The Way Back Home

by Allan Stratton

  My teachers check in on me, too. They give me extensions, plus the principal tells me his door is always open. Like I’m actually going to visit, ha ha. Still.

  So far the video isn’t on YouTube. But hey, if it shows up, it’s Madi who should be ashamed, not me.

  * * *

  I bike home after school. Tonight it’s us hosting dinner and I want to help make it perfect. When I walk in the door, Mom’s washing Ms. Burke’s hair, Mrs. Carmichael is under the dryer, Ms. Green and Mrs. Gibson are still in line, and there’s so many gals hanging round the dinette set that Mom’s brought in the kitchen chairs.

  Everyone welcomes me home, even the ones I hardly know except to make fun of, which I guess I won’t be doing anymore.

  “That cousin of yours,” Ms. Green says, “it just goes to show.”

  “Thank goodness for your aunt,” from Ms. Burke.

  “You know about Aunt Teddi?”

  “The gals were walking on eggshells from the moment I opened this morning,” Mom says. “So I finally said, ‘Jess has been talking, has she?’”

  “Honestly, Carrie, you make it sound like we gossip,” Mrs. Gibson goes, all embarrassed.

  “You, gossip, Doris?” Mom teases. “Heavens no. You just pass on interesting information.”

  “Well you have to admit, it’s not every day a long-lost relative shows up. We didn’t know how you’d be taking it.”

  Mom winks at me. “Anyway, I said, ‘It’s true. Now get a coffee and pull up a chair.’ I must say, it’s the busiest day I’ve had at the salon in weeks.”

  “Your aunt Teddi’s a lifesaver,” Ms. Greene tells me. “She seems to have a great heart.”

  “Her husband, too,” I go.

  “She has a husband?”

  I guess Mom didn’t tell them everything. “Yes, Uncle Wilf. He’s a retired principal. With Aunt Teddi still working, he does all the cooking and cleaning.”

  “Sounds like a keeper,” Mrs. Gibson says. “I can’t get my husband to pick up his underwear.”

  Mrs. Carmichael wakes up from under the dryer. Her jaw drops when she sees me. “ZOE!” she hollers, like everyone’s as deaf as she is. “WELCOME HOME!”

  I don’t know what the gals think inside, but Mom is right. They’re not just clients. They’re friends.

  44

  As soon as the gals leave, we get ready for dinner. Dad and I bring the carpet up from the basement. Then he deals with the Hide-A-Bed and I help Mom make spaghetti sauce. Normally, we scoop it out of a jar, but she wants to make a good impression. She’s even bought Häagen-Dazs.

  Dad’s on his third shirt when Granny and Aunt Teddi arrive in their special scarves. I think Granny’s is going to be part of her uniform. She holds up the ends for me to feel. “Soft as a bunny, eh, Pumpkin?”

  As we enter the living room, Mom flutters a hand at the sheets on the hair dryers. “Sorry about the whatever.”

  “Not at all,” Aunt Teddi says. “What great colours.”

  Dinner’s pretty friendly. Even Granny’s polite. After they’ve gone, Mom and Dad talk about how everything was so perfect. They’re right, except it’s Friday night. Tomorrow is Granny’s last supper at the Bird House. Then, early Sunday, Aunt Teddi leaves and she’ll be locked up again.

  All night, I try to plan the most perfect speech to get Aunt Teddi to convince my parents to let Granny stay at the Bird House. I practise in my dreams, too. In one, I’m on the perch of an actual birdhouse; Aunt Teddi’s nibbling worms. In the last, I’m a hatchling falling out of a nest. Fly, fly. I can’t.

  I wake up as I go to hit the ground. It’s five o’clock.

  I brush my teeth and go to the kitchen. By the time Mom and Dad wake up, I’ve got their coffee and porridge ready.

  “Honey, you didn’t have to do this,” Mom says.

  “I wanted to.”

  Dad raises as eyebrow: Is this so Granny can stay at the Bird House?

  I toss him puppy eyes: No.

  He frowns: Because you know it’s decided.

  I hand him a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice: I don’t want to fight.

  “Thank you,” he says.

  After breakfast, I bike over to Granny’s. She’s with Aunt Teddi beside the mannequin in the wheelbarrow. “Why, if it isn’t Detective Bird!” Granny exclaims. We do our shtick.

  “I see you’ve met Fred,” I say.

  “Oh, yes,” Aunt Teddi winks. “We’ve even shaken hands.”

  “He used to wear suits in the front window of Tip Top Tailors,” I go. “I think he’s happier in a shower cap. In winter, we give him an old coat, don’t we, Granny?”

  “I guess we do.” She points at my old Tonka truck. “Say, will you look at that.” We wander over. I think of the mound of purple impatiens when Granny was gardening.

  “I bet that made a very nice planter,” Aunt Teddi says.

  “Still is,” Granny says. “Weeds are just flowers growing in the wrong place.”

  We head back to the veranda, stopping at the drain spout. “Elves lived here when I was little,” I tell Aunt Teddi. “They left me candies in plastic wrappers.”

  “What a coincidence,” Aunt Teddi says. “We had elves in the drain spout in Elmira, too, didn’t we, Mom?”

  Granny nods. “Elves are a nuisance. They dig up the tulip bulbs.” She climbs the steps. “Oh my, I think I should shut my eyes for a minute or two. I’ll be on the comfy couch if you need me.”

  “Okay.”

  She goes inside. Where will you be tomorrow, Granny? Was this your last walk around the yard? The last day you’ll see the bird baths and everything you care about?

  Aunt Teddi and I sit on the glider.

  So this is it. Speech time. I sit on my hands to stop them from twitching; I cross my feet to keep them from tapping; my bum starts to rock. Last night I had a good first sentence. What was it? “So anyway …” Think!

  “Is this the conversation?” Aunt Teddi asks. Hunh? “The conversation you want to have with me before I go back to Toronto?”

  “How did you know?”

  Aunt Teddi shrugs. “Tomorrow’s a big day. You want to make sure you’ve done everything you could. And that’s good: regret is a terrible thing. So please, tell me what’s in your heart.”

  I take a deep breath. “Tomorrow you go home and Granny goes back to Greenview, unless I can change my parents’ minds. Remember in Toronto how I said that Granny needed to stay at the Bird House?”

  Aunt Teddi nods.

  “So now you’re here. You can see how she loves it. What it means to her. How it’s her life.”

  She nods again.

  Good. “Before you said you wouldn’t help ’cause Granny was from another lifetime. Only everything’s changed since that. Also you and Dad: you’re not best friends, but you get along.”

  “Yes.”

  “So tonight at dinner, could you please tell my parents how this is Granny’s life and she should stay here?”

  Aunt Teddi eases the glider to a stop. “Zoe, that’s a very important thing you just did. Speaking your mind. No matter what happens, you can be proud you took a stand.” Please don’t say what I think you’re going to. “This isn’t what you want to hear, but your parents are right,” she continues. “Mom needs to be in Greenview. You know it deep inside, don’t you?”

  I swallow. “But this is where she’s happy.”

  “You’re right.”

  “If she’s in Greenview she’ll be dying every day. How would you like it if you woke up every morning in a place you didn’t remember with strangers telling you what to do?”

  “I hope I’d be grateful my family cared enough to put me in a place where I was looked after. Wilf’s father didn’t want to be in a nursing home, either, but in the end he loved it.”

  “Hooray for him: he’s not Granny,” I go. “I mean, Aunt Teddi, I know Greenview’s great — the people, everything — and maybe Granny should be there. But who cares, if she’d rather be dead?”
>
  “It’s a matter of safety.”

  “Safety isn’t everything.”

  “You’re young,” she says.

  “That doesn’t mean I’m wrong. You’d have been safer if you’d lived as a man. Would that have been worth it?”

  “That’s different,” Aunt Teddi says. “Where you live isn’t who you are.”

  “No, but taking risks to be happy is the same choice exactly. When you came out as trans, you risked your life. Not just with the surgeries, but with all the crazies who’d beat you, kill you, even. You did it because you had to, to be happy. Why doesn’t happiness count for Granny?”

  Teddi doesn’t answer.

  “I don’t expect you to change your mind right away. And maybe you won’t change your mind at all,” I say quietly. “But you’re my favourite aunt. Okay, the only aunt I can stand. Please promise you’ll think about what I said?”

  “Okay, I’ll think about it,” Aunt Teddi says carefully.

  45

  Tonight at the Bird House is supposed to be relaxed. Aunt Teddi went to the grocery store with Granny this afternoon and picked up some salads from the deli counter. Mom thawed a tub of chili con carne.

  But for all the easy talk, my heart’s on a tripwire. Granny nods and laughs a half second after everyone else. Mostly, though, she pokes at her food and winks at me. Oh, Granny, if only you knew what’s going to happen.

  I take her upstairs after dinner and get her ready for bed, while my parents and Aunt Teddi have cookies and coffee.

  “You take better care of me than Mother,” Granny says as I tuck her in.

  “I try.” I give her a kiss on the forehead, turn off her light and go downstairs.

  “Well, it’s back to Toronto tomorrow,” Aunt Teddi sighs as I rejoin the table.

  “We hope you and Mother had a good visit,” Dad says.

  “Yes. Thanks for giving us the time.”

  “What time would you like us to take Grace back to Greenview?” Mom asks.

  It’s now or never. “About Greenview.” They freeze. “Look, I promise I won’t yell or do anything crazy, but please hear what I have to say.”

  “I think we have heard,” Dad says gently.

  “This is different. I wasn’t honest with you before. I pretended Granny was fine. I was afraid what would happen if she wasn’t. I acted like you were the bad guys because I didn’t want to see the truth.”

  Mom and Dad look surprised. “Go on,” Dad says.

  “What I did, running away, was awful. I put Granny at risk. The one good thing, apart from finding Aunt Teddi, is I got to see how much Granny needs. What I can do and what I can’t.”

  “Well, you can certainly do a lot,” Mom says. “Aunt Teddi told us how you can bathe her, toilet her when she needs it — you should be proud of yourself.”

  “We couldn’t have done that,” Dad adds. “Even Greenview has trouble.”

  I blush, but it’s true. Okay, so how to put this: “The thing Granny needs most is supervision. We can’t give her that at our place ’cause of the salon; there’d be too many problems. But if I was here—”

  “Honey, that’s not possible.”

  “Why? Before you worried about drugs and boys. You don’t anymore, and I’d just be a phone call away. A two-minute drive.”

  Dad shakes his head. “Not during the day. You’ll be at school.”

  “Right, but that’s where you’d come in. You mainly work online. Instead of our stinky basement, you could set up your office here in the big, sunny living room. Granny wouldn’t be in your way. She sticks to her room, the den and the veranda. After work, you could drive us home for dinner, then we’d come back to sleep. I’d make breakfast and lunch.”

  They shift uncomfortably. “What about your grades?” Mom asks.

  “Your gals have kids who work after school and on weekends. I’d basically be an overnight babysitter.”

  Mom and Dad glance at each other. Neither knows what to say.

  “Look,” I say calmly, “it’s not perfect — nothing is — and maybe it’ll get to be too much. But right now, right here, Granny knows where she is. She doesn’t at Greenview. Think how scary that must be. Plus, she doesn’t wander except a block down on garbage night. If she ever did, it’s a small town and her phone has GPS.”

  “But the house.” Dad’s breathing goes funny. “Keeping up two properties … the time, the stress …”

  Aunt Teddi clears her throat: “I’ll support whatever you think’s right, Tim, but just so you know, Wilf and I are happy to arrange for maintenance and a regular cleaning crew. We can also hire extra help.”

  “I appreciate the offer,” Dad says, “but we don’t need charity.”

  “It’s not charity. So far, you and Carrie have done everything for Mom. That isn’t right. I need to help, and I have a lot to catch up on. I also want to see more of Mom. If you decide to give this a try, I’ll stay with her every other weekend to give you all a break.”

  “Thanks. That would be good if …” He pauses; frowns.

  “Tim and I need to have a minute,” Mom says. She and Dad step outside onto the veranda.

  What now? If I bite my nails, I’ll end up chewing my arms off.

  Aunt Teddi catches my eye. “Want a cookie?”

  “Not really.”

  “Have one anyway.”

  Mom and Dad come back five cookies later. They sit and look at each other, like they’ve decided on everything except who’s supposed to say it. Mom clears her throat. Nothing. Dad clears his throat. Nothing.

  “Fine then,” Mom says. “Zoe. We’ve thought about what you had to say. And we’re very pleased you didn’t get angry.”

  “Very pleased,” Dad agrees.

  Pause. I can hear the BUT.

  “But,” — I knew it — “we’re not comfortable about what you’re proposing.”

  “Not comfortable at all,” Mom shakes her head. “Please understand, honey, it’s not because we don’t trust you. It’s just that you’re asking a lot of yourself. More than I think you imagine.”

  “On the one hand, you have a real way with your granny,” Dad says. “It gets results and brings you both joy. On the other hand, the thought of you and your granny alone here—”

  I slump. “So it’s a no.”

  “That’s not what we said.”

  “It’s what you meant. You don’t want me to be here.”

  “We don’t want you here alone,” Dad says. “But when your mom and I got talking we thought about another possibility. We haven’t had time to think it through, so it may be totally crazy, but, well …”

  “Tell me!”

  “Okay, whew boy.” Dad cracks his knuckles. “The Bird House is your granny’s home. But, as you know, it’s my home, too. It’s where I lived from age seven till your mom and I got married.”

  “For quite a while, we’ve wanted to move the salon out of the house, to get my gals out of our hair, so to speak,” Mom says. “We’ve wanted a proper family home, a place you could bring friends without feeling embarrassed.”

  Dad nods. “We’ve been focused on getting a store in town. But since Teddi’s prepared to handle maintenance and extra help, and since you’re better than Greenview at getting your granny bathed and dressed, the thought occurred to us: What if the salon stays where it is and we made our home at the Bird House?”

  My brain’s a dryer on spin cycle.

  “We’d be counting on you to work your magic with Granny,” Mom says. “She may not want me anywhere near the place. She’s been quite harsh.”

  “Granny likes you fine, Mom. She just doesn’t like when you boss her.”

  Mom sits back in her chair. “I don’t boss her.”

  “Well, not boss maybe, but she’s sure heard you say she can’t live how she’s living. The idea of being forced out of her home scares her to death. That’s why she fights. If she thinks you want her here, she’ll come round. Promise.”

  “I hope so,” Mom sa
ys. “Because if she does, well, this may be a solution.”

  “Shall we try it for a month? See how it goes?” Dad asks.

  “Mom! Dad!” The stuff I say next is too embarrassing to remember.

  46

  Sunday morning is such a big deal we actually miss church. Aunt Teddi, Mom and her closest friends have a cleaning bee in the kitchen, dining room, bathroom and powder room, while a few of Dad’s buddies bring their trailers to clear out the guest room, attic, basement, back porch and other spots Granny won’t see.

  Meanwhile she and I stay at our place going over her albums. I take out her favourite pictures to scan for a tablet slideshow. Every so often, Granny says, “It’s such a shame you didn’t grow up at the Bird House.”

  “What would you say if I moved in now?”

  “I’d say your parents wouldn’t be happy.”

  “What if they came too? Imagine Dad back home like in the old days?”

  Granny smiles. “I can still see him on the swing that hung from the maple tree; tossing a baseball with your grampa.”

  “So it’s a yes?”

  “Is what a yes?”

  “Dad living with us at the Bird House?”

  “Your mother wouldn’t let him,” Granny says. “Between you, me and the fencepost, she doesn’t like me. Wants me in a nursing home. Hah!”

  “What if I changed her mind? Could she stay with us if I lived with you?”

  Granny claps her knees. “If you lived with me, she could do whatever she pleased.”

  We repeat this conversation till Granny falls asleep on the couch. That’s when I pack my suitcase. When Aunt Teddi takes us for dinner, my parents pack theirs.

  Back at the Bird House, I help Granny get ready for bed while my parents unpack. Aunt Teddi and I tuck her in.

  “It’s Teddi, Mom.” Teddi kisses her forehead. “I’ll be home again next weekend.”

  “Teddi.” Granny smiles. “Who’s that I hear in the guest room?”

  “Mom and Dad. We’re having a sleepover.”

  “How nice. I was afraid it might be your grampa. He needs to stay on the comfy couch.”

  * * *

  My parents say everything’s fine; that we should expect a few hiccups. Still, a few of the hiccups are more like heaves. Till the Bird House gets Internet at the end of week one, Dad’s without his computer, which makes for serious Whew boys. And when Granny catches Mom meddling in the den, she calls her “Missy Ferguson.”