It was hard to know how to feel. My memories of my grandparents were both good and bad. I remembered Grandma taking me to the American Girl doll store, letting me pick out any doll I wanted and buying all the clothes and hair accessories. I remembered Grandma teaching me how to play chess. I remembered our hourlong Scrabble marathons. I remembered Grandma telling me that her beautiful mother, my great-grandmother, had keyhole-shaped pupils too, and that a key was a symbol of authority. It meant I would have great responsibility in my life. I remembered Grandpa teaching me how to throw a ball, how to cast a fishing line into the river by their house. I remembered how he laughed so easily, so heartily. But I also remembered the tension that filled the air when we visited—the sharp words that passed between them and my mother and the hurt in Mom’s eyes whenever we left their enormous farm and returned to our small apartment across town.
Mom came home dressed in a sleeveless polyester beaded dress with a sixties geometric design. She wore large gold-plated hoop earrings, an oversize rhinestone cuff bracelet, and platform wedge shoes. I took a deep breath.
“Do you want to borrow my cardigan?” I asked. “In case, you, um, get chilly?” It was ninety-seven degrees outside. Mom looked at me for a long minute. I tapped my foot nervously and wondered if ever there was a time when Mom redressed me in her mind. If when she pranced around the show lights of Vegas, she wished her daughter wasn’t afraid to wear fishnet stockings or zebra print. No, I thought, looking at her. She was nothing but proud of me. Enormous waves of shame crashed over me.
“Ready?” Mom asked.
I nodded. I followed her to our car and we drove the ten minutes across town in silence. We passed the entrance to Mia’s subdivision, with clusters of kids riding bikes and Big Wheels in the cul-de-sac, and then turned down Magnolia Drive. The houses grew farther apart, long stretches of green rolling pasture separating them. At the first sight of the familiar white split-rail fence, Mom took in a sharp breath. I reached over and put my hand on top of hers on the steering wheel, trying to calm her. But instead, my touch shocked her, jolted her out of some long-forgotten memory, and her hand jerked, pulling the steering wheel fast to the right and onto the shoulder of the road.
“Oh Jesus,” she said, hitting the brakes. Then she started laughing, the hysterical, maniacal laughing that only nerves can bring. I laughed too.
After a few minutes we regained our composure. She took a deep breath and put the car in drive. We pulled up the long, curving driveway to the stately white-columned house on top of the hill. She parked the car and just sat there for a minute, staring out at the chestnut-colored horse grazing on some hay.
I elbowed her gently. “Come on, Mom,” I said, afraid that she might sit there in the car all night.
We walked slowly up the stone walkway under the white arching branches of river birch trees. She pressed the doorbell and everything felt odd—ringing the doorbell at her parents’ home, the home she grew up in. I could never imagine seventeen years from now feeling like I couldn’t just barge in on my mom’s life.
The heavy double doors opened and there was Grandma, wearing a pale blue striped skirt and an ivory short-sleeved sweater. She wore pearl earrings, and her platinum hair was coiffed to chic perfection. “Willow!” she exclaimed, taking me into a hug and pressing me against her soft chest. She smelled sweet like a mixture of powder and flowery perfume. It felt like just yesterday that I had been in her arms. She pulled back and smiled. “How grown-up you’ve become,” she said. She held one of my hands then turned toward Mom. Her glassy hair moved in one shellacked swing. “Victoria,” she said tentatively.
“Hi Mom,” Mom said.
We stood there on the porch with the soft sound of crickets starting to chirp off in the distant woods. It felt stiff. Like a first date.
“Well, come in,” Grandma finally said. She led us through the foyer, closing the doors behind us, and into the formal living room, where overstuffed couches were adorned with matching decorative pillows and beautiful framed photographs artfully decorated the top of a glass table. I noticed all the pictures of my mother as an infant, a child, an adolescent, but none after that. Pictures of me in matching silver frames joined the others, making me feel special, documented. Mom never seemed to be organized enough to print out pictures off her digital camera, let alone frame and display them.
A shiny black grand piano sat adjacent to two sets of French doors. A spread of sheet music rested on the top of the piano as if just last night this room was flooded with joyful music and happily dancing and singing people. A flash of a memory snuck into my mind of me and Grandma and Grandpa, squeezed onto the slippery piano bench, the keys of the player piano automatically strumming Christmas carols as we sang along.
Adjacent to the living room, a large mahogany table was draped with a white linen tablecloth. Four places were neatly set with bone white china, two plates on each side facing each other and a large vase filled with fresh flowers in between. I looked over at Mom, easing herself down onto the couch painfully, as if it were made of needles instead of obviously expensive fabric, and wondered how she could have chosen to leave all this. How could Mom have felt so suffocated and strangled here when I, stepping into such order and tidiness, felt nothing but harmony?
Grandma took a seat on the ivory wing-backed chair and crossed her legs at the ankle. She gestured with a sway of her bony hand to the large, sweating pitcher of iced tea resting on a silver platter between us. “Some tea?” she offered.
“Is it sweetened?” Mom asked.
“No,” Grandma said and motioned towards two small ceramic containers. “There’s sugar and sweetener if you’d like.”
“Yes,” Mom said tightly. “You know I like my tea sweet. You know Willow likes her tea sweet. And I know you like your tea sweet. You could have just made sweet tea.”
My back prickled. Why was Mom getting so irritated?
“But,” Grandma responded tensely, “if you make sweet tea, you can’t take the sugar out. You can always add sugar.”
Mom exhaled loudly. “But if you know we all like sweet tea . . .”
I knew this wasn’t about the stupid tea. As always, it ran so much deeper. “Okay,” I said, clapping my hands. I was feeling a little desperate. We hadn’t been there for ten minutes. I reached over and poured three glasses of tea. I handed one to each Mom and Grandma. I added a teaspoon of sugar and took a sip. “Delicious,” I said loudly.
Grandma took the glass with a small nod of approval. “Thank you, Willow.” Mom gave a forced smile and I was ready to just stand up and say, Come on guys! You’re sorry, she’s sorry, everyone’s sorry. Let’s move past this rift so I can have grandparents again and we can be a normal family.
Everyone slipped into silence.
“Where’s Dad?” Mom asked, craning her neck to look toward the study.
“He’s not feeling well,” Grandma said, a concerned look falling over her face.
Mom got up and walked toward the study. I followed, stopping beside her at the entrance to the bookshelf-lined room. Propped in a cognac-colored leather club chair, Grandpa snored softly, his reading glasses dangling from his wrinkled hand. He looked like a fraction of the burly linebacker he once was. The Grandpa I remembered had mitts for hands and a fierce grip. He had broad shoulders and a thick neck, eyebrows that looked like bushy caterpillars. But this man was shrunken—shriveled, actually—a pathetic remnant of the man he used to be.
A gasp caught in my throat. Only seeing him now, seeing how sick he looked, made me realize how easily a relationship built on phone calls and letters could disguise the real truth.
Mom turned away, visibly upset by the sight of him and the undeniable evidence of how much time had passed. “He looks terrible,” she whispered to Grandma as we found ourselves back on the stiff living room couches. “Has he been in therapy since the stroke?”
Grandma nodded slightly. “Yes, physical therapy. It’s helping a little with mobility but doesn’t rea
lly help much with the pain. The doctors keep trying to pump him full of pills, but you know your father—he doesn’t like medicine.” She twisted her hands together in her lap.
“You know . . .” Mom seemed to perk up a bit. “I’ve been—”
“I heard you’re working at a doctor’s office,” Grandma interrupted, sounding pleased. “Word travels.” She winked at me. “It must be so nice to have your life on a regular schedule. No late nights, no shows on the weekends. Your mother can be around to attend any of your functions—cheerleading or tennis, whatever you chose to do. And of course I can be there too.”
“Willow doesn’t play tennis or cheerlead,” Mom answered, irritating me by interrupting my mental image of Mom and Grandma sitting in the bleachers next to Mia’s family. Of course in my mental playbook I’ve suddenly developed athletic skills.
“Well, I could,” I said. “I’ve never had the time to.” Mom looked like I’d just slapped her, but Grandma smiled and nodded approvingly.
“So.” She turned toward Mom. “What are you doing at the doctor’s office? Filing? Answering phones and making appointments? You know, I heard that you could take an online medical coding class and get certified in under a year. You should look into that, Victoria.”
Mom took a deep breath, closed her eyes momentarily then reopened them. “Actually, I’m using a technique called hypnotherapy to help people with chronic headache pain. And so far it really seems to be working. The patients are excited and seeing changes. I bet I could help Dad. . . .”
Grandma stood up and looked shocked. She lowered her voice. “I thought you gave that—that hypnosis up,” she said, looking on the verge of tears. “It’s ridiculous.”
“I know you never liked the idea of me doing the shows, but this is different. This is helping people! I have a patient who’s had chronic tension headaches for five years and now—”
Grandma sighed. “Just because you moved from the stage to an office doesn’t make it any less absurd. How do you think Willow feels when her friends find out about your hocus pocus nonsense?”
“It’s not nonsense!” Mom said, raising her voice. “And Willow wouldn’t have friends as judgmental as you. You’re so rigid and critical that you pushed your only daughter two thousand miles away.”
“I didn’t force you to leave.” Grandma said through a clenched jaw. She reached up and anxiously clutched at her pearl necklace.
“You criticized my clothes, my friends, my interests. You wrote an article for the Junior League on what to do when your daughter doesn’t live up to your expectations!”
My eyes bulged out. I never knew about that. I nestled down further into the couch and let their jabs volley over the top of me.
“No,” Grandma said, tears filling her eyes. “I asked how to help my daughter make better choices.”
“How was that supposed to make me feel, Mom? I’ll tell you: like I wasn’t the daughter you really wanted.”
“That’s not true!” Grandma cried.
“Why did you always try to control everything I did?” Mom asked. “Why didn’t you have faith in me?” She reached over, grabbed my hand, and pulled me up off the couch. “Come on. We’re going. Nothing’s changed.”
Inside my head I screamed, No, please, not again. Don’t leave. But I couldn’t make my mouth say the words. So I let Mom pull me through the house like a rag doll on a string. As she fumbled with the front door, Grandma took my other hand toward her and I stood there, literally the rope in a tug-of-war.
“You listen to me, Willow,” Grandma said to me, standing so close I could see the golden flecks in her brown eyes. “I don’t know what your mother has told you, but it was her decision to leave. I never wanted you to go so far away. Now that you’re back, if your mother still chooses to banish us from her life, well, I want you to know that it doesn’t have to include you. I’m just a phone call away. Just a short car ride away.” She reached up and touched my cheek. “I want a chance to be your grandmother. A chance to go to your school events. An opportunity to be there for you—not just in cards and phone calls.”
Mom flung the front door open and Grandma released my hand. I didn’t know what to do. Part of me wanted to say something to Grandma, to take her up on her offer of a relationship, but the other part of me felt swayed by loyalty to my mom. Just because Mom didn’t live her life as carefully constructed as Grandma, it didn’t make her a bad person. It didn’t make our life a bad life. But, that said, I knew what it felt like to warn Mom about our finances and still watch the credit card get denied.
I followed Mom down the porch steps and into the car without saying a word. I looked over my shoulder once and saw Grandma still standing on the porch, the double doors open behind her.
Mom cranked the ignition and sped down the long driveway, no dreamy lingering stares at the chestnut-colored horse this time.
As we pulled onto the road, Mom shifted into gear, accelerating the car way past the speed limit and mumbling under her breath, “Oh sure, she’ll be there for you. As long as it’s cheerleading or tennis or something that she approves of.”
I gripped the side of the car door and pulled my seat belt a little tighter. I felt bad for Mom, knowing this was not the reunion scene she’d hoped for. But I felt bad for Grandma and myself, too. Because all my future plans of Sunday afternoon chats on the porch swing with Grandma’s sweet iced tea and Scrabble games vanished like the white split-rail fence and green rolling pastures that disappeared in the distance behind us.
13
Saturday morning I wandered into the family room. Mom was wrapped up on the couch, drinking a cup of coffee and watching Dirty Dancing on TNT. Even though she’d seen the movie a thousand times at least, she couldn’t peel her eyes away as she motioned toward the kitchen. “There’re muffins on the counter,” she said.
I went to the counter and pulled a blueberry muffin from the grocery store bakery box. I wondered if things had gone better last night if we would have been over at Grandma’s—maybe sitting out on the veranda for brunch overlooking the grassy fields. But I glanced over and saw Mom, curled into a semi-fetal position, the hurt still visible in her eyes and decided it was okay, I liked blueberry muffins on the couch, too.
“Want to go to a movie today?” Mom asked during a commercial break.
“Oh, actually today I’m going to my friend Mia’s cheerleading competition. It’s at one.”
“You can take the car,” Mom said, staring vacantly at the TV. “I don’t have any plans.”
It was strange. In Vegas, Mom’s weekends were filled with dates and activities. But apparently it wasn’t as easy to meet available men working at a doctor’s office. And now we lived in a quiet neighborhood of families instead of an apartment complex filled with eccentric singles.
“Thanks,” I said. “But Max is picking me up.”
She smiled. “Okay.” She fiddled with the edges of the soft blanket. “Cheerleading competition, eh? Wouldn’t Grandma love that?”
I didn’t know what to say. I felt somehow disloyal—like there was another thing that Grandma and I had in common. But it wasn’t like I could say, I’m going because I need to see if my hypnosis worked. Mom would freak if she knew I did that. So I just shrugged. “Yeah, weird, huh? Everyone here is really into school spirit and the sports teams.”
“Well, have fun,” she said with a smile, and we left it at that.
When Max picked me up, he was looking especially good in a black T-shirt with a white Beatles logo ironed across the chest. His blue eyes popped and his black hair had started to grow in. The whole visual just looked perfect.
“Like your shirt,” I said, and he instantly grinned.
“So you do know some music outside your Top 40.”
“Come on.” I laughed. “It’s the Beatles. Everyone knows the Beatles.”
He gave me a skeptical look. “Hey, all I’ve ever heard in the background on the phone was Cher.”
“Not my fault.” I
smiled. “And that was only in Vegas.”
He nodded and started the truck. “Still, it’s nice to know you have some basic knowledge of music legend.” He smiled and I got the sneaking suspicion that he had handpicked that shirt to provoke me. It gave me a total thrill. “So,” he continued. “I have something for you.” He reached into the backseat while barreling down the road, paying no attention to the mailboxes he kept almost skimming. “Here.” He tossed a CD case into my lap and re-gripped the steering wheel.
It was a plain silver CD in a clear plastic case—no labels, no markings. “What’s this?” I asked.
He accelerated onto Main Street and cranked the radio. “It’s something”—he looked over at the CD in my lap—“I . . . made for you. I thought you might like it.”
He made me a mix CD, I thought. Isn’t that something you do for someone you’re into? I felt warmth spread through my veins. “Hey,” I said, noticing that we were headed toward school. “Aren’t we picking up Minnie?”
“Nah, she has to help her parents at the restaurant for lunch. She’ll come later.”
Just me and Max. Alone on a weekend. A mix CD just for me. This had to be more than just friend behavior. A smile engraved itself across my face.
The auditorium was filled with students, teachers, and families, all chatting excitedly with their eyes trained on the large navy blue mats that covered the hard floors. I was surprised by how many nonstudents were there, outfitted in the crimson and gold school colors, but Max informed me that our cheerleading squad was really good. They had advanced to the state finals last year. People were always excited to watch them compete.
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