“No, she wasn’t here, but she found out anyway, that old busybody,” Granny says. “She has a face on her like a plate of mortal sin. And a big mouth, to go along with her big behind.”
“Granny, geez! You’ll have to go to confession for that.”
“I won’t, because it’s not a lie. If you want to know the truth, I was out in the garden just before dark, trying to get in the last of the persimmons. I missed the last two steps on the blessed ladder. It was stupid; I should have waited until the morning, but I wanted to make the preserves, like I do every year. So I picked myself up and drove to the hospital in Asheville. I thought maybe my ankle was broken, because it hurt like the very devil. But they took X-rays and fixed me right up.”
“Wait, you drove all the way to Asheville with a busted ankle?”
“I certainly did.”
“Granny Deirdre, you are awesome.”
She smiles and smacks me on the arm.
“Sure, I wasn’t going to call Louisa to help me. She would have lived on it for months. Besides, it was all over the mountain by the time I got home, the great yammering blabbermouth. Now be a love, and go get the candles off the mantel. We may as well do things up right.”
“The ones beside the Blessed Mother?”
“She won’t mind.”
I walk back into the living room to the huge fireplace that always smells like woodsmoke, even in the summer. A statue of the Virgin Mary, flanked by magnolia leaves and birds’ nests and two tall white tapers in crystal holders, stands on the mantel. Framed pictures cover every surface, my dad and Grandpa Finn in a canoe on Smith Mountain Lake, my mother and me grilling hot dogs in our backyard, all of us at the family reunion six years ago, when Anna was just a baby and nobody was sick or dead.
I bring the candles to Granny, who places them on either side of a pale green glass bowl filled with yellow gourds and tiny pumpkins. She hands me a box of long matches, and I strike one and hold the flame to the wicks. When the table is ready and she’s directed me where to put the roast pork and baked apples, the scalloped potatoes and cornbread and green beans from her garden, I pull out her chair and take her cane, sliding it under the table beside me. Beau sits between us, looking up at me with his soft brown eyes, obviously expecting to join us for dinner.
“Thank you, A leanbh. That cane is humiliating. It makes me feel like a withered old crone.”
“No way, Granny. You’ll never be old. Or a crone. You still got some serious mojo.”
“Oh, go on with you,” she says, but I can tell she’s pleased.
We eat in silence for a while. I’m starving, but Granny’s not really eating, just pushing her food around her plate, every now and then taking a birdlike bite of something. When she’s not looking, I slip Beau a bite of roast pork. He takes it delicately from my fingers and chews quietly. His table manners are impeccable. Granny looks up as I break off a piece of cornbread, so I put it on my leg, under the table. I feel his warm breath and slobbery tongue on my jeans.
“I saw that, Lucas,” Granny says, trying not to smile. “He likes butter on his cornbread, in case you’re planning to give him any more. But just a little. Too much rich food will make him fat and give him bad dreams.”
I hear Beau’s tail swishing against the wood floor, his soft sigh of contentment as he rests his head on my feet.
“So, darling, tell me all the news from home. How is your mother?”
I chew thoughtfully, choosing my words. I don’t want to sound as pissed off as I really am. I don’t want to raise my voice. I don’t want to lose it. Looking into those vivid blue eyes, I swallow the anger down with a sip of sweet tea.
“She’s good, actually. Better. I mean, she’s really, really sad, obviously. She’s still wearing dad’s clothes and his dive watch, and every night she sleeps with his bathrobe. She cries a lot, when she thinks we can’t see, but she wakes up in the morning and gets dressed and fixes breakfast and drives Anna to school, and last week she went to a Friends of the Library meeting, so yeah. She’s doing okay. As well as can be expected, I guess.”
“That’s good to hear. When your grandpa Finn died, I couldn’t clean out his side of the closet for more than a year. I still wear his favorite sweater sometimes, especially when it feels like snow.”
“The green one with the leather on the elbows?”
“The very one.”
“Mom wears a lot of Dad’s Citadel stuff. It’s way too big on her, but she does it anyway.”
“She needs to work through things in her own way, in her own time. We do what we have to do to keep breathing, to put one foot in front of the other. And little Anna? How is she holding up?”
I think of my baby sister, crying in the driveway this morning, terrified that I’d never come back, and I wonder if any of us will ever be whole again. I feel like a dish that’s been shattered on the floor and glued back together. Falling apart along the cracks.
“She’s okay, I guess. I mean, she’s so little, she doesn’t really understand that he’s never coming back. For a long time she’d sit on the front porch at six o’clock every night, waiting for him to come home from work. She’d ask if he was coming to her soccer games. Even though his car was still parked in the driveway, even though she was with us in the hospital when he passed, even though she said goodbye. She doesn’t get it.”
Granny sighs and puts her fork down. She’s barely touched a thing. Under the table, Beau snores gently.
“That’s the blessing of being young. The little ones still have so much hope, even when there’s no hope left to be had. That’s how they survive. That’s how they bear their sorrows.”
“So it’s a good thing?”
“I’ve always thought so.”
I stand up and clear the dishes from the table, put on the kettle to make her some tea. There’s a picture taped to the refrigerator. Just one. I’ve been trying not to look at it straight on. My father, on the day he graduated from the Citadel. He’s standing tall and proud in his uniform, one arm around Grandpa Finn and the other around Granny, who’s wearing a huge corsage. Someone has scrawled Beloved across the bottom.
We need to talk about something else. Fast.
“What can I help you with while I’m here, Granny?”
I scoop Irish breakfast tea into the silver tea ball, hang it from the lip of Granny’s blue china teapot, and pour in the boiling water. While it steeps, I nuke the little pitcher of milk. Granny taught me how to make legit tea when I was nine. She said tea bags were “the work of the Antichrist,” and only lazy people used them.
“It’s hard for me to go to Harris Teeter for the messages.”
For a second I think maybe she’s losing her mind, but then I remember. “The messages” are Irish-speak for “groceries.”
“I’ll make a list, and maybe you could pick up a few things.”
“Sure, no problem.”
I bring the teapot and her sunflower-yellow mug to her, along with the milk and the sugar bowl. She busies herself with the tea business.
“And you, Lucas? Your mother told me you’re in trouble. She said you hurt a boy at school.”
And bam. Here we go.
“He’s not some random ‘boy at school,’ Granny,” I say. “He’s a terrible person, and he almost killed Savannah Rose. Sparrow. You met her at dad’s funeral. She was sitting out on the patio with the rest of us. You probably don’t remember.”
“Don’t insult me, child. I may be old, but I am in possession of all my faculties, thank you very much. I remember your Sparrow quite well. Tiny little slip of a thing. Beautiful hair, remarkable eyes. Graceful in bearing and expression. I thought she was lovely.”
My Sparrow.
“Get out! I hate you! Get out and leave me alone!”
I fold my napkin, then shake it out and fold it again. I can’t take her eyes, staring at me, seeing everything.
“Did Mom tell you what happened to her? Did she tell you how he beat her up? How she almost
died?”
“She did. Not in so many words, but she told me Sparrow was badly hurt.”
“He did it, Granny.”
“She also said he’s not been charged with a crime.”
“Not yet, anyway.”
“And that’s why you attacked him? Because you felt you were the one to deliver justice? Or was it vengeance you were after?”
My face flushes, not so much because I’m angry, but because for the first time since September, faced with my granny’s piercing eyes and quiet insight, I’m ashamed of myself. Beau puts his head on my knee, whimpering a little, trying to make me feel better. I reach down and stroke his soft ears. “Granny, are you going to fuss at me?”
“Not at all. I imagine you’ve had your fill of lectures and punishments and guilt. I doubt that I could add anything that would make a difference. But, Lucas, I’ve known so many good, sweet boys just like you who’ve gotten themselves caught up in dreadful things, things that were bigger and more complicated than they could possibly understand. They convinced themselves they were doing good in the world, righting terrible wrongs, and maybe they were. It was hard to tell, because they left so much destruction behind. Somewhere along the way, they stopped seeing any humanity in the people they called their enemies. And when that happens, when you don’t see a human being on the other side, you give yourself permission to do great harm. That’s when you start losing pieces of your soul. You tell yourself all the reasons why you’re right, that it’s the others who are evil and must be stopped, by any means. But the truth is, you’re both wrong.”
She smiles gently, the corners of her eyes crinkling. She reaches out and covers my hand with hers, giving it a little squeeze. “Now I’ve gone and given you a lecture after all.”
“It’s okay, Granny. But this guy is totally evil. I mean, there’s not one good thing about him. He’s rotten to the core. You’ve never met him, so you don’t know.”
Beau wanders out from under the table with my sock in his mouth, turns in circles, then curls up in his cushy dog bed beside the door to the pantry. He smiles at me before he closes his eyes, his smelly treasure between his paws.
“Oh, darling,” Granny says, stirring her tea, “I haven’t met him, it’s true. Still, it’s hard for me to believe anyone is purely evil. Some people become kinder, gentler when their troubles come. Others harden their hearts and harm the innocent. Yes, he did a terrible, evil thing, and he should pay for it. But perhaps someday, a long time from now, you’ll be able to think of this boy with more compassion than hatred. Neither you nor I know what’s happened in his life to make him the way he is. And now I’ve gone and said my piece. We’ll speak no more of it. Give me that horrid cane, please.”
I pull it out from under the table and hand it to her, then help her up out of her chair. She hobbles her way to the sink and turns on the faucet, squirting in dish soap until the sink is filled with suds. Steam rises, clouding the window that overlooks her garden.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever feel sorry for him, Granny, even if I live to be a hundred. But right now I’ll man up and do the dishes. Why don’t you chill and finish your tea?”
There’s a perfectly good dishwasher in Granny’s kitchen, but she’s never used it. She says she doesn’t trust a machine to clean her dishes properly. She sits down again, wincing a little when she bends her ankle. “Ah, that’s a grand idea. But please, for the love of all the angels and saints, be careful with my china, will you?”
When I glance over my shoulder, she’s staring off into space, her eyes tired and sad. I know she’s remembering Ireland. And her brother.
“Yes, ma’am,” I say, fighting the urge to drop the f-bomb when I plunge my hands into the scalding water. “So, what else do you need me to do around here? Going for groceries can’t be the only thing. Want me to plow the back forty? Milk some cows? Slaughter the chickens? Pick the cotton?”
She pokes me in the butt with her cane. “You know good and well there’s no plow or cows or chickens or cotton, you ridiculous thing. But we will need some more firewood, if you wouldn’t mind splitting some logs. Young Colin from town stocked me up in August before he left for college, but it never hurts to be extra prepared. Just in case we get snowed in and the power goes out.”
“Granny, I’m a dancer, not a lumberjack. I’m totally game to go out there and give it a shot, but just so you know, I’m going to suck. I’ll probably lose some fingers, maybe even a whole arm. Dad was a log-splitting beast, but I’ve never done it before. It may be unwise to trust me around sharp objects.”
“It’s not complicated, Lucas. You’re a big, strapping lad. I’m sure you’ll figure it out. I’ll help you.”
“Ummm, no, that’s not going to happen. You can sit outside in a lawn chair and boss me around, maybe sew my severed limbs back on.”
Another poke in the butt.
“Also, the screen door needs to come off and go out to the shed, and we’ll need the storm door put on before it gets much colder. The wind is fierce in the winter, as you well know. And the gutters need to be cleaned out before it snows. Do you think you can manage that, or do I need to call Colin’s father?”
I picture myself high up on a ladder in a raging windstorm, leaves and snow swirling around me as I throw handfuls of soggy, slimy gutter slop to the ground. I remember Tristan doubled over in the parking lot, bleeding and bruised. I hear Sparrow screaming that she hates me. And I think maybe it would be okay if I fell off that ladder. Maybe it would be okay if I bashed my head on the ground and never remembered another terrible thing, if I weren’t around to cause any more trouble for anyone. I find these thoughts oddly comforting.
Suddenly my arms and legs feel too heavy to hold me up anymore. The charade of acting like I’m okay, joking around with my grandmother, is freaking exhausting. We can pretend all day long that I’m here to help her chop wood and clean gutters and switch out the screen door, but the truth is that my own mother has kicked me out of my own house because I’m a live grenade. She doesn’t want me around.
I put the last of the plates in the dish drainer and fold the dish towel, draping it over the lip of the sink. Granny’s fallen asleep in her chair, her hand still wrapped around her teacup, her chin on her chest.
How am I supposed to help her, when I can’t even help myself?
* * *
After midnight, when the sound of my grandmother’s soft snoring and the ticking of the grandfather clock in the dining room are the only sounds in the house, I tiptoe downstairs to the kitchen. I’m not really hungry, but I’m mad itchy, and I can’t sleep.
I flip on the small lamp tucked into the corner beside the fridge, then pour a glass of milk and cut a slice of Granny’s Criminally Delicious Caramel Apple Pound Cake. Dad’s the one who named it, because she only ever made it at Christmas when he was a kid. But after he came home from overseas, she made it every single time she saw him. She serves it warm, with this kick-ass sauce she makes from butter and milk and brown sugar and vanilla. I’d screw that up hard-core if I even tried, so I just slather the cake with soft butter and stick it in the microwave for a few seconds.
Beau stirs in his bed when the microwave beeps, opening his mouth in a huge yawn and stretching his long legs out in front of him. When he comes to sit beside me, I break off a little piece of cake for him, blowing on it first so it won’t burn his mouth. He wags his tail, scarfs the cake, then pads back to his bed and falls asleep.
It’s pitch-black outside, and I catch my reflection in the window over the sink. My hair is sticking up all over the place, and there are dark circles under my eyes. I’ve lost weight, just like Granny. A gust of wind rattles the trees, and the barred owls that live nearby call softly to each other, like they’re asking, “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you?” In the middle of the night, it’s a haunting, lonely sound.
I can’t face going back upstairs to the guest room, so I plop myself down on the floor beside Beau’s bed and reach over to stroke h
is soft yellow fur. Even when he sleeps, he looks happy.
I pull my phone out and check it for the millionth time. Nothing from Sparrow.
Laney, you awake?
Yep. Can’t sleep.
Me neither. What happened at rehearsal?
Ugh. Swan Queen with Caleb. So awful I can’t even.
Did you talk to her? Does she answer your texts?
No. Tried to see her again after ballet. Mr. Rose was home in the middle of the day, and tbh, he looks like poo on a pancake. They’re going to see a shrink. You know she wrecked her painting, right?
Sophie told me. That’s messed up.
She’s still not talking much. She won’t see anyone. Not even me.
Don’t cry, Laney.
How do you know I’m crying?
I just do.
Go to sleep, you. I have an English test in the morning.
Okay. Talk tomorrow?
You bet. Night.
I give Beau a final scratch between the ears, rinse my plate and glass, and put them in the dish rack. When I put the milk back in the fridge, I stop to look at the picture of my dad.
Beloved.
All the hearts around me, once so big and filled with joy. And now look.
They’re broken all to pieces.
Sparrow
Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o’er wrought heart and bids it break.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Macbeth
28
The Sound of Silence
“Sparrow, welcome. It’s good to see you. Congratulations on getting your casts off! You must feel so much lighter, having all that plaster gone.”
I’m sorry, lady, I don’t mean to be rude, but how could you possibly know what I feel? We’ve never had a conversation. And we never will.
Sparrow Page 21
