Lisa Owens - Not Working

From her throat comes a noise like a roosting pigeon. “Be careful, Claire.”

“About what?”

“I’m sure it feels very free and New Agey living together like that, but these institutions exist for a reason. You’re not getting any younger — you need to be sensible and think about it: two years down the line, no children, no marriage certificate or anything concrete to bind you together — what’s to stop him taking a young Polish bride?”

“I don’t know — love?” Grandma raises a come-off-it eyebrow. “We own a flat together: that’s pretty concrete. Anyway, I don’t think Luke would know where to start finding himself a ‘young Polish bride.’ ”

She snorts. “He doesn’t need to look: the place is crawling with them — hospitals are the worst. Attractive blond Poles everywhere he turns.” She stabs a knobbly finger at me. “Wait’ll you hear this: I read a piece in the paper saying British employers are having to learn Polish now because none of their staff understand them. Imagine!”

“Don’t you think it’s wonderful they’d go to that effort to communicate with their employees?”

She turns her face away for no other reason than to cast me a sidelong look. “And what about your job? Have you sorted that out at least?”

“Actually, oddly enough, I’m sort of back where I was. At the old place.”

Grandma’s eyes bug out as she swallows her tea. “No! They took you back? That was good of them.”

“They asked me back, on a short-term contract, and I agreed. I’m freelancing really.”

“Oh.” She sits back in her chair. “Well, I suppose it’s better than nothing.”

“It’s a good thing. The best of both worlds: I can make some money — quite good money, actually — while I figure things out.”

She shakes her head. “You know, Claire…I don’t know. I can’t keep up. One minute you couldn’t get out fast enough, the next you’re back there and thrilled. Though I shouldn’t be surprised — you were always this way, even as a very young child.”

Leave it, I think.

“What way?” I say.

“Not jittery exactly.” She screws her eyes shut and flutters her fingers. “Wait’ll I think now. Fuh, fuh, fuh, it’s an ‘f,’ I think.”

“Flighty?” I hear myself saying. “Flaky? Fickle? Feckless?”

“No, no, none of those, no. What is the word? It’s on the tip of my tongue. You know what I mean.”

“Frivolous? Flibbertigibbet…y?”

“No!” She looks incredibly annoyed. “Fuh, fuh, not fanciful, not fickle…I suppose you could say flaky, but not quite—”

“Fearless?” I say, on the off-chance I’ve misread the signals and she’s trying to pay me a compliment.

“No, that’s a different sort of thing entirely .”

“Finicky?”

“Yes! No! Nearly. It’s coming to me.” Her eyes spring open. “Kinky!”

“Kinky?”

“Kinky.”

“Mm.” I chew on the inside of my cheek. “Might you mean kooky ?”

“No.”

“Quirky might work too?” I try. “Though it’s a bit, you know, patronizing. Quirky: it irks me.” I smile, pleased at the rhyme, but it fails to register across the table.

“Kinky. The word is kinky.” Her chin snaps to her chest with satisfaction. “Such a funny, kinky thing you were — and you really haven’t changed at all,” she says almost fondly, “except you’ve lost the weight, of course.” She reaches for the cookie tin and twists the lid, lost in thought. “A lot of women lose their looks with the pounds, but if anything, yours have improved. It’s aged you, perhaps, but on balance it’s worth it.” She pops the lid and wedges a chocolate-chip cookie between her teeth. “Suppose you won’t be wanting one of these,” she says, crunching down, crumbs flying.

—

Another cup of tea in and Grandma’s really found her stride: arms akimbo and eyes gleaming. I haven’t seen her this way since well before Gum died. She looks ten years younger.

“…and he pushed in front of me as if he was royalty! I’d say he thought he was, mind you — they have a tendency to make these grandiose claims: king or prince of such-and-such a…tribe? The same thing happened to Pauline, you know.”

“Someone cut in line at the grocery store?”

“Oh, you’re being purposefully difficult. It was the drugstore, and her fellow was making a big song and dance about something or other, so the cashier had to call security — you know the way they get very aggressive—”

“No, I do not know, nor do I like where I think this is heading.”

“Well, neither do I, Claire. It’s a disgrace. The government needs to start clamping down. So much talk, yet in they flood. Your mother agrees, that I know. What’s the matter with you?”

“Where to begin,” I say thickly to the flesh of my palms.

—

As I’m preparing to leave, Grandma disappears, and returns with a heavy-looking bag for life. Attached is a sticker bearing my name, biroed in wobbly capitals.

“Here.” The contents clank as she hands it over.

I look inside and then at her. “Do you want me to…clean it?”

“You can do whatever you wish. I’ve done one for each of the grandchildren.”

“One…?”

“Bag of wedding silver. Stuart got the tea set, being the eldest, but”—she takes my free hand and jogs it up and down—“you got the candlesticks; I thought you’d like those.”

“I do, very much, but won’t you miss all this stuff?”

“I’m too old to entertain now; you young ones will get much more use out of it. I was going to give it to you when you got married, but all my grandchildren are far too modern to bother with such tedious tradition, so I thought I should do it while I’m still here, to avoid any bickering over my dead body!”

“Okay. Well. I’m not sure what to say to that.”

“ ‘Thank you, Grandma, for all this lovely silver’?” she suggests.

“Thank you, Grandma,” I say, leaving it there.

“Crystal next time!” she calls as I walk down the drive, flapping both hands above her head in farewell.

At home, I clean the silver, the first time I have done this since I was small, when my mother lighted upon child labor as a means of keeping me entertained during the school holidays. I loved the ritual of it: laying everything out on a towel, and gently buffing with greasy polish and soft cloths to transform the murky, finger-smudged pieces into gleaming treasure. Mum would let me do her wedding rings too, and back on her hand, they looked foreign and bright, and I’d resolve to monitor their reversion to dullness (a vigil that never lasted beyond that same day).

“How was Grandma’s?” asks Luke when he gets home. “Did you rob her?”

“She’s off-loading my inheritance early,” I say, “starting with the precious metals.”

“And what,” says Luke, picking up a tiny, hollowed-out oblong with clawed feet, “might this fellow be?”

“That item is, quite obviously, a very fine example of the classic…mustard bath? And this is the mustard-bath ladle.” I place a tiny silver spoon on his palm and start to rub a tankard. “It’s technically ‘wedding silver,’ but she’s given up on us ever getting married. She is onto you, my friend.”

Luke laughs. “This should be good.”

“She knows all about your plan to wait till you’re fully qualified, then leave me for a twenty-year-old Polish nurse.”

“Busted,” says Luke. “What did you say to that?”

“What is there to say? We’re happy how things are. We don’t need to get married.”