Read Online The Truth About Luck: What I Learned on My Road Trip with Grandma by Iain Reid - Free Book Online

thinking, Grandma’s face is diametrically disparate to Lincoln’s. She doesn’t have any wrinkles. She’s ninety-two!! Where he has lines, she has brown freckles. Where his cheeks sink in, hers lie straight. His complexion is dark, hers fair. Where Lincoln’s mane is a dishevelled brown and falls in unkempt waves, Grandma’s is blank-page white, washed, and neatly combed up off her forehead. Lincoln was six four and rake thin. Grandma can’t be over five feet and is healthily plump.
    The sherry has done its job, converting her to talkative mode. I was hoping she would be chatty, since we’re going to have lots of time for it. But I’ve had to ask her directly about her own memories. She’s started telling me a little about her birthplace in northern Scotland, just before the 1920s.
    â€œIt was my grandmother who inherited a store on the main street in Wick.”
    â€œI didn’t know your grandma owned her own store.”
    â€œYes, but not at first. In those days in Scotland she wasn’t legally permitted to own property.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œNo, women couldn’t own property. But in her mind it was her store regardless.”
    â€œWhat did she do?”
    â€œShe got her brother to sign the paperwork. But she was going to run it.” Grandma brings her sherry up to her mouth but speaks again before drinking. “That’s the whole thing, it was rightfully hers.”
    â€œThat’s pretty cool.” It’s hard to imagine something like that. It seems absurd to someone my age. But that actually happened in her lifetime, or just before it, anyway. Women were not allowed to own property. Also hard to imagine: that I’m drinking and enjoying a glass of sherry.
    â€œAnd that’s where I was born.”
    â€œIn Wick?”
    â€œYes, but I mean in her store.”
    â€œYou were born in the store?”
    â€œIn the apartment upstairs.” She finally draws her overdue sip. “That’s where we lived. My father worked at a local bakery. He was the baker. But my mother worked, too. She took over the store after my grandmother died. She ran it.”
    â€œThat must have been rare in those days, for a mother to be working.”
    â€œIt was, I suppose, yes,” she says thoughtfully.
    I’M BACK OVER at the cooler, pawing around like a raccoon. I should have put the food away already. The bag of ice cubes is a bag of cold water. I’m getting hungry again. “So what do you feel like for supper, Grandma?”
    â€œI was thinking maybe we should go out. Since it’s the first night of the trip. It should be something special, I think.”
    â€œAre you sure?” I ask, exhibiting a room-temperature ball of semi-thawed lamb meat from the cooler. “We could always stay here.”
    â€œI’d be happy to go out. What do you think?”
    â€œSure, why not? But I should probably put this stuff away first.”
    â€œOkay, I’ll just wait here.”
    But before I even reach the fridge, Grandma is up from her chair. “Actually, I’ll be right back.” She walks over to her purse, which she’s left sitting by the door, and slings it over her shoulder. “Just give me a minute.”
    The cooler is empty when she walks back into the kitchen five minutes later. I’m flipping through the last section of the newspaper. I look up. Grandma has changed.
    She’s wearing different slacks (her word) and a different, fancier blouse. She’s pinned a silver brooch to the left lapel. She has a soft silk scarf tied around her neck. Her hair has been retouched in the front. It’s pushed back, higher, and looks airier. She’s readied herself to dine out. It’s all intensely endearing.
    â€œWe’re going out,” she says, “and it’s a silly habit I can’t break. I just had to put on a little lipstick.”
    It’s true. She’s also