After we drop off Sofia, it’s a long two-hour drive to Sacramento. Mom keeps getting phone calls. She answers with hmms and yeses and okays. I don’t say anything. Grammy’s everything is still pushing up against me. I wish I could give it a good side kick and shatter it into tiny pieces.
As Mom drives, I find myself humming “Alley Cat,” the jazz song Grammy used to play all the time when I was little. I’d march around the living room banging a pot with a spoon. Every time the song was over, Grammy would laugh and say, “That’s what I want played at my funeral.” I wish Grammy could have just stayed like that.
Finally, we make it to her house. It looks the same. Lace curtains in the window. Rosebushes in the yard, though nobody seems to have pruned them in a while. Mom takes my hand when I get out of the car.
“I don’t know what she’s going to be like when we walk in,” says Mom. “She might not seem like herself. Don’t be scared.”
I’m not scared. Not at all. But I know Mom must be because she needs to talk through her feelings. Dad used to say she was a patient and therapist all rolled up into one person.
“And I’m a dang good therapist,” she’d reply.
“And a good patient,” Dad said, nudging her with his elbow. “Very regular appointments.”
“You ready, Katydid?” Mom asks.
I wiggle my hand away. Whenever Mom calls me Katydid, it’s like trying to wear a pair of last year’s tennis shoes—something I used to love that pinches and doesn’t fit anymore. It’s been my special nickname ever since I was a baby and seven weeks premature. Mom and Dad said I was small as a bug. A katydid. But I’m not small as a bug now. And Dad’s not here to watch me grow.
“I’m ready.”
The home care helper, Margaret, opens the door for us. She’s got on blue jeans and a red polo shirt; she leans in to Mom and says, “She’s ornery this morning.”
“Good to know,” Mom whispers back.
When we walk in, there’s a clattering of pots and pans from the kitchen. “Who’s that? Who’s there?” Grammy calls.
She comes around the corner, her white hair frizzy around her ears. “Kate? Can it be? Come give me a hug!”
I look at Mom and she nods, so I creep up to Grammy and put my arms around her. She pulls me into her fluffy chest so I can smell the cinnamon and lemon soap on her dress. Before letting go she says, “I was beginning to wonder if you’d forgotten all about me.”
Mom’s mouth falls open for a second. She does that a lot when we’re around Grammy. “I … am … so sorry, Pat. It’s been … well, it’s been a really hard year for us.”
Grammy straightens up. “Where’s my Tony? He didn’t come with you?”
“No, Pat. He’s, ummm, well, he’s …”
“Late?” Grammy shakes her head. “As usual. That boy. You know, I didn’t raise him that way. I raised him to be on time. Not just on time. Early! We were always early. For church, for school, for parties. But now …” Grammy looks into the distance for a few seconds. Everyone leans in, waiting for her to finish. I tug on her dress a little and she blinks a few times, clears her throat. “What was I talking about?”
“Being on time,” I whisper.
Grammy laughs. “Being on time? My goodness, I haven’t been on time for anything in ages. You know, I think my clock’s broken. That must be it. Darn clock.”
Mom follows Grammy to a couch in the living room. Margaret says goodbye and we all just sit there. We sit there for so long that I wonder if the dust that coats everything in here will start growing on us as well.
Finally, Mom clears her throat. “Pat, we need to talk about what happened this morning.”
Grammy waves her hand in the air. “Pish posh. I went on a morning walk. You know how I like my fresh air. And I got a little turned around because of the fog. It could happen to anyone.”
“Margaret says you’ve been leaving the gas stove on all day.”
“Well, she’s not complaining about the soup I make for her.”
I pull my knees up to my chest.
Mom pushes her hands together and then pulls them apart. Together. Apart. Together. Apart. A slow, silent clap. “She says you shouldn’t be living on your own anymore.”
“Well, that’s a load of codswallop. I’ve been living on my own all my life. I raised my Tony all by myself after his dad died in Vietnam. I am not about to leave this house with my whole life sitting inside it just because some busybody named Margaret, who comes over here every day like she owns the place, thinks she can kick me out.”
I bury my face in my knees, trying to block out the anger echoing off the walls.
“It isn’t like that,” says Mom.
“Of course it is,” Grammy goes on. “I bet she wants my house. Hoping for a good deal on it. I’ve seen the way she looks at my pool.”
“Pat, she’s worried about you. I’m worried about you. We just want to help.”
“Well, then you can leave! That would help!”
In my mind, I hear the memory of her door slamming. “Don’t say that again, Grammy,” I whisper. But nobody hears me.
Mom stands up in her I’m-the-boss pose. “Family is family, Pat. We’re not leaving you here by yourself.”
The room goes silent after that. Mom’s statement sucked every single vibration out of it. Grammy shakes her head, slowly stands up, and shuffles into the kitchen without saying a word.
I trace my finger around the flowers on the throw pillow, but it doesn’t help me let go of the feeling that I’m a teakettle about to whistle. “Will she ever want to live with us? Without Dad?”
Mom sighs. “I don’t think she has much of a choice at this point. It’s not like she can go live with him.”
“Because we don’t know where he is,” I whisper, finishing the sentence Mom has been telling me every time I think of another way to help Dad get better and want to come home.
“And other reasons,” Mom murmurs.
We sit in the living room and nobody says anything. Grammy’s gone back to washing dishes and sweeping all the floors in the house. She won’t let anyone help her. We get takeout for dinner even though Grammy insists she can cook. Mom and I sit in that room some more after dinner while Grammy makes a big show of reading her mail in the kitchen. But after a while, she stops shuffling papers and walks back into the living room. She looks down at the floor the same way I do when I know I’m in big trouble. “Elizabeth, can you play ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love with You?’”
Mom looks up from the Reader’s Digest she’s been thumbing through. “Yes, I think so.”
“Can’t Help Falling in Love with You” was Grammy and Grandpa’s wedding song. And even though Grandpa died in Vietnam, Grammy used to play it, and we’d all sing every time we visited. Well, until the last time, when everything exploded.
“Would you play it for me?” Grammy asked. “I … I can’t.”
“Of course.” Mom moves to the piano in the corner of the room faster than a bumblebee moving through Mr. Harris’s orchard. She opens it up, carefully wipes the dust off the keys, sets her fingers down, and begins to plunk out the first few arpeggios.
My fingers push down like there are guitar strings under them, because there usually are. I know the chords to this song by heart. But I keep my eyes on Grammy, waiting to see what she’ll do. Waiting to see if she’ll start shaking again, slam the lid of the piano down, and stomp out, yelling about how she never wants to play that song ever again.
But that doesn’t happen. Mom starts singing. Her voice is a little stiff, but the notes brush some dust out of the house and bring back the sparkle I remember.
Grammy sits down in her chair. She closes her eyes, leans back her head, and hums along.
Then something starts filling up inside me, a warm rising and building right in my chest. And for just a moment, I think that maybe I could sing. Right here. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt so bad to make music without Dad.
But then Mom plays the very last note. That sparkle shimmers in the air until Grammy opens her eyes, and somehow they seem sharper, like Grammy finally knows what’s going on. “Well, I guess we’d better start packing.”