by Megan Hart
“Get inside here, Andy. You’re going to freeze your balls off.”
Andy let out a guffaw of laughter and charmingly ducked his head. It was hard to tell if he was blushing beneath the wind-chilled red of his cheeks, but Janelle thought he was. He shook his head.
“Gabe!”
“Get inside. Your breakfast is waiting. Jesus.” Gabe stepped aside so Andy could go in.
He did, but looked over his shoulder at Janelle. “This is my brother Gabe. Do you remember him, too?”
“She remembers me. Get inside.” Gabe waited until Andy had moved past him, then closed the door a little too hard. He stared at Janelle. He wasn’t dressed for the weather, but if the cold bit at his bared arms or feet, he didn’t show it.
Gabe also had silver in his hair, at the temples and dark stubble at the scruff of his neck. Maybe a glint or two in his bushy brows and most certainly in the tuft of hair curling up from the V-neck of his white T-shirt. Time had been good to him, and Janelle wasn’t surprised. Gabe Tierney had a face that could make angels weep and devils dance.
He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at her. Daring her, but to do what?
“Hi, Gabe.”
“You’re moved in.”
Janelle glanced toward Nan’s house. She supposed she should start calling it home. She looked back at him. “Yep. Me and my son. Bennett. He just turned twelve.”
Gabe didn’t crack even half a grin. “It’s been a long time.”
She knew that well enough. “Seems like it hasn’t been so long. Not much has changed.”
Gabe put a hand behind him to twist the knob of the front door without turning. It stuck, so he pushed it with his foot, hard enough to force it open. He shook his head once, twice, slowly. “Nothing ever does.”
Then he went inside.
Janelle let out a breath that frosted in front of her face. As kids they’d held their fingers to their lips and exhaled, pretending to smoke. As teenagers, they’d actually lit up. Now she let the air in front of her face fog her vision for a second or two before she took her foot off the front step.
“Nice to see you, too.” More frost hung the words in the air, frozen. If she reached out, maybe she might’ve been able to knock them to the ground like something solid, but instead Janelle slipped down the icy hill toward the back door of Nan’s house.
On the enclosed porch, she stamped snow from her boots and slipped them off, dancing a little in the cold that seemed strangely deeper now that she’d come inside. Unzipping her coat, she went into the family room to find Nan at the table. There was no formal dining room in the house, just this overlarge space where they all gathered to eat every meal and watch TV or talk. Oh, and play cards, she thought. That was where they did that, too.
Nan had an array of bottles set out in front of her, carefully lined up on a small plastic tray, with the labels facing her. She also had a piece of lined notebook paper filled with looping, familiar handwriting. She pointed to one of the lines. “What’s this say? I don’t have my glasses on.”
“Let me see.” Janelle craned her neck to look at the paper, which listed different medications for high blood pressure, anemia, pain management. “This says you need to take your Ferradix in the morning with food.”
Janelle read a few of the other instructions, most stating the dosage for each pill or liquid, the time of day it needed to be taken, with food or without. It was complicated, the paper creased and the ink smudged in places. She’d have to see if she could rewrite it, maybe even type it up on her laptop and print it out in bigger letters so Nan could see it more easily. She watched Nan fumble with one of the pill bottles, the childproof cap giving her trouble. The bottle slipped, and her grandmother hissed in pain or irritation.
“Nan, let me get that for you.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Nan looked up at her with both eyebrows raised. “I can do it.”
“I’m going to make myself some breakfast. Can I get you something?” Janelle backed off, careful to tread the line between being solicitous and overbearing. It was a line she often missed with her son, but for the moment Nan seemed happy enough to accept the offer.
“English muffin with some peanut butter, honey, thank you. I made coffee. You can bring me a cup of that, too.” Nan sighed and looked at the bottles. One of them had a small cup tipped over the lid, like a shot glass, and she poured a dose of brown liquid into it and tossed it back with a grimace. “Oh, that’s nasty.”
The coffee turned out to be pitch-black and full of grounds. Janelle had yet to unpack her own sleek coffeemaker that not only ground the beans but also had different temperature settings and a milk frother, but seeing this mess she resolved to make finding it a priority. Nobody who liked coffee could drink that swill, and Janelle didn’t just like coffee, she considered it its own necessary food group. When she lifted the plastic top to peek inside at the filter, she found the basket overflowing with sodden grounds that looked as though they hadn’t been dumped in weeks. Digging a cautious finger into the mess, she unearthed a patch of mold.
“Nan,” she said in the doorway, careful to keep her voice neutral. “When’s the last time you made coffee?”
Nan looked up from a bottle she was trying to open. “Oh. I don’t drink it much, when it’s just me. Making a whole pot seems like such a waste. But now that you’re here, honey, you’ll drink it, won’t you? You like coffee.”
Janelle did indeed, but the stuff in the kitchen looked like a harbinger of the zombie apocalypse or something. A couple swigs and she’d become Patient Zero. Still, Nan had her pride.
“Something happened to it. I need to make a fresh pot, okay? It will be a few minutes. Unless you’d rather have tea?”
Nan looked thoughtful. “I wouldn’t mind a nice cup of Earl Grey, honey. Sure. But if you want coffee...”
“I’m fine.” She’d have to be, at least until she cleaned the coffeemaker or unpacked her own.
Janelle filled a teakettle and found the tea in the corner cupboard where it had always been kept, on the shelf above the candy jar. The candy inside, sour balls in multiple colors, had melted and stuck together into an inedible mess. Janelle put the jar in the sink and filled it with hot water, hoping to dissolve the candy enough to wash it. Behind the jar she found a couple bags of unopened candy, the same sour balls and starlight mints, along with an ancient package of gummy spearmint leaves. It was the candy she remembered from her childhood, and from the look of the packages might’ve been purchased that long ago.
“Nan...” Janelle, candy in one hand, went to the doorway. At the table, her grandmother had put her face in her hands. Candy forgotten, Janelle rushed to her. “Nan! Are you okay?”
She looked up, her forehead creased and her mouth thin. She looked unfocused for a second, then pinned Janelle with her gaze. Her eyes had once been the color of a summer sky fluffed with clouds, but they’d gone a duller, dimmer blue. Washed out, Janelle thought. Everything about Nan had faded.
Janelle took her hand and chafed it gently, mindful of the arthritis. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, I just got a little headache. My pressure might be up a bit too high, that’s all. I b’lieve I’d better lie down for a while.” She drew in a shuddering breath, but found a smile and patted Janelle’s hands. “It’s time for my nap, anyway.”
“Nan, it’s, like, eight-thirty in the morning.”
Her laugh, at least, hadn’t faded. “When you’re as old as I am, honey, your sleep gets all messed up. I was up at four this morning.”
At four this morning, Janelle had been tossing and turning, in the midst of a series of weird dreams in which she tried desperately to send text messages, but was unable to read them. She remembered peeking at the clock around that time. Maybe a noise from downstairs had woken her. Knowing Nan had been up and about without anyone else awake made her frown.
“You don’t want to eat your muffin first? How about your tea?”
Nan shook her head.
“If I drink it now I’ll just have to pee, and I don’t want to have to worry about getting to the bathroom on time. I don’t always make it.”
Something twisted inside Janelle at Nan’s casual admission, but she didn’t let it show. “How about I help you to your bedroom and let you sleep, then.”
“I don’t need you to help me,” Nan said. “I’m fine.”
“Of course you are.”
Still, Janelle pushed back her chair and held Nan’s arm to help her up from the table. The chair legs caught on the thick orange shag Janelle remembered from her childhood. She’d get one of those plastic mats from the office supply store, Janelle thought as her grandmother grunted but finally shoved the chair back far enough to get up. Or better yet, replace the old carpet with something more up-to-date and salable.
“I’m fine,” Nan said in a steely voice.
Against her better judgment, Janelle let go of her arm. When her grandmother sounded like that it was better to do what she said. Janelle stepped out of the way so Nan could get around the table, her slippers shuffling on the carpet, then on the linoleum. She walked slowly, bent, but she seemed steady enough. From the kitchen, the kettle whistled, and Janelle followed Nan to take it off the heat.
“You’ll have plenty of time to get yourself situated.” Nan paused in the hallway, one hand on the basement door frame for support as she turned. “And honey, I’m so glad you’re here. So glad. You’ve been gone such a long time.”
I promise to visit soon, Nan. I promise.
But she never had. The years of phone calls, cards, letters, all the same. Reminding her she had a place here in Nan’s house, that she was always welcome. No matter how far she’d run—dancing as a chorus girl in Las Vegas or selling newlyweds their first town houses in California—Janelle had never been able to leave this place and that year behind. And yet she’d allowed herself to be kept away by what had happened.
“I’m glad, too, Nan.”
It was almost even true.
SIX
FIRST THINGS FIRST. That was the way to go about any set of tasks. One at a time, prioritize, get the work finished.
Or sit in the middle of the complete chaos that was your bedroom, with open packing boxes all over the place, and look at your old yearbook while you listened to records on a player that hadn’t seen the light of day since...well, since she’d left Nan’s house, probably.
Janelle had found the player and the milk crate of records tucked into one of the dormers. They’d belonged to her dad, though she’d made them her own during her year here. Lots of classic rock, punk like the Sex Pistols, some New Wave stuff including Siouxsie and the Banshees. He’d also had an entire shoe box of random 45s he’d bought from some discount store. None of the songs had ever hit the radio, at least not that Janelle had heard, but she’d listened to a few of them over and over back in the day.
“Don’t Get Fooled By The Pander Man,” by Brinkley & Parker. The black record with its orange label spun on the turntable as she flipped the pages of the yearbook she’d found in a box of books she thought she’d left in storage.
Oh, God. Her hair. Her natural color had darkened to a deep auburn over the years from the strawberry-red she’d hated as a kid, and she wore it just past her shoulders with a few layers around her face. Most of the time she pulled it back in a ponytail, low maintenance, wash-and-go. That’s who she’d become. Someone’s mom.
In this picture, she’d not only dyed it black but also cut it asymmetrically so that one side was shoulder length and the other cropped at chin level. She vividly remembered the mornings she’d spent with a curling iron, the barrel the girth of her pinky, and an industrial-size bottle of hair gel. All those hours she’d spent on her hair, her makeup, her clothes...
It seemed so ridiculous now.
The song ended and Janelle got up to take the needle off the record. She winced at the creak in her joints. If looking at the old photos hadn’t made her feel ancient, that crackity-crack of her neck sure did. She’d been at this since Bennett left for school, with only a few short breaks to check on Nan. He’d been home for about an hour, and from his room came the sound of much more modern music, some rap song she’d let him buy, but only the clean version. Ninety percent of the song was bleeps.
“Hey. I’m going to get a snack. You want something?”
Bennett looked up from his bed, where he was leafing through a stack of comics. The rest of his room looked as if a tornado had blasted through it. She opened her mouth to scold, but stopped herself. Pot, she thought, have you met kettle?
“Okay.”
“I’m going to check on Nan first. Why don’t you wash your hands. With soap,” Janelle added as Bennett hopped off the bed. He rolled his eyes, but didn’t argue.
Downstairs, Nan dozed on the couch in front of the TV. It was showing a religious program—at least there was a nun painting in watercolors, but she wasn’t talking about Jesus, so it was hard to tell. Janelle didn’t wake her grandmother. They’d have dinner in a couple hours, and by then Nan would probably be up.
“How about cookies and milk, buddy? I’ll make dinner in a little bit.” Janelle found the ceramic cookie jar tucked back in a corner by the paper towel holder. Nan always kept cookies there, a constant like the tides. Or political scandals.
The jar’s handle was a squirrel missing its tail. The paint had worn off its fur. Nostalgia swept Janelle again as she lifted the lid. How many times had she helped herself to cookies from this jar? Too many to count.
Inside were the homemade chocolate chip cookies she was hoping for. “Mmm. These are gonna be so good. Grab some glasses, bud. Get us some milk.”
“Should I take it to the table?” Bennett held up the two glasses he’d filled.
She thought of Nan, still napping. “No, let’s just eat them in here.”
Bennett looked around the small kitchen. “Standing up? What?”
Janelle laughed. “Um, yeah. Are your legs too weak to hold you, or what?”
“You always tell me not to hover around dropping crumbs,” he protested. “You always tell me to sit down at the table like a human being, not a cow at a feed trough.”
This was true, but Bennett’s prickly reaction was unusual. Janelle offered him a cookie. She wasn’t sure she could deal with a breakdown at the moment. Everything felt too close to the surface—the move, this house, the past rising up to bite her like a snake. Nan on the couch, so still and silent Janelle thought she ought to have checked to make sure she was breathing. If Bennett, who hardly ever gave in to an emotional display, started up, Janelle wouldn’t be able to help him through it. She’d dissolve right along with him, and probably worse.
“Cookie,” she said firmly, and handed him one. “Milk. It’s good, Bennett, just try it.”
The look of horror he gave her after he bit into the cookie he’d dunked in the milk seemed like a joke—until he bent, choking and spitting, over the sink. “Mom!”
“Oh, Bennett, c’mon. What?” The cookie she snagged was a little burned, but rock-hard. The milk would fix it.
Unless, of course, the milk was sour. Janelle spit her own mouthful into the sink, then ran the water to rinse her mouth. She looked at her laughing son. “You think that’s funny, huh?”
Bennett shook his head, but grinned. “Gross.”
Janelle checked the date on the milk. Sighed. It was expired by two weeks. “Was this open when you took it out?”
“Yes. But I didn’t do that to it!”
She laughed, loving him so much it hurt. “I know you didn’t.”
The carton was almost full, even taking into account the two glasses Bennett had filled. Which meant the milk had been opened but barely touched. Joey had told her that up until her fall, Nan had still been able to get around on her own. In the three months it took for Janelle to tie up her business in California and get out here, she’d assumed someone had been checking on Nan at least weekly—though seeing her now, it should’ve been daily.
Janelle opened a pantry cupboard, studying the contents. Canned soups, dry cereal, plastic bins of pasta. The fridge was also crammed with plastic containers, but the first few she pulled out were expired, too. Clearly, she needed to take a good inventory.
“What are you doing?” Nan sounded hoarse, but her eyes were bright. “Oh, are you hungry? I can make some sandwiches....”
“Nan. No. That’s okay, I’ll make dinner in a little while.” If there was anything to make dinner with. “When’s the last time anyone brought you some groceries?”
“Oh.” Nan shuffled forward, paused with a fingertip to her lips, thinking. “That would be Deb and Joey. They came for New Year’s dinner. Donna and Bobby, too, along with the kids. And Joey a few days before that to bring me the turkey and my pills from the pharmacy.”
Janelle made a mental count. “So...a week or so? Did they bring you stuff for New Year’s, and other groceries, too?”
“They took me out to dinner.” Nan tugged at the fridge door, which at first didn’t want to give until she grunted and pulled harder. “I didn’t eat all of it—I brought some home with me. Where is it... Oh, there.”
She turned with a foil-wrapped container in her hands. “I had some spaghetti and garlic bread. I could heat that up for my supper, honey. You don’t have to make me anything.”
“Nan, you can’t eat that. If you want spaghetti, I can make some.”
She frowned. “It’s such a waste....”
Janelle took the foil package from her and peeked inside. “No, look. This is no good. You’d get sick eating it. And your milk was spoiled. I think I need to go to the grocery store. Like, tonight. Now.”
Nan looked briefly confused. “Okay, let me get my coat.”
“You can stay here.” Janelle tossed the leftovers in the can under the sink, now full, and pulled it out. Tying the bag shut, she bent to replace it with a trash bag from the normal spot. She looked beneath the sink, expecting to see bottles of dish detergent and other soaps, trash bags, a package of sponges. Nothing. “Shi—oot.”
“What? Mice? I had them come and put traps.”