The Circle and the Line (1982)

My grandmother spoke in a different register that August afternoon, a voice I had not heard before. I stopped to see her on my drive back to Charlottesville, Virginia, from summer school in Middlebury, Vermont.   

We were walking through Wilkes-Barre after lunch. The fountain at the center of town was turned off. A man in his late fifties walked by and with a big smile says, "Hi Tillie." 

My grandmother stands a bit taller for a moment and says "Hi," with her whole body, as if she knows him. 

"Who was that?" I asked. 

"I can't remember," she said, "but if they remember me, I say hello as if I know them. I think they like that." 

A few minutes later, she opens her handbag, takes a quarter out of a bloated coin purse, and places it gently into the Maxwell House coffee can beside an old man sitting in the shade. You could say he was begging, and he did ask us for money, but it felt more like he's spewing his woes out to the world, expecting little in return.

"Why did you give him money?" I asked. "He smells like he was drinking."

"It's not easy to beg," she said. "There were times we didn't have enough, and I had to ask others for help. So if someone asks, I give them something. Because I can." 

We walked around the corner to Boscov's, the local department store. My grandmother walked quickly up the escalator to women's dresses. She checked the tag on a claret-colored suit, to see if the price has been reduced enough to try it on. "Not yet," she whispers under her breath, shaking her head no. 

"I could buy it for you," I said. 

"No, no, no." It wasn't even a discussion.

We were driving back to her apartment when she made me promise to call an old boyfriend, whom she believed I was destined to marry. She said something in Yiddish, which I didn't understand. "Please tell me in English," I said, exasperated. 

"You see, Carol dear," her voice went down and she spoke slowly. "There is a circle and a line. The line is the things you chase. You think you know them. But they don't last. The circle holds the things that will always be true. That one (she couldn't remember his name) is forever. The rest of them are not fit to shine your shoes."

I was silent the rest of that drive. I parked the car, took the elevator upstairs with her, and walked inside to her apartment. We were standing by her dresser, when she said, in her deep, serious voice, "My brother did things to me no one should do to another person. My father too." 

By the time I'd taken in the enormity of those words, enough to ask what she meant, all she would say was "more than that I cannot say." She was back to her everyday voice, chattering about chicken soup and almond cookies and her friends downstairs. 

I promised her I would call the old boyfriend, but I never got the chance. He ended up calling me first. A year later we moved in together, two years later we married, and we've been married ever since.