Grandma's Secret

Grandma began speaking with a Southern accent the year she turned 80. Being a huge fan of Paula Deen, she thought it would make her a better cook. Some in the family say it helped, but I never noticed one way or the other. I was too busy eating the peanut butter fudge she’d been making the same way for years.

When I would come by for a visit, she’d open the freezer, put a few pieces on a saucer, and set them in front of me with a glass of whole milk.

It occurred to me one day that Grandma wasn’t getting any younger (probably because she kept telling me as much), so I asked her for the fudge recipe. She gave it to me, but because I’m a walking hurricane when it comes to paper, I’d promptly lost it. I had her write it down for me again a few years later, but I could swear it was different that time, and hard to follow, besides.

Grandma, to prove her point about not getting any younger, died before I got around to asking her about it.

I showed the recipe to my aunts one day to see if they recognized it as her original, but they shook their heads with furrowed brows.

“I don’t think she ever made it in a skillet,” murmured Aunt Sophie, who then flung the recipe back at me. “Or used peanut butter chips.”

“Hey….” Aunt Diane’s eyes grew wide and she flicked Sophie’s arm with the back of her hand. “I just remembered something. On one of Mom’s lucid days a while back, she said her fudge recipe had some secret written on the back of it. A family secret, I think it was.”

Sophie, the taller of the two – of the whole family, actually – tilted her head back to glare at Diane through her glasses, which had fallen to the end of her nose. “The last time Mom had a lucid day was in 2002. What in the world are you talking about?”

“A secret! She never said what the secret was—”

“—or it wouldn’t be a secret…” Sophie dryly interrupted.

“No, it wouldn’t! What do you suppose it was?” Diane replied, and Sophie rolled her eyes. For as long as I could remember, Diane had been oblivious to Sophie’s sarcasm. I’d always found their squabbles entertaining and would often start laughing, which would fluster them both.

Without waiting for Sophie to answer, Diane barreled through her own thoughts. “Maybe it’s a treasure! No, wait…Mom’s family came from Russia. What if we’re related to a tsar? You know – maybe Nicholas!” Her eyes grew wider. “What if Mom was Anastasia?”

“I have one word for you, and for that you should be glad because I’m really holding my tongue here: Alzheimer’s. Mom had it, and you should get checked.”

Diane waved a hand at her and turned to me. “You know, if we can find that recipe and discover that secret, and it turns out to be a scandalous one, we could all become famous!”

“Or rich,” I added.

“We could be on Oprah!” she exclaimed, grabbing my hands, then instantly sobered. “Oh, never mind. She doesn’t have a show anymore.”

“She hasn’t had a show for a long time,” Sophia interjected humorlessly. “And besides, Mom said we’d never find it.”

“Why not?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t know…she just said trying to find it would be like looking for a dime in a big pile of rubble. Then she laughed.”

The three of us turned pensively quiet. My aunts, no doubt, were remembering the same thing I was: Grandma had been a bit of a hoarder, and most of her belongings were taken to either a thrift shop or the dump after she’d died.

Sophie put on her coat. “Anyway, Diane, I’m guessing you’ve had a bit too much of that whiskey you like so well. I’m going home, girls.”

She kissed my cheek. “Talk some sense into her, will you? You’re the only one in this family who has any left.” She walked out the door mumbling something about preposterous secrets, slick soap operas, and old women’s fantasies.

I ran into Aunt Sophie a week later at Grandma’s house, which was now on the market. With the open house just two days away, Diane had asked me to go over and help with some final cleaning. Me, of all people…cleaning.

I found Sophie in the kitchen, flashlight in hand, peering into the darkness between the stove and the cupboard next to it. With her rear in the air and forearms on the floor, she looked like a dog getting ready to dig.

“Sophie? Aunt Sophie, what are you doing down there? Do you need help getting up?”

I was sure the sound of my voice would startle her, but it didn’t. The only move she made was to grab the yardstick lying beside her on the floor and slide it in alongside the stove.

“It’s in this house somewhere – I know it is!”

“What is?”

“That blasted fudge recipe! That crazy coot mother of mine never could keep her recipes straight. Never kept them in a box like a normal person. Used them as bookmarks, coasters, lipstick blotters…gave them away…threw them away…”

Gave them away? I thought to myself. It dawned on me that Grandma must have given me the original when I’d asked for the recipe the first time…and now it’s gone. I couldn’t bring myself to tell Sophie what I was thinking. My guilt over losing it prevented me from doing anything but stepping backward out of the kitchen like a coward.

“I think I have something!” She was almost triumphant as she grated the end of the yardstick along the floor, dragging a slip of paper under it. “Could it be?” She picked it up, only to find herself holding a grease-soaked store receipt for kielbasa. Sophie swore under her breath and sat back on her haunches.

I sidled back into the kitchen from my spot at the doorway, held out my hand, and smiled. “Can I help you up?”

She accepted my offer with a resigned nod and slowly rose to her feet. I could tell her arthritis was troubling her and was suddenly struck by how much older she seemed. Sophie and Diane had taken care of me since childhood after both of my parents were killed in a two-seater plane crash. My dad had just gotten his pilot’s license the week before and had insisted my mother fly with him that day. She hadn’t wanted to.

“You know what I think it is?” Sophie asked, her eyes narrowing.

“What do you think what is?”

She lowered her voice. “The secret.”

“Okay,” I said, lowering my voice, too. “What do you think it is?”

“My dad – your grandpa – he liked men. Mom always suspected it.”

“Grandpa? Oh, Aunt Sophie.” I shook my head and chuckled. “Even if it were true, why would anyone in their right mind put that on a recipe card?”

“Exactly,” she nodded.

“That wasn’t Dad, it was Uncle Mort.” Diane had arrived and strode purposefully into the kitchen. She set her purse on the counter with a thud and held up a piece of paper. “I have it.”

“What do you have?” Sophie retorted.

“The recipe,” came her smug reply. Looking at me, she said, “Remember the other day when you gave me that envelope full of old pictures to have copied? The recipe was in with those pictures!”

To say I was relieved would be an understatement. Off the hook, for sure. “Oh, that’s right! Grandma gave them to me at the same time several years ago. I must have put the recipe in with the pictures for the drive home.”

Sophie gave me a hard look. “How does it feel to know she called your house a pile of rubble?”

I squinted my eyes and twisted my mouth. “Not good.”

She turned to Diane and tapped her foot. “So? Is there a secret on the back of it?”

Diane put her hands on her hips and suddenly seemed taller than her usual five feet, two inches. “What do you take me for, a sneak? There’s something there, but I wanted to read it for the first time with my sister and my niece. Wouldn’t you have done the same?”

“No,” Sophie replied curtly. “Flip it over.”

Frowning, Diane complied, and we brought our heads together to read what Grandma had written on the back of the card. Our collective gasp echoed in the empty house.

I read it out loud.

“'Sophia Marie: Adopted June 4, 1954. Diane Teresa: Adopted May 11, 1956. John Allen: Adopted December 23, 1958. All left in tin containers on our doorstep after bright lights were seen in the night sky.' My dad was adopted?”

“We were all adopted, apparently!” Diane fairly snapped. “But what’s with these bright lights? And tin containers…what are we,

cookies?”

Sophie lifted her head, closed her eyes, and breathed in deeply. “Oh, thank God,” she said, clearly reveling in her sudden change of ancestry. “I knew it!”

“Aunt Sophie…with all the times you’ve called Grandma crazy, you actually believe what’s on the card?”

“Anything’s better than this, honey!”

Diane was almost to the front door before I realized she’d abandoned our little group.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

Without turning around, she waved the recipe card over her head. “I’m calling Oprah!”

“But she doesn’t have a—”

Sophie tapped my arm and shook her head. “Call Dr. Phil, Diane,” she called. “Just call Dr. Phil.”