Curveball : The Year I Lost My Grip (9780545393119) (13 page)

For the next few weeks, things were tense with Angelika. It was pretty darn annoying, because she kept texting AJ about me (“Pete has something to tell you!”), and texting me about AJ (“Told him yet?”). Then AJ would text me about Angelika, and text her about me. He was in this odd kind of Dr. Phil role, and believe me: AJ might be my best friend, but that doesn't qualify him to be a relationship counselor.

Here's a typical session between AJ and me, from the day before Thanksgiving:

On Thanksgiving, my family has a tradition: My grandfather comes over in the morning, and we watch the Phillipsburg–Easton high school football game. They're these two towns about half an hour from where we live, and they've been huge football rivals for something like 107 years. My dad went to Phillipsburg High, and Grampa went to Easton, so it's a pretty big deal in our house. I know this sounds totally sexist — but Samantha helps Mom in the kitchen all morning while the three generations of men sit in front of the TV and argue about the game.

But this year was different. This year, Grampa couldn't keep up his end of the conversation. I don't
think Dad noticed — give Dad a beer, chips, and a wide-screen TV, and he wouldn't notice if Godzilla sat down next to him on the couch. But I couldn't stand it. Dad would complain about a call, which in previous years would have made Grampa snort in disgust. This year, Grampa just grunted. Dad would jump up and cheer when his team scored, which always used to make Grampa say, “Oh, sit down, there's a lot of game left.” This year, Grampa just looked kind of baffled. So I sat there and fumed, wondering how on God's green earth these people could possibly be oblivious to what was so clear to me.

When halftime finally came, after what felt like a million years, I had to get out of that room for a while. I asked Grampa if he wanted to come down and see what I was working on in photo class. Of course, he came, but looking at pictures didn't immediately snap him out of his fog like I had hoped it would. I showed him my portraits of Angelika, which he had already seen, but still, I liked looking at them. “Pretty girl,” he said. I started to smile; he might not have remembered the pictures, but at least he
thought my semi-girlfriend was attractive. “Who took these?” he continued. I reminded him that we were looking at my work, and he grinned, but kind of vaguely.

Next, I clicked through some of the best sports shots I had taken, and for some reason, he seemed more focused on these. Looking at one particularly tack-sharp photo I had taken of AJ going up for a rebound in basketball, he even asked me what lens I had used. I told him it was his old favorite 85mm prime lens, and he got all excited. “I love that lens,” he said. “Can I see it?”

I was a bit taken aback, because he hadn't wanted to get involved with the actual equipment of photography for months. I went and got the lens out of my camera bag, though. He took it in his hands and turned it over and over, bending his neck and squinting intently. “That's not my lens. What camera would take a strange-looking piece of glass like that?” he spat.

I took it back from him, set it down on the computer desk, and scrambled to get his best Nikon
camera body. Then I attached the lens, and held it out to him. “This is the camera, Grampa,” I said quietly. “It's your best body. You always called it ‘Numero Uno.'”

He laughed. “Numero Uno? That thing? That's not Numero Uno — it's not even one of my cameras. First of all, Numero Uno is a Leica. Second of all, Numero Uno isn't nearly that big. Or that fancy-looking. All those buttons and dials — I wouldn't even know where to put in the film!”

“Uh, it doesn't take film.”

“What are you talking about? A camera that doesn't take film! What does it print onto — toilet paper?”

“Gramp,” I said as gently as I could, “it's a digital camera. It saves all its images onto a memory card.” I held the camera out for him to examine more closely.

He looked and looked at that camera, then sat down heavily in the chair, looking absolutely defeated. “I'm losing it, Peter. Don't tell your mother, but I am losing it.”

I didn't know what to say. Really, who would?

I stood over him for a while, still holding the camera out like a moron. Then he said, “The other day, I forgot your grandmother's name for a minute. We were married for fifty years, and I forgot her name. What am I going to do? I don't want to forget my own wife.”

I didn't want my grandfather to know I had noticed the tears that were trickling down his face, so I pretended to be scrutinizing the camera. I even mumbled the button functions to myself: “Aperture. Flash. ISO. Video Record.”

Video record! I thought of San saying, “Who needs it the most?” I thought of Henri Cartier-Bresson's words: “We cannot develop and print a memory.” But maybe I could, in a way. Maybe I could help my grandfather record what he remembered before it was gone forever. I ran and got Grampa a tissue, then attached the camera to a tripod while he dried his eyes.

I focused the camera right on Grampa's face, and said, “Hey, Gramp. Can you tell me how you
and Grandma met?” Then I pressed the
VIDEO RECORD
button.

“It was the first day of classes at New York University, 1958. My first class, Portrait Photography, had just ended, and I'd sprinted the three blocks to my next class. I got to the lecture hall early, carrying my huge Psychology 101 textbook in one hand, and my camera in the other. I sat down in the third row, because you should never sit in the first two rows. It makes you look like a kiss —

“Um, wait … what were we talking about again? Oh, right, your grandmother. She walked in and my heart stopped. She was wearing a bright green dress. I dropped my book, and it made a loud BANG! on the tile classroom floor. I grabbed Numero Uno, and swung it up just as she looked to see where the noise had come from. If not for that Leica camera, who knows what would have happened. I got the shot, I got the girl … and I got a C-minus in psych! With your grandmother next to me, who could concentrate?”

 

By the time we got called back upstairs for dinner, Grampa was pretty cheerful. I didn't know whether recording his memories would slow down whatever was happening to his brain, but it had definitely helped his mood. I felt good, too, like I was finally doing something besides sitting around and worrying. Plus, Grampa had looked so vibrant and alive when he talked about my grandmother — and there was so much I hadn't known! I mean, I had seen the black-and-white photo of a very young Grandma in a dress on Grampa's dresser a million times, but I hadn't known he'd taken it in the first minute of their life together.

As soon as we had all piled our plates high with food, my dad announced that we were going to do the dreaded say-what-you're-thankful-for thing before we ate. Samantha rolled her eyes, but when it was her turn she said, “I have a lot to be thankful for this year. I'm so thankful that we could all be here together today. I'm thankful that I was lucky enough to be born into a family that could afford to pay for my college. And my car. Especially in this economy,
with gas being so expensive and all. Of course, I almost have enough in my account to keep up, as long as I don't try to spend too much on fun things, or go to any parties, or —”

Dad cleared his throat.

“Anyway, I'm thankful for David —”

(That's her boyfriend at college. She hadn't managed to say three sentences without mentioning him in the two days she'd been home.)

“I'm thankful for Mom and Dad, for Grampy —”

(Yes, she actually called him Grampy.)

“And for my little brother, who is apparently taking over the high school. As a freshman! Impressive! Now, when do I get to meet this Angelina chick? I can't believe Petey is old enough to have a girlfriend!”

“Uh, it's Angelika. And she's not exactly my —”

Mom cut me off. “Can we get back to being thankful? We have the rest of the year to bicker, OK? Peter, would you like to go next?”

“I guess so.” I took a deep breath, and tried to organize my thoughts. There was some irritating
stuff happening in my life, and some truly bad stuff. But I thought about the things AJ had said about my life when he'd thought I was asleep, and it hit me that there was a lot of good stuff, too.

“I'm thankful for Grampa, for the time I get to spend with him, and for everything he's taught me about photography. Well, about everything, really. And for all the amazing equipment. I'm thankful to Mom, for making me take photography class this year. I'm thankful that I have good friends who care about me. And a family. And, um, that's it. So, thanks.”

Smooth, I know. Somehow, my family managed to hold their applause. Mom reached over and squeezed my hand, though. “Next?” she said.

My dad, who had been fiddling with one of the wings from the turkey because it kept dripping grease onto the tablecloth, stopped what he was doing and started to make a big old speech. It kind of figured that he wouldn't say more than seventeen words the whole rest of the year, but then, when we were sitting in front of our first home-cooked
meal in months, watching the sauces cool and congeal by the second, he'd suddenly start speechifying. But if he didn't hurry, I was afraid the mashed potatoes would harden into a thick mass of fork-destroying glop.

“We are lucky today to be in the presence of our loved ones, who have traveled great distances to join together and break bread …”

(“Traveled great distances?” Samantha's college was maybe eighty-five miles away. And “break bread”? Who says “break bread”? Honestly, Dad.)

I played with my cranberry sauce, trying to see whether I could free a berry from the Jell-O-y part and leave a berry-shaped indentation. That's harder than you might think, so I missed most of Dad's oration. I tuned back in right at the end, when he said, “… and I am most thankful that I have a good job so I can work as hard as I have to, and make ends meet when, uh, additional expenses arise. Crises come and crises go, but I am very fortunate that so far, we have gotten through all of our crises … together.”

(I wasn't sure what the additional expenses were, aside from the demands of Samantha's party budget, but I had certainly noticed the extra work Dad had been putting in. I didn't stop to wonder for too long, though, because then it was Grampa's turn.)

Grampa didn't say anything for the longest time. I noticed his eyes were wet and red-rimmed again, and I was pretty sure his hands were shaking.
This isn't you, Grampa
, I thought.
You don't shake. You don't cry.
“I'm thankful,” he said, then stopped. He cleared his throat and started over: “I'm thankful for the girl in the green dress.” Then, right there at the table, he broke down and sobbed.

I texted Angelika that night:

She wrote back in thirty seconds, tops:

I got there at nine. Angelika's mom let me in. Angelika was curled up on her living room couch
in sweats, holding a ginormous mug of what turned out to be hot chocolate. Soon I was sitting stiffly at the far end of the couch with a huge mug of my own. Angelika's dad was nowhere to be found, but Angelika's mom sat down on a big easy chair about four feet away from me and started chatting her head off. Clearly, she was determined to be her daughter's chaperone for the evening.

All I wanted to do was talk to Angelika about my grandfather, and ask what problems she was having. But it was kind of hard, because her mom was hovering like a bathrobe-clad she-hawk, firing off question after question: How's school? How's the newspaper? How's the yearbook? How's your friend AJ? — I haven't seen him around for days!

(
Hoo boy
, I thought.
AJ's been around?
)

I tried to be as boring as possible with my answers, hoping I could just wear her out until she gave up, decided I was too slow-witted to be any threat to her daughter, and fled upstairs. It didn't work. Whenever her mom looked away, though, Angelika rolled her eyes and made apologetic faces — which
at least let me know she wanted to be alone with me, too.

This weird stalemate was only broken when Angelika's dad called for her mom to come upstairs. As soon as she did — after one last, lingering look at her daughter — Angelika stretched her legs out so her feet were just touching the side of my left leg. “Hey,” she said. I didn't know what the heck was going on with our so-called relationship, but one thing was for sure: All Angelika had to do to make me fall completely in testosterone with her again was give me two feet and a “hey.”

“Uh, hi,” I mumbled.

“So what's the problem?” she asked. “Lumpy potatoes? Dry turkey? Too much of the dreaded green-bean-and-cream-o'-mushroom casserole?”

I tried hard to forget about her feet against my leg — which was tough, because every once in a while, just when I was almost ready to stop sweating, she would wiggle her toes. I tried even harder to forget about the weirdness we'd been going through. I tried hardest of all to block out my questions about
why
AJ had been coming to her house
. And I told her all the latest news about my grandfather. She listened silently, through several rounds of toe wiggling and a few sneak peaks through the stair railing by her mother.

When I had wound up my sad little monologue, I said, “Angelika, how much time did you have before your grandmother … you know … uh?”

She pulled her feet away from me and curled her arms around her knees. Suddenly, I could breathe. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, how long was it between when you first knew something was wrong and when she totally couldn't function anymore?”

Angelika said, “So I'm guessing you haven't told your parents about your grandfather's blanking-out episodes yet? I'm sure it's not the same for everybody, but I don't think you have a huge amount of time. I think with Grandma, from the first time we noticed anything major to the time she needed to be put in a home was only maybe six months. But you know, Pete —”

“I know. I should tell my mom everything.”

“That wasn't what I was going to say … even though you
know
I was thinking it. I was going to say, if you need any help with the video, I'll be glad to come along.”

“Thanks. I'm going over to his house tomorrow to do some more filming. Maybe I'll ask him if it would be all right. I mean, I'd really like to have you there.”

Angelika stretched so that her feet were against me again. “OK,” she said. “Now I have a question for you. What kind of girls does Adam like?”

I moved away from her. Of all the questions in the world, this had to be up there with the all-time, world-record-breaking mood killers. I was tempted to say something that would reflect really badly on AJ. But then again, he was my best friend. I would just have to be as noble as I could in this horrible situation. “Well,” I said, “he's — um — well, I don't think he likes one specific type of girl.”

Translation: He's so hormone-crazed that if you're breathing, you're his type.

“OK, I'll break this down. Does he like short girls?”

Yeah, like I couldn't freaking see where this was heading. But I nodded. “Sure,” I said. Because, you know, short girls generally
do
breathe.

“How about dark-haired girls?”

Crap. I nodded again, and edged all the way over against the far arm of the couch.

“With glasses?”

Good God, why didn't she just rip out my heart and stomp on it? I used every ounce of my willpower to wrestle my mouth into a grin. “Glasses are fine,” I said. “I'm telling you, AJ just isn't that picky. OK?” I tensed my legs and got ready to walk out of there with some shred of dignity intact.

“Wow, this is perfect!” Angelika exclaimed.

I didn't see what kind of perfect this was, other than perfectly screwed-up. I stood and grabbed my cocoa mug.

Angelika jumped to her feet, and said, “Elena is going to be so happy!”

I put down the mug and whirled to face her. “Elena? Elena who?”

“Elena Zubritskaya!”

“Elena Zubritskaya?”

“You know, the Russian girl with the really big, um …”

“Accent?”

“Yeah, her. See, I've been working on my photos of Adam — you know, for the project? Catch 'em lookin' good?”

“Yeah, and?”

“Well, I was carrying a big blowup poster I made of Adam blocking a shot in basketball, and she asked what I was carrying. When I showed her, she said, ‘I always think he so cute!' So I figured maybe … well, Adam just seems so lonely sometimes, so I thought maybe the two of them could … I don't know … get together. What do you think?”

Now my smile was genuine. Also huge. “I think it's genius! Because, truthfully, I had kind of thought that you and Adam — AJ — Adam … I kind of thought you and he, um, had something.”

She laughed. “Me and Adam? Are you kidding?”

“Well, he's this big sports stud, and he's so much fun to be around. And I'm, like, Mister Depression. Plus, you sleep in his bed, and you're suddenly taking pictures of him. Then he's coming over to your house, and you're all mad at me for not telling him about my arm. So I just figured —”

She grabbed my hand and pulled me down so we were sitting on the couch together. Close together. “Pete,” she said, “you're right. Adam is cute, in a big sheepdog kind of way. And he is really fun. But I like intense guys. Smart, intense guys. I like you.”

“But …”

“Believe me, OK? Listen, I'll tell you why I like you. Remember the first time we met, when I caught you staring at me, so I made a joke about it — and you blushed? And then you laughed and got busted by the teacher?”

“Um, I wasn't staring, I was … all right, I
was
staring. So?”

“So then I asked to switch classes, too. Because …”

“Because that teacher was a moron?”

“Well, yeah. But also because I wanted to get to know you. Not Adam. You!”

“Really?”

“Peter, I don't care who can throw a ball harder. You're the one that blushed when you looked at me. You're the one who's so concerned with your grandfather — guys never show that kind of emotion. You're different. And then — remember when I came over to do your portrait?”

“Of course.”

“And do you remember how much I was flirting with you?”

“You were doing that on purpose?”

“Duh.”
Wow
, I thought.
AJ was actually right about a girl. Who knew?
She continued, “So there I was, like, playing with my bra strap while you snapped away. But the one picture you chose out of the whole set was the one where I wasn't posing at all.”

“The one with the brownies.”

“The one with the brownies. It was like you're so sweet that you made
me
look sweet. Does that make any sense?”

“Nope,” I said, and leaned toward her. When we kissed, I could feel that she was smiling.

 

Every day for the rest of the long Thanksgiving weekend, I did two things. First, I went running in the freezing cold with AJ. Next, I headed over to my grandfather's house with a camera and shot video. He really seemed to love talking about his life, and I found out a ton of stuff I had never known. Some examples:

• He had gone to Vietnam as a newspaper photographer, gotten shot down in helicopters twice, and won a journalism award for his coverage of a big battle called the Tet Offensive right before my mom was born. But he gave up his career as a combat photographer when my grandmother called him home. Or, as he put it, “She told me I could sleep in ditches and get shot at all day, or I could come home, sleep in our warm bed, and change diapers. It was a close call — some of your mother's diapers were pretty toxic — but the
  only thing in the world more important than your career is your family. Never forget that.”
  

• He had shot the weddings of three future members of Congress, two famous rock musicians, one murderer, one reality-TV star, and all four children of a legendary race car driver. He had done weddings in chapels, in huge megachurches, in mosques, on the tops of mountains, on an airplane, in the middle of the ocean on a yacht, and even underwater with scuba gear. But his all-time favorite wedding was the very first legal gay marriage performed in Connecticut, between two middle-aged men. “Why?” I asked. He grinned. “It was the easiest shoot ever,” he said. “No bride!”
  

• He and my grandmother had been married for half a century, and had only had three major arguments. The first was when he came home from Vietnam and found out she had gotten their
  house painted pink. “Your grandma Joanie told me it had looked like more of a brick red on the paint sample sheet,” Grampa said. “A wonderful woman, but she had no sense of color.”
       The second argument was the day after my mom's high school graduation, when my grandmother had accidentally walked into his darkroom and ruined three rolls of film — every picture he had taken of Mom in her cap and gown. “That one was my fault,” he said. “I didn't lock the door. I always, always locked the door. But my mother had cancer at the time, and it was getting pretty close to the end. I was so excited to get everything developed so I could rush over to the hospital and show her the photos of her granddaughter all grown up … eh, you know what? The reason doesn't matter. Whenever you're mad, there's always a reason. All that matters is, never yell at your wife. And you know what your great-grandmother said when I got to the hospital? I ran in there with a big bunch of flowers and told her the whole story.
  She said, ‘I know how beautiful my own grandchild is. I don't need pictures for that.' Then she made me march right home and give Joanie the flowers.”
       The third argument had happened just a few weeks before my own grandmother's death from heart failure. Even four years after the fact, Grampa could barely talk about it. “I tried to get her out of bed. It was a beautiful day, and the docs kept saying the more she walked around, the better it would be for her heart. And we had always gone walking together. But she wouldn't get up. ‘I'm tired,' she said. Over and over. But I wouldn't stop asking. Finally, she turned to me and said, ‘I walked with you for half a century. Today, I can't do it. So would you please be quiet and just lie down next to me?'” Grampa started crying, and asked me to pause the recording for a minute. When he told me to start up again, he said, “Where was I? Oh, the last fight … you know what? Sometimes, letting go is the best you can do.”
  

Grampa sat there for a while, nodding his head, lost in the memory. I stopped recording again, and waited without saying anything. For the first time I could remember, Grampa was the one who broke the silence. “Do we have any tuna fish?” he asked.

I got up, ran into the kitchen, and checked. “Yes,” I said. “We do.”

“Um,” he said, “do I like tuna fish?”

That was the bad part of spending so much time there: I had a close-up view of all the ways Grampa was slipping. He could remember the dress his dead wife had worn fifty-four years before, but in the present he wasn't sure whether he liked tuna. He could name maybe two thousand brides, but kept forgetting whether he had brushed his teeth that morning. And, because staring at someone through a zoom lens for an hour a day really makes you notice details, I saw that other things were starting to go: his collars were frayed. His sweaters were stained. His hair was a little clumpy. There were dust bunnies all over the house.

On Sunday afternoon, I asked him, “Grampa, are you all right?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I mean … are you doing OK living alone here?”

He sat back in his chair and closed his eyes for a while. Then he said, “It's hard, Peter. And it's getting harder. But I'm not ready to give up yet. All I want is to be the one that says
when
. All right?”

I nodded.

Suddenly, he leaned forward and clapped his hands together. “Well, that's one discussion over with,” he said. “Now, do we still have any of that tuna?”