Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

Claire, you little nag, you'll finally get a taste of the grandmother. Zeta, I'm sorry, but you only find out what happened to Edgar in the next section....you'll have to wait a little bit, my dear! And everyone, enjoy and COMMENT!


November 15th, 8:25p.m.
Oh my god, my life is flying into little bitty pieces as we speak.
I got home, normal time, and opened the door to find Mom standing in the middle of the front hallway, clutching her arms around herself, biting her lip and pacing. When I came in she jumped a bit and grabbed me into a hug. She smelled like baby oil. Her hair wasn’t brushed, and she was still in her pajamas.
“Oh, honey, you’re home! I was worried…I thought you might be late…” She suddenly trailed off and went sort of vague, gazing out the window. Then she tried to sit down. But there wasn’t any chair behind her, so she just landed hard on her butt on the floor, though she didn’t even wince, just stared with these big sort of eyes. She looked like she used to, before she started taking medicine, and it scared me. I’m scared still from that expression.
Alice came home, then. And Mom realized Edgar wasn’t with her and went positively haywire. She stared at Alice, asked her where her brother was. Alice ground her teeth for a moment before muttering that he hadn’t gotten on the bus with her, she didn’t know where he was, and something else that was cut out when my mother suddenly jerked her arm and smashed the vase sitting on the front hall table.
Alice went silent, and so did I. Rachel came running, she’d just heard the crash. She took it all in in a second; years of working here have taught her how to deal with crazy s**t like this, I guess.
“Josephine,” Rachel said quietly.
My mother ignored her.
“Josy. I have some tea in the kitchen for you-”
“No!”
“We can talk, in the kitchen. We’ll find out where Edgar is. I’m sure he’s f-”
“He’s not fine.” My mother’s voice sounded strange, dead. “He’s gone. Just like his father. Just like his father.” She walked upstairs, then, muttering, stepping on bits of cold, blue, broken glass but not feeling it at all.
Rachel took charge. The last time she completely ran our house, I was probably eight years old. Dad had been on a business trip and Mom had one of her final lapses before she started getting better. “Get a broom and clean this up, please, Alice. Ada, dear, go get your mother’s tea.” Rachel nodded to us both in turn and followed my mother up the steps. I heard my mom’s door close, and a moment later, as I stepped carefully around the bits of the broken vase and headed up with the tea, I heard a yell and a thump, then Rachel’s busy, mothering, calming sort of voice. Another crash, then a moment later I heard my grandmother, from way down the hall.
“Shut up and calm down, can’t an old woman get her damn beauty sleep?!” Sometimes I get the feeling that my grandmother doesn’t even know who’s yelling or why, she just wants to yell back.
It may seem like a bit much to have to older women around the house. But Rachel and Grandma Isabella are totally different.
Rachel is a busy person. She’s worked almost every day of her life since she was 14 (as she likes to point out to us when we complain about doing the dishes), and she hates laziness. After raising a son on her own, she’s very good at taking care of things, and by that I generally mean my crazy family. Most people would have quit this job a long time ago, but Rachel stayed. Who the hell knows why, but she did. We obviously haven’t scared her off, though that’s more due to her inability to be frightened than to our normalcy. She’s smart, clean, and always prepared, and she doesn’t take mouth from anyone, not even our dad (I’m referring, here, to the instance in which she actually chastised a 43-year-old-man for complaining about doing his laundry). She’s a solid weight in this house, she’s what keeps it going. When my mom does well, she can usually drive us places, make dinner, occasionally go grocery shopping or spend time with us. But it’s all the little things that Rachel takes care of; doctor’s appointments, dance lesson reschedulings, keeping a stock of goldfish and her frozen, home-cooked meals, making sure we’ve read all the instructions for our science projects. And I honestly don’t think I’ve heard Rachel complain or whine once in the entire five years I’ve known her.
Grandma, on the other hand, is a different story. Her full name is Isabella Anna Lutte, and yes, she is French. Her husband, Calvin Lutte, has been dead since I was a little girl. I have vague memories of a big man with a mustache sitting on a chair in front of me, maybe watching television or talking to my siblings and I, but I really don’t remember him. He, however is the subject of much annoyance, even now; my mother’s mother complains every chance she gets. In fact, she’s not really the image of a warm, cookie-baking grandmother with an apron and smile lines. Grandma swears and drinks. She used to be an alcoholic. Well, “used to,” more like, ‘cause now she insists that she only has “a glass of wine before bed.” Well, we’ve all got too many problems to worry about that. She’s too darn stubborn to listen to any of us anyways, and believe me, we’ve tried, particularly Rachel. My grandmother hates my father and his whole family. She thinks they’re, ahem, “a buncha judgmental, holy-rollin’ ******** prancing around on their five thousand dollar high horses with nothin’ valuable to do but whitewash their picket fence every few weeks.”
That nearly drives Rachel to her wit’s end. I think my grandmother is the only person who can really make Rachel mad, and I mean really mad, not just go-clean-your-room-already mad. She’s constantly telling Grandma not to swear, not to drink, not to be so bitter, stop complaining, go do something useful…Grandma doesn’t like Rachel any better. She starts going on about “that stick-up-her-a** Jew” whenever she’s really pissed off at her. If I know that Rachel’s never complained, I know that Grandma’s probably offended every single racial, religious, sexual-orientation-related or political group on the face of the planet. Come to think of it, I don’t really know what my Grandmother does with her time besides piss people off, complain, and play solitaire. She likes to sleep, I guess. And watch tv, but not out of ordinary entertainment; she likes to yell out comments to the screen making fun of the characters.
Grandma goes for days in her room, and then she’ll come out and spend days nowhere but in the kitchen or the living room. Right now she’s in one of her hibernation phases, in the farthest room down the hall, way at the end of the house.
Come to think of it…no wonder Edgar left. What reasonable male wouldn’t, with that much hormonal estrogen floating around? I hope he comes home soon, though.