class certificates—hung framed and dust-free on the back wall of her kitchen. As she settled into her domestic life, she kept her passion alive by purchasing magnets and hand towels embroidered with snarky puns about wine or chocolate. 

It was sometime after her lived life, when she was tired from being married and divorced, tired of her two rather average adult sons, and tired of walking (rheumatoid arthritis made everything such a pain), that she decided to like me the least. She never said it aloud and I never asked, but I always knew that if I ever found myself running from a burning building into her arms, “Where are your brothers?” would be the first thing to spew from her mouth. While she remained constantly curious about my brothers’ endeavors and proud of their accomplishments, I remained at the heels of their achievements. I couldn’t be content with her dissatisfaction with me – I persisted with a sense of duty-driven love, always placing calls to enlighten her of my victories in lieu of receiving them. 

I hated being disliked so I tried even harder to be the granddaughter I believed she wanted—a perfectly poised, completely polite rendition of me. I tried to adapt: I chewed with my mouth closed, swallowed before I spoke, took piano lessons, went to “Manners Class”— I even began replying to her mass emails, expressing a fascination for her idiotic attachments (e.g. “Master of origami and he lives in a garbage truck!”) and signing them: “Lots of Love, Ruby”— an easy lie. But none of this seemed to change her perception of me. 

The family dynamic shifted in 2007 when my father opted to replace his daily dose of ibuprofen with a self-prescribed love affair to the brown-eyed sales associate of an overpriced culinary store. He wasn’t thinking long term and when my mother found out, it was, simply, over. My grandmother took the divorce to mean my father was separating from the family, not just my mother—she would have no relation to a wandering Casanova—deeming him the cancer that caused my parents’ marriage to deteriorate, the ink on the divorce papers acting as an effective chemo. My ability to remain in my father’s good graces, rather, my knack for bridling my tongue against any disagreements, led me to believe that my close relationship with him hindered any potential for an affectionate relationship with my grandmother. 

My grandmother had fallen in love with the idea of having a daughter without birthing a daughter, of demolishing a bottle of Pinot together and laughing under the warm hum of the kitchen fan while comparing different versions of my father. After the divorce, my grandmother assured my mother that she would never betray her daughter for her son, cementing this promise with plane tickets to vacation in Paris and an open invitation to visit her in St. Louis every Christmas with the kids. Thus, while suddenly independent of my father, my mother remained tethered to the support of her adopted family. 

My grandmother’s resolution to remain close with my mother was unexpected yet completely accepted by everyone bar my father. All contact between my grandmother and father ceased; a true blood transfusion transpired. My father existed in bitterness, regarding my grandmother as a frigid and cruel old woman and my mother as a money-grubbing bitch. Again, I bridled my tongue, allowing a wave of guilt to subdue my contentions as I was the only person willing to maintain a relationship with him. 

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My grandmother lived in a one-story mid-western neighborhood that consisted of red brick, well-manicured lawns, and true American patriots. Despite the fact that my grandfather had built the 6,400 square-foot home for what he believed to be an enduring family, it now quartered my grandmother alone—a fine asset to retain following their separation in 2000. After my brothers and I survived puberty and had begun to laugh at each other more than argue, we would take her car out at night during visits, root through the glove box for her tinted horse blinder sunglasses, and inevitably end up in the Walgreens parking lot. Ansel had the idea, though it’s rather hazy to him now when he gets reminded. We didn’t need to buy anything, we just wanted to see if we could pull off the farce. Ansel would put on the glasses and we would walk calmly between the aisles while my oldest brother, Max, would extend his left arm and act as a guide for his blind little brother who proceeded with all the caution of a deer on pavement. He told us later that he’d closed his eyes under the lenses, “you know, out of respect.” We’d check out and ferry this sedate pace back to the car, exchange the glasses for fast food coupons, and grab steak burgers and milkshakes before returning to the house. We would shut the garage door and say goodnight and goodbye to her metallic blue vessel, knowing that it wouldn’t see daylight or tread among the locals for another year. 

Upon reentering the house, we’d practice our imitations of our grandmother secretly under her feet in the basement, below her line of vision, sipping water through our teeth, our lower jaws trembling, the liquid spilling down our chins and under the collars of our shirts. I’d fall to the floor laughing, squeezing my stomach while I watched Ansel’s eyes roll back and his body exaggerate the effects of her quivering joints, water oozing from his mouth and nose. 

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Later, after I’d gotten my braces off and she’d grown confined to four wheels rather than two legs, it was decided (without my input) that I would help out more during our holiday visits. When it was just the two of us, Grandma Risch and me, I would employ sympathy lies— “Oh no Grandma, of course I don’t mind—so just dump it here? Into the toilet?” Although afterward, I would call my mother crying. My mother reminded me to be grateful for my grandmother while also assuring me of my grandmother’s jealousy toward my “inevitable potential,” reminding me that while I was looking ahead at my life, she was looking back at hers. Though she could recount the adventures of her youth with tremendous passion and detail, there was always an air of sadness when the account concluded; it was evident she felt pride in looking back, but it also commanded sorrow in the reminder that her vivacious life was forever behind her. But what bothered me most, what I absolutely did, in fact, mind, was pushing earrings through her earlobes—her skin sagging, concealing the piercing so that I had to excavate for a proper puncture. 

Our second-to-last Christmas dinner with her warranted a special performance: a hush fell over the table as my grandmother brought her napkin to her lips and produced a glob of mucus with consistency of gelatin, sliding effortlessly up her throat and into the tissue held in her brittle hand which she immediately placed back on her lap. Our forks remained hovering above our plates until she whispered “Sorry,” and we all realized how awful it must feel to grow old. 

•

When she died, I was on vacation in Minnesota, staying with the family of a friend whose ego reminded me why I should never accept destination invitations. My dad rang me up from his uniform neighborhood in northern California to say: “This isn’t a shock, it probably should have happened years ago.” I heard the tremor in his voice and how he swallowed before taking a long drag from his Marlboro, his exhale overflowing and clogging the speaker of his phone, bringing to mind the sharp ashy scent that has stained his life and mine. I imagined my dad, sitting on the back porch, his elbows on his knees, his bare feet against the grain of the deck, his left hand holding the phone tilted under his chin, his right covering his forehead, two fingers tensely gripping the lit cigarette. I didn’t want him to feel alone, so I tried not to blink, letting the dry air wash over my slick marbles and remembering how to pull at my tears. 

On occasion throughout my life, when I’ve found myself in a less than favorable situation, I would wish that something bad would happen to warrant my excusable departure. I would imagine the phrase, “Ruby, there’s been an accident,” over an intercom somewhere and start packing my bags with a wisp of a smile on my face. When it finally happened in Minnesota, I was, at first, relieved to have an escape—I’d become bored and welcomed the idea of going home early—but in the silver Prius on the way to the airport, I was completely ambushed. I had foolishly gotten into the car second, relegating myself to the seat in between my friend and her mother, so when the car started to get warm and I couldn’t roll down the windows or move my elbows or legs or neck, I cracked. The highway got blurry and I had to cradle my head in my hands so they wouldn’t see my distorted face. I was embarrassed but unable to speak, my throat shrinking and nostrils leaking, gasping for oxygen, hot tongue, red cheeks, completely confused. My friend’s father handed me a stale paper towel from the front seat and after a few pats on the back and a couple ‘there-there’s, I was dropped, with great relief, at the departures curb. 

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With the exception of two heirloom wedding ring sets that my grandmother had set aside for my brothers, the red brick house with the well-manicured lawn and everything in it was to be sold. When the date of her funeral was set, my father told me that he would understand if I didn’t want to go to Grandma’s summer send-off, that it was going to be hard for everyone and he didn’t want me to be overwhelmed. I told him I’d think about it even though I’d already made up my mind. I called him the next day and told him that I didn’t want to go because I didn’t want to see her house all disjointed before the sale, because I wanted to remember everything just as it was when she was alive, because I didn’t want to face having to say “goodbye;” and because when I thought of going to St. Louis in late July and hovering under the heat, wearing black and staying silent, my upper lip and hairline sweating, physically exhausted and completely remiss, it made me sick. He told me he understood, and that I’d be missed but everyone would accept my absence with tones of compassion and sympathy as they had with Max’s excuse. 

The memorial took place in the bones of her living room, I heard the turnout was fairly lousy. Later, back home, when Max and Ansel received her wedding rings from the executor, I tried each one on and laughed a little morosely at the familiar polished elegance of another era resting between my knuckles. Who needs a ring, I thought, when last year, when she existed, I had stolen her refrigerator magnet that read: “Screw it” next to a picture of a corkscrew, branding me both a liar and a thief.