“You’ll find what you want,” she said. “It may not be what you think it will, it may find you when you least expect it, it might even be law school. And if you’re drifting, you might just drift into the right thing. Or if it’s the wrong thing, you’ll figure out how to turn it into the right thing. Sometimes you have to create your passion. I have great confidence in you. You’re young. You have time. You’re a fine person, Ben.”
He sighed and finished his Cream of Wheat. Then he said, “Thank you.” He smiled and got up and kissed her cheek and put his bowl in the sink. It amused her to see that he did not put it in the dishwasher or even rinse it, that he just left it there. “Thank you, Grandma,” he said again. “You’ve always helped me a lot, you know that?”
No, she didn’t, but she was extremely happy to hear it now when she felt she was about as useful as one sock.
“You have time,” she said again.
They went for a walk every day and sat on the same bench in Central Park watching the dogs parade by. They ate lunch in the coffee shop, and when Ben wasn’t seeing his old friends, they ate dinner there, too. They bumped into Karl twice, but they didn’t sit with him.
“He was Grandpa’s friend in the park.”
“Yeah?”
Ben didn’t seem interested and Joy had no desire to tell him more. There was nothing to tell, anyway.
She was none too steady on the walks back and forth to the coffee shop. Sometimes her feet just sort of slid forward instead of lifting up and moving the way feet are meant to do.
“I’m shuffling,” she said. “I’m going to shuffle right onto my face if I’m not careful.”
“You can lean on me,” said Ben.
That made Joy smile. She remembered holding his little hand to cross the street, lifting him onto the bus’s high step. He used to wear tiny navy-blue sneakers and overalls.
“Yes,” she said. “All right, I will.”
His arm was wiry and strong. He slowed his step and shortened his long stride.
Ben stayed for six nights before he heard about another job in New Orleans and decided to sleep on a friend’s couch down there until he could get his apartment back. But before he left, he asked his grandmother for a favor.
“It’s kind of private,” he said.
“Do you need money, sweetheart? Of course you do. Here’s a twenty. No, that’s not enough. Here, I’ve got eighty bucks.”
Why is my grandmother carrying a purse around her own house? Ben wondered. He knew that if he asked her she would tell him a long complicated story that would make no sense to him, so he didn’t ask her. But he put his hand out to stop her rummaging in the big shoulder bag.
“No, Grandma, no. It’s not money. And you gave me a really generous Christmas present. Really.”
She’d had to be creative at Christmas. So much had been going on. There was no way she could have gotten out to go Christmas shopping. A card with nice crisp bills for Ben had done nicely, five twenty-dollar bills. She thought of the two beautiful teacups (they’d been her mother’s, just a small chip on one, and she had three more) she’d given Molly and Freddie, plus an opal and silver ring she’d found that Molly had liked as a child, she told them they could share it, there had to be some advantage to having your daughter marry another woman. But money had been fine for Ben.
“Then what can I do for you, Bennie?”
He blushed and reached into the breast pocket of his shirt. It was a nice shirt. Had she given it to him for his birthday last year?
“Did I give you that shirt?”
“Yeah, I think so.” He handed her a crumpled wad of pink paper.
“Ben! A traffic ticket? You don’t even have a car.”
“Don’t tell Mom, okay? It’s kind of embarrassing.”
He did look embarrassed, that was certain. His cheeks were as rosy as a little English choirboy’s. It made him even more appealing. He was such a handsome boy. He was such a good boy, staying with her like this. She felt sick at the thought of him leaving. Maybe it would have been better if he had not come at all, then she wouldn’t have minded his departure.
“And the problem is, there’s a court date,” he was saying. “And I won’t be here because I’ll be back in New Orleans, and so I was wondering…”
Joy nodded and smiled. Ben needed her. This strong young man needed her, and it made her feel a bit strong and a bit young herself. A bit manipulated, too, but that was a grandson’s god-given right, to manipulate his grandmother.
“I’ll pay you back the money for the fine,” he said with the generous confidence that his offer would not be accepted.
“But how did you get a parking ticket without a car, Ben?”
“Oh,” and he said something in that soft, barely comprehensible mumble young people so often employed.
“What? I hate it when you people mumble. Even your mother does it sometimes.”
“You know, um, public urination.”