“I’m not sure if there is any,” he said, looking thoughtful.
“I’ll go and have a look.” I opened the refrigerator and found a mess that confirmed my suspicions. The shelves overflowed with a seemingly endless repetition of the ingredients Grandpa appeared to be buying every day and then forgetting and buying again—Gruyère cheese, endives, butter, olives, eggs, and potatoes, over and over and over again.
I spied an unopened carton of milk in the door, checked the expiration date, and carried it into the kitchen.
“You don’t take sugar in your tea, do you?” Grandpa asked.
“No, no.”
“Milk?”
“It’s right here.” I took two rice-ware bowls from the cabinet and set them on the tray.
“We’ll have tea in the dining room, I think,” he suggested, “if you’d like to bring in the tray.” When we got there, I waited while he moved stacks of papers to the end of the table to clear out a space for us. He looked up. “Do you like milk in your tea, Miranda?”
“It’s here, Grandpa.”
“Ah, yes. I’ll go and get the teapot.”
“It’s here, too.”
“Ah, yes. Silly of me. Sugar?”
“No, thanks.”
“Me, neither.” He looked ruefully at his little bowl of sugar packets, many of them open and half empty, all pilfered from various Geneva cafés.
We sat down.
“May I pour you some tea?”
We sat in silence and sipped. He smiled at me.
“It’s good to be here,” I offered.
“I’m glad you came. How did you get here? I’m sorry I couldn’t come pick you up—perhaps I told you I gave away my car,” he explained. “To a young couple at the UN.”
“Why?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t need it anymore. It’s too much trouble. I’m getting too old to have a car. I can take the train or the plane anywhere I need to go.”
I didn’t know what to say. This was the first time I had ever heard my grandfather admit to aging. We finished our tea in silence, and then I stood up.
“If it’s all right with you, I’m going to clean your refrigerator,” I said, waiting for him to fly into a rage at such a presumptuous proposition.
“If you would like to,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve cleaned it in quite some time.”
I hid a smile. “I don’t think so, either.” Grandpa stood and watched me work for a while, then drifted away to the living room. As I cleaned, I tried to figure out what to do. My grandfather was eighty-eight, and other than a kindly couple across the hall, he had no one to help or look after him. He had alienated nearly everyone in his life. He did not appear to have any plans for his old age, either. The fact that he was still clean and tidy and put together seemed to be enough for him. How much help was he going to need, and how soon? And how was I going to give it to him? When I had finished with the refrigerator, I went to find him. He was sitting in the living room with a stack of books, staring off into space. “I have to take the trash out,” I announced. “And then I’m going to buy some rubber gloves and some cleaning materials. Also some things to eat for dinner.”
“What for?”
“Well, I’ve been cleaning the refrigerator. It’s really quite filthy.” I choked on my impoliteness, my peremptory tone, my impropriety, but he did not seem to notice. “And now that I’ve thrown out all the rotting and expired food, we don’t have anything to eat.” He looked skeptical. “I’ll show you.” He got up, and we walked to the kitchen.
“I see.” There was a silence. “All of this was from the refrigerator?” He counted the trash bags waiting in the vestibule to be carried downstairs. “You’ve really done quite some work, here, Miranda. I feel really guilty.”
If I’d been surprised Grandpa would admit to aging, I was downright taken aback that he would voluntarily name anything he was feeling. “It’s not your fault,” I reassured him. “You just don’t remember.”
We ended up eating dinner out that night, and I watched my grandfather dither over what to order. He noted his choice on a little piece of paper, slipped the paper into his shirt pocket, noted a different dish on the place mat, and then ordered something else entirely when the waiter came. The night had turned very cold by the time we left the restaurant; I said so, and Grandpa offered me his arm. We moved along in companionable silence.
“I hope you find the bed comfortable,” Grandpa said, as if he had been meditating upon the matter for quite some time.
“Of course. I love that bed. It’s like an old friend.”
“Really?” Grandpa’s voice sounded as if I had said something truly bizarre.
“Well, I’ve been sleeping there since I was a child,” I reminded him.
“Really?”
“I slept there every weekend when I was at the International School.” I felt a small, thready sensation of alarm.
“But where did we meet?” That was Grandpa the gentleman, puzzled, but always polite, always patient with strangers.
“Do you remember who I am?”
He shook his head.
“I’m your granddaughter.”
He stopped and looked at me.
“Do you know who my mother is?” I turned my face to him. How cold it is outside, how bitterly cold, I thought. I wanted to keep going, but he held me still, my arm tucked firmly into the crook of his own. “Angèle,” I told him, “I’m Angèle’s daughter.”
His blue eyes grew wide and sad. “Of course. Tu vois? Tu vois comme je suis devenu idiot.” We started walking again. When we got home, we wished each other goodnight, and I sat down on my little bed and cried. I would have given anything to have my bitchy old grandfather back.
The next morning I awoke to a quiet apartment. I could hear my grandfather’s radio murmuring from his bedroom, so, timidly, I knocked on his door. “Come in,” he called. I opened the door and realized I had never seen my grandfather supine. He smiled at me, the old cautious smile and soulful blue eyes. “Ah, Miranda.”
I felt such tremendous relief, I thought I might turn into water. “You remember who I am?”
He looked mildly offended—wonderful! “Of course I do,” he remonstrated. “I may be getting old, but I’m not so doddering as all that.”
I spent the next few days in a flurry of phone calls to various senior citizens’ service providers. I arranged for a visit from the social worker in charge of retirees’ affairs at the UN, and my grandfather received her cordially. He accepted the pamphlets she handed him about retirement planning, assisted living, and home health aides, offered her tea repeatedly, and shook her hand twice as she was leaving. “She seemed quite pleasant,” he remarked when she was gone. “But I can’t imagine what she thinks I need all this for.” He indicated the pamphlets.
I proceeded with caution. “You’ve been having some trouble with your memory.”
“I know that. But it’s hardly a reason to treat me like an old schnook.”