Grandma's Eggs

Stephen and Rebecca drove down the road. Stephen looked between his phone and the dash of the car. On the dash, one fly was on top of another. The flies were hovering about, their bodies moving into one another. 

“Wow. So this is supposed to be super rare,” Stephen said to no one in particular. Rebecca clicked through radio stations.

“Common house flies spend about two hours each time they have sex. Most flies have sex multiple times in their life. A standard lifespan for a fly is 28 days. If you compared that to the 72.6 year average life expectancy of a human, a human’s average time for intercourse would have to be 78 hours and 51 minutes to match that of a housefly.”

Stephen opened the window and the flies were sucked outside. Stephen watched Rebecca’s face as she drove. She was focused and singing to a Mariah Carey song on the radio. . 

“I hope this isn’t miserable,” Stephen said.

“Me too,” she responded. 

Rebecca and Stephen arrived at his grandparents’ trailer park. It's called "The Trailer Villa," to be exact, which is an important distinction because there were only mid-sized SUVs and used Buicks to be found in the parking spaces at this mobile home park, not the deplorable doorless trucks or sun-stained Ford Focuses sitting in the lawns.

Rebecca brushed her bangs out of her face. Her black hair was longer now. It extended just beyond her ears, so Stephen didn't have any need to concern himself with his Pop-Pop getting caught up with heteronormative disapproval of a woman having short hair. Stephen led the way up to his grandparents' driveway. He sighed a sigh that you would only sigh if you knew that your pious grandfather was going to administer a "Christian Journey" interview on the person you love, who is also carrying your child.

The door opened and there he stood six feet tall with his shoulders back and his gray-white mustacheless beard down just past the collar of his Habitat for Humanity tucked-in T-shirt. 

"Hey, there, Hollywood!" Pop-Pop belted out at his grandson. 

"Hey, Pop-Pop."

"Well, aren't you going to introduce me to your much more attractive other half?" 

"We just got here. I'm still processing your Amish beard." 

"Hi!" Rebecca chimed as she made her way to the porch. 

"Hello. I am Pop-Pop. The patriarch of the family. 52 strong. Six children, 18 grandchildren, and 28 great-grandchildren in total. And one more on the way." 

"Nice to meet you. I'm Rebecca." 

Pop-pop extended his hand and the two shook hands. Stephen hugged his grandfather. 

"Where's grandma?"

"Your grandmother is inside." 

The three entered the home. This trailer was much more narrow than Grandma and Pop-Pop's previous trailer but just as neatly kept. There was the same brown flower print couch that Stephen and his nine siblings had competed for during the "Christmas Story" reading that Pop-Pop would preach every Christmas Eve when they were kids. Pop-Pop walked to the back hallway presumably to retrieve Grandma. Rebecca discovered for the first time the Lion and the Lamb Precious Moments Statues on the mantle and Bible verse posters that adorned the wall. VHS tapes of Spartacus and old-school Kurt Russell Disney movies lined the bottom of a bookshelf full of Christian literature. Pop-pop promptly returned. 

"Grandma will be here shortly." 

"Oh, cool."

Pop-Pop stood erect in the middle of the room with his hands in his pockets as his visitors looked about his home. 

"Have you ever heard of Muhammed Ali?" 

"Of course," responded Stephen.

"Yes," responded Rebecca.

"He was a Muslim. He believed in a god, but he did not believe in Jesus Christ. So, he is burning in hell.” 

Grandma walked into the room.

“Hi, Grandma!” Stephen ran over and received a warm hug from one of the sweetest people you would ever meet. 

“So good of you to visit, Robert.” 

“It’s Stephen. Robert is his dad,” Pop-Pop corrected. 

“It’s okay. We look alike,” said Stephen.

Rebecca squinted in a very nuanced discomfort. Stephen was much more handsome than his father. 

“Let’s have a seat,” Pop-Pop declared. Pop-Pop helped grandma into her mismatched chair at the table-clothed foldout table that preceded the kitchen. 

Stephen sat and watched as his grandmother began the long process of perpetually rediscovering that her silverware was imperfectly placed next to her plate. Pop-Pop began to serve the canned sausage, room temperature eggs and scalding hot coffee that he had prepared for brunch. 

“You’ll have to forgive the rations. I’m bearing the brunt of the housework nowadays,” Pop-Pop announced. 

Rebecca squeezed her intertwined fingers below the table. The tension of the incoming interview was rising. Stephen had warned her that this would happen. When his two older brothers had impregnated their respective girlfriends they also were invited to interviews. The difference here was that Stephen’s brothers also lived in North Carolina, not 25-hundred miles away in Los Angeles. 

“So, Rebecca. Tell me about your walk with Jesus.”

“Excuse me?” She responded.

“Dammit,” Stephen thought. He had forgot to use the verbiage “walk with Jesus,” or “personal relationship with Christ,” when prepping her. 

“Your faith,” Pop-Pop clarified.

“Oh! Well. I grew up Catholic. I went to Catholic school in Syracuse, New York.” 

“Hmmm. I pastored a Baptist church in Norwich.”

“No way! I have family in Norwich.”

“Norwich?” Stephen asked. 

“It’s a tiny town in upstate,” responded Rebecca. 

“Continue,” Pop-Pop prompted.

“Oh right. Um. Yeah then I graduated high school, and I went to college at U of R. University of Rochester. I went to law school in Buffalo. I was…I am an attorney for… God… fifteen years now.” 

“Hmm.” Pop-Pop put his hands on the table. The interview was over. His assessment was made. He would have to do a lot of praying on behalf of Rebecca’s relationship with Jesus. “How old are you?” he asked in a much less official tone?”

“Rebecca is about twelve years older than me,” Stephen chimed in.

“Wow. You look better than him!”

“Yeah. She’s half-Asian. Her dad is half Taiwanese, half Japanese.” 

“You don’t look Asian.”

“My mom’s Irish-American,” Rebecca responded as if she hadn’t had her ethnicity doubted ten thousand times. 

“Well you are quite lovely, darling,” Grandma chimed in. 

“Thank you, Grandma.” 

The brief moment of silence reset the tension and Pop-Pop flipped back to serious mode. 

“Of the 28 grandchildren, and great, and their spouses that I oversee as patriarch, I have a close relationship with three. My eldest granddaughter, Hannah. My youngest grandson, William, and Stephen.” Pop-Pop quickly pointed to Stephen. “I’m not going to say that I have a favorite grandchild, but if I did…” Pop-Pop once again pointed at Stephen. “I understand that you two have made decisions that are sinful and I expect that you will make right with God. Your father, your earthly father, informed me that you plan to marry at some point."

Stephen’s chest tightened. He and Rebecca looked straight ahead at Pop-Pop. Stephen put his hand on Rebecca’s thigh. He was so proud of her for entertaining this meeting. Her jaw was tight and her fingers remained tightly intertwined atop her crossed legs. 

Pop-Pop lowered his voice and continued. “When your grandmother and I were young we fell in love. We also made mistakes.”

“Huh?” Grandma asked.

“I’m telling a story.” 

“Speak up, I can’t hear you.”

“You don’t need to hear me. You lived it!” Pop-pop continued in his low voice. “The Bible says that the sins of the father falls ‘on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.’ What I’m about to tell you, I have never told anyone before, and I trust that you will keep it between us.” 

Grandma’s bite of egg fell off her fork onto the floor and she ducked below the table to retrieve it.

“If it weren’t for your grandmother, she and I would still be virgins.” 

Grandma returned from below the table with a piece of egg covered in several hairs of varying length and springiness. Grandma began to remove the hairs from the bite of egg. 

“We succumbed to the temptations of the flesh and we’ve had to claim forgiveness from our Heavenly father.” 

Grandma began to pick a long grey hair off of the egg. 

“When your grandmother and I wed I was not yet washed in the blood of the lamb.”

Stephen winced. Catholics may not be aware of that phrase either. 

“I did two tours in Vietnam. The first as an alcoholic. The second as a saved follower of Christ.” 

Grandma held a mostly clean lump of yellow scrambled egg in her hand. She lifted it to her mouth but stopped short to remove a particularly coiled hair from the top of it.

“I pray for you daily, and Rebecca, I’ll now be praying for you daily.”

A fly landed on Grandma’s eggs. Grandma tried to flick the fly away and in turn, knocked her eggs to the table. Pop-Pop caught sight of the eggs. The fly landed on top of the eggs. Pop-Pop brought his hand down like lightning on the fly. The eggs smashed in between his fingers, and when he lifted up his hand, he revealed a dead fly amidst the yellow grime on the palm of his hand.