Back in the car and headed home Daddy Phil told us the funniest joke. Let me see if I can remember how it went;
“Deep in the back woods of Tennessee, a hillbilly’s wife went into labor in the middle of the night and the doctor was called out to assist in the delivery. Since there was no electricity, the doctor handed the father-to-be a lantern and said, “Here. You hold this high so I can see what I am doing.”
Soon, a baby boy was brought into the world.
“Whoa there!” said the doctor, “Don’t be in such a rush to put that lantern down. I think there’s another one coming.”
Sure enough, within minutes he had delivered a baby girl.
“Hold that lantern up, don’t set it down there’s another one!” said the doctor.
Within a few minutes he had delivered a third baby.
“No, don’t be in a hurry to put down that lantern, it seems there’s yet another one coming!” cried the doctor.
The redneck scratched his head in bewilderment and asked the doctor, “You reckon it might be the light that’s attractin’ ’em?”
Jacquelyn and I got it right away and laughed like crazy, but Jacquelyn had to explain it to Joey before he got the joke.
Daddy Phil told a bunch more jokes. However, that was the only one I remember, probably because it was the funniest.
“So did you have fun?” Grandmother asked as we arrived back home.
“No, we had a great time!” Joey squealed with delight.
“Best ever!” I agreed as I took my surf board from Daddy Phil so I could carry it up to my room.
Jacquelyn and Mommy Beth came in behind us carrying our wet towels and chatting among themselves. I never actually confirmed it, but I think Mommy Beth liked having another girl around for a while.
Joey and I started to head up the stairs as Grandmother called after me, “Alvin, your grandfather needs to see you in his study as soon as you put your surf board in your room.”
I stopped and looked back.
“We both need a change first.” I said as if it were nothing out of the ordinary for me to say.
“I will see to them.” Mommy Beth offered.
And to that, Grandmother informed her, “I think I will give you a hand my dear.”
After a quick change by Grandmother while Mommy Beth tended to her son, she ushered me out of my bedroom and to Grandfathers study. We reached the door but that is all the farther she went.
“I will see you downstairs for dinner.” She said and walked back toward the steps.
All the excitement from the day seemed to evaporate, leaving me feeling nervous. Only one other time had I been summoned to my grandfather’s study and that was when I had gotten into some trouble about three and a half months into the school year. My friends and I had decided that we wanted the day off from school. Playing hooky was something I had become quite good at back in California, but Maine is a totally different world all together. Not even an hour had passed when the local Truant Officer found us and drug us all back to school. All of us got 2 days in school suspension and I don’t know about the others, but after getting chewed out by the Vice Principal, I got chewed out by Grandmother, then both of my parents, and finally Grandfather, who told me that if I did something like that again he’d have me shipped off to an all-boys boarding school in Europe.
With my heart pounding and my ears ringing I raised my hand to the door knob and turned it. The door silently opened and I looked in to see, that aside from the fire in the fire place and some music quietly playing, it didn’t seem like there was anyone inside.
“Grandfather?” I called into the dimly lit study.
At first there was no response, just the gentle crackling of the fire and the pleasant playing of what I took to be some kind of soft jazz.
“Grandfather?” I called louder.
“Ah good,” Grandfather said when he heard me, “Come in boy; come in. What-What!” it sounded like he might have said something else after that, but I wasn’t sure.
While still standing outside of the door, with only my head inside his study I asked, “Grandmother said you wanted to see me?”
He made a sound, which I took to be him clearing his throat. “I did? Oh yes right! I did!”
My eyes tracked the direction of his voice to a large, high-backed brown leather chair sitting to the left of a small orange glowing fire.
“Well don’t stand there half in and half out.” He said as his hand and arm came into view beckoning me to enter. “Come in, come in.”
Don’t ask me why, but for some odd reason I was feeling very uncomfortable, like I was trying to sneak up on a sleeping lion.
I crept into his study, almost on tip-toe as I slowly advanced toward the fireplace.
“Come join me here.” He said pointing with a smoldering cigar at an identical chair to the right of the fireplace.
When I lowered my freshly diapered bottom into the chair, both my diaper and the shiny leather sang out a mingled chorus of crinkles and squeaks.
I looked up at him and that is when I noticed Grandfather was talking on the phone. Without looking at me he offered me the phone.
“Would you like to talk to your mother?” He asked.
Now you might think that I would have pounced on that phone like a hungry leopard would a wounded gazelle, but I didn’t. Instead, I hesitated while considering the small bit of electronics wrapped in a handsome black plastic covering.
“Come on boy. She doesn’t have a lot of time. What-What!” Grandfather said while jiggling the phone at me.
He then stood up and placed the phone to my ear.
Mechanically I said, “Hello?” and then took hold of the phone for myself.
“Oh sweetheart! It is so wonderful to hear your voice again!” came my mother’s voice, “I have missed you so very much.”
I didn’t know what else to say, so I said the only thing that came to mind. “Grandmother said that the hospital won’t let me come see you because I might spread germs.”
Mom was quiet for a moment and then she started to weep, but only for a brief moment.
“Alvin,” she started to say with a dejected voice, “Your father loved you so very much. He told me the night before…”
Mom’s voice trailed off. I felt an uneasy comfort in knowing that like me, she was still finding it difficult to draw reference to that horrible day.
She sniffled, coughed and then started again, “He told me that some of his happiest memories were of the two of you surfing in the dawn of morning.”
I was crying as I listened to her and was glad that, after giving me the phone, Grandfather had returned to his chair and wasn’t looking toward me. Still, I turned away from him, in case he turned back around again.
After a long pause in our conversation, where the two of us listened to the other crying, Mom spoke and said what I already believed to be true.
“Alvin, I don’t think I am going to be well enough to take you to California.”
I sighed, “I know. It’s okay.”
But then Mom’s voice became stern. “No!” she snapped, “No, it is not okay! Your father and I wanted you to compete again! Your father wanted so desperately for you to try for the teen championship.”
She was yelling into the phone now, “IT ISN’T OKAY!”
I guess Grandfather could hear Mom yelling into my ear because he had turned around. Though I couldn’t see him I knew his eyes were on the side of my head.
“Mom really, it’s okay.” I wept.
I heard Mom say something away from the phone and then the call went dead. I just sat there looking at the receiver in my hand and hoping that Mom’s voice would return.
I heard a sound behind me; I think Grandfather had cleared his throat in an attempt to get my attention. I pressed the red button on the phone and without looking, I handed it to him.
There was a long drawn out silence in the room while Grandfather let me stare at the fire and get all my tears out.
“How was your day?” he finally asked while smoke swirled around his head.
“It was good.” I said sheepishly looking around as though I were expecting something or someone to jump out and grab me.
“Get all that surfing nonsense out of your system did you? What-What!” He said while shifting in his chair. His words had been partially masked by the groaning of the leather.
“Excuse me?” I asked not sure I had heard him right.
Instead of repeating himself he said something completely different.
“Had a visit from Carl…” he fumbled briefly, then recovered, “your school principal. Yes, that’s right.”
My only response to this news was to raise a single eyebrow. For a wonderful day I had forgot that the school year wasn’t over yet, at least not here in Maine. I dreaded the idea of having to go back to school; not just because of everything that had happened, but because my friends where here and I wanted to spend as much time with them as I could.
“I am sure you will be glad to know that you have been transferred into the next grade.” Grandfather said with nearly no pageantry.
“What?” I grunted confusedly.
Grandfather puffed on his cigar, blew smoke at the fire and then added, “They have elected to close the school early this year. Skip all that end of year testing and whatnot. What-What!”
“So I don’t have to go back at all?” Even though I said it, I don’t think the idea had fully sunk in just yet.
“Well don’t sound so happy. What-What!” Grandfather scoffed at my lack of excitement.
“Huh? No…I mean, yeah… uh… I am… I mean… Well.” I couldn’t seem to get a single thought to complete.
“I’m afraid that isn’t all I have to share with you.” He said as he tossed what was more than three-quarters of a cigar into the fire. Before continuing he leaned forward in his chair, took up the fire poker and stabbed at the dwindling fire several times until the flames began to dance once more.
“Thing is, your mother will be coming home in a few days.” He said as though this were bad news.
I started to speak but he held up a hand to silence me.
“She is still not wholly well; but I believe it will do her better to be here with her family than inside…” his words trailed off, except I knew what he was about to say.
“She will have a nurse here to look after her day-and-night until she snaps out of this depression that has hold of her.”
“Snaps out?” I thought, “She lost her husband and he says it like that?”
Despite him trying to silence me once again I managed to ask, “What day is she coming home?”
I am not certain what I was feeling for sure. Mostly excitement to have Mom coming back home, but also something else that I couldn’t identify; then Grandfather named it for me.
“Your grandmother has told me that you know why your mother was sent to the hospital in the first place.” He said as he raised his fingers to his mouth and then remembered he had already discarded his cigar. He looked at the fireplace remorsefully before continuing.
“It will be important that you not let your mother know how embittered you are with her.”
“What’s embittered mean?” I asked.
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.
Lord knows how long I sat alone in the dark. The only light in the room came from the quickly dying fire. I am sure it was at least half an hour, maybe more before Grandmother came looking for me. I had stopped crying but one look at me and she knew I was madder than she had ever seen me. Without saying a single word she reached down, took hold of my wrist and pulled me to my feet. She then led me out of the study, down the hallway to my bedroom and into my bathroom where she washed my face and neck with a cold washcloth.
After depositing the washcloth into the laundry chute she took hold of my left hand and the two of us walked out of my room and down to the dining room.
Once again Mommy Beth cooked and though Grandmother at first turned her nose up at the plate set before her, she did taste it. You should have seen her face light up.
“What is this astounding sandwich?” Grandmother asked as Mommy Beth sat down with us.
“Sloppy Charlies,” Mommy Beth answered with a prideful smile.
“You mean Sloppy Joes,” Jacquelyn corrected.
Mommy Beth replied with a slightly cheesed off titter, “I most certainly do not. They are Sloppy Charlies.”
Though I didn’t feel much like eating, I took a bite of my sandwich and the wonderful flavors filled my mouth. Try as I might, I could not place the unique flavor of the meet. It for sure wasn’t beef.
Jacquelyn poked at her bun with her finger, “What’s in it?”
I could tell by the sound of Jacquelyn’s voice that she wasn’t too keen on the red stuff that was oozing out of her bun.
Joey was the one to answer with a cute little giggle, “It’s tuna fish!”
“TUNA?!” Jacquelyn shrieked loudly and made a gagging face, “That’s just sick!”
Grandmother adopted a stern expression by forcing the corners of her mouth down.
“Young lady! Please use your inside voice!”
She replaced her sandwich on her plate before continuing to verbally instruct Jacquelyn on the proper way for someone to act.
“You should taste it before deciding whether you like it or not.”
Effectively rebuked, Jacquelyn grudgingly picked up her sandwich and nibbled off a small bite. We all waited with fevered expectation to see if she was going to spit it out or not. After a pensive pause, which seemed to last an eternity, Jacquelyn’s eyes grew wide and she announced, “Hey, this isn’t half bad. Actually, it’s more than that, it’s really good.”
Grandmother’s expression softened, “Now see. After all that fuss and it turns out you do like it.”
Grandmother smiled as she complimented Mommy Beth with, “My dear, I will have to insist that you share the recipe with Micah.”
Mommy Beth wiped a drip of mustard from Joey’s chin as she said, “Well it couldn’t be easier. You dump a can of Hormel Sloppy Joe mix into a sauce pan along with six cans of drained tuna fish and heat it up.”
“Fascinating!” Grandmother commented as she took another bite of her sandwich.
“This is delicious Mommy.” I said revealing the partially chewed contents of my mouth.
Grandmother leaned over and tried to poke me with her boney finger, except I had instinctively flinched away thinking she was trying to tickle me or something. I don’t know why I thought that because that wasn’t something Grandmother was inclined to do.
“Swallow before speaking please.” She said.
Grandmother made a thoughtful sound as she savored another bite. “Is this something you came up with?” she asked.
Mommy Beth humbly told the story, “A couple years ago there was a mix up with Phil’s military pay and we had to go over two months without a paycheck. Our cupboards were getting in every respect bare. I had a can of Sloppy Joe sauce and several cans of Tuna fish. With a momentary hesitation I decided to give it a try.” Mommy Beth smiled, “And well, it turned out to be so good that they ask me to make it almost every week since.”
Grandmother sat what was left of her sandwich down before saying, “Even the name is catchy. Sloppy Charlies.” She said it several times before asking, “I get the Sloppy part, but why Charlies?”
Daddy Phil was the one to explain that it was named after the StarKist Tuna fish mascot.”
“It sounds perfect!” Grandmother said, “We should look at getting these sandwiches into our restaurants.”
“Really?” Daddy Phil said nearly choking on his water.
Grandmother seemed to be beaming with excitement as she said, “I think we might have something here that could be a popular lunchwich.”
“Oh my!” Mommy Beth exclaimed, “Do you really think so?”
“What’s a lunchwich?” Joey asked loudly.
Grandmother smiled, “Inside voice please.”
“Sorry,” He said and asked again in a softer tone, “What is a lunchwich?”
“Thank you.” Grandmother said as she smiled across the table at Joey. “That is an expression we use here in Maine to refer to a sandwich typically served during lunch.”
“Is there a dinnerwich?” Jacquelyn asked.
Before Grandmother could reply Joey piped off with, “Or a breakfastwich?”
She smiled with amusement and said, “No, I’m afraid not but we do have snackwiches. However, those are typically only finger foods served at parties or small gatherings.
With that Grandmother scooted her chair away from the table and excused herself momentarily by saying, “Let me make a quick phone call.”
While she was gone everyone was buzzing with the idea that Mommy Beth’s sandwich was going to become famous in Lewiston, Maine.
She returned with an unreservedly aberrant smile splitting her face horizontally.
“If you are willing to, tomorrow morning we’ll go meet with the gentleman that is in charge of what is served at our restaurants.”
Mommy Beth and Daddy Phil were keen on this idea and for the remainder of our meal it was all that everyone talked about. Well mostly anyway. Joey wanted to know more about snackwiches and Grandmother was all too happy to explain it to him.