The Beautiful Between - Alyssa B. Sheinmel [15]
It’s strange that I know how my mother’s father died, I have some idea how Gram’s whole family died, but I don’t know how my own father died.
I sit across from Gram at the restaurant, both of us in flowered chairs with plush seats and hard, straight backs that Gram says are good for your posture. I wonder if Gram is proud of my mother, if the life my mother has is anything close to the life Gram wanted for her.
Maybe my father’s not really dead. Maybe it’s true that he and my mother had some terrible, awful divorce and she got full custody, and then she said he was dead so that I would never go look for him. Maybe he is a really terrible person. Maybe he did something really bad. There’s a girl at school whose father convinced a judge that his ex-wife was insane and had her institutionalized so he could have full custody of his daughter. The truth came out, though, and the mother was released, and the girl never sees her dad anymore. It’s comforting to think that the truth always comes out eventually. It soothes my curious muscles. But then they tense again, because I don’t know how that truth came out; there was probably a lot of work involved: court cases, investigations, questions asked and answers found. I wish the truth would just come out on its own.
My grandmother clucks as I eat my soup, though she seems somewhat pacified by the fact that I’m also eating bread.
“Not so much butter, Connelly Jane.”
Gram likes to call me Connelly Jane; Jane (or some Polish, Jewish version of it) was her sister’s name.
“Gram, the butter’s the best part.” She smiles, because she agrees with me, and if her stomach wasn’t so sensitive, she’d eat butter too.
“So, darling, I can’t remember the last time you suggested we have a meal.”
“Don’t be silly, Gram, I see you almost every week.”
“With your mother. Honestly, I think she brings you along to distract me while she goes through my china cabinet.”
“You know all she wants are Grandpa’s candlesticks.”
“Feh. I’ve never kept them from her.”
I don’t understand; is she irritated that my mother wants the candlesticks or irritated that she hasn’t taken them yet? My mother takes only the things that my grandmother suggests she take, the things Gram practically forces into our arms when we leave the apartment. Things I know my mother doesn’t want, things that add clutter to our home, clutter that she hates: a china candy dish; a set of linen napkins, some of which are stained; leftover chicken soup. The candlesticks are never offered, and they’re the only thing my mother wants; she’s told me so. They are tall and silver, elaborate, even maybe a little gaudy. Not my mother’s taste, and not mine, but they were important to her father, so now they’re important to her.
“It must have been hard for her when Grandpa died, and they remind her of him.”
“Why? He stopped using them a long time ago. They just sat in the cabinet. I’m the one who took them out and polished them.”
“Maybe just because they were his. Because he used them when she was growing up. Maybe that’s enough to remind her. I mean”—and I pause—“it’s not like I remember seeing my father open a wine bottle, but the wine rack still reminds me of him.”
I’ve made that up. It’s pathetic that bottles of wine are the best I can do. But my mother never touches them—she doesn’t even drink—so I can guess that the extensive, untouched, dust-covered collection by the kitchen must have belonged to him.
“Not the same thing.”
“Why?” My soup has gotten cold and I only had a few spoonfuls of it. It’s not fair; my mother had the chance to build up memories with her father. She doesn’t need to choose the candlesticks just because they happened to be his, like me and the wine bottles.
Although, no matter what they say about “it’s better to have loved and lost,” maybe it’s harder to lose a father you knew and loved.
Gram takes a slow sip of tea, like she’s deciding what to say to me. “She only wants them because they’re fancy,” she says