5…Burdens

After putting the junk mail into the recycling bin in the perfectly clean kitchen, I take the remaining pile of mail into Henry's perfectly clean study, Petal padding along behind me since Bea is in the midst of doing a radio show at her apartment. Bea wouldn't say how she managed to get this place spotless this week—if she hired someone or did it herself—only trilling out "Ancient Chinese secret," in a bad jokey accent, before clamming up about it. I'm impressed, though. This place is Bea-clean, no dust motes allowed. Yet another thing I'm grateful to her for. She also called Zarahi's referral to start coming every week.

The study, I notice, looks odd without Henry's beat up chair under the bank of windows. My chair and Grandmother's are still there, though; we didn't move hers after she died, although no one's probably sat in it since then. I look at her hooded porter's chair sadly, but shake it off. I have work to do.

I sit in the old leather swivel chair at the massive antique desk and start sorting the mail into stacks. One is for personal correspondence to Henry. I think it's so sweet that people of his generation still write real letters via the mail. Henry has embraced email, somewhat, but his primary correspondence to his friends, the older ones at least, is through traditional mail.

I'm happy to see that he has letters from nearly every continent and quite a lot from the U.S. as well. Mostly those, I see, are from various college towns across the country: Henry knows a lot of scholars. I go through all the letters, arranging them in order according to their postmark date. Some of them were sent in February and March. I don't know if they just took a long time getting here, or if Henry has been lax lately in answering his mail. Either way, we'll take care of it tomorrow.

I have one letter, too, from my high school friend, Ito, who taught me Japanese and even some Chinese in the two years that he and I spent at school together in D.C. Both of his parents were Japanese diplomats and he had an upbringing much like mine, moving around a lot. We have sporadically continued the letter tradition, although we mostly email. He must've sent it here, expecting Henry to forward it to me. I rubber band that with the personal correspondence and put it aside to read tomorrow with Henry. He always liked Ito.

The next stack I go through is the "not sure" pile. There are three letters that are not bills, I don't think, but are also not personal correspondence. One has a preprinted return address from Midtown Manhattan, "Rosen, Clermont and Delaine." Law firm maybe? It's hand addressed to Granddad. I just don't know.

The two other ones in the "unsure" pile are both from a different law firm, this time in Philadelphia. Brechlin, Browning and Strohlein—at least it sounds like a law office. I'm curious and really want to open them, but as it is, I'm walking a fine line between taking care of everything I can so Henry doesn't have to worry, while also trying not to invade his privacy. I quell the urge to pry and put these letters on top of his correspondence pile to take to Rehab.

The stack I'm going to take care of now is the large one of bills, with a couple bank statements thrown in. It's getting near the first of the month and I don't want to be late on the rent. I'm not even sure how much the rent is on this place, I just know that my grandparents for years—well, mostly my grandmother, who handled the bills—always made a big joke of sending the rent check at the end of every month to "The Evil Slumlord."

I decide to do this methodically. First, I open and put aside all the outer envelopes and, without really looking at each one, set the bills out in a grid around me on the large antique desk. I swivel the chair around to the wall of built-in bookcases and file drawers behind me to fish out the large green leather checkbook ledger from the shelf where it always sits. I lug that onto the desk, tracing my fingers over where Grandmother had embossed "Office of The Rambler" on its front in gold lettering. It looks officey and old timey, about the size of a large photo album.

Not for the first time today, I wish Grandmother was here.

Opening it, I see that the balancing of this checkbook has not been kept up at all and I need to figure that out before I start writing checks. I set to work getting that up-to-date, picking up the bank statements, which are for January, February and March—April's apparently is not in yet—so I can match what's in the ledger.

An hour later, I've figured out that Henry's State Department pension and Social Security checks gets direct-deposited on or around the 1st of every month and that a Ms. Gladwyn Fairfield is our Evil Slumlord. Since I couldn't ask Bea, I had to match up the copies of the checks included on the bank statements with the check stubs that just said, "rent" to figure out her name.

But if she's an evil slumlord, she must be a doltish one, or maybe The Rambler is rent-controlled, because rent for this huge place is only $2000 per month. Ms. Fairfield's lack of real estate knowledge is really appreciated right now because it doesn't look like Henry has paid April's rent yet and the balance on the checkbook is $297.02. And that's even before I've looked at or paid any of the other bills.

Oh, Dios mio!

I put my head on the desk. We have never been rich, but have always lived well and had enough money to pay our bills. What was I thinking running around China with Henry paying for my plane ticket?

That triggers something in my brain and I bolt up from the desk, making Petal, who had settled on the chesterfield sofa, raise her head in alarm.

I run down the hallway to my room and rifle through my bedside table to find it; my own checkbook and saving account. The pride I had in amassing this balance withers as I make my way back to the study. Because here I was putting money in the bank as Henry is struggling to pay our household bills. Without looking, I know I have $7200 between my checking and savings accounts at Stanford Federal Credit Union, not including the piddling interest my savings earn.

Back at the study desk, I first write out a check for $4000 to Ms. Gladwyne Fairfield for both April and May's rent and put it aside in an envelope. I still don't know the address to send it, but it feels good to have written it; I'll go online to transfer all my money to checking later. Then I look at the bills laid out on the desk to prioritize. I put one aside.

The next largest one, not including rent, is a homeowner's insurance bill due at State Farm for our little bayside cottage in Napeague on Long Island. Dios mio, that's expensive, probably due to the fact that the house is in a flood zone. I write out a check for that from my account and seal it in the enclosed return envelope. I pay the whole Amex balance, which is not much, but only the minimum payment for the Visa where I see the largest recent purchase was my plane ticket to China.

Ugh. I can't sit still. I need to move.

Petal's eyes follow my pacing around the study, as I try to shake off the deluge of guilt I feel at my self-involvement at school, letting Henry pay for my school travel; letting Henry pay for anything. On my next round of pacing as I pass the window, something pulls me towards Grandmother's hooded porter's chair and I sit, tentatively, on the edge of the seat. I slowly scoot back and immediately feel her comfort. I shut my eyes and images from the past flit through my mind.

Of Grandmother going with me to open an account at Stanford and methodically showing me how to balance my checkbook and do my taxes from my various jobs, teaching me to drive and taking me to get my license. And before that, here and in D.C., and London, Paris, Ankara, and heaven knows how many other places, installing tile on a floor with me as her helper, showing me how to do laundry, the right amount of soap and sorting of colors and sewing buttons on shirts. Showing me how to get stains out of clothing using readily available products like vinegar and baking soda that you could find in any third world country. The memories flit past.

We've had housekeepers here and abroad, but Grandmother never let them clean my room or change my sheets or put away my books and toys. I did it. She took me shopping with her, figuring out bus routes, sometimes taking the bus with a security agent accompanying us, depending on where we were. She talked to me about budgets, comparing prices on things, gently haggling with stall workers in foreign marketplaces, counting out francs and euros in Paris, rubles in Moscow and St. Petersburg, dirhams in Dubai, pounds in Cairo, dinar in Algiers. We sent thank you notes together after any function we attended, shopped for appropriate and thoughtful hostess gifts beforehand. And so many other small moments, I see now, all in the service of making me adept at a practical and gracious life, making me capable. Anywhere.

And here I am in New York, using normal old American dollars to pay normal bills, and feeling dilettantish, inept, imminently incapable.

Eyes still closed, I whisper, "I don't know if I can do all this, Rosamunde. I need help." I sit quietly.

A startled gasp pulls me out of my self-despair and I wrench my eyes open to see Bea standing in the study doorway, stunned eyes open wide. We each don't say anything for a moment as she walks in slowly, eyes glued to me.

"My God, I thought you were Rosamunde for a moment," she says, sinking shakily onto the sofa next to Petal, smoothing out her yellow caftan over her knees. "You were in her chair sitting all upright, with that perfect posture she always had."

"I'm not feeling like Grandmother right now," I say woefully.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I was just thinking of her and how capable she always was. And how she spent so much time and effort trying to teach me, which was obviously wasted energy."

"Do you know why she did that? Spent so much time teaching you normal practical things?"

"Because she liked pointless endeavors?" I answer churlishly.

Bea chuckles, "For one, she understood that you had a very different life from most other children and she wanted to make it as normal as possible. And two, she couldn't stand the thought of you being like she was when she was young. She didn't know how to do anything."

I look at Bea quizzically because Grandmother was always the very picture of practical ability. She was the personification of a doer.

"Uh huh," Bea nods. "Hard to believe, isn't it, but when she first married Henry she doomed untold loads of laundry from not knowing how to use the washing machine and she'd pour bleach on minor stains before putting them in the wash. She hid the ruined clothes and sheets and whatever else and went out and bought all new so your grandfather wouldn't know. She even said she blew up a stove, too, somehow. She said she didn't even know how to sweep a floor."

I start giggling a little at the thought. "I can't picture that. She knew how to do, like, everything, anywhere, anytime."

"They were in D.C. at first and she told me Henry had to fly off somewhere for just a couple weeks and she didn't go with him that time. Instead, she ran home to Main Line Philly and asked her family's long time housekeeper to teach her everything to do with running a house. She followed her around and asked questions and learned how to do all the housework. Rosamunde said their housekeeper couldn't wait to get rid of her. Hildegard was her name; a big no-nonsense Pennsylvania Dutch woman."

Bea pauses wistfully at the memory. "Your grandmother was a straight-up rich, spoiled W.A.S.P.—her words—who only knew how to look pretty and be charming at parties and mix great cocktails and play tennis. It was a generational and class thing—this would've been the late fifties and early sixties, I guess, before I was even born. Her life was going to be the same as her mother's and her mother's before hers; white-only country clubs and dinner parties."

Thinking of my grandparents' wedding photo, I say, "But she chose adventure with a scrappy half-Welsh, half-Lebanese interpreter from Brooklyn instead."

"Yep. She chose Henry. And a completely different world," Bea nods. "But that's why she wanted you to be capable in your own life. And your father got the same lessons you did; she was not having any progeny of hers blowing up appliances and not knowing a broom from a hand rag. You can bet your dad knew how to sew up a rip in his shirt and scour a kitchen floor, too."

At the mention of my father, I feel that ever-present sadness again, for me, for Rosamunde and Henry, even Bea, who was a family friend. My parents have come up so much since I've been back and I don't remember much of either of them. And I didn't know any of this about my grandmother's past, either, just what I learned from direct experience with her.

My self-involvement and selfishness and guilt and regret all mix up into a potent cocktail of their own as I look down at the floor in shame and self-pity.

Bea says quietly, "You know one of Rosamunde's main lessons is something that you rarely make use of."

She is looking at me so sincerely and with such feeling, that I don't really want to know. But of course I ask anyway. "What's that?"

"Asking for help when you need it."

"I never wanted to be a burden. Ever. Especially to them." I am dismayed to hear there is a little bit of whine in my voice.

Bea rolls her eyes theatrically. "What was Rosamunde's favorite thing to do when you were in a particular country—any country—for more than a few weeks?"

I'm not sure where she's going with this, but I have a feeling I'm not going to like it. "Um…Doing volunteer work?"

"Exactly." I don't trust her acerbic look. "And what were the primary organizations she worked with?"

I don't answer her, instead I mentally search for the trap she's laying out. Bea is never someone you want to have a battle of wits with.

"Come on…" she prompts trenchantly, motioning with her hands. "What kind of charities?"

"Organizations helping elevate women and children," I say reluctantly, before adding, "Why don't you just get to the point you're leading me to in your very laborious fashion and save us all this torture?"

She holds up her hand to shush me. "I cannot hurry this point because boneheadedness has to be countered step by step and very slowly." She draws out the last two words. "Right, so women and children's organizations. Now…how did Rosamunde feel about doing this work she chose to do?"

I know this full well because Grandmother and I talked about it at length over the years. When I wasn't being homeschooled, we volunteered together in I don't know how many countries.

But I'm not playing Bea's game anymore. I don't answer, instead I just meet her gaze, my lips pressed tightly together. She waits me out.

"Okay, fine, fine! Rosamunde felt honored and blessed." Now it's my turn to roll my eyes for effect.

"Thank you," she says primly. "She loved it. She was honored to be able to help, maybe even because she was so affluent early in life." Bea takes a big deep breath and I know we're getting to the heart of the matter. "Now, if you can, try to pull up anything in that scholarship-to-Stanford-at-sixteen/speaks-forty-la nguages big fat brain of yours that would make you think that taking care of her beloved son's only child would be anything like a burden to Rosamunde. Or Henry."

She doesn't wait long before prompting satirically, "Hmm? Hmm? Can't find anything? That's because there isn't anything. She was honored and blessed!"

"But they got me when they were in their sixties and could've been living it up in retirement on the Riviera or something."

"Right, because they are, were, the living-it-up-on-the-Riviera type!" Alright. I'll give her that point. "How do you feel about helping Henry now?"

"Honored and blessed," I say immediately.

"And how do you think I feel helping Henry in my own way, making his dinners every night and whatever else?"

"The same," I mutter.

"Exactly! And how do you think Henry feels about you being here taking care of him?" Bea looks up at the ceiling as if for divine intervention, adding to herself, I think, "God knows, I should probably have this same conversation with Henry again." Shaking it off, she turns back to me, "How do you think he feels?"

Oh. "Like a burden," I say quietly, and I know it's true. That thought weighs me down.

"Uh huh."

"Bea, what was your original point to all this?"

She ponders this for a moment. "Dammit, I don't remember now. You made me forget with all your poor-me talk about being a burden." Then brightly, "Oh yeah! It's that you don't need to be afraid to ask for help! You don't have to keep everything inside. That was one of Rosamunde's main lessons."

"I'm not afraid of asking for help!" I exclaim, not sure if it's true, but Bea's so unequivocally pedantic that I just feel the need to argue.

Her only answer is a cocked eyebrow and a smirk.

Now I've forgotten what I needed help on. Oh yeah, I was paying bills, before feeling completely overwhelmed. A question I didn't know I had until now comes out of my mouth as I get up from Grandmother's chair and go around to the desk.

"Do you know if there are any other bank accounts, but the main one? I know there used to be several savings accounts, but I can't find anything."

"Before Rosamunde…left us…she streamlined everything for Henry. Plus, I think there were a lot of medical bills for her that might've…drained some of that."

Oh. Bea's got heartache written all over her face and I will do anything in this moment to alleviate that. "Will you help me sort some of this out?" I ask tentatively.

Bea smiles, and gets up from the sofa, coming around the desk to lean over me as I open the Rambler's check book again.

"I've written out the rent check to Ms. Gladwyne Fairfield, but I can't find the…"

Bea interrupts me, "Who?"

"Gladwyne, our landlady." She looks as confused as I'm feeling right now. I explain to her how I figured it out by matching up check stubs from the copies of the checks on the bank statements. "Is that not right? Who do you send your rent check to?"

"Hang on. Let me grab something. Be right back."

She walks out the door and I just sit waiting, memories of my grandmother again flitting through my mind. One of these memories is of her working on our little bayside cottage at Napeague Harbor, making a side table out of a washed up tree trunk as I watched. It turned out really pretty. I do remember her saying then that she didn't know how to do anything useful when she was young, although she never went into detail about it like Bea just did. I remember not really believing her, just brushing it off as self-deprecation. I wish I'd asked her more about it then.

Bea comes breezing back in, a checkbook in her hand with cash stuffed in it. She sits on the edge of the desk.

"I don't send off a rent check. I give rent to Henry."

"Why?"

Bea looks a little uneasy, pausing before answering. "Well, technically, my apartment is not separate from this one. It's carved out of what used to be storage rooms and Rosamunde's old workshop. The bathrooms and kitchen were added when I moved in. You remember what it used to be, right?"

"Not really. I never really spent a lot of time here. We were always away in some other country." And then I gasp as a new thought enters my mind, "Is it not legal? Does the landlord not know?" I can't imagine Grandmother doing anything that was not by the book, but there is clearly so much I don't know.

"Of course we got permission from the owner. It's not legally separate though, it's like with maid's quarters or whatever."

I had no idea.

She leans over me, picking up all the bills and rifling through them. "I pay the cable, cell phone, and Con Ed bill every month. And this one other one is for my super high-speed internet. And I pay fifteen hundred dollars in rent to Henry."

"What! Are you aware that you pay almost all the rent for this whole floor?"

"So?" she shrugs. "You tell me where else I could find the apartment I have for what I pay."

But something about her is a bit shifty and I wonder if she's just making this up so she can give me money without my knowing. "I didn't find any record of a regular monthly deposit from you."

She looks at me pensively for a moment and then her eyes flick to the shelves behind me. She slides off her perch on the desk and grabs a Syrian carved metal box, setting it on top of the big checkbook on the desk. She lifts the lid and I see various denominations of bills are folded in it, mostly foreign, though.

"That's because I always put it in here." She takes the cash stuffed into her checkbook, drops it in the box, and closes the lid again, putting it back on the shelf behind me. "It's like Henry's petty cash for the month."

For some reason, I still think she's not telling the whole truth. "Are you sure you're not just saying that?"

"Please!" Bea opens her own checkbook and slaps it down in front of me. She points to the register showing payments made to the utilities at the end of March, then turns a page back, points to those same payments for February, and January and so on. She releases the checkbook and it flips to show the printed address on the checks as a P.O. box in Philadelphia.

"You need to change your address." I point to it.

She grabs up the checkbook. "Do you believe me now? Are we done?"

"I guess," I shrug. "It's just…you're paying for nearly everything. I thought maybe you were making it up to help me out without my knowing."

"And if I was?" She has that smart-alecky look on her face again. "Seriously, think of it this way…I'm starting to make good money from my radio shows…" I had no idea and open my mouth to ask about it, but am silenced when she continues. "And I need the high speed internet and electricity for that, right?"

I nod.

"Do you think with so much riding on these services that I would trust Mr. I-Can-Negotiate-Peace-Accords-in-Ancient-Sanskrit- But-Can't-Remember-Mundane-Things-To-Save-My-Life to send those checks every month?"

I think about it for a second and she's right. It was always Rosamunde who did all the household business.

I smile at her. "Maybe Grandmother should've spent some time teaching Grandfather to balance a checkbook and stuff."

"She was not stupid. I'm sure she knew that it wouldn't take with him."

"True," I concede. "Why don't you just set up an automatic debit? No one uses checks anymore."

"Because this is how I choose to do it." Bea says all huffish, getting up from the desk.

"Either we have rent control or our landlord is really dumb."

"Yes, I sometimes think the landlord is a complete idiot." Bea shakes her head.

"Wait! I still don't know where to send the rent check!"

"It goes to a law firm in Philly, but I can take care of sending it."

I pick up one of the envelopes from on top of the pile to take to Henry, showing it to Bea. "Is it this place? Brechlin and Browning and whatever?"

"Yep. But leave it on the desk with the rest of those bills you're done with, too. I'll go get some stamps from my place and get them ready because you, missy, are going to go walk Petal and pick us up some dumplings from that place down the street. I don't feel like cooking this afternoon after doing my radio show."

"Deal!" I say, as she walks toward the study door. "And Bea…thank you."

She turns around before leaving with a Cheshire cat grin, saying blithely, "Quit being such a burden!"

Great. I have a feeling this is going to become a new running joke.