Card Reader

At almost ninety years old, my great-grandmother doesn’t get out much. Instead, she relies on her family to do things for her. My Grandma Sharon, her only daughter and now the person with whom she lives, cooks for and takes care of her, while my father and great-uncle help out with the more technical and everyday issues that arise — things like insurance problems and TV repair. The responsibilities that fall upon my brother and me are of a simpler nature. Namely, we act as gophers, seeing as we have neither the inclination to do anything more or, in my case, the ability to understand things like Medicare documents. Rather, my brother, Matthew, and I run around to different places, picking up things like groceries or prescription medications, occasionally making the short trek up to our grandmothers’ house to bring in the mail and newspaper when no one is able to go out and get them.

My latest assignment from my great-grandmother, a smallish, white-haired woman named Inez, came back at the end of September, when her daughter’s birthday was just around the corner.

After she asked me if I could pick something up for her, she handed me a small white envelope with a folded piece of notebook paper and a small stack of cash. I didn’t open the piece of paper, remembering as how, several years ago, I’d been in a similar situation and had managed to make a complete ass of myself.

Back then, my great-grandmother had had me lean close to her so she could whisper in my ear what she had wanted me to pick up — again, for my grandmother’s birthday. All I could focus on was the particular aroma of her, that not-so-subtle smell of age mingled with liberal doses of Jovan Musk, and so I had only caught most of what she said.

When I stood back up, I thought I knew what she wanted me to buy, but in order to make sure, I repeated back to her what she had said.

In any other place this might’ve been okay, but as it were we were in my Grandma Sharon’s living room, and she was sitting right next to us. I watched my great-grandmother’s face slacken in surprise, and as she let out a slight gasp and looked at me with eyes that said, You imbecile, I felt myself grow smaller, like a turtle retreating into its shell.

This time there would be no ruined surprises, and so I left the paper folded, thinking that if I did take it out I might just read it out loud, word for word, in front of both of them.

After work the next day I drove out to the mall and picked out the various bottles of hand and body lotion I’d been tasked with procuring. I walked down to the other end of the building to try and find a greeting card. In passing shop after shop of trinket-peddling mom-an-pop stores employing teenagers who never seemed to look up from the text messages they were sending, I found myself before a Hallmark store.

This shouldn’t be too hard, I thought.

Before I stopped giving greeting cards to people, I was pretty fast at picking them out. My system was an efficient one: after finding the appropriate section for a birthday, holiday, or death, I would place myself before the selection and simply choose one at random. Sometimes things worked out and other times they didn’t, and although it was nice not having to wade through card after card, it was admittedly kind of sad losing so many friends after giving a Happy Birthday card with a picture of a girl to one of my guy friends, or, even worse, giving a grieving friend a Let’s Party! card some asshole had set down in the wrong section.

When I stepped inside the store it took no more than thirty seconds for me to feel out of place and more than a little uncomfortable. Awkward enough was the fact that I was the only man in the store, but I was carrying all my grandma’s lotions in a delicate white bag decorated with flowers and probably the most effeminate lettering one could ever imagine. Ordinarily that sort of thing wouldn’t bother me, but when the women around you look like they’ve just stopped in after their most bountiful pig slaughter or have donned some in-your-face God Loves You shirt, it doesn’t inspire the warm and welcoming feeling of inclusivity.

At least the store isn’t busy, I told myself, marching past pristine glass cases displaying overpriced chocolates and shelves holding decorative picture frames. There were maybe six or seven other customers there, plus the five workers I could see. The women shopping I was separated from by about ten to fifteen years, while the ladies stocking the floor and working at the cash registers looked to be well into their fifties and sixties. It felt odd being there. Not because they were women, but because everyone was so much older than me. They made me think of just how much time I’d wasted and all the things I’d yet to accomplish.

My English degree.

A finished novel.

Any reason to buy and wear a fine dinner jacket.

Were I to climb on top of a high-rise, perch myself on the edge of the roof, and threaten to jump, what might someone say to coax me down? I wondered as I searched the rows of cards for the birthday section. It was sad to admit, but it wasn’t like I had many proverbial irons in the fire, and so I was left feeling both small and insignificant, a failure of sorts except that I hadn’t really tried at much.

“Now hold on just a minute,” I told myself, suddenly thinking out loud. I tried to reason that there were things I was doing, tasks that I was trying to accomplish. But the best I could come up with was making it through all five seasons of The Wire, a television program about cops and drug dealers in Boston, or developing my appreciation for Joni Mitchell’s album Clouds, a collection of songs that, to this day, still makes me want to shoot myself in the head. Other than that, I was more or less drifting, and in all honesty, I thought, that was pretty pathetic.

Reading through the greeting cards didn’t really help either.

When I found the birthday section, I planted myself in the center of an aisle overflowing with bright pink signs, like I was standing before a giant rash. At first the notion crossed me that I could just do as I had before, and let luck and fate do the deciding. But then I remembered how my great-grandmother always fawned over an eloquent card, one that said exactly the right thing, and so I began leafing through them.

I must have been a sight: me, twenty-three years old, eyes sunken and tired after a day’s work, leafing through cards that read For Sister, From Sister and To My Goddaughter.

I started looking for and avoiding anything referring to mothers or sisters, and if I noticed my hand drifting toward something with the word “cousin” or “niece” I drew back like it might hold the plague. Instead, I tried to look for something flowery. Grandma Sharon could give my great-grandmother a card that simply read, You’re the Best! and she’d gaze at it, smiling distantly, as if remembering delicate moments, but if the card was one that gushed about moments together and lessons learned, she might break down and start crying. That was the kind of card she would want to give.

The verses inside the cards were all printed in delicate, elegant writing, as if pixies had calligraphed each and every one. Some of them were really quite beautiful to look at, but while the cards differed in content the meanings, more or less, stayed the same. “What would I have done without all the special, beautiful things you’ve done for me?” one card asked. Another read, “How can I thank you for all the magical moments we’ve shared?”

After ten minutes of looking I was skimming every other line. Each card was so sugary I felt worried I’d end up leaving the store with diabetes. Besides, I was tired and the fluorescent lights were starting to give me a headache. These cards were supposed to convey so much — all the heft and magnitude of how much the recipient meant to the giver — but all i could focus on was one question: Who are these cards based on?

What kinds of lives did the people who wrote these cards lead? True, I wasn’t a girl, but, being gay, I was the next best thing, and I didn’t think any daughter had those kinds of moments with her mother.

Looking at the cards, I was reminded of the feelings the women around me stirred up. If someone were to write a little blurb about me and all the special things I’ve done, I thought, they’d have to reach pretty far. I’ve never really done anything heartwarming, much less heroic or commendable.

“Great job playing that video game twice that one summer,” mine might say.

Or, “Thanks for all those times I thought you were going to do something special.”

I started moving through the cards, grabbing randomly and hoping that one would have something close to sensible. Feeling out of place here was bad enough, but to be confronted head-on about my obvious lack of value was too much.

Finally, I picked up a card with a little ribbon adornment. he background was a pine green color, and inside I read from a mother’s wistful point-of-view about the moments they had experienced together, the profundity and the power of them. After reading it once and then rereading it again to make sure it didn’t say anything completely stupid, I decided it would work. Grabbing its matching envelope, I made my way to the cash register feeling like someone on the run.

The woman who looked up at me from the cash register was short, at least a full foot and half below me, and from above her I could see the still-dark roots of her otherwise gray hair. She wore large glasses that made her smallish face seem exaggerated like a cartoon character’s, and as she went about ringing up the card I wondered if all of her possibilities were summed up somewhere in the rows and columns of heavyish single-folded paper.

“Ooh,” she said, picking up the card and setting it back down. She tapped it with her finger. “This one’s a good one. Pretty.”

“Thanks,” I said. I was in a hurry, but I meant it. It was nice, the feeling of accomplishment and recognition for having picked out a graceful, tasteful card. I felt as though I had succeeded at some difficult task.

But, in stepping away from the counter after the lady slipped my receipt into the little peach-colored bag, I caught a glimpse of the other customers, the ladies dressed in their God-fearing sweatshirts or their harshly-worn jeans. How foolish it was to think myself different from them, better even, I suppose, when I truly had nothing to show that might put me on a higher plane. On the way out, I noticed a small rack of cards with a sign above it. Blank, it read, and as I passed by the cards, empty like something someone had intended to start and finish, I realized that the cards right there, waiting, declaring nothing and able to boast even less, seemed to have been made just for me.