Tender Graces (43 page)

“Hey, it looks almost the same as I remember.”

Shoes clomp on the floor, closer, closer, until here they are, filling up my room. And I can’t believe they came. All three of them. (Even Micah!)  I jump up to hug on brothers. I say, “I can’t believe you’re here!”

My brothers make faces, pretending they aren’t glad I’m happy to see them. We step back and grin at each other. They look around the room.

“What the hell is all this stuff, Vee?” Micah points to the mess on the bed and floor. “You’ve been scooting down memory lane, getting all whirly brained again?”

“She never could leave stuff alone.” Andy looks like a kid again. We all look like kids again—the house is pulling us all back. “You’re kind of a mess, Seestor. What’s with the robe and wrinkled clothes?”

“Huh?” I check myself in the mirror and see a silly grinning girl instead of a middle-aged woman.

“So this is your house, and your room.” Bobby looks around. “I always tried to picture where y’all lived.”

“Yep, Bobby. This is it.” I swing my hand around, including Momma in the sweep.

Andy says to Bobby, “Come on, I’ll show you our old room.” I hear their grown up shoes clomping down the hall, like Daddy’s had.

I smile at Micah, say, “You’re here.”

“Yeah. I’m here.” Micah pushes aside some of the mess and flops down on the bed.

“I can’t believe it.”

“What’s to believe?”

I look at Micah as if he’s made up of solid stupid. “You said you’d never come back.”

“I did?”

I flop beside him. “You know you did.”

He shrugs. In the next room, my brothers are laughing up a storm.

“I guess I thought nobody was coming.”

“Well, here we are.” He pushes through a pile of photos and picks up a picture of Momma and Daddy. “Dad’s here, too, Vee.”

“What do you mean, here?”

He doesn’t say at first. “You’re right, I didn’t think I’d ever see this holler again. But hell if here I am.” He gets up and goes to look out my window. “You always loved that mountain, but have you ever been on it?”

“Yes.”

He turns to eagle eye me.

Andy’s stomps retreat to the other end of the hall, and Bobby’s follow. I imagined it just as it happens, I hear Andy bust into Momma’s room and say, “This is my momma’s room,” and then walks out, as if it’s nothing at all.

Micah says, “Dad’s not sure if you want him to come to the memorial.”

“Why did
you
come?” I unflop myself from the bed.

“I came for you.” He stares over to the picture of us in the Popsicle frame. “Well, maybe I came for all of us, even Momma.”

“I’m glad.”

He shrugs, again.

“I never knew you sent her those paintings. They’re good, Micah.”

“So, she didn’t throw them out.”

“No, she didn’t. They’re in her room.”

He looks around my room, as if he’s seeing things, or wanting to see things.

The screen slams. Andy’s showing Bobby the maple and where the old swing was, I bet.

A breeze lifts up Micah’s hair.

I stand closer to him and lean my head on his shoulder.

A slam, and shoes clop towards my room again and then Andy and Bobby are standing in the doorway.

Micah goes to Momma’s urn and touches it. “It feels warm; I thought it would be cold.”

I turn to straighten up the things on the bed. “Mrs. Mendel said she was all dressed up when they found her. Had her hair done up in that high ponytail she liked when she was young. Red lipstick and all.”

“Well, that’s Momma. There’s no trying to figure her out,” Micah says.

Andy and I nod.

Bobby says, “Y’all had this life here I always wondered about.”

“We wondered a lot of things ourselves, Bobby,” Micah says.

Bobby nods, looks away, and Micah reaches over to pat his shoulder to let him know all is well.

“I thought we’d have the memorial under the maple tree,” I say.

“That’s good.” Andy nods.

“All of us have to take a part of her with us and spread her out. It’s what she wanted.” I take the letter from my pocket, rub it.

“What’s that?” Micah asks.

“She said she wanted to go different places she’d never been. Guess this is one way for her to do that.” I tell them Momma’s wish she wrote in the letter, how she wanted her ashes to go here and there and yonder.

Bobby says, “I wish I’d have known her.”

Micah, Andy, and I look at him. It’s as if he’s always been here with us all through time, as if we all came from the same place.

Andy says to Bobby, “Let’s go get some food.”

“Good luck finding anything much,” I tell them, but they’re off again, clomping.

“I’m getting hungry, too. You want a peanut butter sandwich, Micah?”

He grins sheepish, then says, “I have something to tell you first.”

“What?”

He pushes back his hair until it sticks on end. “I bought the house on the hill.”

“Huh?”

He points to his right. “The one up to the hill on the other side of Mrs. Mendel’s.” He grins, shrugs. “Where Dad’s waiting to see you.”

My mouth falls right onto my lap and stays there. I have to pick up my chin and work it back. “You bought the lonely house on the hill?”

“Uh huh.” He puts his hands in his pocket and jingles his keys just like Daddy. “I remember how you always thought it was such a mystery. I did, too. I used to watch Dad go up there.” He stares at Momma’s urn. “I guess I bought it for reasons I haven’t figured out yet.”

I rub my eyes. “But what about Momma’s house?

Micah looks away from Momma. “Leave it here to rot?”

My head spins.

“Come on, let’s get out of here. I hate talking about this in front of Momma.”

In the kitchen, my brothers have found a box of crackers, the half loaf of stale bread, a jar of blackberry jam, and the peanut butter. They have the circle glasses out and Bobby is making ice water. They all gather around the table and start gobbling and slurping it all down. I almost expect them to open their mouths and go, “gah uh gah uh,” showing me the half-chewed food. I eat a peanut butter and jam sandwich with them. We’re quiet for a while. I’m thinking about Daddy on the hill, wondering why he isn’t coming down, but knowing why just as much.

Andy asks, “Where’s Momma’s booze?”

“I poured it all out.”

“Good,” he answers.

I finish my sandwich quick as a hungry dog. All a sudden, I don’t want to stall, I want to see Daddy as bad as ever. I want to see him with the holler below me. See what it feels like to stand on the hill with him and look down as he used to. “I’m going for a walk,” I tell them.

They all nod and chew. They know.

I walk to the house on the hill. I see Daddy standing up there, his tall, wide shoulders that stoop just a little under the weight of his age, and the dark hair that has turned white and sparse. When I reach him, I gather him up in a hug. I smell Old Spice and sun-drenched cotton, but I don’t smell the bourbon. Not today.

“Daddy, you’re here.”

“I am.”

“And Rebekha?”

“She didn’t think it right to come.”

I nod. I remember how she sat in the car, waiting for Momma to give up Micah. “I’ll call her later to fill her in.”

“She’ll like that.”

I look down at the holler, and at Momma’s house. I can see through the kitchen window a bit. Micah sticks out his head and waves. I wave back. I ask, “Why did you always come up here, Daddy?”

“It’s the perspective. Look, you can see so much from up here.”

I look across the holler, over the next hill, and to the distant mountains.

“There’s something I want to show you.” He walks towards the corner of the house, stops to kneel down, and puts his hand to the ground. “It’s here. Right here I buried it.”

“What, Daddy?”

“I buried everything the hospital gave me. It was all I had, all I had of our little one.”

I can’t think of what to say. Little lost babies that Momma and I never knew or held.

“I had to have a place for it. I had to have somewhere I could come to. And facing the house below, like some kind of strange taunting.”

“Why’d Momma do it?”

“Do what?” He looks at the ground, and not at me.

“Nothing, Daddy.” I watch his face tense and release and tense again as he lets himself remember what he has to remember. He stands up and scrubs his face with his left hand.

“Let’s go to the house, Daddy, okay? I’ll send the boys to the store so we can cook some supper.”

“Seems strange to be back here, Bug. I’m tumbling back, like I’m off-balance.”

“No Shakespeare quote for me, Daddy?”

“I suppose I’m not in the mood.”

I take his hand and help him down the hill. When we get back to Momma’s, he’s sucked up by the house, same as I am.

Over a supper of stewed chicken and cream potatoes, we all don’t talk much. The ghost mists are swirling about and everybody feels tired and spent with feelings. It’s strange having us all at the table again, but without Momma. It’s strange, and sad, and just like a kid, I wish for things I can’t ever have.

After supper, everybody finds a place to rest. Daddy goes to town to stay at a hotel, says he’ll be back early. Daddy couldn’t stay in the house overnight. Ghosts.

I get under Grandma’s quilt and wish her to me again. I want to be coddled like a baby-girl. I wait and wait until I fall asleep without her.

The next morning I get up early before it’s full-out light. Micah and Andy are sleeping in their rootin’ tootin’ beds, their long adult legs flopped off the end of those kids’ sized beds. Bobby is sleeping on the couch, looking much more comfortable than his brothers do.

After putting water on to boil, I go to the window and see Gary and Mrs. Mendel in the garden. I wave at her, but she can’t see me. Gary waves back, and I want to shout out, “I’m not waving at you. I’m waving at Mrs. Anna Mendel.” I’ll see her at the memorial and hug her neck then. She’s bent and her movements are slow and deliberate. She walks with a cane now and wears thick supportive shoes and stockings. But she is timeless. I laugh when I remember how as a child I thought her old, when she was younger than I am now when I lived in the holler.

When I get the coffee made, I sneak past sleepy Bobby, and open the screen, the
scrangy
sound loud in the morning quiet. I settle myself down under the maple and sip. I’m there for days, months, and years. I’m there until the sun is full-out strong. I’m there even after I hear a car pull up, and then another one. I keep my back to the maple and sip my hot sweet coffee without a care. And then my daughter is slamming out the back running to me like Fionadala galloping. She hollers out, “Mom, are you okay?”

I’m grinning happy stars. I hug her and she smells like Jean Nate. “I thought you couldn’t come.”

“I tried to call your cell to let you know I’d be here after all but you never answered. What is it about you never answering you cell?” She asks. “I finally reached Uncle Jonah and he picked me up from the airport. I rode out here with him and Aunt Billie.” She pushes back her hair. “They won’t let Aunt Billie drive anymore and they argued about that all the way here. She said they let old men do anything they want to up until they fall over dead, but women have to fight for every scrap of everything all their lives.” She laughs.

I laugh, too, but I know it’s true for my momma’s generation more than now.

She inhales deep deep. “It smells good here. It’s so pretty.”

“Yes, it sure is.”

“I’m starved, Mom.”

We go inside where my brothers are all talking at once, their hair standing on end. I laugh at the sight of them. Daddy has come, hanging back as if he doesn’t think anyone wants him here. I hug Uncle Jonah and Aunt Billie and they both feel like they have bird bones. They turn from me and give Adin big hugs.

Aunt Billie and I get breakfast on the table. Everyone looks at Mee Maw’s marks on the wall. We talk about how Mee Maw is playing Queen of the Nursing Home, driving the staff wild and sinking her claws into all the men who still have a pulse. It was her decision to go there once her last husband, the one following the tater boiling man, died from what surely was sheer Mee Maw-induced exhaustion.

We pull in chairs and somehow all fit around the table.

My brothers stuff eighty pounds of biscuit with gravy down their gullets while talking about work and family and all the things that make up their lives now. I know we’re all getting older, but now that we’re all here, I can’t see the gray in Micah’s hair, or the way Andy’s crow’s feet fan out from years of squinting in the sun, or how Bobby’s hair is thinning on top. They still look much to me as they did when we were children. I wonder if I look like a young sister to them. It’s this house; my eyes wide open makes us all go backwards faster and faster until the lines and gray and talk about mundane things fade away and what’s left are barefoot kids running in the grass.

I look to Daddy. He’s still quiet, but he smiles around the table at us all there together.

After the breakfast dishes are done, I go to my room to get Momma, and Micah is right, the urn is warm. I bring her outside, search the faces of my brothers, wondering if my eyes match theirs, and if our eyes are saying Momma is never coming back.