She just stared.
"She told me that when I saw her in the hospital just before I came here," I added.
"Nothing else?"
I shook my head. She never really told Ian or me much about Great-aunt Frances. and Mother knew so little about her.
"My name burns her lips, is that it?" she asked with the first sip of anger in her face and voice.
I didn't know how to answer,
"You don't have to answer," she decided, "I know the answer." She looked away, her face still hard, tight.
"Maybe you should go visit her in the hospital now," I suggested.
She turned to me slowly, her eyes widening as she nodded. "I should do that. shouldn't I? I should just surprise her."
"I'll go with you," I offered. "And maybe we can go visit my mother. too."
"Yes, that would be nice. I'll think about it. I'll think about what we should wear. too. It will have to be something very special, and we'll have to do something different with my hair. I used to go on car trips all the time. I would go whenever my father would take me, no matter where.
"Emma wouldn't go unless it made sense. 'Why ride to a gas station or to a hardware store?' she would ask me. 'What are you going to look at when you get to the garage or the hardware store? How can you just tag along like a puppy dog?' "
"Maybe you just wanted to go for a ride," I said.
"Of course. No maybe's about it, and my father liked me to be with him. But that wasn't enough for Emma. Nothing I did was right according to Emma. I used to stand in the middle of the room and think. If I turn left, she will complain, and if I turn right, she will complain.' Once, she saw me just standing there and asked me what I was doing. I said. 1 don't know which way to turn. Emma.' "
"What did she say?"
"She said. Turn around and go back to your room and close the door.' Isn't that funny? Emma could be very funny, only she didn't like to be thought of as funny. If I told her she said something funny, she told me I missed the point."
Ian's more like Grandmother Emma than he thinks he is, I thought.
"When would we go visit her and my mother?" I pursued.
"Oh. I don't know. Soon, soon," she said. She didn't sound as positive about it as she first had. "Now then." Great-aunt Frances continued, her face returning to the face I was accustomed to seeing, "let's think about tonight's dinner. I can make spaghetti and meatballs. That's not hard. We still have lots of ice cream for dessert. Is that all right? Is it enough?"
"We always have a salad with our dinner," I said.
"Salad? Oh. yes. I'm sorry I didn't think of it last night."
"I can make a salad for us."
"Oh, could you? Good. You make the salad. I'll cook the spaghetti and meatballs and I'll find Italian music and we'll pretend we're in Italy being serenaded under the window by some handsome young men. We'll look out the window and imagine them below us in the piazza. We'll smile at them, but we won't say anything or do too much of anything to give them hope. We're supposed to tease them. They expect it."
Why did we have to pretend something every time we had dinner? I wondered, but I didn't ask.
Mae Betty came out of the kitchen and stopped in the doorway. "I've done the best I can with that kitchen and the downstairs bathroom. You got to wipe up when you spill something."
"Oh, we surely will," Great-aunt Frances said. "Make sure she does," Mae Betty told me.
"We're going to make a salad," Great-aunt Frances said instead of listening to her. "Do we have tomatoes, lettuce and... what else, Jordan?"
"I like celery, onions, green olives. too."
"Oh, do we have that?"
"I don't know what you have, woman," Mae Betty said. She threw her arms down in frustration and returned to the kitchen. I looked at Great-aunt Frances, who shrugged, and then I followed Mae Betty. She looked in the refrigerator and in the bin by the sink.