“I look so glamourous. Like a movie star.” I didn’t say what I was thinking, which was that the movie star was Faye Dunaway playing Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest.
“Where are we going tonight, anyway?” The last time I saw her this done up was for my cousin Amy’s wedding.
“You’ll see,” she said, applying the bright fuchsia lipstick that all women seem to be issued at eighty.
“Why do you never tell me anything?”
“I tell you plenty. You’re impatient, that’s your problem.”
“I thought I was boring.”
“It’s all the same problem. The excitement comes from not knowing.” She stood and removed her robe, revealing only a pair of literal granny panties.
“I’ll let you get dressed,” I said, exiting quickly. Not that modesty had been a trait of hers when she was younger, but no shreds of any that once existed remained now.
It was nearly five before my grandmother emerged, and I had dozed off on the sofa. “Are you sleeping? We’ll be late.” She shook her head at me.
“Aren’t we already?” I checked the time on my phone.
“No. We need to be there at five.”
“Then why did you tell me four thirty?”
“I never said four thirty.”
I sighed, picking up my purse.
“How do I look?” she asked as we approached the restaurant that she directed me to.
“You look fabulous, Grandma.” I found myself wondering if Tony was inside. But would she drag me along for that?
We stepped into the cool blast of air conditioning, only to be assailed by dozens of voices as a crowd swelled forward, swallowing my grandmother.
I took an instinctive step backward, bumping into the door. There were people everywhere, and she was hugging them all. I stayed put until I nearly fell when an older couple opened the door behind me, then pushed past me to embrace my grandmother.
“Darlings,” she said, her voice silencing the group as she gestured to me. “This is my Jenna.”
Suddenly the crowd was on me, hugging, kissing my cheeks, holding me out at arm’s length to admire me and pronounce me the very image of “Aunt Evelyn.”
“You’re . . . cousins?” I asked.
The woman who was patting my cheek laughed. “Of course we are,” she said. “I’m your cousin Laney.”
Grandma appeared at my side, her grip firm on my arm as she led me from person to person, introducing me to the whole room. They all looked vaguely similar, the Bergman genetics dominant, but there were too many of them for me to retain names. I recognized Donna, but the rest overwhelmed me.
We were eventually seated around banquet tables in a private room. I tried to count how many people there were, but they kept getting up to talk to each other, and they looked so much alike I couldn’t be sure I wasn’t counting anyone twice.
“These are your brothers’ and sisters’ kids and grandkids?” I asked my grandmother. She nodded, content in her role as reigning queen of the room. “There are so many of them.”
She laughed. “Well, darling, there were seven of us. Granted, only six had children.” She paused for a moment, clearly remembering Vivie, who died at twenty-one. But she shook her head, and the mood passed. “This isn’t even everyone. Just the people in the general Boston area.”
“There are more?”
“I’ll make you a list.”
“A list?”
“It’s important to know where you come from,” she said. “Who you come from.”
I agreed, looking around the room but thinking that what I had learned from her and from being here, in the place that my family was from, had taught me so much more than a list could.
The eldest of them had been eight when my great-grandparents forbade her to marry Tony, which I doubted they really remembered. The stories they told over dinner revolved around their time at the cottages, most of them referencing later years, when my grandmother would come for the entire summer with my mother, aunt, and uncle.
I cringed guiltily. My mother had called while I was getting ready, and I had forgotten to call her back. I had texted her that I went to the island, and she had replied, OMG does your grandmother know you went out there? Then she called, but I was in the shower by then. Mom, Aunt Joan, and Uncle Richie should be here for this, not me. I didn’t know these people.
A cousin named either Diana or Diane （there was one of each, and I couldn’t tell which was which） was in the middle of a story about a goat that Joseph had purchased for the grandchildren when I felt my phone vibrate. I checked it discreetly from my lap, assuming it was my mom.