“Alex!” Ed shouted, arms out, welcoming his grandson into a hug.
Alex accepted the old-world embrace happily, a kiss planted on his cheek, the feel of Ed’s smooth skin loose and soft like a baby’s arm. Sandalwood and lavender mixed in with a light peppermint scent greeted Alex along with Ed.
As they pulled apart, Ed said the same words he said every time. “Let me take a good look at you. Boy, have you grown! Where’s your mother? Where is Judy?” he asked, looking behind Alex into the hallway as if genuinely expecting to find her.
“Grandpa, she doesn’t pick you up for this appointment.”
“Oh.” His eyes clouded and Alex felt the bottom of his stomach drop. It was rare, but once in a while Ed could go into that place where only his daughters, in the flesh, could anchor him. Alex was one generation removed, just enough to make Ed hesitate. And once that line had been crossed, getting him back was extremely difficult and generally required a call to his mom or one of his aunts.
The cloud lifted and Ed’s smile widened even more. “Of course. It’s just us boys. There aren’t many of us, are there, Alex?”
“No, sir,” he said, smiling.
“Just those lousy sons-in-law of mine and my delightful granddaughters. It’s you and me Alex, all the way.”
“That’s right, Grandpa.”
Ed shut the door, carefully sliding a key into the deadbolt, clicking it shut, turning it back and sliding it out, slipping the key on a thin string under his shirt. They had taught him to do this about three years ago and he took it as deeply serious as a big, overgrown latchkey kid. But no more lost keys, no more frantic phone calls from a neighbor who found him wandering.
As they walked back to the parking lot, Alex glanced at Ed’s old Dodge Omni, forlorn and rusting out at the wheel wells. No matter how many times they explained to him that his license was expired, Ed would still try to get in the car. A handful of times he had managed to drive somewhere; the farthest he had managed to go was from Watertown to Greenfield, a good hundred-mile jaunt that no one could really figure out. He must have just gotten on Route 2 and kept driving until he stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts. He had munched happily on about a half-dozen chocolate glazed before an employee had figured out that he was lost. It wasn’t the first call from a kind Samaritan, but it was the last. Since then, Alex had disabled the car’s engine and his mother, aunts, and uncles took turns about every third or fourth day, surreptitiously reconnecting the battery terminals and driving it around a bit. Just enough to keep it functional.
“My car is broken, you know,” Ed said, pointing to the old gray clunker. “Damn engine—probably cost more to fix it than it’s worth.”
“Yeah, Grandpa, sorry about that.” That, too, was another conversation that they had over and over. If he let him ruminate on the car’s broken status, they could end up in an endless loop. Instead, Alex diverted the conversation by blurting out, “So, I met a new girl.”
“Your mother lets you date?”
Oh, boy. This was one of those days when Grandpa thought he was fourteen.
“Grandpa, I’m twenty-eight years old.”
Ed frowned. “I guess that means you can drive then today, right?”
Ed reached Alex’s car and he slapped the top of his green Honda.
“Yes, sir.” The less said, the better.
Ed took the fact that Alex was twenty-eight in stride, which meant that he was in a pretty good place today.
They both climbed into the car. Alex started it up and they wended their way a handful of miles through the Cambridge streets, past coffee shops, Alex’s favorite Eritrean restaurant, and finally Ed’s favorite hang-out in Harvard Square—the chess tables.
When the study appointment was done, he would take Grandpa to his favorite diner for lunch and then over to Harvard Square for a few games of friendly chess. If Alex deviated from that routine he would never hear the end of it. Ed may float back to 1953 sometimes, and even as far back as the early 1940s, but there was one thing that he knew about 2013—and that was that he was going to get his piece of pie at the diner and he was going to play three or four rounds of well-matched chess.
“So, this girl,” Ed asked, “she cute?” He held his hands out in front of his chest and mimicked a set of br**sts, ogling his own creation.
Alex bit his lower lip and tried not to laugh. “She’s… pretty, Grandpa. She’s pretty.”
“Did you… y’know?” Ed leaned over and nudged him with his elbow.
“Did we…?” Oh, God, he thought. Please. Not this conversation. It was easier to lie. “Uh, no.”
“Not yet,” Ed teased. “So, there’s another date?”
“That’s up to her.”
As they made the left turn to go into the parking lot at the nondescript medical building where the research trial was held, Alex felt his body flush. It had been one thing in the abstract to decide that he was still going to bring Ed for their monthly routine, that he would catch her and leave her no choice but to face him. It was quite another to slide into the parking garage, press the button for the ticket, and move slowly through the dark concrete jungle.
Josie did a double-take when Ed Derjian walked in to the room because there, standing behind him, was his two-generations-younger double. Taller, broader in the shoulder, and with a touch of something different, an ethnicity she couldn’t put her finger on but a body she wanted to put all her fingers on.
Dammit!
Of all the people in her life to be Ed’s grandson, how had she missed it? Somehow she had compartmentalized her life enough that work was work and everything else was everything else so Alex’s last name hadn’t rung a bell. Alexander Edward Derjian. She’d been blinded by lust. He’d blinded her with his lust. The easy familiarity in his eyes should have been a clue.
He knew her—or at least, knew of her when they met at Laura’s birth. Or did he? Maybe he really hadn’t recognized her and she was just making this all up in her mind as she looked him square in the eyes while Ed introduced them
“Oh, hey, Jackie. So, this is—”
“Josie, Grandpa. Her name is Josie,” Alex whispered. It was a stage whisper with a quick little look of amusement that Alex intended only for her.
“Josie!” Ed said, slapping his forehead. “That’s right. Josie. I knew that,” he chided Alex. “Josie, let me introduce you to my single, eligible, bachelor grandson. He’s a doctor,” Ed added, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.