There didn’t seem to be much left to say, so we went back to the dishes and fell into an uneasy silence until Karen took a deep breath and gave me a serious look.
“Speaking of Grandma,” she said, “Dad seems convinced that she has given you the guilties and that’s why you feel you need to stay here. You know, Kate, it’s not your duty to be the family lifesaver. You and Ben have your own lives to live. I’m all for your staying, if that’s what you and Ben want, but not if you feel you have to.”
“It is what we want.” I wondered what Dad had said to her. “Dad needs to stop trying to shove his opinions about the farm onto everyone else. I like it here. I’ve always liked it here. The quiet time has been really good for Ben and me. It’s helped me realize that I’m not ready to hand Joshua over to a baby-sitter and go back to work.”
She looked at the dishes, not at me. “Um-hum. Well, you know, a lot of friends of mine went through that, but once they got back to work things just kind of settled in. Being off all this time won’t do your career any good. Management frowns on women who want to stay home.”
“To tell you the truth, that doesn’t seem important right now.”
“Are you sure it won’t seem important later?”
I wondered why she was pressing so hard—if the sentiments were hers, or if Dad had put her up to talking me out of staying. It was odd to think of her and my father on the same side, but Karen wasn’t usually the type to show deep interest in other people.
Glancing up, I caught her gaze, dark, earnest, and my mind flashed again to my mother. I found myself confessing all the things I had been afraid to say, or even think. “The truth is that we’re still waiting to see whether Joshua’s heart is developing normally, and whether he’ll need another heart surgery. We’ll know more when he has his six-month checkup.”
Karen dried her hands and gave me the towel. “Kate, you should have told us. We could have done . . . something. Been there at least.”
“There’s nothing to do.” My darkest thought, the one that had hidden in the corner of my mind since the day Joshua was born, came spilling out in a veil of tears. “The truth is, I’m afraid all the time for Joshua. I worry about him getting sick. I worry about him exerting himself too much when he cries. The doctors told us to treat him like a normal baby, but it’s hard, knowing what he’s been through.” I closed my eyes impatiently, not wanting to go back to that horrible time in the hospital. “It makes everything else seem pretty unimportant.”
Rubbing her forehead, Karen let out a long sigh, then stretched out her arms with surprising tenderness and embraced me. “You know what, Kate? You’re right,” she whispered. “It does.”
I hugged her back, realizing there was something special between us, after all. Whatever else we felt, however we had failed each other in the past, or would in the future, we were still sisters.
When we let each other go, Grandma was standing in the door looking very benevolent and happy. “I guess we aren’t doing so badly, after all. This has surely been a fine Christmas day,” she said, then shuffled across the kitchen to the back door. “I’m going out to my little house for a while. I’ve eaten too much turkey dinner, and it has given me the heartburn.” Wrapping her coat around herself, she opened the door. “Now, don’t worry about me. I’ll just take some seltzer pills and go watch my shopping program. I’ll be back after a while. I want to get some visiting in before everyone packs up and leaves again. I certainly don’t care for that football on the TV . . .” She was still talking as the door blew shut behind her.
Karen and I looked at each other and laughed, taking comfort in the fact that some things never changed.
We gathered in the living room later that evening to enjoy the fire, roast marshmallows, and look at old photo albums. Grandma told a story about Grandpa spouting off and getting his horses into a pulling match with a neighbor one summer. The neighbor had a newly broken field that was filled with rocks, and he volunteered his place for the contest, in which a sled was loaded with rocks, and the teams took turns proving they could drag it thirty feet. Rocks were added to the sled until finally one team couldn’t pull it. In the end, Grandpa’s team won, but the victory was bittersweet. He looked at the neighbor’s field, now cleared of rocks for free, and realized the neighbor had bamboozled him on purpose. After that, Grandpa was a wiser man.
When the story was over, all of us laughed.
We went on looking at old photos while Josh rolled around on the floor with a sheet of leftover Christmas wrap. Finally, I untangled him from the mess and pulled him into my lap.
“You’re a rascal,” I said, and he snuggled close to my chest, patting me gently with his hands. Letting out a long sigh, I cuddled him and rested my chin atop his head, losing myself in his baby-powder smell and the fuzzy-soft feel of his pajamas, and the sweet circle of his tiny arms, and the low, scratchy refrains of “Silent Night” playing on Grandma’s old hi-fi.
When I looked up, Grandma was watching me, her lips trembling into a smile filled with love and her blue eyes as bright as the Christmas lights outside.
That benevolent smile was still with her as she gathered her things to go out to the little house. “I do hate for this day to end,” she said. “But I have to be off to bed if I’m to be up in the morning to cook a breakfast before Karen and James leave.” She sighed, looking slightly crestfallen. “Lands. It seems like everyone just arrived.”
“Maybe we can do it again at Easter,” Karen said, and Grandma seemed instantly cheered. Across the room, Dad looked a little surprised. Karen glanced sideways at me and gave a quick wink.
Aunt Jeane brought up the subject of Grandma as soon as the back door closed. “All right, I talked to her this afternoon about the idea of getting a live-in and, of course, she doesn’t think she needs a live-in and doesn’t want to pay the money, but she’s acquiesced to the fact that she doesn’t have any choice. So I think we’re all set.”
“Good,” I said. “You and I can sit down and write some ads in the next day or two before you leave.”
On the other side of the room, my father cleared his throat, and the rest of us stiffened visibly.
“Everyone can relax,” he said. “Since I am hopelessly outvoted, I was going to suggest that you put an ad in the Springfield paper, rather than just the local one. There isn’t much to pick from in Hindsville. In Springfield, you might have a chance of getting someone with nurse’s training or EMT experience who wants to move into the country.”
Everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief.
“Good point,” Aunt Jeane said. “If you like, you can help me write the ads, Jack. You are going to stay a couple more days, aren’t you?”
My father nodded, noting my look of surprise. “A few, at least. Maybe a week. I have a consulting job shortly after the first of February. So for a while, at least, I think I’ll stay and take care of some things that need to be done around the farm.”
All of us stared at him in openmouthed amazement, and he just shook his head with a rueful smile. “Lest all of you forget, once upon a time, I was a farmer.”
We chuckled at that, and the conversation turned harmless again as Dad recounted farm adventures, I told everyone the story of Joshua’s birth, Aunt Jeane talked of finishing her last years before retirement from teaching, and Karen described the nightmare she and James had gone through building their new house.
In the end, the evening was a success. We spread the logs on the fire and wandered off to bed feeling as if we knew each other a little better, feeling closer, feeling like a family.
I wondered if Grandma Rose, asleep in the little house, felt it, too.
Chapter 15
T
HE end of the Christmas holiday came too soon. After dreading our coming together, we now found that we were reluctant to part. Perhaps we were afraid that the miles between us would destroy what we had built.
After Karen left, Aunt Jeane and I wrote ads to place in the papers and questions to ask potential live-in caretakers. We convinced Grandma to add Aunt Jeane’s signature to her checking account and went to the bank to fill out the forms the day before Aunt Jeane left. Grandma followed us as if she were being dragged to the gallows and made sure to tell the bank teller that she was doing it to appease the needless worries of her children, and that we were welcome to all that she had.
The house seemed vacant after Aunt Jeane left. I was actually glad that my father had decided to stay longer, even though I suspected he was staying because he thought we would need advice on how to properly look after Grandma.
Dad spent long hours walking the farm, examining the rusting implements behind the barn, finding his initials on trees and fence posts, reconciling himself to his past. He worked on repairing the barn and the fences, and met with the farmer who was contracting out the land. He often took Joshua with him on his walks. When he thought I wasn’t looking, he would talk to Josh and tell him stories about things on the farm. As the weeks passed, Dad and I admired Joshua and laughed at Grandma, and slowly learned to get along, even to enjoy each other a little. He knew more about environmental issues than he had let on, and, being a doctor, he was able to give me valuable advice on Joshua’s future treatment. Never in my life could I remember the two of us being so relaxed with each other.
Dad seemed to have reconciled himself to Ben and me staying longer at the farm, and to the idea of hiring live-in help for Grandma, though he admonished me regularly not to feel guilty about returning to our lives in Chicago once we found someone to care for her.
But the truth was, the more time that passed, the farther away that life seemed. When I called my boss to tell him I might need to take my full six months of leave, I felt as if I were talking to a stranger. I hardly got upset when he complained about it, barely felt a twinge of jealousy over the fact that my assistant was rapidly taking over my job and my contacts were quickly becoming her contacts. I wondered sometimes if I was losing my edge. The job, the office, the commuter train, the fund-raising parties all seemed like part of a former life—like an old movie playing in a projector with the light slowly burning out.
I hoped I could remember how to play my part when we returned to our lives in Chicago. I considered going along when Ben drove up to Chicago to sell the boat, discontinue the club membership, and help Liz rearrange some of our belongings at the town house, which she had agreed to rent until we came home. If Ben was upset about having to give up his boat and cancel his memberships, he didn’t say. He just got it done, returned to the farm, and started on another consulting project so we could keep our heads above water.
On the February morning that Dad was scheduled to leave, Grandma didn’t come in for breakfast, nor did she poke her head out the door to tell Ben to drive carefully as he left for the church office. I figured she was sulking in the little house, trying to shame Dad into staying longer.
Dad must have been thinking that too. He shook his head, looking out the window as he put his coffee cup in the sink. “I really can’t stay any longer. I’ve been here for over a month. That ought to be enough to make her happy. I have to be in Dallas in three days for a consulting job. I’ll have only two days at home to get ready, as it is. I don’t know why she has to try this emotional blackmail.” He pointed a finger at me. “Be prepared, Kate. She’ll try this on you, too, when it’s time for you to leave. You do realize she means to sabotage every live-in candidate Aunt Jeane finds?”
“I know,” I said. “But the next good one that comes along, Aunt Jeane is going to go ahead and hire her without having her call here to interview with Grandma. We think that once the check is paid, Grandma won’t have much choice except to accept the situation. She can’t stand to waste money.”
“Probably a good idea,” Dad agreed. “Time is passing. You need to get things settled. I don’t know why she feels the need to make things so . . . impossible for everyone.”
“Don’t let her get to you,” I said as I wiped Josh’s face. “You know she’s a master manip—” I stopped as I heard the sound of my bedroom door banging against the wall, then the clatter of dresser drawers being opened and closed. “Looks like she finally made it to the house. I wonder what she’s doing in my bedroom.”
The clatter grew louder, followed by the sound of Grandma muttering words I couldn’t quite understand. Feeding Josh the last of his bottle, I picked him up as the commotion grew alarming. “What in the world is she doing in there? It sounds like she’s tearing the bedroom apart.”
Dad followed me from the kitchen and into my bedroom, where Grandma, dressed in one of her church dresses with the zipper still undone and her hair sticking up in all directions, was rifling through my bedside table. Most of the dresser drawers were hanging open and clothes had been strewn everywhere.
“Grandma, what are you doing!” I said, setting Josh down and starting to pick up the clothes. “What in the world is going on?”
Without looking at me, she paced around the bed to the other nightstand, bumping unsteadily into the corner posts on the way. “I can’t find my pearls!” she said, sounding angry and desperate, as if she were about to cry. “Henry’s waiting in the car and we’ll be late for church. I can’t find my pearls or my lesson book.”
Alarm bells rang in my head as my father pushed past me just in time to stop Grandma from falling over the stool at the foot of the bed. Holding her by her arms, he forced her to look at him, and my heart went to my feet. The expression on her face was like nothing I had ever seen—complete panic and nonrecognition, like a person gone crazy.
Dad leaned down, trying to capture her attention, but her gaze darted haphazardly around the room.
“Mother, you’re not making any sense. Today is Thursday.”
“No,” she said, trying to pull out of his grasp and knocking both of them off balance so that they fell against the bed. “It’s Sunday. Henry’s waiting in the car for church.” She looked at me, beseeching me to help. “I can’t find my pearls.”