Close to the Broken Hearted (29 page)

T
wo days after my mother solved the Sylvie Carson incident, Ethan Montgomery gave her a week off work. She decided we would use the first day of this time off to finally make the trip up to Georgia to meet my new grandparents. In the end, my mother didn't have to worry: Carry was just as excited about meeting them as I was.

At least at
first
she appeared to be. Then the long drive got to Carry and, about an hour and a half in, she started complaining about her legs being cramped and having to go to the bathroom. We must've stopped four times on account of things wrong with Carry, but eventually we got to Columbus.

My new grandparents lived in a pretty, one-level house with a nice lawn and well-kept gardens. The windows all had boxes full of flowers. Everything was blossoming or full bloom, making it not only look like the kind of house you see in fairy tales, but it also made the air sweet, too.

It was late afternoon when we arrived and the sun was slamming down like a hammer striking an anvil. I don't know that I ever felt the sun as hot as I did that day. It reflected so brightly off the yellow siding of my grandparents' house that it looked like they lived on the sun.

Their door was white, and under the afternoon sky, it was the brightest white I could ever imagine. The grass was trimmed perfectly and felt lush and green beneath my new sneakers as we walked to the door. I couldn't believe how excited I was to be meeting blood relatives I didn't know I even had barely a month and a half ago. Especially relatives on my pa's side.

My mother opened the screen door and knocked on the white wooden one behind it. I examined the house, wondering how often they painted it, on account of everything looking so brand-new. A few seconds later, a tall man with thinning white hair and black-rimmed glasses answered.

The minute he saw us, a big, toothy smile came to his mouth. “Why, I know you. You're Abe! And you're Carry! I'd know you two anywhere!” he said. And then to my mother, he held out his hand. “And you must be Miss Leah. It's a pleasure to meet you and I sincerely want to thank you for taking the time to make the trip out.” The sun glittered in his glasses.

My mother shook his hand. She smiled back, but not with nearly as big a smile as my granddaddy was beaming at her. I wished hers was bigger.

“Come in! Come in! Sure is nice outside, though. But the air is so dry. It's drier today than happy hour at the Betty Ford Clinic.”

I looked at my mom to see what he meant.

“Just go inside,” she whispered.

We piled into the house and began taking off our shoes when he stopped us. “Leave 'em on. Everybody does round here. Come on, your grandma's anxious to meet you!” He took us through the living room and down a hallway into a smaller room that reminded me of the parlor at Reverend Starks's house, only this room was bigger and had a television. A woman sat in a rocking chair in the corner knitting. The minute we walked in she beamed at all of us. Then she stood and gave us all hugs. “Oh, I'm so glad you came! Little Abe! And Carry! And Miss Leah!”

She took a step back. “Well, let me take a look at you.”

Awkwardly, me and Carry stood there, not certain what we were supposed to do. I felt like maybe I should do a twirl for her or something. Then she said, “I'm your grandma Sara. That there is your grandpa Jeremiah.” She shook her head at me. “Oh, boy, do you ever look like your daddy. Don't you think he looks like his daddy, Jer?”

I gave a broad smile back. Nobody'd ever told me I looked like my pa before. That made me very happy. “Have a seat,” my grandma Sara said, gesturing to the davenport and chairs around the room. She sat back in her rocker. “Grandpa Jer will put on a pot of coffee.”

Looking to my mother, I got the slightest of nods from her. I was allowed to drink coffee, but only on special occasions. I guessed this must've counted as one of those special occasions.

Me and Carry sat on the davenport. My mother appeared very uncomfortable, looking at all the pictures in the room. “Are you hungry?” Grandma Sara asked us. When she spoke, she did so louder than she should've, almost like she was yelling everything at us.

“No,” I said back. “Carry made us stop for lunch.” I paused and added, “Almost twice.” Then, after another pause, I said, “And two more times so she could go to the toilet.”

Grandma Sara laughed and slapped her knee. Carry just glared at me. She was keeping remarkably quiet.

Grandpa Jeremiah came back in and told us the coffee'd be ready soon. “The pot's on the blink,” he said. “You gotta work with it. I had to go round my elbow to get to my thumb.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. I looked at Carry, but she just looked back blankly.

“We were so surprised when Addison told us you'd talked to her,” Grandpa Jeremiah told my mother. “We had no idea she had planned to come down and set this up. It was one of the nicest things she's ever done for us.”

“Can I ask you somethin'?” my mother asked him.

“Certainly.”

“Well, you two were at Billy's funeral—that's where you apparently met my pa—how come Addison never came to the funeral?”

I saw Grandpa Jeremiah cast a nervous glance at Grandma Sara. “Well . . . that's a bit of a story.”

“We have time,” my mother said, which I thought was quite rude of her. He obviously didn't want to talk about it.

“She was up in Boston.”

“I know. That was gonna be my next question: How come she lives in Boston and y'all is way down here in Georgia?”

Grandpa Jeremiah's gaze dropped to the floor. “We sent her to Boston when she was seventeen on account of she got involved with a bad group of kids. Got hooked on all kinds of things. You know—drugs and that. So, when Billy passed away, she was up there in one of them rehabilitation clinics. We was too worried if we let her out for the funeral she might have one of them relapses.”

My mother was clearly taken aback by this news. “Oh, I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have pried.”

“No, it's fine. It's probably best that you know.”

“Is she still . . . ?”

“No, she's been clean now goin' on . . . well, Abe's what? Eleven?”

“I'm twelve,” I said.

“Oh, I'm sorry. Of course, you are twelve. And you was two when Billy died. So she's been clean near on eleven years.”

“That's fantastic!” my mother said. “Good for her. You must be very proud. She stays up in Boston because she likes it up there, then?”

“She's built herself a life up there. She's got friends and a husband. She's workin' on startin' a family of her own. She comes down to see us often enough, I suppose. Calls at least twice a week.”

“I see.” My mother fell silent again. She still hadn't sat down. She seemed captivated by some pictures they had displayed in frames, sitting on top of the cabinet that held the television. I looked harder and realized they were pictures of me and Carry. “You got these from my pa?” she asked.

Grandpa Jeremiah gave Grandma Sara another quick glance before answering. “That's right. Your pa was a good man. He sent us lots of pictures so we could see our grandchildren grow. Sure missed him when he went.”

My mother picked up a picture of a young man in a T-shirt. He had blond hair and did sort of look a bit like me, so I figured it must be my pa. “Yeah,” she said, sounding very far away. “Me too.”

Grandpa Jeremiah came up behind her. He looked over the top of his glasses at the photograph. “Billy'd have been 'bout, oh, fifteen or so when that was taken, I reckon,” he said. “Always wanted to be a rock star.”

Grandma Sara laughed. “A singer!” she said. “Can you believe it? That boy couldn't carry a tune if he had it in a bucket with a lid on it! But oh, he tried.”

“Did he ever sing for you, Mom?” Carry asked.

“He tried.”

I wished I could have heard him sing.

My mother picked up another picture of my pa. This time it was one of him and a girl. The girl didn't look like my mother. Grandpa Jeremiah lifted his glasses above his eyes and got a better look at it. “Oh, I remember her. Girl was a few crayons short of a complete rainbow, if you ask me.” He laughed. When he laughed his voice broke up and he sounded much older than when he spoke.

“Better go check on the coffee, dear,” Grandma Sara said.

Grandpa Jeremiah left and she added, “Good thing that man has me. He couldn't find his own ass with both hands stuck inside his pockets.” Her eyes cut to me and she quickly covered her mouth. “Oh, I'm sorry. I guess I should've said rear end.”

“It's okay,” I said. “I know the word
ass
.”

“Hey,” my mother said. “Language.”

“I was just pointin' somethin' out.”

“I don't care.”

Grandpa Jeremiah returned with the coffee. By the time he'd poured five mugs and we'd started drinking it, everyone seemed much more relaxed, even my mother. She'd stopped curiously looking at pictures and taken a seat in one of the chairs. I discovered my grandpa Jeremiah had a fondness for talking about his son, and, in the next hour, I learned more about my pa then I ever knew the entire time I'd been alive. I was even getting used to the funny way both my grandparents talked.

We found out that my pa used to like to sneak out and then make up stories to cover his tracks, but my grandpa always found out the truth. “I'd tell him, ‘That dog don't hunt,' ” he said. “But he'd try it again and again, thinkin' each time he could pull the wool down over my eyes.” He turned to me. “Back then his elevator was stuck on the second floor.”

“Yeah,” my grandmother said, “but he had a knack for fallin' into a barrel full of crap and comin' out smellin' just like a rose.”

“That's only on account of you let him get away with so much.”

“I most certainly did not,” my grandma said. “He would get into one of his angry moods and I'd tell him, ‘Well, you can just go and get glad the same way you got mad or you can just die.' ”

When she said that, the room went silent. She brought her hand to her mouth. “Oh, I'm sorry... ,” she said, trailing off. “I didn't mean . . .”

Everyone looked at my mother, who seemed to not even notice what had been said. Then she realized everyone was looking at her. “Oh, hey, it's fine. Seriously.” She laughed. “It's just a figure of speech, right?”

My grandpa pointed at her. “See? This is why I've always liked you. You were always best for my Billy. You kept him out of trouble. You were the one who'd say, ‘My cow died last night, mister, so I don't need your bull.' ”

There was a pocket of silence, finally broken by my mother.

“How do you know what I would say?”

“What's that?” Grandpa Jeremiah asked.

“How do you know what I would say? Billy never saw you after him and me started goin' out.”

Grandma Sara laughed. “Of course he did. He kept dropping by right up until a few weeks before your weddin'. Then Jeremiah and him had that fight. We should've seen it comin'. After Billy met you, it was like he was a new man. He used to fight with us constantly. Wasn't a week went by that Billy and his daddy didn't almost come to fisticuffs. I think once they actually did, but Jeremiah refuses to tell me the truth.”

“I've told you the truth,” Jeremiah mumbled. “You just refuse to believe it.”

“But then you came along and everythin' seemed to change.” She paused and then asked my mother quietly, “Didn't you know this?”

My mother shook her head. “Until Addison met my boy in the street, I didn't really know y'all existed. Billy hardly ever talked 'bout you.”

Both my new grandparents just shook their heads slowly and sipped their coffee. “Ain't that just like Billy,” my grandpa Jeremiah finally said.

“What do you mean?” my mother asked.

“Ain't nobody gonna mess all over him and call it apple butter,” my grandma answered.

“I—I don't understand.”

“Billy blamed me,” my grandpa said. “For the way he was. On account of he could get violent. In fact, it's amazing he never had no run-ins with the police, but he got lucky.”

“I never knew Billy to be violent,” my mother said.

“That's probably why you never heard 'bout his family. In Billy's mind, his family was the cause of his violent tendencies. If he don't tell you 'bout them and leaves 'em out of your relationship, the violence stays away, too.”

My mother looked like she was a deer caught in a trucker's headlamps. “But—if that's true . . . then . . . it worked.”

“The mind is a funny thing,” my grandpa said.

“And a tragic one,” my grandma added. She kept studying me and Carry sitting on the davenport. I realized Carry hadn't spoken much at all, even though I hadn't really either. “And we've missed so much.”

“Thank the Lord Jesus we met your daddy,” Grandpa Jeremiah said to my mother.

There was more conversation, most of it filled with funny phrases from my new grandparents, and there was a lot of laughs. Even my mother laughed. It had been a long time since I'd heard her laugh, and I was happy to witness it again. We wound up staying for homemade jambalaya that was really good and for dessert Grandma Sara pulled a freshly baked pecan pie out of the oven. Nothing ever tasted as good as that pie.

When we finally said good night and headed home, it was nearly nighttime. The first stars had begun to peek out of the sky around a full moon that was rising low in the east.

“We're awfully glad you came out to see us,” Grandpa Jeremiah said at the porch, after hugging each of us and shaking my hand.

Grandma Sara hugged us all, too. “Please come by anytime. Or maybe we can make the trip out your way. We'll see you again, good Lord willin', and the creek don't rise.”