My nose comes from my mother's side.
Thick, coarse hair like Nana Bea.
My name is Aunt Lorraine's and my skin
is Grandma Bunny's.
Dad has claimed my eyes and lips
but I am told that my presence, my persistence
and my dirty mouth comes from a man
I never really got a chance to know while he was around.

I don't remember much about my Grandpa Arby,
there are moments of clarity where I can see him so well,
and these recollections I have stored,
much like the two dollar bills and the porcelain cats
in his cigar box that he somehow knew to leave with me.

When we were little, my cousins and I, he would pinch our noses
And say we were replicas of his Aunt Sophie,
who we were never quite sure actually existed, nor what he meant by it.
His cheeks were always red and he had a full head of
Tissue-soft white hair well into his eighties.
He smelled like orajel and vicks vapo rub and cinnamon.
I remember how he chased me around the swimming pool wearing
A rubber donut just to get me to jump in, a
saggy-bellied sea monster in neon green trunks.

There were rare times we were alone together,
But I once spent an afternoon with him when I was ten,
he taught me to make peaches and cream the real way,
The Eastern European way, with sour cream and sugar and
he made me eat it with my hands because it was the sort of
Snack you got your fingers sticky for.

And I remember his poor health, his failing eyesight.
His amputated leg, the house he bought in Vegas
Just because he could. Because he was old. Because he had lived his life.
I remember how when we visited him, he took off his prosthesis
At the buffet line to get ahead and how proud he was
For his misuse of bystander sympathy. His mischevious guffaw.

I was fifteen when he died.
So new to loss and numb to death, I held my father’s hand
And stared into his casket and I remember thinking he looked bloated,
Like my hamsters, when they died.
There is nothing to be said for that sort of grief
And even then I scoffed at eulogistic fondness,
Passed the tissues to my dad and snuck wine into the bathroom.

My father avoided talking about Grandpa Arby after he was gone.
As I grew older, I did my own research
Wanting to know the guy I was so often accused of mirroring.

As a younger man he was a commercial actor,
Did advertisements for Coca Cola and Guinness Beer,
Dog food and insurance sales. My mother gave me his portfolio,
A box kept in the basement that hadn’t been opened in years.
There was a journal there, a scrawled left handed ferocity of sarcasm.
His voice could have been my own if I liked pussy as much as he did.

Apparently Grandpa Arby also liked to wear a helmet and take off his shirt
When he got drunk. And that he regarded his dogs like children.
He loved to cook for his wife and even burned off his tattoo
To prove his loyalty to her because she thought it was disgusting.
How he would have rather died in her place instead of having lost her so young.

That he was proud of his sons
But that he wished he’d had a daughter.
That he was angry with God, but still managed to pray every day.
And that he loved to dance. He loved the Mets. And he loved me.
His little chick-a-dee.

In the pictures that I have he looks like a bedraggled version of
Johnny Cash with a Jewish nose and a side-part.
The woman he’s always got his arm around might as well be me
For all I’ve inherited from her.
But there is a smirk on his face and a stick up his ass,
You can see right through those photos,
he left those to me.

01/29/2013

Posted on 01/29/2013
Copyright © 2024 Lauren Singer