Her face turned an ugly shade of purple, as she excused herself from the dining room table and followed me upstairs. The ear-lashing she gave me was nothing compared to the beating I received after everyone had gone home for the evening. I honestly think she just liked the pity that people poured on her when she put me in the hospital. Little did they know that she was the one who needed to be locked in a padded cell.
That would be the last of my mother's parties that I would attend. A month later I was sent to my grandmother's house to live in upstate Pennsylvania. Mother had grown tired of my rebellious nature, and couldn't exert any more effort into giving me the attention I desired. So I was sent to live with my father's mother, a woman who was my mother's polar opposite. She wasn't concerned with the finer things in life; she only troubled herself with providing a warm and comfortable home, good food, and lots of laughter. Connections meant nothing to her. She didn't care for social occasions, or in her words "high-class showboating." Ernestine Westfeld, was country-raised, and she had no plans to venture into the big city. If we wanted to see her, we had drive to her little cottage in Gabbard's Bend. She refused to visit us at our townhouse, calling my parents’ new sophisticated lifestyle “frivolous and uppity.”
Mother had made the mistake of inviting Grandma Westfeld to dinner once. She quickly learned the error of her ways when Grandma told Leland Cottilard that he really thought better of himself and than anyone else, and it was a good thing, because no one else gave a flying fadoodle about his hideous clothing designs. Mother never invited her to dinner again, and that was Grandma’s deepest desire in the first place. She was perfectly happy living in the town she grew up in.
She lived there alone. Her husband had fled some years prior when my father was just a kid, unable to deal with Grandma's stubborn ways. Grandma Westfeld's house sat on an acre of farmland in the Scot Run Meadow in Gabbard's Bend. Her house was a simple thatched roof cottage, like the kind you see in UK travel pamphlets. Grandma's first husband Toby had built it for her as a wedding present. While her love for Toby died after five years, her devotion to her little cottage was evergreen, surviving three husbands, four kids, and even a small grease fire in the kitchen back in '58.
After a heated conversation over the phone in which my mother essentially begged my grandmother to let me live with her for a while, and my grandmother was told my mother exactly where she had gone wrong with me, I was packing my bags and getting ready to head to the country. Grandma eventually agreed to take me on, telling my mother that I simply needed something that she couldn't provide - love, warmth, and attention. Grandma was furious with my mother for putting me on medications and for dragging me to doctor after doctor, and making a spectacle of me at her dinner parties. In her opinion, my mother just wanted to silence me into submission. If only she knew about the hospital stays and medications. I will never forget Mother’s anger when my doctor said that there wasn’t anything seriously wrong with me, I was just depressed. Grandma Westfeld would wring mother’s neck if she knew about any of that.
I climbed into the backseat of the town car, as my father waited in the passenger seat. I sat quietly, waiting for my mother to exit the house, but she never came. "Kitty,” he said, “I think this will do you a lot of good. Grandma is really excited to see you." I nodded in agreement, though I didn't say a word. I was hurt and embarrassed. When Reginald came out of the house with his coat on, my feelings were cemented. My mother was a cold, heartless woman.
The ride to my grandmother's house was long and quiet. When we arrived, it was already dusk. She was waiting for us in her rocking chair on the porch, her powder blue bathrobe wrapped around her plump body. As our black town car pulled onto her dirt driveway, she scuttled towards us. My father exited the car through the passenger side door. He brushed off his navy blue suit jacket, and walked towards his mother giving her a polite kiss on the cheek. A conversation ensued, the contents of which were out of my earshot. As my father spoke calmly, Grandma Westfeld seemed mad. When the conversation finally came to a lull, I watched as my father reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out a money clip loaded with large bills. He tried handing it to her, but she refused it, throwing it onto the snowy ground. She held her hands up, as if to say, your money is no good here. My father held the money clip in his hand as he opened my car door.
"Come now, Kitty. It's chilly out here. Grandma has a fire going inside," Father said, taking my satchel off my shoulder. "Here, take this. I will send more whenever you need it."
I looked at my father's face, ruddy and frozen from the cold. But there was something more. He felt guilty for what he was doing. God forbid he ever stand up to Mother and say so. "Goodbye, Father. Tell Mother I love her," I said, as I made my way over to Grandma Westfeld who was happy to see me. A short, round woman with a friendly face and warm eyes, my grandmother was the type of woman who immediately could light up a room and a heart with a smile.