A collection of short stories

Do I Know You?

     Sitting at the table, my grandmother across from me, my mother to her right, and my dad at the head, with my brother and me to his left. The faces of my family are all blurry, but my grandmother's is clear as day. I sit there making sure to memorise every line, every hair, every smile, every laugh, every word that she says because I know that our time together is limited. I'm scared that now that I  have admitted it, it will become true, so I'll continue to hide my fears behind jokes that are way too cruel.

     My brother, Anthony, shifts in his seat and taps my shoulder, "Ya know she's gonna say it again," he whispers into my ear.

     "Say what?"

     "You know. When the waiter asks, 'How is everything?' and she'll respond, 'I don't know, I can't taste it'," he jokes mockingly.

     "Oh yeah. And I bet she'll ask for a million dollars when the server asks if we want anything else," I reply, continuing to escalate the unfunny joke because damn is it too real.

     My grandmother has always had something going wrong with her. First, it was her taste and then it was her memory or lack thereof. It's a sad world to be losing your senses; lying at the bottom of a well, waiting for someone to come to help you only to realise that no one even remembers you. For now, she relies on our descriptions of the food and her barely visible memories to experience the world as we know it. Her recollection of her grandparents' farm and how she would feed chickens and pick strawberries with her friends brings a smile to her face, the saddest part is that as she tells these stories her smile begins to fade with each moment that her Alzheimer's takes.

     So call our jokes cruel and despicable but how were we to know? We were too young and scared to understand the indecency of our words.

     Our jokes are cut off by the restaurant owner, Pasquale, reaching his hand across the table to set down a plate of antipasto. At the sight of the dish, my grandmother's face crinkles up as she leans over to my mother and whispers a bunch of incoherent words. It seems that Anthony also notices this because again he leans over and says, "She was talking about the food. I bet you."

     "No shit," I respond, trying to muffle my curse by stuffing my face with bread and mozzarella cheese. Pasquale bends down to pick up the napkin that I unknowingly dropped, and lays it onto my lap. "Grazie"

     "No problem Bella."

     Picking up my fork I looked over at my dad for a second, and I knew I shouldn't have because the second I do he asks me, "How'd you do on your math test today?"

     "Fine, I guess. I mean I studied—" my answer was interrupted by the sound of my grandmother coughing. Immediately I look over. This can't be it. No. It can't be. Not again.

     I was nine when my grandfather passed away. He was my favourite person in the entire family. He would talk about his days in the navy, and how he dreamed of being a pilot. He was colourblind though, so he never got to learn how to fly a plane. There were happy stories too. Stories about how my grandparents met in university. Stories about their first date and how they went to the same candy shop that I went to every time I would visit them. Stories about their wedding and my grandmother's beautiful dress. Stories about my mother and aunt being born, their first dates, and getting married. We would laugh and joke around all the time, but unbeknownst to me, he was actually sick. It wasn't until the summer of fourth grade when he passed away that I had to experience death for the first time.

     I remember the day like it was yesterday. I was sitting in the kitchen, eating breakfast, when the phone rang with my grandmother's number popping up. The next thing I knew my mom was running into the kitchen with a deep red face. I knew this wasn't going to be good. Please don't tell me...

     "How does it taste?" my grandmother asks me as I set down my piece of bread covered in prosciutto.

     "It's good. It almost tastes like a salty piece of ham covered in olive oil," I replied. Trying to do my best to describe every aspect of the food, making sure she could savour the flavour as if she were the one eating it.

     "It tastes a lot like thinly sliced smoked pork," my mother chimes in.

     "Ah. Like the meat, Jerid used to make at Christmas time," my grandmother replies. I can see the gears in her head churning, trying to remember the taste of the meat.

     My mother would always tell us about how when she was younger, she and my grandfather would wake up really early on Christmas morning before anyone else was awake, and they would begin preparing Christmas brunch. They would make things like geräuchertes schweinefleisch, stollen, and kartoffelsalat. They would also mix in things like scrambled eggs and bacon so that my not so german grandmother could find something to eat. For my mother, breakfast was the grandest meal on Christmas day, but now she no longer eats breakfast and I always seem to be up before her.

     "What are you going to get Livy?" my mother asks, eyeing the menu in my hand.

     "I was thinking of getting the panzerotti ripieni di ricotta and spinach."

     "Oh. That sounds good. What about you Anthony?" my mother asks, looking over at my brother for a second opinion.

     "Linguini tre colori."

     "You are gonna put protein on that right?" my father chimes in, staring me down until I answer.

     My dad has always been like this, the first question he asks is always "what are your grades looking like" or "did you have enough protein to eat today," and every time I respond "great" or "yes" because that seems to suffice. I know he wants the best for me, but I can't seem to get past the thought that maybe he just wants to annoy me. About a month ago he told me about how he got into drawing and became successful. How he failed out of engineering school, and how he was going to try and live doing an easy low paying job. As he was walking into a pizzeria to be interviewed for a job as a chef, the realization hit him that he didn't want to be a chef at a pizza place for the rest of his life. He walked out of the pizzeria, applied to university and was accepted to Kean College, where he chose to study art. He would always tell me about his college professor, Werner Karl Burger, with a childlike expression on his face. He would tell me about how he inspired him to become an artist and eventually start working for an advertising company. Around that time he also met my mother, who was quite the art nerd, but as he said: "it was legit love at first sight".

     After our appetizers were gone, our main courses were brought out. A shallow bowl of moon-shaped pasta with cream and walnuts sprinkled on top was set down in front of me and my mother. My grandmother's dish seems to include a few small hockey puck-shaped crab cakes, with a small mountain of mashed potatoes and asparagus on the side. As for my father, a salad with a huge cut of steak is delicately balanced on his plate. My brother's plate seems like a lot more food than anyone else has, with a large bowl of linguini tossed in white wine sauce, and decorated with cockles, crab meat, arugula, and cherry tomatoes. "Looks good," is all I can muster in my brother's direction, before turning back to my own dish and taking a bite.

     My brother has always been the odd one out, and because of that, I envy him the most. He has always been a great student with almost perfect grades, who does a lot of extracurriculars, and has a lot of friends. These traits are what got him into a private school in Hightstown, Peddie, and are also the reason why I want to go too. I've always followed in his footsteps because he always seems to know where he wants to go and what he wants to do. I remember when we were younger, he asked Santa for a Death Star Lego set so of course, I did too. On Christmas morning though, he was the only one that wound up getting one, so after he had spent three hours constructing it and was finally done, I rushed over and kicked it. This ended with both of us crying, him because I destroyed it, and me because I was being reprimanded. 

     As the sound of silverware clinking against ceramic plates begins to fade, I excuse myself from the table and head to the bathroom. Opening the door, I am greeted by a wave of Febreeze that is trying to cover up people's pee. I don't need to go to the bathroom, but for years now I have made it routine to go after I eat. Finishing up in the stall I enter the washroom and wash my hands for sixty-Mississippis. Then I step back out into the dimly lit restaurant and head to the table where my meticulously planned out future awaits me, with my grandmother sitting there just looking confused.