Finally Free

by Lynne Gentry

  I watch Teeny shovel in her third helping of fried chicken. “Momma hasn’t been this happy since those two spent a week at Fossil Ridge.”

  “Maybe you can rent them for a few days.”

  “If I thought I could manage three geriatrics, I would.”

  “Never easy doing the right thing, is it?” Something about Winnie has changed, softened, become even more beautiful.

  I follow her gaze and finally admit the truth to myself. Winnie’s in love...and I’m glad. “How’s Bo holding up?”

  “He’s always been close to his mother.” Winnie’s attention is sitting squarely on Bo who’s standing across the room visiting with the Wootens. “He’s going to miss her.”

  “Winnie.” The truth is a lump I’m unwilling to continue to choke upon. The only way to breathe easy again is to come clean. “I know we didn’t part on the best of terms when I went back to DC, but I just want you to know that I think Bo’s a lucky man to have you in his corner.” I communicate my sincerity by offering my hand. “Forgive me?”

  Winnie ignores my offered hand and wraps me in an incense-scented hug. “Nothing to forgive, friend.”

  Clinging to each other, it’s like we’re Momma and LaVera. Two old friends who can fight like cats and dogs, but love each other in the end. Although Winnie will never show up with a new tube of lipstick, all is forgiven and forgotten.

  What will Momma do without LaVera? Friends are a treasure. And Momma has so few treasures left.

  “Looks like Esther’s ready to go,” I say, stomach clenching.

  “Better follow them out.”

  “You know I suck at picking up the pieces, right?”

  Winnie gathers the paper plates. “It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it.”

  I follow Momma and her guests outside. In the shade of a large live oak, Esther waits beside Trixie, Ira’s beautiful old turquoise Cadillac. Momma is in the process of hugging Teeny when Sam Sparks pulls into the church parking lot.

  Any hope that Momma may not remember Sam’s car is quickly dashed when she shouts, “Charlotte, get my gun!”

  Ira turns to see what has Momma in such a stir. “Sara, who is that?”

  “A buzzard.” Momma shakes her finger at the finely-suited man carrying flowers and striding toward the church doors. “Sam Sparks,” Momma yells. “What do you think you’re doing here?”

  He stops, wheels our direction, and smiles. “Not that it’s any of your business, Mrs. Slocum, but I’ve come to pay my respects.”

  Momma’s fists are clenched as she stomps across the parking lot, the rest of us scrambling to keep up. “LaVera’s not even cold in the grave and here you are trying to pick apart the bones of her estate.”

  “Now, Mrs. Slocum—”

  “Don’t now Mrs. Slocum me, Sam Sparks!” She marches to within spitting distance, and for a second it appears that’s exactly what she intends to do. “What’s the real reason you’re darkening church house doors?”

  Sam juggles a potted plant in one hand and fiddles with the knot of his tie with the other. “Mrs. Tucker was a...friend.”

  “Liar!” Momma lunges for him.

  “Sara, no.” Ira pulls her back.

  “Momma!” I grab her swinging arm. “Sam, I don’t think anybody’s up to talking business today.”

  “Bo’s never going to talk business with you.” Momma’s back is stiff. “He loved his mother and he loves her homeplace as much as she did.”

  “Now, now, Sara,” Ira says. “Try to calm down.”

  Sam’s dark eyes slide from me to Momma. “The only business Mrs. Tucker and I ever discussed was her skin care line for men.” Although stunned by his admission, none of us can argue with his assertion. Sam’s skin radiates meticulous care. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to make my apologies for missing the service and offer my condolences to Mrs. Tucker’s son.” He wheels and leaves all of us with nothing left to say.

  Esther’s the one who realizes we can’t stand out here in the heat waiting on the dust to settle. “Dad, we really need to get going,”

  Ira’s sober face tells me living at the mercy of others isn’t any easier for him than it is for my mother. “I’ll call and check on you tomorrow, Sara.”

  Momma nods. “Take care, Ira. And limit Teeny’s trips to the buffet.”

  “Momma!” I feel the need to apologize for her lack of a filter, but I don’t have it in me.

  We walk them back to the shade of the live oak.

  Overcome by the support Esther and her father have shown today, I hug them both. “Thank you for making the drive today. It meant a lot to Momma.”

  As I watch Trixie disappear in a swirl of caliche dust, I choke on the loneliness settling on me as heavy as the fine white particles coating the leaves of the live oaks.

  Who was I kidding?

  The support of these strangers meant the world to me.

  Chapter 16

  ARIA

  Aria, get a picture of that cross-stitch LaVera’s mother gave her on her wedding day.” Nana points at a wooden frame hanging on the wall in her best friend’s kitchen.

  I hold up my phone and click. “It’s ugly.”

  “One woman’s trash is another woman’s treasure.” Nana straightens the frame. “LaVera always told me she’d run through a fire to save this gift. I hope Bo’s not planning to let it go in the estate sale.” Nana licks her lips like she’s a guppy needing air. “You think you know people. I never would have pegged Bo to let bargain hunters pick over his mother’s things like vultures on carrion.” Nana looks at me, but it feels like she’s seeing someone else. “I probably won’t even be cooled off good before you and your mother sell off Fossil Ridge. Lock, stock, and barrel.”

  Nana’s been mean since LaVera died. Mom says she been mean for twenty-five years. Just when I was getting used to having my grandmother around, now she acts like I’m getting on her nerves. I’ve tried everything to cheer her up...even memorized the hardest part of “One Day More” to surprise her with a piano duet. Nothing’s working.

  Until we moved to Texas, I didn’t understand why Nana and Mom fought all the time. I just thought that maybe bickering is normal for Slocums. Mom and I seem to be doing our share of fighting, especially now that she’s going to work at my school. I still can’t believe she took the music teacher job.

  Geez. I can’t catch a break.

  Mom I can deal with...will deal with. But this change in Nana scares me. I may not understand all the secrets in this house, but I know Nana hasn’t always licked her lips. I think it’s a side effect from one of her new medications. When I googled some of the stuff she’s taking, dry mouth is definitely something we should be watching for. Mom told me not to worry about Nana’s chapped her lips and to please quit looking up side effects and/or natural solutions. I’ll quit sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong when Mom pulls her head out of the sand.

  Nana’s losing it.

  Why am I the only one who’s worried that my grandmother has worn the same dress for five days? That she hasn’t combed her hair or brushed her dentures since we got home from LaVera’s funeral?

  I snap a couple more pics of LaVera’s hideous wall art. “Mom says if Bo and Winnie get married they wouldn’t have room to swing a mouse in all of this junk.”

  “Married.” Nana licks her lips again. “If that bohemian communist moves into LaVera’s home, she’ll turn over in her grave for sure.”

  I don’t want to think about what the woman I saw slumped over her vanity is or is not doing in her casket. That’s just weird. But Nana’s stuck on LaVera. Obsessed with her death.

  “Keep up, girl.” Nana yanks me along on the next stop on this photo safari. We climb the stairs and stop outside LaVera’s master bedroom.

  “I don’t really want to go in there, Nana.”

  Instead of looking at me like the loser that I am, she points at my phone. “Is that thing hard to use?”

  “Not really.” />
  “Show me how to take a picture.”

  Mom says I’m never to let anyone touch my phone, that we can’t afford to replace it if something should happen, but I really don’t want to go back into LaVera’s bedroom.

  “Okay, but be careful with it, okay?” I demonstrate the point-the-phone-see-the-object-on-the-screen-push-the-button method.

  “Show me again.”

  “Point the phone.” I click to camera mode and demonstrate again. “See how the object I want to photograph shows up in the screen?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hold the phone steady, then push the white button.”

  “So, I...what do I do first?”

  Then it dawns on me. Nana’s not getting it. The woman who can play the entire score of Les Misérables without music can’t point a phone camera and push the button.

  “What’s this button here?” She asks again.

  I’m tempted to roll my eyes, but I don’t want Nana to see how worried I am. “That’s the one you push to take a picture.”

  “I’ve got it.” She leaves me alone in the hall alone and steps inside the room where her friend died. I think I’m closer than anyone to understanding what she’s feeling. LaVera’s dead. Ira and Teeny had to go back to that old folks’ home. Wilma Rayburn would just as soon never see my grandmother again.

  Nana is alone.

  Not having a friend sucks.

  I have to start a new school on Monday. New girl in town. No friends. A music geek with skinny legs and braces who lives with her crazy grandma and uptight mother.

  Maybe I shouldn’t blame Mom for this mess, but I do. She wouldn’t stop by LaVera’s on the way to town. She wouldn’t let Ira and Teeny live at Fossil Ridge. She wouldn’t let me live with Dad. And she says she’s done it all for our good, mine and Nana’s. Ha!

  If Mom thinks becoming my music teacher is going to make the transition easier, she’s crazier than Nana will ever be. So what if she’ll be only a few doors away...should I need her. I’ve needed her for years. The woman lives on the moon when it comes to “being there” for me. Don’t get me wrong, I know she thinks she tries. Claims she wants to be a better mother than...that’s where I stop her.

  I don’t want to hear smack about my grandmother.

  Nana is awesome. A little confused...but awesome.

  I don’t know what happened to my Aunt Caroline or my grandfather. Nobody tells me anything. It’s ancient history everyone thinks I’m too young to understand. But I’m not stupid. I googled it. Yep, accessed archived articles from the Addisonville Herald. The drowning of my aunt and the subsequent drowning of my grandfather one year later in the very same river, the river that runs right behind Nana’s house, was big news.

  I’m not going to lie, I cried when I thought about my mother losing her sister at eighteen. Explains why Mom keeps everyone at arm’s length. Getting close to someone hurts. At least Mom had a sister to get close to. I’m an only child who probably won’t see much of her dad or his parents any more. Mom and Nana are the only family I have left. I wish the two of them could let this feud go. We’ve got bigger fish to fry...so to speak...Nana’s slipping.

  According to that hairy-faced doc, “Y’all don’t have much time left.”

  I can’t believe how quickly I’ve started sounding like a Texan.

  I don’t even text my friend Caitlyn anymore. And not because Mom threatened me to within an inch of my life if she scrolled through my messages and caught me talking to “that delinquent.” I don’t text Caitlyn anymore because she laughed at me when I texted, “What y’all doin’ tonight?”

  Here’s the thing: I won’t be eighteen for five more years. If I don’t want to spend these next few years staring at a river I can’t swim in or scrolling social media, then I’ve got to do what I can to save my Nana. It won’t be the first time I did something that made my mother wonder where she failed.

  Chapter 17

  CHARLOTTE

  Aria stomps onto the porch wearing the first-day-of-school outfit we ordered online. Life was so much easier when she had to wear a uniform. Thank goodness, Addisonville has a dress code or I would have had to let her wear a halter top and booty shorts to get her in the car today.

  “I think those jeans were a great choice.”

  “I look like a freak.” She storms past me, tosses her new backpack on the front seat of the Escort, then throws herself into the back seat and slams the car door.

  “Our first day of school is going well, don’t you think?” I say to Momma who is sitting on the porch swing, glassy-eyed and devoid of emotion.

  For the sixth consecutive day, she’s wearing the fuzzy winter housecoat LaVera gave her ten years ago. Even though she must be melting under the robe’s matted pile, nothing I say persuades her to change.

  I stand on the porch steps in sensible heels, a pencil-straight skirt, a blouse that will allow me the freedom to play the entire keyboard of the school’s baby grand, and holding a piece of dry toast. The satchel I carry, the one that my paralegal Loraine used to stuff with legal briefs, bulges with worksheets I’ve designed to inspire a love of music. My stomach quivers at the prospect of resurrecting a very old dream. My heart, on the other hand, beats with the guilt and angst of leaving Momma for a few hours.

  “Winnie.” Gratitude for my friend’s willingness to pop in to check on Momma now that she and Bo have moved into LaVera’s house sticks in my throat. “Momma hasn’t eaten and I don’t have time to fight with her.” I hand Winnie a piece of dry toast. “I can’t get her to comb her hair either.”

  “Bo says his mother used to say, I’m heading to Sara’s for a cup of tea and a few kind words. How about I fix Sara a cup of steaming brew and see if I can’t get her to talk?”

  “She doesn’t like you, you know.”

  Winnie’s brows raise. “I’m not the one going to work for the enemy.”

  “Wilma Rayburn is taking a huge chance on me.”

  “Not really. According to Aria, you’re some kind of musical prodigy. How come I never knew this about you?”

  “Do I know everything about you?”

  “I’m an open book. You, on the other hand, are a mystery yet to be solved.”

  “I’m not that complicated. I came home to do the right thing. End of story.”

  “Your story’s just beginning.”

  Hoisting the satchel strap over my shoulder, I watch Momma rock herself back and forth. “I don’t think our story’s going to have a happy ending. She doesn’t want my love.”

  “She does.”

  I shake my head. “It’s like she doesn’t think she deserves it and, frankly, when I think about the way she’s pushed me away since Charlotte and Daddy died, maybe she doesn’t.”

  “Who does deserve unconditional love?”

  “Bo.”

  Mentioning Winnie’s new husband’s name brings a smile to her face. “Are you still pining for your old boyfriend?” she teases.

  “You know I’m not,” I say. “According to Momma, Bo Tucker is a perfect child...well, he was until he emptied LaVera’s house and let a communist and her cats move in.”

  Winnie shrugs. “Nobody’s perfect, C. Not even, Beauregard.”

  Aria honks the horn and yells out the window. “I’m not walking in late holding my mother’s hand.”

  “Coming.” I nod toward Momma’s flattened bed-hair and flatter-still expression. “Winnie, I don’t know what to do. It’s almost like Caroline has died all over. Momma won’t eat. She’s not sleeping. She’s hardly said two words. All she does is play the piano. I hate leaving her alone.”

  “I’ve got a couple of hours before I have to start my route. I’ll pop in around noon when I deliver her mail. She’ll only be on her own a couple of hours a day.”

  Visions of LaVera slumped over her vanity flash through my head. “A lot can happen in a couple of hours.”

  “She’s grieving her friend. She’s grieved worse and come out the other side. We’ll h
elp her through this.”

  “What if we can’t? What if this is the beginning of the end?”

  “Today’s got enough trouble of its own.” Winnie turns me toward the car. “You’re already behind the curve with Aria, you don’t want to get off on the wrong foot with Wilma.”

  “Bye, Momma.” I rush to the swing and kiss her papery cheek. “Any advice?”

  Momma’s vacant gaze remains fixed on the horizon, but there’s a slight clearing of her throat. “Don’t smile until Christmas.”

  It’s a small olive branch, Momma bestowing her teaching motto upon me, but I grab hold like she’s tossed a drowning person a rope. “Thank you, Momma.”

  She rocks the swing with a gentle push of her foot and says nothing more.

  Chapter 18

  ARIA

  We’re not to the end of the drive when Mom says, “You can sit up front, you know.”

  “I’m good.”

  Mom sighs. “Well, would you mind turning down your music? I need to call Nana’s doctor.”

  “She’s getting worse, isn’t she?”

  Mom’s eyes find mine in the rearview mirror. “Let me talk to Ben...I mean Dr. Ellis. He’ll know what to do.”

  She’s crazy if she thinks I’m going to let her keep me in the dark. “We shouldn’t leave her.”

  “Winnie’s going to drop by when she can.”

  “Mom, Nana’s brain is going to dry up if we don’t find something to get her going again.”

  “I’ve tried.”

  “You’ve bullied her. Like you do me.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You say she needs to go work in her roses, but you don’t offer to go with her.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been a little busy trying to get ready to start a new job.”

  “Okay, then let me do stuff with her, before she disappears forever.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “Brain games, switch her to an organic diet, supplements, and—”