Her Hometown Girl

by Lorelie Brown

  The café is cute. The counter is wood topped with white, and the floors are a dark maple. The chairs are a mishmash of unmatched origins, but the tables are pretty much all the same. A large blackboard announces the daily specials—with a high emphasis on sandwiches and omelets—and that they proudly serve one hundred percent Kona coffee. There’s even bulletproof coffee on the list, which I find kind of surprising for some reason. Through an open archway, I see a room that looks like someone’s living room, except it’s got multiple comfy chairs instead of couches. A big TV is turned to the Food Network.

  When we walk in, there’s no one at the counter, but a guy immediately hops up from the back room and hustles out to meet us.

  “Hi, Ethel,” he says. He’s kind of chunky, with a receding hairline even though he doesn’t seem that old. “Want your usual red-eye?”

  “Not today, sweetheart. Give me a dirty chai with coconut milk.”

  I double take. Sweet old ladies are supposed to order … I don’t know, regular coffees that they add plenty of milk and sugar to. She sees me looking and smirks while Tansy orders a mocha. She had seemed like a standard grandma at dinner the other night.

  “Up you go,” she says, shooing me to take my turn. “This place’ll put a shine on any of those Starbucks you’ve got in the big cities, just you see. Order anything you want. Nicky’ll have it.”

  I tuck away the first smile I’ve felt since Beth’s revelation this morning. “A large latte with vanilla and cinnamon?”

  “Powder or syrup?”

  “Syrup. And soy milk.”

  “One horchata latte coming right up,” he says with a smirk that matches Ethel’s. “Got it. Any food for you guys?”

  I laugh, letting my guard down. “Okay, how’d you know that one?”

  “We’ve got Hispanic people in town,” Ethel says. She wags a finger at me. “Don’t judge us and we won’t judge you. Okay?”

  “Plus I do have Pinterest,” Nicky pipes up. He takes oversized mugs from a shelf beneath the syrups and starts zipping around the espresso machine. The steaming milk is a comforting buzz.

  “I make sure all my baristas stay up on the latest.” Ethel sniffs and takes the mug Nicky hands her. It’s shaped like a panda head. I kind of wish I’d gotten that one.

  “This is Nanna’s place,” Tansy says in response to my confused look. “It’s been a coffee shop since she moved to Idaho.”

  “Back in 1966, that was.” She leads the way to the back room, where she takes the remote from the box that’s labeled Do Not Touch. Guess if you own the place, you’re the one who sets those rules. “It was different then. Had just a coffeepot and some homemade brownies.”

  I open my mouth, suddenly wondering exactly what kind of brownies she was serving in the mid-sixties. I glance at Tansy, wanting guidance, but suddenly I realize that she’s still doing that seeing-not-seeing thing. Motherfucker. The wide plank flooring falls away beneath me. “Was it still here? In this building?”

  “Sure, sure.” She settles into a pink chair that looks soft, but not squishy enough that it’ll eat her alive. I know old people have a hard time getting out of furniture sometimes. “Tansy’s great-grandfather owned it. When I married his son Harold, I told Harold I wasn’t going to be your average housewife. I didn’t want to leave Chicago, and if I was going to for him, he had to give me something to do. And here we are.” She waves a hand to encompass the building.

  The place suddenly seems stiflingly hot. Stripping off my coat makes it somewhat better. Tansy curls up in her chair, tucking her feet under her butt. “I used to come here after school a couple times a week.”

  “That’s because you used Kim as a math tutor when she was supposed to be working for me.”

  “You didn’t mind,” Tansy says serenely, then sips her mocha. She’d gotten an Alice in Wonderland mug assigned to her, and the Cheshire cat’s grin leers at me.

  My latte is perfect, even if it’s served in a Don’t be a salty bitch mug, with a drawing of the Morton’s salt girl. I’m choosing to believe it’s not a dig at me. I guess.

  “I was hoping it’d remind Kim that she had a brain.” Ethel shakes her head. “Shouldn’t have gone chasing after that Reynolds boy. She’d have been better off on her own, even with their daughter.”

  “Sometimes I think you don’t believe in marriage, Nanna.”

  “It’s a fine enough thing for some people,” she says. “Others, not so much. I was always the marrying kind.”

  “Did you and Harold have a good marriage?” I ask. It’s hard to hold up my end of the conversation when even innocent questions like this are filled with layers. Tansy still isn’t looking at me. I turn my mug around in my hands so that Salty Bitch is pointed at me.

  “Pretty good. He was a nice man.” She smiles wistfully. “Always remembered the important days and picked wildflowers for me. I’d have probably married my first girlfriend if I’d had the opportunity, though.”

  Tansy chokes on mocha and has to cover her mouth with her hand. “Nanna!”

  “What?” Her eyebrows lift. She’s proud of blowing our minds, I think. “You don’t think lesbians these days have the market cornered, do you?”

  I try to imagine what Ethel would have looked like in the mid-sixties. Maybe something like Tansy? I can’t quite picture it. I look down at the swirly top of my latte. Let Tansy deal with this one.

  “No, Nanna. But … you married Grandpa.”

  “I believe you younguns call it bisexuality.” She nestles into her seat. “Big cities don’t have a monopoly on everything. Or anything, for that matter.”

  I’m dying of laughter. “Tell us about the girl you’d have married.”

  “We went to secretarial school together. Very sweet girl who still lived at home with four brothers, and she was the baby of the family. Her name was Tansy,” Ethel says, and Tansy absolutely collapses. She has to set her coffee cup on a table, she’s laughing so hard.

  She puts her hands on her head as if she’s holding in her brains. Her eyes scrunch up as she giggles. “Oh my god, you’re kidding right? Mom named me!”

  “She liked Tansy very much.”

  Tansy gasps. “She knew? They’d met?”

  “Well, I can’t as much say as she knew.” Ethel taps a finger on her jaw as if she’s trying to remember. “Tansy came for a few visits through the years. She became a secretary for a VP at one of the car companies out of Detroit. Never married, so she traveled a lot. Always used to take your mom out to the movies.”

  “Did grandpa know?”

  “Sure, sure, he did. I was always honest with him about my life before him. Just the same as he told me about the girl down in Idaho Falls who he knocked up.”

  Tansy claps her hands over her ears. “Nope. I’m done here.” She drops her hands and looks at Ethel. “Wait, do I have an aunt or uncle out there somewhere?”

  “I’m afraid not.” Ethel shakes her head. “The girl miscarried. Her and Harold’s relationship didn’t survive the difficulty, which I suppose is for the best. There’s a lot of stuff that has to be weathered in a good marriage. It’s not all hot cocoa on the porch and wild sex when the kids leave the house.”

  Good lord, this lady is a hoot. Tansy is blushing so hard that her skin is positively splotchy. I smother my own laughter. “That part sounds like a good time.”

  “You can make a good life in this town,” she says pointedly.

  She’s on team Stay in Idaho, I guess. I should have expected that. I’m sure all Tansy’s family wants her to move home, and why shouldn’t they? Her presence makes my life shinier. They must miss her.

  That still doesn’t mean I intend to give her up.

  Unless I don’t have a choice. Unless it’s better that she’s free.

  I stare into the bottom of my cup as if I can use the last dregs of foam like tea leaves and read my future. There’s never been a brash choice that I’ve passed up, but not all of them have worked out perfectly. On rainy days, my el
bow throbs to remind me—it hasn’t healed right since the fall I took in Guatemala, hiking up the side of Pacaya. Literally breaking my ulna had been worth it to be able to see three volcanoes at once.

  I didn’t get singed then. I might be burned to ash now. It’s the honorable thing to do, letting Tansy go. Holding on to her would be almost cruel, especially after the promises I made in the beginning. I told her that I wasn’t a permanent kind of woman, and that she shouldn’t rely on me for forever. Those words came out of my mouth. I even said them in a far more rational time than when I said that I love her.

  How do I even know what love is? If I truly love her, I should want what’s best for the life she’s meant to live. And I do. I really do. She fits this town, this countryside. She stood out in California because she’s never lost the sweet innocence that came with living in a town where everyone loves her. Hell, no wonder she was ripe pickings for that bitch of an ex. She must have taken absolutely everything Jody said at face value.

  Just like she takes everything I say at face value. She doesn’t realize that I made my declaration in the throes of passion. It’s probably not a real emotion. One day she’ll wake up and realize that I’ve unfairly tied her to me and dragged her back to SoCal and she’ll start to resent me. Nothing could survive that.

  If Tansy ever came to despise me, I don’t think I’d be able to go on.

  I can’t let that happen.

  Tansy

  Cai is weird as heck for the rest of the day. We take Nanna back to her apartment and go in for a while. Nanna first shows off my baby pictures—which is part of why I’d never pushed Jody to visit. Wherever I go, I get treated to trips down memory lane. They’re a blast for me, of course, but it’s like I have Jody’s ghost sitting next to me and rolling her eyes.

  It makes me prickly. I keep checking in with Cai, who says everything’s fine. She asks Nanna about different pictures, things like what it takes to get a blue ribbon in barrel racing and what 4-H stands for. She was sad earlier, and that’s still there, lurking like a wolf beneath her words, but it’s different now. She’s sad and … wistful?

  “It’s getting late,” I say, and it’s kind of true. The sun is going down, at least. This ought to be late for an eighty-one-year-old woman.

  “Just a minute, just a minute. I’m almost done with you.” When Nanna disappears into her bedroom and reemerges with a photo album I’ve never seen before, I don’t like the direction this is going. “This one I keep in my nightstand.”

  She’s going to tell me it’s got pictures of her being a stripper or cavorting on a nudist colony or something, and I’m simply not going to be able to handle it. I always knew Nanna was quirky. She did some of the same thing as other grandmothers in town, like baking really great cookies for the softball team bake sales. But in addition to running the café, she also collected rents from the other shops in the building and from the set of apartments she bought in the eighties. Everyone knew she was a firm businesswoman. I always admired that about her.

  I keep my hands folded in my lap and my spine rigidly upright. I go for totally noncommittal. “Oh yeah?”

  “I’m not showing you everything in here either.” She’s holding the leather-bound album between both hands as she sits in her favorite chair. At her elbow is a small table covered with a white doily she crocheted. Four pill bottles are lined up in a row next to a potted ficus. She flips through the book and draws out a photograph.

  “Here you go,” she says as she passes it over.

  Cai gets it first since she’s sitting closest. “Is this you?”

  Nanna nods. Her eyes are twinkling and her cheeks are rounded by her smile. “It certainly is.”

  I lean toward Cai only so that I can see the picture. The woman in it is wearing capri-length black slacks with a boat-neck blouse. She’s in profile, looking at the guy next to her, and her super short curls give her the look of a pale Audrey Hepburn. They’re standing on rough-hewn steps in front of a doorway. “Nanna, were you a beatnik?”

  “For a little bit. It turns out that I like having hot water more than I like living ‘the authentic life.’ Recognize anyone else?”

  The guy is handsome enough, with a strong nose and a decent mouth. He’s wearing a plain white T-shirt that could be from any time, but the sharply parted hair is pretty old-fashioned. “That doesn’t look like Grandpa.”

  “Is that …?” Cai looks up at Nanna, her jaw gaping. “Is that Jack Kerouac?”

  “Such a dish. Such a thinker.” She shrugs, and the kittens on her sweatshirt look like their high fives actually connect. “So crazy too, but what can you do?”

  “You’re badass,” Cai says, and I flap a hand at her to shush her, but Nanna is eating it up. “Nah, Tansy. Can’t hide it. Your grandmother was a wild child.”

  “Like recognizes like, don’t it, girl?” The finger she points at Cai is gnarled and the knuckles thick with arthritis.

  Cai leans back in her chair, folding her arms over her chest. Her long-sleeved T-shirt is shoved up to the elbows, and the position shows off her tattoos. When she narrows her eyes, I shiver a little bit—in a good way. She bares her teeth in a smile that verges on feral. “That mean you want to go out for a night on the town?”

  “Not tonight.” Nanna stands, and Cai and I both take it as our cue to stand as well. “You two should go now. It’s getting dark.”

  I look out the window, and I’m surprised that she’s right. Time got away from us. “That snuck up on me.”

  “Days are getting shorter. Happens when you’re this far north.”

  Is she warning me? Just making conversation? I don’t know how to put my thoughts together, much less dig through her words for deep meaning. When I hug her, it’s like holding a tween. She’s so tiny. If I moved back home, I could take her out to dinner regularly. She has a standing invitation to Mom’s house, but she only ever goes about once a week. Something about not wanting to interfere in her daughter’s life, but I think it’s more about liking her own space as well. Nanna has always been an independent soul.

  In Cai’s rental SUV, I stare out the window as she drives the couple of blocks back to the motel. Salmon is so small. Everyone’s taken me back with open arms. I missed them. I missed absolutely everyone, all the way down to Mitch and Eddie this morning.

  Eddie once threw a wad of paper at me in health class because he’d resented being forced to partner with me for tennis in phys ed. I’ve got to be delusional for how much I like everyone, right? Maybe I’m coloring it all with the exhilarating freedom of actually being able to talk to whomever I feel like. If it had been Jody with me this morning …

  But it hadn’t been. It was Cai.

  I reach across the console and touch her thigh. Through her thick denim, it’s not much of a stroke, but I take it. “Have you checked in to your flight?”

  “I will later. I’m barely under twenty-four hours, and I’m pretty flexible about seats. Don’t care what I get.”

  Because that’s Cai. Laid-back when it counts. She turns the corner into the motel. A new layer of orange and red and brown leaves has fallen across the parking lot. They rustle underfoot when I get out and follow Cai to her room.

  She has to lean toward the orange-hued porch light to find which way to put the key in. Night has snuck up on us on silent feet.

  I lean against her back. She’s layered with sleek muscle, enough that I feel like she could hold me up forever. But that’s not fair to her.

  I have to learn to stand on my own.

  She flips the switch next to the door, which lights only the lamp between the beds, and then she stands beside the TV. She looks … different. It’s not angry and it’s not lost.

  I hate that I don’t know her every mood. As much as I want to stay in Idaho, I want the chance to know Cai.

  “I should pack,” she says.

  “Probably,” I agree.

  Neither of us moves. She stares into space. I stare at her. I rub my upper arms, tryi
ng to fend off a cold that comes from inside.

  “Do you think you’ll finish out the school year in California, or will you come back here immediately?”

  “Maybe at winter break.” I step toward Cai, one hand out, but even though she doesn’t seem to be looking at me, she jerks away.

  “Have you thought this through?” She drops her brown coat on the room’s only chair.

  “Some.” I run a hand up into my hair, scratching my skull above my neck. I pull first, then twist tight. It’s a counterbalance to my tumultuous thoughts, but it’s not the same as what Cai gives me. “I know this probably seems impulsive, but it’s different than running off to somewhere I’ve never been.”

  “I think maybe you were supposed to be here all along,” Cai says hoarsely. I wanted her to look at me, but when she finally does, it’s like I’ve been slapped with her pain. Her eyes are dark, but it’s the shadows underneath them that look like a wraith is clawing her. “You’re a small-town girl. Jody kept you from visiting because she knew she’d lose you.”

  The air is completely sucked out of me. I make a noise that could have come from an animal. Wrapping both my arms around my waist doesn’t feel like it’ll keep my emotions from vibrating away from me.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “It’s true. God, it’s so true.” I can tell because of how desperately I now want to hide. I’m so exposed, and I cover it with a little laugh. “I’m mostly really freaking impressed that you figured it out.”

  The smile she manages to produce carves deeper the lines that fan from the corners of her mouth. “Not much of a magic trick.”

  Cai and I are standing on the edge of two separate cliffs and trying to reach each other across the abyss. “Is this goodbye?”