Charms for the Easy Life (25 page)

She opened with Chopin’s “Revolutionary Étude,” then played Grieg’s E Minor Piano Sonata and Bach’s Minuet in G. After these Tom whispered to me that his sister had wanted to play the more complicated and sophisticated pieces she’d mastered at Juilliard, but his mother had reminded her that this wasn’t New York. She went on to
Woodland Sketches
and then closed with Ravel’s
Le Tombeau de Couperin.
I remember how still the audience was during this last piece. It had been written in honor of Ravel’s friends who had died in the Great War.

Tom, my grandmother, and I arrived at his house for the reception before any of the other guests. He took my grandmother’s coat and said, “Now I’m going to show you
my
house.” He led her around, as she had led him earlier that day. She seemed very pliant, letting him hold her hand and take her from here to there. He showed her the pictures of his mother standing next to everyone from William Randolph Hearst to William Allen White. He said she met everybody who blew through town. He showed her a picture of himself receiving his Eagle Scout badge. He took her to the grand piano and told her that it had been his grandmother’s and that Sarah Bernhardt had offered her top dollar for it, as she thought the tone did justice to her voice. Miss Bernhardt had spent a weekend with his grandmother when she was in Raleigh for a performance. His grandmother was remarkable in many ways. Among other things, she had taught Clara Bow how to make buttermilk biscuits and Gertrude Ederle how to fly-fish.

He was showing my grandmother his sisters’ thimble collection when people started arriving, and he excused himself to go to the door. She seemed fascinated with the thimbles; she took one and held it up to the light, put it back, and took another. “Margaret,” she said, “this is
some
family.” I agreed that it was, and then told her we’d leave whenever she felt tired. I said, “Unless the business about poor blood was a ruse to get free iron tablets.” She told me she’d let me know when she needed to leave.

We stayed for an hour. In that time she managed to astound everyone present by taking a bothersome wart off the right hand of Tom’s pianist sister. My grandmother noticed it and asked, with not a great deal of tact, how she played the piano with that thing. Tom’s sister said it worried her considerably, but she was afraid of having it cut off. My grandmother said, “I’ll do it. I’ll do it and you’ll be rid of it.” Tom’s sister asked if it would hurt, and my grandmother told her it would, but only for a few minutes. The guests were choosing sides in a discussion of whether or not she would accept my grandmother’s impromptu offer to take this wart off right here, right now. Tom’s mother said, “Oh, go ahead!” Her daughter thought it over a bit more and then told my grandmother she was welcome to set up her operating theater in her bedroom. I asked my grandmother what I could do and was told to gather all the usual supplies from the kitchen and medicine cabinet and bring them in to her.

Tom showed me where everything was. He kept saying I had no idea what this meant to his mother. She’d talk about it for years. When he let me into his sister’s bedroom, she was sitting on one side of a table with her hand poised in the air as if waiting for my grandmother to manicure her. I had put a paring knife, two hand towels, and a bottle of Merthiolate on one of those Coca-Cola trays with the Gibson girl on them. My grandmother thanked me and said she’d be out in a minute.

I went back to the party with Tom, wondering whether the Victrola would drown out what I knew lay ahead. However, there were no screams. My grandmother came in and pronounced the patient very brave. She said she had left her in her room, applying pressure to the wound. She’d be out soon. Then my grandmother excused herself. I knew she was going to the bathroom to clean the paring knife and the tray before they were returned to the kitchen. I followed her, offering to help. She said, “Better than that. I’ll let you do it. I’m feeling whipped.” She sat on a slipper chair in the bathroom while I washed the things, and when I was done, she stood and said, “Think of the living I could make removing warts door to door. Maybe that could be my new line.” I didn’t know how to respond. Where my grandmother was concerned, there was no precedent for self-deprecation.

When we got home, my grandmother drank gingerroot tea to relieve what she termed an “irritatingly vague nausea,” and then took papaya tablets for her indigestion. I told her she should lie down. She refused, saying that would make things worse. She intended to keep moving, and thus drive the pain out of her system. She’d move about all night if she had to. I left her in the living room, standing in the middle of the floor, lifting one leg and then the other, touching her hands to her shoulders. Both actions were done to the tick of the Pasquotank mantel clock. That’s how I went to sleep, hearing those high-top shoes clomp, clomp, clomp.

Usually I would hear her in the morning. I would hear her taking the marble mortar and pestle out of the cabinet, and then I would hear her get out a cutting board and a broad knife. This is when I would get up and go to her. My mother would be leaning against the counter drinking coffee or sitting at the table working the crossword puzzle. I cannot recall a time that my mother didn’t say, “Margaret, you’ve got two choices. Raw garlic on toast, or cereal.” I always chose the cereal. That morning, I didn’t hear anything. I got up and saw my grandmother hadn’t slept in her bed, so I went to look for her. I found her sitting in the mohair chair, slumped to the side. She had sat down, tired, I imagined, of marching in place, and had died sometime during the night.

I dialed the operator and pleaded with her to put my call through. She was sympathetic, but she couldn’t do anything. I would have to wait for a line to my mother. I screamed that I couldn’t wait, and then I hung up. I phoned Dr. Nutter at his home. He told me he could place the call. He would talk to my mother, and then he would drive to my house. He said I should have a neighbor or a friend to come stay with me until he got there. I was so grateful to be told what to do. I called Tom and told him what had happened. He said he’d come right away. I thanked him, and after I hung up I stood by the phone, wondering what I was supposed to do with myself.

Then I knew. I went to the linen closet and took out as many towels as I could carry. I brought them into the living room and dropped them in the middle of the floor. Then I went back, got an armload of sheets, and dropped them on top of the towels. We had so many mirrors—I had no idea how many until I started draping them. Then I moved to the pictures, turning them to the wall or placing them facedown on the furniture. I stopped the clock in my room first, then moved to the others in the house. I had to stand on the tall stool to reach the one on the kitchen wall. All that was left was the mantel clock from Pasquotank County. I opened the little glass door and stopped the hands. Everything seemed to have been done. I sat on the sofa and watched my grandmother there across the room. I hadn’t done everything. The miniature railroad watch pinned to her bosom had to be stopped. I had to get up, go over to her, and touch her to stop it. I stared at her, for how long I cannot say. And then I stood up and walked over to her and pulled the tiny gold pin up with my fingernails.

Now everything was done, and I told her so. I sat down on the floor by her and said, “There. See how I knew what to do?” I looked at her mouth, slightly open. Her lips were dry. She hadn’t purged. She had always said all she needed to say, and so there were no secret longings, no secret wishes and desires that had never been spoken. I was glad for that. I smoothed my great-grandmother’s dress across my grandmother’s knees and ran my hand across the toes of their resolute shoes. And then I lay down, rested my head by her feet, and waited to be found.