SUMMER SEVENTEEN XX

ON THE WAY home, a memory comes.

                Summer fifteen, a morning in early July. Grandad was making espresso in the Clairmont kitchen. I was eating jam and a baguette toast at the table. It was just the two of us.

                “I love the goose,” I said, pointing. A cream goose statue sat on the sideboard.

                “It’s been there since you, Minho, and Tiffany were three,” said Grandad. “That’s the year Sunny and I took that trip to China.” He chuckled. “She bought a lot of art there. We had a guide, an art specialist.” He came over to the toaster and popped the piece of bread I had in there for myself.

                “Hey!” I objected.

                “Shush, I’m the Grandad. I can take the toast when I want to.” He sat down with his espresso and spread butter on the baguette. “This art specialist girl took us to antiques shops and helped us navigate the auction houses,” he said. “She spoke four languages. You wouldn’t think to look at her. Little slip of a China girl.”

                “Don’t say China girl. Hello?”

                He ignored me. “Sunny bought jewelry and had the idea of buying animal sculptures for the houses here.”

                “Does that include the toad in Cuddledown?”

                “Sure, the ivory toad,” said Grandad. “And we bought two elephants, I know.”

                “Those are in Windemere.”

                “And monkeys in Red Gate. There were four.”

                “Isn’t ivory illegal?” I asked.

                “Oh, some places. But you can get it. Your Gran loved ivory. She traveled to China when she was a child.”

                “Is it elephant tusks?”

                “That or rhino.”

                There he was, Grandad. His white hair still thick, the lines on his face deep from all those days on the sailboat. His heavy jaw like an old film star.

                You can get it, he said, about the ivory.

                One if his mottos: Don’t take no for answers.

                It has always seemed a heroic way to live. He would say it when advising us to pursue our ambitions. When encouraging Minho to try training for a marathon, or when I failed to win the reading prize in 7^th grade. It was something he said when talking about his business strategies, and how he got Gran to marry him. “I asked her four times before she said yes,” he’d always say, retelling one of his favorites Jung family legends. “I wore her down. She said yes to shut me up.”

                Now, at the breakfast table, watching him eat my toast, “Don’t take no for an answer” seemed like the attitude of a privileged guy who didn’t care who got hurt, so long as his wife had the cute statues she wanted to display in her summerhouses.

                I walked over and picked up the goose. “People shouldn’t buy ivory,” I said. “It’s illegal for a reason. Tae was reading the other day about – ”

                “Don’t tell me what that girl is reading,” snapped Grandad. “I’m informed. I get all the papers.”

                “Sorry. But she’s made me think about – ”

                “Jessica.”

                “You could put the statues up for auction and then donate the money to wildlife conservation.”

                “Then I wouldn’t have the statues. They were very dear to Sunny.”

                “But – ”

                Grandad barked, “Don’t tell me what to do with my money, Jessica. That money is not yours.”

                “Okay.”

                “You’re not to tell me how to dispose of what is mine, is that clear?”

                “Yes.”

                “Not ever.”

                “Yes, Grandad.”

                I had the urge to snatch the goose and fling it across the room.

                Would it break when it hit the fireplace? Would it shatter?

                I balled my hands into fists.              

                It was the first time we’d talked about Granny Sunny since her death.

GRANDAD DOCKS THE boat and ties it up.

                “Do you still miss Gran?” I ask him as we head toward New Clairmont. “Because I miss her. We never talk about her.”

                “A part of me died,” he says. “And it was the best part.”

                “You think so?”

                “That’s all there is to say about it,” says Grandad.