Unfinished Business

Before Sophie moved to Ridgewood, she spent about 30 years in upstate New York making a living by owning and operating a Dairy Queen. That was the family trade at the time– for many years, my aunts, uncles, grandparents, and even my mother and father had a monopoly on the Dairy Queens in the Hudson Valley area.

Throughout that time, Sophie did a fair amount of traveling between her house in Dutchess County and Olga’s apartment in Granny Mansion. She used to spend months split between the two places until about a decade ago, when she took up permanent residency in the Mansion as well. These days the 2.5-hour-long car ride prevents her from being able to visit upstate anymore, but she still believes she’s got some unfinished business up there. Despite what we tell her, she insists that she’s got a huge sum of money waiting for her in her old bank account.

So, three times, she’s tried to take a taxi from Ridgewood to the Rhinebeck Savings Bank to withdraw her money from the bank account that’s actually been closed for over ten years.

The first time, she strategically planned her trip for when I was out of town and unable to stop her. So she actually did make it up there and back in the cab—I have no idea what kind of hell she raised in the bank and honestly I’m surprised I didn’t get a call from the Rhinebeck police regarding a wild granny on the loose. When she did end up back in Ridgewood with no withdrawn savings, she paid the taxi driver the fee he asked– $600 cash.

The second time, about a month ago, Steve found Sophie on the front stoop waiting to be picked up by the cab she’d arranged to drive her upstate for another try at the bank. When I went downstairs to see what she was doing, she said that it was a nice day for a ride and that she needed her money. I asked her what price she’d arranged for the trip, and she said they gave her a good deal this time—only $400 for the roundtrip taxi. When I tried to talk her out of going, she got that manic laughter and those glossy eyes that come over her in moments of sheer mental frailty. Like the stubborn old German lady she is, she refused to give up on the trip and go back inside even when I had my dad on the phone trying to talk her down. When the cab driver finally arrived, Sophie eagerly hopped in while I tried to explain to the man, who seemed to only have a few words of English, that he couldn’t take my grandma on a $400 trip to a town 100 miles away because 1) she couldn’t sit in the car that long , and 2) the whole idea was f***ing crazy! After I paid him off $20 to cancel the trip, I had to literally pull Sophie out of the cab by her arms and legs, and then deal with her angry huff for the rest of the day.

The third time, a couple of weeks ago, as I was leaving for work I found her again outside on the stoop waiting nervously with her kerchief, sneakers, cane, and bank book in hand. I asked her what she was doing, and she, as a suspicious teenager lying to her parents, answered, “Nothing. I’m not doing anything.” With that, I stared blankly at her for a half-second, turned toward the subway station, and reached for my phone to call the cab company and tell them that they should definitely not ever pick up my senile grandmother for joyrides out of the city, thank you very much.