For the next couple of days Aunt Louise is in and out, and she and Mother are having a great time screaming at each other about everything they talk about. I’m telling you, the decibel count went up about six hundred percent on our street by the end of the weekend. The principal thing they argue about is the house and what should be done about it. Should it be sold or rented? If it’s sold, it will take so long to settle Grandmother’s estate, but if it’s rented, there will be income for me, and I’ll be able to go to college. But I’ll be able to go to college anyway, if it’s sold and the money is invested. Real brilliant arguments, you can see.
The second thing they argue about is chairs, which belonged to their grandmothers and great-grandmothers and a variety of other ancestors—and things like handmade bedspreads, some of those funny dishes with flowers painted all over them, and a whole lot of other junk. The argument about the big clock is the funniest. That argument lasts off and on for about six days. It’s one of those clocks made two hundred years ago. It weighs a ton and a half, I guess, and there’s a lot of stuff carved all over it and a pretty good picture of a ship on it. To tell the truth, without thinking much about it, I always liked that clock. This particular argument is settled by Uncle Jess.
“It’s the only thing I want from the house,” he says. Since there’s no topping that, Uncle Jess is awarded the clock. Of course, he doesn’t get the last word on it.
“You’ll have to pay the shipping charges to Los Angeles,” Mother says. She’s a real gracious loser.
They’re always arguing about me too, but I don’t get the gist of those arguments because they make elaborate efforts not to have them when I’m around. When I get tired of hearing the discussions about the house and the furniture, I figure they’re tired of them too and would like to change the topics of disagreement. So I take Fred for walks a lot during these days. He’s delighted of course. It isn’t too often that he is taken out about ten times a day. He gets out so often now that sometimes when we come in again he looks at me as though he’s apologizing for not having done his business outside. I tell him that’s OK, he doesn’t have to do his business ten times a day, three are enough. Mother keeps saying I’m nuts to talk to him in sentences, that all he understands are short, one-word commands, and that people like me who talk to animals have personality defects. She’s all heart.
One of our walks is a long one, on Saturday. Grandmother has been buried for four days, and no one says anything much about her. In fact, it’s almost as though they forgot why they’re all together. She’s been dead for a week. Last Saturday she made me a great breakfast—pancakes from some mix a buddy of hers brought back from Vermont, with some syrup that tasted as though it had just oozed out of a maple tree. That afternoon she had this heart attack, and she died that night. I figure that since no one is going to talk about Grandmother, to me anyway, I’d better take a walk over to where she is buried just to be sure everything is all right. The cemetery is not too far from the house, maybe two miles. It’s in a part of the town where a lot of Italian people live. Whenever I meet an Italian kid, I always figure he lives near the cemetery. That’s crazy of course, because Italian kids live everywhere. It just goes to show you what nutty ideas people get into their heads. I figure that since the cemetery is filled with gravestones and I have seen all these great pictures of Rome and Italy with stone pillars and a lot of marble, it is natural that Italians would live around cemeteries where they would feel closer to their heritage than in any other part of the town. I’m great on ethnic origins.
I put a leash on Fred for a long walk like this one. When he’s just going out around the house or to the beach near the house, I figure that Fred doesn’t need a leash. He obeys me very well when we’re outside. But I don’t walk to the cemetery part of town too much, so it’s better that Fred knows who’s boss right from the beginning on this particular stroll. He hates the leash. But he likes to go to new places, which gives him a chance to sniff at a thousand new spots on the sidewalk, curbstones, corners of walls, fire hydrants, and trees. Old long Fred. When that doggie sniffs, all of him sniffs. He starts with his nose naturally, but in a second his chest is heaving in and out, his rear is moving, and his tail is wagging. He accepts the leash as the price of having all those marvelous new sniffs.
We get to the cemetery in about an hour. Fred has sniffed a lot, but not so much that we couldn’t get anywhere. I find where Grandmother is buried, in the old part of the cemetery in a large grassy plot. I look at the gravestone and see that my grandfather died nineteen years before Grandmother.
There are a lot of wilted flowers piled up. Fred goes crazy. The flowers don’t smell like flowers but have sort of a putrid smell. Fred loves them. He throws himself into the pile, runs his head and neck over the profusion of color, and generally enjoys himself, which makes all the money tied up in those flowers seem worthwhile to me.
“Hey, Fred,” I say, “this is where Grandmother is buried.”
Fred looks at me, but he doesn’t stop rubbing around.
I think that maybe Grandmother would like him to do this.
“You don’t mind, do you, Grandmother?” I hear myself asking aloud. It is quiet in the cemetery, with the exception of the noise Fred makes on the flowers.
“They’re going to sell the house or rent it,” I can’t stop myself from saying. “Mother wants me to go to New York to live with her. I think she wants me. Do you think she wants me?”
I don’t know what I think is going to happen, but I wait for an answer.
“She doesn’t want Fred. I won’t go without Fred. I didn’t mind going to visit her for a weekend without Fred because Fred was with you. Now he can’t be with you any more. I thought maybe Fred and I could stay in the house alone, but no one will let me.”
Fred has stopped rubbing around now, and he looks at me as though I’m crazy. I sit down on the flowers with him. I hold him in my arms, which is all he needs to fall asleep in two seconds.
“What do I do now?”
I lie back on the flowers. One bunch has a blue ribbon on it, with crummy-looking gold letters reading “Love Davy.” I pick off the letters.
“That was a good breakfast, Grandmother,” I say. “I didn’t tell you last Saturday, but it was. You’re a very good cook. I always wanted to tell you. And Fred liked the way you cooked too. Didn’t you, Fred?”
I guess I am the world’s number-one crybaby this week, because I start bawling again. Fred wakes up and licks my tears, and I say a lot of crazy things to Grandmother, like how I’ll never forget her, and when I’m as old as Mother and Aunt Louise I won’t be arguing all the time, and please, God, keep Grandmother warm this winter and forever.
I finally drag myself off the flowers. I put the crummy gold letters in my pocket along with two wilted flowers. Fred and I go home.
“You’ve been for a long walk, sweetheart, haven’t you?” Mother says when we come in. She is sitting there with Uncle Jess. They are having drinks.
“Yes,” I answer.
“Where did you go?” Mother asks.
“Oh, no place.”
“You must have gone some place!”
“Just around.”
“Be that way,” she says. “We’ve been thinking.” She nods to Uncle Jess. “If Fred means so very much to you, sweetheart, he should come to New York too. What would you think of that?”
Think of it! I stand there like a twirp for a minute, and then I guess my mouth spreads from one ear to the other.
“You mean it?” I ask.
“Sure,” she says.
I run over to her and give her a big kiss. I think she gets a little embarrassed, because our kisses have usually been more or less formal. But she carries it off OK.
“You’ve got to promise to do all the work though,” she says. “I’ll just have the fun.”
