Out of the Dungeon (21 page)

"I hope so," he said, dropping his bag and
hugging her back. "I work hard for it."

"Is that all you have for luggage?" she
asked, stabbing a toe at the duffel bag.

"I travel light. I'll pick up a suit for
court. No worries, Granny."

"Don't call me Granny. Don't ever call me
Granny. And I'm not worried. Anymore. Come in. Are you hungry? I
can whip up some pancakes and sausage. Take me ten minutes."

"Thought you weren't cooking anymore. I was
hoping for the Meals on Wheels experience."

"I said I don't cook for one. Come on. I'll
make some coffee."

He'd forgotten about Gigi's heavy buttermilk
pancakes. She mixed up the buttermilk and flour, added some salt
and baking powder, cooked up a mini cake, tasted it, called it a
little too fresh, and added some more salt.

She skinned the sausage. He watched her dash
a knife across each one, then peel the skins off like a plastic
sheath. "Why do you skin them?"

She cocked an eyebrow at him. "Because you
like them better that way."

"Since when?" he asked.

"Since you were five."

He was almost forty, and he'd never skinned a
sausage. Ever. So he laughed. "Are you kidding?"

She served him the pancakes and sausage, and
at the first bite he realized he hadn't tasted sausage this good
since he was… a child. Apparently spending a couple of minutes
peeling sausage was well worth the effort. He should have been
doing it all along. He ate two and a half pancakes, five sausages,
and felt like he wouldn't need to eat again for at least a
week.

"You can't finish that last pancake? Boy, you
don't look it, but you've become a wuss. Used to be you put away at
least three, sometimes four." Gigi nagged and sounded like a crabby
old woman, but there was a gleam of humor in her eyes, and Roman
knew she was tickled to have him as a guest.

"I was a growing boy," Roman protested.
"Besides, your pancakes sit in the gut like lead. Maybe after a nap
I'll be able to move again."

"Oh sure, insult my pancakes. You'll watch
that attitude if you know what's good for you."

Roman bent his head in acquiescence, then
took his dishes to the sink and washed them. There was an easy
familiarity to being at his grandmother's house. He'd spent most of
his teenage years here, escaping his father's ludicrous rules. He
supposed his father had been attempting to guide, to be a role
model, but he went about it all wrong. There were rules for how to
fold shirts, and a rule about brushing teeth before taking a shower
(instead of after), about making the bed just so, about vacuuming
only after dusting, and how the living room must always be vacuumed
first and the hallway last, and one had to get the mail before
eating dinner, and on and on. It made Roman crazy to live by rules
that had no other purpose than to do things Albert's way. They were
rules that didn't matter.

"He's a bit off in the head since your mother
left," Gigi would say, just talking, neither judging Albert nor
defending him, when Roman visited her after school and complained
about his dad. Then she'd make Roman pancakes or scrambled eggs.
"Ain't easy losing someone."

"But still, Gigi, it can't matter if I put my
right foot into my Levi's first or my left. You know?"

"I know," Gigi had said. "And then you been
making eyes at the Anderson boy, and that don't make anything
easier."

Roman had been shocked. "Says who, Gigi?"

"Says nobody. I got eyes in my head, and I
know how things are. You act like it's this big secret or
something. Now, how about a game of cribbage before you get on home
and do your homework?"

Amid counts of fifteen-two, fifteen-four,
pairs and straights, Roman had said, without taking his eyes off
his cards, "It's kind of like a secret, don't you think?"

"Depends on who you're talking to. Talking to
me, now you know it ain't no secret. Talking to Albert, I think you
both know what's what, but then you both pretend not to know
nothing. Then you feel ashamed and he feels angry, and there's no
truth in the house. Hard to live in a house without truth."

"Is that the trouble then? Not the secret
itself, but just having one?"

Gigi had shrugged and pegged out. "Damn near
skunked you, lucky you got around the corner," she said, referring
to the card game and the pegs on the board. "Yeah, that's what I
think. The fact that you got eyes for the Anderson boy, well,
you're gonna be who you're gonna be. It don't make no difference
what anybody thinks of it. Some boys is just like that. I don't pay
any mind, not really. What's it to me, except maybe I don't get
great grandchildren from you."

His now eighty-six year old grandmother
pulled him away from his memories when she squeezed past him to get
to the sink. "Why don't you grab the cribbage board and a deck of
cards from the top of the fridge, and we'll have a game like back
in the day?"

Roman suppressed the urge to stare at her,
his mind-reader Gigi, and grabbed the cards and board and set up at
the coffee table in the living room. Gigi finished the dishes and
joined him. "Do you remember how to play?" she asked.

"Oh, yeah, I remember how to play. You might
have to help me count, though." He was teasing her, because he knew
that was never going to fly.

"Bullshit," she said. "You're a grown man
now, not a boy. You miss points, I'm going to steal them. That's
league rules."

Roman was toast before the game even started.
He hadn't played cribbage in five years, at least. He'd taught
Jeff, but Jeff had never taken to the game. The cut gave him first
deal and first crib, and he hoped for a good hand right off the
get. Start ahead and stay ahead, that was the best strategy.

They played without talking for a while, but
his memories were stirring, and he figured he was adult and brave
enough to ask the questions of her that he had neglected to ask
when he was young. "How did you know that I was going to die if I
stayed in the closet?" he asked her.

"Ach. All the tiny crap was bothering you.
Every day you came over here after school sniveling about Albert,
or the math teacher, or that little witch Erica Jones. You were
almost as obsessed with every tiny slight you perceived as Albert
was about having housework done properly. Thought you might
explode, and I didn't see what the big deal was. What is, is.
Albert, silly man that he was, kept trying to make you do and be
his way, and he just couldn't stand that you were going to be your
way. But I tell you, I know that children grow up, and if the
family does its job, they turn out just how they ought to be. The
same or different, doesn't matter. Just how they ought."

Roman grinned at her. "Well, if I never said
thank you, I'm saying it now. I think you saved my life. Who knows
what sort of craziness might have ensued if I didn't have you not
to care if I liked boys." He laid down his hand. "Fifteen two,
fifteen four, and a pair is six."

"Ha. Knobs!" she crowed, and pegged a point.
'Knobs' was a point for having a jack in your hand that was the
same suit as the turn card. Gigi had been robbing him of knobs
points his whole life.

"Dang it."

"You should shut up and pay attention to your
cards. Never knew you for a talker."

"Yeah, yeah. Even I have stuff to say
sometimes."

"Hmph. Not often. You're as opposite your
father as you could possibly be."

"And you think that's somehow an accident?"
Roman asked.

She gave him a look, the kind of bold look
that said
I know stuff
without any words at all. He grinned.
Same old Gigi. She would die before she changed one little bit.

She made chicken legs, mashed potatoes and
creamed corn for supper, and the food was good. They sat outside on
the back patio that evening, and he found her company good, as
well, and she caught him up on the family gossip. "Harold's
granddaughter lost her son to social services for a few days last
summer." Harold was Gigi's brother, dead twenty years now, but Gigi
still called that part of the family 'Harold's this, or Harold's
that,' as if Roman had forgotten everybody's names. Or maybe it was
because she didn't keep track of their names herself. "That boy,
he's a little stinker, he is. Climbed out his bedroom window while
his mom was asleep, early in the morning. Police picked him up
running around the neighborhood naked. Harold would have been
proud. Created quite a hullaballoo, it did, meetings and social
workers and the whole bit. All worked out okay. I don't know what
those social workers think, stabbing their noses in everybody's
business, as if parents should never sleep. Sheesh. Busybodies,
that's what they are."

"Then last winter Harold's nephew on his
wife's side rolled his truck and broke his neck. Forty eight years
old, and all of a sudden he's wearing this big metal cage that's
screwed right into his head."

"Lucky he didn't land in a wheelchair," Roman
said. "Lucky, like Jeff."

"Oh?" She took off her glasses and rubbed
them with her sweater, pretending, Roman knew, to be barely
interested, but ready to memorize every word. "They screw his head
into a thing like that, too?"

"Yeah. It's called a Halo. You get to wear
one of those for a few months if you break your neck but don't
paralyze yourself. It's a good thing. Like I said, lucky. He was
riding his bike to work and got hit by a delivery truck."

"Lucky, no kidding," she said. "Lucky to be
alive. So after court are you going home to take care of him?

"Nope. He went to his parents' house.
Insisted on it, like he can't get away from me fast enough."

"Funny," Gigi said, and cocked an eyebrow at
him. "Pretty sure I saw pictures of him in a box. Pretty sure he
was liking it. I'd think the, what you call it, halo, would be
right up his alley."

Roman threw up his hands. "Okay, Gigi, all
right, you got me. You know stuff. You can quit with the sly
routine. Jeff said his hospitalization was like bondage, only
without a safe word, and it cured him of his kinky little ways. Are
you happy now? Because that's pretty much the whole story."

She nodded. "Makes a weird kind of sense, if
you think about it."

Roman sighed. "Yeah, I guess it does. How do
you know this stuff, anyway?"

"Told you. The internet."

"Show me," he said. He'd Googled himself, but
didn't find anything that put out there the details she seemed to
know.

"Oh-ho, show you, huh? Fine."

She booted up her computer, which was right
there in the living room, and damned if she didn't log into
FetLife. He peered over her shoulder and watched her type
NaughtyGranny68 and a password. She navigated to Jeff's page, and
then to Jeff's pictures. And there was Jeff, in a box. Well, most
of Jeff. There were certain, well-aroused parts of Jeff sticking
out of the box.

"I could die crazy right about now. Who the
hell has a kinky grandmother?"

She laughed. "You do. Had to get it from
somewhere, I suppose. Maybe it's inherited."

"You're not sixty eight," Roman said.

"Well, I'm not going to tell people I'm
eighty six. Who'd even talk to me then?"

Roman groaned. "Okay, that's all I want to
know. I feel like I've just lost my innocence."

"Seems you're losing a lot of things right
now, Grandson. I'm sorry to see it, but you'll come through. Might
come through it different than you were, but you're tough."

"Am I? I'm not even sure what to do
next."

"You'll figure it out."

"How do you know that?"

"Because we're related, and I came through
everything, didn't I?"

"Yes, Gigi, you sure did. But you're a
stubborn old woman."

"And you're a stubborn young buck," she said.
"We're the same, in the end, don't you worry. Now go to bed. People
who are in the midst of major life changes need their sleep."

He was tired from his journey, and sad, and
lonely, although not nearly as lonely as he'd have been at home,
and bed seemed like a good idea.

The room he'd slept in as a kid was not much
different now than the last time he'd visited. The walls were baby
blue, and the same old TV rested on top of the dresser, and the
same old radio sat on the floor. Roman tried to remember the last
time he'd slept in a twin size bed, but couldn't. It was probably
this one.

It was early by New York standards. He
thought about calling Vanessa or Jeff, just to see how things were
going, but changed his mind. Life in Gigi's world moved a little
more slowly, and maybe he needed to embrace that pace, accept early
nights and early mornings, and just let himself be for a while. Let
himself be a Roman from a different time.

Morning did, indeed come early.

The sun streamed into his room by six, and he
could hear that Gigi was up and moving about downstairs. He threw
on sweat pants and a tee shirt, and ventured down to say good
morning.

"It's a beautiful day," she said. "Let's have
coffee on the patio."

She already had steaming cups waiting on the
small table. The patio chairs had comfortable cushions that weren't
even wet from the dew. "Did you carry these cushions in last night
without my help?"

She shrugged. "I always carry them in. It's
no trouble. They're just pillows."

"Still. You should let me help you with stuff
while I'm here. And you don't have to wait on me."

"I prefer to call it 'doting,'" she said.
"And I like to. Reminds me of all the weekends you stayed here. It
was good to have you around then, and it's good to have you around
now."

"Suck up. You just want to prove how capable
and independent you are so I'll be convincing when we go to
court."

She just smiled. "Drink you're coffee,
Know-it-all. Did you notice the bird feeders last night?"