Good Times With Grandpa
“Grandpa, can you hear me?” I ask gently. I’m sitting beside his hospital bed, his hand in mine, as my dad and his remaining living siblings conferr in the hallway about the best course of action. He is 86 and has been suffering from Dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s–the list goes on. You name it, he’s got it. Today is Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday of the year. My dad and I don’t see eye to eye on much, but I never feel more at home than on Thanksgiving with his side of the family. It’s a huge family, you see, my Aunt Mary converted to Catholicism when she got married and really took it to heart. Be fruitful and multiply and all that. 6 kids total, plus two miscarriages and a stillbirth. I don’t know how she can still walk. Thanksgiving for us can range from 30-40 people in a given year, and man, do the Taylor’s know how to party. Now, almost at seventeen years of age, I realize that most of ‘em are borderline alcoholics, but it sure is a good time. I fit right in. Anyhow, I never built much of a connection with old Gramps here. At age thirteen he stopped remembering who I was and I never talked to him much before that.
“Ruthhhhh,” he moans. His face is drooping off and his eye is sagged into the corner–it’s his third stroke in 6 months. They found him pissing in a flower pot before he collapsed. Shit, when I heard about it I was impressed that he could stand up that long.
“No, Grandpa….it’s Jordan, your Grandson. Remember me?” I ask. Of course he doesn’t remember me. He doesn’t even know who my Dad is, but man is he breaking my heart with that Ruth talk. That’s my Grandmother–his wife, she’s been dead eight years.
“Elsieeeeee?” he sputters. Now this one takes me back. Elsie…Elsie…who the fuck is Elsie? Oh yeah, I remember, it’s his mom. Or was it his sister? It’s both, sort of. Grandpa William here (or Bill) was a bastard, which was a big deal back then I guess. I don’t mean like a bastard person, or a drunk bastard (though if his children and my older cousins are to be believed he was both of those things). He was a bastard in the way that he was born out of wedlock. He never knew his father. The stories I’ve heard about my Great Grandmother Elsie are the kind of stories you read in a tabloid–some crazy ass shit. My Aunt Mary told me, maybe a couple years back, that up until Elsie died they all had known her as Bill’s sister, not mother–and so they referred to her as “Aunt Elsie” their whole lives.
Here’s the story: Elsie managed some hotel in South London back in the 1940’s and slept with some guy by the name of McCaskey–which, if you want to be technical, should be my last name. But the guy took off as soon as he found out, and left her alone with his bastard–my Grandpa. I say bastard because that’s what they called it back then, and it was a real stain on your honor to give birth to one of ‘em. What happened was, when she decided to up and immigrate to New York in 1948 (when my Grandpa was eighteen) she tells him that he’s to call her his sister, and never again refer to her as his mom, or mum, as they say. She didn’t want the bastard thing to carry over when she crossed the pond, ya know? She was young enough to pull it off too, or so I’ve been told, and so that’s the way it was. Bill had been given her last name of Taylor anyway, and I’m sure U.S customs didn’t give enough of a shit to look into it. I mean the woman was nuts. She could have done anything. They say they found 500 G’s in the walls and floors of her house when she croaked–although my Dad claims his sister and brothers colluded to keep it from him. I don’t know, my Dad can be real paranoid sometimes–but I do know he never saw any of the money. I mean, even if he did he would’ve pissed it all away gambling and boozing anyways, so I don’t blame my family for keeping it from him.
“No…Bill, it’s Jordan, your Grandson,” I say, hoping he will hear his name and snap out of it.
“Jord-psfff-ah-n…” he says, spitting all over himself. He kept going on like this for a long time. I get real uncomfortable. I peek my head out the door to see if I could find someone. SOS.
“Hey Grandpa, don’t hurt yourself now,” I say. “I know, I know..don’t worry Gramps, everything’s okay,” I grab his hand again. Man I could use a smoke, where is everybody? Probably outside right now, smoking without me. The pricks.
Well, what happens now is real eerie, I mean it really gives me the spooks and I don’t scare easy. The old man’s eyes sort of light up, ya know? And not like some cliche, twinkly bullshit, his brown eyes are completely fogged over. I mean, there is some like, white film or some shit covering ‘em–you can hardly see their color. All of the sudden, his head turns over to look at me and the droopy side of his face kinda gets pushed up against the hospital bed–making him look semi-normal, and the fog in his eyes clears up. I shit you not, his eyes look like he dropped a couple of Rohtos in, like I do before school, if ya know what I mean. His right eye is still slumped in the corner, but the other one is looking right at me–clear as day. Creepy old bastard. I sorta jump back, not jump back–I’m not that big of a wuss, but I slide my chair back against the wall and stare at him. I’m afraid to blink.
“I was ten when it began…poor Alby…..” he says. He’s talking real quiet. I get over myself and move my ear by his mouth. He looks like he’s about to cry.
“When what began, Grandpa, what happened?”
“The bombssss…..”
Note to the poor asshole stuck reading this crap:
For the sake of the story, I’m gonna tell it from his perspective–as if I was him, you get it? It was hard to get all the details from him because he was pretty weak and all. The whole time he was talking it looked like he’d croak any minute. When I told my family about this they looked like I’d won the lottery or somethin’. Either that or they thought I was so full of shit my eyes were brown. Probably the latter. Old Bill apparently never was too close with any of his kids, except maybe his oldest, young Bill–but he’s dead now.
Anyhow, none of his living kids ever heard any stories about their Dad’s old life. He refused to talk about it. He either didn’t give enough of a shit to share things with ‘em or maybe he didn’t want to think about it, who knows? Either way, they hardly know jack about his life in London. That being said, they weren’t too helpful in filling in the blanks that Gramps left, so I (just so you know) have, uh, taken the liberty to fill things in where I see fit.
September 7th, 1940, that’s when the bombings started. I was ten years old, sitting in a primary school at St. Mary’s Junior Boys’ School on St. Alphonsus Road, right off Clapham Park. I don’t recall much of the beginning of that day, but I remember the classrooms being glum and the nuns glummer. Being just a young lad, I didn’t care too much for school and I always felt a bit left out ‘cause I wasn’t able to board like the rest of the boys. Mum didn’t have enough money. I remember trying hard to cover up the nature of my birth but they found out anyway, being the crafty little arseholes primary school boys are. From then on, they never let me forget that I was a bloody bastard. Heh, jokes on them anyways–most of their daddies died in the war. At the time though, their daddies was heroes, and they made sure everybody know’d it. Wankers. Well, I shouldn’t say all of ‘em were bad. There was one boy, Albert, who also couldn’t afford to board. We outcasts stuck together. He was a scrawny, dodgy bloke with greasy black hair and pale, freckled skin. Not a real looker, but neither was I. The only girls we were ever around was the nuns anyway, so it didn’t matter much. Anyways, the day was cloudy and rainey–as usual, but I remember the sun starting to peak its head out of the clouds. I was slumped over my desk, proppin’ up me head with me hand and looking out the stained window. That’s when the sirens began.
“Alright now, everybody stay calm and stay seated. It’s just a test,” Sister Wilson said. But us boys were fidgety. The war had everybody on edge. We know’d Hitler was mad ‘nuff to do just about anything. Just then, we heard tyres screeching on the street outside, and we all panic.
“Alby, let’s get out of here,” I says. I didn’t know if it was a test or not, but I never missed a chance to skive off. He looked at me in the eyes and nodded, the poor lad was shakin’ like a leaf. Sister Wilson steps into the hallway and I take my chance. Alby and I darted right past her, I can still remember her yell. I wish I would’ve listened.
“C’mon Alby, this way,” I said. We turned down the long hallway and I could see the double doors in the distance. As we got closer, I got a better listen of that siren. It was the air raid siren. Since the war started, they’d been testing all these different kinds of sirens on a regular basis in case of an attack. They were always just tests, though, no way could anything happen in London. We were the British Empire for Chrissake, you had to be off your gourd to try to attack London. So I figured it must be another test, and out the door we went.
“Holy Christ Billy…” Albert said. We was stunned by what we saw. There were cars abandoned everywhere, men and their birds running and screaming. We had never seen anything like it. Not a thing like it.
“Comon, this way,” I said. We turned left on Clapham and ran as fast as we could. After a block or two I turned to look behind me–I’d always been faster than Albert, the boy had less coordination than me Grandmum and was twice as likely to go arse over tit. Sure enough, the boy was nowhere to be seen. I ran back about a block, and saw him down a different street. He was a block down, staring straight ahead.
“ALBY! ALLLBEEEERT! GODDAMNIT MAN, SNAP OUT OF IT! C’MON MATE WE GOTTA GET OUT OF HERE!,” I scream, running back towards him. When I caught up I got a look at what he was staring at. There was a lorry crashed straight into a filling station, right in front of him. The flames were still roaring. There were bodies, well I don’t know if I should call them bodies. They were scorched almost to the bone. Looked like a family to me, but then again, I couldn’t look long. “C’mon mate let’s go,” I pulled him away. We headed back down the way we came and we saw a bomb blow up in the distance ahead, the German bomber came right over our noggins. Men, women, and children were running all sorts of directions. No one said a word to us. That is, till a young chap, maybe twenty, screamed at us that we was running the wrong way.
“Follow me, boys! Closest shelter is Clapham South!” he shouted. Bollocks. I had been running us north this whole time. There wasn’t time to beat myself up for more than a moment and we followed the chap. This is when the bombing really started. It was all around us, buildings collapsing, people maimed or dead–cars toppled over. We was absolutely snookered any way you looked at it.
“Keep your head down Alby, just don’t look!” I yelled. I was running behind him, as to not lose sight of him. I didn’t want to lose him again. That boy didn’t have anybody else to look out for him. I knew by that gobsmacked look on his face that he was more scared than I was.
“Just a few more blocks, boys! Keep your heads up and watch where you’re running!” The chap yelled. He’d been saying that for five blocks now. I didn’t know how much further we could go. The man was half a block ahead of us, but would turn his head back once in a while to check on us. That’s when it happened, when he turned to check. He came to a complete stop to wait for us and a bomb dropped straight onto his head. Blown to bits he was. Right in front of us. The force of the bomb blew us back straight onto our arses and I had a piece of shrapnel fly straight into my shin.
“Fucken ‘ell! Alby me leg is fucked!” I screamed in agony. People say you go into shock in those types of situations and that you don’t feel a thing. Well I’ll tell ya right now, son, anybody who says that is off their goddamned trolly. Absolute rubbish. I lay there grabbing at the metal trying to pull it out. The pain was unbearable. “ARGH FUCK IT ALL TO ‘ELL!” I shouted as I pulled the bloody bastard out of me. I looked at the hole, and by hole I mean a goddamned hole, where my shin used to be. I could see the bone and the blood left me head quicker than it filled me willie that time ol’ Alby showed me one of his Daddy’s High Heel mags. I almost fainted but as me vision starts to black I look over to Alby. He had taken the fetal position but looked uninjured. He looked alright, that’s what mattered.
“Billy….I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I want my mum,” Albert said, laying in the street. He was absolutely hysterical–there was no moving him.
“I’m not leaving without you!” I yelled as I hobbled over to him. After I got to him I kept pulling at him and pulling at him but he wouldn’t budge, so I plopped down right next to him. “You wanna die, is that it? Yeah? Then I’m dying with ya! You stoopid arsehole!” I scream in his face. I wasn’t sure if he could hear me, hell, I couldn’t hear me. My ears rang like church bells.
He turned to me, tears in his eyes, and nodded. He struggled to his feet and then helped me to mine. “Billy your leg is fucked, can you walk? We’ve got to get you to the A&E,” he said to me. A stark soberness washed over his face.
“No worries mate, I’ll be alright. Let’s get out of here, yeah?” I says. I tried to ignore the pain in my leg but I grunted with each hobble. We started running again, or more like he ran as I hopped along. Next thing I knew he was way out ahead of me. I tried to keep up. I did try. I tried so hard. Finally, I yelled to him, “Alby, slow down mate, don’t leave me!”
“I’ve re-lived this moment again and again every day of me life, son. Why didn’t I just keep going? Why did I ask him to stop? Why didn’t I ask him for help earlier? Why did he not offer to help me walk when he saw me limping? Why? Goddamnit man, someone tell me why!” Grandpa says to me. Sitting next to the hospital bed, Gramps has me by the collar. He’s shaking me like a rag doll. He’s lucid, but when I look in his eyes there is nobody home. He was far away, in London, running away from a Nazi bombing.
I saw Alby stop and turn. “Shite! I’m sorry Bil–,” he was cut off by another shell dropping. Time stopped. I saw him staring at me with that stoopid, gobsmacked look on his face. He couldn’t believe he had left me behind. I saw how sorry he was. I never got to tell him it was okay, that I forgave him. All my life I just wanted to say, “No worries mate.”
Poor Alby. I was about a block back, and safe from the explosion. When time decided to up and start working again I saw him launch into the air–his legs detached from his body. He landed about 50 metres from me. I tried to yell, but nothing came out. I ran to his body and started dragging the top half of him towards the shelter. He wasn’t dead to me. He couldn’t be dead. I dragged his torso for about a block until a man running by grabbed me up, threw me over his shoulder, and carried me to the shelter. I kicked and screamed the whole way, covered in blood. I remember wondering whether it was my blood or his. For a few minutes there I thought I was dead, I must’ve blacked out. I was floating high above looking down at a man running with a bloody boy over his shoulder. Who are they? I wondered. What in God’s name has happened to them?
Here, at the end of his story, Gramps turns to me and looks as lucid as I’ve ever seen him. His eyes are clear and filled with intent. He starts rattling off facts like some kind of History Channel Doc.
“September 7th, 1940, the only day raid of the entire Blitz. Over 300 bombers entered London, and 500 fighters came with them. That same night at least another hundred bombers came, and cleaned up what the others had started. All in all, a couple thousand were injured, and a few hundred dead. I can’t say I was happy to be among the former. It was just a fraction of the some 40,000 of us Brits that would be killed by the end of it. One of them was Alby–that’s all that mattered to me. Look me in the eye, son,” he says, turning to his side. He knows someone is there but he can’t tell who. He must think I’m his oldest. “Billy, listen to me. It’s my fault. My fault,” he whispers.
I listen to my Grandpa’s story with tears welling in my eyes, how could he live through this and never talk about it? My Dad tells me that to be a man, you gotta keep your shit to yourself–everybody’s already got their own problems, ya know? They don’t need yours too. Maybe he learned it from Gramps.
He finishes telling me his story, or at least what he’s able to get out, and turns over on his back, unconscious. “Nurse! Nurse!” I yell, “Get the fuck in here! He’s dying!” and a pair of nurses rush through the door and tell me to fuck off for a while. I feel sorry for swearing at ‘em, but I swear when I get excited. There’s no helping it. I know, I know. Swearing is for people that don’t have vocabularies and what-not. But I’ll tell ya, I’ve got a great vocabulary! I know all sorts of words and shit. I’ve read every book I could get my hands on since I was little. I still swear though, and nobody’s gonna make me feel bad for doing it. Anyhow, I stand in the hallway like an idiot until I see the nurses rush him out of the room. Time for that smoke.
“Hey, assholes! Do you realize I’ve been in there for a whole hour alone with him? You wouldn’t believe the shit I’ve gone through in there!” I yell to my family as I walk out the door. I join their circle and light a cigarette and they all look at me like I just shot Lennon or something. Like I’ve totally fucked up their lives by joining this circle. They were probably out here bitching over the will. Sometimes I can’t stand this family, always bitching about money. Their goddamned Father is dying in there and all they care about is his money. That is, except for my Aunt. She’s got tears in her eyes and is pale with worry. She’s the best person out of them all. It’s not even close.
“Oh shut up, your fine.” my Dad says. My Aunt walks towards me.
“Sweetie, what happened? My Aunt asks.
“Grandpa went unconscious, you might want to go check on him,” I say, and my Aunt runs inside. I was left with my Dad, his two living brothers, and my little brother, Bryan, who abandoned his gameboy and came out of the car to check out the commotion. I take a deep drag of my cigarette and start telling them the story, and I realize how much I’d been sweating during the whole experience. I smell like heavy BO and I shake like Gramps. It feels like I’ve just seen a ghost.
“What a load of crap,” my Uncle Ben says.
“What the hell’s the matter with someone like you?” my Dad adds.
“Fucking hell.” I sigh. “I’m waiting in the truck. Your Dad might be dead in there if any of you care to check,” I say, “C’mon Bry let’s go,” and my brother and I walk away.
To this day, those three assholes still don’t believe me, but my Aunt and the rest of the family did when I told them at dinner. I don’t know how I feel about it, though. When I told them they all turned it into some big religious miracle. Like God wanted me to know this about my Grandpa or something. Like God or some sort of fuckin’ angel was acting through him. Like God even gives a shit anyway. I mean, I get they want some comfort about Grandpa, but I don’t like it. I don’t like it one bit.