“Rebecca, are you there?”
It was my grandfather calling from downstairs. I loved him very much, but he just didn’t know when I wanted to be alone. Especially when I was in my room reading.
“What is it grandpa?” I said loudly.
“Rebecca?”
Poor old grandpa, deaf as a doornail. I’d better see what was the matter. Last time I didn’t he had somehow dropped his false teeth into the soup. Pretty disgusting, though we both had a good laugh about it over freshly ordered pizzas. That reminded me, I still had to make dinner.
I opened the door and walked over to the stairs. He was standing in the hallway, looking like a lost – admittedly white-haired – puppy. How could I not take care of him?
“Ah, there you are, Rebecca. Sorry to bother you, but I just can’t seem to find my slippers. I knew I had them when I was sitting down, but…”
“I’ll have a look, grandpa. Are you hungry yet?” I asked, coming down the stairs.
“Please, Rebecca, you do so much already around the house. I really don’t know what I would have done without you after Margaret died.”
His eyes watered slightly, as they always did when he mentioned my grandmother. The loss of her had hit us extremely hard.
I had grown up with my grandparents, they were my parents. My father had died from babesiosis, a rare but deadly blood infection, when I was still a baby, so I couldn’t really remember much about him. My mother had been devastated by the loss, my grandparents had told me. She just couldn’t cope, and so they brought me up as their own child, while my mother drifted from place to place.
It was strange but I never really felt that deep connection you should have with your mother. I wanted to, desperately, all my life. But every time she came to visit, it was so fake. She tried. And so did I. We went on short trips or visits to the zoo. But I think neither of us could ever forget that she had abandoned me.
Eventually, she drifted away completely. A postcard in the mail told us that she had moved to the United States, though I don’t know whether that was true or not. She told a lot of fibs, my mother.
My grandparents had to pick up the pieces for her. But I could never have wished for anything better. They had loved and cared for me. They had provided me with a home and a family. I was grateful and very fierce about repaying that debt. And so when the time came, after my grandmother’s death, when friends and relatives asked me why I just didn’t put my grandpa in an old people’s home, I didn’t. It would have been a betrayal. And I wasn’t like my mother.
***
My grandfather loved meatballs, or ‘keftedes’ as he insisted on calling them. That’s what they say in Greece, and he had lived there for some time when he was young. They were already sizzling in the pan when he came into the kitchen. He was in charge of making the salad.
“I almost forgot, Rebecca, that young man called. Now what’s his name again, I keep forgetting.”
“Peter?” I asked, dully poking one of the meatballs.
“Yes, that’s right. Peter. Nice boy, good manners. Will you be going out together?”
“Well, he wants to.”
That sounded a bit mean, but I really wasn't in to him. And he somehow didn’t get the message.
“But he seems like such a steady young man.”
“That’s the problem, grandpa. He’s boring.”
“You’ll want to settle down sometime, don’t you? You’ll need someone dependable, reliable.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But I wish there was someone I really felt something for. Peter is ”
“You can’t have it all, Rebecca. But perhaps it’s just as well. Good things come to those who wait, you know.”
He chuckled affectionately. He knew that these empty old wisdoms drove me up the walls.
“I’ve been waiting long enough, grandpa, I know how boys are,” I said, intentionally taking the bait. “All of them.”
“A comprehensive study, excellent. What is your conclusion?” he asked conversationally as he was chopping up some tomatoes.
“Either too nice like Peter. Or...”
“Yes?”
I flushed scarlet and quickly hastened to put more oil into the pan, which was totally unnecessary. He looked at me curiously, but thankfully didn’t ask any more questions.
All summer, I had tried to push away the thought of Ryan and the humiliating disaster at the prom. Or the school ball, as my grandfather preferred to call it. Old school all the way.
Ryan had been one of the cool guys at school. Good looks and a certain charm had made him the subject of many a bathroom conversation. Most of the girls in my year had been fawning over him for months. It had come as a great surprise to me (and everyone else) that he had asked me to be his partner. Perhaps it was because I didn’t take any nonsense from him, or that I hadn’t been interested in joining his fan club, or perhaps he just didn’t like the girly type, but he had asked me anyway.
My closest friends were all for it, at least to my face. I was curious above all else, though I won’t deny that he had a certain effect on me, too. What could possibly go wrong?
I hadn’t expected him to make me look like a complete loser by dropping me right before the prom for some other girl. Leaving me alone and totally humiliated in front of the entire school. A laughing stock. Even worse was that he told me that it had all just been a bet with his friends, to get me to say yes. Of course he had never any intention of going out with me.
I would have spent the opening dance just sitting there in my dress if it hadn’t been for Peter, who hadn’t had a date to begin with. Don’t get me wrong. I was enormously grateful to him for making an evening of hell a little terrible. I invited him a week later to dinner with my grandfather to show him my sincere thanks. But it seemed he had got the wrong impression, and he’d been calling ever since. I felt terrible for turning him down after what he had done, though I had to remain true to myself. And the truth was that I liked him as a friend, but no more than that.
***
Eating dinner in front of the TV was a bad habit we’d always enjoyed indulging in together. Without my grandmother, however, there was no one there to talk some sense into us.
Today was different. My grandpa put the remote control aside and looked at me. It was strange that he could be a doddering old man in one moment and as sharp as a pin in the next. This was one of the latter moments. I could already sense a speech coming before he opened his mouth.
“Rebecca, I know there’s something going on. You’ve been cooped up in your room for days. You haven’t been yourself all summer,” he said.
I was about to deny everything but he stopped me in my tracks.
“Please, Rebecca. I might be old, but I haven’t forgotten how it was like to be a youngster. Not everything at least. And I know that, at your age, I didn’t want to spend my days caring for old codger like I am now.”
“It’s not that, grandpa,” I said. “It’s not that at all. It was at the school prom. That’s what…”
There was a ring at the door.
“Saved by the bell,” my grandfather chuckled. “Perhaps it’s your friend Peter.”
“Oh, don’t go there,” I said, half exasperated.
I walked out into the hall. I could see through the paned glass of the door that it was pretty dark outside already. Surely, Peter wouldn’t be calling at this hour. That was almost like stalking.