Too Many Mysteries

On an overcast Florida morning, my grandfather stood alone on a deserted stretch of beach, hands clasped behind him and staring out at the horizon. Thunderclouds were gathering over the ocean and it was a lonely image, the sky and the water, even the sand were colored in shades of gray and a soft mist of rain was falling.

I don't know if I actually remember that morning or just the picture of it that my grandmother took and kept in one of her many photo albums. My memories of Florida are hazy and fragmented - a camel ride, the glass bottom boat in the Everglades, the dozens of chameleons that lived all over the grounds, and the Spanish looking red brick of the bungalow that we stayed in are all sketchy. I don't remember my grandfather's presence at all except for maybe that one morning.

Everyone, including my mother and grandmother, called him Charlie or more commonly "CB". People outside the family adored him and he seemed to have hundreds of friends and could call everyone he encountered by name. He was a large, gruff, bald man with an ever present cigar or cigarette. He was loud, rough spoken, could and did cuss like a sailor and was violently impatient and demanding. He displayed no soft side and he frightened me because he always seemed to be yelling at someone. His laughter was raucus and he was famous for hard drinking, off color jokes, marital infidelity and generosity. He bought people off, including his grandchildren. And he controlled his world with a tight rein on my grandmother and a tighter, more dismissive one on his daughter. He believed in ruling absolutely and when needed, with a fist. The family was wary around him, always careful not to displease or let down their guard. Except for my daddy, we all asked permission for the smallest things and he took pleasure in granting them as long as we understood that we had to ask first.

I was in my first year of high school when he died and the effect of his death was minimal on me. The funeral was held at Cambridge's largest Baptist church and not only was every seat taken, people stood in the aisles, the balcony, even the choir loft. My mother and grandmother sobbed from opening to closing while my daddy comforted both as best he could. I watched with a detached but un-invested interest, I was hard pressed to feel much loss at the death of someone who had been, at best, a sometimes not unkindly stranger. His death was as much a mystery to me as his life had been and it seemed that the massive churchful of mourning strangers had known him better. I came to realize that he'd had a profound effect on my life because he'd had a profound effect on my mother's life.

Later at Nana's kitchen table, she drank coffee and I listened to a story of a loveless marriage which had produced an unloved child. She spoke with resignation and bitterness, I needed a husband and he needed respectability, she told me, it was a fair trade. When I asked her why my grandfather and mother had never gotten along, she gave me a sad smile and touseled my hair. People often don't get along with their mirror images, she said softly, It's a mystery.