Okay! I said. Kill Gord then! Have sex with ancient men! I don’t care! You’re evil!
Grandma said all right, all right, hoooooo, let’s cool it. Let’s see. Do you know I’m registered for another Later Life Learning class at the university? Oh good! said Mom. Fake enthusiasm, I said. They were trying too hard to talk about other things. They really had to use all their might not to talk about perverted things. What’s the class this time? said Mom. Leonard Cohen, said Grandma. And then believe it or not they started talking about it again! He was a real ladies’ man, said Grandma. That’s what Muriel said. She knew someone who knew him in his mountaintop phase. Yeah, said Mom, he had a real big, you know, following. He was kind of sexy in a way. Like you just kind of knew he’d pay full and complete attention to you for twenty-four hours or something, and then you’d never see him again. Grandma said well I wouldn’t know about that! Mom said trust me. Then she said hey yeah, when was the last time you—
Had intercourse? said Grandma. Well, let’s see! It certainly wasn’t this century! Mom said wow. Grandma said well if I’ve had intercourse recently I sure can’t remember it! They were laughing again. There went Gord flying around inside Mom. That was it. They were horrible. They were perverts. They were baby killers. They were obsessed with it. It was an obsession for them, like King of the Castle. I went to Grandma’s room and turned her Netflix on and watched a show about a nuclear power station exploding and everybody turning into liquid.
6.
This morning Mom was back to her bad mood. Nothing got broken during the night. Before she left she blew her nose two hundred times and dropped piles of Kleenex everywhere that I picked up with the barbecue tongs and threw away. I have post-nasal drip and I can’t take any of that steroid spray shit cuz of Gord! The body produces one quart of mucus a day! She left streaks of oregano oil in the kitchen sink from spitting. I told her it takes one second to wash these off and saves me a lot of work! When the streaks get hard I have to get out the green pad and scrub them. Nothing got broken during the night, at least. Did I say that already? I picked up hearing aid batteries and Amish farm pieces and conchigliettes from the kitchen floor. Grandma said good luck, have fun, don’t work too hard! I hugged Mom around the waist and whispered I love you to Gord. I squeezed hard. Mom rubbed her snotty nose in my hair. She said don’t squeeze me too hard or you’ll get sprayed with one entire quart of mucus. All she does with her life is talk about mucus. All Grandma talks about is bowel movements. Then Mom mumbled something else and slammed the front door. Your mom’s not really a morning person, said Grandma. She was rubbing Voltaren on her hand. Her veins looked like bulging tubes of blue water like at Splash Mountain. She’s never a person! I said. I think she’s a twilight person, said Grandma. A dusk person. When all the foofaraw of the day is coming to an end. Your mom is a crepuscular person.
Grandma and I had Editorial Meeting. What can I do for you today, Swiv? she asked me. I told her today was the deadline for her letter to Gord assignment. Did she have it? Yes, ma’am, she said. Part of it. I said Grandma, have you ever heard the expression “A deadline is not a suggestion”？ Just now! she said. Maybe she’d heard it before but she can’t remember things like expressions about deadlines anymore. She had written her letter by hand on lined, yellow paper. Did I ask you for a scroll? I said. Did you steal this from the Museum of Ancient History? Did you rob some Pharaoh? I can’t read this!
Oh, c’mon, said Grandma. Knock it off!
I tried to read it. I couldn’t. I can’t read your chicken-scratching, Grandma! Grandma said our next class would be Penmanship. Penmanship! I said. What the holy hell is penmanship? Grandma thought I should run around the block twice to get rid of my yips, but I said not until I’d read her assignment. She grabbed it from me and said she’d read it out loud. I asked Grandma to read it twice. Once for me to listen and another time for me to make notes. Very well! she said. She stood up at the dining room table and cleared her throat. This is what she read.
You are ten weeks inside, the size of a kumquat, a nice dirty-sounding word, your head half the size of your body, your hands covering your heart. Protecting your heart, as though we are able to do that. Beginning to kick. If I can manage to submit to the terms of my house arrest you and I will emerge from our confinement at the same time, mid-July. It’ll be hot, you’ll be slippery with thick white slime and screaming, maybe shitting black tar, as freaked out as you’ll ever be, hello precarious world, and I’ll be right there, maybe not right there, your mother and perhaps even your pilgering weiter father will be right there, but I’ll be there in the parking lot or in the waiting room or in the cafeteria or some dark cabinet or wherever it is that grandmas are put to wait, and I’ll be ready for you, little one, my adorable accomplice. You’re a small thing and you must learn to fight.