I was the freak, the alien at the table full of pretty faces. Plates of chicken were garnished with things I’d never thought I’d see paired with chicken. Like strawberries. And I was just sitting there, the quiet one for once in my life. Among news editors and other female interns who, amidst these unending minutes of small talk, were chomping at the bit to talk themselves up. Sarah, another intern, was always my ally at events like this. She was the one person in the roomful of strangers who knew me, and just knowing that she cared as little as I did made the afternoon bearable. With Sarah there, sitting at my right-hand side, I didn’t feel like I was selling just myself but this special duo of sorts. “The Sarahs from Huntington,” is what the head of internship program called us.
The pretty girls at my table could all speak Spanish, including Sarah. “The Hispanic population, especially in this state, is really taking off,” said Mayer Maloney, the friendly, yet ever-intimidating publisher of the newspaper where I had spent the last ten weeks trying to prove myself. “What language did you take in school?”
“Well, actually, I took two semesters of Hebrew,” I said, “like the kind in the Bible.”
My tendencies toward a well-rounded, liberal arts education had failed me in this moment. Mr. Maloney nodded like he was unsure of something; the glint I had seen in his eyes as he spoke to the other girls disappeared. Why had no one warned me that someday very important people would ask me which language I studied in college and if it wasn’t Spanish, points would be deducted from my score? What I was actually being scored for, I couldn’t be sure. Probably just the vague hope that one of these men would recognize the name at the top my resume in a year or two when it hit their desk. My future was in their hands, and I‘ve never been comfortable in a situation where I had to sell myself. I just wanted to jump out of my skin, like my own body was poisoned or on fire or both.
I sat stiffly at the table, conscious that any movement I made meant a wrinkle in my brand-new black cotton button-up and gray, knee-length skirt. I had this irrational notion that if I could just make it out of that restaurant without any wrinkles, I could chalk the day up as a success. I had lost all this weight during the summer, almost twenty pounds and I didn’t have any nice clothes that fit me. I’d gone to the mall the night before, and I stood looking at myself in the dressing room mirror. The blouse had two purposes. It worked for my luncheon, but I also knew that I would be wearing it to my grandmother’s funeral, and soon.
I couldn’t get the scene from a few days earlier out of my mind, at least the one I had put together for myself from the fragments of real information I was given. She was on the bed in her tatty sweatshirt and soiled underwear. Her thin, 80-pound frame sprawled across the faded pink comforter trimmed in worn lace. The stroke had left her there for dead. I had never thought about my grandmother changing her clothes before. There really isn‘t anything to think about, I guess. It is an automatic in life, something any capable person can do for themselves. And my grandma, who grew up during the depression and married just after the war, was nothing if not capable. She fed us homemade food even when it was a dying art, and gift-wrapped every present with care, signing each card and tag with “Love, Grandmother”--though not once have we called her anything but “Grandma.” She was old-fashioned, yes, but the most competent woman in existence. Yet, just two days before, she could not manage to clothe herself without having a stroke. My aunt and cousin walked in on her in the early afternoon, half-naked.
Her mind died first. She became a little actress to cover up the memory loss. She pretended, badly, I‘ll admit, to recognize me when I would make a visit. Still, she stayed alone in the farmhouse those seven years after Pop died, which I can only attribute to stubbornness. Grandma’s body began to diminish months before the infamous morning she stroked out.
The day of my internship luncheon, she had been in the hospital for less than a handful of days. My Mom had been several times to visit her. Though Grandma couldn’t speak, her eyes said everything as she laid there. She was ready to be done.
We were finished eating, and it was time for show and tell. It was perhaps more uninteresting than that, like a shortened “What I did over my summer vacation” presentation. It was my turn to stand and tell the room I told the fellow interns and publishers about Grant, the autistic boy-wonder I’d done a feature on. He drew beautiful cartoon animals that his mom printed on greeting cards and baby onesies. For the first time all afternoon--all week, really--I didn’t have to force a smile. It was my last genuine smile for days. I sat down and tried to keep my hands from shaking. As soon as the last intern was finished sharing their story, I excused myself to the bathroom, sneaking my purse under my arm, so that I could check the voicemail I had gotten during lunch. It was my dad. He wanted me to call him back right away. Shit. She was dead and I knew it.
The dessert had come while I was gone, and tried my best to engage in the social ritual. I was smiling and trying my best to be charming, as if it is something one can achieve by sheer concentration. It felt like someone had seared two pieces of string to my face, one on each corner of my mouth, and yanked them as far apart as they could. I couldn’t help but feel like a stage actress-- maybe like my grandmother had felt when I made visits--as I was trying to convince these professionals how happy I was to be at that restaurant with them instead of at the hospital with my mom and frail, dying grandma. How could I be thankful for the me opportunities that had kept me from visiting her the entire summer.
Now I just had to make it through the group picture; then I could head to the parking lot. My suspicion that my grandmother was gone had yet to be confirmed--but there is really only one thing Dad could be calling about, interrupting the most important lunch of my semi-adult life. “I just know he is calling to say she’s dead,” I said to Sarah as we got to my car. My hands are clammy and shaking more than when I had made my presentation back in the banquet room. It was August, but I was so cold. I got my phone out again. My dad answered on the home line right away.
“Well, Grandma died at about 11 this morning,” he said softly, skipping the traditional scripted phone-pleasantries.
“Uh-huh.” The only syllables that I could manage. One tear escaped and made its way to my tight lips, and I felt like the wind had been knocked out of my lungs.
“Take some time before you get in your car,” Dad said. “ Don’t drive until you’re ready, okay?” Sure, Dad. Like I would ever be ready to drive home and face the realities awaiting me there. I said goodbye and hung up.
Sarah stood there with me for a few minutes. She gave a look that attempted sympathy but looked more like awkwardness. I went ahead and got in my car. After she pulled away in hers, I finally let myself go. My Grandma was dead. I cried there in my car, my face in my hands. My blouse and skirt were a wrinkled mess by this point. When I finally looked up, most of the cars in the lot were gone. The members of the press association had probably seen me there, wailing into the steering wheel of my Hyundai Sonata. There was finally a moment of honesty that afternoon, and I didn‘t feel embarrassed. I could only feel sad, and drive.
In my Hebrew courses we learned about something called “Shiva,” the Jewish tradition of intense mourning. For a week, the family of the deceased won’t change their clothes, read scripture, or perform any “normal” activities. They refuse to even sit in chairs, but use special stools so that they will be closer to the ground. And everyday for a year, they say a sacred, scripted prayer for the one they lost. At the time, I had a hard time seeing Shiva as a good thing; I had always respected the idea of putting on a brave face and moving past the sadness in life. Dwelling in loss and mourning felt like a contradiction to that. But now moving forward was the last thing on my mind; I wanted to take up residence in the sadness of my situation.
I got out on the interstate and started the hour and a half drive home. I refused to try to make myself feel better by thinking of the good moments I’d had with Grandma. There would be time later, probably sitting in the funeral parlor with my sisters, to take turns telling Grandma Alice stories. Mine was how she always ordered her favorite sandwich, a BLT, whenever we would play restaurant with a set of small, plastic dishes filled with empty thread spools we used for food. I knew when I got home I would have a lot to do, especially since my mother and big sister wouldn‘t be there. The funeral was two hours from home, and our pets would need to be fed while we were away. My sister Lauren would need help putting clothes together for the funeral services, then they’d undoubtedly need to be ironed. I couldn’t believe it, but I even had a newspaper article to finish and send to my editor for Sunday’s edition.
I needed my own sort of Shiva, just some time to myself so I could reflect on all that I had lost that afternoon. But I didn‘t have seven days, let alone two hours. The only thing I had was my drive home. I turned my cell phone off, and I got lost on purpose.
