Grandma’s Coming with Us
We arrived at the dog show without a dog, with Grandma in the boot.
My sister said we were going to have a look. People looked at flats they weren’t going to buy. Dad wanted to know how much a dog like that ate. Mum had announced before we’d even left home that she wouldn’t be cleaning up dog hair. I’d agreed to come because it was Sunday and, in our family, it was easier to get in the car than explain why you didn’t want to.
Nobody had asked Grandma. She was already in there.
On a bend, something thudded behind us.
‘What was that?’ Mum asked.
‘Nothing,’ Dad said.
My sister and I looked at each other.
‘Dad.’
‘The water bottle. I put it at the side.’
‘What about Grandma?’
‘Grandma’s fine.’
Mum adjusted the air vent so it wouldn’t blow on her knee. My sister went back to looking at dogs on her phone. There were no more thuds behind us.
We were driving to a place whose name none of us could pronounce properly, to a show in a yard behind a sports hall. Grandma, who’d wanted to see the whole world when she was alive, had so far been to three towns with us, a lake, and a shopping centre car park where we realised we’d missed the turning for the old town.
We didn’t count that last one as an outing for her.
The urn had been in the boot ever since Dad collected it. First, someone needed to be called. Then that someone was on holiday. After that, a date had to be found that suited everyone, a document had to be tracked down, and someone had to check whether another document was needed. I lost track. Whenever we asked, Dad said he was sorting it out.
Once, Mum suggested he at least bring her up to the flat.
‘I will.’
The following weekend we went to the lake. Mum stood by the car with a bag of food.
‘Is she still in there?’
‘Yes.’
‘All right. We’re all going, then.’
That was how it started.
We didn’t tell other people she was in the car. Before leaving, we’d decide who was bringing water and who was bringing sandwiches. Grandma was already accounted for.
When she died, none of us cried.
I watched Dad. He was staring at his phone screen, listening to what someone was telling him. Mum went to get a pen. My sister suggested we sit down. We sat down. Later we ate, and I was surprised by how hungry I was. I took another piece of bread, then put it back in the basket, as though someone was keeping count.
Grandad had died before her. After that, Grandma wanted to die. She would say so without warning, in the middle of a conversation about the electricity bill or whether she needed us to bring her milk. If Dad tried to stop her, she raised her voice.
‘I know what I want, don’t I?’
She died soon afterwards. We said she’d got her way. No one added anything, so that was how we left it.
She’d already told us once that Grandad was dead. It was the first of April. She rang, said it, and waited.
I remember Mum’s hand on the back of a chair, and her asking when. Then we heard Grandma laughing down the phone. She laughed long enough for all of us to hear.
‘It’s April Fools’ Day! What’s wrong with you?’
Grandad was at the shops.
When he died for real, I checked the date.
On the way to the show, Mum opened the box of crescent rolls. She held it out to Dad, who took two, although she’d told him to take one because of the crumbs.
‘Grandma would have asked us to stop three times by now,’ my sister said.
‘And told us we should have taken a different road,’ Mum said.
Dad chewed.
‘She wouldn’t have come,’ he said at last.
He kept his eyes on the road, and Mum closed the box. No one spoke for several kilometres. My sister put her phone away.
Grandma wanted to go everywhere. If a travel programme came on television, she’d call us over to watch. As soon as the adverts started, she’d tell Grandad to change the channel.
She kept money under the bed, but whenever a trip was mentioned, she said she couldn’t afford it. I didn’t know how much she had. As a child, I imagined the banknotes all lying flat and facing the same way, like the towels in her cupboard.
The grandmother I knew had bipolar disorder. I heard from other people what she’d been like when she was young.
When she was manic, she baked at night. Tray after tray of cakes while everyone else slept. We’d arrive in the morning and there would be no room on the table to put down our keys. She talked fast, moving cakes from baking paper to plates, opening the oven, talking about a neighbour, a new curtain, someone who’d once been in love with her. She didn’t wait for us to ask anything. Sometimes she was so funny I laughed with my mouth full and scattered sugar down my T-shirt.
Grandad would greet us in his vest, his eyes not quite open. The sink held dishes he hadn’t got round to washing. Grandma hurried him along. If Dad intervened, she could turn on both of them in an instant. We would take our cakes more quietly then.
When she was depressed, she sat in a room with the blinds down. I stood in the doorway with something cheerful I’d rehearsed saying. The moment I saw her, it sounded stupid to me.
One morning, as she cut up a cake still warm from the oven, she told me that Kata next door had run off with a bus driver.
‘Which bus?’
‘What do you mean, which bus? An international one. To Graz.’
She put a slice on my plate, its middle still oozing. She leaned closer without lowering her voice.
‘And her husband thinks she’s at her daughter’s.’
Grandad was standing at the sink.
‘She is at her daughter’s.’
Grandma looked over her shoulder at him.
‘Oh, she’d tell you, would she?’
She said Kata had taken two large bags. Grandad said he’d carried one of them to the bus stop for her. Grandma slapped the table.
‘There! He even helped her!’
She laughed until I began to laugh too. Grandad waved a hand, turned on the tap and went back to washing up.
‘But how do you know about the driver?’ I asked.
‘You have to question everything. Eat it while it’s warm.’
I wanted to tell her she’d started it. I put too big a piece of cake in my mouth and it burnt my tongue, but Grandma had already turned towards the television. Her Mexican soap was starting. She immediately called one of the actresses a whore. I asked what she’d done.
‘Watch and you’ll see.’
A romance novel lay on the table in front of her, folded back at the spine. If the adverts went on too long, she’d pick it up and read, then ask what she’d missed.
I didn’t know what to make of her stories about her childhood. I knew about the poverty, about growing up during the Second World War, about a family where she hadn’t been happy. When she started talking about those things, I didn’t ask how she knew, or whether she was sure. I let her talk. Afterwards, I tried to separate what she’d said that day from what she’d said the time before. I stopped repeating some parts because I didn’t know which version to choose.
This was her advice to me:
‘Always have several men on the go. Then pick the one who’ll do everything for you.’
Grandad was bringing saucers in from the kitchen.
‘Listen to her,’ he said.
He set down her saucer and moved her cup closer to her hand. Grandma seemed very pleased with the evidence.
Outside the sports hall, a man in a hi-vis vest showed us where to park. Dad straightened the car several times, although everyone else was parked at an angle on the grass. He opened the boot.
The urn was wrapped in an old towel, wedged in so it wouldn’t tip over. The water bottle was lying loose. Dad picked it up and showed us.
‘What did I tell you?’
No one disputed his victory.
Mum took her jacket. My sister was already heading towards the entrance, where we could hear barking and the PA system. Dad stayed by the boot.
‘What if someone breaks into the car?’
Mum looked at the urn, then opened her bag.
‘Give her here.’
She moved her tissues and purse into a pocket, and handed me her glasses and an unwrapped mint. Dad lowered the urn into the bag. Mum tried to do up the zip, but it caught on the rim.
‘Don’t force it,’ Dad said.
She left it open a few centimetres and slung the bag over her shoulder. As she walked, she held it in front of her with both hands.
At the entrance, they asked how many of us there were.
‘Four,’ Mum said at once.
My sister turned towards me. I looked down.
Grandma got in free.
In the yard, the dogs had numbers, chairs, brushes and people to wipe the corners of their eyes. A large white dog stood on a table while a woman brushed its backside. Grandma would have said it was lovely, as long as it belonged to someone else.
Mum and I sat on a bench with the bag between us. My sister went to speak to a man with two dogs like the ones she’d shown us on her phone. Dad followed, close enough to hear the price.
At the other end of the bench, a woman was brushing a dog with a tiny brush. It wore a blue bow. She asked which one was ours.
‘We haven’t got one,’ Mum said. ‘My daughter’s looking.’
The woman said that was the best way: have a look first, ask questions. Her dog was eight. Before him she’d had another of the same breed. When she talked about that one, her brush stopped. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand and said you got attached, what could you do?
Mum took a tissue from her pocket and handed it to her.
I looked over at Dad. He stood with his arms folded, listening to the price of the dog. My sister was already on her knees.
The woman thanked Mum and went on brushing. I didn’t tell her about Grandma. Beside the bag with the urn in it, we talked about the shampoo she used.
Later, we went to a food stall. Mum put the bag on an empty plastic chair. When the waiter brought our plates, she asked if the bag was in the way.
‘Are you expecting someone else?’
‘No,’ she said.
She pulled the chair closer.
Dad had ordered ćevapi. My sister said the dog wasn’t really that expensive when you considered everything that came with it. Dad asked whether it came with someone to walk it.
‘Grandma would tell you to find a husband,’ I said.
‘Several, first,’ my sister said.
Dad laughed before he’d had time to swallow. Mum passed him a napkin. We laughed at the table over plates where crumbs floated in grease, with Grandma’s bag on the chair beside Mum, at the same height as the rest of us.
Grandma would have spotted that table a mile off. She was obsessed with cleaning. In her kitchen, the sink was wiped after every drop. Once, as a child, I’d wanted to wash my hands, but changed my mind when I saw her holding the cloth. I went to the bathroom. Behind me, I heard her asking where I was going.
While Grandad was alive, he was careful too. He shook his hands several times before moving them away from the sink, but a drop would still land on the edge. Grandma got up at once. Sometimes he hadn’t even had time to move before she pushed his hand aside with the cloth.
I didn’t like being left alone with her. When people asked how it had been, I listed the cakes we’d eaten. That was usually enough.
On the way back, we stopped at a service station. My sister had fallen asleep as soon as we set off, and now complained that we’d woken her. Mum wanted coffee. While the two of them were inside, Dad took out the rolls and sat on a bench beside the car park. I sat next to him.
‘I can carry her upstairs later,’ I said.
He looked towards the car.
‘All right.’
Mum came back with coffee in a paper cup. My sister had another dog leaflet and a sandwich.
The leaflet showed a small white dog. Grandma would have said every mark showed on white. Then she’d have asked me what was new, and been disappointed if I said nothing. I made up a story about a woman from the show who’d left her husband and was travelling from one competition to the next on his money. Grandma would have liked it. By the end of the week, in her telling, the husband would have ended up in prison and the woman would have married the judge.
I didn’t tell it aloud. My sister read from the leaflet that this breed didn’t like being alone. Dad held out the box of rolls to her.
We stayed on the bench until Mum finished her coffee.
Dad opened the boot. I took the bag with the urn and headed for the back door.
‘I can hold her.’
I got in, put the bag beside me and slipped my arm through the handles. My sister shifted so she wouldn’t step on the strap. Mum turned round and asked if I had enough legroom.
At the first bend, I steadied the bag. Dad looked at us in the rear-view mirror.
‘Everything all right?’
‘All right.’
When we reached our building, Mum handed out the bags. My sister took the leftover rolls and her leaflets. Dad locked the car and reached for the bag.
‘I’ve got her,’ I said.
Dad went ahead to open the door for us. The handles cut into my fingers. While we waited for the lift, I moved the bag to my other hand.
In the flat, Mum asked for her bag back. There were already shopping bags on the kitchen table, so I moved them aside and took out the urn. I folded the towel and laid it beside her. From the other room, my sister was saying something about dogs.
For the first time, I saw the urn under our kitchen light. There were fingerprints on the lid. I took the hem of my T-shirt and wiped them away. Then I turned the urn a little, to see if I’d got them all.
In the end, we drove her to the place where she’d wanted to rest, beside Grandad. Dad had all the paperwork. When it was over, we stood there a little longer. Then the four of us went back to the car.
This time, Grandma wasn’t coming with us.