My Grandmother is one hundred and three and refuses to use a wheelchair, so it’s all hands on deck to get her to my cousin’s hipster wedding at a drafty loft in Williamsburg.  First mistake: We hire an Uber to get her there and she was clearly expecting a Town Car.  As she approaches the car using her walker at glacial speed, she pauses to take in the beaten-up Honda Accord and looks at my dad, and raises one eyebrow as if to say “Really?”

       Park Avenue grandmothers, as a rule, are not called “Nana” or “Granny.” They go by cute perky diminutives like “Mimi,” “Dee Dee,” and “Sookie”, names that make them seem like carefree 1950’s sorority girls from the South, and my grandmother is no different.  She is called Gee Gee by everyone and has been since my fledgling efforts to say “Grandma” as a toddler were successfully redirected to something more suitable.

       “I guess Heidi couldn’t be bothered to go to the expense of a real car,” Gee Gee announces shifting back and forth in her cramped seat. Gee Gee insists on calling my father’s third wife Heidi.  Her name is Kathleen, and Gee Gee knows it. “Heidi” also is sitting next to Gee Gee, shoulder to shoulder, gazing up at the stained roof of the car as if praying to be struck by a large piece of falling debris. My father is making nervous conversation with the driver, determined not to let my grandmother’s rudeness torpedo his Uber rating.  As we cross the Brooklyn Bridge, Gee Gee observes, “I have not been to Brooklyn since the forties. No reason, and I cannot see the reason now.”

          I remind her it’s my cousin, her granddaughter, Callie’s wedding. “I know that,” she snaps, her still elegant long fingers tapping her knee with impatience, “A wedding in a factory,” she snorts, shaking her head.  Four wrong turns into very ungentrified parts of Brooklyn later we alight into the icy February night. We are surrounded by what looks like abandoned warehouses. My father half elbow-guides, half-carries my grandmother up a shaky, rotted metal ramp, and through the huge loading dock doors that have been bedazzled with fairy lights.  I silently curse my cousin and her man-bunned fiancé for picking a winter wedding venue that it is clearly impossible to heat to a temperature above 32 degrees.

           Gee Gee has some admirable quirks that have come with age:  She wears only red, at all times and puts on all her good jewelry at once. She eats only cookies for breakfast. Until she speaks, everyone finds my grandmother adorable. I watch her looking around, getting the lay of the land.  We are surrounded by men with a lot of ironic facial hair and women in retro evening gowns. My cousin Callie is wearing a green satin slip dress that clearly shows her nipples. Callie approaches us with a fearful smile. Callie is a Columbia University-trained therapist and is always trying to shrink Gee Gee’s mean-spirited and generally cruel tendencies away with theories about her upbringing: Gee Gee was sent away too young to a Swiss boarding school; her father lost all his money and killed himself during the Depression; her older sister was a model on the cover of Life magazine and outshined her, so she needed to prove herself and so on.     

        Gee Gee looks Callie up and down and finally declares, “That is quite a dress.”  Callie mumbles a thank you and gingerly kisses her on the cheek.  Then, before Callie walks away, Gee Gee turns to me and in a stage whisper of seventy decibels says, “Well, you clearly got the looks, and she got the brains.” 

         I wince and see Callie blink in shock and shrink into herself, slouching as she retreats.  My father who always tries to act like Gee Gee is cute and eccentric whispers in my ear, “Well don’t feel bad, you can always study.” 

       “It’s not funny,” I hiss. 

       “Pourquoi? C’est vrai.” My grandmother insists on switching to French especially when those around her, which is everyone in the family except for me, do not speak French.  

      I take Gee Gee by the elbow and guide her into the area of the warehouse where they have set up for the service. I see we are expected to sit on long metal benches, which are doing double duty by being both as hard and cold as possible. We scurry around to find my grandmother something else to sit on. My father finds a rickety folding chair which he carries over his head triumphantly winking and grinning broadly, making a scene as he pushes through the crowd.  It’s more of his usual antics around Gee Gee, but tonight for some reason the coarse jokes, laughing and talking about her as if she cannot hear him, bother me. Gee Gee has always been cruel and funny and elegant, but most importantly, powerful. I feel an anger I don’t understand seeing her diminished.

        I watch as my grandmother lowers herself carefully into a rickety metal chair, waiting until the last possible minute to use my arm for help.  

        “I won’t fall. You do know, I fell last year and nothing happened. Ten stitches on my forehead but nothing broken. My neighbor Ellen Jaffe who was only ninety-four fell and broke her second vertebrae and was dead within the month,” she laughs triumphantly.

     “She’s too mean to die,” my stepmother whispers in my ear as she slides into her seat next to me.

            I ignore Kathleen and turn to Gee Gee who is looking me up and down with a 

laser-sharp, mean girls’ stare that would put any of my former New York City private school classmates to shame. “Those earrings are attractive,” she says begrudgingly. She always acts annoyed when complimenting anyone, as if every kind word she says chips away a piece of her.

            I think about what I do know of Gee Gee’s childhood: the sudden death of her father, being sent away to school at eleven, and always living in the shadow of her much older, more beautiful, and glamorous sister, Elise. Once Gee Gee showed me a picture of her and Elise and my grandfather. In the picture, they are standing on a beach in the 1930s somewhere in the south of France. The women wear unflattering dark one-piece swimsuits ending in what look like bike shorts, and even though the photo is in black and white, I can tell they are all deeply, unhealthily tanned.  In the picture, my grandfather has his arm around Elise’s shoulder and they both look very tall, very beautiful, and well, very chummy. Gee Gee, still young, barely out of her teens, stands off to the side, slightly awkward and scrawny, gazing at them with a look that is an unpleasant concoction of disdain, desire, and determination.

When I asked Gee Gee about it, I remember she laughed airily, “Oh, yes, Pop was Elise’s beau first, for quite a while, really, but then he saw the error of his ways.” I wonder what it takes, who you have to be, to steal your sister’s boyfriend and then marry him.

        The frigid service finally begins and Callie’s Indian friend from grad school, Samir, stands up and begins to sing a lovely Hindu wedding chant, accompanied by a girl with blond dreadlocks playing a ukulele. The guests all join in at the chorus. “The cantor really has a lovely voice,” Gee Gee says. I can’t for the life of me tell if she is joking.

            After an interminable number of readings of poems by Rumi and handcrafted vows addressing, among other things, division of household labor, including the care and maintenance of their homegrown artisanal bread yeast, mutual respect, and the importance of self-actualization, the service ends. Callie and her new husband Ryan greet the guests in some sort of receiving line involving everyone awkwardly bowing as the happy couple hands each well-wisher a daisy while reciting a blessing I recognize from yoga class.  My father and Kathleen dash off to get online as if they could not wait to be given a wilted flower.  

     I happen to know that the architect of this circus of cultural appropriation is not Callie, the bride. This is Ryan’s show. Ryan Hamilton, a painter/barista who arrived in Brooklyn via an estate in Greenwich Connecticut. He is as ethnic as a club sandwich and in addition to an impressive lumberjack beard (which he has not combed or calmed down for today’s festivities) he also brings to the marriage a hedge fund-running father, who is not paying for the wedding at Callie’s insistence, but who is paying for their giant two-million-dollar loft (I looked it up on Redfin) several miles away in Brooklyn Heights.

            “That Ryan is handsome or would be if he shaved off that ridiculous animal sitting on his face,” says Gee Gee squinting her eyes like a jeweler looking through the loup at a stone that may or may not be authentic.  “And he has family money,” she adds with a very small lift of her eyebrows.  I feel oddly stung. I didn’t know that she knew anything about him, or the details of Callie’s marriage because Callie has chosen to keep what she calls “a healthy emotional boundary distance” from Gee Gee.  Meaning she never calls her or sees her.         

         Kathleen miraculously comes back from the receiving line to relieve me. As she approaches, she wiggles her hips, awkwardly trying to dance/walk to the Tyler the Creator rap playing in the background. 

            “Hello Heidi,” says Gee Gee. Kathleen clenches her jaw and makes a big production of placing her metallic silver wrap over Gee Gee’s shoulders.  Gee Gee looks down at the wrap as if a spiderweb had descended from the ceiling and removes it with two fingers as if it is too distasteful to touch. 

            “I am not cold, thank you,” Gee Gee says.

            Kathleen looks at me from where she is standing behind Gee-Gee and raises a hand to her temple and mimes shooting herself in the head.

I head to the bathroom which miraculously is not coed and has a serviceable mirror and two toilet stalls.  The door opens and Callie comes in and immediately lights a joint.

            “I hear there is an open bar,” I say.

            “Ha ha.” Callie takes a long drag and leans against the dirty mirror, reaching her hand out to offer it to me. I shake my head no.  

  “It’s just all worse and better and crazier than you expect,” she says laughing, looking dazed and happy.

I feel mildly annoyed that she chose that provocative dress, that her hair looks tangled and unbrushed, and that her lipstick is a weird shade of pink that does not suit her.  At thirty, I am three years older, clearly better looking, better dressed, but not married and not in a relationship.  She wins. Poor Elise, poor me.

           I approach the filthy cracked bathroom sink to wash my hands and I see a look of shock on Callie’s face.  She is staring at my left hand.  

            “Nice ring,” she says.  I realize I am wearing the ring.  It’s our family heirloom: Gee Gee’s engagement ring, a showstopper of Art Deco perfection with a four-carat stone so white and perfect that it avoids being vulgar.  If you had asked me, I would have sworn I had taken it off before coming.  I never intended for Callie to know I had it, especially not today, but there it is, sparkling on my finger in all its glory.

            “She gave it to me for my 30th, I thought you knew?”

            “No. I didn’t.” All vestiges of Callie’s usual kind, relaxed demeanor have dissolved away.

            “You’re getting the other one, I’m sure of it.”  There is the 25th Anniversary Ring: a large sapphire set with diamonds.  It’s pretty and tasteful, but it lacks the drama and the story of my ring.  My ring whispers of uncontrolled passion, betrayal and big gestures.

            “It figures, so typical of her, yours is prettier.”  She makes finger quotes in the air around the last word.

            “No, it’s not, the other is lovely too,” I say, but she shakes her head and walks out of the bathroom.   I wish I felt bad, but I honestly don’t. I’m Gee Gee’s favorite and it worries me a little to think about why.

         By the time I get out of the bathroom and find Gee Gee, dinner is being served and by “served” I mean large aluminum trays of take-out chicken tikka masala and highly spiced curries are laid out buffet style on an old industrial factory table.  I make Gee Gee a plate and bring it to her bracing myself.  It smells of garlic, ethnic spices and grease, all three of her least favorite food groups. Gee Gee, who has made it to one hundred and three by smoking the first forty years of her life and without benefit of ever eating a green vegetable or setting foot in a gym, looks at the plate and gestures it away.

         “I’m not eating that. Just a gin and tonic. Make it strong.”  

         I head to the cash bar where they are serving only Old Fashioneds and Manhattans- classic cocktails that had their heyday when Gee Gee was first drinking. After negotiating a plain old gin and tonic, I rush back to her and see she is now visibly shivering in the cold factory.  

      “I am fine” she snaps smoothing the fine wool of her cashmere skirt and straightening herself to sit up taller. I wonder how much longer we will have to stay and start checking my phone for nearby Uber X’s (or should I splurge on an Uber Black). My dad and Kathleen have stationed themselves as far as humanly possible from our location and are ignoring my gestures and eye-rolls. 
       As I look up from my phone, I notice Gee Gee quietly and gracefully tipping over to the side.  It happens in slow motion as I reach out to catch her before she falls out of her chair and hits the floor.  I don’t get there in time.  She has landed on her side: legs curled in, her head on her arm like she is resting. Her eyes are closed, and I wonder if this is it, knowing how much she would hate this, the scene, the indignity. A doctor is found, her pulse is thin but there, so an ambulance is called.  

      As she is wheeled out of the factory to the ambulance, her eyes flutter open. I grab her hand and say, “Gee Gee?”

     She is short of breath, and I can tell it is an effort for her to speak, “Your dress is lovely, but I really hate that haircut on you,” she whispers.

Melissa Brown is a graduate of Duke University and has a master's in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She worked as a journalist for MSNBC and for ABC News affiliates in Seattle and Washington DC. She lives in the Washington DC area with her family. Her short stories have been published in Subnivean and Ponder Review and Minerva Rising. She is currently attending the Johns Hopkins University master's program in creative writing and is working on a novel