“Aren’t you supposed to be on my side?” But I laugh as I say it. Because Gram is always honest with me, whatever the price.
“I am on your side, honey, and if the people on your side can’t give you a little friendly constructive criticism, then who can?” Her eyes sparkle with laughter, too, though. “I’m just saying, it seems like you’re jumping to conclusions. You do have a tendency to do that, Bon-Bon. You don’t know he’s going to dump you until he does—and if he does, well, then he was never the right partner in the first place, and he’s doing you a favor. He’s freeing you to find the right person.” She reaches across the table to catch my hand, patting it softly. “At the end of the day, that’s all any relationship is. A test to see if you match. If you don’t, the best thing to do is to move on, until you find the one who does—and trust me, you will.”
Her wedding ring glints in the light of the setting sun beyond the facility windows. We’re playing chess in the tiny game room, but it feels private, with nobody else from the facility in here at this hour. I glance at her ring, the only reminder of a man I never knew.
“How did you know, with Grandpa?” I ask. She never talks about him. He died decades before I was born, and yet she never remarried, never even took her ring off.
Gram’s smile turns a little sad. “When I met your grandfather, we had both just come off tours in Vietnam. He was becoming an auto mechanic in our town, way north of here, tiny little place called Redding. I wanted to keep flying, and I told him as much on our first date. The other men I’d gone out with that summer all laughed at me, or told me it was a waste—that a pretty woman like me was needed at home, making more pretty little ladies and handsome young lads, rather than up in the sky sailing all over the place.
“Some boys were more subtle about it than others. They said being a pilot sounded very fun, like a great hobby. Others told me they’d love to have a pilot for a girlfriend, but eventually they’d need a wife who was, you know, a wife. They always said it like that. Like I ought to know implicitly what a wife was. And I knew what they meant, and that was never going to be a life for me.”
Her smile deepens, grows happy again, and there’s a light in her eyes that I’ve never seen before. A twinkle, almost. “But your grandfather. On our first date, he swung me across the dance floor at a little club downtown, the only one in town, really, and I told him I wanted to keep flying, and he looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘Sue-Ann, that is the sexiest thing a woman has ever said to me.’ And he meant it.” She laughs softly. “Oh, he loved that I was a career woman. He used to come out to the fields and wave me off every time I had a run. At first it was little cargo runs, local trips, with the only place that would hire me. Then later, a real airline, TransAm, and I was their first female pilot ever. Your grandfather was so proud of
me . . . He came to my wings ceremony with your mother in tow, and held her up on his shoulders so she could see me getting them pinned on.” She sighs and shakes her head.
The smile fades, and a tear glitters at the corner of her eye. I reach across the table to grab her hand, and squeeze her fingers gently. She clutches mine harder, like she’s clinging on, and I hold on too. I’m thinking the same things she is, I’m sure. About my mom, who died far too young, and my father with her. About my grandfather, who I never had the pleasure of meeting, but who sounds absolutely perfect for the wild free spirit that is my grandmother.
“He sounds great.” I venture a small smile.
She nods. “He was. He was . . . I could never remarry after that. Rich was my soulmate, my partner in life. He raised your mother, and he held down the homestead and let me fly off into the sunset, and he held his head high when the other men in our town called him a sissy and a queer for taking on women’s work, because that was what he wanted to do too, you see? He wanted to stay at home with your mother, to be present for all the little moments. He was a gentle soul, my Rich, and he loved cooking for us all, making huge feasts that would blow your mind to taste. Whereas me, my god, I could barely boil an egg. He used to make fun of me for it.” She sighs again, but it’s a lighter sigh this time. A happy one. “That’s what you need to find, Bon-Bon. A partner who fits you. And maybe you’ll want to be the one at home with your kids, or maybe both of you will want jobs out in the world, or maybe you’ll both want to raise a whole passel of little ones. You got to blaze your own path. But I’m telling you, no matter how unusual the things you want may be, there’s a man out there who wants a woman like you.”