Getting Rid of Mr. Grainger, Part 1

When she came in the front door, Olive Rowe smelled cigarette smoke and she frowned. She carried the bags of groceries to the kitchen, then went down the hall to the sunny room at the back of the house. Her mother, plump and rosy, smiled at her from her wheelchair, a lavender shawl around her knees. With her sat Hale Grainger.

Her mother said, “Hello, dear, did you have a nice day?”

“Lovely, thank you,” Olive said, unsmiling.

“How was Miss Greenberg?” Her mother did not like Jews and always wrinkled her nose a little when she asked this question. It was her sole signal that she resented Olive’s friendship with Binnie.

“Miss Greenberg is fine,” Olive said. “Where’s Mrs. Murphy?”

“Well, she was anxious to leave early today, and, since Mr. Grainger so very kindly came by…”

“We let the dear old girl go,” Grainger laughed. He stood, lean, sleek, silver-haired. He bowed and smiled. It was a handsome smile. “It’s nice to see you, Miss Rowe. Your mother and I have been enjoying a little low tea. May I pour for you? It’s a blend of my own, perfected after years of trial and error — smoky Sou Chou and black with a pinch of jasmine.”

“It’s simply delicious,” Mrs. Rowe said. “I’ve never tasted such tea.”

“Brown bread and butter?” Grainger nodded at the plate of thin slices on the table.

“No, thank you, Mr. Grainger. I’d better start supper. It’s half past five. Mother…” She couldn’t resist the dig. “You always told me you hated brown bread.”

“This is different, dear. Stone ground.”

“There’s a little bakery perhaps you don’t know about,” Grainger said. “On Euclid Avenue just below Graham. Their breads are superb. I took the liberty of tucking a loaf of the brown under my arm when I came calling today.”

“And the flowers, dear — the lovely glads.”

They stood on the floor beside the French windows, a tall, silent explosion of peach color.

“Where did you find the tall vase?”

“Mr. Grainger found it. Poor man . . .” Her mother’s dimpled hand patted Grainger’s strong, tanned one. “I couldn’t tell him where it was. We so seldom use it any more.”

“I had to do a bit of ferreting, but I turned it up at the back of a kitchen cupboard. Hope I didn’t upset domestic arrangements. I tried to put things back as I found them.”

“I must put on the potatoes,” Olive said.

“And I must run.” Grainger consulted the chronometer on his wrist, a glittering device of elaborate dials, alarms and calendars. Swiss. Turning from the room, Olive wondered from whom he had stolen it.

“It’s been such a lovely afternoon she heard her mother saying.

She shut the kitchen door.

At the sink, she turned on the water hard and began to scrub potatoes. Her mother had met Grainger at a garden party at her friend Alice Whipple’s. Alice was in the real estate business. In Florida, these days, who wasn’t? Grainger was, newly. And he had been the party’s stellar attraction, with his strong, suntanned features and striking blue eyes, his vaguely English accent, his white teeth, his charm. He was sixty if he was a day, Olive thought bitterly — but then, so was Cary Grant. Those fool middle-aged women had positively drooled over him, simpering in their picture hats like insane withered flowers.

Grainger had been attentive to all, but it was Martha Rowe who won him. He had pushed her wheelchair for her along the gravel path around the little ornamental lake under the barbered willows, bending solicitously over her, smiling, chatting. And her mother had lost her heart completely. She was fifty-six years old, and she had acted like a highschool girl on her first date. Olive had been beside herself, the man was so obviously a fraud, a gigolo, a confidence man. Oh, she’d lacked the necessary heartlessness to tell her mother so. But it was high time she told Grainger.

He looked in. “Just to say goodbye.”

With a wet potato in her hand, Olive turned to him. “Could I speak to you for a minute, Mr. Grainger.”

“Why, certainly.” He was composed. He shut the door and looked at her expectantly, gravely. “Is something the matter?”

“Why do you come to see my mother so often?” She put the potato down and began scrubbing another. “Notably on the two days in the week you know I won’t be here.”

“I’m fond of your mother. She’s the most charming woman I’ve ever met.”

“Nonsense.” Olive turned sharply. “She’s as ordinary as ordinary can be. She’s a typical American widow. There are thousands just exactly like her.”

Grainger’s eyebrows rose slightly. “Why, really, Miss Rowe, I’m sure you don’t mean that.”

“It’s true,” Olive said, and was annoyed with herself because her voice shook. “I love her because she’s my mother. Good Lord, I’ve devoted my life to her. But she isn’t the most charming woman you’ve ever met, and you know it. It isn’t she you’ve really come for. It’s this house, it’s the insurance, the stocks. Don’t pretend you don’t know my father left her well-fixed. I know your type. You’ve looked into it.” She turned again to the sink. “It’s certainly not her charm.”

But Grainger wasn’t shaken. His voice came calm and deceptively without reproach. “It is. And her helplessness. She’s not only a pretty thing, Miss Rowe, she’s — very feminine.” He let that sink in. It was true as Olive well knew that her mother was very much what the cliché “clinging vine” meant. And, she reflected grimly, it was also true that Olive Rowe, herself, did not walk but strode, her voice was gruff and mannish, her body angular ‘ not soft; clumsy, not graceful. She tried, in the ordinary run of things, not to be paranoid about it. But Grainger, she felt sure, meant it as a dig. “Very feminine,” he went on, “and appealing. I like your mother very much. In fact… I love her.”

“And how many women have you said that about, and to, in your lifetime, Mr. Grainger?” She plunked down the last of the potatoes and walked to the refrigerator for butter. “On how many continents?”

“I had a wife, Miss Rowe,” he said quietly. “For twenty-eight years. She was a dear, soft, sweet little thing like your mother … gentle, and not terribly bright. But I loved her. Your mother is the first woman I have said this about (you needn’t be alarmed: I haven’t said it to her, yet) since Bernice died.”

Olive rubbed the potatoes, with butter, one by one. “If that’s true, then I’m sorry. But I don’t want you coming to visit my mother any more, Mr. Grainger.”

“Don’t you think that decision ought to be hers?”

“No,” Olive flared, “I don’t. She’s smitten with you. And I am not. I’ve had to do a lot of judging about what was good for mother and what wasn’t, over the years. All of the judging, in fact. I’m used to it. And I’m good at it, what’s more.”

She thrust out her chin, blinked angrily at him, and bent to open the oven door. She laid the potatoes on the rack and let the door slam to on its spring.

“I’m not talking out of prejudice, Mr. Grainger. I too have made inquiries. You drive a fine automobile, a new Lincoln…unpaid for. You live expensively at the Mirador but your bank balance (I have a friend who works at the bank, Mr. Grainger) is less than a thousand dollars. You are a real estate salesman, but in your first three months at Allied Florida Land, you haven’t made a single commission. You’re after my mother for her money, Mr. Grainger. That’s what the facts tell me.”

She stood trembling before him, defiant, sure of herself. He forced a smile and gave a little shrug. “Facts can mislead us sometimes, Miss Rowe. And there are other things besides money...” His laugh was soundless. “But then, you’ve heard that one.”

“And always from those who don’t have it and want to get it the easy way,” Olive said.

Grainger gave a stiff, humorous little bow. “Goodbye, Miss Rowe. While you’re mistaken, your candor and your…” His smile was wry. “…your guts, do you credit. They would (and I expect this is the highest form of flattery I could give you) they would do credit to a man. Goodbye.” And he was out the door.

Goodbye and good riddance, thought Olive Rowe.

Getting Rid of Mr. Grainger

Joseph Hansen

James Colton