Wedding Bell Blues

The fact that Kaitlin first misunderstood her grandmother was entirely her own fault.

They had gone out to breakfast together, just as they did every Wednesday morning. But the Seashell Sunblock commercial presentation had to be given to the company VIPs that afternoon, and even though Kaitlin was prepared, she was restless. This was her own ad agency, and the account was a very important one. And the verdict had just come in on a particularly scandalous assault trial and she couldn't help but notice the headlines on the Miami Herald, so she was reading the story out of the corner of her eye when Gram first spoke.

'Kaitlin, I'm going to be mur--'

Mur--and something garbled. It didn't help any that after fifty years in this country Gram still spoke with a brogue so strong it could be sliced clean through with a knife.

Mur-something. Gram was going to be mursomethinged. That was all Kaitlin heard. She looked up, but Gram was looking down. It had sounded very much as if she had said, 'Kaitlin, I'm going to be murdered.'

Murdered. Well, it was natural that Gram would be nervous. She was nearly seventy, and alone. She had refused to live with Kaitlin, who had offered her separate living quarters on her own property. Gram liked the condominium where she lived; the building was filled with other active retirees. She missed children, of course. Gram loved children, and she missed them when she was in Florida. But she went north every winter to spend the holidays with the family. She had ten great grandchildren, aged eight months to eighteen years, to greet her lovingly on each visit. Gram was precious to all of them. She was their link; she was, in essence, the Ireland of their ancestry. She told wonderful stories, and when Kaitlin had been a little girl, Gram had her really believing in leprechauns and convinced that if men practiced evil deeds, the banshees, the wailing death ghosts of Eire, might really come for them.

So, with her brogue, she was difficult to understand at best. But then, that big hairy German shepherd of hers had eaten her best set of teeth, and Gram hated the new ones, said they didn't fit right.

So she was afraid of being killed. There had been a rash of robberies--home invasions, they called them now--and it was natural that she should be frightened.

'Oh, Gram!' Kaitlin said. She took Gram's hands in her own. 'Now, listen to me. You are not going to be murdered. This is a very scary world that we live in, but you're really not going to be murdered. Gram, if you want, you can come and stay with me, just for a while--'

'And I'll be damned if I do, that I will!' Gram said, her tone surprised--and her words startlingly clear. She was still such a beautiful woman, small, with brilliant blue eyes. And she kept her hair a very attractive silver-blue color. She still looked as sweet as a saint, and to hear such a statement come so explosively from her seemed quite an irony.

'But if you're afraid of being murdered--'

'I didna say 'murdered,' Kaitlin O'Herlihy. I didna. You didna listen to me.'

Kaitlin folded her hands on the table. She tried not to glance at her watch; she would be at work in plenty of time, and this--whatever it was--seemed important to her grandmother. She lowered her head, smiling with a certain relief. 'I'm sorry, Gram. What were you saying?'

'Kaitlin, I'm going to be married. Not murdered-- what did you think, that I'd become a hysterical old recluse? Married, Kaitlin. Married.'

'Married!'

Kaitlin couldn't have been more stunned if her grandmother had been absolutely certain that she was going to be murdered in the next five minutes.

Married...

Gram, married?

She'd been a widow for nearly forty years. She'd raised five children on her own in a new country, and she'd gone these many, many years without even dating.

And now she was going to be married.

Kaitlin's jaw wouldn't quite work. Then she managed to repeat the word. 'Married?'

'Married, young lady. Aye, now you've heard me right,' Gram said with a sigh. 'And shut your mouth, love. People will start staring at us.'

Kaitlin didn't know whether to smile or laugh or worry. Then she managed to say, 'But, Gram, you haven't even been dating--'

'Oh, but I have. And I didna say a word to you or your mother or any of your cousins, because I didna intend to take the likes of the teasin' you'd all be givin' me. But I've been seeing Mr. Rosen every week at bingo for over a year now. And we've been meeting Sunday night for dinner, and going to the theatre and movies and--'

'Rosen? Gram, is he a Jewish gentleman?'

'Aye, that he is. And don't you be sayin' a word about it to me, Kaitlin O'Herlihy. At me age, it just don't seem to matter anymore. He's got a beautiful house by the water, and we're going to move into it.