My Gramma's Weird-Ass Boyfriend

We’re sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner, in my Gramma’s basement.

The tables, they are those flimsy plywood kind with the folding legs you find at strawberry socials or smoky bingo halls, their true nature concealed for now beneath the same thick linens my grandmother has been using for thirty years. I’m at the “kids” table, even though I stopped being one at least a decade ago. This means that there is a fizzing glass of ginger ale in front of me instead of wine. I don’t care though, wine isn’t my thing. Not the kind that comes out of a screw-top bottle, anyway.

Over at the other table, there is a sudden metallic clank, and a dozen hands grab unsteady glasses as a man rises uncertainly to his feet. His name is Ralph – I met him earlier. He’s my Gramma’s latest boyfriend, and I had pegged him as kind of a rumpot upstairs in the kitchen:

“Where’s the stuffing?” my mom asked, looking around.

“I’ll find it!” Ralph announced, barging through the doorway. No matter was his apparent drunkenness; he kept his Caesar glass close to his chest, not spilling a precious drop of the tomatoey liquid. He yanked open the oven door, squinting his eyes against the light jabbing at him from the greasy light bulb mounted inside.

“There it is! Right at the back of the bus!” Ralph yelled. He reached in behind a casserole to tug out the dish of stuffing, pushing the crusted thing at my mom.

“Thanks,” she stared. But Ralph was already gone, hollering something about “all hands on deck!” which actually made bizarre sense because he was wobbling around the house in a pair of boaty old-man shorts that nicely accentuated his pale, knobby knees. I assumed that he’d quiet down in time for dinner – there was a family to impress, after all.

But now, even through the dim light of the yard-sale candelabras, I can discern the rheumy glister in Ralph’s eyes. To my mind, there is nothing in them at all. The Caesar glass is still clutched in his mitt, and his mouth falls open to speak:

“I…just want to offer…a toast. To the lady - to the lady, of the house,” he stammers, his lip all pooched out and quaking at us.

Looks of astonishment flash across the tables, as everyone simultaneously realizes that Ralph is falling-down drunk, sincere as a priest…and on the verge of bawling his eyes out in front of twenty people he just met, for reasons they don't know about. Twenty people who almost never drink alcohol, and who certainly do not reveal any actual feelings to one another. It is a family ideally suited for the social expectations of the 1950's. Ralph's reputation is forever sealed in less than ten seconds.

“On this…very…special DAY! I want to say…thank you…thank you very much to you, Barb…this wonderful…wonnerful…holiday…this group of people….” he trails off, and my grandmother stands, whispering something into his ear. Nobody will look at him. In this moment, Ralph has ceased to exist. Easy tears course through the cracks in his face, and he is nodding, nodding in the exaggerated, I know, I know, way that drunks always have. Gramma hooks his arm and leads him upstairs. A collective sigh of relief: the embarrassment is gone. Out of sight, out of mind.

“Amen,” I say. “Pass me a roll.”