Tell Me About Grandpa - A Short Story

Tell Me About Grandpa

A Short Story

By Eli A. Susman

“Can you tell me about my grandpa?”

“What’s there to tell?”

“There should be a lot, that’s what my dad always said.”

My grandma looks down. She itches the side of her face and readjusts her big glasses. 

“What do you want to know?”

“What was he like?”

“Your grandfather liked to talk a lot without saying very much.” She pauses to think for a moment before going on. “He had a lot to say, but he never really knew what he was saying.”

“You’re making him sound kind of dumb.”

“Far from it,” she says. “He had so many great ideas in his head. When he spoke, and he spoke a lot, it often didn’t make sense to me. Sometimes it made me angry. Your grandfather made a lot of people angry.”

My grandma gets up, and goes over to the island in her kitchen.

She takes out a small butter knife and slices up the coffee cake she had made. She puts a slice on two different plates and brings them over to the table.

“So he talked a lot,” I say. 

“He talked a lot, but he didn’t say much.” 

“Maybe if you could tell me something he actually did, that would be helpful.” 

“Helpful for what? Why do you need to know all this?”

“I never knew him, grandma.” 

She looks down at her plate, cuts a slice and eats it. Her small frame shrinks with each passing year. She’s always been a tiny woman, but now almost 90, she looks much smaller than when I was a little boy.

“I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Start with how you met him. Can’t you tell me that? How did you fall in love?”

“I suppose I can tell you that story.” 

“Yes, please tell me that story,” I say. 

"I had a good friend, we lived over in North Hollywood, and her and I would go shopping together quite often. That was one of my favorite things to do. One day when we were shopping she told me that she met a really great guy, and she wanted to set me up with him. Back in those days, that was all you really needed. She put us in touch, we spoke on the phone, went on a few dates, and the rest was history.”

“Maybe that’s why you two never got along.” I try and poke fun at the story, but she doesn’t find it funny. 

“W were meant to be together, for better or worse.” 

“What did you like about him though? Why did you agree to marry him?” 

“A lot of reasons, you know he was a writer?”

“I thought he was an insurance salesman.” 

“He was, but he also used to love to write. Like I said, the man had a lot of ideas, and when I was busy with the kids and the kids were too young to understand what he was saying or too old to care he would write the ideas down.”

“Do you have the writing still?”

“Should be in one of my boxes.”

My eyebrows raise. 

A minute later we are standing in her guest bedroom that is really more of a storage space. It has books piled up, photo albums, an old computer, random household appliances that she’s never wanted to sell or get rid of, an old dog bed, a blanket and an orange pillow on the fading green couch. Stuff that could be used, stuff other people definitely could use. She doesn’t want to part with them. 

“Can you look back here for me?” She points to the top shelf in the closet and I step in to look. 

“Do you see any notebooks or folders back there? Oh, any boxes?”

“I see lots of folders, lots of notebooks,” I say. “And three boxes it looks like.”

“Grab all those, let’s bring them downstairs.”

“The boxes, or the folders?” 

“All of it.”

I grab all the folders and the notebooks and stack them on top of the boxes. Some look new, some look professional, others look hazard. We take everything downstairs to the kitchen table and I spread them out, excitement tingling through my fingertips.

“Grandma,” I say. “None of this is writing. Most of this looks like legal documents and other random things from your work.”

“His writing might be somewhere in there. I remember it all getting mixed. Start with the folders.”

I take a bite of the coffee cake and so does she. I tell her that it might take me hours and she laughs. 

“Do I look like I have somewhere to be?”

“No, and I don’t have anywhere to be either.”

“Would you like a coffee?”

  “I don’t drink coffee.”

“Tea then,” she says. 

  “Sure, I’ll have a tea.”

She stands up and goes to set a kettle to boil on the stove. 

“Grandma," I say, and she looks over. “I don’t even know what I’m looking for. Is it typed and printed? It’s in English right?”

“Your grandfather only knew English.”

“I thought he knew Russian and some Yiddish.”

“Well, he knew some words here and there.”

“So I’m looking for typed English?”

“If I recall correctly, he would hand write with a nice pen, ‘so there is no going back.’” She mocks his laugh.

“Is that what he sounded like?” 

“What was that?” She comes back to the table and sits across from me. 

“Did he sound like that when he laughed?”

“How do you explain a laugh?”

“Was it lighthearted like yours? Kind of sniffling in air?”

“Don’t call me sniffly.” She smiles. 

“Was his laugh proud?” I put an emphasis on proud. 

“Too proud,” she says. 

I smile with no teeth.“So handwritten pen, good ink, old papers written in English, got it.”

Her head dips into a small nod. “Get to work.” 

As I dive in, she gets up and walks around the house; she folds a blanket on the couch, uses the bathroom, takes the dishes away. I keep looking and sorting through all the papers.

The kettle howls, and she pours the steaming water over a Lipton black tea bag. The caffeine wakes me, but the warmth of the cup makes me want to close my eyes. 

By the time the sun has gone down, and only a few orange lamps light up the small kitchen, I am ready to give up and go home. I look up from the mess of papers to see my grandma asleep on the couch across the room. Part of me figures that’s my sign to leave. Another part of me has to keep looking. There is still one more untouched box. 

I take a deep breath and open the final box, half expecting to see the same legal documents, miscellaneous pages of magazines, and anything else my grandmother has kept for no apparent reason. 

Instead, I see only three leather journals, each with my grandpa’s initials engraved in them. I take a short breath to contain my excitement, and flip through the pages of his words.

They begin in a way I never would have expected. 

I forgot to call my mother today. He wrote. She will be worried, though I hope she will understand I have good reason. I met a woman, her name is Marsha, she brings me great pleasure. We had dinner together. She questions everything I say, and makes me think. She scares me, and at the same time makes me confident. She is a mystery to me, yet I feel I know exactly who she is.

I feel I may marry this woman. If I do marry this Marsha, I imagine we will live a happy life together, and my mother will forgive me for my forgetfulness. 

I imagine we will travel the world together, and we will have children, and grandchildren, and those grandchildren will have grandchildren, and they will remember me.

I drop the journal on the table and it flops closed. My grandmother is still sleeping. I did not expect his writing to be so focused on his lineage and I don’t know how to feel. I wonder if he told anyone to give these journals to his grandkids, or if he simply hoped he would be remembered. I open the second journal, and start from the beginning. 

I forgot to call Marsha today. He wrote. Work was busy, and she was busy too, with the kids. I hoped she would understand, but she was much displeased upon my arrival home. We tried to stay quiet, not bother the kids, though they must have heard. I cannot help but yell. She only goes quiet. 

I know she is upset with me. When she is upset with me, I grow upset with myself. That is not fair. Not to her. Not to me. 

“You’re still here.” My grandmother’s voice shocks me back to reality. I close the journal and rub my eyes. “What time is it?” she asks. 

I look at my watch. 

“It’s almost 10.” 

“Oy, and you have a long drive.” 

“There’s no traffic; it won’t take me long to get home.”

She stands up and walks over to me.

“You found the journals, good.” 

“Have you read these? There is so much…” 

“I have not. And I don’t want to.” 

“But you could learn…”

“I know everything about the man that I want to know.” 

She puts her hand on my shoulder. 

“He had his thoughts, and I had mine. No use complicating my life.” 

“There is…” I cough and clear my throat. “There is one more journal I haven’t read.” 

“Go ahead then.” She takes a seat across from me, and I open the final journal.

I forgot why I write in these. It has been months. I never imagined I could go months without writing. When I am alone, I do not want to write. Is that strange? When I was with Marsha, I felt I could fill a scroll. Now, each stroke of the pen hurts. 

Can a man retire from that which he never was a professional? If so, then I retire. From writing, from my kids, from my Marsha. I can only hope she will remember me. 

I flip through the journal, but see only blank pages after the first. 

“Grandma, I think this was the last thing he wrote. He talks about…” 

“Please, darling, I do not want to know.” 

“But grandma, he explicitly says…”

She raises a palm to stop me. 

“I’m glad you have read his words,” she says. “That is all he would have wanted. You should take these home with you now, give them a read when you want to feel close to him.” 

I can tell she wants me to leave now, so I shove the three journals into my bag and stand up. She walks towards the door and I follow her. It all happens fast. One moment I’m reading my grandpa’s words, and the next I’m out the door. I give my grandma a hug and a kiss on the cheek, then I tell her I love her, and turn to leave.

“Read his words, please, it’s all he would have wanted.”