But how terrible you and your family are going to feel if, having thought of her as actively colluding with one of history’s most murderous regimes, some proof emerges that Grandma was an ordinary dentist just like she said. A dentist subject to the kind of windfall that has been known to materialize for honest, well-regarded folk, in this case a scared but determined woman who held on to that windfall with both hands, scared and determined and just a dentist, truly. But she won’t talk about any of it, that’s the thing. Cannot you could all understand, or at least have sincere reverence for. But will not?
Your grandmother’s Catholicism seems rooted in her approval of two saints whose reticence shines through the ages: St. John of Nepomuk, who was famously executed for his insistence on keeping the secrets of the confessional, and St. John Ogilvie, who went to his death after refusing to name those of his acquaintance who shared his faith. In lieu of a crucifix your grandmother wears a locket around her neck, and in that locket is a miniature reproduction of a painting featuring St. John of Nepomuk, some tall-helmeted soldiers, a few horrified bystanders, four angels, and a horse. In the painting the soldiers are pushing St. J of N off the Charles Bridge, but St. J of N isn’t all that bothered, is looking up as if already hearing future confessions and interceding for his tormentors in advance. Boys will be boys, Father, St. J of N’s expression seems to say. The lone horse seems to agree. It’s the sixteenth century, and the angels are there to carry St. John of Nepomuk down to sleep on the riverbed, where his halo of five stars awaits him. This is a scene your grandmother doesn’t often reveal, but sometimes you see her fold a hand around the closed locket and it looks like she’s toying with the idea of tearing it off the chain.
Suspect me if that’s what you want to do.
What’s the point of me saying any more than I’ve said . . . is it eloquence that makes you people believe things?
You are all morons.
These are the declarations your grandmother makes, and then you and your siblings all say: “No, no, Grandma, what are you talking about, what do you mean, where did you get this idea?” without daring to so much as glance at each other.
—
YOU WERE IN NURSERY school when your grandmother unexpectedly singled you out from your siblings and declared you her protégée. At first all that seemed to mean was that she paid for your education. That was good news for your parents, and for your siblings too, since there was more to go around. And your gratitude is real but so is your eternal obligation. Having paid for most of what’s gone into your head during your formative years there’s a sense in which Grandma now owns you. She phones you when entertainment is required and you have to put on formal wear, take your fiddle over to her house, and play peasant dances for her and her chess club friends. When you displease her she takes it out on your mother, and the assumption within the family is that if at any point it becomes impossible for Grandma to live on her own you’ll be her live-in companion. (Was your education really that great?) So when you think of her you think that you might as well do what you can while you can still do it.
—
EVA’S POPULARITY grows even as her speech becomes ever more monosyllabic. Susie, normally so focused on her work, spends a lot of time trying to get Eva to talk. Kathleen takes up shopping during her lunch break; she tries to keep her purchases concealed but occasionally you glimpse what she’s stashing away in her locker—expensive-looking replicas of Eva’s charity-shop chic. The interested singletons give Eva unprompted information about their private lives to see what she does with it but she just chuckles and doesn’t reciprocate. You want to ask her if she’s sure she isn’t a loner but you haven’t spoken to her since she rejected your advice. Then Eva’s office fortunes change. On a Monday morning Susie runs in breathless from having taken the stairs and says: “Eva, there’s someone here to see you! She’s coming up in the lift and she’s . . . crying?”
Another instance in which glass lift doors would be beneficial. Not to Eva, who already seems to know who the visitor is and looks around for somewhere to hide, but glass doors would have come in handy for everybody else in the office, since nobody knows what to do or say or think when the lift doors open to reveal a woman in tears and a boy of about five or so, not yet in tears but rapidly approaching them—there’s that lip wobble, oh no. The woman looks quite a lot like Eva might look in a decade’s time, maybe a decade and a half. As soon as this woman sees Eva she starts saying things like, Please, please, I’m not even angry, I’m just saying please leave my husband alone, we’re a family, can’t you see?