Ours is a strange and wonderful relationship.
I called my grandfather on the phone earlier this week and told him that I wanted to interview him.
“Why, yes, my darling,” he said in a John Wayne voice.
When I walk into his house, cold from November’s endless afternoons, I realized he didn’t understand what he was agreeing to.
“Don’t ask me how long have I been married. I don’t know. All I know is that it’s a mighty, mighty long time.”
“No, Pop, I just want to talk to you about life. No specifics,” I smile, trying to show him there are no wrong answers. “It’s to conclude my book of personal essays.”
He nods but I think he’s nervous and unsure; he doesn’t know what a personal essay is. He looks and acts younger than he is. I have to remind myself of his age.
The truth is, I want to talk to him for selfish reasons. He is the most eccentric man I know, and I need him and his colourful world. He’s smart, in the way that often, I’m not smart. I think if anyone I know can give me guidance, can remind me of what matters, it’s him.
I’m all over the place. I awaken, every night, in the dark, with an aching back and crippled hips. There is little comfort anywhere. My heart won’t stop banging against my ribcage.
“I like your rings and fingernails. You go in and show your Nan,” he tells me. I look down at my blue nails and turquoise ring, tapping the white table.
“Where’s my cat? How’s your brother Mikey?” Pop asks.
“His ankle is still broken, but he’s okay.”
“He’s walking on it? Your Dad come up to see him?”
“Yeah, Dad’s helping him a lot. It’s nice.”
“How are you Mom and Dad making out?”
“Eh.”
“Comme-ci comme-ca,” he says in an accent that is not French. He grew up in Newfoundland, and if you didn’t grow up around him, you have a hard time understanding him.
“Speak slow for the camera, Pop, okay?”
He nods and dances across the floor while winking at me.
“What do you want to know? I’m a male. Eighty-years old. No, eighty-two! Christ, I forgot. That’s how old I am. I listen to that woman, she’s eighty. She was ninety yesterday,” he motions to my grandmother, far older than him in her outlook and now also older in her body. She spends her days lying on the couch, rarely moving.
...
Theirs is a crazy love. It’s not a secret that, in their youth, their marriage was tumultuous and unhappy. It was a strong glue that held them together.
She looked like Ava Gardner. He looked like Clark Gable. She was mentally ill. He was an alcoholic but with star quality that got him out of as much trouble as it got him into.
Pop should have been famous. He was a country and western singer, like Hank Snow, only better. He spent weeks in Nashville, had a fan club and got Christmas cards from Elvis. But rock and roll happened, and then, so did life. My grandmother became pregnant with my mom. Soon, two more children were born and quite suddenly, there was no room for cowboy songs. I grew up never hearing him sing. Some things are too painful to love.
“Are you giving up on acting for this?” he motions to my camera and pad of paper.
“No, I just do this too, now.”
“Good. Never give up acting.”
I feel guilty. He was so talented and unable to pursue his dreams and I complain about mine. I can tell he wants me to make it because he should have.
...
“Pop, what’s love?”
“Love is when you quit drinking. And you realize you can’t have a beer. And smoking. Them are all bad habits which is a good thing that it’s gone.”
“What else?”
He smiles.
“I don’t know, what is love? I love my wife, I love my family, I love the cat. I love everything. Not flies. I go around in the day and killing them all the time. In life, my wife and my family are close to the best things that’ve ever happened to me.”
He relaxes in his chair and I know I need to keep the questions coming furiously or he’ll start performing, hiding behind his generation’s idea of what a man should be.
“How have you changed since you were young?” I ask.
“I’m better. I know more. I was always sick when I was young, on the way out. My childhood was real good, though. The first few years I was sick all the time, I go no schooling on account of it. I was sick with everything, my heart was supposed to be eighty-years old and I was about seven or something like that.”
Now, at eighty-two, he has the heart of a seven year old.
“How else have you changed?”
“I got old. I got almost grey sometimes, until I dye it. I feel healthy enough. I think I’m smarter, but sometimes I play a lot of Lotto. Then I’m a dummy.”
I lay my head on the table, laughing.
“How are you able to be so, I don’t know, funny? Happy?”
“Well, I couldn’t answer that. I don’t think that much about it because I enjoy every night and day. My outlook and Lottos allow me to enjoy life so much. I don’t worry so much. I don’t see nothing to worry about and if I can’t do something about it, I say 'fuck it.'”
“I should say 'fuck it' more,” I tell him.
“You should. Don’t get married again until you’re old enough to take the blame for it. You’re free, like a bird, enjoy it. See, my philosophy in life now is that I married a good woman. You don’t need to marry no good man right now. But I’m still in love with your Nan after fifty-odd years. To me, she’s a goldmine. Every time I get broke or go bust she says, ‘Are you sure you got enough money?’ and if I don’t, I say, ‘No, darling, I don’t,’” he whispers and slyly looks away.
He has never gone ‘bust’ and if he did, my grandmother would never give him money. He’s heard that line in an old movie, and thinks it’s charming to say in front of a camera.
“I love my wife regardless. I give her all the credit for everything I’ve ever done. I haven’t been a perfect angel all my life, but I’m trying to be now.”
I see what he’s getting at. My grandparent’s marriage really is old fashioned in that, they stayed. Whatever happened, the commitment and closeness they have now seems worth it.
Will I commit to anything long enough for it to be worth it?
...
“How do you get over heartbreak?”
“Get another woman or man. I think when you got lot of troubles and you get more troubles.”
“Is that a mistake, though?”
“Not actually. Nothing is. I might have made mistakes at the time, but today, they aren’t mistakes because I got this far with them so I’m on the right track. Look at my family, I got three lovely kids and grandchildren, I am quite pleased with them. You’re one of them. Mikey’s one. Then my great-grand children. Jesse is only two years old I think. Goddammit and I’m eighty-two!”
That’s what I love about my grandfather; he is always surprised that he’s old. In that way, I’m like him. Forever surprised by what happens, by the life I’ve lead, the choices I’ve made. It’s like I was never there to begin with.
“What’s wrong with the world today?”
“People are not having enough fun. Too much pressure. A lot of people, the government are screwing them out their money, left and right. I worked a place for almost twenty years, the union insisted we went on strike for two months and now I can’t get no pension. $14.19 cents per month! Not even enough to feed the cat. I think about it, hard on the brain sometimes. Hard on the wallet, too.”
He blows me a kiss and I look down at my paper. Why don’t I spend more time with him? Will I read this when he’s gone and be happy I spent today with him? That I made him feel important, even for just an hour?
It's not enough, is it?
“What advice would you give young people?”
“I could say enjoy yourself, be good to other people and they’ll be good to you. When you’re kids, you think you know everything and you don’t realize that sometimes, you’re stupid.”
I nod. He’s right. I never realize I’m stupid until way after the fact.
...
“Do you believe in God?”
“I’m a great believer in God. From the time I was knee-high to a grasshopper, my granddaddy was religious and my grandmother was religious. My mama was at one time a preacher. I was taught it all up through the years and it carries me a lot through life. You get any trouble you ask the good Lord to carry you through, and he do.”
I’m surprised. I’ve never heard him speak of God before.
“Do you think everything the Bible says is true?”
“To me, I think they all had a party and got the commandments, just when they were all drunk. Don’t do this, don’t swear, don’t commit adultery. The way life is today, you can’t do that.”
“Do you believe in your own version of God, then? One where you can swear?” I laugh.
“I believe in a lot of people’s versions of God, but I am a religious man within myself. I could be more religious, but I ain’t doing too bad.”
“No, you’re doing great.”
I look down at my paper once more. All the questions are gone.
“Okay, all done, Pop.”
“Fantastic, my darling.”
He puts the kettle on. I want to stay but I’ve agreed to something, someone, somewhere, just to fill the space I don’t want to spend alone. I wish I’d cancelled. When I hug him, he feels smaller in my arms than he ever has before.
“You are a gem, Katie. Never forget that,” he tells me and then spins me around the kitchen.
...
On my way home, I think about my grandfather, about God and men and love and every word that’s filled this book.
Maybe men will just float in and out. Maybe one will matter permanently, one day. Or maybe they will all matter permanently, just occupying different spaces and places that live and die in me. Maybe all love has conditions, but happens and finds you, whether you want it to or not.
Maybe God is what you believe in because you need to feel you aren't alone. Maybe God is that part of me I never touch but always feel, always there and always strong, even when I'm not.
Then I think of my Pop once more.
“Just be happy,” he yelled at me from his porch, as I walked away from him, dressed all in black, with my hair whipping every direction, with my hands in pockets, with my shoulders shaking.
I walk farther.
I pay my three dollars to get on the subway. I walk down to the platform and a great gust of wind swallows me. The train barrels towards me. I look around and I watch people move in and out of the doors and I decide that I can wait for the next train, glued to the ugly tile and concrete walls.
I think of endings.
Finality is strange, isn’t it? I can feel the goodbyes coming now. I look in my mind’s eye into a collage of people, of places, of things I thought I knew for sure, for some clue of what to let go of.
That’s the thing about endings. When you know one’s coming, for better or for worse, you always want to hold on, just so it can hurt a little bit more.
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