Wink
by Diana Caplan
 

"Watch she don't bitecha," the zaftig, redheaded nurse warns Robbie, chuckling when he raises his bushy eyebrows in surprise.  His family loves to swap tall tales about each other, so he thought they were just exaggerating about Grandma Sally.  "Your Sally likes a good teeth sink now and then."  She yanks up the tight white polyester sleeve with her stubby, callused fingers to reveal two rows of fading red dotted lines stretching across her fat forearm.  Tooth marks.  So, the biting is true.  But he's sure Sally had good reason.  The nurse waddles off to help an old man at the nearby water fountain get a sip of water without taking a birdbath.  Robbie thinks, then twiddles his thumbs, admiring how quickly they orbit each other without touching. 

"Grandma?" 

She doesn't respond.  Just watches the nurse and the old man at the water fountain.

"Sally?" 

Her face swivels toward him and her gaze shifts in and out, a camera lens zooming in at details after seeing landscape.  Her brow quivers.  A current stirs deep within the stagnant waters of her blue-gray eyes.  There is something more there.  Robbie wants to drop in a copper.  Grandma used to offer a penny for his thoughts, like it was such a bargain.  True, thought is cheap.

"Have you seen my mother?" she asks, cocking her head to the side like dogs do.

"No, I haven't seen your mother.  Never met her.  I was born after she died."  He reaches into his pocket for a handful of change and then opens his palm to her.  An offering. She looks down at the coins and purses her lips making kiss noises as she picks each one up and places it into her own palm. 

"I'm Hal's son.  I'm your grandson, Robbie."

She cranes her neck toward him and cups a hand to her ear.  "Eh?" Her hearing aid hums.  She used to whack at it when it started up.  Now she's like a horse with flies buzzing around it. She does nothing.  Like she doesn't know it's humming.  Maybe the world around her hums all the time now, since whenever it was she started to piss her pants and bite nurses.  He reaches over and fumbles with the tiny knob to try to make it stop.  It only gets louder.  She winces. Oh, great. Now everyone is going to look to see what I'm doing to her.  His hand shakes as he turns the knob back down to a tolerable hum.  He sighs. Jesus.  It's not like he's still an errant boy disturbing High Holiday services, making the rabbi scowl.  He's a grown man now.  He's got a wife and a daughter for Christ sake!

He picks up Sally's empty hand and places it on his own awkward upturned palm. Her fingers used to be long but contract in humps now like tree roots buckling and breaking through cement. Her knuckles are swollen with arthritis from years of scrubbing, cooking, and cleaning, but they're not heavy like gnarled things usually are.  Her hand is light. He expects it to flutter away, a matter of physics.  An object lighter than air lifted to the vulnerability of the wind loses its will.  He closes his other hand over hers, encasing it--a pearl.
Sally wears a pale yellow button-up cardigan with white embroidered daisies, a green collared shirt underneath, and gray pinstripe slacks.  He thinks she looks nice, but he knows his wife would say whoever dressed Sally either doesn't have any style or doesn't care.  His wife says that the wives of his coworkers at the research lab don't really love their husbands and she can tell by what the men wear to work.  She always tells him he's the best-dressed scientist ever, thanks to her.

A breeze ruffles Sally's fine silver curtain of bangs and she wrinkles her nose, pulling her mouth down at the corners.  Her lips look dead-- thin and progressing to darker shades of blue from the outside in.  They are almost too hardened, too shrunken now to close over her graying dentures. Stale air seeps out from her lungs. He leans in closer to smell it.  Old swimming pool scent.  Or the john at work.  He doesn't remember what Sally's breath used to smell like.  Probably the same.  Some people are old no matter how young they are.  Like Al, Sally's husband.  Dead over ten years now. 

Sally never seemed well suited for Al, though Robbie would never say it out loud to family.  Or even in the dark by himself, especially since Grandpa had died.  Robbie believes in ghosts more now than when he was a child, and he wouldn't want to piss off Grandpa Albert.

He always thought Albert was a bad husband. Albert always told Sally to shut up.  It's nearly the only thing he said to her.

"Shut up, Sally.  You don't know what you're talking about," or, "Shut up, Sally.  That's not how it happened.  Let me tell the story." Sally would sit back and shut up.  Albert droned on endlessly while Sally stirred her tea and looked out the window.

After Albert died Sally came to California. She was depressed.  Aunt Miriam thought it would be a good idea to get away from the East Coast for a few weeks.  Get some sun.  The family went out to a cheap restaurant that served all-you-can-eat salad with iceberg lettuce, croutons, cucumbers and tomatoes.

"Ooh, tomatoes!" Sally shrieked.  "I haven't eaten tomatoes in years.  I used to eat them whole, like apples. I'd hold them right in my hand until one day Albert yelled stop eating those goddamn tomatoes, Sally.  But I'm going to eat them now!" 

She heaped them on her plate and swallowed them in juicy chunks until the corners of her mouth ran red with seeds.  She's lost all that zest now.  Look at her.  Does she even know what's happening?  He claps his hands, loudly.  She doesn't even flinch. 

He picks up the erasable red marker and memo board that the nurse handed him when she first walked Sally over to him where he was waiting on the rusted white wrought iron bench.  He writes, "I'm Robbie."  And pokes her, gently, at the shoulder.

Sally reads it and giggles, pointing at the board.  "I'm not Robbie!  That's a boy's name." 

Miriam, Pop's sister, told him to write 'you', not 'I'.  "Don't assume anymore that she understands basic communication patterns," Miriam had said.  "She's forgetting how communication works.  Don't write long sentences, and don't expect her to respond in full sentences.  If she does, you're lucky."

He erases the words with the heel of his hand and writes, "You are Robbie, my grandson."  He holds the memo board under his chin like it's a caption and his face is a photograph.  He grins and suddenly remembers picture day in grade school.  His grin lessens.

There's a flicker of understanding now.  He watches thoughts trudging along behind her bulging old eyes, but then the eyes roll with dismissal and she shrugs as if this isn't the first time someone has claimed to be kin to her.  She dons the same apathetic face that Pop wears when he's trying to convince somebody that something doesn't matter to him enough to discuss it.

Before Robbie drove to LAX to catch his flight to JFK, Pop had called.  "Robbie, I'm telling ya, don't go. You're just gonna be disappointed."

"Pop, com'on.  I'm a man.  Not a boy.  I know what I'm doing."

"I'm your father and I know ya better than ya know ya self.  That's the kind of wisdom that comes with age, see?  I know you've got some fantasy flitting around your head.  Ya think that by going out there, she's going to magically snap out of it…"

Robbie squeezed his eyes shut and held the phone straight out, a foot away from his ear, but his father's voice was so deep it rumbled and vibrated its way down Robbie's arm. 

"Listen, Robbie, my mother's out orbiting mars, hear?  Mars!"

Robbie put the phone speaker-side down on his yellow tiled kitchen counter and dropped his head onto his folded arms. 

"I'm telling ya, this meeting ain't gonna be no Penny Marshall film, understand?  Whatever you've been imagining, forget it.  She's not a mother, not a grandmother no more. She's not a person, really, Robbie.  She's a blubbering infant."

"Infants are people, Pop.  You wouldn't abandon an infant."  He felt small fingers skipping down the seam of his jeans and reached down to hold the hand of Rebekah, his two year-old daughter. Rebekah's hand was so soft, so small.  He looked down at it, resting securely in his own.  It was pink and warm with thin fingers and wide nails like his.  "It's not too late, Pop.  She's not gone.  I can feel it."

Now he looks at Sally and notices a gleam under her nose.  She's got a cold.  He feels in his pocket for a tissue.  The plastic pack is there but it's empty. He leans forward to wipe his sleeve at the moisture.  He pulls the sleeve back and sees a large green streak.  At least it's a jacket his wife hates.  He glances around him to make sure no one is watching and then he wipes the sleeve clean against the back of the bench.
He picks up the board again and erases the words there.  He writes, "Do I remember you?"
Of all the grandkids, he always fancied she liked him best.  Now he feels stupid remembering he thought that.  Why did he think that? 

She had cupped his chin in her hand once and said, "You're a Goldberg alright.  You look like your grandpa.  Just so much younger." 

A breeze skips by, scattering red and orange dried leaves around the patio.  Robbie taps the memo board insistently.  "Do I remember you?"

Sally fingers the tuft of hair at his chin.  His wife has been bugging him to shave the damn thing off.  Says it makes him look like he's trying to be 21, not 31.  Sally scoots away on the bench and shivers. "I don't know you," she murmurs.

His face falls into a frown and he reaches over to make sure all her buttons are done up.  She growls and he backs off, smoothing the side of his hair down.  He's too late.  Pop was right.  He's changed so much since the last time she saw him.  He didn't even have facial hair then.  He's the only Goldberg man who has ever let his beard grow.  The others have always shaved it off to look cleaner, more professional.  He likes how it looks and feels, but Sally is used to clean Goldberg chins.  She'd cupped his in her hand long ago and pronounced him an authentic Goldberg.  What had she seen?  What was it that made him a Goldberg anyway?  Does she still think he is one? 

Erase. 

Scribble. He writes the words no one speaks in the Goldberg family.

"I love you." 

No, wait. 

Erase. 

Scribble. 

"You love me."  Her perspective.

It's true.  He loves her. He loved her habits.  Any time she ate somebody else's cooking, she'd whisper to the nearest person (but audibly for everyone), "Too much salt."  And wrinkle her nose.
She liked to dip her tea bag into her cup of boiling water for ten seconds, counting aloud, then lift it out so it wouldn't get too strong for her. 

She asked his sister's boyfriends, "Are you Jewish?" She told him and his brothers it was okay to date shikses as practice for marriage.  "But only for practice."

Hidebound.  A Goldberg trait. But he's not like that.  Why not?  If she would just talk with him, just listen to him.  He taps the board.  "You love me."  Yes, he always loved her. No, he loves her. Loves. Present tense.  She's not gone.

She stares at the circle of senior home residents sitting on the grass tossing a bright beach ball.

He sighs and puts the board down.  His movement draws her attention.  She reaches over, her arm shaking it's so thin, and she picks up the board.  She reads it and shows it to him like it's a new thing she just found.
"Look at that!" She holds up the board like a heavy treasure.

He smiles at her, wanly, and fingers his beard. 

"What's your name?" she asks, squinting one eye at him.

He speaks loudly as he writes the words, "You are Robbie, my grandson." 

She cranes forward, peers at the board, smacks her ear lightly with her fingertips, waits, smacks again, and loses interest.  She turns away and watches the group on the grass, all of them sitting cross-legged, like children do.  "Indian style" it used to be called.  Before people had to be so careful about how they said things. 

"Let's play!" Sally shouts.  He misses the gap she used to have between her front teeth, long before the dentures.  Bet those dentures hurt when she bit the nurse.  He stifles a snort and wishes Sally had bitten Grandpa Albert once or twice.  She tugs at his arm.  He stands and helps her up.  He holds her elbow and they walk slowly to where the others are.  Her feet shuffle forward in black patent leather high heels.  Not too high, but impractical for an old lady.  Then he remembers.

Late one night, during her visit to California when he was a boy, they both woke at the same time to use the restroom.  He saw her hobbling in her blue pajamas down the dimly lit beige carpeted hallway.  One foot landed flat on the soft carpet while the other foot walked tippy toe, bent at the arch as if wearing one invisible high heel pump. Her gait was lopsided and foreign to him for the first time.

"What's wrong with you, Grandma?  Why are you walking like that?"

She'd gasped, whipping her head around, caught unaware, and then whispered, "When I was young, I fell.  They had to fuse my ankle like this to fix my hip." She waved her index finger toward the ceiling, speech-like.  "That's why I can only wear high heels.  My ankle doesn't budge!  Albert says that's how they used to do those things, you know. " 

"Can you run anymore?"

"Run?  Why would I run?  Albert says exercise isn't good for women.  Makes 'em funny.  Albert knows what's good for me.  That's why I married him." 

"But Grandma, doesn't it bother you?"

"I don't let anything bother me.  It's a waste of time.  But don't tell anybody I told you so."  She leaned close and winked at Robbie.  Her silver bob cut bounced at the curled-under ends.  Robbie wonders now what that wink meant.  He should have come sooner.  He wasn't so busy working that he couldn't have come a year or two before now.  But Rebekah was due and his wife didn't want him to leave.  Then Rebekah was born and his wife needed help.  Finally, with Rebekah in part-time day care, he was able to visit.

He helps her to sit down in a white plastic chair next to the group of old fogies sitting on the grass.  He stands back and watches Sally play.  She squeals when the ball comes her way and cackles when she throws it.  For an old lady with severe osteoporosis, she packs a punch.  She knocks a curly blue-haired woman over onto her back in the grass, like a bowling pin, and screeches with delight.  The sound makes Robbie want to cover his ears, but also jump up and down like Rebekah at the same time.  He sits down on the grass at Sally's knees.  It's a beautiful day. He leans back and looks at the sky. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Sally catch the ball and gesture wildly.  He turns toward her and she beans him in the face with it.  He catches the ball on the rebound.  Not bad for a lowly researcher.  He sniffs sharply to inhale away the sting of cold plastic smarting at his nose and then winks at her.  She winks back.  Do her winks always mean the same thing?

He lobs the ball gently across the circle to a huge, bald black man who is wearing a tattered tuxedo and has been humming and nodding his head forward, nonstop. The black man catches the ball and throws it to a tiny Asian woman in an orange jumpsuit who's been bouncing up and down on her folded legs, chanting, "Me, me, me, me."  She gasps as she throws the ball straight up in the air, craning her neck backwards to watch it as it lands behind her in a bush.  A short, freckled man with bright red hair and a terrible hump in his back curses under his breath and scrambles on stocky legs straight into the bush to get the ball.  "Ah-ha!" he yells and comes out, his hair ratted with leaves and his face scratched. He narrows his eyes, peers at each member of the circle, and launches the ball at Robbie.  Robbie starts to throw it across the circle again but turns abruptly and darts it into Sally's arms. 

"Gotcha!" 
She catches it and laughs so hard the air wracks through her in labored waves.  She tosses the ball back to 
him and winks again. 

Warmth floods his belly and he hands the ball back to her, gently. 
 

"Right back atcha, Grandma." Wink, wink.

"No favorites, no favorites, no favorites," croons the black man, snapping his fingers.  Sally frowns and heaves the ball at the man, knocking him in the head.  He goes back to humming and nodding.  She looks back at Robbie and grins, eyes wildly open, her pupils wide and dark.  Robbie sticks his tongue out at her.  She lurches forward in her chair.  Oh, god, she's trying to bite him.  He falls back onto the grass.  She leans toward him and sticks her tongue out too. She wasn't trying to bite him. He sits up, his face uncomfortably close to hers now, and wags his tongue.  He holds his nose back, stubby like a pig's, with his index finger.  He snorts and oinks. God forbid the guys at work, let alone his wife, see him now.  The beach ball hits Sally in the head and bounces away but she doesn't stop laughing.  Robbie puts all his fingers in his mouth, stretching his lips wide to the sides and rolls his eyes back so that only the whites show, like he did when he was eight years old and was told never to do again.  Her body heaves upward in waves with each prolonged cackle. He gives her the raspberry, spittle flying, and then stops. She can't breathe, for Christ sake.  She could die from lack of oxygen. She sighs loudly, looks up and waits for more.

The acrid stench of urine swells strong. Oy.  Is it her or someone else?  He looks into her eyes, wiggling his eyebrows to distract her as he slides his hand between her bottom and the plastic chair.  He squeezes gently, feeling a hot squish, like boiled marshmallows. Good, she's been dressed in diapers. 

"You need to be changed."  He stands to help her up.

"No, no, no.  I want to play!"  She gnashes her teeth when he tries to pull her up.  Well, it won't make a difference if she sits in her pee for a while. He closes his eyes again. The September chill hardens his cheeks. Tough grass pokes through his slacks at his ass and thighs.  There's a smell of cider being heated somewhere, and buttery popcorn popping.  The beach ball sounds like the kernels exploding each time its plastic slaps into somebody's hands.  All these old people are laughing like children.  Sally's cackle is distinct, sharp.  It echoes and bounces off the walls of the courtyard behind them.  The ball hits Robbie in the head.  There's the cackle again.  Louder.  Cutting through the rustle of the trees, through the laughter of the others playing. 

His eyes fly open and he looks at her.  She points at him and winks.