Pocket Change

My grandfather was not well liked.

The last summer he spent with us on the island was my least favorite.  He was ill - with what was never discussed - but he spent a good amount of his time in an upstairs bedroom and insisted my grandmother be at his beck and call, stopping whatever she was doing to fetch him hot tea with whiskey or a dose of parabolic or clean sheets.  We were not allowed to play inside for fear of disturbing him and I can still hear his voice - harsh, whiny, helpless but demanding, always disagreeably demanding - as he shouted Nana's name. She jumped at the sound and scurried up the steep steps like a squirrel each time he called.

We had no company that year, not even family came and visitors were few and far between.  The silence was oppressive and unfamiliar - nobody except Nana was allowed in the sick room - and by June, we were all bad tempered, exhausted and battered.  Our usual carefree summer had been turned into a kind of pre-death watch with even Aunt Pearl and Aunt Vi keeping their distance.  The fishermen who regularly would drop by with a haddock or a pound of scallops still came but they knocked very quietly at the screen door and didn't come past it. There were no birthday celebrations that summer, no after supper card games, no Ladies Auxillary meetings or sewing circle gatherings or Red Sox games on the radio.  Nana wouldn't even leave the house to go to church on Sundays.  Children and dogs were turned out every fine day and confined to the sunporch with the door shut if it was foggy.

It was a wearying, lonely, and dark summer and it bred resentment and shame.  I knew he was a crude, vulgar man, a dominating and unpleasant bully with a nasty temper but discovering that others knew it as well was hard.  He frightened people, his family included, and there were times when I wished he would die and be done with it.  I hated his iron handed selfishness and his brutal dismissiveness of my grandmother.  I hated the way she cringed when he talked to her, the way he called my mother names and made fun of the islanders who were so much a part of our lives.  I hated the way the upstairs smelled of sickness and bleach and the way the village felt sorry for us.  In time, I hated him.  It wasn't something he could buy off with his usual handful of pocket change.

In July, we jumped at the chance to get away and spend time at the farm with my daddy's family but I desperately missed hearing the ocean each morning and night and felt guilty about leaving Nana.  We stayed three weeks and then returned to the island, finding things just as we'd left them.

My grandfather didn't die that summer nor for several of the summers that came after but he never came back to the house on The Point either.  I never thought that anyone missed him.