David Rich

My grandmother, Nani we called her, told me these were really my shoes, plated in bronze.  Twice when I stayed overnight in her studio apartment in Milwaukee with the foldout couch and half refrigerator, she took me downtown on the bus to a movie and a sundae and when we came out of the luncheonette she pointed to a big sign across the street – “The Nut House” – and laughed and laughed.  She cheated at cards, looking ahead in the deck.  She gossiped about her sisters.  I never thought of her as a funny person. 

She wrote well over 500 letters to me.  I read every word of every letter.  One was like another: who she heard from, feuds with her sisters, Miriam scolding her.  When she died I rode in the limo to the cemetery with Aunt Miriam who said Nani was a genius because she could figure in her head how much shelf lining customers at Gimbels needed.  Why argue with grief?  I asked for the shoes and for her address book thinking I’d contact some of her friends.  I never did.

How little I gave back through the years.  The shoes, I thought, would chide me for my negligence.  But it was selfishness to think so.  Those shoes amused Nani.  She savored my wonder and confusion at them and their exalted place.  Now I see the letters more clearly, beyond complaints and gossip:  they’re the adult version of the shoes.  Her chronicle of The Nut House.