Answering my cell phone one afternoon---the sixteenth of December, to be exact---I wonder what the lady who isn't my lady wants from me now. She sounds stressed; this is business as usual. Her request isn't.
"I promised Mom I'd pick Grandma up at the beauty parlor and keep her busy while Mom wraps presents--and I'm stuck in bumper-to-bumper on the Turnpike near Bergen and she'll be through at Clara's any time now! And if I don't pick her up, she'll call my dad to come get her in the cab and take her home. She'll try to be helpful and end up spilling the beans about everything Val's kids are getting for Christmas, and Mom will start drinking heavily. There's no way I can make it there--"
Ninety-mile-a-minute mouth, that's her. And I'll do it, of course, but I wait to hear, "Please, Ranger?" because sometimes I think that's the only time I'm ever going to hear it, when she needs me for something. The problem is, the something she wants is never the something I want.
"Babe," I say calmly, when she pauses for breath. "Tell me where."
Which she does in between "Thank you!"s and one "Hey, pass this, moron!", which I don't think is intended for me. I repeat the directions back to her without commentary. "You owe me big, Babe," I say, and hang up.
Clara's Beauty Parlor looks like it's been there for about fifty years, which still makes it a lot younger than Babe's grandmother. It has holiday decorations up, old-fashioned strings of lights with bulbs the size of my thumb. The old lady totters out a couple minutes after I drive up--and if she paid that place any money, she should demand a refund. Is she crazy? Oh, wait--I forgot!--it runs in the family. For a while, Babe's hair was screaming orange and frizzy--compared to that, her grandmother's pink crewcut is dainty and ladylike.
When I get out of the Porsche, Grandma recognizes me and beams. Her ivory dentures can't compete with the earrings swinging from her lobes, little blinking lights casting red halos against the short pink hair. I smile back, doing my best not to wince. Her head is a pink ornament atop a shaggy wool coat--if I ever see a sheep that color green I'm shooting it on principal--and a bejeweled Christmas tree is pinned crookedly on her bosom.
And, according to the woman who has somehow talked me into this errand, I have to keep Grandma occupied and out of mischief until at least 5 p.m. Which is, according to the Bulova on my left wrist, one hour and eighteen minutes away. If my own grandmother is to be believed, a prayer to St. Jude, the patron saint of hopeless causes, would be in order right about now.
"I'm thirsty," she announces after she's greeted me. "Clara had a plate of cookies out, but they were stale. I'm still hungry and it's a long time until dinner. Maybe we could cruise through McDonalds?" She looks at me hopefully. Cruise through...oh boy.
Picturing us motoring up to the drive-thru in the Porsche and ordering a Happy Meal for Grandma makes me squint. Suddenly, I understand why Babe gets that twitch in her eye when she spends too much time with her family. "Maybe you'd let me take you somewhere," I offer, and am rewarded with a smile that makes my breath catch. This is where Babe gets her looks, and even if I don't grow old with her, now I know how she'll look in another fifty years. Scary.
So, in the spirit of taking good care of Grandma, I find an Italian place that doesn't shut down between lunch and dinner and escort her there. I order a glass of white wine, because if I don't, I think I may start to twitch, and request an antipasto platter for two. Grandma pipes up and asks for a Shirley Temple. She must really be thirsty, because she knocks it back like a sailor before the grim-faced waitress--Jeanne somebody, her boyfriend tried to skip on charges for some hot car stereos--has even left the table.
By the time Jeanne gets back with the antipasto, Grandma is ready for another drink, and she's giggly. This concerns me. Does she have a medical conditon or something, or does Bartolo's have a rogue bartender? There's not supposed to be any booze in a Shirley Temple, but my companion seems to be getting tight.
Nibbling a stuffed olive while the old lady chatters on about the latest gossip from the beauty parlor, I hope some food will help soak up the wine. Can't help comparing her to Grandmama Echevarria. They're nothing alike, except for being petite and wrinkled...my grandmother's hair has gone silver and she keeps it in a long braid that trails to her waist. Her wardrobe has a lot of navy blue--nothing that lights up. Grandma has taken off the green coat. Under it is a red sweatshirt with a cross-eyed reindeer holding a cup of cheer. The caption says, "Bingle Jells!" My grandmother wouldn't get that; she still speaks mostly Spanish.
Well, what do you expect? My grandfather worked in New York and sent money back home. Grandmama saved it and got herself and my mother out of Cuba just ahead of the revolution--Grandmama was forty-two and my mother was a teenager (and not anybody's mother at that point!). The first words of English Grandmama learned were from the cab driver who brought them from Newark Airport, and Mama's spent the last forty years trying to get her to forget them.
"Is Stephanie going to be joining us?" asks Grandma, chewing on a slice of prosciutto.
"Maybe. Depends on the traffic. She wanted to make sure you didn't think she'd forgotten you." I avoid saying Babe's name. I don't even say it to her anymore. I want to, but it's up there with all those other things I want that I can't have.
"Well, I think this is nice!" she declares, giving me that unnervingly lovely smile again. "Now, I know Stephanie calls you Ranger, but you must have a real name somewhere."
Several, I almost say. But I know, without a doubt, if I tell her my given name is Ricardo, she's going to start calling me Ricky and things are going to go downhill fast from there. So I give her my middle name, Carlos, which is how most official documents list me.
"Like that movie with Al Pacino!" she exclaims over the Christmas muzak. "Carlito's Way!"
When Jeanne grudgingly offers me more wine, I nod. I've forgotten the Grandmother Radar they've got for things you don't want them to know. Mothers have it too, but grandmothers have it on steroids. "Carlito" is exactly what Grandmama Echevarria still calls me, and if this one ever repeats it to Babe, the first time she says it, I'll have a full-fledged twitch of my own.
"How do you you say 'Merry Christmas' in Spanish?" she wants to know. When I tell her, she raises her glass and toasts the empty restaurant. "Feelies Navy-dad!"
After a while, I excuse myself and go corner Jeanne. "What the hell are they putting in her drinks?" I demand. "Are they crazy, trying to get an old woman drunk?"
Jeanne glares at me. "There were two big, fancy Christmas parties today at noon and one o'clock. We had three people call out sick--from the mall. We're short-handed; I've been mixing the drinks, Ranger, and all your grandmother's gotten is ginger ale and grenadine. Don't start with me, I'm pulling a double shift and I'm in no mood!"
"She's not my grandmother," I retort, and make my way back to the table, where Grandma's leaning her head over the back of the chair and staring upward. "What's is it?" I ask, worried that short-handed Jeanne's gotten her bottles mixed up.
"Look at the pretty lights," she says dreamily. Bartolo's is decked out for the season, and ropes of white lights and gold tinsel criss-cross the ceiling. Arrangements of poinsettias decorate all the tables, also white, wrapped in gold shiny foil. Elegant and Christmas-y.
I've regularly spent money on Christmas, but it's been a long time since I actually celebrated it. Why is that, I wonder as Grandma starts talking about how crowded the house is now that Valerie and her girls have moved in. It's not like my family is in Cuba--or even in Miami. Most of them are right over on Staten Island...I've lied to Babe there; she thinks they're in Jersey, but there's no way I'm giving her hints that could help her track them down. Too much culture shock. The Chambersberg Plums meet the Mariner's Harbor Manosos...not in this lifetime, if I can help it. Thinking of her in the same room as my sisters, something twitches, and I down the last of my second glass of wine.
This is the most alcohol I've had in a couple of years...not since my sister Donna's wedding...and I feel a light buzz. Not drunk, but the twitch has faded away. Except for two olives and a wedge of asiago, Grandma has killed the antipasto platter singlehandedly--I'd hate to have her arteries--and it's ten minutes after five--I can drop her off at home any time.
"I need to powder my nose first," she says with a little wink. She wanders away, one hand waving in time with "Winter Wonderland".
A flash of platinum, and Jeanne appears with the bill. Grandma traipes back to the table, her face haphazard beige with a blob of fuschia lipstick surrounding her mouth. My grandmother draws on her eyebrows with a crayon, I think fondly.
"I had a lovely time," she announces solemnly. "Thank you very much, Carlito." She puts the emerald green sheep on again, picks up her purse and the table's poinsettia, and starts walking toward the door.
Jeanne is returning with the credit card slip, and opens her mouth to say something indignant about the vanishing plant. I shake my head. Peace on Earth, and a poinsettia for Babe's Grandma... I add a hefty bonus to the tab cover it, and slip Jeanne some major folding money with a conspiratorial wink. She smiles for the first time and wishes me a very Merry Christmas.
Fishing the keys from my pocket and following Grandma toward the door, I have an urge to spend Christmas with my family. Maybe I'll take Grandmama Echevarria out for drinks, and teach her how to say Feliz Navidad in English.
Originally a challenge for Yuletide Treasure (New Year's Resolutions 2005), to feature Ranger and Grandma Mazur, subject, friendship.
They belong to theinventive Ms. Janet Evanovich;I don't own any of them. (pouts) If I was Stephanie, I would SO let Ranger put a smile on my face--!
Feliz Navidad, y'all.