In response to Martha Redbone

“I make a mistake.” 

He says it to me in English, so the woman doesn’t understand. She is busy scavenging for something from a drawer, her dark eyes narrowed. 

My grandfather is looking at me. He has bright green eyes, like seawater, beneath bushy eyebrows. He has more hair in his eyebrows than on his head; there’s a thinning halo of gray around his hairline, but he has gone bald on top. He’s grown a scruffy beard, the kind I might imagine on a Bond villain. 

He’s wearing a plaid green shirt that matches his eyes with all the buttons undone on the front, revealing his hairy chest and heavy stomach. Not too heavy–he’s lost weight, I think. A lot of weight. There was a time I would have been glad for that. But now, here, it just makes me worry. 

His fingers haven’t heard the news that he’s skinny now - they’re still fat and thick, bulging flesh around his rings. He grabs my hand. “I make a mistake,” he repeats, nodding. “I should never have marry her.”

He’s right. He shouldn’t have. I told him that. The whole family told him that. Some with tears, some with shouts. But it doesn’t matter now. We’re here. 

“I know,” I say, still in English. I squeeze his hand back.

“Your grandmother was the only one for me,” he says. His accent is thick. “Grandmother” comes out in chunks, each syllable heavily enunciated. It sounds more like “grahd-mutter.”

There’s a portrait of her on the wall beside him. My eyes flick towards it. It’s the extra large photo my cousins printed for her wake. She looks maybe fifty in it, instead of the 77 years she was when she passed. Her hair is dark and full, curled at the shoulder. There’s a subtle blue eyeshadow that makes her dark eyes look bright and inquisitive. Her expression is calm, stoic - like a highborn lady posing for a painting.

I wish they had chosen one where she’s actually smiling. This look was one of boredom, or judgment. Not love. And she was too full of love for that to be missing here. 

Everyone knew my grandmother had favorites.

My grandfather did, too, for the record, but he was at least subtle about it. My grandmother - my Yaya - had a favorite in each generation, and it was always a boy. Of my mom, aunt, and uncle, it was her youngest child, her darling son, my Tio. Of my generation of eight squabbling cousins, it was my older brother, Steve, whose name she always pronounced as “Eh-Steve.” 

I never let it bother me, though, because I was my grandfather’s favorite. 

He notices my wandering eyes. He arches his eyebrows, gesturing to the scavenging woman behind me. “She is a good woman,” he says.

I disagree. But not aloud.

“But she is not your Yaya.”

“That’s okay, Tata,” I say, soothing him. “As long as you can be happy now.”

I’m lying, but I’ve made my peace with that. 

I had always looked up to my Yaya and Tata. My own parents never got married. My aunt had been divorced as long as I could remember. My uncle was on his third marriage. I’d seen different shapes of love stories, but theirs was the one I craved for myself: magical, and steadfast. Like the fairytales I grew up reading.

They had met on a cruise ship in 1963. At 22 years old, while crossing into tomorrow’s tomorrow, they fell in love. He proposed after three days. He married her after three months. My aunt popped out in 1965. My mom in 1966. My uncle in 1967. 

My grandmother was a wisp of a woman, especially when standing beside my grandfather. She was petite and fashionable, rarely seen without manicured nails and a carefully composed outfit. My grandfather was a heavyset man who had crumbs on his shirt, if he wore a shirt at all. My grandmother collected Buddhas - those chubby little figurines with laughing faces. She had cupboards full of them. I used to joke that my grandfather, with his booming laugh and big bones, was like the biggest “Buddha” she had. I couldn’t imagine one without the other.

Then… she passed away. 

And it took him nine months to get married again.

That’s what happens after “happily ever after.” The king remarries, and the queen becomes a photo on the wall. 

My cousin had been more forceful in her feelings towards the marriage. She hurled accusations at our Tata, wailing that this was not the way the love story ends. That this was not what Yaya would have wanted. That it would have hurt her to know he had taken off his ring after its fifty-five years of duty. 

Especially, I think, to replace it with the gaudy one he wore now. I could almost see her wrinkling her nose at it. Tacky. 

The woman has been his wife for months now. She met my grandfather while he was visiting his hometown in South America. She’s younger than him but a little older than my mom. My cousin told me this is her fourth marriage, after being widowed three times. She continues to collect money from her previous husbands’ estates. 

She’s tall and wide, whereas my grandmother was short and petite. She tans too much, her dark skin reminding me of the wrinkled surface of a walnut. Her hair is flat and thin, falling to her waist like a black curtain. 

As if sensing my gaze upon her, the woman turns around. She’s wearing thick black-framed glasses, and her smile is all yellow teeth. “Do you need something, sweetheart?” she asks, in Spanish. 

No. Do you? I want to ask, watching her fingers scuttle through the drawers. But it isn’t worth it to make a scene now. I hold my grandfather’s hand tight. The last time I was here, his palm alone dwarfed my hand. Now, my fingers touch when they wrap around his wrist. I shake my head.

“Let me know if you want a Coke, beautiful,” she says, turning her attention back to the dresser. She pulls out one of my grandfather’s old click and point cameras. It must have been what she was hunting for - she leaves the room with it.

Sometimes I think she forgets my name. After so many husbands, I wonder if she bothers to learn names at all. She only ever calls me a growing list of Spanish pet names - linda, querida, mi amorsito. Beautiful, dearest, my love. She says it with a forced familiarity that makes my teeth clench. 

In my family, nicknames are affectionate gifts. Neither of my grandparents can even pronounce my actual name - “Teh-fee” is as close to Tiffany as they can get, and all my birthday cards are signed “Teffy.” The woman never calls me that, or my brother Eh-Steve. I would like to think she knows better but, in reality, it is more likely she does not care.

My grandfather switches back to Spanish, and asks how my work is going. I hear the woman behind me return to continue rifling through his things. 

Two months after this, the woman will leave with two bulging luggages and a thick carry-on, so heavy my aunt has to pay extra at the airport for it. My grandfather will pass away the night after she leaves, with my mother at his side. He will leave quietly - probably the first quiet thing he will ever do in his life. And my grandmother will get her favorite Buddha back.

But I don’t know this yet. 

In this moment, I am sitting at the table with my grandfather. We are holding hands. He is calling me Teffy, and telling me how next time I will need to come back and help him set up his printer. I promise him I will. 

I tell him I want to write a love story, about him, about Yaya. He consents, on one condition. 

“Make sure you make me handsome, eh?” he says.

I am relieved he did not ask me to write a happy ending. 

He likes drama more anyway.

The woman smiles at me when I get up to leave. I do not smile back.