Then Grandma got talking for about one and a half hours, which took up all of Editorial Meeting, about her old life in that town of escaped Russians. She can’t believe she lived there for sixty-two years except for the few months she squatted in Berlin accidentally when she went to Germany to visit her older sister who was living in the Black Forest, which is the home of the cuckoo clock, she said. Mom should go there, I said. To the Black Forest? said Grandma. To the home of the cuckoo clock, I said. It makes me shudder! said Grandma. I was a maverick! She was talking about her town. It worked against us, she said. When she was a kid her father protected her from Willit Braun Senior, the uber-schultz of the village who was a classic tyrant, pompous, authoritarian, insecure, frustrated, self-pitying, resentful, envious, vain and vindictive, and with a mighty chip on his shoulder and dumb. Also, he embodied the fascist notion of a superior group, which he thought was us. Well, not all of us. The men among us. What a wingnut. You can write those things down, Swiv, she said. Just make a little note of that.
Well, I’m recording it, I told her. I held up my phone and she shook her head. Oh right, I always forget about your camera. Make sure it has juice. Was it a cult? I said. No, said Grandma. Well, yes, possibly. It was!
Grandma divides the people from her town into MB or EMC. She is EMC. She says the MBs think they’re the only ones going to heaven. They were also the first ones in town to sing in four-part harmony. For the EMCs that was a mortal sin until Sid Reimer’s dad brought it in to the church. And he brought a pump organ which was also a sin. He was very instrumental in moving the church forward.
When Grandma grew up, she protected herself from Willit Braun. And she protected Mom from him too, and everyone in her family, even Grandpa, who really liked that about her. He was all for it! He couldn’t fight for himself. He couldn’t do it. He would get very quiet and go for long, long walks. Very long walks. Sometimes until his feet bled. Talking about fighting and escaping reminded her of a friend of hers from that town who she and their other friend helped to escape from her violent husband. The woman’s daughter and her friends got together and hatched a plan to whisk her away to Montreal where the daughter lived in a loft apartment. But the friend felt so guilty she returned to the town and to her husband six months later. Then all the women prayed that he would die. What else could they do? And he did, eventually. It took five years. This can be today’s math class, said Grandma. If it takes five years to kill a guy with prayer, and it takes six people a day to pray, then how many prayers of pissed off women praying every day for five years does it take to pray a guy to death?
Grandma sorted her meds on the table with the edge of her credit card while she waited for my answer. Ten thousand, nine hundred and fifty prayers, I said. Whoa, she said. Am I right? I asked. Who knows, she said, I believe you!
After that I went with Grandma on the streetcar to meet her friends at the Duke of York. I went because she was dizzy and had to lean on me. Every six months the group of them get together to celebrate that they’re still living. Grandma wore her red slippers instead of shoes because her right foot was puffed up like a blowfish. That’s the leg they took the vein out of to put into her chest. Look at the way my track pants cover them up, she said. Nobody will notice I’m wearing slippers. Before we left I spent twenty-five minutes helping her get her compression socks on. She almost went with one compression sock only because she was impatient but I forced her to let me put the other one on because it looked stupid with just one. Halfway to The Duke of York her diuretic kicked in and we had to make an emergency stop to find a bathroom. We got off the streetcar and went into the first building we saw which was the corporate headquarters of OBTRON. It had a lot of glass and shiny black furniture including the desk where the security guy was sitting. He didn’t look at us the whole time. He had a gun. He stared at all his TVs and said, I’m asking you to leave right now.
Surely there’s a washroom in this building that I could use, said Grandma.
I’m afraid not, he said, they’re not designated for public use.
She really has to go! I told him.
You don’t have to yell at me, miss, I can hear you. I told you they’re not designated for public use.
Her diuretic kicked in on the streetcar and she’ll spring a leak if you don’t let her use the fucking washroom, you fascist prick! I said.
Swiv, said Grandma. She pretended to slice her throat with her finger. The guy finally looked at us and got up and came around to the front of the desk with his hand on his gun. Grandma asked him if it was all right with him if she peed in one of those giant planters by the window. He said no, he couldn’t authorize her to do that. Do it! I told Grandma. I’m authorizing it! She said no, no, we’ll find a place. She told the security guy she was very tempted to let ’er rip right there in the lobby on that shiny floor and he said ma’am, you do not have a constitutional right to use fighting words with me. Then Grandma started talking about constitutional rights but she was huffing and puffing and also dizzy still, and sort of teetering around and it was hard for her to talk. You’re gonna have a goddamn cardiac event, Grandma, I told her. I’m telling De Sica. De Sica! said Grandma. Did he call? Don’t let this be the hill you die on! I said. Hooooooooo, said Grandma. You’re right. What a ridiculous last stand. I took Grandma’s hand and we went to the Tim Hortons next door and bought two Boston cream doughnuts so they would give us the code to the washroom.