Blood Relations

A story about a girl and her grandfather

  A girl lay in the patient’s seat.  

  Across from her was a doctor, sat behind a red oak table.

  The doctor tapped his pen against the red oak table, tap, tap, tap, precisely two seconds apart each time, as if he has been practicing. 

  The mother stood dumbly to the side, empty headed mannequin. Even now, she was dull and unimportant as the mold on the walls. 

  “And how do you feel?” The doctor asked, slowly, every other word accompanied with a tap of the pen on the desk. 

  The girl stared at him, head tilted slightly to the side as she tried to think of an answer. How did she feel? 

  She felt bored. If her grandfather were here, he would make a mockery of the doctor across from her. Ha! Doctor, you’re no doctor. Doctors fix people. I didn’t pay half my month’s salary just to talk. 

  But right now she just had to answer his question. How should she feel? She should feel sad.

  “Sad.” She answered finally, spitting the word out curtly. 

  The doctor nodded, in sync with his pen, tap, tap, tap, as if she had a passed a question on an exam. 

  “It’s hard for girls as young as yourself to witness such tragedies.” He held the pen still against the desk and looked up at her. “I am truly sorry about your loss.”

  The girl bit back her smile, satisfied with his attempt to cheer her up. “No tragic event ever happens without reason,” she said, quoting one the obituaries she had read in the paper. 

a  “How true!” the doctor agreed, impressed with her maturity. “Now, this may be difficult, but do you suppose you could describe what happened? It helps to talk about it.”

  The girl cast her eyes at the ground and bit her tongue, forcing herself with difficulty to refrain from boasting. “It’s just too hard.” she choked out, biting back the laughter that itched at the back of her throat. 

  The doctor nodded and began to take notes.

Really, the entire thing had been the mother’s fault. If it wasn’t for her, the girl would have spent the evening with her friends at the cinema, as she had planned to. But instead, her mother had gotten in the way, and insisted on making her spend the night at her grandfather’s. 

  “He gets very lonely,” her mother had said. “Please dear? It’s only one night after all.”

  The girl failed to see how it was her job to entertain her shriveled old clump grandfather, but left with no choice, she was sent to the dirtier part of town, where the streets looked more like zoos than city. 

  Her grandfather lived in the downtown area, where instead of bird song, there was only the blind noise of traffic and cussing. 

  How delighted he had been to see her at the door. “What a surprise!” he had cried, his chapped lips spreading into a thin smile. “I thought you had forgotten all about your poor old grandpa here.”

  The girl was stunning, and she knew it. 

  The sight of the shrunken little man, in a suit that hung over him like a garbage bag, filled her with disgust. 

  Yet she managed a smile, symmetrical, bright red lips and glossy white teeth. “Don’t be silly, grandpa. I love spending time with you!”

  She had expected this statement to thrill him, but instead he smiled smugly, unsurprised. 

  He began to walk away, and she stared after him. After making it to the end of the hallway, he stopped and turned around, surprised that she hadn’t followed him. “Come on then, I’m going for my evening walk. Won’t you care to join me?”

  Left with no better option than wait in the narrow hallway for his return, she was forced to hurry after him like a dog. He began to disappear down the stairs that lead out of the building. 

  “You ought to walk with me more often.” Her grandfather chortled as they descended the stairs. “It’s what keeps me so fit! After all, how many of your friends’ grandpas are fit as I, huh?” he laughed, shoulders shaking. The girl cringed as he shook, his sagged flaps of skin bouncing as he moved.

  The girl laughed as well, though it was at him and not with him. “None, grandpa.”

  They reached the bottom of the stairway, and her grandfather pushed the door handle. As soon as the building door swung open, she was hit with the putrid stench of raw sewage and decaying rat corpses. 

  She winced, turning to her grandfather. She watched as her grandfather drew cigarette and lighter from his pocket. The light from the lighter’s flame shone against the grease on his face, the orange glow outlining the intricate maze of wrinkles across his skin, carving out the hollowness beneath his cheekbones and the sunken bags below his eyes. The man was thin, so skeletal, she wondered how his organs fit between his tight cage of rib and bone. 

  Her grandfather took a long drag of his cigarette, face contorted in concentration, eyes closed as he blew out the smoke between his yellowed teeth. 

  “You know Grandpa,” she said, “Smoking really isn’t healthy for you. We learnt in class, it leads to all sorts of illnesses -”

  “Bah!” her grandfather said annoyed, peering at her with one eye. “Only fourteen years on this planet and you think you know more than me, huh? Well fine then, if you know everything, then why am I still in perfect condition after 30 years of straight smoking?”

  “Oh but grandpa, all the experts say -”

  “You’re trusting some experts over me? Insolent girl, what would you know? Then again, what would you know, been coddled all your life!” He puffed out another cloud of smoke. “Ha! Experts. Those money leeches think they know everything? Don’t be so gullible - after all, what experience do they have of life? I’ve lived more years than all of them pale faced twats together! Listen to me good, I’ve lived my entire childhood on food stamps and spare change, and I can teach you much more about everything than some government pampered experts.” he said, spitting out the word experts as if it was poison on his tongue. 

  The girl shoved her hands into her pockets and focused her anger on the ground, training her eyes on the path of the cracks that ran along the pavement. Such stupidity! Such ignorance! And yet, all she said was “Sorry, grandpa.”

  “Damn right, you are.” he muttered, inhaling from his cigarette. 

  They walked in silence for moments more, both looking on with bitterness at the mangle bearded bums begging lazily for free money. 

  As they reached the end of the street, they noticed a small brothel, hidden mostly between empty convenience stores. The only indication that there was a brothel here were the scantily clad women outside, their dresses glinting like stars beneath the yellow street lights. Glittery girls threw themselves on to passing men, their bodies and fat and flesh fascinating, each movement hypnotic and alluring. Her grandfather stared, the way an infant eyes jingling car keys. 

  As soon as the women fell into the background, he turned back to the girl and laughed. “If you ever wound up like that, I suppose we’d have to disown you, eh?”

  And finally, the girl’s face burned with hot anger, the loud beat of her heart making deaf her ears. Horrible old man, so arrogant, so proud - what would he know of hard work? How dare he look down upon those who exerted themselves tirelessly all day, while he wallowed in his own filth! What awful hypocrisy! As if he had never begged such a woman to cure his well deserved loneliness, as if he had never wasted away his daughter’s college money for the feel of a body against his own. How impossible it was to feel respect for such a mongrel! 

  They came across a stoplight, and he grabbed the girl’s elbow, squeezing slightly too tight. She flinched at his touch, at the clammy fingers and the sweat along his palm. How grotesque his flesh was on hers!

  “Let me tell you a story,” he said. “I know you think you’re too smart for me now, but just listen. You’ll thank me later, I promise.”

  Laughter now itched at the back of her throat. How superior he thought himself to her, how much stronger he thought he was! When in all honest reality, he was no more than a deteriorated collection of skin and bone. 

  And suddenly idea formed in her head, such a brilliant, stomach achingly funny idea! The traffic light was blinking, and she had only seconds left to act. Excitement coursed through her now, she seemed to slow the world down, adrenaline sharpened her senses, she could see the world in such perfect clarity.

  A large gray minivan, the kind stay-at-home mothers drive, was barreling down the road, like an unsteady beast. 

  And then, without wasting time, she shoved the shriveled mess of her grandfather, so fast nobody noticed, watched with glee as he flew forwards. And how perfect it was, how slowly it happened, her eyes capturing each moment like the lenses of a camera. His eyes grew wide as china plates, his horrible glassy blue eyes! And how funny, how terribly terribly funny it was! Just one little shove, from a girl he thought was so inferior, sent him sailing to his death. She watched with full relish, as his eyes met with her own, full of disbelieving shock. And she watched, with immense fascination, as his body was slammed by the front of the car, his thin arms bending into crooked angles, his head twisting into a strange direction. It seemed to take an eternity. Long enough, she thought, for him to understand that he had always been the inferior. 

  And then it was over, her grandfather no more than a mound of broken bones and badly bruised flesh. She could not draw her eyes away from it, could not hide the satisfaction that bloomed across her face.

“Your grandpa is in a better place now,” the doctor assured her. “The incident was terribly unfortunate, and don’t worry, the driver is being made to pay the price. But for whatever reason it happened, rest assured, he is in a better place now.”

  The girl nodded, face hidden. “I’m just glad I was there for him in his last moments.”

  She looked up at the doctor now. “The funeral is in a week’s time, I don’t suppose you could come?” She would be the most gorgeous girl there, she thought. She looked best in black. 

  “Of course,” the doctor was saying, and the girl stole a glance over to her mother. 

  Stupid woman. Useless moron, brainless porcelain doll. 

  But as she looked upon the woman, she realized with shock, that the fog had lifted from her mother’s placid eyes. They bore into the girl, with acute sharpness. And with a jolt of terror, the girl realized that she knew. That her moron of a mother knew. 

  She stared back, unblinking. 

  The doctor stood up, and shook the mother’s hand, plastic smile on his face.

  “I must say I’m impressed,” he said. “Your daughter is remarkably mature for her age.”