Grandpa’s first words to me when he caught sight of me were not “Where have you been?” That came second. First was “Why are you only wearing one boot? And dear God, is that my sister’s old majorette boot from high school on your foot?” He spoke from the kitchen floor in my apartment, where he was lying down, trying to determine, I believe, if I was hiding beneath the sink.
“Grandpa!” I cried out. I ran to smother him in day after Christmas kisses. I was so happy to see him, and exhilarated from the night out, despite how I’d ended it by sacrificing one of my great-aunt’s shoes to the gumshoes and neglecting to return the notebook for Snarl.
Grandpa wasn’t having my affection. He turned his cheek to me, then went for the “you’re-grounded routine.” When I failed to meet his pronouncement with fear, he frowned and demanded, “Where have you been? It’s four in the morning!”
“Three-thirty,” I corrected him. “It’s three-thirty in the morning.”
“You’re in a world of trouble, young lady,” he said.
I giggled.
“I’m serious!” he said. “You’d better have a good explanation.”
Well, I’ve been corresponding with a complete stranger in a notebook, telling him my innermost feelings and thoughts and then blindly going to mystery places where he dares me to go….
No, that wouldn’t go over so well.
For the first time in my life, I lied to Grandpa.
“This friend from my soccer team had a party where her band played a Hanukkah show. I went to hear them.”
“THIS MUSIC REQUIRES YOU TO GET HOME AT FOUR IN THE MORNING?”
“Three-thirty,” I said again. “It’s, like, a religious thing. The band’s not allowed to play before midnight on the night after Christmas Day.”
“I see,” Grandpa said skeptically. “And don’t you have a curfew, young lady?”
The invocation not once, but twice, of the dreaded young lady term of endearment should have put me on high fear alert, but I was too giddy from the night’s adventures to care.
“I’m pretty sure my curfew is suspended on holidays,” I said. “Like alternate side of the street parking rules.”
“LANGSTON!” Grandpa yelled. “GET IN HERE!”
It took a few minutes, but my brother finally moped into the kitchen, trailing a comforter, looking like he’d been woken from a coma.
“Grandpa!” Langston wheezed, surprised. “What are you doing home?” I knew Langston was relieved now to be sick, because if he wasn’t, Benny would surely have spent the night, and overnight companions of the romantic sort have not yet been authorized by the designated authority figures. Langston and I both would have been busted.
“Never mind me,” Grandpa said. “Did you allow Lily to go out on Christmas night to hear her friend’s music?”
Langston and I shared a knowing glance: Our secrets needed to stay just that, secrets. I initiated our covert code from childhood, batting my eyelids up and down, so Langston would know to confirm what had just been asked of him.
“Yes,” Langston coughed. “Since I’m sick, I wanted Lily to go out and try to have some fun on the holiday. The band was playing in, like, the basement of someone’s brownstone on the Upper West Side. I arranged a car service to take her home. Totally safe, Grandpa.”
Quick thinking for a sickie. Sometimes I really love my brother.
Grandpa eyed the two of us suspiciously, not sure whether he’d been caught in a siblings’ web of deceit and got-your-back-yo.
“Go to bed,” Grandpa barked. “Both of you. I’ll deal with you in the morning.”
“Why are you home, Grandpa?” I asked.
“Never mind. Go to bed.”
I couldn’t fall asleep after the klezmer night, so I wrote in the notebook instead.
I’m sorry I didn’t return our notebook to you. It was such a simple task, I mean. Yet I botched it. Why I’m writing to you now even though I have no idea how to return this to you, I don’t know. There’s just something about you—and this notebook—that gives me faith.
Were you even at the club tonight? At first I thought you might have been one of those gumshoe boys, but I quickly realized that was impossible. For one thing, those boys seemed too upbeat. It’s not that I imagine you to be a miserable person, by the way. But I don’t see you as the grinning type, either. Also, I feel like I would have known, like a sensory perception, if you had been standing there near me. For another thing, even though I don’t know how to picture you yet (every time I try, you seem to be holding up a red Moleskine notebook to cover your face), I have a solid feeling you don’t have hair ringlets dangling from your temples. Just a hunch. (But if you do, could I braid them sometime?)
So I left you with a boot and no notebook. Or, rather, I left it with two complete strangers.
You don’t feel like a stranger to me.
I’ll be wearing the spare boot at all times, just in case you happen to be looking for me.
Cinderella was such a dork. She left behind her glass slipper at the ball and then went right back to her stepmonster’s house. It seems to me she should have worn the glass slipper always, to make herself easier to find. I always hoped that after the prince found Cinderella and they rode away in their magnificent carriage, after a few miles she turned to him and said, “Could you drop me off down the road, please? Now that I’ve finally escaped my life of horrific abuse, I’d like to see something of the world, you know? Maybe backpack across Europe or Asia? I’ll catch back up with you later, Prince, once I’ve found my own way. Thanks for finding me, though! Super-sweet of you. And you can keep the slippers. They’ll probably cause bunions if I keep wearing ’em.”
I might have liked to share a dance with you. If I may be so bold to say.
Neither rain, nor sleet, nor gloom of the day after Christmas could keep Grandpa from meeting his buddies for coffee the following afternoon.
I went along, feeling like Grandpa needed the moral support.
While Grandpa was in Florida, where he usually spends the winters, he had indeed proposed on Christmas Day to Mabel, who lives in his complex down there. I have never liked Mabel. Aside from her always telling me and my brother to call her Glamma, her list of step grandmother-to-be infractions is long. Here’s just a sampling: (1) The candies in the bowl in her living room are always stale. (2) She tries to put lipstick or rouge on me even though I don’t like makeup. (3) She’s a terrible cook. (4) Her vegetarian lasagna, which she made sure to mention a million times she made because I’m such a pain that I won’t eat meat, tastes like glue with grated zucchini. (5) She kind of makes me want to barf. (6) So does her lasagna. (7) And the candies in her living room.
Shockingly, Mabel turned down Grandpa’s proposal! I thought my Christmas morning had been sucky—but Grandpa’s had been way worse. When Grandpa presented her with a ring, Mabel told Grandpa she likes the single life and likes having Grandpa as her winter fella, but she’s got other fellas during the rest of the year, just like he has other gals during the non-winter months! She told him to get his money back for the ring and use it to take her on a swell vacation somewhere grand.
Grandpa never imagined she would turn down his proposal, so rather than consider the logic of Mabel’s answer, he typically returned home to New York a few hours later, totally heartbroken! Especially when he came home to find his sweet little Lily bear was out having a wild night on the town. Like, in twenty-four hours, his whole world turned upside down.
It’s good for the old fella, I think.
However, Grandpa seems, like, genuinely depressed. So that afternoon, I stayed close to Grandpa’s side as he met with his buddies, all of them retired business owners from around the neighborhood who’ve been meeting regularly for coffee since my mom was a baby, so they could weigh in with their opinions about Grandpa’s Christmas misadventure. Most of his buddies’ names are complicated and involve many syllables, so Langston and I have always referred to them by the names of their former businesses.
The roundtable discussion of Mabel proceeded like this:
Mr. Cannoli told Grandpa, “Arthur, give her time. She’ll come around.”
Mr. Dumpling said, “You virile man, Arthur! This lady not have you, someone better will!”
Mr. Borscht sighed, “This woman who turns down a marriage proposal on a day that’s sacred to you gentile people is worthy of your heart, Arthur? I think not.”
Mr. Curry exclaimed, “I will find you another lady, my friend!”
“He has plenty of other lady friends here in New York,” I reminded the group. “He just”—this killed me to say, I want to note—“seems to want Mabel for keeps.”
Amazingly, I did not choke on my Lilyccino (foamed milk with shaved chocolate on top, courtesy of Mr. Cannoli’s son-in-law, who now runs Mr. Cannoli’s bakery) when I said this. Grandpa’s face—always so chipper and eager—looked so uncharacteristically downcast. I couldn’t stand it.
“This one!” Grandpa said to his buddies, pointing at me sitting next to him. “Do you know what she did? Went to a party last night! Stayed out past her curfew! As if my Christmas hadn’t been lousy enough, I come home and panic because Lily bear’s nowhere to be found. She strolls in a few minutes later—at four in the morning!—seemingly without a care in the world.”
“Three-thirty,” I stated. Again.
Mr. Dumpling said, “Were there boys at this party?”
Mr. Borscht said, “Arthur, this child should be out so late at night? Where boys might be?”
Mr. Cannoli said, “I’ll kill the kid who …”
Mr. Curry turned to me. “A nice young lady, she does not …”
“Time for me to walk my dogs!” I said. If I spent any more time with these old men in their House of Coffee Woe, they’d conspire to have me locked in my room away from boys till I was thirty years old.
I left the gentlemen to their kvetching so I could play some catching with my favorite dog-walking clients.
I had my two favorite dogs with me in the park—Lola and Dude, a little pug-Chi mix and a giant chocolate Lab. It’s true love between them. You can tell by how eagerly they sniff each other’s butts.
I called Grandpa from my cell phone.
“You need to learn to compromise,” I said.
“Excuse me?” he said.
“Dude used to hate Lola because she was so little and cute and took all the attention. Then he learned to play nice with her so he could have the attention, too. Dude compromised, like you should. Just because Mabel turned down your proposal doesn’t mean you should break up with her over it!”
This concession was very big of me, I agree.
“I’m supposed to take love advice from a sixteen-year-old girl?” Grandpa said.
“Yes.” I hung up before he could point out how completely not qualified I was to dole out such advice.
I’ve got to learn to stop being so Lily sweet and transition myself into a hard bargainer.
For instance.
If I am forced to move to Fiji next September, which is when Langston said Dad’s new job would start if Dad decides to take it, I am going to demand a puppy. I’m realizing there is a lot of parental guilt to be mined from this situation, and I plan to use it to my animal kingdom benefit.
I sat down at a bench while Lola chased Dude in the dog park. From the next bench, I noticed a teenage boy wearing an argyle print beret tilted backward, squinting at me like he knew me. “Lily?” he asked.
I stared at him more closely.
“Edgar Thibaud!” I growled.
He came over to my bench. How dare Edgar Thibaud recognize me and have the audacity to approach me, after the living hell he made my elementary school years at PS 41?