Summer Snow (6 page)

Finally, Grandma cleared her throat and said thinly, evenly, “Hello, Janice.”

Janice inclined her head and, contrary to my estimations of her, gave my grandmother a solemn, contrite nod. “Hello, Nellie,” she whispered in a voice that at the very least sounded respectful. It was a little token—an offering, maybe—to begin to repay the lifetime of debt she owed her ex-mother-in-law.

I swept automatically back to Grandma and tried to read her expression. Her eyes were great brown pools in the darkness, deep and bottomless and unsearchable. I couldn't begin to discern what she was feeling. Loathing, anger, resentment? Fear possibly? Regret? Whatever she was experiencing, my infinitely long-suffering and perpetually sweet-hearted grandmother was as implacable as chiseled granite.

There were a few beats of silence and Janice shrunk even more. Grandma cut a sharp shadow in the halo of porch light, and her outline seemed to carry with it an almost tangible presence. Janice would not look up, and though I felt slightly vindicated, something in me flashed quickly with unexpected compassion. I forced the feeling deep beneath my rising anger.

The weight of the stillness compelled Janice to try to explain. She started, “I'm sorry, Nellie. I should have—”

“What are you doing here?” Grandma interrupted. While her words were harsh, her voice was surprisingly not.

Janice looked taken aback. “Well, I … I just thought …” She stumbled painfully over her words. Glancing at me and then back to Grandma before returning her attention to her feet, she tried again. “I just wanted to see Julia,” she confessed almost inaudibly. “I saw her in the grocery store and—”

“You knew it was me?” I croaked. My unused voice sounded hollow to me and very, very far away.

Janice tore her gaze from the ground to square me in her vision and bravely admitted, “Not at first.” She addressed me alone, leaving Grandma outside the borders of her confession as though she knew I would soften to her pleas.

I hardened my face for her, tried to prove I could not be so easily won.

“I suspected it was you,” she continued, “so I came back a few times and watched you when you weren't looking. I followed you home once or twice.”

A shudder passed through me—a shiver of pure shock—at the realization that I had been spied on without my knowledge. Janice had sought me out, followed and tracked me as though I were some rare, exotic bird and she was trying to catch a glimpse. My face warmed even as my skin quivered.
Why? Why now, after all these years?

I couldn't help but gape at the woman who had once been my mother. I remembered every cold and callous word. I remembered how she took up space in our home without ever actually being there for us. I remembered the way the engine of her car revved as she drove away for the very last time. I wanted to cling to those things. I wanted to hate her.

But now, amid the disgust, the disillusionment, all the evidence of her guilt, there was something much like hope that threatened to rise to the surface. Somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind there was a preserved moment that inched its way into my consciousness. I remembered a forgotten morning.

A stolen hour.

I couldn't have been much older than five when I crawled into bed with Janice one lazy summer morning. For some reason, we were alone in the house—or at least alone in the closet-size master bedroom—and she was still mostly asleep in her overblanketed and sagging bed. One arm was draped thoughtlessly over her eyes to block out the sunrise streaming in through the window. Her skin looked soft and the freckles on her forearm were little sprinklings of color. I remembered standing by the bed and watching the yellow light make her hair glow. And then, because she was asleep and because I wanted to be close to her, I carefully peeled back the smooth white sheet and climbed in beside her.

Just thinking of it made my heart thump in a frantic echo of what it must have done all those years ago. I breathed shallowly, aware of the steam from my slightly parted lips, and was afraid for the child I had been. But on that sunny morning, I had been cautious. I had moved slowly. She hadn't stirred when I curled myself beside her. I recalled pulling my knees up to my chest and lying there with my back pressed lightly against her cool arm. I listened to her sigh in her sleep.

When she rolled over, I squeezed my eyes shut, pretended to be asleep as I waited for the groggy reprimand. But instead of hearing annoyance in her voice, I felt her arm slide around me. She curved herself along the length of my child body and rested her cheek against my head. She murmured something about the smell of my hair, then tightened her grip so that I was enveloped by her.

She was probably sleeping. It had most likely been pure instinct— an impulse born of thousands of years of genetic code—not an intentional act of tenderness.

But I remembered it.

And it made me illogically, uncontrollably angry.

Though it had been silent between us for only a moment or two, I longed to fill the empty space with ruthless words. I instantly distrusted her motives; it struck me that she had not yet explained why she was here at all. She probably needed money or a place to stay—or both. The thought made me sick. Any small hope I had, any childish flame of desire for a present, loving mother, was extinguished.

We stood, a trio of women like the points of a misshapen triangle, and I could feel the pull in each direction. It was an impossible situation. Janice was right; she never should have come. There was nothing that could possibly be said to erase the past ten years and make everything okay for either generation. Even if my estranged so-called mom could explain away her abandonment of me, there was still the issue of my father, her husband, Grandma's only son. Never mind the years without contact, the offensive indifference to my father's death, and her sudden, seemingly self-indulgent appearance at the least likely time. It was all too much. Nothing could fix what had been broken here.

“You need to leave, Janice.” I tried to say the words unemotionally, but my voice betrayed the depth of my feelings.

Janice looked as if I had slapped her.

“Julia,” Grandma said, and I was stunned to hear the firmness in her voice, “I think we need to—”

“No, Nellie,” Janice cut in. “She's right. I'm going. I apologize for coming. I should have … I should have called … or …” She trailed off, raising her hands in supplication or maybe in defeat. I felt no sympathy for her.

Janice didn't turn as she left but continued to recede slowly as if unable to tear her gaze away from me until the absolute last possible minute. It made me queasy. I spared her a sappy good-bye and turned my back on her, sweeping past Grandma so I could retreat into the sanctuary of the house. But then two things happened at once and my refuge was deferred—if not forever destroyed.

First, Grandma grabbed my arm and held on with all the jurisdiction of an infuriated parent. I would have been stunned but for the second thing that happened: Janice's car door opened and a little voice called from inside, “Hey, I'm hungry!”

When I turned, he was standing in the doorframe of the car, gripping the top ledge of the window with mitten-clad hands. I could make out glossy brown hair beneath his rainbow stocking cap and matching dark eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. They were slightly crooked on his petite, sloped nose. He brought his mitten to his face and pushed the glasses up, wrinkling his nose in the process and sniffling. His eyes seemed maybe a bit older, but his small stature disclosed that he could not have been a day over five.

Grandma and I surveyed him guardedly from the porch, still as though we had been frozen solid by the vicious wind. Suddenly I felt it—the wind. It was bitingly cold and growing in ferocity even as we watched the boy. Grandma let her hand drop, and I wrapped my arms around myself.

Janice had forgotten me. She was holding the child in her eyes with a look so tender and loving that I knew exactly what his next word would be.

“Mommy, are you almost done? I'm hungry.”

I didn't even blink.

Undone

H
E WAS A LITTLE
slip of a thing with cowlicks at the temples and glasses that were too big for his face. His skin was a creamy shade of milk chocolate, and his big brown eyes were nothing like my father's or grandmother's—they were exotic, lined with charcoal, densely lashed. At first I thought I had made a mistake. He was not my half brother. But then Janice gripped him under the arms and lifted him lightly to the ground. She pulled him beside her and wrapped herself around him so that only his furrowed brow peeked above her puffy coat. “I'd like you to meet my son,” she said, her voice a curious mixture of reticence and pride.

“Mom, I can't breathe!” the boy yelled, pushing her arms off and jumping a pace away.

I can't either
, I thought.

Grandma swallowed hard beside me. I reached for her blindly, hoping that facing him together would be easier than facing him alone. If he was my half brother, was he her half grandson? It changed the shape of the entire world. She was only a few feet away from me, but when I should have brushed up against her side, Grandma was gone. She had already taken a step toward the boy. I nearly stumbled over my own feet because I realized what she was doing. I had seen her do it a thousand times before.

Maybe it was because she had been a child immigrant—a little girl who spoke only Dutch in an English-speaking school, in a community that hadn't seen a family fresh off the boat for over a generation. Maybe it was because she had lived most of her hard life on the unpredictable prairie. Or maybe it was because she had lost much in her seventy-seven years. Whatever the reason, Grandma was an unequaled pro in the art of maintenance. When a situation threatened to tip off its axis and spin wildly out of control, Grandma laid aside her own feelings and best interests and simply
preserved
. She doled out great measures of peacekeeping control. She cooked or cleaned or talked, pushing through the crisis as if it were nothing out of the ordinary—nothing that couldn't be fixed with a mug of steaming coffee or a slice of freshly baked pie.

She would have that set look in her eye now. That determined, commanding, resolute look.

It hit me suddenly that she was going to ask them to come inside. She saw a child with a need and she could meet that need, even if there was nothing else she could do to fix the situation. Even if Janice was the woman she had to allow into her house to do it.

I took a quick, panicked stride after her and grasped at her sweater, clutching only displaced air as she started heavily down the steps. It looked painful for her to walk, but her back was straight and even, her stride steady.

Ignoring Janice entirely, she approached the child and said, “Are you hungry, honey?”

There is nothing like the gentle sound of a grandmother's voice, and he nodded at her with eyes so great and thankful that it was impossible not to be taken in. He was responding to her as though they were old friends. Warmly, he started, “I had pancakes at the café this morning for breakfast, but then—”

“Simon,” Janice interrupted, “please, they don't need a play-by-play.”

Grandma fixed her daughter-in-law with a brief, impervious stare. She turned back to the boy. “Simon?” she asked kindly.

He nodded almost shyly, peeking at her from beneath the sliding silver rims as though he knew she was someone with whom he wanted to be close.

Grandma's face melted when she smiled at him. “Simon, would you like to have supper with us?”

He glanced at his mom but looked away before he could see her shake her head. “Yes, thank you,” he said politely, and without a moment's hesitation, he followed Grandma up the stairs. “Hey,” he added guilelessly, as though he had just noticed, “what happened to your foot?”

“I broke my ankle,” Grandma said conspiratorially. “I'll tell you all about it inside.”

I didn't dare to stop her, or even to touch her, but when she was close enough, I whispered,
“Grandma.”
My voice conveyed far more than that one word, and I didn't doubt that she heard my every fear and worry loud and clear. There was no way she could mistake the torment in my tone.

But she didn't look at me. “It can't be undone” was all she whispered back, though her words were thick and uncharacteristically gruff.

I watched her go, dumbstruck, and couldn't help but wonder if she even wanted it undone.

Grandma yanked open the screen door with a little too much force and pushed the storm door with her hip. Standing back to hold the screen open for Simon, she bowed her head and motioned him inside, every inch the obsequious porter with a smile that was a close approximation of genuine.

He tripped happily through the door, oblivious to the angles of emotion surrounding him. I watched him pull his stocking cap off with relish and remembered that Janice's car had not been on. He was probably half-frozen.

When I looked away, Grandma was waving me inside with such intent that it would have been distinctly unwise for me to do anything but comply. The house was almost stiflingly warm after braving the bitterness of the porch, and Simon had already stripped off his coat and was working on his shoes. The laces were in a wide double knot, and seeing his small fingers struggle with the graying cloth made me somehow dizzy. I froze on the threshold, paralyzed by the knowledge of who he was and my own inability to understand or even try to hold that truth in my mind. I struggled for air, turned back to the door, and found Janice framed darkly in the rectangle of windswept night.

“Come on, Janice,” Grandma said. She waited as the woman stepped toward the house.

I fell past Simon into the kitchen, beyond feeling, mercifully numb. The smell of nasi goreng made me nearly reel with nausea, but I dutifully moved in the direction of the cupboards to set the table for two extra mouths. It was something that had not been done much in this house for more years than I cared to remember, and though I should have been happy to include guests around our table, I was anything but.