“How you doing, kiddo?” she asks, cradling a Thermos of coffee in her hands. She’s wearing at least three silver rings on each finger, kooky old bat that she is.
“Concerned that my grandmother is wearing more rings than, I don’t know, Saturn. But other than that, fine.” [I know, it’s incredibly frustrating that I just had an epiphany about needing the people I love, and yet I’m cracking jokes and masking the hurt like I always do. Hey. Old habits die hard.]
The lie is not in the least bit convincing. She snorts. “Right. Sure. And I’m Harrison Ford.”
“I wish,” I say.
“Me too. Then I could have sex with myself.”
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, this would’ve given me a laughter-induced stomach ulcer. But not today.
I sneak a sideways glance at her face, on the hunt for signs of crying, but her cheeks are dry and her eyes aren’t red-rimmed. She just looks tired.
I sigh. Here goes. “I’m just . . . overwhelmed. So overwhelmed it’s hard to process everything.”
Preparing for her usual up-by-the-bootstraps, bravado-boosting pep talk, I square my shoulders. But it never comes.
After a long pause, she says in a small voice, “Me too.”
And then the unthinkable happens. She lays down her stick and her Thermos, and wraps her arms around me, kissing the side of my head. Then she tucks a lock of my hair behind my ears, and strokes my cheek with her thumb. She smells how she always smells: of whiskey and cocoa.
“It hasn’t been easy, has it?” she says thickly.
I don’t know whether she means the last few weeks or the last thirteen years, but either way the answer is the same.
“No,” I admit. “I guess it hasn’t.”
Letting go of the embrace, but leaving one arm draped over my shoulders, she picks up the Thermos again, offering me a sip. I gratefully accept.
“I feel like I’ve failed you, Izzy,” she says, voice full of a regret I hate to hear.
“Absolutely not,” I insist. “You’ve given up everything for me. I’ll never be able to repay you. I’m so grateful to have you.”
A tight smile. “But I’ve never given you an environment in which you could talk about your emotions. You’ve felt like you always had to put on a brave face, always had to be cracking jokes, because that’s the way I dealt with my pain. And you had no choice but to do the same.”
I let these words sink in for a while. I guess it’s true. I’ve never thought Betty made me the way I am, but I suppose I learned a lot from watching her. Every single part of my personality contains elements of her, including her flaws.
Finally I say, “Well, every kid is screwed up somehow by whoever raises them. And if I had to be screwed up by anyone, I’m glad it was you.”
We both laugh at this, but it’s different to our usual defiant laughter. Softer. More real.
“We’re going to do better, okay?” she says, gazing not at me but at my mom’s grave. “We’re going to talk to each other about how we’re feeling. And we’re going to cry when we need to. And we’re going to admit that sometimes life just isn’t fucking funny.”
I take a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Okay. Agreed.”
We both watch as a cleaner leaves the back door of the church with a mop and bucket, emptying the dirty water over a wall and into the field behind.
“I miss them,” Betty says quietly. “Your parents. They were wonderful people.” Her voice is even thicker now, and this time not with mucus. A tear slides down her cheek. And then another. And then her shoulders are shaking and it’s me with my arms around her. “I could use their advice sometimes, you know? Their reassurance that I’m doing right by them. With you. With everything.”
A massive lump forms in my throat and before I can help it I’m sobbing too. But it actually feels good. We hug each other tight.
She sniffs. “You’re a wonderful person, Izzy. And I’m just . . . proud. To call you my granddaughter. And I know your parents would be proud of you too.”
More tears spill down my cheeks against my will. “But I messed up, Grandma.”
She shakes her head fiercely. “No. You didn’t. The fact that everyone is so damn interested in the sex life of an innocent teenage girl is more a reflection on them than you.”
I snivel pathetically into her purple tunic. A pigeon watches with interest. “I know, but . . . I haven’t told you the worst part. About Ajita.”
“I already know, sweetheart,” she says softly, which is not usually something she’s capable of due to the eternal coughing.
I’m genuinely shocked. “You do?”
“Yes. Mrs Dutta rang me.”
A coil of anxiety tightens in my belly. “Oh God. What did she say?”
“She was mad. Of course, she had to explain everything from beginning to end because as you know I do not understand the interweb, and hadn’t seen the article in question.” A pause. “Is it true? About Ajita?”
“I don’t know,” I whisper. “That’s the problem.”
Betty strokes my hair and takes a sip of coffee from the flask. “Mmmm. Mrs Dutta seemed to think it was impossible. Literally beyond the realms of possibility. I tried reasoning with her – saying she should be open to the idea that it might be true, and try to have an honest conversation with her daughter – but . . . well. I didn’t get the impression that would happen somehow.”
I rub my eyes, which have finally stopped leaking involuntarily. “I wish I could be there for her. Ajita. In case it is true.”
Betty frowns. “You can be.”
“How? Mrs Dutta won’t let me see her.”
A disappointed tsk noise. “You and Ajita have been best pals for so long. Are you really going to let her homophobic mother dictate your friendship?”
I pause. “I feel like you want me to say no here, but have you met the woman? She’s terrifying.”
She glares at me sternly, which she has literally never done before in my whole life. “Izzy.”
“I know.”
And I do.
Monday 11 October
7.32am
As part of the plan I made with Betty to intercept my Lieblingsfreundin [“best friend” auf Deutsch, because even in my worst times I am an educator of the masses] on the way to school, I get to Ajita’s house stupidly early. Seriously, early is stupid. Never trust morning people. They have deeply rooted psychological issues and, as a person with deeply rooted psychological issues, I consider myself something of an expert on the matter.
Parking my bike across the street [and slightly around a corner so Mrs Dutta cannot gun me down with an assault rifle], I pull out my flask of coffee, take a long, hard gulp like an alcoholic’s first sip of the day, and I wait.
7.33 a.m.
After waiting for roughly forty-five seconds, I find it completely unreasonable that Ajita has not yet surfaced, and consider aborting the mission in lieu of a good old “hide in the bush and cry until you spew” session, but I tough it out.
[I know. My bravery is astounding.]
While I wait, I think about the screenplay competition. Yeah, it sucks that I got kicked out. It does. Mainly I feel bad for Mrs Crannon, and a little for myself over the lost opportunity. But something Carson once said soothes me like cooling gel on a migraine.
“You can love a thing without necessarily dedicating your life to it, you know?”
I love writing. I love performing. I love making people laugh.
The school system, and society in general, would have me believe I therefore have to make a career out of it – have to use my interests and talents to plow money back into the economy. That I have to be productive, above all else. A gerbil on a wheel, powering the machine with my success.
And yeah, it’d be cool to sell a screenplay to Hollywood; to hear actors speak my words on the big screen someday. But if that never happens, I think I’ll be okay. My passions bring me enough joy to sustain me, even if they stay at hobby status forever.