They don’t tell you in San Francisco
That East Coast nights don’t cool down in the summer
Not in Augusta
But not in Brooklyn either
I remember those sweltering nights
Thirty people crammed into my grandparents’ brownstone
Most of us related
Many of us crowded around a tiny TV
Yelling at it, mostly
Everyone was a Giants fan
Except the one Cowboys fan
Just to fuck with us
For sure
I asked him once why
And he said
As a kid
He liked the blue stars on their helmets
Same guy fifty years later
Now so radicalized by Trumpism
That I won’t even talk to him
He liked the color of the MAGA hats, too, I guess
Anyhow this kid was torn between the football game
And getting yelled at for plunking away on the old upright
That no one knew how to play
Maybe my grandmother, a little
But she was busy in the kitchen
Wearing a house apron
I guess that’s what it was called
Kind of a strange little floral vest contraption
With snaps
To protect whatever she wore beneath it
See protecting things was important
To this immigrant family
Five grown kids
With one adult uncle living in the basement
And my grandparents
And both sets of their parents
All living upstairs
Which also featured
In addition to the tiny TV and the upright
A little railway kitchen
And a long table that seated twenty
But wasn’t level
Because really it was three or four tables
All pushed together
Maybe more
In my other grandparents’ brownstone
Down the block and around the corner
They lived entirely in the basement
Which was kind of dumpy
And smelled like moth balls
But they had two stories above them
That sat unused
A bowl of fake grapes and lemons
On the fully-set table
Like Ms. Havisham
Prepared for guests that would never arrive
If ever allowed into these rooms
Which was not often
I would squeeze the dusty fake lemon
And feel the air as it hissed out
But that wasn’t the strangest thing
I mean my grandparents were living in squalor
Below ground in a musty basement
With two lavishly-decorated floors above them
That was strange
But what really stuck with me
Was the plastic wrap on the furniture
It wasn’t the thin plastic we use to wrap food
No, this was a thick, clear vinyl
That somehow was fitted exactly over
The plush couches and chairs
Maybe heat-shrunk or something
I don’t know
Because I don’t think people do this
Not anymore
And when I said that it stuck with me
I meant that it literally stuck with me
On those hot Brooklyn nights
And the days, too
A nice seal of leg sweat
On a plastic-wrapped sofa
I’d get up
And it was like peeling giant band-aids
Off the backs of my thighs
And the sound
The indescribable sound
Of sweaty legs
Trying to part ways
With a plastic-wrapped sofa
Meanwhile my grandmother
Flitting about
Preparing food for thirty in a tiny kitchen
That was no joke
But my grandfather
A master craftsman by day
His gnarled hands kneading the pizza dough
He worked side by side with grandma
Together they would produce an enormous feast
And then a mad rush for the table
The ends filling up first
Because everyone knew
That if you got stuck in the middle
You’d spend all your time passing the lasagna
And not eating
Everyone talking at once
And nobody listening
The one aunt who always brought a different guy
Each one kinda looking the same
Brown skin
Rings, thick necklace, lots of jewelry—
Even for an Italian man
VO5-slicked back hair
And a porn mustache
Kinda half wise-guy, half pimp
And then there was another aunt’s boyfriend
Herbert, a Jew
Which was cool with us
But everyone hated him anyway
For other reasons
Mostly because he would pick fights
About stupid stuff
Like whether gasoline was more expensive than diesel
My dad worked at an oil company
Crunching numbers in a bunker
In Perth Amboy
Underneath a giant machine
That would crunch crude oil
Into many different things
If anyone knew what petroleum products cost
It was my dad
But Herbert wanted to argue with him anyway
And then of course my cousin Olive
She was maybe seven
But she insisted
After my grandparents toiled in the kitchen for hours
That she get her own special meal
Of bland American food
Usually an overcooked burger patty and fries
Or the like
She grew up to be a vegan
And now requires special treatment
Where-ever she goes
Imagine that
Between
The Cowboys fan, now Trumper
The wiseguy pimps, all probably dead
Herbert and my dad yelling at each other
And Olive, the picky eater who became a vegan
My grandparents
And their parents
Must have felt a real loss of control
See, time doesn’t give a fuck
It just keeps going
And the older you get
The faster it goes
Like a roll of toilet paper
Maybe it gave the elders comfort to know
That as crazy as this ragtag bunch of immigrants would get
As much as time would change us all
And eventually get the best of us
All of us
At least the plastic would protect the furniture
