Bunny and Eddie’s Christmas Party

“Grandma, tell me again how you met first Grandpa Eddie at the office Christmas party.”  Grandma Bunny was always consistent in her telling, no nonsense, no embellishment.  She was a love-serious dame, and I’m a sucker for a true-love story.    

My grandmother had a thing for Eddies — two of her husbands were named Edward. I loved my first grandpa Eddie more than his replacement Eddie. Not that “Grandpa Eddie Two” was a bad guy, it was just that the first Eddie was the grandpa of my formative years when digging up worms and sharing giant cherry Slurpees were the highlights of my summer vacation.

“Well, it was really crowded at The Meadows.    I was the new hostess so I had to check the coats of the folks coming in for their Christmas parties,  and since I had never checked coats before, the line was very long.  Because you know the damn accountants are nothing if not prompt so everyone arrived at the same time. “

“And it was the kind of party that included the wives and girlfriends so every woman had a coat.   The few that had fur coats and stoles didn’t check them.  They only wore them a few times a year and didn’t trust the coat check girl to give them back the right coat.  And they wanted to show off a little, too, those snooty bitches.”

“I learned pretty quick that Jolly Gene had some god-damn jolly roving hands when I had to reach over the counter to take up the coats.  He liked to be up-front to kiss all the women and the asses of the big bosses so they’d come back for their kids’ sweet sixteen or their wives’ charity parties, ya know.”  

“So Grandpa Eddie was what we used to call an office boy because he wasn’t a college boy, ya know.  He’d bring the mail around the accounting firm and when it was quiet in the office he’d be studying because he was going to the night school.  He didn’t have a rich daddy to send him to college so after he got out of the army he took the GI Bill and worked while going to school. He used to say that I shoulda come to night school,  too.  He thought I was smart even if my own daddy didn’t seem to think so. That’s why your mom and auntie Eileen went to college — because Grandpa Eddie knew women were smart,  smarter than some men even.”  

“So there’s this long line of people waiting to check their coats, and I’m sweating running around with the coats and the coat room getting so hot.  The men are puffing on their nasty cigars and the smoke is starting to make me a little dizzy — I didn’t have lunch that day because I knew there was gonna be a private party and the staff could have a plate after the service and I was hoping for some of that shrimp cocktail.    It’s loud and I’m trying to keep up with giving the right coat check ticket to the right person, and when I turn around to hang up a coat there’s skinny Grandpa Eddie with his arms out and he’s handing me the coat check chit with one hand and scooping up the coat in my hand with the other.  So all I had to do was take the coat off the counter and turn around.  Nobody sent him to work the coat check — he was just there.  I don’t think I even noticed how good-looking he was,  THAT HAIR OF HIS!  I was just so relieved that I wasn’t gonna pass out in the coat check closet where Gene could get his jollies.”  

“We were a good team and when the coats started to slow down we started talking — ya know, back in the day we’d tease each other, but Grandpa Eddie was kinda serious.  I had brothers so I could really tease rough — but I took it easy on him.  I was smart enough to figure out that a guy like Grandpa Eddie was a real catch.   You know,  I chased him until he caught ME.  But that’s another story, because in this story we didn’t even know each other yet.”  

“The music was starting to get louder in the dining room and I told him I was doing OK now so he could go in to the party with his company,  and he suggested he’d stay in the coat check for me if I want to run to the ladies’ and freshen up before I had to wait in the closet all night.  So I think, his mother must have raised him right or he’s got sisters who work on their feet — and you know Auntie Stella and Auntie Roseanne, so I was right again ”  

“So I come outta the ladies, what, five minutes later?   I get to the half-door of the coat check and there’s Jolly Gene laid out on the floor and Grandpa Eddie standing there looking at his hands — shocked, opening and closing them.   Seems that Gene didn’t know I was in the bathroom and went into the coat check closet with his grabby hands and got a face full of Grandpa Eddie’s five fingers instead.”  

At this point in the narration Grandma would shake her fist and the Bakelite bracelets on her bony wrist would clack together — summoning the righteousness of Grandpa Eddie being groped among the smoky and perfumed coats,  and then she’d lean over and say with conspiratorial wink….

“As cool as could be, I open the lower door,  grab my coat off the back of the stool, put my hand through Grandpa Eddie’s arm and pull him out of Green Meadows.  We went and got hamburgers, and who the hell knows what happened to Jolly Gene.  Until the day my Eddie died we’d drive past Green Meadows, look at each other and just smile.”      

 

 

 

 

 

New Beginnings

She loved new beginnings, but they meant saying good-bye to the comfortable and familiar. So long old, worn-out sneakers that took her to parties and the movies and then away from home.

She found them while cleaning her room over spring break.  They were under the bed all dusty and crusty, so she shook them out in case there were spiders inside and put them on one more time.  They felt funny for a minute until she flexed and wiggled her remembering toes.  A little too small now,  just like her home town.  She wore them until she finished cleaning and when she carried the garbage bag outside she took them off standing next to the stinking can.  Her involuntary sigh of relief was both a sign and a sadness as she tossed them in and let the giant plastic lid slam shut.  

I Knead Words

The dough is still tough, cold but in a little while it will be elastic, warm.   My hands will pull, throw, twist and fold until it glistens and obeys my commands.  I’ll make sure it will look forward to its rest in the warm buttered bowl.

But now I focus on the work and anticipate the earthy smell of the yeast, the chewy crust and the warm crumb.  A story turns itself over in my mind as I knead. Words are like bread.  They rise and sometimes they turn out tasty.  Sometimes they don’t, but like my less-than-perfect loaves, I’ll enjoy them anyway.

 

Ruby Caught Red-Handed

The stacks feel so close. They stretch so high that they appear to meet.  It feels more like a cathedral than a library.  The colors of the books are so bright, and the sunlight pours down on Ruby though there are no windows in the stacks.

Ruby is looking for a book to hide the money and she feels irritated, rushed to complete this task though she doesn’t know why.  She pulls a blue book off the shelf, is it Moby Dick?  Even in her dream she thinks this is a poor choice.  The book is old and some of the pages have been mended with yellowing tape that’s making them stick together.  It smells funny, too.  Not musty like old paper, but antiseptic, like a hospital.  There are pictures in the book, drawings, really.  An old, tired classic long forgotten on the shelf.

She presses the bill into the center of a page, closing it with finality and pushing it back onto the shelf — squeezing it a bit because the shelf is so crowded and the books are so tight together.

A warm breeze brings a sweet, yeasty  smell, like bread rising and Ruby turns to see Artie, her late husband standing next to her.  He’s twenty-five years old, his face sunburned like the first time they met.  He’s holding his old, sun-bleached Red Sox cap in his hand.  Ruby’s frozen to the spot, hand to her throat, afraid that her slightest movement will make him shimmer away.

“Ruby, my jewel.”  He slides the cap through his fingers.  A small motion, unguarded and odd for a ghost.  “Always with your head in a book.  Too smart to end up with the likes of me, and yet….”

Ruby knows she’s dreaming.  Artie died five years ago and despite all her lonely nights of wishing this is his first appearance in her dreams.

“Artie, why now?”

“Just wanted to keep you on your toes, but you don’t need me anymore, Ruby.”  He smiles.  Light pulsates around him.  Ruby struggles to keep from squinting.

“Have you been playing ball, Artie?”  This is all she could think to ask.  She’s so much older, does he see?

“No ball playing, but we watch.  We watch over, and I watch over you, too.  You’ve always been good, Ruby.  They’ll never see, and they’ll never know, but that’s the point, isn’t it?  Life can be hard sometimes — even in the little ways”

Ruby wakes to the grey pre-dawn, hears the sound of rain against the window, feels Pinsky’s light cat-weight warming the bed’s edge.  She pulls the covers close around her and says quietly, “Artie, love of my life, you have no idea.”

Looking to catch up with Ruby, Viv and their friends of Benjamin?  Links below. 

Chapter 1 Introducing Ruby, Viv and St. Benjamin

Chapter 2 Boychik Luis and Bubbe Bev

Chapter 3 Bright Lights and Big Bev City

Chapter 4 Ruby and Viv Find Their Big Girl Panties

Chapter 5 Mother’s Little Helper — Part 1

Chapter 6 Mother’s Little Helper — Part 2

Chapter 7 Rich or Poor, It’s Nice To Have Money