16

Grandma didn’t want to go home. She asked us to take her to our house where at least she didn’t have to look at an empty chair that should have held Grandpa. Mom had gone to pick her up, having taken the rest of the day off of work.

I’d gone home early too. Bernie had let me know that he didn’t need my help, that he and Larry would make do for a few days. From him, that was as good as a sympathy card.

The moment Oma heard, she rushed over, taking her place in our kitchen, making it smell of baking bread and sausages and butter.

Grandma stepped into our house, letting her eyes scan the living room and breathing in the good smells of food. Joel went right to her, pulling her into a long hug. She patted his back as if she wanted him to let go, but he didn’t. Finally, she let her hands be still on his back when she realized he was crying.

“That’s all right,” she whispered to him. “That’s all right.”

We stayed at home all day, welcoming half of the town as they came to offer their sympathies to Grandma. She sat in a rocking chair, looking shrunken and glossy eyed. No matter what someone said to her, she could only muster two words.

“Thank you.”

After a while they stopped coming. I didn’t know if it was the rain that kept them away, but I was glad. Grandma’s eyes were heavy, her skin looking pale. I wondered when she’d last slept a full night.

“We have to write the obituary,” she said, crossing her arms. “It’s been so long since I’ve written one . . .”

“We can ask Jocelyn to help,” I offered. “She writes them all the time.”

“All right,” Grandma said. “She’ll know what needs to be in there.”

“She will.”

“When did Rose say she’d be here?” She shook her head. “I know she’s upset that she has to come back again so soon.”

“She’ll just have to be all right with it,” Mom muttered. “It isn’t that far.”

“What about Frank?” I asked. “Shouldn’t we let him know?”

Grandma narrowed her eyes at me and tightened her lips into a pucker. “You call your father by his first name?”

I lowered my eyes to the floor.

“I suppose you don’t think he’s been much of a father to you,” she said. “Maybe he hasn’t been.”

Mom cleared her throat, setting her jaw as if she was struggling to keep in a burst of temper. At least I knew it wasn’t me she was angry with. I was glad, though, that she worked at defusing her dynamite even if just for the sake of a woman who’d been recently widowed.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“You don’t need to apologize to me.” She folded her hands in her lap, using her feet to rock the chair. It creaked into the quiet room. “I have his address. We should write to him. We should ask him to come home.”

Mom stood up fast and walked to the kitchen, her spine rigid. Her voice carried to the living room in hisses and hard-edged tones. I thought if Oma wasn’t there, we also would have been treated to the clanging of pots and pans and the slamming of cupboard doors.

“Do you think he’ll want to come?” Joel asked.

“He promised he would.” The skin of Grandma’s forehead gathered in the middle and she looked at her shoes. “If something like this happened, he’d come back if I wanted him to.”

“Will you ask him to come home?” he asked.

Joel, the son who hardly remembered Frank, held no bitterness toward him. He inched to the edge of his chair as if in excitement.

Grandma nodded. “Hand me my purse.”

I brought it to her, the weight of it more than I’d anticipated. It was classic black with a gold-colored clasp. It smelled of the violet mints she always kept in the little pocket sewn into the lining next to an embroidered hanky and a tiny pair of scissors. She took the purse from me, pulling it open and taking out her wallet that was of the same color.

From the space behind where she kept her driver’s license, she removed a little piece of paper that had been folded once. She handed it to me.

“I wish I had a telephone number for him,” she said. “But this is what he gave me.”

I held that paper, feeling the softness of it from years in Grandma’s wallet. I thought about telling her that I already had the address, that she should keep it stowed away in her wallet.

“Thank you,” I said instead.

I didn’t want her to think that Mike had betrayed her.

She’d already lost so much.

To whom it may concern:

I’m attempting to reach Frank Jacobson. If this is not the correct address for him, please write back or call 1-231-555-6986 to let us know as much.

If, however, this is where he may be reached, please let him know that his father, Rockston Jacobson, passed away and that his mother has requested that he come home. To that end, we’ve delayed the funeral until August 2 at eleven in the morning to be held at First United Methodist Church in Fort Colson, Michigan.

Frank knows the location.

Thank you,
Anne Jacobson

PS: I can be reached most mornings and afternoons at Bernie’s Diner on Main Street in Fort Colson.