1984, North Hollywood, California

By Brandon D. Christopher

I didn’t know much about a purse, but what I did know about it, I liked.

The idea of carrying an ornate leather satchel over your shoulder, made of bejeweled or classic leather and housing enough zippered pockets for everything remotely imaginable, should have been a universal yearning, a longing subscribed to by every living person — man or woman — but it was not. Carrying a purse most definitely was not.

“But Grandpa, why can’t boys wear these?” I asked my 75-year-old grandfather as he simply gazed at me with uneasy eyes and uneasy thoughts about my future. “You can hold everything in here. This is amazing! I have three pencils in this pocket, and I have some paper in here, and that sandwich you made me, well, looky here, it fits swimmingly in this—”

“Boys just don’t wear purses,” Grandpa declared, “gals do.”

“Did Grandma wear a purse?”

My grandpa took the leather handbag from my shoulder and emptied its three or four contents into his palm, and then he delivered these contents into every available pocket I had on me.

“See here, this is how men hold stuff,” he explained. “Men like to feel their possessions close to their person, so they can tell when someone’s trying to pickpocket them.”

“Who the hell would want my sandwich?” I asked.

Grandparents had a way of looking at you that made you want to tread back in time several seconds and take back what you had said before you had even said it - all with just a sleek glare. My grandpa had it down pat. Neither angry nor dominating, his expression merely stated: My silence means that I am right.

“They must make a purse for boys, don’t they?” I asked in desperation. “I have seen the great abyss, Grandpa, and now mere pockets will never suffice. I need to be able to hold more than just what these two pockets in my shorts can handle.”

My grandpa slowly nodded his head, as if giving serious thought to my predicament. He looked at me and placed his thumbs and index fingers around both lapels of his green blazer, implying: here is your answer.

He casually opened his jacket and exhibited the two inside pockets at his breast, then re-buttoned the blazer and displayed the two larger pockets on the outside, down near his hips.

With a proud smirk, my grandpa then revealed a pack of cigarettes from another pocket at the left of his chest, near the lapel. He tucked the cigarettes back inside, patted some imaginary dust from the green fabric, and then glanced at me to see if I understood how men were supposed to carry things.

“Five pockets are impressive,” I replied.

As he brushed off the dust from the purse and returned it to the cardboard box in his garage, my grandpa paused for a moment and reflected on his deceased wife, Lucy, my grandma, whom I barely recalled from my younger years. She had passed away when I was knee-high to a grasshopper, as they say, and now that I was 12, I could only vaguely recall memories of her and me sitting on a sofa in the living room and watching The Donnie & Marie Show.

I don’t remember her voice or the way she smelled or what kind of car she drove, but I knew that she got a kick out of that Marie Osmand and her brother.

My grandpa always hummed when he was deep in thought. Not an entire song, and not even the chorus of a song, just three simple bars: hmmm, hhmmm, hhhhmm. Each bar would lower as they progressed, like a distancing fog horn. Hmmm, hhmmm, hhhmmm.

He was humming now, and I knew enough to let him have some time alone. He glanced around the garage and realized, I’m presuming, that the entire life of his Lucy was categorically placed into cardboard boxes on homemade shelves in a carless garage.

Whenever he was sad or lonely, my grandpa could just walk to the garage and locate pieces of his past that were catalogued by decade or theme. Near the backdoor were the old baby clothes and crib from when they first got married and started a family; near the aluminum Christmas tree and Halloween decorations were boxes and trash bags of her dresses and gowns; near where he was standing now was the box of purses that I had been rooting through. And now that everything was back in its place, things were back to normal. Her life was again complete. Hmmm, hhmmm, hhhmmm.

There was something strangely appealing about spending time at Grandpa’s house. It was like a house where nobody lived. It was never dirty; there were never any used dishes in the sink; clothes were always on their hangers and in their appropriate closets. And the same food was always in the refrigerator: salami, cheese, milk, condiments, a can of sardines, and a small bag of assorted Hershey’s chocolates.

Like every Saturday, my grandpa would sit down at the kitchen table sometime in the early afternoon and listen to the horse races over a small AM radio. He was a man of few words, and he would collect me and a handful of objects from the refrigerator and set us down at the table beside him with a gentle smile and his usual humming.

As the horses were ushered into the gate, my grandpa would prepare a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for me, and when the horses began their race, he would pause, standing over the half-made sandwich, and stare at the radio. When that race ended, and after the winner was announced, he would finish my sandwich, cut it in half, and then start work on his own.

The whole process was slow and methodical, like everything that he did, and it forced you to realize that life was long, longer than a 12-year-old knew he had time for.

I always watched in awe when he started in on making his sandwich. He first opened a small, rectangular can of sardines by using the little twist-key that came with it. He wound back the aluminum top in slow, concentrated intervals, as if studying each turn of his hand as he went.

Once opened, this miniature casket revealed eight sardines lying head to tail, glistening in a burnt-gray glaze. As soon as I saw their little blackened eyes, I smelled their little blackened smell. They were almost beautiful lying there, as if only God himself could have organized them inside.

Then, one by one, my grandpa pulled out the tiny fish by their tails and placed them on a piece of white bread with mayonnaise. It was such a diligent task to be performing in such a short amount of time; according to the radio, the horses for the second race were approaching the gate.

“Prince Galahad, the 2-to-1 favorite for this race, doesn’t seem to mind the blinders his owner has put on him,” the radio informed us. “But Lucky Lou is taking the inside lane for this second race.”

My grandpa finished his sandwich and placed the top layer of bread over the five sprawled-out sardines. He rewound the remaining fish in their rectangular can and put them back into the refrigerator as the last horse entered its stall.

He had made it in record time, but he had forgotten about the beverages. Before the refrigerator door shut, he swiftly pulled it back open, retrieved a quart of milk, and grabbed two glasses on his way back to the table.

“And away they go!” the radio announcer exclaimed as grandpa blindly poured us each a glass, his eyes fixated on the radio. “It’s Prince Galahad taking the lead, but here comes Lucky Lou right behind him!”

I watched him slowly bite into the sandwich and chew on those little fishes, with their little bones and skulls crunching between his gnawing teeth. His mouth was like a slow motor in idle, gracefully grinding them to paste.

The faster the radio announcer spoke, the faster I ate. Before the horses had even gotten halfway around the track, I had finished my sandwich and just taken the last swallow of milk in my glass. I shifted between watching the radio, like my grandpa, and then watching my grandpa watch the radio. My heart was racing with excitement.

“It’s Prince Galahad on the inside, but here comes Lucky Lou on his right! Lucky Lou is coming up on his right fast! It’s neck and neck! It’s Lucky Lou by a nose now, but Prince Galahad is running strong! It’s going to be close!”

Without realizing it, I was nodding my head to every word the announcer said. I was leaning as far forward as possible, trying to feel his words before hearing them. My eyes were bulging, and I wish I had put a million dollars on Lucky Lou.

I glanced at grandpa again to see if he was as anxious as I was, but he didn’t appear to be. He wasn’t even halfway through his sandwich! I had already eaten, drunk, swallowed, and digested that entire meal, and he was only three bites in, still chewing diligently.

“Lucky Lou is taking this race, Grandpa!” I nodded and said.

He turned to me and grinned as he continued eating, then turned back toward the radio.

“Lucky Lou is in the lead by a fair distance, and Prince Galahad is falling back! But what’s this? Grassy Knoll is charging through the crowd! Grassy Knoll is charging straight through the other horses, and he’s going for the lead. He’s … he’s 20-to-1 odds, and he’s steamrolling to the front! He’s passing Galahad now! Who would have ever thought Grassy Knoll could be this fast? He’s neck and neck with Lucky Lou now! It’s Grassy Knoll, no, it’s Lucky Lou! It’s Grassy Knoll, it’s Grassy Knoll! Grassy Knoll wins the race, folks! This long-shot horse is 20-to-1 odds, and he wins the race!”

My jaw had dropped somewhere around Grassy Knoll passing Prince Galahad and never closed. I relinquished the vice my fingers had taken on the table and relaxed my talons so the blood could again flow through them. I could not believe a horse could be so fast, and I could not believe a radio could be so exciting. I had nothing to say but, “Damn.”

My grandpa slowly lowered his sandwich to his plate and pulled out a small notebook from his blazer pocket. I watched him as he pulled off the rubber band and opened the notebook to a page of written notes. He pulled out a pen from another pocket, and I leaned in close to see what he was going to write.

Beside a perfectly printed #2 was written Grassy Knoll. With his red pen, he wrote $300 beside the horse’s name. He resealed the notebook with the stale rubber band and returned it to his blazer pocket. From another pocket, he pulled out a wad of bills in a money clip and tugged out $5. He casually put it onto the table and slid it over to me before returning to his sandwich.

“We knew it all along, didn’t we?” he asked before taking a bite.

“I have to admit,” I replied, “I thought Lucky Lou was going to take it.”

“So did your father,” he answered as he chewed. “I switched his bet also.”

At just that moment, I realized that I wanted to be an old man. Not an old man in a wheelchair, taking pills from a nurse, but an old man in a sharp blazer who smokes cigarettes and bets on the horse races. That was the type of old man I wanted to be.

To hell with being 12 years old and playing kickball. I wanted to slick my hair back and hum like a real man. I wanted to drive an old American car and occasionally show up at relatives’ homes on Sundays. I wanted to slide grandchildren a few dollars here and there, and wink and whisper, “Buy yourself something neat, but don’t tell your folks.”

I had a new mission in life. I had a direction to aim for. My dad always told me to have a goal, and wouldn’t he be excited to know that I found one, and one so readily within my reach? I was going to be an old man from now on.

“How much do you reckon I need to spend to get a nice blazer, Grandpa?”

He hummed a little before replying, “We could probably get you one at the Salvation Army for about what you made on that last race.”

“You in the mood for a drive?”

“Do you promise not to want to wear a purse any longer?” his mouth asked under plotting eyes.

And just at that moment I realized that he had had an agenda all along. He had used some of that old grandfather wisdom to sway me from the purse and toward the blazer.

It wasn’t the way he said it or even what he said that gave it away — it was the grin in his eyes, if there could be such a thing. It was his sleek glare that said, “I got you.” It was like a chess move.

This had all been some sort of golden plan of his making, and it was just one more reason why I wanted to be an old man like him.

Brandon D. Christopher is the author of Dirty Little Altar Boy. He lives in Los Angeles but pretends that it is Paris in the 1930s.

Posted by Common Ties on Monday, November 12th, 2007 | Email This Post

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