My stomach danced like Christmas morning the closer we got to Grandma’s. Winnie had let me borrow one of her scrunchies. I tightened it and picked the cat hair off my clothes.
Marty parked the pickup in front of Grandma’s. Yes! The realtor’s sign hung in the yard. I slid out and ran to the door without waiting for Marty or Winnie.
Grandma opened the screen door. “Andie, sugar!”
I almost knocked her over when I hugged her. She fit lower in my hug than I remembered.
“Let me look at you,” Grandma said, squeezing my chin in her cold fingers. “I declare, you’ve grown five inches.”
“Hello,” Marty said behind me, with Winnie hiding behind her.
Grandma said hello back, but she wasn’t very enthusiastic.
I held the door back so Marty could bring in my suitcase. She took it into the living room, and we followed. She said hi to Grandpa, but he only nodded.
She set the suitcase in the corner. “Andie, remember that Carl will be back Sunday about four to pick you up. I guess we’ll see you then. Have fun.” She turned, and Winnie gave me a baby wave before they left.
Grandma watched her go. “Does she have to wear her slacks so tight?” she said, shaking her head. “And those fingernails. So gaudy.”
The screen door slammed. I winced, hoping they hadn’t heard.
The next morning at breakfast she asked, “Don’t they ever cut your hair?”
“I’m letting it grow out,” I said, tucking a stray piece behind my ear. “I never had long hair before.”
She flipped a lock of my hair. “But it’s so stringy.”
I pulled away from her hand. “Grandma, I got a haircut in the summer.”
“Your mama always looked better in short hair,” she said, stirring her coffee white with cream. “When she was a little thing, I would put her hair in pin curls on Saturday, and it would stay so nice all week. She had a natural wave.”
My hair was bone straight. It wouldn’t even stay in Winnie’s scrunchie.
Grandma washed all my clothes again, even though they were clean.
“They smell funny,” she complained. “Maybe it’s her machine. Sometimes a washing machine can have a sour smell. Especially an old one. And what’s all this black hair on your pajamas? Do you sleep with a dog?”
“It’s cat hair—”
“Cat hair! Land sakes, don’t they know you’re allergic to cats?”
“They keep him outside. He … he sneaks in sometimes. I guess he used to sleep on my bed. I take allergy medicine when I need it. It’s okay,” I lied.
She asked me questions about Marty, without actually saying her name. I tried to answer without giving any details. She asked me how “the others” were treating me, like they were from some strange planet. But I didn’t tell her about Deja. Why make her worry?
I made the mistake of telling her that I worked at the drive-in on the weekends. I don’t know where my brain was. She started complaining that I shouldn’t be around those kinds of movies, and I explained that they only showed family movies and Westerns. And when she said they had no business putting me to work because I was too young, I started getting mad. She was always treating me like I was still a little kid.
Grandpa felt better in the afternoon, so when their social security checks came in the mail, we went to Safeway. Grandma drove so slow. Now that I didn’t have to hide in the backseat, I wanted to. When she pulled into the parking lot, she barely missed a line of shopping carts a courtesy clerk was steering in the front door. Then she parked way over the line, and Grandpa swung open the Lincoln’s door and smacked the car door next to us. I tried to hurry them into the store before the car’s owner came back and noticed what happened.
We looked like a field trip from the opportunities class; Grandma leaning on her cart, Grandpa shuffling along in his special shoes like he was tethered to her, and me following with coupons, my eyes sweeping side to side, hoping not to be recognized.
It took hours. I mean, how hard is it to pick out milk? A quart jug of Crystal Dairy’s whole milk—the same kind she’d bought every week since I could remember. All she had to do was to check the expiration date. She squeezed every loaf of bread on the discount rack and then decided she didn’t need any. We ended up in the bakery section, where she let Grandpa put some sticky buns in the cart, even though he can’t have sugar. By the time we got back it was getting dark, and Grandma turned the thermostat up to eighty.
I Love Lucy was the only thing worth watching on the three TV stations they got. Grandpa snorted and startled awake when I laughed, and then nodded off again when he realized it was me. After that, I didn’t laugh so much.
I wondered what my friend Kayla was doing. I still had the friendship bracelet she gave me for my birthday in sixth grade. But then she started practicing cheers with Jennifer down the street from her and spending her allowance on lip gloss and body glitter. Grandma wouldn’t let me play her Java Punks CD at the house the last time she came over. I hadn’t seen her since school was out in June, and wasn’t sure she even wanted to talk to me.
We didn’t go to church the next morning because Grandpa’s sugar was out of whack and he stayed in bed. The realtor called when we were eating macaroni and cheese and wanted to show the house in the afternoon. Grandma told her it wasn’t a good day, but to try back later in the week. It took a day or so for Grandpa to get through these spells, she said.
Grandma and I spent the day looking at her photo albums. It used to make me sad to see pictures of my parents when they were young, but now it felt good to hear the same stories over again. I was a kite on a string, with the memories reeling me back to them.
Like a photo in my mind, I remembered the last time I saw my parents. We were at the airport before they left for Mexico, and they were wearing their new aloha shirts. Dad had his sunglasses propped up like his eyes were on the top of his head, and Mom had a new vacation purse made out of straw. It scratched my arm when she hugged me. We couldn’t go all the way inside the airport and wait with them for their plane. We had to kiss them good-bye at the security checkpoint where only people with tickets could pass. Mom smelled like suntan lotion because they planned to go straight to the beach after they checked into the hotel.
Right after we heard about the hotel fire, and it was sinking in that they weren’t coming back, we got a postcard in the mail. It was a picture of their hotel on the beach. Mom said they were having fun and they wished we were there too. She had bought me a souvenir, but it was a surprise. For a second I thought it had to be a big mistake. How could Mom and Dad send me a postcard if they were dead? It was all a big mix-up, and their plane would come back, and boy, would somebody be in trouble then. But Grandma showed me the postmark. It was mailed the day before the fire. I never did find out what Mom bought me.
I wondered how many other families got postcards. Postcards can be a bad thing. That postcard was tucked into Mom’s Bible, and every time I read it, Wish you were here meant they were waiting in heaven for me.
We came to some pictures of my Uncle Greg and Aunt Robin in Canada with my three boy cousins. Grandma traced her finger around Tyler’s picture. He was the reason I didn’t have any brothers or sisters. He was a couple years older than me, and by the time I was five he was sick. My parents figured they just got lucky with me, because I was healthy, and they were afraid to take a chance on having another kid.
Once I looked up Niemann-Pick on the Internet. Scary stuff. It can take out a whole family before they even know what hit them.
“Little Tyler. He had that disease, you know. Poor Greg.” Grandma studied it like she was trying to memorize his face.
My other two cousins were younger than me. “Are Brent and Kyle still okay?”
Her forehead creased. “So far as I know.” She closed the book and put it back on the shelf. “Greg said they might come out for Christmas. I declare, I don’t know where we’ll put everybody.”
“Don’t worry about it, Grandma,” I said. “It’ll work out.”
Uncle Greg said that every year, but they never came.
“Your mama was so good about visiting. She sent cards and letters all the time. But you know what they say: ‘A daughter’s a daughter all of her life, but a son’s a son till he takes a wife.’”
Whatever. I guess she had to make excuses for Uncle Greg. For the rest of the afternoon, Grandma called me Noelle. That was my mom’s name. It was still hard for her, I guess, just like Marty missing Ginger. A daughter’s a daughter all of her life.
Before Carl came to get me, I dug out my Star Trek costume from the closet, just in case, and stuffed it into my suitcase. Then I opened some boxes of my stuff in the sewing room closet and pulled out a few books that I’d already read. I couldn’t stand to be without a book, even if I already had it memorized.
At five minutes till four I heard the Dodge Ram pull up. I went into Grandpa’s bedroom to say good-bye and then walked with Grandma out onto the porch with my suitcase.
“Are you sure Grandpa’s gonna be okay?” I asked her while Carl threw my suitcase into the back.
“He’ll be right as rain in a few days.” She held on to my arm on the wobbly front steps. “Don’t worry, honey. We’ll be all right.” Then she raised her voice loud enough for Carl to hear, “And we’ll let you know when we hear something from our attorney.”
“I’ll come back soon, Grandma,” I said, wrapping my arms around her.
“Sure, honey. You just let me know when you’re coming. We’ll be here.” She squeezed me hard, smelling like White Rain hairspray.
To Carl she said, “Sir, you take care of my granddaughter.”
“Yes, ma’am, we will. Anytime she wants to come back for a visit is fine.”
I waved at Grandma until we rounded the corner. I saw her dig into her pocket and pull out a tissue. Tears welled up in my eyes. It wasn’t fair. They needed me, and I missed them. Then I remembered about the rain gutters and wondered if Grandpa would try to clean them out for real.
Carl got me a Blizzard at the Dairy Queen on the way back. I guess he thought food would make me feel better. He was an okay guy. It seemed funny that he was a grandpa, because he didn’t act like one.
Cars had their headlights on by the time we pulled up at the drive-in. It was only six o’clock and already getting dark. The drive-in was opening earlier every night, with the darkness chasing it.
The marquee at the entrance had changed. It said PARENT TRAP and EVER AFTER. More oldies. We parked and went straight to the snack shack to help Marty open up. I felt a little nervous about seeing her, because of the snotty things Grandma had said about her, but she smiled when she saw me. She asked about my weekend and how my grandparents were doing, just like nothing had changed. Maybe she hadn’t heard, after all.
Sunday nights were slow, so I got to watch Parent Trap instead of working. I didn’t want to talk to anybody. I felt homesick for Grandma and Grandpa. They had seemed really delicate, like old books that crack and flake when you turn the pages. I worried that Grandma wouldn’t make Grandpa eat the right stuff and then she’d blame herself if he got sicker. Inside, I knew you can’t make people do what you want, but you can still blame yourself, just the same.
Marty took Winnie and me back to the house after the first feature since it was a school night. On the way across the parking lot I remembered that I was the reason Deja got grounded. My feet slowed like they were slogging through wet cement.
Marty glanced back at me. “Deja’s not home. She’s spending the night with Summer. She was gone as soon as her time was up.”
Could she read my mind?
“Was it bad?” I asked.
Marty snorted a laugh. “She was awful. But don’t you blame yourself. This is something Deja has to sort out on her own.” She gave my shoulder a squeeze before going in.
Marty helped Winnie get ready for bed. I unpacked my suitcase and put my clothes in the dresser. Then I thought about it and put them back in the suitcase. It was a sign of surrender to unpack.
Marty came to my door just as I was getting into Johnny Tremain.
“Do you need anything?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“Got any dirty laundry? Any cats to throw out?”
“No.” I switched off my reading light and sat there in the dark, but she didn’t go away.
“Marty?”
“Yes?”
“They don’t have anybody else but me.”
She stood backlit by the hall light with her arms crossed, leaning against the doorjamb. The shape of her head looked like an old-fashioned silhouette, with her corners softened. “I thought they had a son,” she said.
“Uncle Greg. He hasn’t come to see them in two years.”
Marty nodded. “I know how much you love them, Andie,” she said. “But you’re only thirteen years old. You have to take care of you.”
“I’ll be fourteen next month. I can take care of me and them too.”
Marty dipped her head. “Why don’t you write to your aunt and uncle? Maybe they don’t know how your grandparents are. Sometimes when you’re far away from people, you remember them the way they used to be.” She paused. “Or the way you want them to be.”
“They live in Canada. I could get the address from Grandma next time. I told them I’d be back soon.”
“Sure. You’d better go to sleep now. School tomorrow.” She switched off the hall light. I couldn’t see her face, but her voice was gentle. “Sleep tight, Andie.”
After she left, I switched my light back on and fished around under my bed for Mom’s Bible. Its ragged cover was the color of old beets. Flicking off dust bunnies and cat hair, I flipped open to the inscription: To my loving wife, Noelle. Psalm 84:11. Forever yours, Gary. Dad’s handwriting was spiky and cramped. He said college ruined his penmanship, taking notes so fast.
Psalm 84:11. Maybe one day I’d actually look it up.