Growing Gray's: May 2008

Lizzy Grey loved ritual. Once a year, on her birthday, she tried to touch the ceiling as she stood upon her ancient “500-year-old Elizabethan Poster bed.” She missed the ceiling by several feet. She was short for her age and the ceiling was very high, but, nevertheless, it was her birthday ritual just to prove to herself that she was actually getting taller. And for reasons you might soon understand, she would announce “The yeah is 2007, dahlink” or whatever year it happened to be. She proclaimed it in the deepest mock English accent she could conjure. Upon proclaiming the year, she realized her voice was sounding more like her Mother’s accent than her Grandmother’s. Lizzy was the only Grey female without an English accent. By the way, another thing that Lizzy tended to do was use her Grand’s accent in her head to quote all the historical information of ancient furniture in the Grey Estate, of which there is a ton. She couldn’t help it. She didn’t dislike the furniture but she did not love it and the history that came with it like her Grandmother did. She had no choice but to live with it. So, she often mocked it in her mind.
Lizzy often reminded herself of the year for it felt as if she lived in the 1500s. She lived in the oldest English Tudor Estate in Los Angeles and surrounding her were furnishings even older than the house, and a seemingly ancient grandmother of 62.
Inevitably, all these silly musings and traditions would woo her to daydream about how different life would be if her parents were together, and lived as a family in a normal house with normal, everyday furniture. Of course, she knew this was totally impossible; she wasn’t really sure what normal looked like or felt like, but she enjoyed the fantasy and went with it.
Her fantasy family lived in a smaller, typical house, the kind that all looked alike.
To put it another way, it was very unlike the huge house that her Grandmother used as storage for all of the ancient furniture. Her fantasy parents—though her mom was very real, just absent—held very common jobs. Let’s see she thought, Mom would be a music teacher which must be better than whatever she is now and her Dad would be a…hmm. She paused because she didn’t even know WHO her Dad was. How could she give him a typical occupation? Surprisingly, she knew he’d be a writer. He would spend a lot of time at home because he was a novelist. That worked. She not only had a dad, but he was home.
She considered for a moment how much she looked like her Father. She knew she looked a lot like her Mom in that she was short and thin and had her Mom’s thick blond hair, but where did her eyes come from. Her Mom’s were blue, and so were Grand’s, but hers were green. Also, she had a deep dimple in her chin that as far as she could tell from all the family pictures, she was the only one. She wanted to know her father more than anything else in the world but she also knew she probably never would. This familiar ache in her heart, she thought, would be with her forever.
Despite the heartache, she was reveling in her created family and already loved them when she heard her name being garbled through the rickety intercom. It was installed some 30 plus years earlier, on her bedroom wall. She loathed that device for disturbing her wonderful daydream.
“Elizabeth, come downstairs at once, please,” her Grandmother’s garbled voice insisted. It sounded like she was placing an order for a hamburger and fries over an old speaker at McDonalds. Not that she ever ate at McDonald’s or any other fast food for that matter; she had just heard the expression from her best friend, Anne.
Lizzy could actually hear her Grand’s voice floating up through the stairwell to her room, however; it sounded like a whisper. And she preferred it that way.
“Yes, Grandmother Grey,” she hollered back loudly, not using the intercom system. She got the feeling her grandmother had called more than once while she was in her dream world.
She didn’t want to leave the new family so soon. She longed for them to be real. But they weren’t and she regretted it. Reality’s name was Grandmother Grey and she was calling.
Lizzy slipped off her bed and grabbed her soft, blue robe. It hung in an “Early Elizabethan era, mid 1500’s Armoire, a cupboard with huge doors showing carved panels of Adam and Eve with corresponding Scripture from Genesis ornately engraved upon it.” She opened her huge bedroom door with both hands, tripped on one of the runners that ran down the hall outside her room, and headed for the stairs. She was three flights up and often wondered why her Grandmother had put her so very far away from the Parlor.
Lizzy knew that’s where her Grand would be; the Parlor, sitting on her throne. Well, sitting on her big chair that looked very much like an ancient throne. She tapped her foot impatiently on the old mahogany floor.
“Miss Elizabeth, you know I don’t approve of you racing down the stairs. You always hold onto the rails when you do that and it loosens them. Keeping this house in repair is impossible with you running through it. It is very costly. And, Elizabeth, please use the intercom.”
“Grand, I…”
“No, I will not hear your excuses, no rolling the eyes either. Sometimes you remind me of your Mother. She always had an excuse and still does, I suppose. My main job concerning you is to make sure you do not become her. You know how I love her and I admit I failed her, and of course, there were her own poor choices; well, it doesn’t matter. I will not allow you to become another terrible musician or play ghastly music for that matter and end up on the streets or wherever she is. You will not make the same poor choices. But you know all this. Why do I always have to repeat myself?”
Lizzy wondered that as well. But her mind tripped on the “love” word that slipped from her Grand’s mouth. At that moment she wanted to cry or maybe inflict fingerprints on one of Grand’s precious antiques before Grand removed her for good, but she didn’t. She knew there was no place else to go. She hung her head in silence. Wasn’t this better than foster care, she thought or possibly being on the street with her mother? Was her mother on the street? She shuddered as it all had its affect.
Grandmother looked a little contrite. Her lips softened and she reached out to touch Elizabeth. Lizzy thought, Grand looks so beautiful for being so old and mean. Lizzy started to pull away but then their eyes met and they both calmed down.
“Oh Eliza, I just hate quarreling. Let us have some dinner and talk about a little party for your 13th birthday. Six friends will be allowed and we will have cake and ice cream and of course you will perform for us that lovely piano piece by Beethoven, “Moonlight Sonata.”
Just great, so much for talking. She’s got it all planned out, as usual.”
Lizzy liked the Classics, too: Beethoven, Bach, Handel, Chopin and Vivaldi, just to name a few of her favorites, but what few friends she had certainly wouldn’t want to come to that kind of party. Her fantasy family’s party would have been much more fun…
“Elizabeth, please stop daydreaming. You indulge in it far too much. Is your life so unbearable that you have this need to daydream so much? What were you thinking just now? That strange faraway look was in your eyes. There is no need to deny it.”
So much for their truce: they were ready to quarrel again, but Lizzy was tired and she did want a party so she cautiously selected her tone of voice. She knew her manner could set the mood or break it. She took her time and answered very deliberately for she could not reveal what she really thought. Grand would never know her thoughts. Her thoughts were hers to have and hold, no one else’s no matter how miserable they were.
“Grandmother, I was thinking I really only have two friends that I would like to invite: Anne and Henry.” Lizzy sighed deeply and sadly stated, “I don’t have many friends. Would that be okay?”
“Well, that’s fine. Quit sulking over not having too many friends. Two friends are enough for anyone, and maybe one too many. Will you play?”
“Yes, I will play, but I’m not sure what yet, if that’s okay?”
“Fine, let me know soon. Since you are having only two friends, we will have dinner. Now that all this is settled, let’s go to the dining room. Next time, stay dressed until after dinner. Your night gown and robe are not appropriate dress for dining. I don’t know how many times I have mentioned this to you. Stand up straight. Chin tucked. Stomach in. My goodness, don’t the schools teach good posture anymore? That is precisely why I’m still considering the Girls Academy in the fall. When I was in school in England…”
Tuning out one of Grand’s repetitive stories, Lizzy headed for the dining room, but it was to her fantasy family’s dining room where everyone wore pajamas to dinner. The fantasy dining room was small with a table just big enough for 3 people. It was a cheap dining set, the kind you could pick up at a department store or the likes. It was unlike the massive dining room with gigantic ancient furniture that had huge swollen legs and carved grape vines traipsing around the edges. Lizzy knew the furniture was beautiful but it gave the room a cold and lonely feel, like the prayer Grand was about to pray for the millionth time. As she sat down, Grand folded her hands and bowed to bless the meal with a prayer she had heard Grand pray her whole life:
“God Bless our meat God guide our ways,
God give us Grace, Our Lord to please.
Lord long preserve in peace and health,
Our Gracious Queen Elizabeth. Amen”
It didn’t matter that this prayer was written in 1565 for Queen Elizabeth I. As far as Grandmother was concerned this prayer was just as valid today for Queen Elizabeth II. This is the only prayer they prayed every night at dinner and Lizzy considered it ritual, nothing more. She didn’t know if she could eat dinner without saying it. Was there a God, she didn’t know. Lizzy put it all off as just more of Grand’s ancient English traditions. It was part of her life.
Lizzy had never lived any other way. She felt like she was caught in a time warp in an old house surrounded by old furniture and a Grandmother who lived as though she was in Jolly Old England; “Jolly Old England, yeah right,” she thought, “There was nothing Jolly about it,” during the Elizabethan Era, and, of course, her name said it all. Well, in her mind she was Lizzy and never, ever Elizabeth.