“Good morning, St. Mary’s,” my grandmother would say as she answered the phone, and I, on the other end, would say “Hi, Marge.” There’d be a pause and then recognition would set in and her voice would light up. “Oh, it’s you!”
I liked calling my grandmother by her first name because I liked imitating people. “Oh hi, Marge,” her friends would say upon bumping into her at Tops Friendly Markets or spotting her at the cemetery, across the tombstones, watering geraniums. These were usually women around her age, with hairdos and brooches, and they talked casually and comfortably, the way people do when they’ve spent their entire lives in the same town. “Oh hi, Marge.” Some people called her Marjorie, but I liked the bluntness of the single syllable. Marge. It seemed like a fun word to say, so I took to using it with her at every opportunity. On the phone, at the back door, upon entering a room. “Oh hi, Marge.”
Pretending to be a sixty-three-year-old woman was, to me, infinitely more interesting than being an actual fourteen-year-old boy.
Pretending to be a sixty-three-year-old woman was, to me, infinitely more interesting than being an actual fourteen-year-old boy.
July 11, 1985
1. Walking on Sunshine, Katrina and the Waves
2. The Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough, Cyndi Lauper
3. Crazy in the Night, Kim Carnes
4. Glory Days, Bruce Springsteen
5. Heaven, Bryan Adams
6. The Power of Love, Huey Lewis and the News
7. We Don’t Need Another Hero, Tina Turner
8. Just As I Am, Air Supply
9. St. Elmo’s Fire, John Parr
10. Cannonball, Supertramp
My grandmother was the secretary at St. Mary’s rectory, which stood beside the church on Fourth Street, a block away from our apartment building on Third Street in downtown Niagara Falls. The streets were separated by a weed-covered lot which provided an unobstructed view of my grandmother’s workplace from my bedroom window. Years later, after I’d moved away, people would build a Holiday Inn on the lot, and then years after that different people would tear it down, leaving an empty lot again, this one covered with cement and used for parking, mostly by gamblers wanting to use the casino that was opened next door to the rectory.
When the church bells rang at noon I knew my grandmother would soon be heading home for lunch, and I’d call to let her know that I’d be coming with her. She drove a white Buick with beige highlights and steered it down Whirlpool Boulevard like the captain of a ship, forsaking the white lines on the road to create her own personal boat lane. Along the way, she’d often stop at a grocery store to “pick up a few things.” Cold cuts. Cottage cheese. Crystal Light. Marge was a big fan of Linda Evans, one of the stars of “Dynasty,” who was starring in a series of commercials for Crystal Light, a new sugar-free soft drink. Voices would sing: “I believe in Crystal Light / ‘Cause I believe in...” and then Linda Evans, standing in the midst of exercise equipment and wearing a headband and a pastel-colored leotard with a towel draped over the back of her neck, would point at herself with her thumb and say “...Me.” That was all my grandmother needed to hear to start drinking Crystal Light. I believe in me, too, she probably thought to herself. She’d mix up a pitcher of the lemon-lime at lunchtime and we’d sit together. Cold cuts. Cottage cheese with fruit cocktail. And Crystal Light. Not only was I acting like a sixty-three-year-old woman, I was eating like one, too.
After an hour or so, Marge would return to her boat and sail back to St. Mary's while I’d spend the afternoons working outside in the garden, cutting the grass, watering flowers, pruning, weeding, digging, trimming. Whatever needed to be done. The flower beds ran the entire perimeter of the back yard with additional beds encircling the house. Peonies on one side, hydrangeas on another, with roses, phlox, daisies, lilies and a dozen more varieties in between. When the neighbors saw that I was cheap and willing labor, they pounced, none more so than Irene Jenkins, a crippled woman who lived across the street. Mrs. Jenkins lived alone and would sit in her kitchen window and talk to me from where I stood on her empty driveway. The window slid open sideways like a drive-thru at McDonald’s and from there she’d pass me gardening gloves, pruning shears, plant food. Whatever I needed for the day’s work she had planned.
Occasionally she’d venture outdoors, shoving her wheelchair out the side entrance then dragging herself up into it. The first time I saw her do this I was shocked. It was the sound that first drew my attention. The sound of metal hitting metal, repeatedly. The side entrance had two doors, a wooden one that opened in followed by an exterior storm door that opened out, the kind that would immediately spring back into place upon release, as if irritated you would ask it to do what it was designed to do. It was this metal door that I heard slamming against something, and as I poked my head around the corner, I saw that the something was Irene’s wheelchair. Irene herself was on the floor of the entrance, sending the chair out ahead of her. She’d give the storm door a good push to swing it out wide, then push on the wheelchair, then...slam. Again, she’d push on the door, push on the chair...slam. Push on the door, push on the...slam. Push on the...slam. Slam. Slam. As far as I knew, crippled meant immobile, but this woman was clearly on the move. She was built like a blob, with a Dutch boy haircut, and wore soft slippers on her swollen feet. Her arms were big and thick and lifted each limp leg into place once she finally got past the storm door and settled into her chair. She’d then propel herself across the thick grass, her hands straining to roll the wheels. It looked exhausting, and judging by all the huffing and puffing going on, it was. Still, she never once asked for help and needed no sympathy. She’d inspect my work, giving pointers and praise, and every now and then she’d pick up a tool to show me a better way of using it.
Marge became jealous. “You spend more time over there than you do over here,” she said while pouring herself a glass of wine from the gallon jug she kept beneath the kitchen sink. “That’s because she pays me,” I said. It was simply an explanation but Marge took it as a demand for money, which I gladly took when she offered it.
My grandmother called me her “One and Only” and used it in everything she wrote to me. Birthday cards, letters, packages from home when I went away to college. “To My One & Only.” My sister eventually took issue with this. “Her one and only what?” she’d say, usually with her hand on her hip. “She’s got two grandchildren.” She took the argument to my mother, who listened with her mouth ajar as she often does when something she should have picked up on has escaped her notice and is being brought to her attention. “That’s a good question,” she said, which is what people say when they don’t have an answer for it. So the two of them confronted my grandmother. “You’ve got one daughter, one son, one granddaughter and one grandson,” my mother said to Marge, “but he’s your one and only. Your one and only what?” “Oh for God sakes,” Marge said. “You’re both being ridiculous.”
She dismissed their complaint with the obvious answer, that I was her one and only grandson, but my mother and sister weren’t buying it. They were convinced it was a commentary on our family. “My one and only”...normal person. “My one and only”...sane person. “My one and only”...friend. But this was far from the truth. Because every day at noon, as the church bells rang, I picked up the phone and demonstrated that I was perhaps the most abnormal of all. “Good morning, St. Mary’s.”
“Oh hi, Marge.”
