My grandmother, then, who was a stay-at-home mother, had to manage these three boys more on her own than she had before. I don't know whether she had to start going to work or what. The family lived upstairs from the Fieldses at the time. Mr. and Mrs. Fields. Mom-Mom and Pop-Pop. (Mom-Mom is pronounced Mum-Mum. I thought you ought to know.) My grandmother (I don't know if I can continue to call her that—I never knew her, you understand, and I had Mom-Mom growing up, acting as grandmotherly as anyone could be), anyway Guion's mother (who we should remember is my father's mother, as well—that tripped me out, you know, the whole time, that when Guion was referring to his mother and father, that they were my father's parents, too; when he referred to his aunts and uncles, that they were my father's relatives, too; and he had a different perspective on these same people that were related to my father and to me), as I was saying—Guion's mother enlisted the help of Mrs. Fields in raising the little boys. Mrs. Fields was happy to oblige. She had no children of her own, but was somewhat notorious, I think, for helping young mothers who needed assistance with their children.

Before telling me these things, Guion asked me if I knew about Mrs. Fields. I said, yes. And then I amended it, saying that I didn't know how much I knew about Mrs. Fields, but that I knew her for a very long time. He asked me what I knew about her. Slightly nervous (about having too small a pool of information), I said that I knew that she and her husband had no children and that they helped take care of my father and his brothers when they were younger. I mentioned that she had gone to live with my father after her husband had died and Guion was surprised. Not so much that she had gone to live with my father, but that he was getting information from me about family goings on that he had not previously known. That was the piece of information that ended the little quiz.

He then went on to tell me about the situation with Mrs. Fields. Mom-Mom, as he finally began to refer to her. He told me how the rift between my father and the rest of his family grew. It was a rift that was never rectified. When I asked what it was about, he spoke to me of my father's relationship with Mom-Mom. I get the impression that my father was sick a lot as a child. I believe he had asthma; perhaps that was the sickness. Whatever it was, Mom-Mom was often called in to help with him, especially because he was sick all the time. My father grew quite attached to Mom-Mom. More attached, Guion asserted than he was to his own mother. His parents toyed with the notion of breaking off the relationship between Ken and Mom-Mom—I believe it was their father's idea—but they never did. Most likely because Ken was sick and all and their mother had her hands full and really needed the assistance. I think Linda in particular (though Guion, too) were of the mind that my father's relationship with Mom-Mom should have been severed early on.

It was a very peculiar thing for me to hear, because Mom-Mom was so pivotal in my young life. I can't imagine growing up without her. I wouldn't have had a grandmother figure on my father's side because both of his parents had died before I was born. I almost wanted to rush to them, to these people, who, in altering this history would have removed Mom-Mom from my life as well, and cry "No! That would have been terrible!" It would have severed my relationship with her as well. And we were so very close.

When he was young, my father would go to Mom-Mom's house whenever there was trouble at home. Rather than staying and working it out, when there was friction, he would just leave. Eventually the Fieldses moved from the same building as the Blufords to another place in a different area and my father would just go there. When my dad was in college and would get sick, sometimes he would come to Philadelphia (without alerting his mother) and stay with Mom-Mom until he was better. Apparently their mother would get very upset about this, particularly if she went to visit him and he was not there. (I wondered about the veracity of this last part, whether or not she really ever went to New York a-visiting and actually found him absent, in Philadelphia with Mom-Mom. It sounds like the kind of slight hyperbole that can be easily made up to prove a point. But it might be true.)

The story made my father sound so very much like me. I remembered times when my father has complained to my mother that I don't communicate enough, she has reminded him of how he was when he was in college. The impression that I have always had is that I'm just the same, or at least, no more extreme than him.

Mom-Mom and Pop-Pop always rented their homes, Guion told me. That was a fact that surprised him. (He and his wife speak of having had their last house built to order. They mean to move out of Cleveland and they speak of having a new house built wherever they move next.) The Fieldses lived, I guess, in one very nice house that Guion would have sworn they owned until he found out otherwise.

(I remembered the last house they lived in. The couches all sealed in hard plastic, the big flat cushions on the floor that you could pile up—one of them had wheels and you could roll it around. In the dining room was a drawer or a dish with M&Ms in it. Hand towels in the kitchen. White walls.)

Guion thought that this was a very curious point—the always renting situation. He said that when her husband died, the fact that she did not own a home must have left her in a fix. He said that he didn't think she ever worked. I told him that she had, but probably hadn't worked in a long time when Pop-Pop died. I said that when he began to get sick, my father promised her that he would take care of her. And he did. She came to live with him. And lived with him almost the rest of her days.

(I saw flashes in my head of the hospital. Going to visit Pop-Pop. I was not allowed to see him. I was too young. I was something like seven. I did not attend Pop-Pop's funeral, though I would have liked to. I did not remember why, but when I questioned my mother one time, she told me that I was comforting Mom-Mom, who did not attend his funeral, either. She was too grief stricken. I was the only thing that was of significant comfort to her.)

Guion was not surprised that my father took care of her, though he did not know that she lived with him, in his home for almost ten years. Guion told me that of all of the children that Mom-Mom took care of, my father was the only one who really stuck. I told him of how when I was younger the arrangement was that I, living with my mother most of the time, would come and stay with my father every other weekend. But I really didn't spend much time with my father at all. I was really coming to spend time with Mom-Mom. I told him that we were extremely close. That she was like a grandmother to me. I was a freshman in college when she died.

I remembered my mother calling me. Letting me know. Talking to me of how much Mom-Mom loved me. And that was the point that caught me. That's how death catches me. I can be pretty Zen about it most of the time, maybe, but then when their love for me is exposed, when I think of all of that love, I lose it. I remembered setting down the phone and leaving the building and running and running and running and running as fast as I could away from the vast well of grief that was attached to the vast well of Mom-Mom's love for me. It was gone and dead and still there and alive inside me all at the same time. It ached and hurt and tore at my insides and I couldn't run fast enough to get away from the pain of it. I did not tell him that.

I told him that she outlived her sisters and brothers and nieces and nephews, too. She lived to be well over a hundred. I told him that I was like a granddaughter to her and that she had a very large family and I would go with her to family reunions in Atlanta and in Buffalo and she would be the oldest member of the family and I the honorary youngest. He asked me if my father went with me on these trips and I said "No." "So, he just sent you off with her, then?" I answered "yes," not sure whether that was proving something to him. I remembered the faces, Mary's and Sonny's. I'm remembering now that there was no funeral for her, no memorial, because there just were no living relatives left who weren't too sick to attend. There was just me and my dad. He sent me a picture of her. Her and Pop-Pop I think that I have since lost. I curse myself for losing it, for losing the letter he sent me after she died, which spoke of the little information we really knew about Mom-Mom. I did not tell Guion these things, either.

Instead, I told him that Mom-Mom lived with him for the rest of her life and then I remembered and amended it. Mom-Mom lived with him for all but maybe the last couple of years of her life, when she had grown senile and at that point, she moved into a nursing home. I remembered the nurse she had before that point, a very nice young woman who looked after her. I remembered the three of us: myself, Mom-Mom, and the nurse being the only people on my father's side of the church when he was married to Cynthia. We were all the family he had. I remembered visiting Mom-Mom in the nursing facility, how the place made my nose crinkle. I was afraid. Of the place and of her. Of a Mom-Mom that wouldn't remember me. I was maybe seventeen. So much I did not / could not tell this strange man Guion who could so easily wish away my father's relationship with this woman.