Note: this is a short story I wrote during a writing workshop a few years ago. I first posted it on another blog in the original form. Due to my creative inability now days to work on any of my current projects, I've taken the time to edit the story a bit and post it here.
Enjoy (or enjoy again, if you've read it already) and comment!
Mr. Benjamin Xavier Grandfather, better known to folks in Grandville as Mr. Granpa, is the smartest old man in Grandville, population 700 and something (what it actually says on the You Are Now Entering sign). Nobody knows in the least how Mr. Granpa’s surname came to be Grandfather, however they do know that he likes the name shortened to just Granpa on postcards and letters, so when someone mails him a letter, it would begin with ‘Dear Mr. Granpa’, like a Christmas letter addressed to the person’s actual grandpa. It may be uncomfortable for some people to accept this name, but they just have to deal with it, because nobody argues with the smartest man in Grandville, at least not the senior citizens. Mr. Granpa is a very smart man, he is a world renowned architect; it was he who designed the local train station, the mayor’s office in Youngsville, and it’s rumored that he had lend a hand in the design of the White House, during its re-renovation. Architecture is Mr. Granpa’s greatest talent, he is also adept in other professions, but architecture is his strongest trait.
In his Mansion, Mr. Granpa keeps blueprints, drawings and sketches, and maps all crowded in the hallways, the unused bedchambers, the vacant kitchens, the silent ballroom, the dusty family room, the leaky den, and finally the twenty or so bathrooms (as an architect and an old man who is at risk of constipation, Mr. Granpa knows the importance of bathrooms in a house). In the backyard of Mr. Granpa’s mansion, there is a 100 acre garden flowering with a strange plant called the Rosebush-Haired Head-plant; they were a present to him from his son Wilfred (he will be mentioned again shortly). The plant was his son’s own creation, Mr. Granpa did not initially want to keep it, because it looks weird among the daisies and roses and violets his hired gardener had installed in his garden, but the plant soon flourished on Mr. Granpa’s over-fertilized soil and ate off all of the other plants, now his garden is full of clumps of head busts with rosebushes growing out of their heads, reaching a meter in height.
Except for this outbreak of a weird plant, the rest of the garden grounds are trimmed with soft grass and ideal for a picnic on a sunny day. Beyond his 100 acre garden is a 200 acre hedge maze. The hedges are grown by Mr. Granpa’s gardener, but each hedge design, each hedge cut into geometric shapes, animals, building, furniture, those hedge are cut by Mr. Granpa himself, exercising his talent of sculpting – one of his auxiliary skills in addition to architecture.
Mr. Granpa is also an expert on kinesiology; he uses his understanding of human body structure to keep himself fit. Even at his advanced age of seventy-four, he is capable of storming the Normandy Beach on D-Day (and would have taken at least five machinegun pillboxes), wrestling with a Viking (and win), bungee-jumping off the CN Tower (without risk of heart failure), and inventing a magnetic explosives detonator to smoke out all the road-side bombs in Afghanistan (not to mention killing a few terrorists in the process of doing that), if only he can put his mind to it. None of it is really challenging, if one can grasp the full physical and intellectual capacity of the human being as Mr. Granpa so shrewdly does. With his thorough understanding of all this, Mr. Granpa is invincible. He can kick Albert Einstein’s butt any day; if only he can put his mind to it.
The reason Mr. Granpa can not put him mind to any of the awesome things listed above is because of a recent tragedy that struck him hard in all parts of his body, but especially his heart. It concerns the death of his only son, Wilfred Benjamin Grandfather, who never got to be a grandfather as his surname suggests.
Wilfred B. Grandfather was a big disappointment, as Mr. Granpa reflects. It all began when his mother, Mrs. Granpa the wife of Mr. Granpa, died giving birth to him. Mr. Granpa was devastated to learn of the tragedy, he was at work working on building a new skyscraper at the time, and was not there to hold her hand as Mrs. Granpa passed away; he blames this tragedy partially on himself, and partially on Wilfred. Mr. Granpa never remarried; instead he built himself a house at the outskirts of Grandville, and lives there in seclusion, working on endless projects to take his mind off the suffering he suffers.
From there, Wilfred became a bigger disappointment to Mr. Granpa when he learned that his son had not inherited a bit of Mr. Granpa’s talents, nor was he ever interested in architecture. Wilfred was a gifted naturalist, something Mr. Granpa could never understand. Wilfred became dedicated to studying wildlife, and discovered fifteen new species of plants; he had also taken up environmental activism as a hobby, something Mr. Granpa never experienced in his generation, and therefore couldn’t understand what all the fuss is about. Mr. Granpa holds the foolish belief that any work with the word ‘mentalist’ in its name had to be a bad apple; a mentally unstable is what it is, and environmentalist does indeed have ‘mentalist’ in its name. So Mr. Granpa disowned his only son. Wilfred did not however forget his dear old grieving father; every year he would send him a postcard, one from a different country each year, and kept him up to date on his travels and studies. Mr. Granpa didn’t know what to say, he did realize his son was a genius, just not the kind of genius he wants as a son. Wilfred had married, in his early twenties, and married he did to another naturalist, they had a daughter, and so Mr. Granpa became a grandfather true to his surname, all without fulfilling any particular duty as a grandfather he had no idea he should.
Wilfred and his wife died a few weeks ago, and Mr. Granpa was no sooner to receive the news; they had perished in the Amazon Rainforest. They were jumped by poisonous tree frogs while collecting samples. Foolish, Mr. Granpa thought, until he heard the news of Wilfred’s will: his son said he nor his wife wanted to be buried under a rock in a cemetery, they wish to have their ashes scattered over the Alps , where they had met; this news made Mr. Granpa so pissed off at that his son decided not to abide to the traditional way of burial that he was near a heart attack when his only son added that they do not wish to have a funeral because they didn’t want anyone to grieve for their absence; they only returned to nature, the will said. Mr. Granpa came out of the Environmentalist Agency in Brazil
Mr. Granpa’s granddaughter is, as the child of two naturalists should be, a naturalist. To her, Mr. Granpa’s mansion is as boring a place as a video game. On her first day living with Mr. Granpa, she asked for a tent, a solar powered flashlight (Mr. Granpa didn’t have one, but he made one and insisted her to follow through with his process of designing and making it, and it took 1 hour but she fell asleep in the first 10 minutes), a rolled up mattress, and a kite. Then she staked out for Mr. Granpa’s hedge maze to explore and has been gone since. Mr. Granpa’s granddaughter, her name he can not remember, although she did repeat it to him five times the first day they’ve met, she asked why aren’t there any pictures of Wilfred around the house, and Mr. Granpa had told her he locked the only picture of his son in a metal chest and threw the key into the hedges, to be rid of the disappointing memories. At this, Mr. Granpa’s granddaughter told him excitedly that she’s going to explore the hedge maze, all of it, and find the key to the chest, as her first favor to her granddad. It would take a few weeks, and she would tell him how far she’s gone with the exploration using the kite to mark where she’s at. What a naturalist! Mr. Granpa thought, more interested in some hedges rather than the grand mansion itself, and finding the lost key in a 200 acre hedge, that equals the probability of finding a needle in ten haystacks! Where had the naturalist genes come from, from Mrs. Granpa? Speaking of which, Mr. Granpa never knew what his wife’s hobby was while she was alive.
When he was young, Wilfred liked to spend precious time in the forest, being fascinated by nature, like Charles Darwin. What Mr. Granpa’s granddaughter is doing with her precious time (the same what Wilfred had done), it is doubtlessly true and discouraging to Mr. Granpa that she is every bit the naturalist he was, and his much cherished talent in architecture is also every bit as dead as Wilfred. There is no more hope in Mr. Granpa that his endowment will resurrect in his descendant. The company which he founded himself, Grandfather Architecture Estate (GAE for short), will fall in the hands of the public once he’s passed away (because his granddaughter will surely sell it to buy insect specimen or something like that). The thought of it makes Mr. Granpa grab for the tissue box.
Once upon a time Mr. Granpa could run the Boston Marathon, play a hockey match at the NHL and arm wrestle Arnold Schwarzenegger, all in one day. Now days, however (and especially ever since Wilfred’s sudden death and the arrival of his granddaughter), Mr. Granpa constantly feels tired and beaten-down. Even his knowledge of human health cannot abstain his depressed behavior. Since the death of Wilfred, it only took him a month to gain thirty pounds from consumption of TV dinners, grow a medium-sized beer gut from a daily 2 liter intake of alcohol, and let his bushy white beard grow wild without trimming. Wrinkles appeared on his forehead, his walking pace slowed, and he sometimes has trouble keeping balance while standing; all within the time span of a month and almost a week!
Mr. Granpa hasn’t worked on a blueprint in five days, a new record for him for procrastinating; this is the sixth day and counting by hours! Mr. Granpa opens his eyes, lifts his head and gazes out into his 300 acre backyard from his lawn porch, where he had fallen asleep in an easy chair the previous night after some hard, depressing and totally unhealthy drinking.
It is a sunny day, a red and yellow kite is in the sky, the string leading from somewhere behind a hedge cut of the Alp, a sign that Mr. Granpa’s granddaughter is still at work, for the third week. Mr. Granpa then remembers that he had gone to sleep yesterday at 12 pm in this same easy chair he’s in at the moment, with an empty bottle of Merlot dangling in his left hand, his beard stained with…vomit, and his pants zipper undone, Mr. Granpa realizes what a terrible state he’s in. Aw, it’s all part of grieving, he thinks, and then another side of him thinks otherwise: com’on, old man, get up and get back in shape already, remember the days – I mean two months ago – when you could still knock out an ox at a Mexican Stampede? You gotta let grief alone now and move on. Your granddaughter will want her granddad to get over it. Look, she’s already over it. Why aren’t you? Get back in shape you old man!
At this thought, Mr. Granpa suddenly sits up tall and straight, and says – loudly but only to himself, because there is no one within his vicinity to hear him, ‘so you’re saying my granddaughter is better than me? Is that what you mean brain? Well think again!’ at this declaration, Mr. Granpa rushes into the mansion, run to the fitness gym, and kicks open the door, causing several blueprints on a table nearby to flutter into the air. That’s when a sick feeling hits his stomach and a newly defiant Mr. Granpa is forced to retreat to the nearest washroom, putting a get-back-in-shape mid-summer resolution on hold for the next 20 minutes, during which Mr. Granpa has to overcome explosive diarrhea, gut-wrenching somersaults in his stomach, and rapid toilet flushing. All this, Mr. Granpa concludes, is the result of last night’s drinking.
Even my stomach is having a hangover, and golly is the hydro bill gonna be big this month, Mr. Granpa thinks painfully as another shot of pain erupts from his scorching bowls. Just focusing my mentality on that this is not the end is using up all of my energy, Mr. Granpa thinks, how am I gonna get through the exercise routine after this? Miraculously, the bathroom stint ended after 20 full minutes of torturous laboring, which Mr. Granpa speculates is nonetheless as painful as giving birth.
After returning from the toilet bow-legged, Mr. Granpa does some stretches, twisting his left wrist and his neck in the progress. Five minutes on the treadmill (set at level one) later, Mr. Granpa concludes that his procrastination efforts for the last month has left him in a much more serious condition than he thought. Mr. Granpa decides to start with small steps. ‘That will have to be all the exercise for today,’ Mr. Granpa says ruefully, ‘I might as well go water the plants.’
It says Tuesday on the July calendar, or is it August already? Mr. Granpa is unable to tell which day of the week today is, or the date, for that matter. Finally he says ‘screw it…I can manage without knowing the date’. Mr. Granpa doesn’t remember the last time the grass in his garden being so slushy and wet under his sneakers, as he goes to water his rosebushes. It appears that the mud under the grass bed has been over-watered, to create a slippery dark brown gunk. From above and afar the grass bed looks nice and fine; a closer inspection is another story.
The rosebush patches are spread out a few yards apart around the house. As Mr. Granpa trudges towards them, he can feel the muddy slush invading the fabric of his Nike sneakers, which once white are now black. Did the gardener do this? Mr. Granpa thinks grumpily, and then remembers. Oh yeah, the gardener went on vacation two weeks ago. He said he wanted to leave Mr. Granpa in peace for a while. Plus, the gardener had said his daughter will tend to it during his absence. The gardener was sure Mr. Granpa’s daughter is gifted at gardening, his eye can tell. Well, Mr. Granpa thinks, he got it sorta right.
Here, Mr. Granpa’s sneakers sinks an inch into the muddy slush, as he gets nearer to the rosebushes he has come all the way from the porch to water. ‘Dingy, dingy, dang! I knew I should have gotten artificial grass for the garden!’ Mr. Granpa curses to himself, trudging on with temper building within his chest. ‘ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!’ Mr. Granpa loses his footing, trips, and falls face-flat onto the grass bed, which sinks, and his face is planted in the muddy brown slush. Mr. Granpa fumes in his fallen position for only a while, and then standing back up, he looks absolutely pissed.
‘Memory, you have died before me!’ Mr. Granpa bellows into the cloudless blue sky. Several birds change their flight course to avoid Mr. Granpa’s vocal blast of sonic energy. ‘Why did you lure me into this muddy grave without reminding me to BRING MY CANE? Now I have to do EXTRA laundry!’ With indignation, Mr. Granpa trudges and stomps back to his porch to get his cane to lean on, so he won’t fall again once he ventures back into the slippery underfoot of the garden. Having a coat of dark brown mud on the entire front side of his body, Mr. Granpa looks like a recreation of Clayface with extra facial hair. His beard (previously white) is now a dripping mass of dark wet goop that resembles tumbleweed that has tumbled through the sludge of the WWI Battle of Passchendaele.
Mr. Granpa, cursing in sailor tongue as he makes his way out into the garden, suddenly remembers why he had bothered to trudge into the garden in the first place: he is here, covered in mud, to water his rosebushes. ‘Where’s, my, water, sprinkler? MEMORY, YOU HAVE DIED BEFORE ME…AGAIN!’ He roars like a tyrannosaurus rex. A mile away, a retired old couple of former 911 rescue workers are driving down a silent country road, they are so startled by what appears to be the roar of the Twin Towers Twin Towers
Fuming like a steam engine, Mr. Granpa trudges back to the lawn porch, snatches the water sprinkler in a way that if it is to have feelings it will have cried out, and trudges back out onto the garden grass, dripping with double the mud. His shirt and pants are caking with slush, and some of it has leaked into his briefs. He trudges onward. Mr. Granpa sees the red and yellow kite in the sky, soaring in circles. He loses his footing, tries to stabilize himself with a cane he forgot to bring along with the bucket sprinkler, and falls heavily into the slush. ‘ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!’ Mr. Granpa lies on his back in the mud that has now completely coated his body from head to toe, screaming protests. ‘MEMORY, YOU HAVE DIED BEFORE ME…FOR THE THIRD TIME! WHY DID I FORGET MY DAMNED CANE!!! WHY!!!’ The water sprinkler is out of his reach for him to beat to a pulp and take out his anger upon, as is the cane, flung down back at his porch. He is now a full-body Clayface.
Mr. Granpa gets up on his feet – he has lost one of his shoes in the process of falling down, and doesn’t even think of finding it in the mud, he just wants to craw back to his porch now–
He loses his footing and falls again, face first.
‘ARRRRRRRRRRRG!’ Mr. Granpa is worn out by all the cursing he has done; his arghs are getting shorter. Panting, Mr. Granpa attempts to clumsily lift himself up onto his feet; and just as he gets his breath back… ‘ARGH!’ with this final argh of protest for the fall he’s forced by fate to endure, Mr. Granpa experiences everything afterwards in slow motion. Mr. Granpa feels as thought he is falling in limbo until his gaping mouth (opened wide to argh just now) is greeted by the dark brown sludge in the ground he presumes is mud. His final thought as his face comes into contact with the brown gunk, some of it will get into my mouth and later I’ll have diarrhea over it.
Having never tasted mud, it tastes awfully like…chocolate. Oh Lord, Mr. Granpa thinks, if the soil in my garden has been turned into chocolate, please let it be low-fat dark chocolate, my liver can’t handle the 40 grams of sugar per serving of milk chocolate anymore! Propped up by his elbows, Mr. Granpa bends his head to have another taste at the dark brown substance…it’s…it’s…LOW-FAT 100% DARK CHOCOLATE! (He’s sure of the flavor; other than being a great architect, Mr. Granpa is also a great chocolate taster.)
‘Surprise!’ Mr. Granpa’s granddaughter, her golden blond hair bathing in the sunlight, her face beaming with joy, gazes down at Mr. Granpa, who has just got to a sitting position to scoop up more handfuls of the dark brown chocolate from the ground to stuff into his mouth. In another time, Mr. Granpa might think it an undignified posture to have his granddaughter find him in, but now, he can’t care less.
‘AH!’ Mr. Granpa exclaims in surprise. A mile away, a pigeon nesting along the windowsill of a penthouse apartment is so startled by this cry that it falls off the sill for 25 stories and lands in the road moments before the wheels of a tow truck drives over it. Where’d you come from?’ Mr. Granpa gets onto his feet and takes a long, sweeping look at his granddaughter that suggests he misses her a lot. Mr. Granpa’s granddaughter is wearing a nightgown covered with stains of mud and bits of plants and twigs. Her bare hands and feet are even dirtier, altogether making her appear as someone who has lived the past month in the wilderness (pretty close to where she has actually been living at).
‘I came from where I went to.’ Mr. Granpa’s granddaughter smiles and says.
‘Why, what in hammers are you doing here?’ Mr. Granpa is still a bit shocked by his granddaughter appearing out of nowhere so all of a sudden.
‘I’m here to celebrate your birthday of course!’ Mr. Granpa’s granddaughter says excitedly. ‘It’s your own birthday and you’ve forgotten about it? Gosh, you are getting old, what happened to the old man who can stop a train in its tracks?’
‘Well, I-I have been slacking off lately…I must admit, and…’
‘Don’t say another word,’ his granddaughter steps over to put a sleeveless arm around a chocolate covered Mr. Granpa, ‘so, do you like my birthday present to you or what?’
‘Why, it’s-well it is WONDERFUL! But-but how did you-what did you do exactly?’
‘I hired the chocolate maker in town and told him to make enough low-fat dark chocolate to replace the soil in your garden with, he did and it was amazing! I also told him not to say a word to you, because I want it to be a big surprise. I think he likes me pretty well.’
‘And-and where did you get the money? This must have cost…oh Lord!’
‘Easy p-easy, I borrowed your credit card. Here’s the receipt, by the way.’ Mr. Granpa’s granddaughter gives him a strip of paper from a pocket on her gown. The grand total has 5 digits of zeros after a 1.
‘Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh dear.’ A deep, long sigh escapes Mr. Granpa’s throat. He musters all his will to maintain his composure, and says, ‘Lord, young lady! You took my credit card without consulting me first? You should have asked-I mean-oh Lord!’ with a chocolate covered hand pressed to his chocolate covered bald forehead, Mr. Granpa looks like he’s about to grab for the tissue box.
‘Well…I did think about asking you first, but you never would have said yes then and I’ll never be able to impress you (mind you, dad said you were a demanding father) and it wouldn’t have been a big surprise! Since you never did like dad (he told me), I don’t think you’ll ever like me much either, so I did my best to try to impress you, in secret of course.’
Something awakens inside Mr. Granpa with a pang that feels awfully like guilt; a big, enormous chunk of guilt.
‘That’s not true! I certainly do not not like you. You’re my granddaughter…and I love you…and I always will, I truly do, because you are a part of me. I can’t not love someone who’s a part of me, whatever the differences we have…I’m just…you know…kinda shocked at first that your father never inherited any of my interests, and there’s almost nothing in us we had in common, so I felt disconnected…and I didn’t have your grandmother there to cheer me up…and…I-I’m lost, really, really lost…I lost the understanding of love, it’s not like architecture, there’s no way to design love, to measure it…it just…transcends science.’
A chocolate covered grandfather saying these words is even weirder that an elephant tap dancing while singing Ode to Joy through its trunk, it is also, like an elephant tap dancing while singing Ode to Joy through its trunk, a marvelous sight to behold.
‘Aw, that’s okay.’ Mr. Granpa’s granddaughter gives her granddad another pat on the back, takes out a cup from a pocket in her gown. She scoops a cup of low-fat dark chocolate from the ground and gives it to Mr. Granpa. ‘I don’t know why you prefer this kind of chocolate though, it tastes bitter to me.’
‘Oh, young lady, you’ll understand once you’re my age.’ Mr. Granpa says, and chuckles a little. ‘Say, I never found out what you liked to do, what do you like to do? I never asked your father that question when he’s a youngster and I sure the heck feel guilty for missing that opportunity forever.’
‘You mean other than exploring, planting plants, playing with animals, camping, canoeing, hiking, flying kites, staying up late, stargazing, sunbathing, ice cream, jumping in leaves piles, watching laundry spin, discovery channel, watering seeds, climbing trees, making sandcastles, swimming, biking, writing in a diary, making flower necklaces, running, dancing, mountain climbing, driving a car, scuba-diving, riding in a submarine, collecting insects, filming nature, recycling, reading jokes, drinking from a stream, watching sunsets, riding roller coasters, mountain skiing, snowboarding, going on waterslides, monkey wrestling, riding horses, racing horses, swimming with dolphins, looking at sharks, getting whales off beaches, collecting litter, collecting leaves, sketching, taking photographs, calamari, daydreaming about going to Antarctica and a few other places, flying kites, flying five kites at once, and a some other things I can’t think of right now?’
‘Err…yes, go on.’
‘I like charting. Making maps.’
‘You do?’
Yeah, I like making maps and drawing and sketching and all that. Oh right, I also like making birdhouses, should have never forgotten that, and harvesting honey, you get to work around bees, it’s interesting, and fresh honey tastes really good! You should try it out sometime…’
‘Wait, wait, wait! You said you have a hobby of mapmaking! Wow, me too, how come you never told me?’ Mr. Granpa suddenly sees hope that some of his talent might actually have passed onto his granddaughter, Mr. Granpa is so happy to feel this glimmer of hope he considers doing the chicken dance in joy.
‘You never asked did you?’ his granddaughter said, raising an eyebrow.
‘I never did. I’m so sorry. I-I should have got to know you better. How could I be so ignorant?’
‘Hey! Now’s my perfect time to get to know you too!’ Mr. Granpa’s granddaughter exclaims. ‘And look what I found in the hedges, it’s a key! Hopefully it’s the right one to the chest you mentioned, there’s surprisingly very few photographs of mom and dad around, they didn’t take photos that much, that’s why I do a lot. Do you have a picture of mom and dad getting married?’
‘Actually I do, it’s in that chest, let’s go now and open it! And then let’s have some breakfast…’
‘Actually, it’s 12 noon, it’s time for lunch.’
‘Oh, alright then.’ Mr. Granpa feels a tiny need to reach for the tissue box. I slept through morning! Oh, the horror! The horror, Mr. Granpa thinks. ‘And I think I’ll have to take a bath, to wash out the chocolate, and so must you, young lady, you look like you came out of a pigsty.’
‘Okey dokey! But you better get out again and get all the chocolate in buckets, there’s a rain coming, so don’t spoil your birthday present!’ Mr. Granpa’s granddaughter skips ahead of him towards the lawn porch, the red and yellow kite under her arms, her golden hair flowing in the light breeze.
About the follow his granddaughter into the mansion, Mr. Granpa remembers something very important, ‘Oh yeah! Can you remind my old brain again what your name is? I seem to have forgotten…’
Hearing his question, Mr. Granpa’s granddaughter turns around and comes skipping back to his side, ‘My name? It’s a long story, lemme tell you all about it…’
The end
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