Family Secrets by Ruth Barrett Page A

Grandpa was slumped over in his chair, his arms dangling loosely at his sides. His gnarled wooden cane had dropped over onto the grass. His blind left eye was half-open and staring. My stomach lurched. For a horrible, heady moment, I thought he was dead… until he twitched and gave a loud gurgling snore. Robert and I sat on the ground as far away from Grandpa as we could, and yet technically still be beneath the tree with him.
                “Maybe if we’re real quiet, he’ll stay asleep until it’s time for dinner,” I whispered.
                “Yeah. They told us we had to spend time with him, but they didn’t say he had to be awake for it.”
                Robert gave me a lop-sided grin and winked. I smiled back. My fourteen-year-old cousin was the greatest guy I knew and I worshipped him during my tomboy stage. I aspired to grow into a female version of him, with the same long athletic limbs, and a floppy fringe of hair that hung in his eyes. Most of all, I loved his attitude of cool cynicism and did my best to imitate it whenever we were together. I cocked my head in the same sardonic way he did as we regarded the sleeping old man with open disgust.
                  “Look at his eye,” I said, nudging Robert with my elbow. “Gross, huh? I hope I don’t go blind like that when I get old.”
                 "Doubt it,” snorted Robert. “He lost it in a pub fight.”                             
                “He did?”
                “Yeah. He used to get real drunk and bash anyone in sight. I heard Dad and Uncle Chuck talkin’ about it in the car when we drove into town to the beer store yesterday. I pretended I was asleep in the back seat. I find out all the good family secrets that way. You should try it sometime.”
                Winking, Robert glanced at Grandpa to make sure that he was still asleep before continuing. I leaned my head in closer as Robert dropped his voice to a whisper.
                “Dad said that one night when he was nine, he remembered Grandpa yelling at Grandma so loud that he woke up the whole house. They were all too scared to go downstairs, but they could hear him breakin’ stuff and kickin’ chairs around the kitchen. He accused her of foolin’ around with one of their farmhands. He even called her a ‘slut’ and a ‘bitch’.”
                I winced. For his part, Robert seemed to relish repeating such forbidden words out loud.
                “Then he drove into town and searched all of the pubs and beer halls lookin’ for the farmhand. When he finally found him, Grandpa jumped the guy, but he put up a good fight and smashed a beer bottle into his face. Even with all the blood and broken glass stuck in his eye, Grandpa still managed to knock him out before the other men in the pub hauled him off and took him to the doctor’s house.”
                I skeptically glanced at Grandpa’s withered arms and legs: he couldn’t even get out of a car or up the stairs without someone’s help. I knew, because I usually got stuck helping him when he came to visit. His filthy yellow nails always dug into my shoulder. I could swear he did it on purpose.
                “Oh sure,” said Robert, with the superior wisdom of his fourteen years. “He doesn’t look so tough now, but when he was younger... ”   My cousin clicked his tongue and paused for dramatic effect. “How do you think Grandma died?”
                I felt a chill at the base of my spine.
    “She tripped and fell down the cellar stairs. It was an accident. Everyone knows that.”
                Even as I said it, I knew it wasn’t true.
                 "Bullshit. That’s just what he wants everyone to think... but no one else was there. Your Mom, my Dad and Uncle Chuck were all at school on the day it