Then Again - Diane Keaton [15]
When I showed up at graduation, I still achieved the effect I wanted. My smile stood out, and I got a lot of attention. It didn’t matter if I looked ridiculous; I beat the odds of being plain old average Diane. And Mom was right about the hat. Better to save it for later.
2
JACK
Not in the Cards
When I was little, I didn’t get my dad. He did nothing but remind me to turn off the lights, shut the refrigerator door, and eat what Mom cooked or I’d have to sleep in the garage. He wore the same gray jacket and striped tie to the Department of Water and Power every day. He said, “Drink all your milk; it gives you strong bones,” “Be sure to say please and thank you,” and, always, “Ask questions.” Why was he like that? Over and over I would ask Mom. Over and over she would say he was busy and had a lot of important things on his mind. He had things on his mind? What were they? She didn’t help me understand my father at all. The only clue lived a few miles away, but everyone was afraid of her, and I was no exception.
It wasn’t Grammy Keaton; oh, no, it was all five feet ten inches of stern-faced brown-haired Grammy Hall. She used to say she didn’t cotton to dressing up in a lot of gay colors, ’cause she “occupied a lot of space” and wanted everybody to see her “plain.” Grammy Keaton said the reason Dad had rickets was because Mrs. Hall hadn’t fed him the kind of nutritious food that would have made his legs straight; instead, they bowed backward, like a sailboat. She wasn’t wrong.
Even though Grammy Hall lived close to Grammy Keaton, they did not become friends. It was easy to see why. Grammy Hall’s face was lined with skepticism, while Grammy Keaton’s was filled with faith. Every Sunday, Grammy Keaton baked angel food cake with seven-minute frosting, served with homemade ice cream and lemonade in tall glasses. Once a year, Grammy Hall made devil’s food cake from a mix. Grammy Keaton was a God-fearing Christian woman. Grammy Hall was a devout Catholic. Grammy Keaton believed in heaven. Grammy Hall thought it was “a lot of bunk.”
After her husband disappeared in the 1920s, Mary Alice Hall drove from Nebraska to California with her son, Jack, and her sister Sadie beside her. It couldn’t have been easy being a boy without a father in the twenties. Mary Hall offered no explanations. There’s still some question whether Dad was a bastard or if in fact, as Mary claimed, Chester had died before Jack was born. Whatever the truth, Mary, a tough, no-nonsense Irish Catholic, picked herself up and waved goodbye to her eleven brothers and sisters, her mother, her father, and the broken-down family farm in Nebraska. She didn’t look back.
Nobody knows where she got the money to buy a two-unit Spanish duplex just a few blocks north of the new 110 freeway, but she did. Mary leased out the bottom floor to her sister Sadie, Sadie’s husband, Eddie, and their change-of-life son, Cousin Charlie. Mary shared the second floor with George Olsen, who rented the bedroom at the end of the hallway, next to Dad’s room. It wasn’t clear what George meant to Mary. No one asked. Grammy did not invite questions about her personal life.
Mary lived at 5223 Range View Avenue until she died in the dining room, the same dining room Mom and Dad dragged us to every Thanksgiving. One year I snuck down the hall, went into her bedroom, carefully opened her chest of drawers, and found a bunch of quarters shoved into several pairs of old socks. I was so excited I even told Cousin Charlie, who couldn’t be bothered with me since we’d had a fight over his stupid Catholic God. He said I was an idiot and a bunch of quarters was chicken feed compared to the sacks of hundred-dollar bills he’d found stuffed under the floorboards in her coat closet.
Grammy was more man than woman, and looked it. She loved to describe herself as a self-made businesswoman who took in boarders. “What interests me is the world of commerce. I like to make a lot of money and make it quick.” In fact, Mary Alice Hall