Flying Lessons & Other Stories(32)
In Berlin, she left me stranded in the middle of a dodgy parade. In Marseilles, she paid a fast-talking young cabdriver named Gael to take me out with his wild teenage friends while she shopped for shoes. And yesterday, on our first night in Spain, I dressed up in a suit and combed my hair so I’d look nice for the “theater,” only to end up cowering in the front row at an adults-only burlesque.
Why can’t I have a normal grandmother? Why is every second of this trip a walk off the gangplank?
Nani returns to the beach four hours later in a completely new dress and hairstyle and finds me hiding in a dank, foul-smelling cave, knees balled to my chest.
“Have you really been in here the whole time?” She frowns.
“This is pointless,” I mumble. “All of this is pointless.”
“It’s true.” Nani sighs, eyeing my new swimsuit. “If I knew you’d spend the whole day in the dark, you could have just worn your underpants instead.”
I give her the silent treatment all the way back to the hotel.
—
“Did you take Mom away too when she was young?” I ask later, struggling to crack a stone crab at dinner.
“Your mother is like your grandfather,” Nani says vaguely, already finished shelling and eating hers.
“What’s that mean?” I ask, trying to keep the slippery crab in the silver cracker.
“They’d rather stay home and do work.”
“Yeah, but that’s how they both make money—”
“And what do they do with it?” Nani fires. “Your mother hoards every dime as if she’ll live forever. Your grandfather hasn’t taken me to a movie or dinner or show or anywhere else in fifteen years. ‘We’re old now,’ he says. ‘We’re old.’?”
“But he lets you spend as much money as you want—”
“Money!” She pounces. “What good is money to a bird in a cage?”
Her eyes glow with emotion. For the first time, I can’t find Nani inside of them.
Slowly her gaze softens. Her hands unclench. “Santosh, sweetie. You really sat there in that dark cave the whole afternoon?”
“What was I supposed to do? Enjoy the scenery?”
“By the time I came back, the beach was teeming with families,” says Nani, taking a big swig of champagne. “You were so busy worrying about naked aunties that you didn’t notice all the kids your age running around, looking as friendly as could be.”
I give up on the crab. “Can’t we just visit the Basilica Sagrada like other Americans?”
She puts down her glass. “Do you know why I brought you on this trip, Santosh?”
“So you could get away from Grandpa?”
She lets out a cackle. “No! Well, yes. But no. I brought you on this trip because you win too many awards at school.”
I stare at her blankly. “What?”
“Best in math, best in English, best in debate, history, science, chorus…How many awards can you win? Every year I come to the ceremony and watch you go back and forth to the stage, picking up all the trophies and making me and your mother carry them, because there are too many for you to hold.”
“Nani,” I say, losing patience. “What does winning awards have to do with anything?”
“Because when you’re older, no one cares how many awards you win, Santosh. People care if you have something to talk about. And right now, all you have to talk about are things from books.”
My cheeks are hot. I’m pretty sure that my nani—my sixty-nine-year-old nani—is calling me a nerd. Not just a nerd, but a nerd who doesn’t have a life, who has no friends, who is a complete and total loser. The cool boys at school taunt me the same way, with their perfect faces and athletic bodies and 20/20 eyes. But it doesn’t matter what they say. Because every year at the last assembly, they and their parents have to sit there and watch me win every single last award while they win nothing, nada, zilch, and they’ll continue to watch me win every last award until senior year, when I’m valedictorian and I go to Harvard and I have a real life while they look back and realize that I was the cool kid all along and they were the losers. So for Nani—the one person who I look up to more than anyone in this world, the one person who is supposed to love me unconditionally—to now say the same thing as the hot boys at school…
She sees it in my face.
“I used to love seeing you win all those awards, Santosh. I loved seeing you and your mother happy,” she says softly. “But now when you win, you don’t smile anymore. The more you win, the less happy you look.”
Heat rips through me, and I turn away. “I’ll be happy when I get home from this trip.”
A long pause stretches between us. I can feel my jaw clamped shut.
Nani’s hand gently touches mine. “Santosh, all I’m asking is that for the last two days of our trip, I want you to forget about books and trophies and school—”
“You don’t know me, okay?” I retort, but my voice fades as I say it, and for once Nani lets me piddle with my crab in silence.
—
The next day, I ask to go back to the beach.
Nani seems to have anticipated this, because my swim trunks have been steam-cleaned and she’s already made her own plans for the day, which include a manicure at the Pink Peony and lunch with old friends at La Tetereria.