The Invention of Flight by Susan Neville Page A

bottom like a small white turtle. Alma thanks her, wants to give her a gift also, points out the steam in the kitchen, a gas that had once been liquid, crowding against the window in the swinging door which leads into the banquet hall, leaving a film of moisture on the glass. But the granddaughter says, That’s nice, accustomed to her excesses, doesn’t know that Alma’s trying to save her years of searching, goes down to the other end of the table and sits by the granddaughter in the man’s shirt.
    Other grandchildren and great-grandchildren come to the table. Some bring her Jello, others bring her rolls. One laughs, says, We’re the Jello brigade. Alma knows she will remember that phrase forever, that that grandson will always be the leader of the Jello brigade. Never one to think of a phrase, she is always the one to make it stick. One of the women at Sunday dinner looked at the table of widows and said, We’re the go-go grannies. From that point on, Alma had never issued an invitation to coffee or games of Manipulation or chicken dinners at the Hollyhock Hill without saying, It’s the go-go grannies, We’re the go-go grannies, The go-go grannies are getting together. Long after the rest of the women hadforgotten where the phrase came from, Alma could have told who said it and where, on what Sunday of what month of what year.
    Another grandchild comes with a roll for her. He sits and wraps a transparent ribbon of kraut around the tines of his fork, doesn’t want to eat it. A son sits across from her and begins telling her how much he’s always loved her music cabinet with the hand-painted picture of a man playing a lute on the front. He guesses it must be worth hundreds, a real antique. Sometimes Alma welcomes these comments, wants her things to go to those that want them. At other times she’s resentful, thinks they pay much more attention to her things than they used to. She grows suspicious that they’re all waiting for her to die, holding their breath. On days like this it seems that they’re all talking at once, saying Grandma, I like your monkeypod tray from Hawaii, I like your cloisonné lamp, but you didn’t really sell the Tiffany, did you, you do still have the humidor and the cranberry glass? When this happens she can feel her lips getting tight and thin, her eyes getting narrow, and she hears herself ask in a scratchy voice that can’t be hers, Why do you want to know? There are things she can’t bear for anyone to have. And they’re not the important things—her Bible, her pictures of John, the china and cut glass. It’s silly things like her rolling pin, the mammy and pappy salt shakers, a metal coffee can where she keeps her saltines, a cotton slip. She knows they won’t fare well. She can picture her daughter saying of course
these
things we can throw away. She can see them looking at her earrings—how tasteless, how quaint, how oldfashioned. She can see them laughing at her supply ofwine that the doctor told her to drink to build up her blood, a joke almost slapstick, the old lady drinking wine for medicinal purposes. She’s told them often enough that she enjoys the wine, has had it for dinner all her life, that the doctor only told her not to
stop
, that it was good for her. The one son who loved to make jokes found her wine the richest material he’d had in years. It was this same son who, when he was twelve and obsessed with being pure and wanted to become a saint, when he stopped eating for a week, had thought her wine was wicked and wild and poured a bottle out in the gravel driveway to save her soul. Alma thinks that she hasn’t changed, that if her wine has to be interpreted she would rather be thought of as slightly wicked than as feeble and silly.
    And last week in the middle of the night she suddenly couldn’t bear the thought of someone throwing away the tiny clear glass bird with the air bubble