What You Should Write

Grandma’s on her third glass of brandy for the evening. She drinks a lot these days, ever since grandpa died. Her mother was an alcoholic and grandma is touchy on the subject, so much so that she refuses to read books about characters who deal with alcoholism. Her own mother’s personality changed at night when she had her first drink and became cruel and wintry. Grandma is more than aware that alcohol can have these effects. She drinks anyway.

“You know what you _SHOULD_ write?” she asks.

I’m sitting on the living room rug in front of her easy chair. “What?” I ask, flatly.

“Travel memoirs,” she says. “That’s what I like to read.”

Then _YOU_ write it, I want to say, but don’t. “Mmm,” I say instead.

“I don’t know why anyone likes what you write,” she says.

I know that she means the subject of what I write, not the writing itself. She has long admired my prose. I don’t really care, though. What she’s said is offensive enough.

I hate discussing writing with drunks.

Grandma wanted to be a writer. When I was 11, she brought me to a writer’s group that she went to weekly. None of the women in it were published, which is fine as it goes, but when there was no real movement toward professionalism in that circle — well, why does it become my burden to be the repository for whatever dreams of a writing life grandma never really pursued in the first place?

“I wrote short stories,” she says. I know this, but my prior knowledge has ceased to be relevant to the conversation. Let’s be honest: _I’ve_ ceased to be relevant to the conversation.

She gets up, which is a trial for her these days since she’s on an oxygen machine that doesn’t quite solve the breathing problems she has from her emphezema. She pulls down a brown file folder. It’s filled with print-outs.

“I wrote poems, too,” she says.

She commences reading them. There’s a sentimental story about a housewife and mother who owns a dog. She wants to know what I think. I hate being put in that position. I tell her I like the specificity of detail. She pushes. I say that the ending strikes me as playing a bit on sentiment. That’s on purpose, she says.

I look at my mother and father. They’re busying themselves with not much in particular. There’s nothing they can do with this conversation anyway. Grandma has already picked on my mother, saying that my mother reminds her of her sister, because they’re both too bossy, and then looking shocked at my mother’s offense.

Oh, mom. The step-daughter from a generation where step-children were a shame to be closeted away, always trying to be dutiful because she knows that the woman who raised her doesn’t view her in quite the same light that she views her ‘natural’ children. If she loves this woman more, if she gives her as much as she can, if she does everything perfectly, then maybe she’ll get maternal love equal to her worth. Sure enough, there was a phone call a few years ago, an apology for treating my mother the way she did. But here’s mom, the only one of the children here after their father’s death, helping to pack away grandpa’s things, and all that generosity and dedication is swept away by brandy and thoughtlessness. They’re both too bossy.

Grandma takes out another print-out. This time it’s a poem. She reads it aloud in her creaking, oxygen-starved voice.

Oh. Oh, no. It’s a poem about me. A poem about me and my cousin who’s just a couple months older. A poem comparing us. Oh. Oh, no. It’s about how everyone fussed over me because I was cheerful and intelligent and performed for company, but grandma, she could see how all that was surface, how all that was nothing, she could see what everyone was overlooking, the tender shyness of the child that everyone should really be fussing over. My cousin. The one who’s really good.

My heart is pounding, or slowing, or something. Something wrong. I look at my mother. Well, here it is again. Natural family versus step-family. It doesn’t matter what we do. If we come to help her in her time of need, then we’re bossy. If we’re successful writers, we write the wrong thing. If people celebrate us, then it’s taking attention away from the really worthy ones.

That poem is about me when I was three years old.

Already wrong in her eyes. Already stealing resources that should have gone elsewhere.

I think of how much I loved this woman when I was a child, how I cradled her gently in my heart during the years when I didn’t often see her, how I’d treasured her, and thought she’d treasured me. But what was going on in my head wasn’t going on in hers. She’s given me glimpses of that before. Loud conversation at Thanksgiving dinner about what a weird child I was. How unfriendly I was. How I would never stop reading. I’ve taken that pain already, and I’ve been stashing it in my stomach, full of thorns and prickles. I try to forget it. It nettles my skin and I remember.

But this? That she already disdained me when I was three years old?

She’s stopped reading. She’s looking at me over the edge of the paper. Her gaze is expectant. Oh. Oh, no.

It’s not enough that I’ve listened. She wants my criticism of the poem now. The poem about me. My criticism as a _writer._

“It’s… very vivid,” I say. I pull myself up. I clutch my arms, looking cold, only half as an artifice that will give me an excuse to go get my sweatshirt. I leave the room, leaving them behind me, my parents on the couch, my grandmother in her easy chair, breathing heavily with the hiss of her oxygen machine.

“I think I’m going to take a walk,” I say, stepping back into the room for a moment as I shrug the sweatshirt on. Grandma isn’t looking at me anymore. Mom looks up and smiles and waves. She’s bossy. I’m attention-seeking. How long have these narratives defined us in this woman’s mind? Since before we were three years old?

I push open the front door and walk outside into the dark chill. All around are identical tract homes, cars neatly parked in the driveways. No one can park on the street here after dark. It’s illegal to deviate like that in this neighborhood. I choose a path between wide lawns and palm trees and darkened bay windows illuminated by the flash of television screens. I try to walk away.