Looking for Jamie Bridger

by Nancy Springer

  “Did you go back and try—”

  “Yes, the next morning, and they wouldn’t let me in! I tried for days. Stayed with this friend and that friend, tried phoning—they hung up on me. Tried writing a letter, pounding on the door, sitting on the front steps, nothing worked. Mom looked out the window at me once, but that was all. They never spoke to me again.”

  His friend gave him a startled look. “Still?”

  “Still. I couldn’t keep sitting on their porch—”

  “Well, no.”

  “—I just couldn’t take it anymore. So I found a burger-flipping job and a place to stay, and then I had a chance to move to the city, and if I wanted any kind of decent job I had to finish school—anyhow, it was a few years before I felt able to go back there, and when I did, they were gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Gone. Moved away. No forwarding address.”

  “Bridger, there’s ways to—”

  “I tried, man! I talked with all the neighbors, all my friends, half the people in that town. Nobody knew where they went. They didn’t leave any messages with anyone. I hired a missing-persons guy, and he couldn’t find them either, and the reason why, he said, was because they didn’t want to be found. They cut themselves off.” He ducked his head, and his voice went ragged. “They locked me out for good.”

  “That’s rough.” The friend spoke softly, his eyes worried. “Most of us, if we fight with our families, things change in time. We grow up, they get older, they accept, we get back together.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “I can’t believe—I can’t believe they won’t come around eventually. Have you left word with friends? So if your parents come looking they can find you?”

  Bridger shook his head. “It’s no use.”

  “You ought to, man. So you’ll know you’ve done everything you can. Do you keep in touch with your high school?”

  “I didn’t even graduate!”

  “You’re still a member of the class. You should get in touch with the reunion committee. You’d be surprised how going home, even to a high-school reunion, can help you feel better.”

  Bridger pushed himself away from the bridge railing and looked up, at the trees, at the skyscrapers towering beyond them. He squared his shoulders and looked thoughtfully at his companion. “It’s not like I go around feeling rotten all the time,” he said. “I’ve got a life.”

  “But?”

  “But … I wonder about Mom sometimes, how she is. Back then I was mad, I felt like she should have stood up for me—but now I can see, she was a victim, you know? It was like he had her brainwashed. She always did whatever he told her. Always.”

  “Nice guy,” the friend said.

  “Actually, in a weird way he was nice to her, most of the time. He was kind to her. Like she was a child.”

  “As long as she did exactly what he told her.”

  “Yes.”

  “And if she didn’t?”

  “As far as I know she’s never dared to find out.” Bridger sighed and turned to walk back to the streets of the city. “She’s probably still with him, she’s probably still jumping when he calls. I disobeyed, and she saw what happened to me.”

  Jamie waited until Saturday, when Grandpa would be a little more approachable than he was on weekday evenings. As Grandma put it, he “worked too hard” at the artificial-tooth factory where he was a plastics specialist.

  Jamie waited until after Grandpa had taken Grandma grocery shopping. (Grandma did not drive.) She waited until after he had taken down the heavy, old-fashioned wooden storm windows and put screens in—by himself, not allowing Jamie or Grandma to help, because it was not women’s work. Grandpa had quite definite ideas of what men were supposed to accomplish and what women were supposed to do. You would never see him in the kitchen except to eat. That was fine with Jamie most days, because she could go to the kitchen to stay away from him—it worked almost as well as taking one of her long walks in the woods. This day, though, she stayed around the house, and waited, and watched her grandfather from the kitchen door.

  She waited until he had taken off his work boots and was sitting on the porch while Grandma fixed dinner—stewed chicken with gravy, his favorite. She waited until she was afraid she would chicken out if she waited any longer.

  Grandpa was an egg-shaped person, but not soft. Hard-boiled. His skin stretched almost hairless over the hardness of his head. He seldom said much. Jamie could not remember that he had ever hugged her or kissed her.

  She had thought about this interview, and had settled on an approach. “Grandpa,” she said, sitting on a porch chair next to him, “I need your help with something.” She had asked him for help with a science project once, and he had been pleased to offer suggestions.

  This time, though, he gave her a flat stare, like a dead fish, and she knew he saw through her. Damn, he was smart, about plastics and lots of other things. He would have been an executive at the tooth plant except nobody liked him.

  “You had better go set the table for your grandmother,” he said, not unkindly. Warning her gently: Be a good girl, back off. Usually Jamie would have heeded the warning. But she had promised herself that this time she was not going to back off.

  “Grandpa,” she said, “it’s about my parents.”

  He sat up straight on his metal porch chair. “Go,” he warned, sternly this time. “Do what I told you.”

  “Grandpa, please. I—”

  “No!” He roared the word, and his entire hairless head flushed strawberry red. “You will not—”

  “I need to know—”

  Grandpa lurched up. “You shall be silent! You shall not speak of parents!” He shouted so loud, the words stretched out of shape, were hard to understand. Neighbors working in their yards turned around to see what was happening. Grandma came scuttling out of the kitchen and hurried toward Jamie, her face white as flour. Jamie knew why. She felt frightened pale herself by her grandfather’s rage. She had never seen him so enraged. The force of his shouting stunned her. She could not move or speak.

  “You shall not think of those Godless fornicators!” He was roaring. “You shall not harbor those thoughts. You have nothing to do with the—the slut and the goat who begot you. They were evil people, evil, I tell you. Your parents were sensual, evil, lewd—” Grandpa had to stop shouting and pant for breath. His chest wheezed and the whites of his eyes showed. Sweat broke out on his reddened forehead.

  “Cletus!” Grandma pushed Jamie aside and laid shaky hands on his forearm. “Come inside, dear, you’re upset. Jamie didn’t mean to upset you. She doesn’t understand, she didn’t know. You won’t ever mention such people to your grandfather again, will you, sweetie?” The look Grandma gave her was a panicky appeal. “Open the door for your grandpa. There. Come in and sit down, Cletus, dinner’s almost ready. Jamie, set the table, please.”

  She did so, quickly, aware that her grandmother was rescuing her. Lily rattled pots frantically at the stove, getting dinner into serving dishes at top speed. Grandpa sat in his place at the head of the table and panted, still trying to catch his breath. Careful not to look at him, Jamie felt the words he had shouted crawling up her spine. Evil? Her mother, her father, evil? It was a double-edged knife of a word, cutting at Grandpa as much as anyone. But still, what if her father was not the prince-on-a-white-horse person she wanted to find? What if he was a macho jerk, the kind to get a woman pregnant and walk away? Or what if her mother was a, well, a slut?

  Maybe her grandparents were stonewalling her for a good reason. The way Grandma seemed so frightened, Grandpa so enraged—maybe there was something awful waiting out there. Maybe she had better just give up this idea of finding her parents.

  “There,” Grandma sang, scooting a dish of cranberry relish to the table. “We’re all ready.”

  “I want applesauce,” Grandpa said.

  “Yes, Daddy.” Grandma often called him Daddy, and she was not joking when she said it. She whisked to th
e refrigerator, spooned him a side dish of applesauce, sprinkled cinnamon on top, and set it at his place.

  “Do we have pickles?”

  “Yes, Daddy.” Grandma fetched a jar of sweet gherkins from the cupboard and set it on the table. Grandpa scowled.

  “Put them in a dish, for heaven’s sake.”

  Grandma spooned pickles into a pressed-glass serving dish and set it next to the applesauce.

  “I want garlic pickles next time we go to the store.”

  Grandma wrote the requisition on her grocery list, then stood awaiting further orders.

  “Sit down, Lil, before everything gets cold.”

  “Yes, Daddy.” Grandma sat. Jamie had already taken her place. Her grandfather did not look at her as he folded his big-knuckled hands, inclined his bald head, and recited a monotone blessing.

  Listening with downturned eyes, Jamie felt only impatience. Kate’s family held hands around the supper table when they prayed, and when Jamie was there she held hands with them, and felt as if a blessing were really happening. But coming from Grandpa, the prayer was only words to her.

  When he had said grace, Grandpa proceeded to build himself his stewed chicken supper. Jamie sat and frankly stared. She had watched him do this hundreds of times and still could not quite believe it. First he put down a waffle, not a frozen waffle from the grocery store but a thick, fresh homemade waffle as big as his plate. He buttered it—Grandpa required real butter; no margarine was allowed. Then he mounded hot mashed potatoes on top of the waffle. He made a crater in the potato mound and put a chunk of butter there. Then he piled a mess of Grandma’s hot homemade egg noodles on top of the potatoes. He buttered them. Then he spooned stuffing on top of that. Finally, he poured about a pound of stewed chicken in gravy all over everything. Luckily, the old-fashioned dinner plates were wide and deep enough to hold all this.

  Rapidly and methodically, working his way around the plate in wedge-shaped sections, Grandpa ate. Grandma took a little chicken and some noodles. Jamie had never felt less like eating, but knew better than to say so. She put chicken gravy on a little stuffing, and made herself swallow some of it.

  No one said anything, but then, no one ever did say much at dinner. Grandpa was serious about his dinner. Maybe tonight he was angry, ignoring her. Jamie could not tell for sure, but she did not desperately care. She had given up caring much about her grandpa or whether he liked her. It was other thoughts that sat like a brick in her stomach and kept her from eating.

  Where are my parents? Jamie was thinking. Forget the daydream crap—they probably both know about me. Why hasn’t either of them ever come to see me? What kind of people are they?

  “Get me something to drink,” Grandpa told Grandma.

  She got up, poured him a glass of ice water from the refrigerator bottle, brought it to him, and sat down again.

  “You’re a good girl, Lil.” Mellowed now by stewed chicken and gravy, Grandpa smiled at her and patted her hand.

  “Thank you, Daddy.” She smiled back at him. “Rhubarb pie for dessert.”

  “Not right now.” He had eaten everything on his plate and looked uncomfortable. Well, no wonder.

  Effortlessly Grandma switched from being his adoring little girl to being his doting mother. “Then you just go sit in your chair, Cletus.”

  He waddled to the recliner in the living room, lay back with a groan, and closed his eyes. Soon he would be snoring.

  In the kitchen Jamie helped Grandma clear away the dinner things, then started washing the dishes. There were a lot of them, especially pots, what with cooking waffles, and potatoes, and noodles, and chicken, and gravy. What a dumb meal. What a typical Bridger meal. What a weird meal. Jamie had gone numb inside, and everything seemed to be boringly normal, yet at the same time very strange.

  “Well, gee, Grandma,” Jamie said, trying to joke, “if I can’t have parents, can I at least have a puppy?”

  Wiping the stove, Grandma gave her a startled glance.

  “Or a pony?”

  “Jamie, you know the lease says no pets.” If Grandma had a sense of humor, Jamie had never been able to locate it.

  “A hamster? They wouldn’t notice a hamster.”

  “Jamie, please.” Grandma turned toward her and lowered her voice to a desperate whisper. “You mustn’t say things that might annoy your grandfather. You simply must not. Promise me.”

  Jamie felt a sudden urgent need to get out of there. “May I go see Katie? Take her some pie?” Jamie doubted that any of the Garibays actually liked rhubarb pie, but it was an excuse to get out. Out of the Bridger house, where Jamie always felt somehow fake.

  A fake what? If she wasn’t herself, who was she? Life was weird.

  “Promise me,” Grandma insisted.

  “Grandma, I can’t promise never in my life to annoy Grandpa!”

  “But you have to!” Grandma’s lower lip was trembling. “You don’t understand what might happen.”

  Bone-tired, Jamie did not want to know what that meant. “Don’t cry,” she complained, and as if offering a different toy to a child, she tried distracting Grandma. “It’s time for the news.”

  “Oh, dear. Go wake your grandfather.” Grandpa hated to miss the news.

  Jamie dried her hands and walked into the living room. She heard the tall old floor clock ticking. The room was oddly quiet, and in a moment she understood why. There Grandpa lay on his recliner with his mouth sagging open, a string of drool at one corner, but for a change he was not snoring.

  “Grandpa.” Jamie gently touched his elbow. “Grandpa.” She joggled his arm a little.

  Then she let go and backed up, staring. He had not moved.

  He absolutely had not moved.

  He absolutely was not moving. He was not breathing.

  It was the idea and the suddenness of the thing that made her scream, not any sense of loss. It was the shock of finding death in the living room while the waffle iron was still soaking in the kitchen sink. It was the plastic feel of her grandfather’s arm when she had touched him. “Ma!” Jamie screamed as if she were about two years old—and when had she ever called Grandma just Ma? “Grandma!”

  Her grandmother came running in and looked. Grandpa’s color was strange, gray, and he lay so still he seemed to suck all the life out of the room, turning it gray along with him. “Cletus,” Grandma said. “Daddy. Oh, no. No!” She fell to the floor, lily white.

  Jamie had to step over her fainting grandmother to get to the phone. It was up to her to dial 911. It was up to her to coax Grandma back to consciousness. It was up to her to let in the police and medics when they came. It was up to her to hold Grandma while Grandma cried. She did those things because there was no one else to do them.

  There was no one now to take care of this frail old Lily flower but Jamie.

  Chapter

  3

  “I never knew having a dead person was such a hassle,” Jamie whispered to Kate the next day while Grandma was upstairs resting. “It’s a mess.”

  “You mean, like, choosing a coffin and all that?”

  “I mean, the whole stupid thing! How are we supposed to pay for a funeral? Everything was in his name. We can’t get money out of the bank because it’s all in Grandpa’s name, savings, checking account, everything. We can’t even use my savings account—it has his name on it. We can’t get a loan, because Grandma doesn’t know how much she has coming to her. She doesn’t know what Grandpa said in his will. She doesn’t even know where it is. And she doesn’t have any money of her own. None.”

  Kate listened with her mouth open. “You mean, like, not even spending money? In her purse?”

  “No! She never carried money. He took care of that. All we have is what was in his wallet when he died.”

  “Let me guess,” Kate said. “Fifty dollars and some odd cents.”

  “Close enough.” Jamie’s voice rose. “Why did he have to go and put everything in his name?”

  “Your grandpa was kind of a
control freak.”

  “Nooooo. He was only the most retentive person I ever met.” No wonder he died of heart failure. He died happy, Jamie thought sourly. In complete control of his dinner and my life.

  Kate asked, “So what are you going to do until it gets straightened out? You got, like, a rich uncle or anything?”

  “I don’t have any uncles. That’s another thing.” Jamie shook her head, wishing it would all just go away, the strangers with their papers and their questions, her grandmother’s pain. “I never knew we were so, uh, different. Like, most people have relatives?”

  “Well, yeah,” Kate drawled.

  “Well, we don’t. No aunts, no uncles, no cousins, no in-laws, no anybodies. Nobody to notify. Nobody to come to the funeral.”

  No pastor. No church. None of the churches in Dexter were’ strict enough to suit Grandpa—or that was his excuse. Really, Jamie figured, he wasn’t the kind to sit and listen to somebody else preach and tell him what to do. He needed to have his own religion, under his own control.

  So what did he have now? Nothing. People were being nice, but nobody really cared that he was gone.

  “I’ll be there,” Kate said, “to keep you company.” She peered at Jamie. “You want me to stay with you tonight? You look a little tired.”

  “Could you?” Jamie had not thought she needed to cry, but suddenly she was teary-eyed. “Thanks,” she managed to say. “I didn’t sleep at all last night.”

  “You sleep tonight and I’ll help Mamaw if she needs anything. You been eating?”

  “Oh, yeah.” The kitchen was full of tempting food brought by neighbors and people who had worked with Mr. Bridger. The refrigerator shelves were stacked with casseroles. Cakes and fancy breads sat on the table and countertops. Kate had just added the Garibay contribution, a Virginia spiral-cut ham with honey-mustard glaze. Jamie pulled off a morsel and tasted it—yum, delicious. “I’m eating okay. I’m not really that upset. Well, maybe I am, a little.” Jamie rolled her eyes at her own mixed feelings about her grandfather.