The Loose Ends List(46)

Gram walks out. She’s a hairless, deflated mushroom. Her body is tiny and shriveled, and her ass tattoo hangs so low, I can’t even make out the seahorse shape. It’s just a blob of color. Her stomach distends like she’s pregnant, and her boobs hang down and touch the swollen belly mass. Yet the shriveled, drooping woman standing before me in a shiny turquoise thong bikini looks beautiful. Her silver hair, pinned up in Chinese hairpins, frames her delicate features. Her devilish expression gives her a schoolgirl glow.

I love my gram.

Aunt Rose stands next to her sister in a ruby-red one-piece thong. She’s a little taller and flatter bellied, but equally shriveled and even saggier. Gravity really does pull everything down.

“Wow, Wes. Billy never told me how large you are. Good for you,” Gram says. Wes turns a perfect shade of purple to match his eye. “And, Trish, maybe a little laser hair removal would be good for you, dear.”

“Thank you, Mother dear, but I prefer to look like a woman, not a baby,” Mom says, adjusting her suit.

Gram pays the saleswoman, who doesn’t bat an eye. She surely sees deranged people all day long. We don’t hide behind our beach bags, afraid to show off our goods. No, the Astrid North O’Neill party struts. We work it. Wes is in the middle, flanked by Mom and me and Rose and Gram, walking the streets of Rio in thongs.

“We’re sexy, and we know it,” Gram belts. A man in a floral shirt gives us the thumbs-up.

We get to the beach, throw our stuff down, and march toward the ocean. We push against the waves, holding hands so we don’t lose Gram and Aunt Rose, who probably weigh a hundred pounds between them.

“Woo-hoo-hoo,” we shout at the top of our lungs, as the cold surf hits our bare skin. Aunt Rose’s sun hat flies off Wes’s head, and we lunge forward to grab it, causing all of us to fall in and yelp.

Wes runs up to get his bee as we stumble out, laughing so hard it hurts my side. We face the sea and pose for a nice lady who volunteers to take photos.

I’m exhausted by the adrenaline rush and from wrestling with the waves while laughing hysterically. Wes sends the photo of our bare asses with a text to Uncle Billy: I’m sorry for being an ass. Please forgive me. I love you.

Uncle Billy texts back, OMFG. I forgive you, you fool.

A few minutes later, he sends a close-up picture of Dad’s terrified hang-gliding face with the caption SCAREDY CAT MADE IT!

Gram laboriously works on a text of her own, beneath the shade of our beach umbrella. It takes her five minutes to write two sentences. Be ready in the lobby at five sharp. We’re going to Iceland, babies!



I get Enzo’s first three things just before we board the plane. I’ve been waiting; I wasn’t going to go first. 1. My mum likes you. That’s a first. (She called my other girlfriends flighty.) It’s probably because you made me leave my cabin. 2. The best thing about being back in England is the prospect of eating large quantities of curry for lunch and dinner. 3. You have a perfect nose.

Enzo Ivanhoe said girlfriend.





FIFTEEN


IT TAKES EIGHTEEN hours, including a layover in Amsterdam, to make it to Iceland. The flight is so long we get warnings to walk around the plane so we don’t develop deep vein thrombosis, another cause of death I was not aware of.

I switch seats with Bob and sit with Gram in first class for the second leg of the trip. Bob honks so loudly nobody can sleep. Gram doesn’t know what’s worse, Bob’s snoring or Grandpa Martin’s overactive bladder. “More reasons to embrace your youth,” she finishes.

There are so many things I never knew about Gram. She can be as cryptic as she can be open and exposed. I ask why we’re going to Iceland, of all places, and she whispers, “It’s all because of a very old book.” Then she pulls out a tattered copy of Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne. Gram had read us the story about the guy and his nephew who burrowed into an adventure through an Icelandic volcano one summer in Bermuda when we were freshly showered and lined up on the guesthouse daybed. I never knew how much it meant to her.

Gram hands me a folded, yellowed paper from inside the book cover. It says Dear Mummy, I would like very much if you and Father could take me to the Sneffels volcano in Iceland so that I may take a journey into the earth. Very Truly Yours, Astrid North.

According to Gram, who was ten at the time she wrote the letter, her coldhearted mother returned the letter and told her there was no such thing as a Sneffels volcano, the book was pure fantasy, and they would not be going to the wretched island of Iceland.

Despite Gram’s parents, who were supposedly big *s, the book became a source of inspiration for all her world travels. She’s been to over sixty countries, but never got around to visiting the place where it all began. We’re going to Iceland to prove Gram’s mother wrong.



“This is psychedelic,” Mom says as we drive down a solitary road surrounded by giant black boulders. There are no plants or trees, just an eerie lava rock graveyard.

I’m squished in the back of a tiny rental car with Jeb and the luggage. Our caravan pulls up to an oasis, a massive turquoise cauldron simmering in the middle of a vast boulder colony.

The Blue Lagoon.

“Pretty neat, isn’t it?” Gram says as we climb out of our respective cars, groggy and grubby. “It’s a man-made geothermic hot spring in the middle of a lava bed. These hot springs are the national pastime here in Iceland.”