This is one of the
stories I tell when somebody actually asks me for a story. It's
true. It's
historic. It's not
touching or
inspiring, but
most people like it
anyway.
My
great-grandfather was, if
family accounts are
correct--and they usually are, especially when you're dealing with a
dead guy--a
cheap-ass miserable
asshole. He used to
frequent pawn shops, in the interest of, well, being a cheap-ass, I suppose. He had a
son, but his wife was either
dead or just
gone, I don't remember. Anyway, at some point he met my
great-grandmother, a gentle
German girl right off the ship. Her name, believe it or not, was
Helga. My great-grandpappy offered to marry Helga, and she was
flattered and happy that she woudln't just go
broke and
die in the streets like so many
immigrants did those days. So she married him. On their
wedding night, he showed her to her room, informed her that he'd only married her so she could
keep the house clean and
raise his son, and
left. Yeah, he was
that kind of asshole.
Anyway, Helga did what she was told because it
beat the shit out of starving in the
streets of early-20th-century
Chicago, where all this was happening. One day, when they'd been married for a while, Great-Grandpappy showed up in Helga's room in the middle of the night and had
sex with her. She ended up
pregnant from this act, and grandpappy told her, "
Fine. Don't say I never gave you anything." And so
my grandmother, my dad's mom, was born.
Granddaddy continued to be a
dick and Helga continued to
run the house and
raise the kids. From what I've heard, Helga was a
sweetheart and everybody loved her except
her husband. She, however, was always
grateful to him for
marrying her and giving her
children, even one of
her own, and she was
forever defending him to everybody else.
In the
middle of their lives, my great-grandaddy happened across a
pendant in his favorite
pawn shop, which was owned by his
sister's husband. His sister's name was Marie, and she too was
always defending Helga. Marie convinced my great-grandaddy to buy this
pendant for Helga, and after being
assured that it was
cheap and worthless, he did.
The
pendant, I should interject, is
reportedly a
silverish cross with
stones in it; it was sold for something like a
quarter to my great-grandaddy. The
pawn-shop owner, great-grandaddy's brother-in-law, told him that it was
cheap silver and
rhinestones and would probably
turn Helga's neck green. But Helga
never wore it.
No, she was
so blisteringly happy over her present that she
put it away safe and would never wear it. Even though she got it with an
admonition of "Don't ever say I never bought you a
present," Helga was all
teary-eyed and happy about it. She never knew that it was
cheap shit; she bragged to
Marie and everyone else how wonderful her husband was. Marie, of course, had a hard time
keeping her mouth shut, but she did.
Then the
miserable bastard died, leaving Helga with
plenty to live on, even with their
two kids--he was a
miser, remember. But she wanted to
display the wonderful gift he'd given her, the only gift he'd EVER given her, and so Helga took the
pendant to a
jeweler's to have it
cleaned.
Marie was
insane with
terror, but she couldn't think of a way to keep Helga from going without telling her what a
piece of shit her late husband really was. So Helga went to the jeweler's.
And, wouldn't you know it, the jeweler almost falls
flat on his face when he sees the pendant. He informs Helga that it is not only an
important antique, but it's made of
absolutely pure platinum with
ten PERFECT diamonds set into it. Even the
chain is
hand-crafted platinum. It's worth a
fortune.
So Helga got what she deserved in the end, but unfortunately she left the
UberPendant to Marie, who had children and left it to them. So I, who would
otherwise be the one with it in my
hot little hands by now, got screwed. It is no
comfort to me that my name, too, is
Marie, even though it IS a
neat coincidence. (No, I wasn't named after
that Marie; I was
named after my mother's mother.
Completely different story there.)