My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry(13)

“What friends?”

Granny puts her hands against Elsa’s cheeks and smiles.

“They’ll come. Tomorrow I am sending you out on a treasure hunt, and it’s going to be a fairy tale of marvels and a grand adventure. And you have to promise not to hate me for it.”

Elsa blinks, and there’s a burning sensation.

“Why would I hate you?”

Granny caresses her eyelids.

“It’s a grandmother’s prerogative never to have to show her worst sides to her grandchild, Elsa. Never to have to talk about what she was like before she became a grandmother.”

“I know loads of your worst sides!”

She’s hoping to make Granny laugh with that one. But it doesn’t work. Granny just whispers in a sad voice: “It’s going to be a grand adventure and a fairy tale of marvels. But it’s my fault that you’ll find a dragon at the end, my darling knight.”

Elsa squints at her. Because she has never heard Granny talking like this. She always claims credit for the dragons at the end. It’s never her “fault.” Granny sits before her, tinier and more fragile than Elsa can remember ever having seen her. Not at all like a superhero.

Granny kisses her forehead.

“Promise you won’t hate me when you find out who I’ve been. And promise me you’ll protect the castle. Protect your friends.”

Elsa doesn’t know what any of this means, but she promises. And then Granny embraces her for longer than ever before.

“Give the letter to him who’s waiting. He won’t want to accept it, but tell him it’s from me. Tell him your granny sends her regards and says she’s sorry.”

And then she wipes the tears from Elsa’s cheeks. And Elsa points out that you’re supposed to say “to he who’s waiting,” not “him.” And they argue a bit about that, as usual. And then they play Monopoly and eat cinnamon buns and talk about who’d win a fight between Harry Potter and Spider-Man. Bloody pathetic discussion, of course, thinks Elsa. But Granny likes nattering on about these types of things because she’s too immature to understand that Harry Potter would have crushed Spider-Man.

Granny gets out some more cinnamon buns from large paper bags under another pillow. Not that she has to hide the cinnamon buns from Elsa’s mum the way she has to hide the beer from Elsa’s mum, but she likes keeping them together because she likes eating them together. Beer and cinnamon buns is Granny’s favorite snack. Elsa recognizes the name of the bakery on the bags; Granny only eats cinnamon buns from that one bakery, because she says no one else knows how to make real Mirevas cinnamon buns. In fact, it’s the national dish of the Land-of-Almost-Awake. One very bad thing about it is that one can only have the national dish on the national day. But a very good thing about it is that in the Land-of-Almost-Awake, every day is the national day. As Granny likes to put it, “In the end the problem disappears, said the old lady who crapped in the sink.” Elsa hopes with all her might that this doesn’t mean Granny is going to start using the kitchen sink with the door left open.

“Are you really going to get well?” Elsa asks with the reluctance of an almost-eight-year-old asking a question to which she already knows she doesn’t want to know the answer.

“Course I will!” Granny says with complete confidence, although she can see well enough that Elsa knows she’s lying.

“Promise,” Elsa insists.

And then Granny leans forward and whispers into her ear, in their secret language:

“I promise, my beloved, beloved knight. I promise that it will get better. I promise that everything will be fine.”

Because that is what Granny always says. That it will get better. That everything will be fine.

“But I still think that Spider-Man fellow would have wiped the floor with this Harry,” Granny adds with a grin. And, in the end, Elsa grins back at her.

They eat more cinnamon buns and play more Monopoly. And this makes it much more difficult to stay grumpy.

The sun goes down. Everything goes silent. Elsa lies very close to Granny in the narrow hospital bed. And they mainly just close their eyes, and the cloud animals come to fetch them, and they go to Miamas together.

And in an apartment block on the other side of town, everyone wakes up with a start when the hound in the first-floor flat, without any warning, starts howling. Louder and more heartrendingly than anything they have ever heard coming out of the primal depths of any animal. As if it is singing with the sorrow and yearning of an eternity of ten thousand fairy tales. It howls for hours, all through the night, until dawn.

And when the morning light seeps into the hospital room, Elsa wakes up in Granny’s arms. But Granny is still in Miamas.





5





LILIES


Having a grandmother is like having an army. This is a grandchild’s ultimate privilege: knowing that someone is on your side, always, whatever the details. Even when you are wrong. Especially then, in fact.

A grandmother is both a sword and a shield. When they say at school that Elsa is “different,” as if this is something bad; or when she comes home with bruises and the headmaster says she “has to learn to fit in,” this is when Granny backs her up. Won’t let her apologize. Refuses to let her take the blame. Granny never says to Elsa that she shouldn’t let it get to her because “then they won’t enjoy teasing you as much.” Or that she should “just walk away.” Granny knows better than that.