There was a weird sense of unreality as Mom pulled the Dodge into the driveway and we began unloading our stuff into their house. I guess on some level I’d known that I had grandparents, but when you live your whole life without anybody ever mentioning them, you just kind of think of them as being like the parents in cartoon adventures, rarely seen and never important to the story.
But suddenly they were now front and center and who knew what to think about that?
Sierra, of course, was completely unfazed. She was cheerful and delighted, making a big deal over their house and calling them Grandma and Grandpa. I took my cue from Mom. She called them Vern and Mrs. Leland. I wasn’t about to claim them as family if she didn’t.
But it was hard to fault them on welcome. Vern continued to act as if our showing up uninvited was just a wonderful surprise. He helped us with our boxes, talked to us about the neighborhood, even laughed at Sierra trying to get the dog to carry stuff into the house.
Mrs. Leland emptied out a big double chest in the garden room so that Sierra and I could have a place for our clothes.
“I’ll get this closet emptied, as well,” she told me. “It’s probably not big enough, but it will have to do.”
I glanced at the storage area behind the mirrored door. It was more room than we’d had at our last place.
“This will be fine,” I assured her, maybe sounding a little bit lofty. “We won’t need to unpack our winter things, or school clothes and all that.”
The truth was that my entire wardrobe was basically jeans and T-shirts. Sierra had more stuff, but there was easily enough space for everything she owned.
“Is this going to be my room?” Sierra said with a delightful giggle.
“You’ll have to share with your sister,” Mrs. Leland told her.
She continued to giggle and twirl around in the center of the room, before throwing herself on one of the twin beds.
“This is the nicest room I’ve ever had in my life,” she announced.
I wanted to kick her. It was so disloyal to Mom. Mom always got us nice places to live. Maybe they weren’t like the Lelands’ house. But it wasn’t like some kind of palace! It was just an old house with some nice furniture. The room was wallpapered in a pale green with bright, flowery bedspreads and there were double doors that led out to a little rock patio and garden. I mean, it was nice. But it wasn’t incredible. Sierra was acting like we’d just stepped into The Princess Diaries and this stiff, cold stranger was our personal Julie Andrews.
Resisting an eye roll, I decided to leave the cinematic set and see if Mom needed any help.
The guest suite was at the front of the house. It wasn’t really two rooms. Just one room with a little enclosed porch. The windows were on the street side, but you didn’t notice that. You were high enough to see over the neighbors and get a view of downtown Knoxville in the distance.
“It’s nice, huh?” Mom said.
I shrugged.
“What are we doing here?” I asked her.
She continued unpacking, avoiding my eyes as she answered. “It’s time you and Sierra got to know your grandparents,” she said. “Tennessee is certainly cooler than Texas this time of year. It will be good to spend the summer here. Don’t you think?”
“Not particularly,” I answered.
“There’s lots of things to do here,” she said, her enthusiasm deliberate. “There are lakes and mountains and wonderful museums, music in the park. You’re going to love it, Dakota, I’m sure of that.”
“What are we doing here?” I repeated. “All I ever heard about these people, Mr. and Mrs. Leland, was that they didn’t approve of you and Daddy getting married. If they didn’t like us or want us, then what are we doing here?”
Mom glanced up sharply. “It never had anything to do with you,” she told me. “Don’t buy into that kind of nonsense, you’re much too bright. The Lelands didn’t approve of me. And they were angry with Sonny, but it didn’t have anything to do with you girls.”
“You haven’t answered my question,” I pointed out. “And anyway, if they didn’t approve of you and were mad at their own son, why should I give them a chance?”
“Because that was a long time ago,” Mom answered. “Because they had some good reasons not to approve of me and some even better ones to be mad at Sonny.”
I shook my head, not willing to accept that.
“And because I said so,” Mom declared. “End of discussion.”
“No way,” I answered.
“Way,” she said, rising to her feet. She walked over and put her arms around me. I tried to resist, but I couldn’t. “Dakota,” she told me. “I need for you to be on your best behavior for the next few weeks. I know you may not want to, but do it anyway, just because I tell you to.”
Mom didn’t usually ask me that kind of thing. Ordinarily she trusted me to use my own judgment about how to treat people. The fact that now I was virtually ordered to be nice made me even less willing to be so.
“Mom!” I complained.
“Please,” she countered.
“Okay,” I answered, reluctantly.
“Good, let’s get the rest of the stuff out of the car. How’s your sister doing?”
I made an obscene sound. “You know Sierra,” I said. “If she were going down with the Titanic she’d be all thrilled and excited about taking a nice cold swim.”
Mom laughed. “I know,” she said. “Sonny was like that, too. It’s great, but it can really get to be annoying.”
I knew, without asking, that she wasn’t referring to any of the Sonnys that I knew personally. She was talking about this Sonny. The one that had belonged to the people here. He had never really been featured in our daily conversation. But now he seemed suddenly more a part of us.
The rest of the day seemed to go on forever. I had a tremendous sense of being uncomfortable. We were in the house of strangers and we were all tiptoeing around each other. For lunch we had tuna salad and tomato soup out on the Leland patio.
Vern was determined to have a pleasant conversation and apparently the safest subjects for the discussion were me and Sierra. He asked us questions about ourselves and what kind of things we liked.
Sierra piped up immediately. She talked mostly about clothes and what she’d read in the fashion mags. I’d never paid any attention when she talked about that stuff.
The Lelands showed a polite attentiveness.
Sierra presented both pros and cons for the current fashion war between chunky heels verses pointy-toed sling backs. And who knew that blue eyeshadow was making a comeback?
With everybody’s attention on my sister, I was able to really get a good look at these people who were my grandparents. They were old, I guess. I guess they had to be old, but they weren’t like elderly or anything. Vern was mostly bald, but what hair remained on the back of his head still had plenty of dark brown mixed with the gray. He was tall, but not particularly muscular. Pretty slim except for a thickening around the middle. He had a nice face. Strong, masculine, yet it wasn’t stern or foreboding. I especially liked his eyes. Even behind the wire-rimmed glasses I could see the empathy of those eyes.
Mrs. Leland was better looking. She was tall, almost as tall as her husband. Sleek and chic, with movements so graceful I wondered if they were practiced. She seemed like a woman who would know how to serve tea or maybe play the piano. But in all her graciousness there was something less open about her. It took me several minutes to figure it out. Then I realized that she never really looked at us. She looked in our direction, she talked with us, but somehow she managed, very discreetly, to make us invisible to her.
We were down to plates of crumbs by the time Sierra began to run out of topics. Vern kept the conversation from lagging.
“And what about you, Dakota?” he asked. “What are your interests?”
“She’s our family geek,” Sierra answered for me. “In all the schools we’ve been in, wherever we go, Dakota walks in and the very first day she just wows the teachers. I tell her that her personal slogan must be All A’s al-ways.”
Sierra giggled at her own attempt at humor. I knew she was trying to build me up. She didn’t value school much, but she knew that some people did. She always wanted to give people who liked her a reason to like me, as well. Sometimes it worked. But somehow, with the Lelands, I wasn’t sure if I wanted it to. I felt cautious, secretive. I didn’t want them to know too much about me.
“An all A’s student?” Vern said. “That’s wonderful. What’s your favorite subject?”
“English,” I lied. I liked English okay, but it didn’t even make my top three.
“English,” Vern repeated, nodding. “That’s a first for us. Phrona’s a history buff. It was her major in college and she’s kept an active interest all these years. My passion is physics. I taught here at the university for thirty-two years. I never had anybody to talk to about it at home. Sonny’s love was botany. Any kind of plant, he just found infinitely interesting. He was going to turn that into a career before…”
His sentence just sort of trailed off and we were left with a giant uncomfortable silence. Before he died were the words left unsaid. Vern hadn’t wanted to say them, because he hadn’t wanted to hear them. It was as if, for a short moment, he’d forgotten. But now the truth was back and it was big and empty and hurtful. Everybody was looking down at the plates. I wanted to say something to make the sad quiet around the table go away, but I didn’t know how. My father had been dead all my life, yet somehow with these people it felt like it had just happened. I could feel their hurt as if it had just happened. I was desperate to do something to make the bad feeling disappear, to say something, but I didn’t know what to say. The moment dragged on forever.
“Forestry,” Mom said, unexpectedly.
That was the first word she’d spoken.
“What?” Mrs. Leland asked. She was looking Mom in the face for the first time since we’d sat down.
“Forestry,” Mom repeated. “That was what Sonny was talking about before his death. He liked working in the woods, but he had some real issues with the timber-cutting industry. He told me he wanted to go back to school to study forestry. He thought he could really make a contribution there.”
A different kind of thoughtful quiet followed that and I thought, for a minute, that Mom had made it worse. That by mentioning him again the blank spot would just get bigger. But amazingly it didn’t.
Vern sort of chuckled and shook his head. Even Mrs. Leland managed a ghost of a smile.
The rest of the day both dragged and rushed by. I was torn between a strong desire to race outside, check out the neighborhood, find the library, get a bus map, all the things I’d automatically do in a new town. But another part of me felt weird, scared. This was not like any other town. This was a place from Mom’s past and we’d come back here for a reason.
Mom had decided on a nap after lunch and Sierra installed herself in front of the TV to watch General Hospital. I said I was going to nap, too. But I can’t really sleep in the daytime.
I wandered around the room a bit and then went out the glass doors to the garden. It was a beautiful afternoon with a cool breeze, bright sunshine and all the flowers in the garden were in bloom. At the far end of the yard I could see an old swing hanging from a tree limb. I made my way in that direction.
I fanned through a collection of spiderwebs to discover that the chain was rusty and the paint on the seat peeling. But it looked sturdy enough and I sat down. For a couple of minutes I just lolled there lazily listening to the rustle of the leaves and the buzz of insects. I’m not sure how long it was before I became aware of the voices. I glanced around and saw that built onto the back of the garage was a little office of some kind. The Lelands were inside and they were arguing.
I slipped out of the swing and tiptoed to the side of the garage, maybe ten feet from the door.
“I just can’t stand it, Vern. I can’t have her here. I don’t think I can bear it.”
“Phrona, she’s got no other choice and neither do we,” he answered. “Once she sees the doctor and we get some idea of what is going on, then we can talk it through. We can figure out what’s best for everyone concerned.”
“What is best for me is if I never had to see her face again as long as I live.”
I didn’t want to hear anymore. I hurried back to the house as quickly as I could without calling attention to myself. Mom always said that eavesdroppers never hear anything good about themselves. I guess it was true.
I slipped back through the glass doors and laid down on the bed. Staring up at the ceiling, I wondered what was going on. Why didn’t Mrs. Leland like my mother? And why did she let us stay here feeling the way she did? Why was my mother going to see a doctor?
Sierra barged in.
“Is your soap over?”
She shook her head. “I just came to get my nail polish,” she answered. “What’s with you? You look all freaked out or something.”
“I overheard Mrs. Leland say that Mom was going to see a doctor,” I said.
Sierra thought about that for a moment and then nodded slowly.
“What do you think?” I asked her.
“I guess she must be pregnant,” Sierra answered.
“Pregnant?” I didn’t believe it. “You watch too much TV,” I told her. “Mom is not pregnant.”
“You know, I bet she is,” my sister said, rapidly warming up to the idea. “It makes perfect sense, really. We didn’t get any warning that she and Moroney were breaking up.”
“So, we never get any warning,” I pointed out. “Mom keeps her private life private. At least from us.”
“You’re the one who pointed out that we never backtrack.”
“Yeah, but it’s not because she’s PG,” I said with certainty. “Didn’t you hear her tell Mrs. Leland that she’s sick?”
“So. Women are always sick the first few months,” Sierra said.
“No. That’s not it. I’m sure that’s not it.”
“Okay then,” she said. “But tell me, why else would she have dragged us back here?”