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Edgar didn't think these things, exactly; he felt them. He felt that his grandmother had a past, sometimes merely by the way she turned her head, as if there were a breeze blowing through her hair. But there was no breeze—and certainly there was no hair. His grandmother was nearly bald and regularly wore a bandana on her head like a hoodlum.
The past was also in her closet, where there were outrageous dresses—some with tiny sparkles sewn in, some with beads. Dresses that, if she were to put on now, she'd split open like the Incredible Hulk when he turned green. Among the many photos on top of his grandmother's bureau, there was one in which the old woman was young and impossibly slim, with a cigarette in her hand and a sharp-fanged fox wrapped around her neck. It was all so strange. His grandmother had been alive such a long time that she had traded one face for another. Or perhaps someone had stolen the first one. Edgar knew nothing. The only feat of logic he managed (a good one) was that there had once been perfume-wearing days, and that, now, they were over. Anyway, she wouldn't miss a few drops.
As soon as Edgar touched the bottle (it was cold!), the old woman awoke, as if the boy had put his hand on her.
"What are you doing?"
"Nothing." He retracted his fingers.
"Why aren't you in bed? Is something wrong?"
The boy shook his head and drifted toward the old woman. There was no fear. He touched the blanket where it covered her arm.
"Where's your mother? She go out?"
Edgar knew better than to answer this question. He shrugged languorously. His grandmother didn't approve of the men. Suitors, she called them, even though most of them wore jeans. If she was ever downstairs when one of them came to claim Lucy, she retreated into the kitchen and made a very loud cup of instant coffee, clanging the spoon like a Salvation Army Santa wielding a bell.
Her pudgy red hand emerged from under the blanket and covered the boy's cold fingers with a blissful warmth. "Get me a glass of water, would you, sweetheart? That Chinese was salty."
Florence was referring to the cartons of food that Lucy had brought home for dinner. Such surprise attacks of to-go fare irked the old woman. She was the cook in the family, she cooked beautifully—who could deny it?—and the idea of restaurant food in her own house, well, it bordered on insult. Why couldn't she be permitted to cook every single meal of their lives? She was willing to do it. It was her joy.
At least the Chinese was tasty. She'd give it that. The old woman liked a little fire now and then, and had consumed the incendiary broccoli in chili sauce with formidable gusto. When she sat up, a prolonged burp rolled out of her. "Oh, it's repeating on me."
Edgar turned on the light in Florence's bathroom.
"Let the tap run for a minute," she called out, "or it'll be full of clouds."
Edgar knew the rules. When he returned with the water, it was crystalline. He sat on the edge of the bed while she drank the entire glass.
"Ahhhh, that hits the spot." The old woman's tongue darted in and out of her mouth in an intriguing lizard-like fashion.
"Tomorrow, I'm going to make meatballs," she said.
But tomorrow wasn't Sunday. Meatballs on a Thursday? Edgar sensed the competition. He knew his mother didn't care for meatballs. Too much fat. Once, she'd tried to convince the old woman to make them out of ground turkey, and the old woman had looked at his mother like she was insane. "Turkey? What do you mean?" It was as if Lucy had suggested she make them out of socks, out of sawdust. For days after the suggestion, when Lucy wasn't around, the old woman, in Edgar's presence, would shake her head and mutter, "Turkey, my foot."
Anyway, Edgar liked the meatballs. When his grandmother made them, she always put one, freshly fried, on a small white plate, before delivering the rest into the bubbling sauce. A special gift. A naked sauceless meatball, just for him.
Excerpted from Edgar and Lucy by Victor Lodato. Copyright © 2017 by Victor Lodato. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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