Where's My Wand?: One Boy's Magical Triumph Over Alienation and Shag Carpeting (11 page)

Before this year’s visit, I had spent some time in the basement in bedspread-clad conjuring. My magic was needed. Mother and Grandma did not see eye to eye, and for fourteen days each summer, the house was enveloped in a mushroom cloud of smoke and hostility. Mother was incredibly unforgiving to this old woman who seemed to want nothing more than to play cards, read trashy novels and chain-smoke in bed. It was time, I’d decided, for that dynamic to change. With the help of my magic, Mother and Grandma were going to get along.

For my sister and me, Grandma’s visits were a mixed bag. The upside was that, since Grandma slept in Val’s bedroom, Val got to move up the street to her friend Vicki’s house, where they passed the time contemplating the boyfriend potential of various junior high hunks and sneaking nips out of Mrs. McDougal’s tumbler of Southern Comfort whenever she was passed out, which was pretty much any day after four P.M. Mother grudgingly allowed Val to stay in what she referred to as the “White Trash Riviera,” because it was a less heinous option than having Grandma camped out in the family room.

Because I had few real friends, Grandma’s visits supplied
me
with a ready-made companion for two solid weeks, and I reveled in the camaraderie. She lectured me on the evils of the Republican party as we played endless rounds of card games. “Thanks, kid,” she would growl as she threw down another winning pinochle hand and scooped up the change from my piggy bank, “you’re keepin’ me in nylons!”

The downside of her visits was that our mother quickly lost patience with the smog in the family room and the fact that there was another witness to her evening tantrums, and this friction inevitably resulted in a spectacular Pearl Harbor moment that ended each visit on what could generously be described as a low note.

On the morning of this latest visit, Dad warned Val and me that the two women were getting along even worse than usual.

“Your grandmother and your mother both have strong opinions,” Dad explained as we prepared to execute item #6 on Mother’s list for the day, scrubbing the patio with Ajax. “They don’t always agree.”

“How come?” I asked, slipping on my personal pair of Playtex Living gloves.

“Well, your grandmother’s a Democrat, and a backslidden Christian, so she’s wrong about a lot of stuff,” Dad replied. “When we’re done here, let’s pray for her.”

Whether right or wrong, Grandma did have a comment about everything. The previous summer, when Val came home from Vicki’s one day wearing Bonne Bell lip gloss, Grandma announced to Mother, “Congratulations, Elaine, you’ve officially allowed your daughter to turn into a truck-stop whore.”

And when she asked what I wanted for my birthday and I told her I was coveting a recorder (a Native American flute), she replied, “How about a
boy
instrument?”

These pronouncements had stung a bit, but Grandma was quick to explain the reason for her bluntness.

“Your uncle Stewart and his hippie wife aren’t gonna have any kids,” she confided. “So I gotta make sure your parents don’t screw you and your sister up.” I peered through the veil of smoke and saw that a tear had come to her eye. “You’re all I’ve got.”

 

 

GRANDMA’S ARRIVAL was heralded by the screeching of her cat, Tweeter, the feline reincarnation of Joseph Stalin. Tweeter understood the inestimable power of fear. She hissed at anything that locked eyes with her, and favored flesh-ripping as a method of gaining the psychological upper hand. This worked wonders with Val and me, who were afraid to even walk by the closed door of the den that Tweeter occupied like a vacationing despot.

“Grandma!” I yelled, running to greet her as she came in. She collapsed onto the sofa and lit a Winston.

“Never again!” she announced in her mellifluous baritone. “I’ll ride a pack mule before I ever
fly
to St. Louis again. That damn plane was bouncing up and down like a nickel kiddie ride at Kmart.”

I flinched at Grandma’s vocabulary and stuck my finger in my good ear, concerned for my mortal soul. Grandma wasn’t a complete heathen, but she did savor a good “damn” or “hell” every now and then, and Vacation Bible School had assured me that this was more than enough to guarantee Satan as my lifeguard in the Lake of Fire.

Grandma exhaled deeply, blowing the smoke into Dad’s face. “Ray, when it’s time to go home, you can drive me back to Kansas City.”

Dad, who was wearing a pair of heavy gardening gloves as he carried Tweeter’s travel cage, forced a smile, a gracious son-in-law even in the face of godless expletives.

“I’ll just let Tweeter get comfortable in the den,” he said, as the cat hissed and swiped at him through the bars. “Elaine!” he called out. “Your mother’s here!”

Grandma and I waited expectantly to hear footsteps on the stairs as Mother emerged from her basement hideout, the laundry room. One minute turned into two; two into five. The house was quiet save for Dad’s creative attempts to cuss without profanity—“Godduckit!”—as Tweeter did her impression of Norman Bates in
Psycho
.

“Mother doesn’t like to stop in the middle of ironing,” I explained to Grandma. “I think she’s doing dish towels.”

Suddenly, Mother barked from the basement, “Is that cat locked up?”

“Darn-nacious!” Dad yelped from the den.

“Yeah, she’s playing with Ray,” Grandma hollered.

Mother entered, wearing her requisite print housedress and curlers. Home was her respite from the workaday world and the rigors of getting glammed up, and she wasn’t about to waste slacks and a blouse on relatives.

“Hello, Mother, glad you made it safely,” she said to Grandma as they circled each other in a WASP version of hugging, which mostly involved a slight lean-in, followed by light touching of one hand to a forearm or shoulder. In the Poole family, full-body contact was reserved for clearing the airway of a choking victim.

“Barely,” Grandma replied. “That damn plane ride felt like a Tilt-A-Whirl.”

“Still lighting up the killer sticks, I see,” Mother announced. “I could smell it from the basement.”

“Yes,” Grandma replied. “
Stress
makes me smoke.”

“When you get tuberculosis and lose a lung, don’t come running to me.” Mother turned to head down the hall. “Ray!” she shouted. “What on earth are you
doing
? Get Mother’s bags.”

Tweeter yowled. We heard a ripping sound. “Fockit all to heck!”

 

 

THAT EVENING, Val arrived for dinner wearing Vicki’s crocheted sweater vest, miniskirt and white go-go boots.

“Hi, Grandma!” she said, flipping her long brown hair in a bad imitation of a very short Cher.

Grandma stared at her as she took a drag off a Winston. “I
hate
that outfit!”

Deflated, Val sat down just as the door of Mother and Dad’s bedroom opened.

“God in heaven!” Mother coughed, waving her hand at the smoke. “Is this our home or an opium den?!”

“Elaine, come see what you’ve done to your daughter,” Grandma ordered. She nodded in Val’s direction as she whispered loudly to me, “See, this is what happens when the mother is absent.”

Mother stomped in, followed by Dad.

“I am not absent,” Mother replied, “I’m just not retired like you, so I don’t have all day to sit around deciding how other people should raise their kids.” She pointed to Val.

“You. Pants. Now.”

“You people wouldn’t know ‘groovy’ if it bit you in the be-hind,” Val retorted as she skulked off to her bedroom.

“Language!” Dad admonished her.

Mother turned back to Grandma. “Could you take your disgusting nicotine habit outside?”

“I’m not going out to the patio. That bug zapper is gonna electrocute somebody one of these days, mark my words!”

“Then don’t stick your head inside it!”

Grandma exhaled a lungful of tar. “Why does my smoking bother you so much, anyway?”

“Because you’re turning our wallpaper brown!”

“Funny,” Grandma replied as she heaved herself off the sofa and shuffled over to the sliding glass patio door, “for a moment, I thought you might be concerned for my health.”

 

 

OVER MOTHER’S DINNER of green bean casserole topped with crumbled potato chips, Grandma advised the family that Tweeter now preferred her meals in the morning. Since both our parents worked, Val was staying at Vicki’s, and Grandma liked to sleep in, I was elected Tweeter’s official caretaker.

“You’re always up at dawn’s crack,” Grandma said to me as she passed the Jell-O mold, the flabby flesh of her upper arms quivering in unison with it, “so have at it.”

“Good luck,” Val whispered. “That cat would sooner kill you than look at you.”

Grandma pinched my cheek. “Thanks. I’ll spot you some pennies for pinochle.”

Dad cleared his throat. “Um, Dorothy, Elaine and I were talking about that, and we were wondering if you could maybe not gamble? Jesus threw the money changers out of the temple, so we have a pretty good idea how God feels about the subject. . . .”

“How does he feel about the Vietnam War?” Grandma said as she flicked the green beans out of her casserole serving in an ill-conceived nod to caloric restraint. “Seems like that might be something he’d be more concerned about.”

“Well, defeating the communists is important,” Dad began, “but Proverbs thirteen, eleven warns us against attempts to get rich quick.”

“Well, there you go,” Grandma replied. “It takes a long time to get rich off penny-ante pinochle, so we’ve probably got a few more summers before he strikes us dead.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Mother interjected. “This is not a casino!”

“I’ll say,” Grandma replied. “You can’t get a beer in here to save your life.”

Mother banged her fist on the table and stood up. “Until you see a slot machine in the foyer, you will remember that this is my house and you will live by my rules. Is that clear?”

Mother stared at Grandma, her jaw clenched. Dad smiled wanly at Val and me as if to say, “You know how mothers and daughters can be.” Or “I wonder what would happen if I plunged this butter knife into my temple?” It wasn’t quite clear which.

Grandma turned to me.

“Your uncle Stewart would never talk to me that way.”

 

 

LATER THAT NIGHT, as I helped Grandma climb into Val’s bed, I nervously contemplated my feline feeding duties.

“Are you sure you want me to do it?” I asked as I handed Grandma a Zippo and an ashtray. “Tweeter hates me!”

She adjusted her floor-length pink cotton nightie and lit a cigarette. “Don’t worry; since you’ll be bringing her food and cleaning up her poop, she’ll probably just ignore you. But remember, cats are like dogs. They smell fear.”

The next morning, in an attempt to dull the scent of terror, I tiptoed into Val’s room while Grandma was still asleep and began liberally spraying Val’s Love’s Fresh Lemon perfume on my arms and legs.

“I smell Pledge,” Grandma muttered, half awake. “Is that you, Elaine?”

I then crept down to the basement and grabbed my bedspread from its secret hiding place. Much like Joseph’s Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, I knew that the bedspread was my magical armor. If anything would shield me from harm, it would.

As I timidly snuck up to the door of the den, draped in Endora drag, I heard Tweeter mewling pitifully, like a kitten crying out for its mother. My heart melted. Could it be that Tweeter was just misunderstood? I opened the door, bag of cat food in hand, and spotted her crouched under a chair.

“Oh, poor baby,” I whispered, “you’re just—”

Her trap effectively set, Tweeter leaped out from under the chair, back arched and eyes blazing as she sunk her teeth into my left hand. I screamed like a baby seal, dropped the bag of cat food and fled, slamming the door and holding it shut with my good hand as I shrieked, “She’s trying to kill me!”

Grandma, awakened by all the commotion, poked her head out the bedroom door down the hall and sized up the situation.

“What the hell are you wearing?”

 

 

I WAS CONFUSED. My bedspread had not protected me from Tweeter, nor had it helped Grandma and Mother get along. Were there limits to my magic, some sort of set boundaries that it couldn’t cross?

I pondered this throughout the first week of Grandma’s visit, as Mother’s reaction to the disarray into which her spotless home was falling triggered the nightly summoning of our Lord and Savior to the basement. Fortunately, Grandma was becoming hard of hearing, and thus tended to assume that these shrieks were emanating from the TV, which she generally avoided, convinced that its radiation was going to burn out our retinas.

“You better develop some talents like that Stevie Wonder,” she warned Val and me, “ ’cause it’s expensive to be blind.”

Early the next week, things became clearer. Near the end of another uneasy dinner, as Mother stewed over Grandma’s habit of comparing President Nixon to Hitler, Grandma decided that the political point she was making would be more effective with a lit cigarette.

She had won the war with Mother over smoking, lighting up in pretty much every room of the house. But the dining room had always been sacred.

Now, as Mother left the room to fetch steak sauce, Grandma fired up a fresh Winston. Dad sat back, in shock, unsure what to do.

Val and I glanced at each other. “Holy cow,” Val whispered.

“Language,” Dad admonished her.

“This country’s going to Hell and that Nazi’s driving the bus,” Grandma declared, the smoke punctuating her words like poison darts. As she continued her rant, waving her perilously poised ash directly over the remaining barbecued Spam, Mother returned.

She stopped in her tracks, as though, for one shocking moment, her brain could not quite compute what her eyes were reporting.

“You have no regard for the rest of this family!” Mother shrieked as she snatched the cigarette out of Grandma’s mouth and threw it into her water glass.