For the first time since I had entered his study and sat across from him he looked at me. I mean really looked at me. He cleared his throat again, brushed his chin with his thumb thoughtfully and then said, “It means angry and unhappy.”
My only reply was to look at the lavish rug beneath my feet and burble out a single, “Oh.”
He told me what to expect in the coming days, such as when my friends were scheduled to leave, when he thought Mom would be home. Then he dropped a bombshell on me.
“There is one bit of unpleasant business I need to discuss with you.” Grandfather said with more emotion than he had thus far shown during our little chat.
With no idea what to expect I leaned back into the leather backed chair and braced myself for anything.
“What can you tell me about the broken vase from the third floor hallway?”
For several moments I sat looking dumbly. I had no idea what he was talking about at first; then like a flash it all came back to me. More than a month back I had been amusing myself one boring Sunday afternoon with a game of Frisbee football. I had made a Frisbee from an old cardboard box I had found. I had been tossing it inside the house and chasing after it while I tried my best to dodge the make-believe opponents. I pretended to be going back for a long pass when I bumped into the table at the end of the hallway. The only thing on that table had been a tall, top-heavy green and white vase. I hadn’t even realized that I had sent it tumbling to the floor until I heard the crash of glass. I think I would have confessed to breaking it then and there, had I not been told at least four times earlier that day to stop playing rough in the house. To keep from getting into trouble, I had collected all the shards of glass, taken them to my bathroom and spent the remainder of that day gluing them back together. I guess I must have done a pretty good job of rebuilding the vase because it had taken this long for anyone to figure it out.
OK, Grandfather had me dead to rights and we both knew it. I should have come clean but I guess I was scared. Instead I lied like a rug.
“What vase?” I asked, trying to sound innocent and clueless.
He pointed across the room. There, sitting in the middle of his desk, were the remains of the green and white vase in question; it was once again in several pieces.
Now, on more than one occasion Grandfather has given me his speech about how much he detests lying. Evidentially, he felt that I needed to hear it once more. The painful thing about this speech, it lasts from anywhere between twenty minutes to over an hour. This time I had no idea how long it took, but it felt like the long version. I think that the speech is his way of torturing me into spilling my guts, because in the end I always seem to tell him the truth. This time was no different. I told him I had broken the vase and then attempted to mend it using Elmer’s Glue, which in hindsight probably wasn’t the best glue to use on a container that is sometimes filled with water and flowers.
I wasn’t punished; at least not right then. Grandfather said he would talk with me later. Boy I hate when he does that. It means I get to sweat bullets until he decides what sort of punishment I will be forced to endure. I suppose that in itself is part of the punishment.
With our conversation at an end, I knew this because Grandfather had stood up and was moving toward the door, I quickly blurted out, “I want to go to California and compete in the surfing competition.”
Almost immediately he began shaking his head. “My boy, I think it is time you gave up on foolish ideas such as those. It is time for you to accept that your life is here now and get on with living. What-What!”
I couldn’t believe my ears. No, that’s not true, I could believe them. It was just like Grandfather to be so cold-blooded. Yeah, he has his moments where I actually think there is a human heart beating in that old wrinkled shell of a man, but those are few and far between.
“My dad wants me to compete.” I said with tears in my eyes, though they were not tears of sorrow but of anger.
Like an inhuman machine he said, “Your father is not here anymore; I am. What-What!” His voice was cold and business like, “I have to start looking after your future. With that in mind; after your friends have left…”
I tried to cut him off but he quickly squelched anything I had to say by exclaiming loudly, “Excuse me! I am talking and you will listen! What-What!”
Grandfather made eye contact with me one last time, “Indeed they are.” He cleared his throat, straightened the collar of his smoking jacket, smoothed his eyebrows and continued, “After your guests have left, you and I will have another talk.”
And that was it. He left me sitting alone in his study, shaking with anger as enormous tears flowed down my face.