She asks him if he wants her to stay. He does. She asks him if he wants her to stay in the lesson room. He does.
She takes the metal chair closest to the window. The room is stuffy, and she notices a film of dust and cat hair on sills and floor. Only the instruments shine.
The boy faces the teacher and the keyboard, his back to her. So she is free to stare. How when he was a baby, she loved staring at his perfect features, his coffee-milk brown skin, his soft curls, his long-lashed dark eyes. She took in limbs and lips. She took in his long torso and feet big for his small size.
“Sit there,” he’d say, when in his bath, directing her to the toilet seat while he sunk ships, blitzed dinosaurs and waged bubble wars on floating tigers and elephants. She watched and feasted on his playful contentment, as well as trying to keep bathwater in the bath, unsuccessfully, she might add.
But that was years ago. Now of course, he’s much older and she’s locked out of the bath and quizzed when caught in a stare. “Why are you looking at me like that, Grandma?” as if she is doing something wrong.
And now, she must stick to the protocols of hellos and good-byes: One kiss hello. One hug (maybe two) good-bye. For her not enough. Never enough.
But here in the lesson room, his back to her, she may stare to her heart’s delight. She watches him take a deep breath as his voice rides up and down the scale. She hears him sing the notes and repeat the nonsense syllables his young, delightfully quirky teacher assigns as part of a difficult exercise. “Nu … Nu … Nu … Moo … Moo … Moo … Bu … Bu,” he chants, in order to stretch and broaden his vowels, the teacher explains. “This will help you cover your full range,” she instructs, as they make their way to Celine Dion, a song he sings with such sweetness, it knocks her out. His teacher, too, delights in his musicality and promises that soon his vocal cords will deliver without the crack. Soon.
Toward the end of the lesson, the teacher suggests it might be better if he came every week rather than their schedule of every other week. There is discussion of available appointment slots. “I can get him here by five,” the grandmother offers. Then the boy turns to her. He mouths something she doesn’t understand. He whispers something she does.
It seems that her pronouns were wrong. She has offended him with her pronouns. She must, she knows, move out of the linguistic past and into a personal plural, pronomial future, utterances that confuses her. A gender-neutral convention that also confuses her.
But really, when you think about it, grandparents, as a general rule, are adaptable. How often they are called upon to broaden their own vowels and stretch rigid muscles. Haven’t they learned to text? Haven’t they traded favorite apps and acquired smart phones (even if sometimes to cut off rather than receive a call). And it’s not the first time a grandparent has been asked to support difficult choices their grown children or grandbabies make. So, she starts again:
“I can get them here by five,” she says to the teacher.
And next week she will ask them if they want her to stay.
She will ask them if they want her to stay in the lesson room. If they do.
So she will.
Ruth Charney lives in Greenfield