“Well, Grandma absolutely refuses to set foot in our house as long as Mom has all the Christmas stuff up. And Pop, which is what we’ve always called my grandfather, goes along with her. You’ll see, she’s the one in charge.”
They drove some more. Lizzie looked out the window at mostly different shades of brown, in a mostly unchanging landscape. She couldn’t understand why anyone would want to live here. “How come you decided to go to OSU for college? Didn’t you want to go further away from home?”
He turned the question back at her. “How come you decided to stay in Ann Arbor and go to college there? Didn’t you want to get further away from home?”
“That was different.” Even to herself Lizzie sounded defensive.
George asked the obvious follow-up question. “Different how?”
If diversion were an Olympic sport, Lizzie would most definitely medal.
“But obviously Todd left Oklahoma, so people do leave.”
George, then and nearly always, was willing to indulge Lizzie, and didn’t pursue his own question. “Yeah, Todd went about as far away as he could, but I knew that I’d probably go out of state for graduate school, so it seemed silly to leave before I really had to. Besides, from the time I was a little boy, we had season tickets for all the Cowboys’ basketball and football games. I loved coming to Stillwater to watch the games with my dad and Pop. It wasn’t ever a big deal to Todd, but I hated to think about the two of them going to the games alone, without me. It would have broken their hearts if I left too, just a few years after Todd did. I still feel guilty that I’m in Ann Arbor and not here on football Saturdays.”
“What did your mom want you to do?”
“Oh, I think she really wanted me to go east to school. It’s an understatement to say that she’s never loved Tulsa. A few years ago she told me that she still spends her days kicking and screaming against the circumstance of living here. When Dad proposed to her she made him promise that they’d never move back to Oklahoma.”
“What’d he say to that?” Lizzie asked, fascinated.
“That it was only sons whose fathers owned oil companies who come home to Oklahoma to run the family business, that he wasn’t interested in living in Stillwater and working in the jewelry store. He basically promised that it wouldn’t ever happen. And then he added something about orthodontists pretty much having the whole country to choose from.”
“What’d she say then?”
“That, yes, she’d marry him.”
Lizzie thought for a few minutes. “So what happened when your dad decided to come back?”
“He didn’t tell her until he’d almost finished his residency, so they’d been married a few years by then. I think they argued a lot and for a long time. Mom never talks about that part. But Dad tried to convince her that, because they weren’t moving to Stillwater, he wasn’t exactly breaking his promise to her. She hates that kind of quibbling, so that made it even worse.
“When Mom’s telling the story, she says that she just decided to be a grown-up and a good sport about it and come here because she loved him and because she saw how important it was to Dad. But Dad says that she wept and raged and told him she was pregnant and didn’t want to be a single mother and that since he made the decision about where they’d live and bring up their kids, she could decide everything else from then on until they died.”
Lizzie was becoming by the moment ever more infatuated with Elaine.
“Gosh, has she? Made all the other decisions? Or was it just an idle threat?”
“They agree about most things. I don’t think Dad has ever been thrilled about all this Christmas stuff, but he goes along with it, even if he knows it upsets his parents.”
George changed the subject. “Did either of your grandparents live near you when you were a kid?”
“Oh, George.” Lizzie sighed. “You met Mendel, and Lydia’s even worse, if that’s possible to imagine. You know they’re automatons, constructed out of coat hangers, powdered milk cartons, and a heart cut from a piece of graph paper. Nobody could possibly have given birth to them. I don’t have grandparents.”
George sighed. What could he say?
Gertie and Sam were sitting on the front porch, waiting for them. George enveloped his grandmother in his arms, loudly kissed her cheek, and told her happy birthday, then shook his grandfather’s hand and pulled him in for a hug too. Only then did he put an arm around Lizzie and introduce her to his grandparents.
“This is Lizzie,” he said proudly.
“It’s so nice to meet you both.”
The elder Goldrosens gave Lizzie identical tight smiles. They’d met several of George’s girlfriends in the past and didn’t have high hopes for this one either.
“Can we go inside?” Sam asked plaintively. “I’m freezing. And starving.”
Lizzie handed Gertie the bouquet of flowers they’d bought that morning on their way out of Tulsa. “Happy birthday,” she said.
“Whose idea was it to buy me flowers?” Gertie asked sharply. “Georgie? Why would you waste your money?”
“But they smell beautiful,” Lizzie protested. Gertie gave her a look of such scorn that it brought back vivid memories of Terrell the Terrible and that awful poetry class where she’d met Jack. Jack. What was he doing this very moment? Did he ever think about her? Why had he really left her? Where was he? Not in Stillwater, Oklahoma, for sure. But why couldn’t he be here? Lizzie decided that she needed to find a phone book to check if against all the odds he was now in the exact same (small) city that she herself was.
That progression of questions she’d directed at herself sidetracked Lizzie enough that she almost missed Gertie saying dismissively, “None of the flowers you buy from florists ever smell as good as the ones you pick yourself. These probably began the day in some New York hothouse. Ha! You know, Georgie, come spring, my wisteria perfumes the whole house.”
“It does indeed, Grandma,” George said, winking at Lizzie.
“Of course, the downside of that smell is that the wisteria is threatening to take over the whole backyard, not to mention the house, but Gertie can’t bear to cut it down,” Sam said. “If she ever decides that she wants to get rid of it, George, you and Allan will have to come dig it out. Those roots are more aggressive than telemarketers. We might have to bring Todd back from Australia to help us.”
“Well, I suppose it was sweet of you to bring me these, Lizzie, although I’d have thought that Georgie might have mentioned my feelings to you, but no matter. The damage is done.”
George was laughing as they walked into the living room. “Grandma, I had no idea you felt so strongly about florists and flowers. We’ll do better next time. Here, sit down and open the rest of your presents. Here’s a little something from Mom.”
“Is it my mandel bread?” she asked eagerly as she opened the cookie tin. It was. She bit off a corner of one. “Not bad. I do have to give Elaine some credit: for a terrible cook she makes the best mandel bread I’ve ever tasted. Even better than mine. Perfect for dunking.”