How to Love an American Man (22 page)

In my driveway he walks to the back of his SUV to pull out my bag. Together we walk to the porch, and when I open the front door and step into the house, he sets my bag just inside the door. For a moment he remains standing there on the stoop with his hands resting politely in his pockets. “Good night, Kris.”

“Good night.” I click the front door closed and watch him make his way across the driveway to his car. I'll help him in his office for the last time tomorrow . . . and then I don't know when I might ever see him again.

I make sure he's around the corner before I turn off the outside lights—realizing we've turned many corners recently, haven't we? For the second time today I feel the way I did the night we first met. He opened my car door that night, same as he did multiple times today. It was a gesture that demonstrated his care for me, his kindness toward me, the compromise of his own position to see to it first that I was comfortable in mine. The first time we ever encountered each other he'd torn himself away from studying the peculiar tree in my yard in order to join me in a shared space, to share an evening with me. I suppose that was when my hopes started to build. I suspected perhaps this man might make a rule of setting aside his own curiosities and fascinations to just . . .
be
with me. I've seen that he's capable of it; it's just that his work trumps everything else in his life.

This is the one dilemma that Grandma's insights can't seem to solve. I ignore the dogs' barking as I slump up the stairs. Mom's grandfather clock chimes midnight. Chris and I have an early morning tomorrow. I'll spend the day running around to pick up farewell gifts that he wants to give to his staff, and I know that when I hand over his credit card at the chocolatier, at the greeting card store, at the café for the staff lunch, the women behind the counter will eye me, wondering who I am to Dr. Christopher. I remember the time I told Grandma he needed a wife.
I'm cut out to play the role of the person who takes care of you,
I want to tell him.
We've been opening doors in each other's lives since we met . . . so why won't we let each other in?

Chapter 10
Love by Existing

T
HERE WAS AN AFTERNOON
in early March when Grandma called me in a breathless panic. She'd had a dizzy spell and blacked out in the hallway; somehow, she said, she'd managed not to fall. “I just called the doctor's office and they think I may have had a ministroke,” she told me. “Can you come and take me there?”

There was no car at our house, so I dialed my brother and asked him to rush home from work and drive me into town. I stayed quiet in the car so he could zip around the slick roads with high concentration—winter had pounded us for what would be one final time this year, casting the sky in the same bleak tone as the slush that lined the highway. My temple rested against the cold passenger-side window with the same hurried dread I felt flying home when Grandpa was dying.

When the receptionist called Grandma and me from the waiting room, the nurses hardly acted concerned. One stuck a tongue thermometer with a spiral cord under Grandma's tongue and gazed up at the ceiling while another slapped a blood pressure sleeve around Grandma's arm. “That's cold!” she said, as alarmed as a child poking his little foot into a scalding bathtub. I stared astounded at the nurses in their autopilot rush, shocked that they weren't a little more careful of my grandmother's comfort. I didn't care if this was her third visit to their office in a month: she was scared, and I could see the staff's impatience flustering her even more. My hand crept inside my purse—I wanted to text Chris:
A little concerned by what I'm witnessing at my g-ma's doc visit
, I'd write.
We need you
. I didn't dial the message because I never disturb him while he's working, but I could imagine the nurses snapping into their best behavior if he whisked in the door. In reality I'd have to act as Grandma's only advocate: part of this staff's job was to be sensitive to her.

The one nurse removed the stethoscope from her ears and the Velcro sleeve from around Grandma's elbow. She said the problem appeared to be that Grandma's blood pressure was high—it wasn't major, she told us, but she wasn't sure why it was happening. She said the doctor had decided before we arrived that he wanted to do a full-on exam.

The nurse handed me a blue cloth gown with ties in the back; just like the one Grandpa wore in Florida when he was admitted for his heart blockage. “It gets a little drafty in the back, Mrs. Gasbarre,” the nurse told Grandma. “Maybe your granddaughter can help tie you in.”

“What do you need her to remove?” I asked as she turned to go out the door.

“Everything. She's getting the whole shebang today,” the nurse said. “I noticed on her chart that it's been five years since her last pap, so we're going to run that too.”

“Oh heavens,” Grandma whispered.

The heavy wood door slammed hard on the nurse's exit, making both Grandma and me jump.

“It's chilly in here, isn't it?” she said.

The fluorescent lights highlighted the lines around her eyes unforgivingly, and the doctor's kids stared down at us stoically from a black-and-white photo on the wall. Good God, are they Amish or just unhappy? “Yes, it's pretty cold.” From the mood to the antiseptic soap on the sink, the entire room felt completely sterile and just about the last place on earth a woman would want to get naked.

Grandma sighed loudly and unbuttoned her petite pink cardigan. Carefully, I unfolded the chilly blue gown that I was about to help her into. “I guess as Grandpa would say, whaddya gonna do?” she said. “Anything for my health.”

I held out my hand and pretended to be casual as my eyes wandered any angle of the room except at my disrobing grandmother. I heard the rustle of fabric as one by one, very slowly, she removed each article of clothing and placed it over my wrist. After I counted her sweater, her blouse, her pants, and two knee-high stockings, I extended the hospital gown to her. “Here, Grandma, I won't look, but let's get this on fast so you stay warm, okay?”

“Wait,” she ordered me, and I felt a piece of satin fall carelessly into my hand. I turned, shocked, to find a flimsy silk camisole trimmed in lace. Painting on composure, I folded it carefully, trying not to react. What else does this little stinker have up her sleeve?

When I heard her stand, I looked the other way and spread open the blue gown. Her arms tugged into the sleeves, and I pulled the strings together tight so that no one could see her body. She smoothed over the bottom of the gown the way one smooths their church dress over their behind to sit in the pew at church. When she was seated, she slowly angled her back to me. “Dear,” she said, “could you please unfasten my brassiere?”

Brassiere.
Such a womanly word that no one uses anymore. (Later I looked up its etymology and found that it comes from an old French word referring to a child's jacket, and no wonder—a brassiere, or a bra as we know it now, was created to protect innocent and delicate subjects.)

The brassiere. I rubbed my hands together to warm them up before locating the hook and eye between the gown's breezy gap. Grandma slid the straps down her arms and swiftly removed her bra through the sleeve of the hospital gown, reminding me of the fourth-grade sleepover where I learned to take off my training bra while still wearing a shirt.
Ta-daaaa!
, I'd yelled, swinging it around my head. By accident, on Grandma I see that it's the same type of thing that I might wear.
My God, my grandma wears underwire and lace!
She nimbly folded the tiny cups into one another so they were spooning like newlyweds. She tucked the bra under the folded pile that I'd draped over her chair, then slipped her white loafers back on. I noted that in fact I have inherited some aspect of femininity from my grandmother: when I'm at the doctor's I always carefully fold my clothes and protect my unmentionables by stashing them respectably, hoping that if the doc sees I take good care of my belongings, then he'll take good care of me.

When I knew it was safe to look, I held her hand so she could climb up on the examination table. Her back rested on its incline, and her tiny legs dangled over the side. I thought of lightening the mood with some cheeky
I hate having my girl parts examined, don't you, Grandma?
comment, but I figured she was almost certainly attempting to think about something else.

When the doctor walked in, he gave me a curt nod, then asked me in a whisper, “How's her memory?” I wiggled my hand back and forth, as if to tell him,
So-so
. He and I hadn't been seeing eye-to-eye about Grandma's health. On our previous visit he lectured her about how her mood swings should be stabilizing with the antidepressants. She hated the side effects, she'd told him, and was afraid of dependency, so I innocently asked him what he thought of her seeing a psychologist to talk through her grief of losing Grandpa. “Maybe it would help with her memory too,” I'd said. “That's not getting . . . any better.”
Please, help us
, I wanted to beg him, but he'd lowered his gaze and narrowed his eyes and told me very firmly—too firmly, with contempt—“I have more physical symptoms to address before we resort to
that
.” I remembered from studying psychology in college that within the medical community, psychotherapy's not always regarded highly . . . and I sat seething in the examination room while he seemed to condescend to my grandma with his notion that she was imagining her symptoms. Again, though, these medical issues are out of my hands. Doing my best means being present and relaying the results to my dad and uncles.

The day of Grandma's alleged stroke, somehow, the doctor seemed in a bit lighter mood than last time. He yanked the stirrups out of the side of the exam table and curtained off a private curve of space around her.
Thank God!
I love Grandma, and I'm not shy, but on the other hand, knowing her discomfort in exposing her body would've made me squirm too. From the other side of the curtain I could hear the doctor telling the nurse to heat the speculum, and I heard a lamp click on. “Ooh, that's bright,” Grandma said. The doctor told her to relax. I held myself in my seat and then heard cues of Grandma's increasing cooperation.

As he quietly checked the parts of her body that she kept all her life for herself and her husband, the understanding slowly occurred to me: Grandma is a
woman
. Until these last few months I've always thought of her in relation to the people in her life: as a wife and a mom, a grandmother, a player in a bridge group, a member of her parish, a pesky customer in a restaurant, a patient at the doctor's office. I've insisted on picturing her as a part of her surroundings, a character in a scenario, a subject always reacting to some outside stimulus . . . but never as a person with thoughts and feelings inside, independent of the situation that happens to surround her. I hear the doctor ask whether it hurts when he presses here, does she feel pressure there, can she take a deep breath so he can hear her heart. Meanwhile my own heart is pulsing noticeably in the subtle discovery of this moment, and inside, I realize, Grandma and I are composed completely the same. We have hearts that beat (and break), minds that think thoughts both spoken and private, parts of our bodies meant to serve both beautiful form and life-creating function. We've both loved, made love, at moments felt sexy and experienced high passion. We've both laid alone at night crying and tortured to understand why our loves are—our love is—gone. Grandma lay there behind the curtain quiet and obedient as the doctor went through his cold procedure to determine the general condition of her very existence. Is she healthy? It depends: does a broken heart count?

In the waiting room I'd assured her that the doctor would take care of everything, but deep down I was as worried as she was. A
stroke
? Could something serious be happening? And if it came down to it, could I consider putting my life on hold to care for her?

There was something Grandma told me late in the summer that pops into my mind often, for no reason: you have to decide on the things you want in life, and address them, before you can commit to sharing a life with someone else. No matter what stage of life a woman is in—in a relationship or out of a relationship—she holds visions for herself in her heart. Grandma's visions have included walking down the aisle to join a hero on his adventure, acting as head of a wild household, and enjoying a retirement where she and Grandpa could kick back and enjoy their grandkids. My visions have been quite different from hers: I wanted to work in New York and spend some time traveling while I was young . . . and now that I can tick those goals off the list, I can start to think seriously about my future: it may involve partnering up with somebody else so we can combine our individual narratives into a love story that's better than fiction . . . or it may not, and I'll live my story on my own.

But Grandma and Grandpa did it together, and I do believe that relationships like that still happen. Love just documents itself a little differently today than it did when they met and got married. When two people committed their lives to one another in Grandma's day, the motive was often a practical one—just take her and Grandpa: she craved a family, he wanted support to be successful in his career. It seems that back then, young people weren't encouraged to be picky about their partners or to consider a young adulthood of self-discovery. Why, if someone fancied you, you simply accepted his kind invitation to spend time together. Picking apart the way he dressed or smelled or acted may have created a social ripple in the community, and in the interest of communal peace and long-term personal contentment, you just said yes because if he was asking you out, he'd probably decided that his feelings for you had the potential to be serious.

Grandma has explained to me that from there, when a boy and girl began to like each other, and after he came around to her house to meet her family a few times, the pair would begin hanging out with packs of their friends. After they'd been spotted out together consistently—“steady”—it was well understood to their peers that they were officially “going out.” The transition between courtship and a relationship was generally an easy process to detect for both the couple and the community, and the relationship grew more serious as the couple grew more intimate and attracted to one another. When—usually not if, but when—they reached the point when they were prepared to marry, their plans for the wedding and their life together were modest. Remember, many women didn't work back then, so in most cases there was only one income coming in, which didn't leave a lot of room to splash out on extravagant dates and exotic vacations together. For my grandparents' honeymoon in 1948, they traveled through the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. They stopped to picnic and snap photos of each other along the road, and recently Grandma flipped through these pictures with all of us granddaughters studying over her shoulder.

In the snapshots, she's classically feminine in a long coat with a dress under it (I couldn't determine the dress's color from the black-and-white image, but she remembered it was navy blue). I imagine what's even deeper beneath this outfit; soft silk and flowered lace, a satin slip that probably both frustrated and thrilled her new husband to keep unwrapping delicious layers before he finally discovered her milk-white skin. She stares into the camera with a look that could be either sultry or shy. Her arms float down to her sides, as though she knows just where to place her hands. Her sexiness is subtle, but knowing. I froze her in my mind, wondering if the day I gaze that way into someone's camera will be sooner, later, or ever. Finally I'm prepared for any of these realities.

In these photos, Grandpa is in sharp slacks and a white button-down shirt with the sleeves casually rolled just past his wrists, and a tie—a tie!—for the honeymoon drive. The Tennessee highway spirals above and behind him, far into the forested mountains, and his rear rests against the wooden guardrail with one leg propped up against it like a model's pose. With his right hand leaning on the rail he stands regal with the landscape . . . only Grandpa could make Tennessee look so irresistible. His pose is the epitome of what I imagine American malehood was like back then: strong, effortless, adoring,
handsome . . .
with a capacity to strike amour in the simplest of settings.