Tuesday
Butter Pecan For Everyone
Tiff HollandI was eight when Gramps moved his tired green suitcase into the back bedroom. It was the same size as the screen of the old black and white console TV. Gramps watched the Vietnam War all day. Mom said he was sick, but he never seemed sick, and she never gave him the tiny silver bell she gave us when we had the chicken pox or a cold. That didn't stop Gramps, though. He would holler out to one of us kids if he heard us in the hail, "Bring me a bowl of that butter pecan!" although he knew Mom wouldnt let us get into the food between meals.
If she had, you can bet we wouldn't have wasted our time on Butter Pecan ice cream. Mike would have gone for cold hot dogs, straight out of the pack, and I would have gorged myself on those semi sweet chocolate chips Mom used to make cookies. Even if Mom let us eat whatever we wanted any time, Bob probably would've just stuck with meals. He never really cared for food. That's why he was such a skinny little kid, I guess. He could make his popcorn last through the whole matinee. He'd break a Hershey bar along those little lines and eat one square a day. The only thing Bob cared about was money.
Other kids played cowboys and Indians, or soldiers, but Bob liked to play rich. He liked to
sneak the monopoly money out of the box and carry it around in his pocket, pretend it was real. Sometimes, he'd put on a ratty old housecoat and get Mom to pour him cherry pop in a wine glass. She'd do it because she thought he was so cute dressed up like that, talking all day with a fake British accent like a tycoon.The way Gramps made us fetch him things, the paper, his misplaced reading glasses, you'd think he was dying. Mom said he took the aspirin on purpose, that he knew he was allergic, that he wanted the attention. I think I was supposed to be mad when she said that, but I just felt sorry for him. Most of the time, I liked it that Gramps lived with us. Sometimes on the weekend, he'd fry potatoes for breakfast. Mom never cooked anything for breakfast except Pop Tarts. And Gramps could play the Orange Blossom Special on the mandolin. Once I even heard him play half of Dueling Banjos, although I never would have guessed his fingers could move that fast.
Before moving in with us, Gramps had lived at the Salvation Army. Mom said that was because he was a drunk. I looked at him real hard when I didnt think he was looking, when he was busy listening to Walter Cronkite on one of the fuzzy black and white stations. He didn't look like a drunk. I was just glad he hadn't moved into the den where there was a color set.
Since he was always sitting in the chair in front of the TV, I could really only see his neck where it poked over the back of the chair. His neck was red and the skin seemed thicker there than any place else on his body. He had a scar that went all around his neck, just above his shirt collar, but I was never sure if something had happened or if it was from that thick red skin. Bob said the scar looked like a broken zipper, and Mike called Gramps "Lobster Man" as if he were a villain in some cartoon. Mom told us not to stare.
Before he arrived with his suitcase, I had never even seen Gramps. He had sent us a swingset once, from the Salvation Army donations. Mom got really mad when he did that. She said now he was going to want something back, and how whoever donated it in the first place had meant it for poor kids.
The swingset was just a little off, and wobbled any time more than one kid was on it. This meant the big swing, with the two seats facing each other, was off limits. I never really minded because that would have meant sitting entirely too close to one of my brothers.
What I did mind was the way Gramps would give Bob a dime for ice cream every morning. He'd yell down the hail for Bob, who always went running. Bob would come out in a minute with a dime or sometimes a quarter. Bob never even bought ice cream with the money, instead he saved it in a hole he'd dug and then covered it with a rock in the backyard. He didn't think I knew where the money was, and any time I borrowed a dime for ice cream, I made sure to put it back right away. Bob counted his money a couple times a week.
One day when I'd used one of the dimes for ice cream at lunch at school, leaning down into the big freezer and digging for the chocolate that always seemed hidden, Gramps took us all out. He piled us into his Fairlane without telling us where we were going. Gramps hardly ever went any place he could send someone else. We were all so excited. We hardly even punched each other.
On the big back seat, when we pulled in front of the soft serve place, we couldn't believe our luck. For a minute the three of us slipped around without any respect for the invisible lines neatly dividing the seat into thirds. We all wanted to go up to the window with Gramps, but he only took Bobby to help carry things back. Mike and I yelled out our preferences, chocolate and strawberry, but when Gramps got back it was with four one scoop cones of Butter Pecan.
"Butter Pecan for everybody!" he said as he handed out the cones.
Instead of returning to the back seat with me and Mike, Bobby scooted next to Gramps in front. Gramps nodded at him, then satthere watching us lick our cones with that satisfied smile he wore when he watched the Vietnam War on TV.
Mike gobbled down his cone while I licked slowly, trying not to get too much Butter Pecan on my tongue. After a minute Gramps turned back around to look at the small building where girls in white t shirts handed out colored cones through the windows. When he seemed engrossed I snuck open my door and let the cone slip from my hand. When the boys told he just said too bad, no more, like it was an accident. On the way home, I could barely keep my hands from reaching over the front seat and unzipping his big head.
Originally appeared in Exposure and appears here courtesy of the author
I love the accumulation of details: Vietnam, butter pecan, cold hot dogs straight out of the pack, Hershey bars, cowboys, Indians, monopoly money, cherry pop in a wine glass, the misplaced reading glasses, fried potatoes for breakfast, Pop Tarts, Orange Blossom Special on the mandolin, the Salvation Army, Walter Cronkite, the scar like a broken zipper, "Lobster Man," the swingset, a dime for ice cream every morning, his Fairlane, the small building where girls in white t-shirts handed out color cones through the window.
It is somehow both our childhood and not, each "universal" detail twisted so it fits only into this one. And at the center of these details clamoring for our attention is that desire for attention, the wanting of it from a world seemingly unwilling or unable to give it, and that kid so full of that need--and isn't each childhood somehow like this and not, and don't all ice cream cones somehow fall, like all childhoods, like it was an accident.
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