Merry Christmas/Call the Police

My father’s parents lived in Shaker Heights. On Van Aken Boulevard, a wide street
with the requisite grassy median to accommodate the Rapid Transit line down the center.
The cars were powered through a metal rod that scooted along electrical wires strung on
poles along the tracks. Row after row of clean three-story brick apartment buildings with
manicured lawns seemed to pass by as I sat in the backseat of the car. Set back from the
street, they were imposing but boring, almost all the same except that every ten buildings
or so, the shutters at the windows would change from white…to green… to black…then
repeat. Upper middle class Cleveland.
Alvin and the Chipmunks sang on the car radio in their helium-soaked voices:

Christmas, Christmas time is near,

Time for toys and time for cheer.
We've been good, but we can't last,
Hurry Christmas, Hurry fast.
Want a plane that loops the loop,
Me, I want a Hula-Hoop.
We can hardly stand the wait
Please Christmas don't be late.

I loved it; I probably wanted to be Alvin; he’d jump at any chance for fun or to satisfy
his curiosity, the little devil. He could be naughty as he wanted, touch anything he
wanted, and just had to put up with a scolding from Dave now and then. No biggie; Dave
always let him sing again in the end.
I’d asked Santa for an Alvin for Christmas, the little fuzzy guy with a baseball cap and a
gold A on his shirt; you could wind him up and he’d play the song with his little music
box hidden inside. Wow.
Gram and Backee lived at ‘The Drake Apartments’, 19606, (don’t ask; I do it with
phone numbers, too.) and we were heading there for Christmas. My great-grandma Nan
would be there. I loved her. She’d send me little things all year that she‘d cut out of
magazines or from the backs of cereal boxes, and crocheted tiny dresses for my Ginny
dolls. Last year she’d given me my own can of ripe olives for Christmas, too; she knew
how much I loved them. She had a halo of white, fluffy hair and wore wide-skirted
dresses in dark colors, and chunky medium heels on her feet.
Backee was dubbed so by my sister (it was pronounced ‘Bah-key’), apparently her very
early attempt at Grandpa. The name stuck.
Backee had gone to Hahvard. Impressed? Yeah, me either. I didn’t know it or care
enough to remember it until my sister dropped it into a conversation with some of her
friends when we were visiting her once in Atlanta. You know, the casual way you can
slip something into a conversation? And most assuredly no one’s really buying that it
was a throw-away line, right? It was hard not to notice that she grew more like our
grandparents all the time.
He was a tall man with silver-grey hair, parted on the side and combed into order with
some kind of stuff to keep it in place. He looked just like the picture of his father in their
hallway above the telephone. A stuffy-looking guy with a bad black suit and white shirt
with a Herbert Hoover collar and watch fob; kind of looked like he’d been carved out of
wax. The photo beneath him was of my father wearing basketball uniform, outstretched
arms holding a b-ball in the ridiculous pose of the day. I remember wondering what he’d
been thinking, and what he’d been like in college.
Backee had worked in management at Republic Steel, and was a no-nonsense man who
could wilt you with a look; he oozed superiority and self-congratulation as though he
were a little island nation of his own. He could smile, but it was a watery, distracted sort
of smile that didn’t last long. Maybe the Important Thoughts in his head crowded out
any potential dalliance with amusement.
He was talented and artistic in the areas that were approved by the other people of his
class then: he grew loads of gorgeous flowers in the rooftop garden space he rented; he
did needle-point (it was popular, if not de rigueur); he was a diligent photographer, but
none of it made him an amiable or sympathetic human being. The only bright times he
and I ever spent together were in his garden. As he worked, he would teach me the
names of flowers and I’d ask him questions, though I had to squeeze answers out of him
like he was a slightly dried up toothpaste tube. He would sometimes pluck a snapdragon
bloom for me to play with; a gentle squeeze to the part where its jaw would be, it sort of
talked. I liked that. And it sometimes made Backee smile.
Gram was short and chubby, with watery grey eyes that held some unknowable far-
away pain; the muscles between her eyebrows were set into an aggrieved expression of
‘poor me, woe is me,’ and she’d make little staccato sigh sounds signaling that things she
did were a bit of a bother, like when she’d bend over to pick up little specks of Backee’s
Bond Street pipe tobacco off the carpet. By the time I was twelve or so, I found the habit
so annoying in its demonstrative passive-aggression, I’d think that I hoped that if I ever
started doing it, that somebody’d shoot me. Grunt-death killers, maybe; a sort of
community service work.
She had those slightly bull-doggish deep crevices on either side of her nose that headed
toward her mouth, and her lips were rouged with Powder Pink lipstick; her nails always
matched.
My father was their only child. He was smart and good-looking and huge as a bear, six
feet and four inches tall. He’d graduated from college, gone to the Coast Guard
Academy, and had done a stint in the service. His outer life was successful, but he
carried lots of wounds from his parents’ inabilities to love him. We grew up hearing my
mother’s stories about what his life with them had been like. They had gone to the same
high school, so she lived at the edge of some of it, and took the ‘outrages’ personally.
The one that seemed to rankle my mother most was that during the Depression, Gram
and Backee owned seven cars. And yet my dad had one pair of jeans with a hole in the
knee to wear to school. She would have been embarrassed for him, but I’d bet that
wasn’t the worst of it to him. It was almost impossible for a father’s daughter to believe
any parents would treat a child with such cruel disregard; it’s not supposed to work that
way. I knew from experience that they were masters of stinging criticism, and he must
have received plenty of it. As a father he found closeness hard, and he was tough. But in
many ways he did better than anyone might have predicted. And dammit, he taught me
how to love baseball and play softball, though I could have done without the ‘pitcher’s
got a rubber arm!’ calls when he came to the games. (Right; I was the pitcher.)
 Gram and Backee didn’t really like me, and I can remember sometimes after visits with
them my mother sitting on my bed trying to explain it; it must have hurt, but the why of it
seemed almost more important than the fact of it. Her theory was simply that Linda was
first-born, and she had sucked up all the grandparental instincts and favor. I know they
felt pain over it, but my guess would be they never spoke to Gram and Backee about it.
Some of the issues were around presents; Linda might get a raft of new clothes and toys,
and I might get a pair of brown shoes. (and yes, it’s embarrassing to mention to you.)
And the gift-disses were accompanied by comparisons to my sister in which I was found
wanting. They couldn’t have used the word stupid, but enough other words that
amounted to the same thing. (I really wasn’t stupid, in case you were wondering.)
I’d always imagined that the imbalance must have caused her pain, too, but that may
have been my mother’s voice speaking. Poor Linda. (Yes, more of my issues are
showing; get over it.) Surely I couldn’t have been that altruistic back then, could I?
How the hell is that shrinks miss the enormous influence grandparents have on us? Does
Uncle Sigmund still reach out to them from his goddam grave?
Backee called her Princess, so presumably by default, I was occasionally Kitten (cringe)
right out of Father Knows Best. (even Raccoonie might have been better, old man.)
When I look at early photos of myself, I see a little girl with medium-brown braids, and
my dad’s deep-set eyes; a little raccoon of a girl in sunsuits or dresses of polished cotton.
I like the little girl, the impishness of her eyes tempered with a dose of caution, though
that part gives me a little pang in my heart.
Later on I would become pretty much a tomboy, and always had skinned knees and
bruises and dirt-stained feet from going barefoot so often. And yes, you bet your booties,
my pop had wanted at least one boy. (Yes, dears; more issues.)
When the summer families came to our island, it was sublime to have more friends than
just the snotty girl next door. If I wanted to play with the boys, I had to be ready for
rowdy games and adventures. We were allowed to roam the whole island on bikes, and
we did. We’d make the rounds most days, and had favorite spots: this tree, that stone
wall to walk atop, this long hill to ride up repeatedly, so that we coast down fast, our feet
off the pedals, allowing them to spin as fast as they would. (You sprouts may not know
that bikes didn’t always free-wheel.)
We’d take graham cracker lunches into the woods and hunt for fossils, and make forts
under enormous fallen trees, their roots dank with earthy smells. Circle marble games
could last hours, and we carried our purple velveteen Seagram’s bags full of marbles so
proudly, and we swapped baseball cards with serious determination.
Gram and Backee weren’t amused by my tomboy ways, but at least by then there was
something concrete they could grouse about. Linda, on the other hand, was a boring
bookworm with zero imagination for play; a budding young lady. She became another
major critic of mine, a would-be second mother, and stayed one permanently. The extent
of her bossiness even irked my mother. She tormented me physically when no one was
looking. I guess her meanness outpaced my athleticism somehow, plus she was two
years bigger. Some days I really hated her.
So there was that tension with the Grands, but the larger problem lay beyond me: they
really didn’t like my mother. It was the tired, old class story: they thought my dad had
married beneath him, and she needed to be punished for it.
 Her dad, my Grandpa Steck, was a funny bird. He’d worked forever on the Chicago
Board of Trade, making a decent living until one day he screwed up, and instead of
placing a Sell order for a client, he placed a Buy order. I have no idea about the
mechanisms or extent of his liability, but in any event, he lost all his savings and
probably more over it. And what was worse, his job and confidence in himself.
His first wife had been killed in an auto accident when my mother was twelve; she
became the mother to her two siblings, and ran the house. Small wonder that she became
a Camp Director; the crack of her finger snaps would get your attention jig-quick.
He eventually married again, not long after my mother head to college at Oberlin. Mary
was a terror, and the kids still at home abhorred her. My aunt got pregnant a sixteen just
to get out of the house; Uncle Bobby lied about his age and enlisted in the army.
Steck (so he was called) finally divorced her (good riddance), then for God’s sake
married her again a year and a half later when she appeared at his door, pregnant with
another man’s baby.
I visited them in Florida once as a teenager. Mary was a hoarder. Yep. The bundled
newspapers and sacks and bags of God knew what piled in one large room at one end of
the house. During the four or five hours I was there, she disappeared into the gloom
several times to retrieve some scary piece of dreck she was sure I’d just love to have.
One piece was a flowered cotton wrap-around house-dress she’d sewn; oh thank you,
Mary; it’s lovely; of course I’d love that collection of old spools of thread; I sew a lot
myself, you know; really can’t use those ancient boxes of cake mixes, though… Poor
Grandpa Steck; Twice! He’d married her twice!

……………………………………………………………………………………………..
But now it’s time to head back to Shaker Heights.
It was finally Christmas Day, and I’d made a snowman outside with the fresh snow that
fell in the night. Santa had come in the night, too. By the obvious glances between my
know-it-all sister and my parents whenever ‘Santa’ was mentioned, I had cottoned on to
the fact that ‘Virginia’ must have received a load of happy crap from old Francis
Pharcellus Church who’d assured her that ‘Yes, dear… there is a Santa…tra la la…’, but
it was hard to quit pretending to believe; some illusions can be as important to parents as
kids, yes? (only my therapist gets to hear about all that.)
But Santa had brought me Alvin. And a Deluxe Pillsbury Baking Set with its own light-
bulb stove. (hint, hint.)
The blessed morning had been laced with pissy snarks, mainly around gifts received.
Thank you for the pretty beads, Virginia. Beads? Beads? Those are the finest pearls,
yata, yata. Poor Grandma Nan. How the hell had her daughter turned out to be such a
nasty old harpie, anyway?
Final dinner prep was underway in the kitchen, and tension oozed out into the living
room; I peeked in, but didn’t quite grasp all the comments and scrapping. Gram and my
mom were drinking, the men, too, in the den or somewhere. Finally dinner was served.
Maybe someone said a blessing, or maybe someone poured some wine; I forget. Nor do
I remember what or who provoked the cascade of events that followed. There must have
been cross words, but then, my grandmother hit my mother in the face. My grandfather
stood up; my father stood up, and everyone was yelling. Backee hit hit my dad. And it
must have been when my one of them stood up, the movement lifted the edge of the
dining room table up and tipped it over. Food and drink and china and silver and
glassware crashed to the floor. Our German shepherd, Q squealed; she was trapped
beneath, but wriggled out. Poor Nan was against the wall, looking frail and frightened
and unbelieving amidst the pandemonium. I panicked. I didn’t know what to do, but we
needed halp.
So I ran to the telephone in the hall, and picked up the receiver to call the police.
Television violence was my only point of reference: surely this fight met the standards of
police help, didn’t it? But I realized I didn’t know how to call the police; I called for my
sister’s help, but she didn’t come; probably thought I was an idiot… My mother came,
though. She put the phone receiver back in the cradel and held me, and said it would be
okay. Okay. Soon it would be okay.
I remember nothing more about the aftermath, or the gathering of our belongings and
getting ready to leave. Someone had rescued Nan while I at the phone; she looked so tiny
and fragile and utterly confused. When we were ready to go out the door, my father told
us to go out and wait by the car; I wouldn’t go. I was terrified that the two of them
might hurt my father, and I wanted to help him, and begged him to come with us now, or
let me stay. No, he wanted to stay to talk to his father. I let myself be sent to the street,
carrying my little suitcase and new toys; I dumped my Pillsbury Bake Set all over the
sidewalk, crying and shivering. When at last my father emerged from the house, I melted
with relief. Backee was still on the sidewalk outside the apartment hose door: they shook
hands. Shook hands? His face was waxen and he had tears on his face when he got to
the car, and when he saw us, he visibly shook his body, and straightened up, attempting
to move on, take charge…something. I don’t remember the ride home, or much
discussion about the hideous events, though there must have been some. Some of it
might have been incomprehensible to a young child; therefore, maybe not memorable.
It was good to go home.

………………………………………………………………………………………….

Not long afterward, we moved away from the island, and left no forwarding address for
the Grands. Perhaps ‘making up’ was a useless proposition. It must have been a year
later, on a Sunday, that my sister and I were sitting in the den watching television. On
one wall was an enormous lithograph of the Grand Tetons, tacky but cool. The glass wall
to the south looked out onto an overly-sunny concrete patio and a neighbor’s fence
behind an expanse of dry grass; ye gods, it was ugly, and we never went out there.
I must have sensed movement, and looked out the window. Like a chimera, my
grandfather shimmered out of the air and took shape. He looked right at me, and once I
began to believe he was real, I let him in. It turned out that he had hired a private
investigator to find us. I went and got my parents. Uh-oh.
Somehow relations were re-established; perhaps there some rules were agreed upon, I
don’t know. But there was one noticeable change: my sister and I got equal gifts for a
time. Gram’s new by-word was ‘no partiality shown’ in some falsely chipper voice.
Gag.
Come to think of it, though, they took my sister to Europe later on, and she came home
laden with silk formals and shoes and handbags and whatnot. I was supposed to get some
pansy seeds they’d bought me in Wherever (I was even then a gardening nerd) that never
arrived. Hey, you asshats: Where are those damned pansy seeds?

Some do-gooder angel must have thought I needed to let go of them. Thanks, Angel.
Gram did manage to get her final revenge on me, though. After my grandfather died,
she changed his will and left three-fourths of their money and stuff to Linda, and a
quarter to me. She said it was because I hadn’t sent him a birthday card that year. Damn;
if I’d only known! That was one expensive piece of forgetfulness; bugger!
I did finally forgive them, but it only happened in my dreams, and only after they’d
died. One Grand at a time. I swear I couldn’t have done it in my waking life.

Past childhood, most of us are insulted by stories with Lessons. If you’re one of them,
bail out now. Because I want to tell you something I put together recently. Ready?
Our daughter married a man whose mother is doing the same damned thing to their
elder son. Boy, have we had long talks about it, and how she might handle it, given that
her husband won’t.
A lot of pieces fell together for me last year. Our daughter married a man whose mother
is doing the same damned thing to their elder son. Boy, have we had long talks about it,
and how she might handle it, given that her husband won’t.
My sister and I finally split up over Something Really Crappy she had done to me and
wouldn’t apologize for. I told her she could call me if she ever got ready to own her
behavior; she hasn’t yet. I almost wish I felt more pain over it, but I had eaten her Crap
Sandwiches for years in order to have a relationship, including her ripping off some of
my portion of my grandparents things and money. But when Mother-in-Law started
doing the same thing to my grandbaby, a hundred light bulbs flashed inside me: As
crappy as their partiality had been for me, it was far worse for my sister. I finally, finally
got that over time she had come to believe that she deserved such special treatment.
Her blind arrogance allows her to look down on anyone she considers lesser, which is of
course, most of us. She never needs to apologize, because she’s never wrong. She
laughs at me when I talk about having an inner life; it does not compute to her. She
claims to be ‘low-maintenance;’ which she must consider a good thing.
My daughter is realizing now how dangerous that can be, and has recently insisted that
Second Son gets grandma time, too, or else. You go, girl!