She was standing in her grandmother’s living room and groaned, “Granny, the light in here is terrible. I wish we could open the curtains.”
“I’m naked under this robe. I don’t want the neighbors to see me until the great unveiling.” She snickered with her voice raspy from the cigarettes she’d been chain smoking before Liesl arrived. According to Granny, cigarettes and coffee were life’s elixir. Personally, Liesl hated the smell of the tobacco, but her Granny was her Granny.
“Well, I still think we should go to the back yard where there is lots of light. You could pose on the bench for me so I can take a couple of photos.”
Her grandmother shivered, “it’s September. It’s cold.”
“It will take only a few minutes.”
“The neighbors will see my hoo-ha. Did you know I had my first Brazilian wax for this? They even waxed my asshole.”
“Oh my god,” she felt nauseated thinking of her grandmother getting such a thing done.
“When your grandfather was alive, he was into the seventies porn bush.”
“Granny!” she chastised the woman with a single shake of her finger.
Her grandmother was incorrigible and unstoppable, “he called it his secret garden.”
She suddenly wanted more vengeance against Craven and her video for putting her into the situation where she owed her Granny this favor. It wasn’t that she expected her grandmother not to have been a highly passionate woman with an attentive lover for a husband. No, she had seen firsthand how much her grandfather had doted and loved her. She simply did not want the specifics. Thinking of them doing the nasty felt, well, nasty.
She set up a light she’d brought from home and then motioned for her grandmother to sit on the settee. When she was a young girl, she used to come to Granny’s house, lay on this specific piece of furniture to read and sketch. She could lay there for hours. Now the memory was tainted because Granny had said she wanted the settee in the photo because it was her grandfather’s favorite place to make love. She shuddered as she looked at the velvet covered furniture wondering what a blue light would show.
“Do you truly intend to hang this up in the dining room?”
“Yup. Can you have it done for Thanksgiving? Make it as big as the last supper painting, I have in there now. I’ll take it down and put this up for Thanksgiving. It’ll boil your mother’s blood. She was the one who gave me the painting in there now.”
“Why do you want to boil her blood?”
“Because she’s doing what she always does and it’s bullshit,” Granny dropped her robe with no hesitation and stretched out languorously on the settee. She was draping herself over it in a way Liesl suddenly imagined she had seduced her grandfather a thousand times in his lifetime.
Liesl couldn’t help but the happy smile tugging at her lips at the notion this home had seen a lot of love. She began clicking with her phone.
“What do you mean, it’s bullshit?” her Gran’s words caught up with her.
“When you were a kid, she was always saying you were the older one, the stronger one, the sane one, so it was up to you to take the high road and back down from Sandy. She would give us the crap about how she never had to worry about you because you were so tough, but Sandy’s mind was so fragile. She was far needier, so she gave her time to her. It was bullshit. Strong people need support too. Your mother played into Sandy’s games from the day the kid could walk and talk. She’s still doing it and it’s wrong.”
“Fred says the same thing. I know Dad and Mom used to fight over it a lot when he was alive.”
“Your dad left her once, you know. He took you and Fred and brought you here with me. You stayed a whole month.”
Liesl frowned, “I remember coming here and staying a long time and not seeing mom. I never knew it was because of me.”
“It wasn’t because of you. It was because of your mom and what she did with Sandy. Sandy went too far. You were eight or nine and she would have been six or seven. She was old enough to know better, that’s for sure. You had gotten one of those snow globes which makes music for Christmas, and she wanted it. Your father put his foot down and said under no circumstances were you to give up the snow globe your aunt had brought you back from Europe. Sandy had gotten a set of nesting dolls, Fred got some kind of car, and you got the snow globe. The little brat wanted it. When your father said no, she took it when he wasn’t looking, and she broke it.”
Liesl frowned as she tried to recall the snow globe and this story. “I don’t remember this.”
“Well, probably because she broke it after she bashed you on the head with it. You were sitting on your little bean bag chair watching the television. She walked right up behind you. Your father raced to stop her. He said he could see it all happening in slow motion. She bashed you over the head. You slumped over unconscious and then she slammed the thing to the hardwood floor.”
“I don’t remember this at all.”
“No, because you had a concussion and were in the hospital three days. Your father was pissed because your mom kept saying Sandy didn’t mean it, but he’d watched her walk straight up to you. He went back a month later because the counsellor blamed Sandy’s behavior on him not being as supportive to Sandy as he was to you and Fred. Six months later, the counsellor apologized to your father, said Sandy was a sociopath and he refused to treat her anymore.”
“What did she do to the counsellor?”
“Accused him of inappropriate touching. The thing was, he was never once alone with her. She made it up and everyone knew it. She didn’t like him telling her how to behave.”
“She’s a menace.”
“Your father loved her, but he was terrified of her. He frequently worried she would kill you. I know for a fact, if he were alive today, he would have disowned her, and your parents would be divorced.”
“They loved each other,” Liesl protested.
“Your father loved your mother very much, but Sandy drove a giant wedge between them, sweetheart. Even the strongest of oaks can die from the smallest of poison. We all tried to help but your sister is a hard person to love, Liesl.”
“She was just a kid.”
“At one time, when she was small, I agreed with you. Your mother made the situation worse by covering her actions and not correcting her and making you, her scapegoat. By the time she was in school, the entire family was so sick of your mom and Sandy. Sandy was harshest with you, but she was a bully to all of her cousins too. She pushed one of the babies down from the top of the slide at the playpark and his arm got broken. She stole two hundred dollars from you uncle’s wallet and blamed it on his daughter Becca and when the truth came out, she started swinging her fists and blackened Becca’s eye. It took three adults to pull a ten-year-old off thirteen-year-old Becca. Mental illness is no laughing matter, but your sister is a lost cause. She needs to be medicated under the supervision of a professional.”
Liesl nodded, “I’m worried for their ugly baby.”
Granny chuckled, “all babies are cute, Liesl. You’ll love your nephew. Of this, I’m sure. It’s not in you to begrudge a child because of its parents.”
“Merlin confessed he intends to divorce Sandy when the baby is born. He asked me to go back to him and help him raise it.”
Granny gasped, sitting up abruptly on the settee, her breasts bouncing. “Tell me you told him to fuck off.”
“More than once. I can’t tell Sandy because she’s constantly threatening to abort the child and,” she sighed, “you’re right, I can’t hate a child. It’s not his fault his parents are douche canoes. I have no intention of ever going near Merlin or the McGrath family again. I hope he does leave her, and his child is raised by him and his parents in a loving home away from Sandy. I simply won’t be part of it at all.”
“Good girl.” Her grandmother reclined again, “now hurry up and take these photos. My nips are so cold they could cut glass.”
