Grandma Judy

By: Anthony Emerson

(From our Series Unspoken Rules of Being a New Englander)

Judy met up with her grandson, Andrew, at the end of the aisle with shelves full of cans of pumpkin, tin cookware, and sepia-colored vegetable oils. He’d been sent to the farside of the Hannaford for the remainder of the stuffing fixins’— celery, and way more onions than seem plausible for the dish—and he was standing there with buckling elbows when his grandmother remembered that they hadn’t finished the conversation that had started in the parking lot. 

So anyways… the Levasseur fella…

Yah, I don’t know him.

Sure you do. He’s a kinda big guy, hair… he used to volunteer up to the Congregational Church?

Nah I can’t place him. 

His fatha worked in the paper room with uncle Jimmy. His wife’s family used to own that huntin’ camp out to South Twin?

I’ve never been there. 

You went there once for a banquet when you were a Webelo, but they’d sold it by then. 

Oh right. That place smelled like piss. 

I don’t remember the smell. 

Anyway…

His sons played baseball with them friggin Gendreau boys?

I don’t know who they are either. 

Yes, yes, you do… their sister graduated ahead of your cousin Kate at Stearns. 

Hmm. I guess. 

Your mother went to Prom with their uncle, Richie. He died in a car accident up on the Golden Road oh umpteen years ago. 

Oh wow. 

Levasseur used to go fly fishing with your grandfather’s godfather. Ya know Steve Deveraux, the one who had Polio as a kid and has the hand thing?

Who?

Steve with the hand? Judy gestures furtively in the cereal aisle. 

HA, yeah, I never met him. 

You met him.

He came down to camp one time when you were little. He was drunker than a fart and gave you a sip of Aftershock even though you were like five. Your motha was pissed. 

That doesn’t ring a bell. 

John Levasseur?

…No?

John was the best man at your uncle Larry’s wedding. And actually, in a way he’s our cousin. Going way back. 

Of course. 

His great-grandmother and your great-great-aunt were married to brothers. 

Huh, interesting. 

And your cousin Mary Pat and his niece Mary Catherin were close friends. People called them the Marys. They used to go to Bangor together on the weekends to find boys and raise hell. They’d go over to the department store and ride the escalator up and down for like an hour and just laugh like it was some big joke only they got.  

That’s funny. 

His nephew was the Game Warden that arrested your cousin Daryl for OUI when he was sledding up to Ambejejus drunk?

Uh huh.

Oh and his wife taught third grade and was your cousin Jill’s homeroom teacher. 

Ohhhh ok. 

Anyways… he died. 

The End.

Anthony Emerson is a writer from Maine, now living in Brooklyn with his dog and fiancee. He is the editor of Judy Magazine.