Win and I drove Andie up to Pine Run straight from school on Friday and dropped her at her grandparents’ mobile home. The FOR SALE sign in the yard looked faded and weather-beaten. It was chilly, in more ways than one, and Winnie was unusually quiet as we left the mobile home park. I pulled into a drive-through on the edge of town for hamburgers before hitting the interstate, which cheered her up. The burgers turned out to be big and sloppy, so we pulled over to eat them in the parking lot.
The scenery was beautiful. No wonder Andie was anxious to get back. I rolled down the window to breathe in the fresh air. On a distant hillside, an Amtrak train wove through the forest, a gleaming satin ribbon gliding through an eyelet of sugar pine and cedar.
Stuffing her mouth with french fries, Winnie observed, “She’s different.”
“What do you mean?”
She shrugged and washed down food with a drink. “She never laughed before.”
I thought for a second. “You’re right.” I thought about how Andie had become alert as we’d entered the park, how she’d bolted before the truck was completely parked, and how her solemn face had lit up in her grandmother’s arms.
“Mommy, does she love them more than us?”
I squirmed a little, not wanting to hurt her feelings, and feeling hollow myself. “It’s natural that she would love them more, Win. She doesn’t know us very well, and they’re her grandparents. They’ve been taking care of her since her parents died.”
She reached greasy fingers over to caress my cheek. “Does that make you sad, Mommy?”
I grabbed her hands and planted a kiss on her salty fingertips. “No, sweetheart. It’s good that her grandparents love her so much. You can never have too much love. You just watch—one day she’ll be laughing with us.”
Winnie licked some catsup from the side of her mouth. “Jimmy Cochran at my school, he lives with his grandma because his mom and dad are in jail. He doesn’t like it, ’cause she makes him go to bed at eight and she won’t let him play any video games.”
Like I said, food does wonders for Winnie’s frame of mind. She jabbered like her old self all the way back to Newberry.
We pulled in at dusk, just before the drive-in opened, and cruised around a line of cars waiting to get in. Winnie hopped out to open the gate so I could drive through. I found Dad working all by himself, because Deja had told him she was sick with cramps. It was her little way of getting payback for the fact that she was grounded.
After we got the snack shack in order, Winnie stayed behind with Dad to be an extra pair of hands, and I went down to the admission booth to open the gate. I spotted a car with the back end practically dragging on the ground, and I told the driver to pop the trunk. When he argued, I told him to come back on Tuesday nights, because it was family night and he could bring his trunk full of friends for $4.00. He made a U-turn and left.
I spent the rest of the evening thinking about what I’d said. What was a family? Here we were, a grandfather helping to support his single thirty-something daughter and her kids. Did a “normal” family exist anymore?
At unguarded moments we still connected, except for Andie, who needed time. We’d laugh together, and I’d see glimpses of our old selves, before our lives got hard. But more often than not, we were fragmented. Deja was gone mentally and physically with her friends, which was scary. Dad withdrew in frustration more and more whenever Deja showed her colors. Off and on since we’d lost Mom, he’d left us for several weeks to paint after the Christmas holidays, except when Ginger’s health was at its worst. While he was away I’d have to work overtime to make ends meet, and the girls would be home alone most nights.
And of course, there was Russell. If I really wanted to blame someone for the way our family turned out, it would be him.
At least he’d never wanted to share custody. He never even wanted the girls for weekends or holidays, so I always had them with me at the most important times. Starr blocked any attempts by Deja or Winnie to contact him. It was her handwriting on the birthday checks they received, not his. She didn’t know it, but her actions probably had spared them even more pain and disappointment. If I knew Russell, he’d promise them the moon, but he wouldn’t deliver.
Starr was effectively erasing him from their lives. One day, maybe I’d thank her.
Later that night, after we closed down the snack shack, Dad made himself a buttery tub of popcorn and set up a lawn chair within earshot of somebody’s car radio to watch the second half of The War Wagon. I headed back to the house. Deja’s music blared, even though it was after eleven. I knocked once and peeked into her room.
She looked younger in her blue monkey pajama pants and T-shirt, without her black-and-red armor. Her head was crooked against the phone. “What?” she challenged.
“I see you’re feeling better.”
Her eyes got big, and I could see she remembered the lie she’d told Dad to get out of helping at the drive-in. “Yeah. I took some medicine.”
“We’re going to bed. Would you mind turning down the music a little?”
She wordlessly grabbed the remote to her CD player and clicked it down a few notches. It was still loud, but at least she didn’t argue.
Instead of doing battle, I simply said, “’Night, honey. Love you.”
She was probably expecting me to pounce on her for ditching the drive-in, so I think I surprised her. The corner of her mouth turned up just the slightest bit. “’Night.”
I got ready for bed and was just turning off the light when Winnie knocked on my door.
“Mommy, can we have a sleepover?”
Her tummy showed beneath her baby-doll pj’s, and she clutched her blanket like a four-year-old.
“Hm, I don’t know. You kick. And you talk in your sleep.”
“Oh, Mommy,” she scolded.
“All right. If you promise not to kick.”
She made a running jump onto my bed and burrowed in beside me. I reached past her to turn off the light and wrapped my arms around her. She smelled like all the summers of my childhood. It was comforting to have someone who would receive my love without question.
I lay contentedly listening to Winnie’s steady breathing, thinking about Andie looking at my pin, so close that I could have grabbed her and hugged her. Any sudden movement would have frightened her hummingbird hands away.
How did I feel with her gone?
Worried that the baby steps she’d taken toward us would be erased by giant steps backward after spending time in Pine Run. Afraid that her grandparents would poison her against us. And guilty, when I realized that I also felt relief and that we all really needed a break from the stress.
Winnie shifted and sighed. I rested my cheek on her silky head and thanked God for this family, as flawed and imperfect as it was, thinking how He had let me curl up beside Him when I’d needed Him most.