The Tea Kettle

My grandmother on my father’s side had a few issues. Now, we all have issues so hey, what of it? And sure, that’s fine, but hers were a bit different and some of them impacted me directly.

For example, she refused to have anything to do with the color black.  She wouldn’t sit on it, wear it, or eat off of it. Black, you see, was the color of death and her husband had died very young.  This might almost make the rest of this understandable. Almost. Except not at all.

Have you ever tried to go to a restaurant in New York and demand non-black seats? Try it sometime. Seriously, give it a try. Because they will give you such a look. Such a look. And then, after the look, they will ask you where they should procure this mystery spare alternative chair for use.

Once we got an orange kitchen chair. Right from the back of the restaurant they dragged this thing out. I mean, bless their hearts, they let us use it, but it was not in the best of shape and made the whole joint look shabby. But they humored the old woman.  They didn’t have much of a choice, I guess.

Well, that’s not true, but can you imagine the manager of a place telling some old woman to shove it? Wouldn’t go over well. So if they could, they would humor her – and take it out on the rest of us.  Eating was always tense. Waiters would come by and glare at us, glancing sideways at the offending chair.

But that was nothing compared to the tea kettle.  The way holidays worked with my grandmother was she would tell my mother what she wanted and my mother would tell me and my sister.

As if it was her idea and a secret.

“Your grandmother would like a tea kettle,” she said once.

I’m pretty sure I replied “No, I’m sure she’d like something else.”

Of course she didn’t, though. No. She wanted a damned tea kettle. And so what?, you might think – it’s a tea kettle, why would I deny an old woman her tea?  She didn’t want a stainless steel one, she hated those, I was told, and of course it couldn’t be black on the inside.

Have you ever in your life seen a tea kettle? They are either black inside or stainless steel. That’s it. And I was now charged with finding this elusive new kind of kettle. A kettle forged in the halls of Valhalla by magical unicorns. Because that fucking thing wasn’t normal. No.

And so I found myself as Zabar’s because they had a huge selection and they were close.  I saw the aisle of kettles and whipped out a small flashlight.  I went to each kettle in turn and opened it and shone the light inside. Then I moved on to the next one.

It didn’t, as you might guess, take long for someone who worked there to notice me.  So this guy comes over and asks if he can help me. He looks worried, as if he might need to call the cops, or my keeper, to come take me back to the home, ya know?

“Oh, I’m just looking for a kettle that isn’t black inside. Or stainless,” I told him with a shrug.

“Uhm.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“Really?” He didn’t want to believe my story and I don’t blame him. But there I was with a flashlight, looking as resolute as anything. Once he accepted that I wasn’t pranking him he decided to help.  Well, by help I mean “stand there looking nervous and giving advice.”

Eventually I found one that I decided was navy blue inside. The store guy agreed and I got it rang up and I went home.  My mother wasn’t sure about the color but I told her that me and this other guy had agreed, and so we wrapped it up.

When my grandmother opened it, the first thing she did was open the kettle itself and peer inside. Before “thank you” or anything. And she grimaced.

“That’s black inside.”

“No! No! It’s navy blue! Hold on, I’ll get the flashlight!”

The whole family had to inspect it, then, peering inside this kettle. My grandmother eventually decided to agree that it was navy blue and thanked me for it, but I could tell she didn’t buy it.

Next time I was over at her place her old kettle was on the stove and in a corner of the kitchen was the box with the kettle I had gotten her.

Untouched, of course.