She tossed her statements at us as if we were chickens clucking at her heels, waiting to be fed her wisdom or facts about the house and its contents. The truth was there was so much about it that I. even so young, thought was breathtaking, and I couldn't help being proud when other people complimented me on where I lived. Even my teacher, Mrs. Montgomery, who had been at Grandmother Emma's house once, made flattering comments, comments that caused me to be more conscious of its richness.
Some of the grand chandeliers hanging over the stairway, the hallways below, and the dining room came from Europe, and one was said to have once belonged to the king of Spain.
"The light that rains down on us now once fell on royalty," Grandmother Emma was fond of saving.
Did that mean we were magically turned into royalty, too, when we stood within its glow? She certainly acted as if she thought so. She walked and talked and made decisions like someone who expected it all to be written down as history. After all, the mansion was historic, why wasn't she?
No two rooms had the same style furniture. Ian and I were often given sermons about it so that we would fully appreciate how lucky we were to be living in the shadows of such elegance and culture. Everything, even the knobs on doors, had some significance and value. She made the house sound like a living thing.
"Each room in a house like this should be like a new novel," Grandmother Emma said. "Every piece should contribute to some sort of history and tell its own story, whether it be the saga of a grand family or a grand time."
Some of the pieces of furniture in the same room could have a different background and heritage, as well, whether it be a picture frame, a stool, or a bookcase.
The dining room had a table, chairs, and a buffet that was vintage nineteenth-century Italian and had once belonged to a cardinal. The sitting room, which was different from the living room, had a Victorian parlor settee, a Victorian gossip bench, and a Victorian swan fainting couch I loved to lie on when my grandmother was out and about and wouldn't see. The wood was mahogany and the material was a golden wheat brocade with a detached roll pillow.
All of her furniture, despite its age, looked brand new and there was always this terrible fear that either Ian or I would tear something or spill something on a piece and bring down the family fortune. Our own grand heritage and glory would be lost, for we were never to forget that this family once paraded through the Bethlehem community with great pomp and circumstance, our family crest flapping in the breeze.
There had often been overnight guests here and grand dinner parties during Grandmother Emma's Golden Age. She would describe them to us with an underlying bitter tone as if it was our fault she no longer had them. I knew she couldn't blame us for her not having guests anymore. There was still another guest bedroom downstairs and Daddy's old bedroom on her side, so there was plenty of room for someone to sleep here. She maintained a maid. Nancy, and a limousine driver named Felix, and a man named MacIntire whom everyone called Mac, to oversee the grounds. He lived just down the street, so it wasn't a question of extra work for her either. Money was certainly no problem, although I often heard my father complain that his mother held such a tight grip on the money faucet, there was barely a drip, drip, drip.
I didn't doubt that. Grandmother Emma was always criticizing my mother for being extravagant. I thought that was at least part of the reason she stopped going regularly to the beauty parlor and stopped buying herself new clothes. Like someone living on a fixed income, Grandmother Emma would complain' about the electric and the gas bills, too.
"If you would stay after your children and have them turn off lights when they are not necessary and close windows when we're heating the house, we wouldn't be throwing money out the window," she lectured. She threatened to fine us for every
unnecessary expense.
"They're not wasteful," my mother said in OUT defense. "Especially not Ian."
Grandmother Emma would only grunt at that. She couldn't argue about Ian doing anything illogical or unnecessary. If anything, he was looking after wasteful practices on her side of the house. He would venture over at least as far as the switch on the wall and deliberately turn off a hall light. If she
complained about having to navigate in the dark, he would say, "I didn't think it was necessary with so much natural light through the windows,
Grandmother. Perhaps you should fine yourself. "
Behind the hand she held over her mouth, my mother might smile at that. My grandmother would shoot a reprimanding look at Ian, who would stare back at her without so much as a twitch in his lips. He had two licorice black eves with tiny white specks and when he looked at someone so intensely, he didn't even blink. Mama was always telling him not to stare at people.
"It makes you look like an insect and not a little boy." she told him. Other boys his age might have been upset about that, but Ian looked pleased. I knew that sometimes he did deliberately imitate creatures so he could better understand them.
"What would it be like to only be able to crawl?" he asked me when I saw him doing it in his room. He'd walk about the house with his forearms pressed against himself so he resembled a praying mantis. Or he would wonder what it would be like to be a Venus flytrap and have to wait patiently for your meal to succumb to deception. He would sit with his mouth open for as long as he could stand it. He was studying carnivorous plants as well as insects. He was truly interested in everything.
Grandmother Emma was often disturbed about something he would do, especially when he stood ye1y still and flicked out his tongue like a snake.
After trying to reprimand him for staring at people, my mother would only shake her head and walk away. Grandmother Emma would do the same. I envied the way Ian could make her shake her head and retreat.
When it came to Grandmother Emma's criticism of Daddy, however, she was relentless and unswerving. She never failed to tell him he was lazy and wasteful. She found ways to blame that on my mother, claiming she just didn't inspire him to be better or try harder.
"At times I think you are completely void of ambition and self- respect, Christopher."
She would say these horrible things to him right in front of Ian or me and even in front of my mother sometimes. Her sharp, surgical comments were never dressed in euphemisms or subtleties. She refused to rationalize or make excuses for Daddy and especially not for my mother and us. On occasion, my mother would try to stand up to her.
"Is it wise to be so critical of Christopher in front of his children?" she once asked her.
"The sooner they learn to base respect upon reality and not false promises the better off they'll be. As ye sow so shall ye reap," she added.
"So do you blame yourself for Christopher's failings?" my mother dared to follow up.
Grandmother Emma faced her firmly and replied, "No. I blame his father."
"That woman has an icicle for a spine," my mother muttered to me.