Grandma’s veil caught on fire at her wedding. She was in a hurry to sign her name in the marriage book and get that out of the way but there was a candle beside the book and her veil caught the flame. Her older sister ripped it off her head and stomped on it and then ran home to get her own veil and brought it back to the church and put it on Grandma’s head and nobody noticed a thing. The minister said her wedding dress was too wide at the bottom and everyone in the town talked about that for months but Grandma didn’t care one iota. She ran around at her wedding and wouldn’t sit still because she was so excited. Did you play your favourite shoe game at your wedding? I asked her. She said she would have loved to have played it at her wedding. Everyone racing to find their shoes. But Grandpa wanted a more low-key event. Grandpa stood smiling quietly in the reception line while Grandma ran around. He had written all the wedding invitations in his beautiful handwriting. Grandma hated the new pews so Grandpa carried all the old wooden pews that she loved out of storage and back into the sanctuary where the wedding was. And they were very heavy. Then he carried them all back into storage after the wedding. She loved Grandpa. She knew she had to do the fighting against everything but that was okay with her. Grandpa didn’t like to fight. He liked to read. He made a skating rink for them to skate on together outside in the moonlight behind the little school. They didn’t fight with each other. She did the fighting against everything, and that wasn’t easy for Grandpa. He thought men should do the fighting and so did the town.
Then Grandma killed her dad. She had to. All of the kids were taking turns waiting around with him to die and the nurses kept having to put a tube down his throat and suck out the liquid that was in his chest so he wouldn’t drown in his own body. One night it was Grandma’s turn to sit with her dad. She noticed he needed to have the tube. She was already a nurse then, so the other nurses at the hospital said she could just do it herself and not bother them. She decided not to do it because her dad wanted to die and go to heaven to be with his wife. He was calling out to her. He could see her. He told her he was coming to meet her. He said just give him five minutes. Grandma decided to let him go there to meet his wife. She didn’t put the tube in. She killed him. And everybody was relieved. After that, it was just life, lots and lots of life. Good times! Fun and games! Grandma learned something about Mom when Mom was two years old, which was just get out of her way and let her do her thing. But Grandpa killed himself later, and then Momo killed herself after that. Grandma just breathed. That was all she could do. For two years she just breathed. She didn’t open her mail for a year. She hated people who would talk to her and pretend that Grandpa and Momo hadn’t killed themselves. She didn’t want to hate people. So after two years she stopped hating people and tried to understand everything instead. She understood that Grandpa and Momo had fought and fought. They were the smartest people Grandma knew. We know that! she said. Mom agreed it was true. Grandma loved Grandpa and Momo. She looks at their pictures a lot. She needed to understand that they had no choice in their minds. They had fought and fought. They had their own fight. They had their own fires. It was their fight. A lot of people in Grandma’s town had already died. All her brothers and sisters. There were funerals every day! They kept the coffins open so everyone in town could see the people who had died one last time and say goodbye. But that’s life! It’s been good! I’ve been lucky! That’s what Grandma says. Fino alla fine. My assignment from Mom was complete.
After that, everybody woke up. Grandma sang a song from her favourite band, which is CCR. She was putting lord in the lyrics. Ken and Jude were clanking in the kitchen again. I guess they’d rubbed enough oil on each other for the time being. Maybe they used up all that oil and got cold without their clothes on and figured out that they had to eat or starve to death and be found naked and dead. I imagined Grandma going in there and finding them. It happens! It’s life! They’re just naked bodies! Relax!
Mom phoned me for one minute today. She asked me how it was going. I said really great if you like being trapped in the Playboy mansion. She said oh hahaha. She said she’s so happy for Ken that he’s found love. She said she’s starting to feel good about the play. It’s really coming together. Also, she can see Gord’s tiny foot pushing against her stomach from the inside. Will he push right through? I asked. No, no, she said. I’ve never heard of that happening—like, suddenly a foot? No. I already knew that, obviously, but I was trying to think of things to say so she wouldn’t hang up. Mom doesn’t understand small talk. Obviously I know that Gord isn’t gonna poke his foot right through to the outside of her stomach. She said she missed me and Grandma and isn’t spitting oregano oil in the sink. At the end, when we were getting ready to hang up, I said I love you first before she could which I haven’t done since I was two years old. And then she sounded so tragically excited about it, about me saying it first, that she got all loud and hysterical telling me that she loved me so much too and how really proud she is of me and all that jazz. I said yeah, yeah, yeah well I have to go eat breakfast with sex addicts now. Bye!