Page 39 of We All Live Here
Celie is lyingon her bed when her grandfather enters. He doesn’t knock. He never knocks before he walks into any room. He just booms her name—he is STILL calling her Celia—as if in warning, then walks right in, that big stupid grin on his face. Mum has probably sent him to check up on her.
“Hey, sweetheart! How you doing?”
“Fine.”
She is not fine. She actually wants to die. Martin had shielded her from the group by turning in his seat to block everyone’s view of her as best as he could, but you cannot hide the smell of vomit, and within a few minutes, even though he had folded over the top of the bag and handed her a packet of Handy Andies, a murmur had begun to spread through the coach—a whisperedHas someone vommed? Oh, my God, can you smell that? OH, MY GOD.Kevin Fisher had made loud gagging noises, shouting at Mr. Hinchcliffe that the smell was going to make him puke, and the girls had started shrieking and hyperventilating and even though nobody said anything to her, she knows the story of how she puked and stank the bus out was going to be all over school by tomorrow morning. She had waited until everyone had got off before she disembarked, hunched, tearful and wishing she could just disappear. Martin had put the sick bag under his jacket and chucked it quietly in the public bin. She was grateful, but you know, it wasMartin. He is so uncool that a bit of her is fearful that just having him sitting next to her has lowered her standing even further.
“I just wondered if you wanted to take a stroll with your old pal Gene.” He never calls himself Grandpa. It’s like he thinks wearing one of his faded old rocker T-shirts every day shields the fact that he is basically decrepit. “Maybe show me round the neighborhood. All the streets look the same to me. All those brownstones.”
“No, thanks.”
He doesn’t leave. He just sits on the side of her bed, without being asked, and gazes around her room at her posters and photographs. She still has the pinboard of her and all the girls up beside her bed, even though looking at it makes her want to cry. It’s like if she takes it down it will be admitting that she no longer has any friends.
“Cute room.” He turns to her, as if that requires some kind of answer. She shrugs. “When I was your age…”
Why did all old people begin half their sentences withwhen I was your age? “…dinosaurs ate your room?”
He blinks, then laughs. “Pretty much. I guess I am a dinosaur to you kids. I was going to say that when I was your age my room was covered with pictures of my favorite actors. Marlon Brando, Jimmy Dean, Steve McQueen—all the rebels. I guess it’s kinda nice to have your friends instead.”
“They’re not my friends.” It’s out before she can stop it.
He glances at her, then up at the picture. “They look pretty friendly.”
“Well, they’re not. Not anymore.”
“You guys have a falling-out?”
“Oh, my God, why do you have to ask so many questions? You’re just staying here because you haven’t got anywhere else to go. You don’t have to pretend to care. It’s so obvious you’re not interested in any of us anyway.”
She is shocked by the savagery of her words. But he doesn’t seem troubled at all. When she looks up he is still gazing at the pictures.
“Yeah,” he says. “I guess I haven’t really stepped up in that department. But, hey, never too late, right?”
“Maybe you should talk to Mum about that.”
“Well, I’m talking to you.”
“Maybe I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Prickly little pear, ain’t you?” She glares at him but he seems amused. “That’s okay, kid. I guess I wouldn’t have wanted some old guy interrogating me about life at your age either. Hey, you want to grab a Coke? Old Bill downstairs seems to have just herbal tea and water, and I need me some sugar!”
She almost laughs then, the thought of him calling Bill “old,” as if he himself was some kind of juvenile.
“C’mon, sweetheart. I could do with some live company. This old house is way too quiet and gloomy to spend all our time hanging around here.” He adjusts his neck in his T-shirt. “And, besides, I need to load up on potato chips before we have to eat another darn salad.”
Maybe it’s because the thought of staying another evening in her room with the picture of how her life used to be is just too much right now. Maybe it’s because he’s the one person who hasn’t tried to offer a bloody solution. Or maybe it’s because, actually, she really does fancy a Coke. Celie slides off the bed—not smiling, she’s not ready for that—and follows the old man out of her room and downstairs.
•••
Looking back, Celiesees that evening as a blur of images: the tube journey to Soho, the way Gene (she cannot yet bring herself to call him Grandpa) talked to people in the carriage like they were all his friends, the way an old woman stared at him and then said: “Excuse me, are you that man fromStar Squadron Zero?”
And the way Gene immediately seemed to grow six inches, shooting back at her: “Captain Strang, reporting for intergalactic duty, ma’am!” with this cheesy salute, and the woman went bright pink, grabbed on tohis arm and got her daughter to take pictures of them together. She didn’t even care that everyone on the tube was looking at them.
And Soho, where she had been once years ago when she was a kid, a warren of grubby streets packed with early-evening drinkers, spilling out of pubs and clogging up the pavements so that Celie had to keep walking in the road, and Gene pulling her into this coffee house or that pub and going on about how it used to be around here and who he hung out with, actors’ names she’d never heard of. And how he stood in front of the gay sex shop, with all the harnesses and studs, frowned, tilted his head sideways, and said: “You know, you’d think with your climate the way it is they’d build a sweater or something into that leather gear, huh?” And then dared her to go in with him.
“Oh, my God! Why?” she had said, crimson with embarrassment and laughter, this old man peering in through the smoked-glass door.
He had shrugged. “Why not? You got to be curious, right? Or what’s the point in being here?” So she had taken his arm and walked in, and tried not to laugh at the bored, muscular guy with the Freddie Mercury mustache behind the counter who obviously knew as soon as they walked in that they were not real customers. He looked at them through half-lowered lids, and muttered, “Do you need any help?” with a deep sigh running underneath every single word.
