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“Gran, this is Ryan,” she said.
Gran looked over her shoulder with an appraising look and then turned back to her task, pouring a brown concoction into a martini glass before putting down the shaker and wiping her hands on her pants as she faced us. “Hello,” she said, smiling sweetly. “I’m Helen, but everyone just calls me Gran, so you might as well join in.”
“It’s a pleasure,” I told her, shaking her small thin hand gently. “Thank you so much for having me.”
She gave me a narrow-eyed look then, and I got the distinct impression I was being evaluated. “Do you smoke pot?” She asked.
Juliet stifled a laugh and I shot her a look, trying to figure out if there was an appropriate response I didn’t know about.
“Um, no ma’am. I mean. Once? In college? I didn’t inhale, of course.” I felt my face reddening.
“Right,” Juliet laughed.
“You do coke?” Gran was escalating her investigation, and I wondered exactly where we were heading. What was the right answer here? I got the sense it might not be the one I would normally default to around parental types.
I swallowed my surprise and shook my head. “No ma’am. I’ve got a pretty serious Altoids habit I’ve been trying to kick, but I’m clean when it comes to opioids, narcotics, hallucinogens and whippets.”
“Whippets?” Juliet asked, her eyes wide.
“Yeah,” Gran said. “Whipped cream cans? You’ve never done one?”
Juliet’s brows lowered at Gran’s explanation. “Seriously?”
“I think we’re having pie later,” Gran said. “I’ll show you.”
“Um…” Juliet said.
“So no, ma’am,” I said, trying to distract from Juliet’s worry over the potential that later we’d all huff whipped cream cans in the kitchen of this old plantation house with her elderly grandmother.
“Pity,” Gran said, turning back around and picking up her drink. “Manhattan?”
I glanced at the clock behind her, noting it was barely noon. “No thanks,” I said, almost wishing I did feel like a drink. The lady of the house was no doubt full of surprises and I looked forward to sitting down to learn about her life here in this place.
“Lunch on the porch,” she proclaimed, and we followed her out a screen door to a wide sweeping back porch overlooking the lawn and the smooth water flowing beyond it.
“This is incredible,” I said. I’d had no idea Maryland would be so beautiful. “Is that… the Chesapeake?” I took a guess.
“That’s a river,” Gran said, and she sat down clucking her tongue. “Californians.” She shook her head.
I thought about whether I wanted to take a guess at which river it might be, but I also found myself wanting Gran to like me, and my lack of drug use and ignorance of Maryland geography had me feeling like I was behind the power curve.
“Ignore her,” Juliet said. “It’s the Potomac.”
Juliet waved me to a seat, and we each served ourselves from the center of the table. I glanced around, wondering where Tess was, but I didn’t want to ask. Giving Juliet the impression I was interested in her sister was probably not a good idea. And I wasn’t exactly interested in her. I mean, she was interesting, no doubt.
I suspected it was more that I was fundamentally drawn to her. I’d actually never felt anything like it, and I didn’t trust the feeling completely. Maybe I was just tired? Maybe I’d feel completely ambivalent around her when we next saw one another.
Maybe, I thought, I felt around her kind of the way I felt about waffles when people first set them in front of me—super excited, like I’d never had anything half so good. But within three bites, I regretted the waffle decision and kind of wished I could just have something else.
Maybe Tess Manchester was just a regret waffle. So to speak.
I sighed and turned my focus to my lunch.
“So you can’t screw things up too badly, I’d guess, on the heels of that last asshole, Juliet,” Gran said. She was clearly talking to Juliet, but she was looking at me.
“Gran!” Juliet’s tone was scolding, but there was laughter in her smile.
“I’m pretty sure I told you back then that Zac was a moron, but no one ever listens to me,” the old woman continued. She sipped her drink and then looked at me. “Just wait, young man. Once you hit a certain age, everyone assumes you’ve got a few connections unhinged up here—” she pointed at her head, “and they pretty much ignore everything you say.”
