Grapefruit and Cuban Cigars

It smells of grapefruit and Cuban cigars. It’s always bright. It sounds like running water and opera. It tastes like the sweet, foreign tang of Kraft American Cheese. 

A typical day consists of the four of us—my mother, father, older brother, and I—hopping into our tiny, white, and very old Ford Mercury. The gray seats are stained with dried coffee and coated with a layer of sand that permanently ingrained itself into the threads of the seat. The car radiates powerful warmth. I focus hard on putting on my seatbelt. It’s always a fun game, trying to avoid the boiling silver buckle. 

It’s an eleven-minute drive to my grandfather’s home. I stare out of the fingerprinted car window. Palm trees that line the highway morph into streaks of paint. The blues and greens melt into each other, every now and then interrupted by a splash of yellow from a patch of daisies at the base of a tree. 

My father maneuvers his way down a winding road with a stop sign that approaches behind the leaves of a tree. I prepare myself for a short stop because for some reason he can never remember it’s there. But it’s always been there. Just as I predicted, my body shoots forward quickly and my mother inhales sharply through her teeth, with her hand clutched tightly to the handle above her head. 

We enter through the north gate of my grandfather’s development. The palm trees look a lot more polished and clean cut. I count. Each tree has an average of five coconuts. 

The Mercury scoots along a road paved so evenly, it feels as if we’re floating in space. I rest my head on the bottom of the middle seat and look up just enough to where I can’t see the trees, only sky. I imagine our car rocketing through the air in a separate universe—a universe where no one dares to touch the ground, and people live on saucers thousands of feet above the tree line. Every now and then I catch a glimpse of a palm tree leaf in my peripheral vision but force the image out of my brain in order to keep living in my world of make believe. The car makes a wide turn, and without looking, I know we have arrived. There’s a specific feeling here, where just by the degree the steering wheel turns, and the way the ground feels under the Mercury, I can tell exactly where we are: pulling into my grandfather’s driveway. In front of me is the gray and white house with its deep wine shutters. My father slowly parks the Mercury, and before he turns it off, I quickly hold back the stiff button on the side of my door to roll up the cloudy windows. It’s always a thrill, seeing if I can roll the window up completely before my father puts the Mercury to bed. I get out and slam the door shut with fortitude. 

A few feet behind our car is the door to my grandfather’s home. It is lacquered brown, with a shine that resembles the sweat on the bridge of my mother’s nose. I raise my tiny fist just above the doorknob and knock with all of my strength, bruising my frail knuckles. “IT’S OPEN!” my grandfather’s rusty voice swims through his endless hallways. I hold on to the bronze doorknob with both hands and use my thumb to press down on the lever. It never budges. My father swipes my hands away and opens the door with no problem. I always resent him for that. The second the door opens, a rush of cool air washes over my body, almost pushing me back a step onto the cobblestone. It smells of grapefruit and cigars. My grandfather, a large circular man with only a few strands of bright white hair combed neatly over the top of his glistening head, approaches us. He walks over to my brother with open arms. “Tiger!”

He plants his plump lips on the top of my brother’s light brown hair. My brother is Tiger, after Tiger Woods. He takes pride in that nickname. He thinks he’s good at golfing. 

“Oh, my princess!” 

He always comes up to me after my brother. Either he wants to save the best for last, or he has a special place in his heart for his eldest grandchild. I prefer to think it’s the former. I break open a big smile and try to wrap my arms all the way around his body, but I can only reach each of his sides. 

My grandfather has lived in this house for my entire life; I’m not too sure how long before that. He takes care of it. My mother and father follow him in conversation to the kitchen. I stay behind.

In front of me is a delicately decorated living room where no one really sits, except when we open presents on Christmas Eve. The couches are a pearl color with hints of pink. They aren’t comfortable, and I never understood why you would buy a couch that didn’t do its job well. The pillows are outlined in gold thread that matches the tassels used to pull back the enormous flower-printed curtains. Every now and then, I would steal the tassels. I removed them from the wall and flipped them upside down so the strings fell to resemble hair, and the bottom to resemble a body. It’s always an enchantment, creating a little tassel family of all different shapes and colors from each room of my grandfather’s house. Directly behind the “couches” and stiff pillows is a series of glass sliding doors that stretch from the ceiling all the way to the floor. I can hear running water. Directly behind those doors is a magnificent pool. The hot tub sits slightly above the rest of the pool, with a stream of water that constantly filters into the main pool. I always wonder how the big pool never overflowed. 

I follow the hallway to the left of the front door and find myself in his kitchen. It is always bright in there. The walls are lined with more glass doors and the cabinets shine a loud white. I reach under the counter to retrieve my favorite cup: a plastic one with a patch of a pineapple pasted onto it. I fill my cup with crushed ice and water. His crushed ice is better than any I have ever known. In hopes of finding the perfect snack, I struggle to pry open his gargantuan refrigerator. 

“Hungry, my princess?” my grandfather asks, removing himself from adult conversation with my parents. 

“Always,” I respond with another warm smile. 

A biting cold runs up my arms, and I see it! Mm... American cheese. I pick up a slice, coated in a plastic film, peel back the delicate wrapping, and take the smallest bites I can. The shiny orange cheese melts into my tongue and molds around the shape of my baby teeth. I love that taste. I need to savor it. 

Once entirely satiated, I return to the hallway and walk towards the door but stop on the way into another room, the TV room. In here lies my grandfather’s desk with an itchy gray upholstered chair, a towering bookcase decorated with names of John Grisham and J.R.R. Tolkien, and most importantly, a wide, crimson-red reclining chair directly in front of the TV box. It’s always exhilarating, seeing if I can steal the chair from my brother when he leaves the room for a moment. His loss. 

I continue back out into the hallway in the same direction. I pass the front door and head towards the hallway on the right of it, which eventually leads into a room with a carpet of snow and soft couches and endless tassels hanging from the curtains, and photographs of my grandfather as a young and budding entrepreneur. He wasn’t nearly as circular. There’s another desk in here, but I’ve never sat at it or touched it for that matter. My thoughts are always consumed by the upright Yamaha piano standing against the wall. Its age bleeds through the cracks in the white keys and the muted glimmer of the black. Its body is an oak brown, as if from a tree that was just chopped down. Here is where I spend most of my hours, creating my own worlds by mixing pieces of nocturnes and polonaises. I sit down on the bench and it falls deeper into the carpet with a slight groan. I can’t hear the opera from this room, or the running water. The carpet absorbs all extraneous sound and leaves me alone to create my own noise. To the right of the music stand is an old clock, which no longer wishes to do its job, and a photo of my grandfather and his wife in matching white blouses, in a cheap silver frame that disappeared for a couple of years but then reappeared. I wasn’t told much about their relationship. To the left of the music stand is a dark charcoal statue of the head of Frédéric Chopin, watching over me to make sure I run my scales before I begin to play. When I come in here at night, while my brother watches all of the Star Wars movies in the TV room and my grandfather reads on his kindle by the poolside, I turn the statue around so he faces the wall. He scares me sometimes. 

I cherish what this house gives me. It gives me the ability to create so much out of so little. My racing mind takes advantage of the stillness and maturity of a house and uses every bit of it to create something otherworldly. I am building a life for tassel dolls, challenging my brother to a cutthroat competition for the crimson chair, and composing a piece of music no one would ever have the ability to replicate. I adore this place because nowhere else can I envelop myself in the tremendous power of my own mind as a child. Nowhere else can I discover the beauty and mysticism tucked away in places I would never think to look as an adult. I am always a child at my grandfather’s house.