North from 26th Twilight
BY Martha Pinson

That evening, long after the guests had left, only my grandmother and I were still awake. She asked me if I noticed anything unusual about Louie. Since she notices everything, I thought long and hard. His hands, while small and pudgy, still held me with a firm grip. His suit was blue and neat, starched white shirt with the top button open, shoes spit polished, handkerchief in jacket pocket. Nothing except his complexion was a bit red.

“Aha!” my grandmother said, “I was right to worry.”

“Why worry?”

After forty-nine years of living together in the Hotel Empire, Virginia had left my Uncle Louie for the more secure pastures of marital bliss. She had succumbed to the attentions of an elderly Irish gentleman who lived down the hall. Louie told my grandmother all this, just the week before, over a few drinks. Drinks which were making him redder and redder. Although my grandmother couldn’t blame Virginia, drinking was an Irish problem. Cross-examined, I failed to name three Jewish alcoholics.

Like most of its elderly tenants, the Hotel Empire had fallen on hard times. Louie moved into a tiny room with barely enough space to walk around the bed. With Virginia gone, without anyone to talk to, he became afraid that his memory might fail him. After the bottom had fallen out of the women’s hat industry in the late 1950s, Louie had really earned his living playing gin. As his cronies grew a trifle senile Louie was still a sharp razor, slicing them up for walk around money.

…the Hotel Empire had fallen on hard times. Louie moved into a tiny room with barely enough space to walk around the bed. With Virginia gone, without anyone to talk to, he became afraid that his memory might fail him.

As is my grandmother’s custom every story must have a moral. This story had a simple one. “Marry one of your own kind, one of your own people.” Not because it was the right thing to do but because you should never isolate yourself and die lonely. She made me promise. Which I did because it was late, I was tired, she was old and, goddamit, I didn’t have all the answers.

My grandmother returned to Miami and the few doctors she cared to trust. I write her every month or so and almost immediately receive an answer filled with chatter and history.

A year ago I began living with a black woman, Antoinette, known to family and friends as Nettie. Nettie, like my grandmother, notices everything and we are quite happy. After our conversation about Uncle Louie, I didn’t want to break the good news to my grandmother by letter or telephone. Besides, nothing I could say or write would be as convincing as Nettie in person.

About a month before this Christmas, I was walking with Nettie trying to get a head start on the other Christmas shoppers. Coming from a good Christian home, she had a long list of presents to buy. I looked up from my periodic inspections of this list and saw, a couple of feet away, my Uncle Louie. We shook hands and he took off his hat while being introduced to Nettie. I promised to stop by soon but the next I heard he was in the hospital, dying.

My grandmother, remembering how I used to complain about my birthday being forgotten during the holiday season, always sends me a birthday card a week early. The usual, “To My Beloved Grandson,” with lots of flowers painted on it and the faint smell of perfume, a poem with rhymes like, ‘love and dove,” “bliss and kiss.” Below the poem she added a postscript.

“P.S. Received a postcard from Uncle Louie today. Says he saw you with a very pretty and classy lady friend. Louie tells me you looked handsome, happy and healthy. Love you, Gram.”

Recently, at Louie’s funeral, my grandmother met Nettie who is, to quote my grandmother, “a real lady.” And next Christmas, in the privacy of our apartment, I’m going to buy a birthday cake and light two candles: one for me and one for Louie.