FIVE
Grandma Underneath It All

When we got home from church that afternoon, there sat a pie on the counter, with golden peaks of meringue a mile high.

“Lemon pie!” I yelled with joy to anyone in my family who cared to listen. Mama and Daddy were still out by the back door of the service porch, smooching right out there in the open on a bright, sunny Sunday, if you can believe that, and my sister had trailed into the kitchen right behind me.

I touched the side of the pie pan. “It’s warm. Grandma must have just been here.”

Someone sneezed in the living room.

“She’s still here!” I grinned real big.

“She brought us a germ-infested pie,” Myra Sue said, glowering at the wonderful dessert, “and poor Isabel is still recovering just down the hall in the bedroom.”

“Now, Myra Sue, be nice,” Mama said, frowning at her as she came into the kitchen. Daddy went upstairs to change out of his church clothes, but not before he gave that pie a great big grin.

“You’re a dipstick, Myra,” I said. “A dipstick, heavy on the dip. You know Grandma always washes her hands when she cooks. Besides, she hasn’t been around any of us since Monday night because she didn’t want to spread her germs.”

“I don’t care,” said my sister, all uppity. “I am not going to—”

I left that goofy girl grumbling in the kitchen while I dashed into the front room. Grandma was sitting in the small, faded rocker she always uses when she visits, and she held a blue box of Kleenex on her lap. She had missed her beauty parlor appointment that week, and her colored-from-a-bottle hair was not as fluffy as she’d been wearing it lately. Her face and her blue eyes were makeup-free, and she wore a pair of dark blue slacks and a lavender sweatshirt with a white cat painted on it. That day, she looked more like a grandma than she had since Isabel St. James made her over back in the summer.

I had about half expected ole Isabel to be in there, too, but I reckon she was still in bed, nursing all her wounds. Probably if she’d tried to come into the living room, Grandma would’ve made her go right back to bed. According to my grandma, bed rest and lots of food will heal you faster than a doctor’s medicine.

I hugged Grandma and laid my hand against her forehead. Her skin was cool and soft and a little moist. It seemed like a year had passed instead of a few days since I last saw her.

“How’s your cold?” I asked, kneeling on the floor by her chair.

“I’m still blowing a bit, but I’m finally drying up.” Her voice was kinda gravelly and nasal. “And Rob said I’m not contagious. He oughta know; he used to be a pharmacist.” I did not want to talk about Rob Estes, whom Grandma had dated a time or two or three. I preferred Ernie Beason from the Grocerteria. He had a stocky build with kinda messy gray-and-brown hair and a gray mustache. To me, he looks like a grandpa, and what’s more, he has liked my grandma for many years. Ole Rob, though—his gray-and-black hair was always styled and neat. He wore nifty glasses that seemed to have no rims, and behind them his eyes were as brown as chocolate. I liked him well enough, but I’ll tell you something: he looked more like a teacher than a grandpa. Besides that, I didn’t think Grandma had any business whatsoever having two boyfriends. One was more than enough. Sheesh.

“You made a lemon pie,” I said.

“Yep. Well, I had to do something. I was purely bored, and you know I like to keep busy.”

“I’ve missed you, Grandma.” I reached up and kissed her cheek. “You’ve never been away so long in my whole entire life!”

“I didn’t want none of you to catch my cold.”

“You’ve had colds before and never stayed home,” I reminded her.

“Well, this time was different, with your mama feeling poorly.”

I frowned. “So you’ve noticed that Mama hasn’t been herself lately, too?”

She shrugged. “I know she’s been under the weather.”

I pulled a face, but I don’t think Grandma noticed, since she was busy blowing her nose.

“Tell me about school. You learning a lot?”

I had not wanted to bother Mama or Daddy with school problems, so I was plenty glad to tell Grandma.

“They are teaching those of us who made really good grades last year an entire section on basic algebra this semester. I hate it.” Then I brightened. “But I like literature. We have this cool teacher, Mrs. Scrivner. She is going to let us write stories next semester.”

“Well, you oughta be good at that. You got an imagination that don’t quit.”

I beamed at her. “I know.”

“What else is going on?”

“The food in the junior high cafeteria will make you barf up your socks.”

“Mercy! That bad, is it?”

“I’d rather eat roadkill.”

Grandma tsk-tsked.

“I am purely starving,” I added fervently.

“Didn’t you have breakfast this morning?”

“Yep, but I have to make up for all those days of rotten school lunches.”

She nodded. “I see. Well, I’ll go help your mama make lunch in just a minute. Think you can make it till then?”

I sighed. “I guess I can try. Grandma, do you know Lottie Fuhrman?”

“Of course I know Lottie. What about her, and why are you making that awful face? April Grace, stop that before your eyes stick that way. I thought you liked Lottie.”

I made a gagging sound. Grandma raised her eyebrows.

“I used to. We used to be good friends, but she has become a Major Drip.”

Grandma’s frown deepened so much, you could probably measure her wrinkles with a ruler.

“Now, why would you say that?”

“She became someone else over the summer.”

“Ah.” As if she fully understood, but I know she didn’t. At least not yet, ’cause I had not told her anything. “She’s growing up, is she?” Grandma said. “Well, so are you.”

“I don’t mean that. I mean, she used to be fun. Last spring her and me and Melissa built a playhouse in the hayloft and swore we’d always be friends. And she always comes to my birthday parties and my sleepovers, and I’d go to hers. Now, all of a sudden, she won’t even speak to me.”

“That doesn’t sound like Lottie,” Grandma said.

“That’s what I mean! She has turned into the awfullest snoot you can imagine since she went to visit her cousin Cassie in Little Rock all summer. According to Melissa, who hears a lot of stuff because she lives in town, ole Lottie has decided she wants to be in a clique like the one Cassie belongs to in her school. But since there isn’t one in our class, she has created it herself. There are four other girls in her little group and they call themselves the Lotties. Melissa and I call them the Snotties. They even made up a list of Lottie Laws and posted them on the sixth-grade homeroom bulletin board. But I think the teacher took them down.”

“Laws?”

“Yeah, rules like, ‘You can’t speak to a Lottie unless spoken to,’ or ‘No one but a Lottie can wear pink hair clips on Tuesdays.’ Stupid, dumb stuff like that.”

“Well, I’ll swan,” Grandma said, using a Grandma phrase. “I can’t hardly believe little Lottie Fuhrman would act like that.”

“Believe it, Grandma, ’cause it’s true.”

She sighed. “I take it you won’t never be a part of the Lotties, April Grace.”

“No! They’ve been making fun of Jimmy Joe Pitts and the Wilkeses.”

“I see.”

Jimmy Joe Pitts has a hearing aid, and he wears thick glasses. The Wilkeses have eight kids, and they are probably the poorest family in all of Zachary County.

“She calls Portia Wilkes ‘Poor as Dirt Wilkes,’ and on Friday, when Eldon Marcus had an asthma attack, all the Lotties laughed like it was the funniest thing ever. The rest of the day, they kept gasping and wheezing. It was purely awful!”

“Well, April,” Grandma said, dabbing at her nose with a Kleenex, “just see to it that you stay the same sweet girl you are.”

Me? Sweet? “I’ll try,” I promised.

Mama came into the room right then. She smiled at Grandma.

“Hi, Mama Grace,” she said. “I just looked in on Isabel.

Ian said she’d taken a painkiller about thirty minutes ago, so she was sound asleep. I believe he could do with a good rest himself.”

“I’m sure of it!” I offered. “She probably makes him sleep in that chair in the room like she did at the hospital.”

She did not respond to that. Instead she looked at Grandma and asked, “How are you feeling today?”

“Much better. The question is, what about you?”

“I’m fine,” Mama replied dismissively. “Now, don’t you go pushing yourself, Mama Grace. You don’t want—”

“I’m all right, Lily,” Grandma said, “but I gotta say, you look a mite green around the gills.”

“I think so, too, Grandma,” I chimed in. “In fact, I think she ought to see a doctor, ’cause anyone with half an eyeball can see she’s not feeling right.”

“That’s enough, April Grace,” Mama said firmly, sounding irritated. “I said I’m fine and I am, so I don’t want to hear another word about it.”

I looked at Grandma, who just kept looking at Mama, who looked right back at her.

“How’s Rob?” Mama asked after a short time, as if she wasn’t irritated at all. In fact, you could see she was trying hard not to giggle when she asked that. Irritated one minute, teasing the next. See what I mean? It was so confusing.

Grandma’s face turned pink. “He got over his cold a few days ago.”

“But not before he gave it to you,” Mama teased. “You better be careful around Ernie. We don’t want him to get sick, too.”

“Why, Lily!” said Grandma.

I did not want to hear that mess! “I hope you two aren’t gonna talk about kissing and smooching because I heard more than enough of that stuff when old man Rance was here.”

Mr. Rance was a rotten ole horse rancher who tried to hoodwink my grandma out of everything she owned by being all lovey-dovey with her. He almost succeeded, too, except yours very truly did a little investigation and found out what a noxious old goofball he was.

Mama laughed.

“You’re living right on the edge, aren’t you, Mama Grace?” she said as she left the room, still giggling. Grandma scowled at the empty doorway.

I chose not to talk about Grandma’s two boyfriends. It’s bad enough that, thanks to Isabel’s makeover skills, Grandma now dolls herself up and gets her hair dyed and wears makeup and trendy clothes like she’s gonna guest-star on that dumb TV show Dynasty. At least she’s still Grandma underneath all that hair spray and eyeliner.

“Grandma, you think Mama’s sick, too, don’t you?” I asked real quiet so Mama wouldn’t hear.

“Child, your mama just said she don’t want any talk about it, so I’m not talking about it.”

She got up and went into the kitchen to help get dinner ready.

And that was that.