2004-05-07 - 1:09 a.m.
This week I have managed to survive two fire alarms,two rush-hour subway delays, the ceiling of the acupuncture clinic springing a sudden leak while I lay helplessly on the table with my head and feet full of pins, a pyrex coffee mug which exploded next to me when someone poured coffee into it, and, to add insult to injury, the discovery that someone had cashed a cheque dating from March, giving me a bank balance of negative $91.00. I'm telling myself that there must have been some sort of astrological chaos factor to account for all of this, and that it isn't just me.
On the other hand, workguy continues to be amusing:
Workguy, glazed and twitchy: I - I - I had - I had those frozen waffles for breakfast, you kow, the waffles you put in the toaster!I had about three of them!
Me: Yes? And?
Workguy: And I think there's a lot of sugar in them! A lot! A *lot* of *sugar* in those babies! I think.
Me: I think you'd better sit down...
And here's the writing course, week 2 - the assignment was 600 words about
the music of your childhood. I'm not tremendously happy with this piece, but I think that's partly because my grandmother is a much longer story than 600 words...
Nana's house had a piano in the living room and an organ in the basement. Whenever we drove out to Bewdley for a visit I'd beg her to play, and she'd pat her stack of curls, sit down with a flourish, and launch into one of the sentimental songs I adored, A Broken Doll, or Second Hand Rose – "I'm just a second-hand Rose, wearing second hand clothes, on second avenue…"
Second-hand or not, Nana's bedroom closet overflowed with clothes and shoes, in range of sizes – she never could resist a bargain, whether it fit her or not. I used to go home with strange and splendid finds – a red velveteen figure-skating dress, with a circular skirt trimmed in white fur, or a floppy-brimmed woman's hat in a piercing shade of green. Sometimes she'd let me look at the costumes she had made for her performances. I wasn't clear on exactly where these performances had gone on – I knew, in some part of my mind, that she had worked at Outboard Marine, just like my grandfather and uncle, and that didn't seem like the theatrical career her conversation implied – but the costumes were splendid enough that I didn't ask any questions. There was a blue brocade suit with a tail-coat, a gold lame jump-suit trimmed with hundreds of sequins, a turban and matching harem pants, a long silvery cape that said "Liberace' across the back.
The closet downstairs was full of puppets. There was a snake-charmer, and Elvis, complete with blue suede shoes, and next to him a creature that she gravely explained to me was a one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people-eater. This was an idea which would have alarmed me if his one eye, fringed by luxuriant lashes like the ones Nana kept on her vanity, hadn't looked so wistful, as though he'd like to be your friend and was genuinely sorry about the whole eating situation. The thought of his plight sometimes used to make me cry in the car on the way home, until my father finally explained to me that it was only purple people he ate and that he was free to have plenty of friends among the rest of us.
Sometimes our going home would make Nana cry too, and she'd try to give back the presents my father had brought her – "No dear, you shouldn't spend the money on me, I'm sure you have better things to put it towards, and what do I need with sherry anyway, it was your father who really liked it after all…" Nana had never quite forgiven the universe for my grandfather's death. At almost every visit she would play "You are my Sunshine", heavy on the pedals and stops that made the organ's notes whimper tremulously – "The other night dear, as I lay sleeping, I dreamt I held you in my arms…"
Other times we couldn't visit her at all. "Nana is depressed," my mother explained, and I wondered suspiciously how she could possibly be depressed when her house was so full of fascinating things.
Outside of her treasure-trove of a house she seemed oddly diminished, almost puppet-like herself, launching into her act at the slightest tug of attention. When she came to visit us she’d bring her ukelele, put on an outrageous mock-cockney accent and sing "Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner", or "The man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo", keeping up a patter of songs and stories that kept anyone else from talking. It made me sad in a way I didn't entirely understand – it felt as though, like the one-eyed puppet, she was looking in at us from somewhere else and trying to get through.
