The Rule of Threes

by Marcy Campbell

  I leaned closer to her, looking at where she was pointing. The back of her hand had brown spots, and I could see her veins poking up, but her nails were perfect because Mom had trimmed them for her and painted them a pale pink. The diamond in the center of her wedding band winked at me.

  “Do you see?” she asked, and I smiled because I did. I did.

  Tell Me Something

  When we ate dinner these days, there were five of us at the table—Tony across from me, my parents across from each other, and Grandma at the end like she was in charge, like if it was Thanksgiving, she’d have to carve the turkey.

  Tonight, Tony brought his basketball to dinner and was moving it around with his feet under the table, which made a noise like some small animals were in a battle under there for scraps of dropped food.

  “No ball at the table, Tony,” Mom said.

  “It’s under the table,” he said, shrugging.

  Mom gave Dad a sharp look, and Dad said, “No ball under the table, either.”

  “Fine,” Tony said, like he didn’t care one way or the other, but I could tell, he cared. He rolled the ball into the living room, where it sounded like it knocked over one of Mom’s plants or something. Nobody moved, though. We all sat there looking at the enchilada casserole and the basket heaped with cornbread muffins. I wasn’t so big on the casserole, but I loved the muffins.

  “Could you please pass me the muffins, Grandma?” I asked.

  “Certainly,” she replied. She was wearing a blue-checked scarf, and had even put on some red lipstick before she came down for dinner, which made her eyes look unnaturally green. I felt pretty sloppy next to her, in my T-shirt and the brown sweatpants with the big, white primer stain on my butt.

  I took a muffin and passed the basket to Tony, who took three.

  Grandma pointed to the napkin by my fork. “Don’t forget, Maggie,” she said softly.

  “Oops!”

  I unfolded my napkin and put it on my lap. Maybe one of these nights, I’d remember before Grandma told me. Tony immediately grabbed his and did the same, and so did Dad, which kind of made me laugh. Mom already had hers in the Grandma- approved position. We only had paper napkins at our house, not linen ones, so it seemed a little silly to even bother, but “proper manners are proper manners,” Grandma said.

  We all ate pretty quietly after that; it was almost like Quiet Lunch at school, without the giggles and lunch lady threats. Mom tried to put a second scoop of casserole on Grandma’s plate, but she held her hand out to block it and said, “No, thank you.”

  “I had a looooong meeting today,” Dad said, breaking the silence. “So long, I thought you kids would be all grown up by the time I got home.” Mom and I laughed, but Tony and Grandma didn’t. Still, he persisted. “I thought Tony would be walking with a cane and have a white beard down to his belt buckle.”

  “We get it, Dad,” I said, not unkindly. He was hitting a little too close to Grandma with the old people jokes. “It was a loooong, dummmb meeting.”

  “Hmmm,” Dad said, buttering a muffin. “Not especially dumb, just long. Necessary, but too long. When you kids get older, you’ll find that . . .”

  “No, no, no,” Mom cut in. “No lectures about office life. We want these kids to want to have jobs, Bob.”

  I smiled, but Tony didn’t. He’d stuffed two muffins into his face already and was sliding his casserole around on his plate with his fork. I didn’t blame him; there were too many chunky bits in it. But didn’t he know that you couldn’t let anyone see you sliding it around, if you wanted to make it look like you’d eaten some?

  Dad fake-pouted at Mom. “Fine, then, what did you do at work today?”

  “Well, you know, it’s mostly been calls from home for a few days.” She had a tight smile as she glanced over at Grandma. I didn’t think Grandma noticed. She was picking at her casserole just like Tony was.

  “Yes, yes, that’s right,” Dad said quickly, and we all went back to eating silently for a few seconds, but I could see the silence was killing him.

  “So, then, Mags . . . ,” he started, and I knew what was coming. “Tell me something good.”

  Dad had tried this last week, and Grandma and Tony both said “pass,” which I didn’t know was allowed.

  “Mags?” Dad said. “Anyone?”

  I looked around, waiting for someone to speak. Mom looked kind of sad and disappointed, at something besides the casserole, I figured. Tony and Grandma just sat there. Well, fine. I had something important to say.

  “Okay, I’ll go,” I said. “I finished setting up the outer office for the contest yesterday, and it looks really great!” I glanced at Tony, who wasn’t even pretending to eat anymore. “And Tony helped!” I continued. “That can be your something good, Tony, or your something big, or whatever.”

  “Is that true, Tony?” Dad asked.

  “I don’t know. I guess.”

  “Of course you did!” I said. I looked around at everyone. “Tony helped me paint the bookcase. He’s really great at painting. I may make him my new permanent helper!” I felt like I was talking too loudly, or taking up too much space, or both. I was trying to fill the emptiness I felt in the room, and I could only fill it by making myself bigger.

  “How about you, Mom?”

  “Me? Oh, uh, let’s see . . . I got my email inbox down to twenty. Does that count?”

  “Hooray!” I said, holding up my milk for a glass clinking, but we didn’t seem to do that anymore now that it was the five of us. Mom left me hanging.

  “I finished my cross-stitch,” Grandma said, smiling at me.

  “Hooray!” I said again.

  “That’s great, Eleanor,” Dad said. I noticed he’d been calling her Eleanor ever since she moved in. He used to call her Mom sometimes, but maybe now he was trying not to confuse her. “See, you can find something big in every day! Just a matter of how you look at things.”

  Tony cleared his throat. “I’m going to my . . . I mean, I’m going to the living room,” he said. “I have homework.” He pushed his chair away from the table, and Mom said, “Don’t forget to clear your place.” Usually, Mom made everyone stay at the table until we were all finished.

  Tony grabbed his plate, but his fork tumbled off, clanging on the table. He just left it there and quickly slipped out of the room. I didn’t know what was bugging him, but with Tony, I’d learned it was best to let him cool off a bit, have some space.

  As me and Mom and Dad cleared the rest of the things, Grandma stayed where she was, watching the birds at the feeder. There were a couple blue jays at the moment, regular visitors, but I knew she would say that just because they were common, didn’t mean they weren’t beautiful.

  The three of us shifted around each other in the kitchen for fifteen minutes or so, loading the dishwasher and washing the pans. At any other time, we’d be having a family discussion, but Grandma was right there within earshot. I imagined this was how it was if you had little kids and couldn’t talk about serious things until they went to bed. I imagined this was how it used to be for my parents, with me.

  Later that night, I decided to take my phone into Grandma’s room and show her the pictures of the outer office and the before and after of the bookcase. I walked across the hall to where Grandma’s door was half open. I knocked.

  “Yes?” came her voice, reed-thin and quivering like one of those stalks in the pond outside the assisted living facility.

  “Hey, Grandma,” I said, peeking around the door. I held up my phone. “I thought I could show you the photos of the room I did.”

  Grandma stuck her needle, threaded with red floss, into her fabric and looked at me blankly. Weird—I was sure this was the same cross-stitch she’d been working on for weeks, but it looked a little different, almost like she’d taken some stitches out.

  I was going to sit on the edge of the bed, but it hadn’t been made yet. Honestly, it smelled kind of bad in the room, like maybe Grandma needed a bath. My mom had been he
lping her with that, which I knew wasn’t easy.

  I suddenly thought, maybe Grandma wasn’t able to make her bed. Well, I could help. That was an easy thing for me to do. I went to the side of the bed and pulled up the sheet, and that was when I saw my tissue box on her nightstand, the one that was missing from my desk, and next to it, a little stack of my books, Easy Holiday Crafts on top. Oh, well, if she wanted to borrow some things, that wasn’t a problem.

  “What are you doing, girl?” Grandma asked.

  Girl? I tried to ignore that. Sometimes Dad called me “his girl,” so maybe that was what she meant.

  “I’m making your bed for you,” I said. “Just sit right there. You can work on your cross-stitch while I take care of it. Do you want me to find your magnifying glass for you? I’ll take care of everything.”

  I pulled up the blanket, catching a whiff of something sour, which I also ignored, and fluffed the pillows, noticing the cases were getting a little threadbare. And don’t get me started on the comforter. Blue and orange roses? The whole room desperately needed a makeover. Maybe I could get my hands on it before Tony moved back in. I stopped making the bed for a moment, a pillow in my hands, when I realized I was actually picturing Tony in here, in a space that was all his. I thought that was pretty cool, but at the same time, I hated to send Grandma away.

  I put the pillows in place and picked my phone up off the nightstand. I scrolled to the before picture I took of the whole room, with Mrs. Abbott standing behind her desk.

  “Just look at how cramped everything was,” I said, holding the phone out to Grandma. “The secretary could hardly get around all the mismatched furniture.”

  “What on God’s green earth are you talking about?” Grandma said. She sounded not just confused, but kind of angry.

  I held the phone up closer to her. I knew she couldn’t see very clearly, even with her glasses. Mom said she hadn’t passed her last driving test, so they wouldn’t renew her license. Another reason why she couldn’t live alone.

  “Remember? My design contest at school?” I asked, but I felt the urge to flee, like somewhere in the back of my brain, I must have known what was coming next.

  “Who . . . are you?” Grandma asked.

  “What . . . what do you mean?” I lowered my phone, felt the tears rushing to my eyes. “I’m Maggie,” I said. “I’m your granddaughter.” She didn’t respond. “You said we could look at my pictures later and . . . it’s later . . . and so . . .”

  Grandma shook her head, as if to knock loose the right memory, but it didn’t work, and as Mom came into the room, Grandma was only able to say, “I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry” to both of us.

  What is happening? She was fine at dinner! I ran to my own room, really crying now, and lay down on my bed, right on top of all the magazines, some of them sliding down the ladder to the floor and making a pile just like they used to in Grandma’s basement. Would I ever go back there? Grandma wasn’t going back, not like this, and that meant Mom would sell the house. I wanted to pack my bags and go live there myself and keep everything as it always was.

  Of course it was just then that Tony poked his head in. “What’s going on?” I waved him away. He had enough of his own problems. He didn’t need to hear mine, plus, as he’d pointed out to me once, she wasn’t his grandma.

  I kept my head buried in my pillow until Dad came in and climbed up enough of my loft’s ladder steps so he could reach out and smooth my hair with his hand. He said softly, “Mags?”

  My pillow was soaked through, and my eyes hurt, and my head. “Grandma didn’t know who I was,” I said. Saying it out loud made it seem too real, truer than true.

  “I know,” he said. “If it makes you feel any better, she doesn’t always know who I am either anymore. I’m sure she’s hoping I’m just the dishwasher repairman.”

  He laughed a little, but I didn’t. Sometimes, I wished he wouldn’t joke about stuff that wasn’t funny. I sat up and leaned against my wet pillow, feeling its chill on my back.

  “Will she get any better?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Maybe sometimes.” Dad sighed. “But it won’t last long.” He climbed back down and started busying himself with the magazines that had fallen on the floor. “You should try and enjoy the good times, whenever they happen. Pretty good rule for life in general, when you think about it.” He put the magazines into neat stacks, even though he wasn’t usually one for neatness.

  “It could be worse,” Dad continued. “She could be really upset about Tony, and making things hard for him, and for all of us.” He looked up at me and whispered, “Mom actually did tell her he’s an exchange student, just like I suggested. I’m not sure if she remembers that, though.”

  “She does,” I said, “or at least she did, a few days ago. She mentioned it to me.” A few tears leaked out, and I wiped them with the back of my hand.

  Dad said, “Hey, don’t worry. She’ll probably remember you tomorrow. It goes back and forth.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s not that.”

  “What is it? Is it Tony?”

  “Yeah, no, it’s just, everything. I just miss the old us.” I lay back down in my loft so I couldn’t see Dad anymore. Unfortunately, sometimes, if you listen really hard, you can hear a person’s sadness even when they aren’t talking.

  “I’ve made a lot of mistakes,” Dad said eventually. “I’m trying to make it up to you and Mom, and Tony, too. You have to believe me.”

  I sniffled. “I do.” I did. “Tony told me his mom wasn’t very helpful in bringing you guys together, so it wasn’t all your fault.”

  “I can’t put this on her,” Dad said, but then he didn’t say anything for a while. I started to wonder if he’d snuck out of my room, but I didn’t want to sit up and look. Then he said softly, “There are a lot of things I would have done differently, and certainly if I’d known Tony’s mom was sick . . . but she wasn’t when I knew her. Her car accident happened later . . . and everything—”

  “And maybe you wouldn’t have messed up in the first place, with her I mean, if you had to do it over again . . . ,” I said.

  “Sure, yes, but it’s hard to think that now, isn’t it, when, well, Tony’s here, and . . . he’s a good kid.”

  I lay still, for what felt like a long time. Then I whispered, “Am I a good kid?”

  “Aw, sweetheart, you’re the absolute best.” He knocked on my bed rail. “Look over here so I can see you.” I turned toward him, pulling my covers up to my chin. “Mags, you’re amazing,” he said, and I smiled there in the dark.

  I thought about what Dad was saying, about trying to enjoy the good times and holding onto memories, and I knew I wanted to remember this moment for as long as I could. But then I thought of my shell and all those beach memories, and I realized . . . Grandma had my books and tissue box, which meant she had been in my room, which meant . . . Tony was probably telling the truth all along. Maybe he hadn’t broken my shell. I’d been so angry at him, but, well, how could I be mad at Grandma?

  “I forgot to tell you, my shell got broken,” I said.

  “Your shell? What shell?”

  I’d never even told my dad about it. “The shell I brought back from the beach, the one you said came from the world’s tiniest unicorn.”

  “From that trip to Florida? I didn’t know you saved that. What happened to it?”

  “It was on my desk, and then I found it broken on the floor. I’m not sure what happened.”

  Dad looked over at the desk. “Well, I’m sorry about that, Mags, but I bet you can get a new one,” he said. “I’m sure the aquarium sells them, probably all different kinds.”

  “Yeah, it’s just that, well, it’s not really the same,” I said. I knew I sounded babyish, but I didn’t care. I leaned over my rail. “It reminded me of our trip and how much fun we had.”

  “Aw, Mags, none of those memories are going away,” he said.

  I wanted to agree with him. But now I knew: Me
mories didn’t always last forever.

  I woke up in the middle of a beautiful dream where I was on a stage getting a trophy, and Grandma was standing in the front row of a filled auditorium, clapping and smiling at me. But when I went downstairs for breakfast, it was back to reality.

  Mom and Dad were snapping at each other in the kitchen. Mom was complaining that she wasn’t making any commissions on house sales because she was having to give her showings to other realtors. Dad was saying it was time Grandma went to the assisted living facility, even if they didn’t have a room in the wing she wanted.

  “Or she can go to one of the others,” he said. “There’s four of them in town!”

  “The other ones don’t have good ratings,” Mom said. She was peanut-buttering a sandwich with so much force, the knife went right through the bread.

  I tiptoed around them, grabbing a banana. They didn’t even stop arguing when I entered the room like they usually did. Although, honestly, this level of arguing was new. It had been years since they’d really argued, that I knew of, anyway.

  “It’s not just my mom, Bob,” Mom continued. “We have children to take care of, you know, TWO children, and everything seems to be falling on me, which is pretty ridiculous, considering.”

  “Considering what?” Dad replied. He jerked the coffeepot out from underneath the steady drip and accidentally sent his mug crashing to the floor.

  “Oh, great,” Mom said. “I guess I’ll clean that up, too.”

  I hated this. I grabbed my backpack and said, “I’m leaving now! Bye!”

  “What?” Mom said, looking at the clock on the stove. “It’s too early. You’ll be waiting at the bus stop forever.”

  “It’s the contest today,” I said. “Don’t you remember?” Only the most important thing in my life right now. “I need to be there early.”