Aquarium

~ ~ ~

My suitcase and backpack, one box from the kitchen, and my mother’s garbage bags of clothing. That was it. All that we owned, except my mother’s car. We’d sell the old TV and cheap furniture.

We didn’t need three cars for the move. Everything fit in our own backseat and trunk. But we followed my grandfather, and Steve followed behind us, up Alaskan Way and then angling over on East Madison, an expressway. We turned off on East Olive. His house was only a block or two away from auto stores and old high-rise apartments and the expressway, just around the corner from a YMCA, an area not much better than what we had left, but you’d never know that once you were on his street. It was tucked away just enough, and there were nice houses close to us, and all the trees that shielded us from the neighbors. A small paradise. And no planes thundering overhead at takeoff.

We parked in the driveway behind my grandfather, but my mother didn’t turn off the engine. I don’t know if I can do this, she said. I’m trying it for you, Caitlin. I’m really trying here. I know you’ve always wanted a bigger family.

Thank you, I said. I had more to say, of course, about her getting a house and my grandfather giving up everything and agreeing to everything, but I didn’t dare.

And we didn’t have it so bad, she said. I’m sorry you didn’t get a flute. But you had everything you needed. It’ll be nice to have more, but you had everything you needed.

My grandfather walked past, not daring to look at us. He went up the steps and opened the front door.

Okay, my mother said, turning off the engine. Let’s see what happens.

The day cold, the sky in close, a dull gray-white, but inside the house was everything warm.

Welcome to your new home, my grandfather said and winked at me. It was just like when Charlie inherits the chocolate factory and Willie Wonka is finally friendly after being so mean, even though my grandfather was never mean. But it was that same feeling of suddenly inheriting the entire world and having endless possibility, all limits and poverty and fear gone.

I went to my room and closed the door, just so it could be mine for a moment, only mine. Even the light was warm. A small chandelier above and a standing lamp in one corner, by the lounge. I reclined on the lounge like a Hollywood star and looked at my enormous bed and the dark beams above. This is me, I said softly. This is my life now. I was trying it on, a new life the same as a new outfit, something that changes you and you can’t ever see yourself the same way again afterward. I knew this would be a moment I’d remember forever, and so I still see now exactly what the trees and sky looked like outside the windows, muted and fading and calm, without wind, and the white windowsills, a perfect milky shining white, new, and the walls not blue but papered tan in an endless pattern that shifted in light, a pattern made by texture only, silky-smooth swirls in what otherwise was a matted surface. Over the years, I would see anything and everything in that wallpaper, the walls themselves a kind of mirror, and on this first day I knew it would be that way. I knew I could fall into the walls endlessly, and the beams above, and the soft bed and comforter, and this lounge, and I knew that the wood floor, also, by being so old and having patterns of dark knots and old nail holes would shift and never be the same floor twice. A home rather than a box, and infinite what tan and cream and brown could be, as infinite as anything Charlie or any prince or princess ever knew. And someday I know I will live there again, in that same room, when my mother is gone. I want to finish there. That will be the room to take me to the end, the home given by my grandfather. He’s gone now, but he left us something, a place to remember him. Every surface here finished by his own hands, dreaming of us.

But that day I was just settling in with my grandfather and thought he would live forever. I came out of my room and he was standing there smiling at me, as happy as I was about my new home.

Thank you, Grandpa, I said, and he didn’t say anything but just hugged me.

My mother and Steve were putting things away in her room. My grandfather and I went to sit on the couches by the front window to wait.

Do I have any other family? I asked. Cousins or aunts or uncles?

I’m sorry, Caitlin. Your grandmother did have a sister, but I lost touch with her decades ago, and I don’t know whether she ever married or had children. I don’t think so. And I didn’t have any brothers or sisters. We just both came from small families. When we moved here, we were on our own.

Where was she from? I asked. I loved that he would talk with me and tell me anything. My mother was never like that.

Louisiana, same as me. Seven years younger. We had no money, and only occasional jobs, and we wanted to get away. We wanted new lives. I was thirty-six and she was twenty-nine. This was the end of 1958, beginning of 1959. We didn’t know how cold it would be here. We wanted somewhere no one would know us, but she got pregnant early on, so we were struggling. The freedom never really happened.

I tried to listen to everything carefully, but I don’t remember all that he said. Lives so far in the past and removed, and this grandmother I always imagined as old but who had never been old.

Do you have photos of her? I asked.

Sorry, Caitlin, he said. I ran away and didn’t keep anything. I tried to forget my whole life and start a new one, and it wasn’t my first time doing that, either.

When was the first time?

When I left for the war. And the second time was when I came back. And then moving here to Seattle with your grandmother, that was my third time running away. And then leaving her was the fourth, and then coming back here from Louisiana was the fifth. All my life I’ve been running, but I promise you this is it. I’m staying this time, until the end, no matter what happens. You can count on that. I won’t run away from you, ever. I know I did that day in the aquarium, but it won’t happen again.

I was leaned in against him and he had his arm around me, so comfortable. I remembered the policewoman and all her questions, and I realized my mother wouldn’t like seeing this either, so I straightened up and then stood as if I wanted to look out the window. I went up close to the glass and looked at the long front yard covered in snow. What war? I asked.

The big one, World War II.

You’re that old? I turned and looked at him, and I just couldn’t believe it. World War II is in the oldest movies, I said.

He chuckled. Yeah. A living piece of history. I was nineteen when I joined up, so I was on the young end.

What happened?

Oh, you don’t want to know.

But I can’t imagine anything.

I was the same as I am now, a mechanic. I worked on diesel engines in tanks and trucks and even a few small boats. So imagine a mechanic but dressed like soldiers you’ve seen in the movies. None of the exciting scenes, but just a lot of mud and oil and tools and the tanks not working most of the time. War is mostly repairs and delays and always having to move again. Like the first few minutes of the movie, but repeated endlessly.

What are you talking about? my mother asked. She had appeared suddenly with Steve.

Oh, my grandfather said. Nothing. Caitlin was asking about when I was in the war. But there’s nothing to tell, really. Just fixing engines.

I thought you never talked about the war. Mom always said you didn’t want to talk because you had some terrible times and were all broken about it. What happened to that? Now you talk about it to my daughter, whatever she wants to know?

Sheri, I’m sorry. There were some bad times, but I try not to think about them, you’re right, and I wasn’t going to tell her any of that, of course.

Well it’s time to tell. I want to hear. What were the bad moments?

Sheri. It’s 1994. He had his arms out, indicating everything around us, an entire world. It’s a Saturday. You’re just settling in. We should go out to dinner. No one wants to hear about a war from another time.

I do. I want everything you never gave us before.

My grandfather had his mouth open but wasn’t saying anything. How would I know where to start? he finally asked.

Start with what explains you. It should explain why you left. Something that happened in the war or earlier in your life that made you leave, because I have to find some way not to hate you so much. I’m giving you a chance here.

There are no stories like that, no stories that can explain. I was a coward and I ran away. I did something unforgivable, and I know I can’t make up for it, and I’m sorry.

That’s not enough. You’re going to search until you find something, and you’re going to tell me. Right now.

Sheri. Please.

You do it now or we’re gone. You give me some way to have some sympathy for you as I stand in this nice house, all lovingly redone, and think about the broken house you left us in, with its leaky roof and no heat and no insulation and nothing. Tell your sob story about the fucking war, whatever it was that my mom thought you were so broken about.

My grandfather closed his eyes. No story ever explains. But I’ll give you what you want. I think I know the moment you want, because I made a kind of decision. There was some change. But I can’t start the story at the beginning. I’ve never been able to do that. I have to start at the end and then go back, and it doesn’t finish, because you can go back forever.

Do it, my mother said.

I don’t think Caitlin should hear.

She can hear.

Okay. You’re her mother.

That’s right.

So I won’t give the awful details, but I was lying in a pile of bodies. My friends. The closest friends I’ve ever had. Not piled there on purpose, but just the way it ended up because I had been working on the axle, lying on the ground. And the thing is, the war was over. It had been over for days, and we were laughing and a bit drunk, telling jokes. There was something unbearable about the fact that we’d all be going our separate ways now. The truth is that we didn’t want to leave. We wanted the war over, but we didn’t want what we had together to be over. I think we all had some sense that this was the closest we’d ever be to anyone, and that our families might feel like strangers now.

So that’s it? You couldn’t be a father and husband because you weren’t done being a buddy?

No. No. It’s the way it happened, in a moment that was supposed to be safe. After every moment of every day in fear for years, we were finally safe, and that’s when the slugs came and I watched my friends torn apart and landing on me, dying. That’s the point. We were supposed to be safe. And with your mother, too, I was supposed to be safe. A wife, a family. The story doesn’t make any sense unless you know every moment before it, every time we thought we were going to die, all the times we weren’t safe. You can’t just be told about that. You have to feel it, how long one night can be, and then all of them put together, hundreds of nights and then more, and there’s a kind of deal that’s made, a deal with god. You do certain terrible things, you endure things, because there’s a bargain made. And then when god says the deal’s off later, after you’ve already paid, and you see your friends ripped through, yanked like puppets on a day that was safe, and you find out your wife is going to die young, and you get to watch her dying, something that again is going to be for years, hundreds of nights more, all deals are off. Nothing is owed.

So that’s it?

My grandfather looked collapsed, sitting there on the couch with his head down and hands hanging. Yes, he said. I forgot that I owed you, that you were a child and should be given everything. I forgot that my wife was owed something, also, that my deals weren’t only with god, that the deals weren’t only about me. It’s a terrible thing to forget. I was selfish. And I’m sorry. I have to admit, though, I do understand why I left, and I forgive myself for leaving. I guess I didn’t realize that until right now, having to say all this, but I do forgive myself, or at least I understand why I did it, which maybe is the same thing.

Well, my mother said. Congratulations.

My grandfather had a grim smile, then, very strange. Yes. Congratulations. One life can never know another’s.