Although she often seemed sad, my grandmother’s face would always soften and lighten when she looked at me.  This was true even when she lost some of her mental faculties and couldn’t remember the people around her.  If I visited her in the nursing home and stood in front of her, she would smile and nod--as though she was warming herself in front of a fire that she could barely see.

The home had little to do with her sadness; even before those days, she would sit and play solitaire for hours on end with a half-empty bottle of wine next to her.  “Haunted” is too strong a word.  It was more like resigned disappointment.  As though the world had failed to meet certain, exacting expectations.

I grew older before I found out what happened before I was born.  My mysteriously absent grandfather had a way with hitting the bottle, and eventually he had a way with hitting the road.  This explained lot, but it didn’t all come together until I saw a photograph of my grandmother as a young woman.  She was stunning--a model’s cheekbones and gorgeous black hair.  Combine that kind of beauty with a rigid, conservative upbringing in the ‘20s, and you end up with a traditional girl who expected to marry Prince Charming and stay married for the rest of her life.  She ended up married to Jim Beam, who really can’t claim any kind of blue-blooded pedigree.

It would be easy to conclude that she wandered into the chambers of her mind and shut off all the circuit breakers marked “Love” and “Sex.” I suppose she did.  But when I was nine, I made a fantastic discovery--I found a trashy thriller novel on her sofa, pushed face down to bookmark the chapter. It was by Eric Van Lustbader, which has to be a pseudonym because it’s just too accurate a name on multiple levels.  His characters hunger passionately after each other.  Their underclothes are torn in fits of torrid romance.  Everyone carries a gun; the heroes have to fight ninjas.

I devoured the novel and gorged myself on the salacious prose.  Afterwards, I was sated enough to spare a moment’s thought for my grandmother.  After all, even though I didn’t know the details about her marriage or her upbringing, I knew she was alone and that she sometimes seemed sad.  I thought, “Good for you, Nana.  You should read more books like this.”

I regret that she left us before I could grow old enough to connect that sense of childhood approval with my adult desire to help her do even better.  Because I know what I’d like to do.  I’d sit down with her and lay the book in front of us.  I’d say, “I know you were sold a bill of goods as a kid, and I want to make sure we’re on the same page.  This book is a pretty good start, but I want to make sure you realize that, in real life, people do hunger passionately, underclothes can get torn--in that good way, not in the way that you accidentally catch yourself on a nail or something.  And it’s worth keeping your head up to watch for whatever might be lurking around the corner--even if, y’know, you go your entire life without meeting a ninja.”