The Truth About Luck: What I Learned on My Road Trip with Grandma (20 page)

“What kind of business?”

“I don't think he was sure. And I don't think that's what he really wanted to do, either. I remember sitting with him — this is so funny that I can remember this — and I knew he had to make up his own mind. No one could tell him what to do, but he always liked to talk about things. I just suggested that he go back and finish university. I told him I'd be happy to go back to work at the hospital. We could live off my salary.”

“I didn't know you went back to work so soon after the war.”

“Well, I'm getting to that. So anyway, he thought about it and, yes, he decided he'd like to go back to school. He went out and bought a huge book of mathematics to refresh his mind. He hadn't been studying in years. But I knew he could do it. I knew he was a smart guy. That summer, after he enrolled back in school for the fall, we stayed in Victoria. We obviously couldn't afford to stay in a hotel, so we found a cheap room to rent in a house. George took a job at the dockyards. The couple who owned the house also lived there. They gave us use of the kitchen and bathroom. It was all we needed and was very cheap. It was small but we loved it. It was only a short time, just one summer. I have such fond memories, Iain, even if I can't fully remember them. I'm not sure if that makes any sense, but it's true.”

There's a natural break in our chat. It's the first true stop for a while and lasts full minutes, I would guess, not seconds.

“Well, it would have been an exciting time,” I finally say. “The war was over, you'd just married. You could finally start your life.”

“Everything changed on the train back to Winnipeg. I guess it really changed about six weeks before that. It was on the train that I told George I was pregnant. I'd been concerned about it, telling him, that is. You see, this was going to change our plans. I wouldn't be able to work because in those days if you were pregnant you had to stop working immediately. It was ridiculous, like so many things. But if I couldn't work, I wasn't sure George would be able to go back to school. I was worried he was going to be disappointed. And it wasn't like we were planning on it.”

“Was he upset?”

Grandma has been playing with the bottom edge of her sweater. She stops now, looking up. “He was absolutely delighted. He really was thrilled. Back in Winnipeg my mom gave up her apartment and went to live with my sister Lottie. So we moved into her old place. George went to university and we lived off my small pension. And of course, his tuition was paid for by the government.”

“How did it go?”

“We enjoyed those years. I remember lots of laughing. George was so absent-minded. Once, he was leaving the apartment very early because he had some work to do before class. In fact I was still in bed. About five minutes later I heard the door. And then George was back in the bedroom. I asked him what he'd forgotten this time. He just looked at me and then said, ‘My shoes.' He'd left without his shoes.” Grandma's laughing harder now. “Can you imagine that? It was typical George.”

“So how did you get from that apartment in Winnipeg to Ottawa?”

“In his last year of school, George was always checking the job board to see if there were any postings for electrical engineers. He found one, a job with the government. It was in Ottawa. He applied for it and was offered the position. I didn't know this until later, but he wasn't sure if he wanted to take it. He didn't think I would want to leave Winnipeg, because my family was there. Even after he told me about it, he still wasn't sure. The first letter of response he wrote was to decline the job. He would find something else, something in Winnipeg. Then we talked some more and he wrote a second letter, an acceptance. He carried both letters with him to school every day, for weeks. Every night when he got home I'd ask which one he'd mailed. For a while he would always say neither. Until one day when he came home and put the rejection down on the table. We were going to be moving to Ottawa. I was thrilled. He knew that's what I wanted. It would be something new for both of us. A fresh start.”

“Grandma, do you think it's strange that when my dad was my age, he was married, had children, his own home, several university degrees, a steady job, and also how his bed was a proper bed and not just a mattress on the floor?”

“Sorry, dear?”

That was a stupid question to put to her, out of the blue like that. I'd have to repeat it, and slow down for her to catch it.

“It's nothing important,” I say. “I'm just thinking about how different things are now and how much different my life is at this stage than Dad's was or yours.”

“It took me longer to do some of the things I wanted to do as well.”

“Is time really best used as a contextual element for our lives?” I ask.

“Isn't it more something to appreciate and enjoy?” she responds.

“What?”

“Time,” she says. “We shouldn't think of it as something we've already lost or are losing. Time helps us along. It actually makes things easier.”

“You think?”

“Time can be made almost irrelevant in certain situations. Like when you're enjoying something. It seems to me,” she says, “time is usually only a detrimental force when we're aware of it. It's like with breathing or your heart beating; better for those things to happen without us being aware. When you think about it too much, it will just throw you off.”

I've been picking at the edge of a fingernail as Grandma speaks, listening. It finally breaks off.

“It is amazing how some people find them ugly,” Grandma says.

“What?”

“The turbines,” she explains, rising up off the hood gradually. She takes another look around her. “Maybe you have to get up close like this to appreciate them. Maybe they're just ugly to some people, you know, regardless of where they see them from.”

WE PASS ONLY
one car on our drive back to the ferry dock. We see more ducks than humans; three are swimming in an inlet, unconcerned as we slow to watch them. We have twenty minutes or so before our ride back, and when we see the general store we both agree that's where our loose change and those twenty minutes should be used up. We park and walk back along the road to the store.

Grandma's drawn in by the glistening sausages rotating on the stationary belt under bright warming lights. This is an unshakeable symptom of living through the Depression. Apart from the war, the Depression has had the largest impact on how Grandma experiences the world. Spinning preservative-filled meat in a store like this is attractive; there's just nothing she can do about it.

I'm less enchanted and begin my search for a suitable candy bar for the ride back. Something with peanuts and perhaps nougat, I think. Grandma eventually wanders off toward the back of the store.

“I just can't believe I found all these goodies here,” she says, returning to the cash. “What a great store. It's so different.”

I'm already half done my Snickers. Grandma holds up her booty: a pack of spearmint Life Savers, an individual pouch of microwave popcorn, and a dust-covered glass jar of ground paprika. “Are you sure you don't want to take a look back there? Lots of treats.”

“I think I'm fine with this treat. We'd better get back to the car, anyway. Ferry will be loading now.”

Thankfully, the rain has stayed away for our ride back. We take our place in the line of cars and snake our way on board. Again our view is of the walls of the ship and the other cars around us. I play the Guthrie tape. I yawn and close my eyes, and recline my seat an inch or two.

“You should take a nap,” says Grandma. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah, I'm fine. Just a little tired. I usually am at this time of day.”

Grandma opens her window a crack and removes her seatbelt. “How are you sleeping these days?”

“Not bad, I guess. But I'm not a very good sleeper. I never have been. If I start thinking too much about anything, I can't sleep. I've just always been like that.”

I tell Grandma about some of the things that have caused me restlessness over the years. Illness was one. Not as a threat to me necessarily, but to my family, friends, even pets. We lost a close family member to cancer when I was young. Another to complications after surgery. During those years I became fixated on death. I envisioned car accidents. Worrying became synonymous with going to bed.

“If Jimmy or Jean was out late, I'd just be lying on my side in bed, waiting to hear the engine and the gravel crunching under the tires. The dog would bark. The headlights would flash in through my blinds. Then maybe I could fall asleep.

“But it was during university when I started to worry about something less speculative.”

“What was it?” asks Grandma.

“One night, I was standing at the toilet. Beside me, on the wall to my right, it looked like someone had scribbled some graffiti with a black Magic Marker. I couldn't decipher the lettering. Turns out it was an insect, one I'd never seen before.

“I was never into insects, but this one was particularly grotesque. Its torso was long and skinny, like a julienned vegetable, and it had very thin and long legs that looked like strands of human hair. It was the tentacles that really disgusted me,” I say. Reliving this old story with Grandma has perked me up. I haven't thought of it in years. I'm no longer yawning.

“I've never seen a bug like that.”

“Neither had I. I went down to the apartment below and asked the guys if I could borrow some type of aerosol spray — Raid, or whatever they had that would kill bugs. They just stayed on their sofa. The air smelled of recently used hot knives.”

“Hot what?” asks Grandma.

“Hot knives.”

“Oh, okay.”

“They told me they had just the thing. They wondered half-heartedly what kind of bug. When I described in detail what I'd seen, they sat up. They recoiled. They told me it was a house centipede.

“It was the first time I'd ever heard that name, Grandma. I'd thought it was called a silverfish. They told me house centipedes actually
eat
silverfish. And other bugs, even spiders,” I say. “For the next couple of years, every now and then it would come up: someone would mention a house centipede. More often not by name but by description.

“Then, one day, I was at a brunch party. My friend, an emergency physician, often entertained big groups at a time. As is often the case in a group of doctors, the line of discourse had taken a turn toward the medical. My friend was telling everyone about this very strange case she'd seen the night before, about this guy who came in complaining about some pain in his ear. Said it felt like a dull ache, thought he could feel something.

“My doctor friend continued, saying how she assumed he had some wax or an infection. She wasn't thinking it was going to be anything serious. But she decided to take a look. She was saying how everything was pretty much looking normal, but then she thought she saw something, an obstruction. She said it seemed like it was moving.”

“Uh-oh,” says Grandma.

“I remember setting my fork down. I started paying attention. She said it was pretty obvious there was something in there, something with legs, with lots of legs. She explained that he could feel something in there because there
was
something in there.”

“I know what you're going to say,” says Grandma, shaking her head, grimacing.

“Yup, she told us how it was ‘one of those super-creepy bugs.' She said, ‘One with all those legs.' I was thinking,
Dear God, of course I know
. And,
How dare you! Don't you dare say it.
But she did. She said, ‘I think it's a type of centipede.' A few people nodded. Some chuckled. ‘Yup, that's it,' she said. ‘He had a centipede in his ear. It had crawled in during the night.'

“The story of that guy was the nail in my coffin. You see, I'd been reading in bed, a couple weeks earlier, when I felt something near my head, something very delicate. Probably nothing, I thought. I ignored it.

“When I felt a second, similar sensation, that of being caressed by a feather, across my eye — that would be
EYE
, part of my
FACE
— I shot straight up, reaching for my flashlight. Nothing. I pulled back the sheets, though, just to be sure . . . A house centipede the size of a small zucchini sprinted down toward my feet.”

“Oh, no, in your bed?”

“I flung the covers to one side and barrel-rolled out of the other side. It fled behind my bookcase,” I say. “So when I left the brunch party, I headed home and called Jimmy. I was looking for some engineering tips, older-brother encouragement, anything to help secure my room. Or even just reassurance, that the story was a fluke, a one-off.”

“A good idea,” says Grandma. “I would have done the same.”

“Jimmy told me that the story from brunch made sense because they love small, dark places, like pipes. Ears, noses, he said, there were lots of places they'd probably like to go. He did offer some practical advice, about moving my bed away from the wall and putting each of its legs in a container filled with water, which would likely be a strong enough deterrent.

“The problem was there were no legs to put in water. My bed was just a worn mattress on a box spring. On the floor. So I pulled the bed out from the wall. Then I moved onto the next phase — scent dissuasion.”

“What's that?”

“It was just an idea I came up with to try and keep them away. I figured that most insects were sensitive to strong scents. I gathered anything I thought might apply — old soap cartons and dryer sheets were ideal. I put them all around my bed.”

“I thought I saw some soap boxes around your bed the other day,” says Grandma. “I wondered why but didn't say anything.”