It only took five minutes to drive from the west side of town to the east. It had freshened up in some spots, declined in others, but it didn’t seem all that much bigger than it had been. Jennifer was about to head on out Main Street, which would turn into Citrus Trail, which would lead to where she was going, but she pulled into the parking lot of a Rexall Drugs instead.
She didn’t want to be in town. She didn’t want to see anyone that knew her, and she was feeling a little shell-shocked, but she wasn’t sure she was ready to go to the old homeplace, either. She also knew she’d need a few things, so she turned back onto the street and headed west again, back through town.
She pulled into a parking space at the Pantry Pride, and sat there a minute, listening to the rattle of shopping carts and the ticking of her engine. The last time she’d been here, she’d been with her mother. She’d never come back. She hoped it had been completely redone.
She got out of the car and took a deep breath before heading for the store.
A young man with shaggy brown hair and a walrus mustache was leaning against his hood, smoking a cigarette and listening to Cat Stevens on his car radio. A plump redheaded woman about Jennifer’s age was loading her bags into the back of a fairly-new Gremlin. A toddler of indeterminate gender nibbled a cookie in the seat of the cart.
Jennifer hurried into the store, grateful for the cool air that met her, and grabbed a cart. She didn’t want to be there long enough to run into anyone that might recognize her, so she scurried through the store, grabbing things as she saw them. Milk, coffee, sugar, orange juice. Some Grape-Nuts. A box of Space Food Sticks—peanut butter—her secret indulgence. She grabbed a six-pack of RC, bread and peanut butter, some fruit, and a few things like toilet paper and dish soap, and then headed for the register.
She thought she looked very different from the girl she was at eighteen. But she was also afraid that she really didn’t, and that someone would suddenly call out her name, or worse, look at her the way they had right before she’d left. So, she pulled her sunglasses back down off her head and peered at the papers and magazines.
Lots of headlines and stories about Watergate, as usual. Jennifer wondered if the movie stars were ever going to stay in that place again, or if they were so sick of hearing the name that they didn’t want to call for a reservation. Gas prices. Gas lines. She had enough problems; so she focused on the magazine covers instead. Robert Redford. Twelve dinners for twelve dollars. Sonny and Cher. How to decorate your room for under fifty dollars. Nice topics. Nothing sad, nothing scary.
When she’d first become a police officer for the city of New Orleans, she’d read every line of every paper, every day. Even though she’d spent two years as a meter maid and two as a dispatcher, she’d thought that keeping up with crime and other events would serve her as a cop. Two years ago, in her fifth year as an officer, she’d finally been allowed out onto the street. Within six months, she’d stopped reading the news. She saw enough of it.
She checked out without any problems and hurried to the car. She got a paper cut from the edge of one of her grocery bags, and she sucked her finger for a moment. She loaded the last of three bags and was about to get in when she saw the pay phone by the front door. She thought about that for a minute. She’d promised, and it was the right thing to do.
She shut her door again, and rummaged in her purse for the change she’d just been dumping in it all day. Very unlike her, with her need for everything to be where and as it should be. She finally pulled out a dime just as she reached the phone.
She was about to pull out the phone book when she realized that she still remembered the number. He answered it himself, on the third ring.
“Yeah!” he answered, cheerful and robust.
“Hi, Uncle Ray.”
He didn’t respond for a moment. She heard kids yelling at each other in the background. A television going.
“Well, hey, there, Jennifer Marie. Are you here?”
It threw her, the Marie. She hadn’t heard it in a long time. “Yes, I just got to town.”
“Where are ya?” She heard him put his hand loosely over the mouthpiece. “Would you kids please do that outside? I’m on the phone.” He took his hand away. “Where are you, hon?”
“I just stopped to get a few things at Food Fair,” she answered.
“It’s a Pantry Pride now,” he said. “Publix still isn’t interested.” He chuckled, and she smiled to be polite, even though he couldn’t see it. “Well, we were expecting you tomorrow sometime, so Peggy hasn’t had a chance to put a few things in the fridge over there. We did get the electricity back on yesterday, though.”
“Thanks, I appreciate that,” she said. “I’ll pay you back when I see you.”
“Don’t worry about it, it’s coming on your first bill. Electric company always gets theirs. Well, listen, why don’t you come over for supper in a while?”
“Oh, thanks, that sounds nice, but could we do it tomorrow as planned? I’m pretty beat, and I’m sure I’ll have a lot to do.”
“Yeah, sure. That’s fine.” He paused for a bit and she was about to say goodbye when he spoke first. “I haven’t...uh…told anybody. You know, besides Peggy. The job, of course. But I mean anyone else. You know.”
“Okay.” A few faces drifted into Jennifer’s vision and she blinked them away. “I really appreciate everything you’ve done.”
“Family’s family,” he said simply. “As far as the job, well, somebody was gonna have to fill it. Might as well be you, since you were coming anyway.”
“Well, thanks for everything. I’d better go, before my stuff melts,” she said, even though she hadn’t bought anything frozen.
“Did you call the phone company?”
“No. I will in a day or so.” She didn’t mention that she didn’t really want the phone on just yet. Not that anyone would call her, but anyone who did would be uncomfortable to talk to.
“Okay, sure. But listen, are you sure you want to stay out there? I mean, right away? You’re welcome to stay in our guest room as long as you want.”
“I know. But, no. It was always my favorite place to be.”
“Okay, well. You need anything, you call us. Peggy and I both, we’re really glad you’re here.”
Jennifer wasn’t sure how true that was, but when she hung up the phone, she felt a little less alone.
Once she’d gone a few miles out Citrus Trail she passed Orange Blossom Farms. They had a large grove, and in the respective seasons, they offered U-pick oranges, watermelons and strawberries. The farm stand where they sold to passersby was still on the side of the road near the entrance, though they’d added on to it and painted it white. After that, there was nothing for three miles, until her turn.
She knew it was coming, but it startled her anyway. She’d grown up there, and still knew every inch of it. She’d gone back there in her head many times while lying awake in bed. And yet, seeing it now was like seeing it in a movie somehow. Not real, but pretty close.
The mailbox was still at the road, still leaned, and was still painted a bright blue. She turned onto the dirt drive, leaving the mailbox behind her, and kept her eyes on the road in front of her, not looking up until she got to the end of the driveway. When she stopped the car, she stopped breathing, too.
It wasn’t exactly as it had remained in her memory. There were no begonias underneath the huge old live oak that loomed over the roof in front, and there were no kalanchoe planted around the three smaller live oaks in the side yard. The birdbath that had been by the path to the front porch was gone. The old Nash Rambler wasn’t in the driveway. The house and outbuildings had never been painted, but the wood looked lighter than she remembered, grayer.
The old place had been built in 1910, and from the outside, a visitor could almost imagine they’d gone back in time. The old wood frame and rough-cut timber house was the clos
est structure to the driveway, and shaped in an ell, with the ell pointing south. The tin roof was rust-colored, primarily, and there was a brick chimney on the south end of the house as well as the west.
The darker wood of the ell marked it as the addition it had been, back in 1938. Grandma and Grandpa had added a third bedroom and an inside bathroom that year, when Jennifer’s mother had been thirteen, and Grandpa had thought it best that she not share a room anymore with her younger brother, James. James was gone, now, too, killed in Korea three days after he’d gotten there.
This had been Jennifer’s wonderland, her safe haven, her yellow brick road. She and her brother had much preferred the freedom of Grandma’s acreage to the little house in town that they’d shared with their father.
As kids, she, Jonah, and their friends had taken apples and carrots to the old work horse, Roosevelt, that had lived out his days in the pasture behind the small, log stable. They’d picked strawberries from Grandma’s beds behind the old outhouse, where Grandma had said they grew best. They’d dragged the hose over to the garden rows and watered the lettuce and the tomatoes and their hot, tanned legs. They’d climbed the orange tree behind the shed and picked the brown-speckled fruits, which would be the sweetest. Then they’d thrown the peels at each other as the juice ran down their chests and they swatted the bees away.
Jennifer sat in the quiet car, staring out the windshield at the place that had meant everything to her, and to Grandma and Mom and Jonah.
Now there was just Jennifer, if you didn’t count her drunken and broken father, and she did not.
She hadn’t brought much; her 13-inch television, a couple suitcases of clothes and linens, a box of books. A few necessities, like her radio, her alarm clock, her blow dryer and her potted philodendron. It only took her ten minutes to bring it all inside from the car.
Then she sat down at the Formica kitchen table, in the yellow-flowered chair she’d sat in whenever she’d eaten in Grandma’s kitchen.
She looked around her, and let the memories wash over her, let herself be surprised by little details she’d forgotten.
It had been three months since Grandma had passed. Jennifer had been on her first vacation as an adult, in Puerto Rico. In any case, she had moved since she’d last spoken to Grandma, two weeks before her death, and Uncle Ray couldn’t find her new address in Grandma’s red leather address book. The letter was finally forwarded to the efficiency she’d rented three weeks after Grandma’s death. A peaceful death, unexpected, in her sleep. Jennifer should have called when she’d gotten back to New Orleans. She’d meant to, and there was a packet of photos in her purse, with copies that were intended for Grandma.
There had been no memorial to miss; Anna Mae Quindlen had wanted nothing of the kind. Words had been said before the Sunday service at Orangewood Methodist Church, where Grandma, her friends, and Uncle Ray attended. Her ashes had been scattered underneath the live oak out front.
Uncle Ray had said they’d left almost everything in the house, except for those things she had willed to certain friends or family. Grandma had wanted her clothes donated to the Salvation Army, and her books had been left to the library. Her good china went to her best friend’s daughter, Tricia. Everything else, she’d left to Jennifer.
Grandma had told her to go far away and never to come back, though they had discussed visiting over the last couple of years. Jennifer had trouble understanding why she would have left her the house, and the thirty-two acres on which it sat. Maybe so she could make her own decision about whether to come back.
The same old Lady Kenmore refrigerator hummed in one corner, but it wasn’t as big as she’d remembered. There was a clock in the shape of a barn that hadn’t been there before, but the hunk of Formica that had been missing from the end of the counter was still gone.
Almost everything she saw, Jennifer had a memory to go with it. She let them drift around the room for a bit, then remembered that she had groceries to put away. Her few things looked sparse in the old fridge, but it was enough for now, and the fridge was cold. The rest of the things, she put in the same cupboards they would have gone in ten, fifteen, twenty-five years ago.
When she was done, she found some aluminum ice trays in the freezer and filled them. Then she went around the house, opening all of the original windows. The ceilings in the house were high, and the windows narrow and tall. She opened them all, propping the one in her mother’s old room, which still needed propping. She had just opened the last one when she suddenly smelled iron, and the skies opened up.
The rain didn’t ease its way in, it was just suddenly and completely there. It pounded on the metal roof, and Jennifer grabbed an apple and went out through the kitchen door and onto the back porch.
The chairs and Grandma’s rocker were neatly piled on top of each other at one end of the porch, and Jennifer didn’t feel like putting them right, so she sat down on the top step and took a bite of her apple. The huge garden was now just a rectangle of dirt dotted with dandelions and stickers, but the old tire swing still hung from the tree in front of the shed. Grandma had said a few times, over the past few years, that gardening in the heat had started to wear her out too fast.
The rain cooled the breeze just enough for it to feel good, and the smell of good, wet earth made Jennifer’s nose twitch. As the breeze picked up, the tire swing moved just a hair.
“You remember the time you filled that tire swing with water and tried to raise tadpoles in it?” Grandma asked.
Jennifer looked over her shoulder and smiled. Grandma was sitting in her red rocker, pinching the tips off a strainer full of green beans. She looked like she had when Jennifer was about twelve or thirteen. Her silver hair was pinned back low on her neck, and over one ear was the enamel hairpin Jennifer had bought her from McCrory’s, the one with the daisies on it. She was wearing the red gingham apron with the rick-rack around the pocket.
“I remember,” Jennifer said. “You didn’t care how much I cried and stomped; you made me cart every one of those things back to the creek.”
Grandma laughed softly. “Not all of them. Some of them you didn’t get.”
“I know,” Jennifer said. “We couldn’t swing in that old tire for weeks.”
“You were so mad at me,” Grandma said, smiling. She had a short bean in her hand, and she popped it into her mouth. “Too small.”
“Not really,” Jennifer said. “I just felt bad because some of them died, just like you told me they would.”
“Well, some of the tadpoles died, but plenty of them grew up safe and sound,” Grandma said. “God knew how many frogs He needed in the world that summer.”
Jennifer nodded and took a bite of her apple. It stuck a bit in her suddenly dry throat, as she wondered why God had needed one less mother, one less brother and one less friend, in the fall of 1962.
“Why don’t you go on in and wash up, Jennifer Marie,” Grandma said. “You’re all muddy from picking these beans.”
“Okay.” Jennifer looked out toward the woods in back of the yard. “I miss you.”
“I miss you, too.”
Jennifer felt her eyes water, and she blinked a few times, then stood up and stretched her back. Her eyes glanced over the old red rocker in the corner, underneath a couple of wooden chairs, before she walked back into the kitchen and let the screen door shut behind her.
It rained off and on for most of the night.
Jennifer put her things away in her mother’s old room. When her mother left her father, they’d come to live with Grandma. Jennifer had been given her mother’s room, and Claire had roomed with Grandma. The white eyelet curtains were still there, and the white wrought iron bed that had belonged to her mom. Jennifer found a few cardboard boxes and shoeboxes in the floor of the tall, narrow closet; they were filled with books, mementos and photographs that had been in this room when Jennifer had left. She was tempted to sit dow
n and go through them, but she put her clothes away instead, and made up her bed.
Her box of books and records she left in a corner of the small living room. Grandma’s television set was gone, and Jennifer set hers up on a small table across from the flowered couch. She spent several minutes fiddling with the antennae, and finally managed to get three of the four channels that she knew about, and left it on just for the company.
She only half-listened to All in the Family as she set up her stereo on the tea cart that Grandma had used for her houseplants, which were gone. As for her own plant, Jennifer ended up giving it a drink and then putting it on the kitchen table.
Once she was done, she couldn’t help wandering around, touching things, remembering. Grandma’s room looked almost exactly like it always had. The same eyelet curtains as in Jennifer’s room. The same white linen runner across the pine dresser, the one with the whitework that Grandma had done when she’d gotten engaged.
There were a few boxes in Grandma’s closet, too, one held objects wrapped in newspaper. Jennifer unwrapped one of the ones on top. It was the old picture, from the 1930s, of Grandma and Grandpa sitting on the back porch. Grandma’s hair was jet black and worn pinned back. Grandpa was frozen eternally in the middle of a belly laugh, with the sunlight or overexposure turning his golden hair almost white.
On the grass by the porch steps, Jennifer’s mother, Claire, was waving at the camera, her smile revealing one missing front tooth.
Jennifer swiped a little bit of dust from the glass, and set the picture back onto Grandma’s empty-looking dresser, where she’d always kept it.
She glanced down at the rest of the boxes. The one on the bottom was marked “Photos” in red ink, written in Grandma’s graceful hand. They used to go through that box sometimes, on rainy days, spreading the pictures around them on Grandma’s bed. Jennifer was tempted to look at them now, but she knew that would be a rabbit hole. She folded the flaps on the box of breakables and closed the closet door.
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