“Why?”
“They had their reasons—or thought they did. Their reasons didn’t matter. Your mother was an adult. Her parents treated her like a child. They wanted her to, um, end the pregnancy. That was not legal at the time.”
“They didn’t want me?”
“You weren’t you yet, Lu They weren’t thinking about the possibility of a person, with all your bright promise. All they could think about was your mother. Their daughter. And then when your mother was, well, gone, they said, ‘See, we told you this would happen.’ They said I had signed her death warrant. They said other things, rude and cruel things. I became very angry. I told them that they were to have nothing to do with us. I didn’t trust them to be . . . careful around you, to keep their feelings to themselves. AJ was almost nine at the time. He had lived with his grandparents most of his life. It was very hard on him, but he understood. The three of us had to stick together. Perhaps if they had apologized or acknowledged how hurtful and wrong their words were, things could have been different. I told AJ it was as if they had died, that we must live as if they had. I believed they would make you feel responsible for your mother’s death, which was not the case at all. I also feared that they would try to do to you, both of you, what they had done to your mother. I couldn’t have let that cycle repeat itself.”
“What did they do?”
He paused, leaned forward, palms pressed together as if praying, his chin on the thumbs, his nose on the index fingers. “They were too protective. They acted like the parents in Sleeping Beauty. Only it wasn’t spindles that needed to disappear—it was everything. They would have had her live forever in her childhood bedroom, venturing out only under the most controlled circumstances.”
“Why did they start calling after all this time?”
“I don’t know. But they won’t be calling again. I’m going to get an unlisted number and install a second phone line for just you and AJ to use, although it will be in his bedroom for now.”
I wanted to argue that this was unfair, that if the phone were in AJ’s room, then it was his phone. But then my father might ask how often my friends called and I would have to admit that no one called me, ever.
“What do you say we go out for pizza tonight? I was in such a rush to get home after I heard about the calls that I didn’t stop at Colombo’s on my way.”
There was no such thing as grandparents’ rights at this time. But I did not know until recently that my careful father, who was not inclined to leave things to chance, took out a restraining order against his in-laws. Today, I suppose, such a thing would become public. Did you hear? The state’s attorney has a restraining order against his in-laws. People had more secrets then. Or maybe they were just better about keeping them.
At any rate, the three of us, a team, united, made the short drive to Colombo’s, our favorite pizza place. To this day, I find all pizza inferior to the memory of what I ate on Friday nights from Colombo’s. As a treat, we ate at the restaurant instead of getting carryout. We even had a whole pitcher of root beer to share. I was beside myself with joy, but AJ’s mood seemed grim. I tried to understand. AJ knew our grandparents, had loved them and been loved by them. I wasn’t being asked to give anything up. But AJ was, for a second time. Now, I can see it. AJ had lost his grandparents as surely as he had lost his mother. I never had either.
Both the Closters would be dead soon. It turned out that our grandmother decided to contact us because her husband was dying of pancreatic cancer. He was gone by that summer, and she followed within a year. There was no inheritance, not for us. When I lived in Mount Washington during the first years of my marriage, I sometimes drove a few miles out of my way to go past the Closters’ house. It has been chopped up into apartments, and the upkeep is minimal. But the stained-glass windows and the turret are still there. I would have loved to know that house in its glory. And I think I would have liked to have known my grandparents, but if my father thought I needed to be kept away from them, he must have had good reasons.
In contrast to AJ’s dark mood at Colombo’s that night, our father was unusually ebullient. He spoke to strangers, laughed at their jokes no matter how lame, shook hands. I think he even bought pitchers of beer for some tables.
“That was fun,” I whispered to AJ in the cozy cover of the dark backseat. He usually fought to ride in the front, as he was about to get his learner’s permit and wanted to study our father’s driving. “I wish we did things like that more often.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Go out. Talk to other people, like it was a party.”