by Larry Watson
“Sorry,” says Edie. “That was all me.”
The nurse slumps a little with disappointment. “When I heard your voice I was hoping . . .”
“Has she been talking? At all?”
“The last time her son was here. He walked in, and she sort of brightened up and said, ‘Dean?’ But that was it. And since then, nothing.”
Edie shakes her head sadly. “Roy. That was Roy who was here. His twin brother was Dean. He died almost twenty years ago.”
The nurse winces. “Roy. Of course. Roy. What’s the matter with me?”
“How long ago did she say Dean’s name?”
“Well, it was a Sunday of course. You’re Saturday and he’s Sunday. This was at least a month ago.”
“If I hear so much as a word from her,” Edie says, “I’ll be sure to let you know.”
“You never know. She’s a tough old gal. She’s got about five things wrong with her, and any one of them would kill most folks.”
“She once told me,” Edie says, “that she’d dance on my grave.”
EDIE CLIMBS INTO the car and says with the kind of mock enthusiasm that seldom fools anyone, “And we’re off! What sights would you like to see?”
“I don’t know,” Lauren says. “Maybe like where you used to live? Or where you went to school?”
Edie turns the key in the ignition. “Let the grand tour begin!”
EDIE DRIVES DOWN one of the blocks that make up Gladstone’s business district. It’s a Saturday morning, but the street is as deserted as on a Sunday and Edie has no trouble finding a place to park.
She points across the street, to the building with the letters Bronze Glow Tanning Salon stenciled on the large front window.
“I used to live there,” she says to Lauren. “In an apartment upstairs. My first home. Well, mine and my husband’s. And down below was a bakery, so we smelled pies and cakes and cookies all the time. Which was wonderful at first but then became too much.” Edie closes her eyes. “It’s funny. Most of my life I’ve lived in other places, but in my dreams I’m so often in those rooms”—Edie opens her eyes and points to the windows over the tanning salon—“and I’m never in the rooms I’m currently living in. I suppose a psychologist could tell me what that’s all about.”
Lauren points to the narrow storefront next to the tanning salon. The sign in its window says Baubles, Bangles, and Beads. “Is that an Indian store?” Lauren asks. “You know, like Indian beads?”
Edie shakes her head no. “It’s just a craft store.”
“I know there’s a bunch of Indians living around here. Jesse said your neighbor is.”
“That’s right.”
“That must be weird.”
Edie comes out of her reverie now and turns to her granddaughter. “No,” she says. “It’s not weird. Not at all. Why would you say that?”
“I don’t know. Just, you know. Indians.”
“Rita was my friend in grade school and in junior high. And then she moved away. But she came back to Gladstone before I did, and when I came back Rita helped me find a job and a place to live. I feel very, very lucky to have her for a friend and neighbor.”
Lauren shrinks back in her seat. “Okay, Grandma. Okay. Did you know Mom goes to a tanning place? She thinks she looks better with a tan. I’ve tried to tell her it just makes her look old. You know, because it dries out her skin and all. And then she’s like cooked her hair with all the dye jobs. I wish she’d let me fix her hair and dress her.” Lauren shrugs and sighs. “But she thinks it’s all working for her.”
“Your mother,” Edie says, “has always been pretty.”
“I tried to tell her she can get cancer from those tanning beds.” Lauren waves her hands as if she wishes to erase what she’s just said. “I know, Grandma, I know. I’m pretty tan. But I kind of have to be. I’m thinking I’ll try to be a model, and I’m pretty sure models need to have good tans.”
“A model?”
“It wasn’t my idea! But we were watching America’s Next Top Model. Billy and Jesse and me. And Billy and Jesse said I was prettier than any of those women. And it’s kind of true, plus I’ve got the long neck and the long legs you need. And boobs, okay, yeah, but not like too big.”
“I think it’s a hard life, honey.”
“Plus I know like how to wear makeup and how to dress. Girls have always asked me for advice. I could maybe do something in fashion too.”
“I’m sure you could. Well, what would you like to see next?”
“Can I ask you something, Grandma? When you broke up with your first husband and Grandpa Gary too, what did you say? I mean, did you just like come right out and say, ‘Hey, I don’t love you anymore’?”
“Oh, I don’t remember. It was so long ago. With Dean, I’d left Gladstone and after I’d been gone for a while I called him. Yes, I suppose that’s what I said. Something like that. It sounds so cruel now. But I don’t think I had to say anything to your grandfather. He knew. We both knew. Over and done. Why do you ask?”
“And then did they like argue? Did they try to talk you out of it?”
“Talking was pretty much over by that time. And when people don’t love each other anymore, you can’t really argue them into it. But you still haven’t answered me.”
Lauren points to the windows over the tanning salon. “So if you still lived up there, you could look out and see yourself now.” Then she laughs. “I don’t know what made me think that. I just get these like really crazy ideas sometimes.”
Edie looks up at the windows too. “I’m not sure we’d recognize each other.” Then she shifts her gaze to her granddaughter and touches her lightly on the shoulder. “Are you thinking of breaking up with Billy?”
“I sort of tried to last spring. But he talked me out of it. Mostly he cried. That’s what did it, the crying. That and Jesse told me how bad it would bust Billy up if I dropped him.”
Edie keeps looking at her.
“Really,” Lauren finally says. “It’s all good.”
“Whatever you say.” Edie puts the car in gear but doesn’t drive away from the curb. “Anything else you’d like to see?”
“Do you have a Starbucks here, Grandma?”
“Billings I believe is the closest Starbucks. But they’ve got good coffee at Jitters. It’s right over on Fourth Street. Close enough to walk.”
“No, that’s okay,” Lauren says. “How about where you went to high school?”
“It’s just a school,” Edie says. “Like every other high school in America.” Then she must hear herself because she adds, “Okay. Home of the fighting Wildcats here we come.”
They drive through Gladstone on rain-washed streets, under canopies of cottonwood, box elder, and ash, but Lauren never looks up from her phone. Edie pulls in behind Gladstone High School, a two-story brick building with wide expanses of blacktop on three of the school’s four sides.
“When I was a student here,” Edie says, “about a hundred years ago, there was only a small parking lot back here. Then they tore down houses and apartments to make room for more cars.”
She points to the far northeast corner of the block. “Over there was the apartment building where my friend Nancy’s grandmother lived. I think we ate lunch there almost every day when I was a freshman and a sophomore.”
She points toward a section of the school built of a paler brick than the rest of the building. “And that’s the new gym,” she says. And then she laughs. “The new gym must be fifty years old now!”
“My school was pretty new,” Lauren says. “But they put like way too much glass in it, and on sunny days it was so hot you could hardly stand it.”
“I remember a hot day in the fall,” Edie says, “and my boyfriend was supposed to pick me up after school. He was older and he’d already graduated. Well, when I came out, he wasn’t there. I waited and I waited. I sat right over there on the steps. And while I was waiting Dean Linderman came along and he sat with me until my boyfriend showed u
p. And when he finally drove up he told me he couldn’t come earlier because he was watching the World Series. That was the end of the two of us. And the start of Dean and me.”
Lauren says, “And then he died, right?”
“Well, no, not . . . yes, yes, I suppose. Then he died.”
“That was his mom you were visiting?”
“His and Roy’s, Dean’s twin brother. Yes.”
Edie takes another long look at the steps where she waited on a sunlit afternoon. “Why is it,” she says, “I keep remembering what I’d just as soon forget.”
“WHEN WE LIVED there,” Edie says as she stares at the little brick bungalow she has parked in front of, “there were elm trees up and down this block. Trees so big and leafy cloudy days and sunny days didn’t seem much different. And we had lilac bushes on either side of the front door. Three blocks that way”—she points south—“lived the Spillers. A young couple who had two little girls. And both the mother and father worked some nights, and when they did, I babysat their girls. The mom usually came home first, and when she did she paid me—paid me very well, I might add—and sent me on my way. One night the father came home first. Don Spiller. He paid me, and I started to leave, but he said no, no, he’d walk me home. When we got right there”—Edie points to the sidewalk leading to the front door—“I thanked him but he kept walking with me. Then when we got right up there by the lilacs—it was May and they were in full bloom—he grabbed me and kissed me. I’d been kissed before but never like that. This was a man and the way he held me was different and the way he kissed was different. Even while it was happening, even while I was afraid he was going to do more than just kiss me—that he was going to rape me right there in the bushes—I thought about his girls and how they were home alone. I felt responsible, like if Mrs. Spiller came home while her husband was here trying to stick his tongue down my throat she’d be mad at me. And Mr. Spiller must have assumed I was going to welcome his . . . his . . . what he was doing. That I was a girl getting this kind of attention from a grown man—why wouldn’t I think this was wonderful? Why wouldn’t I swoon in his arms? Why wouldn’t I let him do whatever he wanted? But when I kept trying to pull away, he finally let me go and I went inside and locked the door behind me.”
Edie turns back to her granddaughter and says, “And that was the end of my babysitting for the Spillers. My mother was angry that I kept saying no to Mrs. Spiller. ‘You need to earn your own money,’ she told me.”
“What’s ‘swoon,’ Grandma? You said swoon.”
“It’s . . . it’s sort of giving in, collapsing.”
“Like turned on?”
“Something closer to fainting.”
“Oh. Why didn’t you tell your mom what happened?”
Edie stifles a laugh, and the sound that comes out is half a sigh and half a cough. “She wouldn’t have believed me. She would have asked me what I did to encourage him.”
Lauren nods in eager understanding. “Mom thought I was flirting with Kyle.”
“That’s the boyfriend who’s younger?”
“I could have told her to look at how he looks at me.”
“But you didn’t.”
Lauren shakes her head no.
“I’m sorry, honey.”
“That’s why I’m not in like a real big hurry to go back. One of the reasons.”
“And that’s why I can’t stand the smell of lilacs. Come on. Let’s go to Jitters.”
BECAUSE JITTERS JAVA occupies the space that was once Shaw’s Rexall, Edie and her granddaughter wait for their coffee at the counter where Edie once drank lime phosphates. Ahead of them in line is a woman who, when she receives her coffee, turns and says, “Edie! I’ve been meaning to call you.”
“Well, here I am. What did you need, Joan?”
This woman looks to be Edie’s age, but the sun has toughened her face and arms like animal hide. Her hair with its loose curls is raven black. Her eyes are heavily outlined, and she has given her lips a shape not quite theirs with bright red lipstick.
“I know it’s a ways off,” Joan says, “but we’re putting together a committee for the next class reunion, and someone said you might be willing to serve on it.”
Edie shakes her head. “No. Sorry.”
“Are you sure? There wouldn’t be all that much work. Think about it. Tomorrow we’re having an organizational meeting at Keith and Mary’s. Down by the river? Right next to Frontier Park?”
“I know where they live.”
“If you come, bring a suit. We might go swim-ming.” She sings the syllables of that word and smiles coyly at Edie.
Edie puts her arm around Lauren. “Sorry,” Edie says. “I have company. My granddaughter.”
Edie and Lauren carry their coffee and cappuccino to a small table.
Lauren says, “What was her deal, Grandma? What’s all that about swimming?”
Edie sighs and seems to be considering whether she should provide an answer. Finally she says, “It’s silly. I can’t believe any of this matters.”
But she moves her chair closer to Lauren.
“On our graduation night there was a big party down by the river. That’s where the park is she was talking about. Bonfires. Beer. And some of us went swimming. I say swimming but not really. Splashing in the water, not much more than that. On a dare, because the water was so cold. My God, it was cold. But we undressed before we went in. I mean, nobody had a bathing suit. So we stripped down to our underwear. Bras and panties for some girls. Just panties for a few others. And nothing at all for one or two girls. Joan remembers that I was one of the girls who took everything off. But I wasn’t. Yes, I stripped down to my bra and panties before I jumped in. And does it matter to me? Not really. Except it just seems like every time I run into someone who knew me then, I feel like a part of me vanishes. I mean, Joan might as well carry an eraser with her. Every time we bump into each other, she rubs out another part of me.”
“Have you told her?” Lauren asks. “Have you said, ‘Look, bitch, that’s not what I did’?”
Edie shakes her head no. “I don’t give a damn if she thinks I was naked or wearing my prom dress. I wasn’t the best-behaved girl back then, and I sure as hell wasn’t modest. Maybe I would have taken everything off. That’s not the point. It’s that when she’s remembering me she doesn’t remember me. I mean, all of us are someone else in the eyes of others. And for all I know, maybe that other is as true, as real, as the person we believe we are. But the thing is, when you’re back home, you never have a chance to be someone other than who you were then. Even if you never were that person.”
Edie pauses and looks away from her granddaughter. “And Dean’s mother—if she remembers me at all anymore, it’s just as the woman who ran out on her boy and broke his heart. But what makes me think we have any right to control the memories of others?”
When Edie turns back to her granddaughter, she sees in her eyes a look both bewildered and alarmed.
“Oh God, what am I doing?” Edie says. “Here I am, yakking away and with one sleazy story after another. Nude swimming. Bad boyfriends. Attacked by a father. I’m sorry, honey. You should have just told me to shut up.”
“That’s okay, Grandma. I don’t mind. You probably needed someone to talk to.”
“And you wanted to see Gladstone and now I’ve made it seem awful. It’s not. Really. It’s a nice town. No better and no worse than most towns.”
“You know what we did on my graduation night?” Lauren asks brightly. “We got high and went bowling. Me and Billy and Jesse.”
“Is Jesse always with you and Billy?”
“Not always always but pretty much all the rest of the time. It’s weird because Billy says Jesse needs us and Jesse says Billy needs him. Jesse said we’re like the three Mouseketeers.”
“Don’t you ever need to be alone?”
“Not really.”
“But how about you and Billy?” Edie asks. “Sometimes it needs to be just the two
of you.”
Lauren slaps the tabletop as if her grandmother has just said something hilarious. “Oh, Grandma! He’s not with us then!”
“I meant, finally it has to be the two of you.”
Smiling widely, Lauren holds up both hands with three fingers showing. “The three Mouseketeers!”
“THEY’RE OUT ON the town tonight,” Rita says. “Is that right?”
Edie and Rita stand on Rita’s balcony, drinking white wine and looking westward, where the thin clouds that drifted in late in the day have taken on a yellow-orange tint, though the sun has not yet dropped below the horizon.
“It was my idea,” Edie says. “I gave Lauren some money and suggested they go out to eat and take in a movie. ‘Come with us,’ she said. But I told her I was tired. Which was not a lie.”
“How much did you give her?”
“Fifty dollars.”
Rita doesn’t say anything but sucks air through her teeth.
“Cheaper than trying to come up with another meal idea,” Edie says.
“How about you? Did you eat?”
“I fried an egg. Which was just right.”
“Well, here’s my prediction—they’ll take that money and eat cheap at Hardee’s and then go to a bar and drink what’s left over.”
“Lauren’s only eighteen.”
Rita scoffs. “Shouldn’t take them more than a couple tries to find a bar that’ll serve her. By the way, what’s with that girl’s hair? I know it’s supposed to be some kind of style, but it just looks like she never washes or combs it. Lord.”
“She wants to give me a complete makeover. I told her it was too late for me.”
Rita leans back to examine Edie. “At least you wash your damn hair.” Then Rita holds her glass up to let the dying light shine through the wine. “Guess who called me today? Cousin Dennis.”
“This is the cousin who isn’t really a cousin?”
“One and the same. By the way, I finally figured out how that got started. We were together so much when we were kids and we got along so well it put a fright into my mother. So she told me Dennis was my cousin. And she got his mother to tell him the same damn thing. By the time we figured out what was what, we were both with someone else.”