it” sales at the local supermarkets. I looked at a couple of the new bestsellers Grandma was reading but after flipping through them I figured they were written for old dried-up people like her, so I picked up an old copy of the Sunday New York Times Magazine and looked at the dirty pictures.
Dinner was served, or luncheon or lunch or brunch or whatever Grandma chose to call it that day. Grandma had made a soup, her own secret blend of vegetables and stock, but I wasn't hungry at all. I nibbled on a roll, dunking it into the soup occasionally, but all I wanted to do was to steal infatuated glances across that table at Sandy.
“What's the matter with you, sonny? A growing boy like you has got to eat more than that. Where's your appetite? I thought you were running around in the woods all morning.”
“We were, Grandma,” I yelled.
“Then what's the matter? Something wrong with my soup?”
“Soup's great, Granny. I just can't eat.”
“You can too eat,” Sandy said.
“Can I?”
“And how!”
“Yeah, but this is different, I mean this is soup. It's not the same thing as you…”
“Well,” Grandma said, “if he doesn't want it, take it away, Sandy, we've had ours.”
They both got up, Sandy to clear the plates, Granny to fetch the next course. I picked the strawberry seeds out of my fingernails and ate them. The ladies returned.
The food looked pretty good-rainbow trout, poached or something, and chilled in tomato aspic; potato salad and sliced cucumbers and tomatoes in a garlic and vinegar sauce. She heaped my plate high and told Sandy to fetch some wine from the icebox.
“They call this chablis, but I think they make it out of lemon peels. Your mother let you drink wine?”
“Sure,” we shouted.
“No wonder, the way she puts away the hard stuff.” She poured each of us a goblet of the chilled wine and settled down to eat. I sipped at the wine and poked at the fish, pretending I didn't know how to take out the spine.
“Terry, stop playing with your bone,” Sandy said.
I laughed.
“Sandra, will you tell him to eat?” Grandma said. “He won't listen to me.”
“Terry,” she said with a bitchiness that must have rivaled the first Queen Elizabeth's. “Eat!”
I started to get up, as though to climb across the table at her.
“Your food, you jerk!”
I sunk back into my chair, pulled the bones adeptly out of the fish like a zipper and, given an excuse to glut my appetite, immediately began to do so.
“Amazing,” Granny said, watching me stuff my mouth. “You know, Sandy, he was just like that when you were little.”
“What do you mean.”
“He wouldn't listen to anybody but you. He was like a little sweet-faced Lucifer with your mother and father. He wouldn't do anything they said. In fact, if your father told him to do something he'd refuse to do it on those grounds alone, even if it were something he wanted to do. The only one he would listen to was you. He'd do anything you say. He followed you around like a slave. And you took full advantage of it.”
Sandy sat there gloating over this and I kept on eating, pretending not to hear, but I was getting a hard-on just listening. It proved that what I felt for my sister had been there all along.
“What did I do?” Sandy asked.
“Oh, you made him wait on you like one of Cleopatra's body servants. You made him wash you and bathe you and-” she caught the flush on both our cheeks, and blushed slightly herself. “It was all very innocent, just brother and sister, you were both very young.”
“Sure, Grandma,” Sandy said. “What else.”
“Oh, he'd have to dress you and brush your hair and follow you around and carry all your things. And if he did anything the slightest bit wrong you'd take down his pants and give him a good spanking, sometimes with your hairbrush.”
“What did I do, Grandma,” I said, “did I like it?”
“You loved it. You loved her. I've never seen a brother and sister so close. That's why it's a shame you had to be separated for so long.”
Sandy and I exchanged a long look of longing, for each other and for our lost childhood. “We can make up for all these lost years this summer, though, can't we, Sandy?”
“We can try.”
“Well, I hope your parents decide to keep you together, I hope they don't split you up again. It would be a shame if either of you had to go with that drunken father of yours.”
“You don't think there's a chance of that, do you Granny,” I asked, slightly panicked. “You don't think they'll split us up?”
“I don't know, dear, but I wouldn't worry about it. Your mother will watch out for your interests.”
I wondered about that. “When will we know?”
“Probably not until after the summer. These things take a long time when they fight them out in court, which your father is determined to do.”
“Tell us more about when we were kids,” I said, offering her my glass to be refilled.
“Well,” she said, pouring the wine to the brim, “there was the summer you thought you were Tarzan.”
“Tarzan?”
“Tarzan, or his Boy, or someone like that. You'd seen a movie to that effect and you decided that's who you were. You paraded around in some kind of a loincloth you made out of old rags and you insisted on calling your sister 'Jane.' You built a tree hut out in the back-” she pointed out the window to an old cherry tree ”-and you kept on prodding your mother to let you sleep out there at night with Sandy. She got into the spirit of things herself and started walking around in old rags until your mother made her stop.' You rigged up some kind of a rope from the tree and you used to swing on it, shouting like Tarzan.”
“Gee, I think I remember that. How long did it go on?”
“About a week. The rope broke one day and you went bawling into your sister's arms. That was the end of Tarzan.”
“Too bad.” I finished the last my wine, offered my glass for more, but Granny wasn't giving. “What's for dessert?” I asked.
“I've got a special treat for you.”
“What?” Sandy asked.
“It's a special treat because you're such lovely children and you cleaned your plates.”
“Well what is it?” I pleaded.
“Close your eyes,” she said as she pulled herself up from the table, “and I'll bring it to you.”
We closed our eyes, and then I opened mine just before Sandy opened hers. I wiggled my tongue from side to side somewhat obscenely, and she stuck her tongue out at me like a little brat. Then Grandma started shuffling in and we went blind again.
I heard her set the two dishes down in front of us. Then she said, “Open your eyes!”
I looked down. “STRAWBERRIES AND WHIPPED CREAM! WOW!”
“Grandma,” Sandy squealed, “how did you know?”
“You always liked that. It was your favorite food.”
“I know I can never get enough of it,” I said.
“Me neither,” Sandy said.
“Look, Granny,” I went on, “you've been talking so much about us when we were kids, would you mind if we did something like that?”
“What do you mean,” both Grandma and Sandy said.
“I mean, would it look funny to you if Sandy fed me these? Like she used to when we were kids?”
“Well, you're only young once.”
