One late May, before I was old enough for Sleep-aways and
summer school, Grandma and I camped on her cement patio and poached the caps
from the second wave of blossoms on her Magnolia, hours prematurely. She could
tell when one was ready to bloom, recognizing the ripples and white stretch
marks in browning caps. With more gentle fingers, she demonstrated how to
properly cap-pluck—a quick screwing of pinched thumbs and pointers and a gentle
tug up, like unravelling a curled hose—and her flower popped open, like the
spray in slow motion stills of pipette dropped, disturbed water. My first
attempts were brusque. “Take it slow,” Grandma urged. Still, the buds tugged with the shell, and
severed from their bases, or from the branch entirely. Grandma assured this
would all be redeemed; eventually I’d coax a cap gently enough for the pink
flowers to unfurl, still attached. I did not get there that afternoon. She strung
the husked, clamped flowers from the failed attempts with old dental floss and
made a necklace with a day long life-span, never seen by me again. Necklaces and
flowers demanded girls, so she wore it. In the afternoon, the strung flowers
crippled, and Grandma needed to refresh her false-teeth. She led me inside. Her
house smelled of potpourri. We ate deli-bought mashed potatoes, on her couch.
The first first-date I ever went on, I remembered the
delicate moments when Grandma guided me with her hands, and suggested this
activity. The girl was over first-kisses at RomComs, a veteran of sunset smooching,
an apostate of wineless pasta dinners and symmetric end-bitten ciabatta rolls.
This was sweet and unique. It had been a dry April, but the Swayze Park
Bradford Pear buds were plump, ripe. At the first group of trees, I pointed out
appropriate buds. Her strokes were terse, and the first few ripped from the
tree. I had lots of success. The flowers did not spring open like those on
Magnolias, but they smudged out with the push of a thumb. I was too afraid to
broach our distance and teach her the proper method, with my fingers piloting
hers. She grew restless and laid a hand on my shoulder. She told me some people
joked the buds smelled inappropriate, and her lips peeled into a slight smile.
I pretended to agree. I pecked her cheek at her door. She giggled, and I
blushed. We made out the next Sunday
when I was prepared with Listerine. She told me to reign in my tongue.
We held pasty hands in public and trite secrets spilled
from my sore lips during on-top-of-the-blankets cuddling, my upper back perched
on my futon armrest, my hands locked-in and fingers revived. Certain secrets
that betrayed callowness were off-limits: that she was my first kiss went
unspoken, voice-recordings pre-voice-drop were sheathed, the source of my first
date unrevealed. Most everything else was unguarded and escaped. “I have scars
on my upper right thigh from play sword-fighting with a fireplace poker.” “I
always hung up without reciprocating Grandma’s love yous.” “Sometimes, when you
dig your head into the crease between my shoulder and chest, and tickle me with
your breath, I think I may grow to love you someday.” She would exhale to alert
me she was listening, spiraling a sympathetic finger, from below, on my scapula.
Usually I slipped into her hairline crease, wondering at her roots,
anticipating a verbal response. After a few breaths, she would find words. “How
old were you?” “She knew you loved her—some things are implicit.” Sometimes she
was more pointed. “Take it slow.” She
repeated herself my first time. The semester sped to an end.
We were together seven weeks; summer came, she was
respectful but bored, friends had me know relationships were unwieldy to carry on
Saturdays at beaches across the country…we centrifuged away from each other,
and did not care to stop spinning. I spent my summer weekends loading pickups
of kitsch lingering in Grandma’s basement, like pear skins stuck on
blender-blades. We gutted the place in a few weeks.
I had my first driving lesson on her gravel driveway.
The car wobbled in a ditch, by some transplanted magnolias, and boxes shifted
in the back of a pickup. I floored the break and one box titled forward, its
contents oozing out in waves. Dad told me to leave it be, and he shifted into
the driver’s seat and led us on the highway fast-lane to the dump. It was my
job to throw things out. Thirty-gallon bags, boxes brimming with desk-lamps and
tissue boxes and brochures. The contents of the empty box, disappointing
unfounded expectations: packets of tree-shaped air-freshener, a flattened
wreath, an alphabet-bead necklace spelling “love” from my sister, dental floss.
