AMERICAN EXPRESS
Cynthia Kaplan

“…I can see now, too, that the American Express card was too open-ended for my grandmother, its functionality so wide-ranging as to render it irredeemably vague. Who exactly was American Express, anyway? Wasn’t it a travel agency? At one point, she asked me if we were going on a trip. I should have dropped the whole enterprise then and there. My grandmother had always been literal-minded, even before the Alzheimer’s. Moreover, in her prime, with all her faculties intact, it would never have occurred to her to buy things she could not pay for with the money she had in the bank. Buying on credit was too precarious, too fraught with the possibility of blowing it all, all the gains, all the sweat and struggle. It was even, perhaps, a little unsavory. Where were you going to get this money, anyway, when it came time to pay the piper? Nobody wanted their knees broken. My grandparents lived in the same two bedroom apartment for over forty years. It was neat and clean and very comfortable, but not too fancy, nothing bought on an installment plan. Besides, fancy was dangerous. Fancy meant that it was always possible that the socialists would come one day, renounce your membership, and occupy the apartment in the name of The People, as they did Ralph Richardson’s mansion in Dr. Zhivago….”

Cynthia Kaplan is an actress and writer. She is the author of a collection of autobiographical essays, Why I'm Like This: True Stories, and her work has been published in numerous newspapers, magazines, journals, and anthologies. She has appeared in many plays, some movies, and a few commercials, but has never been on Law & Order. She lives in New York City with her husband and children and is currently working on a second book and a TV show.