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he’d been clawed by a wild cat. He was crusty, rumpled, sour-smelling, and one other thing that my mother could never tolerate—lazy. Grandpa had long since stopped trying. As a young man he’d lost or shed whatever ambition he’d possessed. When his dreams of becoming a professional baseball player crumbled to dust he drifted into the insurance business, enjoying a success that turned his stomach. How cruel of fate, he thought, to make him excel at a job he loathed. He got his revenge on fate. The moment he amassed enough money to generate a dependable income for the rest of his life, he quit. From then on he did little more than watch his house fall apart and make his family cringe.

    We cringed that much more when he took his act on the road. Every day at dusk Grandpa would walk uptown to greet the rush-hour trains from the city. As commuters stepped onto the platform and discarded their final-edition newspapers, Grandpa would dive into one of the garbage cans and fish a newspaper out, intent on saving himself a few cents. Seeing him with his legs sticking out of a garbage can, no commuter could have imagined why that poor old hobo wanted that final edition in the first place—to check the closing prices on his sizable portfolio of stocks and bonds.

    Grandpa had a photographic memory, an astounding vocabulary, a firm command of Greek and Latin, but his family wasn’t able to enjoy his intellectual gifts because he never engaged us in actual conversations. He kept us at bay with a ceaseless patter of TV jingles, advertising slogans and non sequiturs. We’d tell him about our day and he’d shout, “It’s a free country!” We’d ask him to pass the beans and he’d say, “Tastes good like a cigarette should.” We’d mention that the dog had fleas and he’d say, “Don’t tell everybody—they’ll all want one!” His private language was a fence he put around himself, a fence that grew a few inches taller the day he overheard one of my cousins urging the constipated dog to “do boo-boo.” Thus was born Grandpa’s signature phrase. At least a dozen times a day he’d say, “Do boo-boo,” which might mean hello or let’s eat or the Mets lost—or nothing at all. It’s possible that Grandpa talked this way to compensate for his stutter, rehearsed phrases being easier to say. It’s also possible, however, that he was moderately insane.

    Grandpa had two passions, one a secret, one not. Every Saturday morning he’d come downstairs with his hair brushed, his teeth in, his clothes pressed and spotless. From the pocket of his blue pinstripe suit a lace handkerchief would rise like a fresh orchid. Without a word he’d get into his Ford Pinto and putter away, not returning until late, sometimes not until the next day. No one asked where Grandpa went. His Saturday rendezvous was like the cesspool, so obviously foul it didn’t require comment.

    His nonsecret passion was words. For hours Grandpa would sit in his bedroom, solving crossword puzzles, reading books, gazing at a dictionary under a magnifying glass. He considered Shakespeare the greatest man who ever lived, “because he
invented
the Eng, Eng, English language—when he couldn’t find a word, he made one up.” Grandpa credited his etymological passion to his Jesuit schoolteachers, who, when they couldn’t make him memorize a word, beat it into him. Though the beatings worked, Grandpa believed they also caused his stutter. Priests made him love words, and made it hard for him to say words. My first example of irony.

    One of the few tender moments I ever shared with Grandpa came about because of a word. It happened when he accidentally answered the phone. With his stutter and poor hearing he tended to avoid the phone, but he chanced to be walking past just as it rang, and picked up. A reflex, maybe. Or else he was bored. Unable to hear what the caller was saying, he waved me over. “Translate,” he said, shoving the phone at me.

    The caller