BRILLO PADS AND CANNED CORN

 

All the trouble began when my grandfather died, and my grandmother - my father's mother - came to live with us.  It was a rainy, cool day in May – not unusual for a Massachusetts spring. I was home for the summer from boarding school and had just celebrated my thirteenth birthday. I was now officially a teenager. I should have been happy with the whole summer ahead of me. Still, my best friend and fishing buddy, my grandfather, had died suddenly, and my grandmother was moving in for a few months until she found more suitable housing than the ramshackle 200-year-old farmhouse she grew up in Michigan.  Our house was a relatively large post-war colonial house with enough room for myself,  my parents, and two younger sisters with a spare bedroom on the first floor.

          My father worked all day, and my mother's daily routine usually left me at home with my sisters during the day. My grandmother was now moving in as if this wasn't bad enough. I was distraught.

       My sisters were lazy. They ordered me around like drill sergeants. I washed the dishes. I vacuumed the floors. I took out the garbage. I did the laundry. I made the beds, including theirs. In turn, they made themselves look like the actresses they saw in their numerous teen magazines. This was an impossible feat because they were not blessed with gorgeous hair but stringy, thin, and unruly reddish hair that looked like rusted steel wool. The freckles on their face would become more pronounced after adding three pounds of makeup, making them look like beige-colored spotted newts.  They had inherited skinny lips that naturally curled down into a grimace. They would try to correct this by smearing and artistically applying dark red lipstick. They both looked like Clarabelle, the clown from Howdy Doody. I felt like I lived in the Peanut Gallery.

The day my grandmother moved in was the day that my life would change forever. She was an overweight woman who looked like my sisters – same hair, same complexion, and same lips. Her hair was a different color as she had tried to dye it an azure blue to cover the silver grey that had crept into the red. This resulting color, combined with her red lipstick, made her look like an animated  American flag. She did not attempt to corral her unruly hair, so she always appeared as though she had barely survived a severe wind storm.

             She arrived one morning with three bags. Two bags were filled with dowdy old clothes that had gone out of style thirty years earlier. A smaller leather satchel was full of framed photos, which she immediately piled on the fireplace mantle. This photo gallery then portrayed a lineage of my relatives who all looked the same – a whole gaggle of Clarabelles. She also had a bushel basket filled with food "from the farm."

 "Where's my little Deanie?" she loudly asked as she entered the house.

I hated being called that. Little Deanie – I was almost six feet tall and carried enough weight that the wind didn't blow me away.  Anyone who calls me "Deanie" is in for a lot of hurt.

Hearing her, I started to shake. I immediately hurried to the cellar, hoping she would think I wasn't home or had run away.  Most people ran away to the circus. I was running away from one.

 

"Come give your old Grandma a big smooch," she said as she wandered from room to room looking for me.

I could hear the floors creak above my head with each lumbering step. Dust and other evil things rained down on my head. I found an old Army hat of my Dad's, pulled it over my head, and crept back into the old coal bin.

Most grandsons would love to have a hug from their grandmother. I was not one of those lucky enough to look forward to this affection. The truth is I immediately broke out into a sweat and started to tremble thinking about the inevitable.  She just loved to grab your head and pull it into her lavender-scented humongous breasts while pinching your cheek until you were brought to tears. It was mortifying. I still like small-breasted women wearing a hint of Chanel No. 5.

 "Come out, come out wherever you are," she said as she cracked open the cellar door and peeked down the staircase.  "Are we playing a game, my little sweetie?" she said.

 I did not want to be her sweetie, so I inched further into the dark corner, hoping she would leave and not find me. This movement caused me to move up against something that squeaked and scurried over my feet. I muffled a scream, but it was not soft enough.

 "There you are. Come give me a hug and kiss," she said as she shuffled down the stairs.

 I was positive that I was about to die, either from a rabid mouse bite or by being smothered. I inched out of my dingy hiding spot, took my position, and was rewarded with an agonizing hug.

"Didn't you miss your old fat Grandmother?" she said as she tweaked my cheek.

 "No," I thought. "I missed getting beat up in school or having my lunch money stolen more than I missed getting smothered and pinched."

 

"My word, it is certainly dusty down here," she said.

 "Well, of course, it is," I thought. "You just caused it to become dusty."

 "Your father and mother will be home late, so I have to cook dinner for you and the girls. It would help if you cleaned this mess up before coming to dinner. I'm making your favorite meal," she said enthusiastically.

"Great," I thought, "more chores."

 My grandmother prided herself on self-sufficiency and believed one could "live off the farm."  Although she and my grandfather were not farmers, they raised chickens, a few pigs, and a cow they called "Bessie," which was about as original as calling your dog Rover. They also maintained a garden, raising vile vegetables like Okra, Brussels sprouts, Kale, and Cauliflower. These she, of course, transported from Michigan, so they had all turned slightly brown and a tad mushy.

For as long as I can remember, my grandmother believed I liked fresh farm-fried eggs, slab bacon, and home fries. The truth is that this meal makes me gag. She would overcook the bacon, leaving an inch of grease in the pan so "you could slowly cook the eggs in the fat, giving it a home-cooked flavor."  If the bacon did not leave enough grease, she would take a scoop of lard from a can my mother kept unrefrigerated in her pantry. She would then add large chunks of potatoes to this sizzling grease– she hated to dice up anything and preferred to whack any vegetable once or twice with a cleaver. This effort resulted in burnt bacon, cold, runny fried eggs covered in a cooling white oil coating, and undercooked potatoes. She would top this all off with her favorite beverage - prune juice. This abominable drink was near and dear to her as she drank it with every meal and expected everyone else to do likewise.

My mother got along with my grandmother but just barely. My father was the apple of her eye and could do no wrong. My mother "couldn’t boil water and was too lax with discipline when raising the kids.” I think my mother thought it was easier to let her cook rather than get into an argument with her. That summer, my grandmother ran the kitchen and had some awful meal concoctions besides the bacon and eggs.

 

I remember three of them. 

 One was a mixture of canned cream corn, ketchup, and sliced hot dogs. I couldn’t possibly describe its looks or taste.

Another favorite was tuna fish casserole topped with stale bread crumbs she saved in an old Quaker Oats tin – “Waste not, want not,” she used to say. I’m unsure exactly what the ingredients were, but you could see peas and celery swimming in the gray-colored sauce. It smelled like rotten fish and pretty much tasted the same.

 Her “Sunday go-to dinner” meal was fried pig’s liver sauteed with onions. To some, this might sound appetizing, but to me, well, it dumbfounded me that anyone would eat any organ from any animal. My grandmother believed there was nothing from a pig you couldn’t complete with the “squeal”- including pickled pig knuckles and deep fat fried pig ears. When this was cooked, the aroma from the kitchen caused a burning electric sensation, much like several hundred volts, to slam through my sinus cavity, eye sockets, and throat. Rover - I’m only kidding; his name was Lucky -  loved that smell because he knew that his favorite meal was about to be served. I usually gagged.

 I made it through this meal and many others that summer by waiting for her to look away. I would quickly hold my plate beneath the table so Lucky could lap up the morsels of food shimmering around my plate. He could clean a plate in two seconds flat. I always tried to give him my prune juice, but he would snarl and walk away. This poor dog had to be put on a diet at the end of the summer as he had transformed into this fluffy little blob that looked like an oversized marshmallow and constantly passed gas. On the other hand, I spent many hours in the bathroom since my dinner usually consisted of just the juice and anything else I could sneak out of the kitchen when she wasn’t there.

My grandmother believed that I could do no right. Anytime I attempted to please her, she found fault with what I did. She constantly reminded me of the time my grandfather tried to teach me how to fish. We had a small wooden boat we kept at the farmhouse that I loved taking out and chasing the ducks with. My grandfather thought this was disruptive and decided I needed to learn how to fish. I guess I was about ten at the time. We spent many previous summers feeling together.

 

As I stated before, my father could do no wrong in my grandmother’s eyes. When my father drove through the garage door in his haste to get to work one morning, it was somehow my fault for not putting it up. I never touched the door. I only entered the garage to retrieve the dreaded “Sears Super Push Mower” - no powered vehicles were at our house. My father considered this chore “good for me.” I never knew why it was good for me. I guess it was helping to build my character.

My sisters could also do no wrong. Once, they used Brillo pads to clean off-road tar on their “kickin’” ten-year-old Chevy. They scuffed the paint so severely that it removed all color to the bare metal underneath. My grandmother thought I should pay for this because I didn’t teach them how to clean a car properly. I refused; I took my life savings and purchased over a hundred used comic books at the local hobby shop so she couldn’t get her hands on my money. My sisters never repainted that car. They decided to spend money on a newly invented contraption to straighten their hair. Throughout the summer, the vehicle rusted and matched their hair color.

  My grandmother never spent any money on clothing. She made everything herself. She always wore light cotton dresses, nylons rolled halfway up her calf, and clunky shoes similar to my Dad's. This was okay, I guess, looking back on it. It was not okay that she never wore a bra – I don’t think they made one big enough for her. My prepubescent friends who visited that summer followed her, hoping to glimpse these humongous orbs. They would snicker and laugh as they tripped over each other. She would shoo them away. To stop them from pursuing this embarrassing quest, I usually pretended that there were some essential things we had to do- like skimming rocks or pestering the ducks on the lake.

 Most of that summer was a blur. I spent most of my time sitting on the john, hiding in the coal bin, and reading and rereading my comic books. My sisters also managed to find boyfriends – they were twerps. They spent most of their time driving around in their rusty Chevy and hanging around the A&W with all of the other twerps. I was stuck with one of their hand-me-down bikes for transportation. It was pink until I painted it green with some leftover house paint. I also had to remove the frilly tassels hanging from the handlebars.

In late August, my grandmother announced she was moving in with Mel, “a gentleman of fine upbringing, exemplary morals, and a snappy dresser with only righteous intentions.” She had met him at church and spent most summer nights sitting on the backyard picnic bench.  I never considered Oshkosh’s fashionable, but that’s what he wore – of course, he did iron them.  Any other thoughts I had about their relationship I preferred not to think about.

 The day she moved out, I got my obligatory hug and smelled what I thought might be just a hint of Chanel No. 5. I also noticed that the top of her nylons had disappeared under the hemline of her dress.

 “You’re a good boy, Deanie,” she said as she pinched my cheek for what turned out to be the last time.

 My grandmother died that following year. She was 76. Today, I remember that summer living with her. I look at my daughter, who has a tint of red in her blond hair.

 To this day, I only boil my eggs. I don’t touch canned cream corn or tuna fish, and if my wife happens to cook liver, which she likes for some bizarre reason, I go for a long drive. I miss my grandmother.