And although a part of her wanted to die and join her beloved Emma because she didn’t think there could be life without her daughter, she knew her work on earth was not complete. “My, my,” she has told me over the years as she caresses my arm, “I thought what a huge task God has given to me in my old age—to care for this tiny one. But you know what? The task was not a chore at all. No, no. Every moment with you has been a gift.”
At this point, I always feel honored, special, and immensely worthy—like a beautiful quilt has been swept over me, engulfed me, and warmed me with sunlight even brighter than the sun beaming over the Carolina coast.
Ducee’s mouth is fully opened now, and she is snoring. Many times as a child the husky sound of her snoring annoyed me. Now I welcome it; it means she is alive.
I lift the sheet that has slipped around her stomach, tucking it over her chest and around her shoulders and neck. When I pat her shoulder, it feels fragile to me. Like a Japanese porcelain doll I once saw displayed in a glass case at an Asian store in Goldsboro. I was so afraid it would topple off the shelf, shatter, and break. I worried that if my footsteps were too hard or loud, the doll would come crashing down. I didn’t want to see damage come to that delicate porcelain face.
Ducee murmurs something I can’t understand, and a slight smile forms across her mouth. Then the door to her room is flung open and a frazzled Iva announces, “Clive is here. He was in a fight.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
In the emergency room of the same hospital, seated on a crisp bed, is Great-Uncle Clive. His head is wrapped in a white bandage and a scarlet-and-blue bruise lines one side of his jaw. His right arm rests against his side in a bulky cast. There are streaks of blood around the neck to his white “Drink Pepsi” T-shirt. His denim overalls are torn at the knees.
“He hit first” is all he says.
Iva, who cajoled her brother into telling, relayed the incident to me as we headed down to the ER in the elevator. Clive heard Dennis had come back to see Grable and collect his things. Furious, Clive asked where Dennis was staying. Grable told him he was at a friend’s apartment in Goldsboro. Clive found the telephone number mounted to Grable’s refrigerator with the forest green Mount Olive magnet and tracked Dennis down, entering the apartment this morning. Dennis yelled at him to get out, and the fight began. Clive left town right when Dennis threatened to ram an axe into one of the truck’s doors—the one heavily adorned with the Pepsi logo. It wasn’t until Clive’s daughter Chloe saw him hours later, in his broken condition, that he agreed to take her advice and head to the ER.
Of course, Iva didn’t know that Dennis had left Grable and Monet. Her brother’s fight with Dennis was the first she’d heard that Dennis had not been living at home in ages.
“I just don’t know why Grable didn’t tell me or Clarisa Jo,” Iva says with shock.
I am surprised that our clan has kept a secret. Grable didn’t want her mom, Clarisa Jo, or her grandmother Iva to know that Dennis was gone more than he was home and that she knew of his affair. She confided in Clive, and a little in me.
“He had it coming to him,” Clive tells me through clinched teeth and eyebrows that rise in fury.
“What does he look like?” I ask tentatively. “What did you do to Dennis?”
“He’s a selfish good-for-nothing.”
Clive, even as a child, I’m told, was a person of few words. He has nothing else to say. He waits for the doctor to release him to go home so that he can tend to his cucumber crop, sit on his newest John Deere and mow the grass, and work on a playhouse he is building on his property for Monet. I heard he painted a bottle of Pepsi on one side.
I touch his arm, the one without the cast. “I’m sorry, Uncle Clive.”
“She needs her daddy.” His eyes hold flames.
I nod, knowing he is referring to Monet. “She needs so much.” I let the sentence hang in the air and then am tempted to add to it, but what is there to say? Monet is suffering without her daddy. And Grable is clearly at her wits’ end.
“How’s Ducee?” Clive asks after moments of silence pass between us.
“Better . . . I think.”
He stares at his cast. “She can’t leave us.”
My sentiments exactly.
When a nurse enters with what Clive calls his exit papers, I leave the room.
Among the relatives, it has always been said of Great-Uncle Clive, “He has a temper. You think he’s all silent and strong, but when his temper boils, it boils.”
It boiled today.
I’m sorry I missed all the drama. I would have liked to have seen what really happened. I have a hard time believing that Dennis, who can act so refined in his pressed lawyer’s suit, threatened my great-uncle’s Pepsi truck with an axe.
No wonder he reminds many family members of Aunt Iva’s ex, Harlowe.
———
Ducee sleeps when I visit the next day. It seems the flowers in the room have multiplied overnight. I read the new cards and notes attached to the vases of day lilies, roses, and one delicate purple orchid. Against one of the vases is a thick piece of paper with a picture painted on it. In the picture, the sun is shining through a set of dark clouds. Below the clouds is a square fish tank with a little angelfish inside. Around the tank are strands of purple, green, and blue. The picture, obviously drawn by an elementary school student, makes me smile. I wonder who painted this artwork for Ducee. The artist used acrylic paints and did quite a good job.
Violet enters Ducee’s room and greets my sleeping grandmother by touching her cheek with one hand and exclaiming, “How are we today, Mrs. Dubois?” Then Violet sees me studying the picture. “Nice, isn’t it? That little girl does love your grandmother.”
“Which little girl?” I ask.
“The one with the Chinese kimono doll and the Dora the Explorer T-shirt.”
My eyes grow wide. “Not Monet!”
Violet nods and laughs. “She’s a noisy thing, but when I gave her paper and some paints I found in a drawer, she went right to work.”
“She was here?”
Violet manages to convince a sleepy Ducee to open her mouth for the thermometer. “Last night after you left,” the nurse says as she sits on the stool by Ducee’s bed. “I squeezed paint from a few tubes onto a paper plate and filled a small tray with water. She did all the rest.”
I shake my head and want to laugh. All these years we’ve been giving Monet the wrong artistic medium to use for her drawings. We’ve supplied her with crayons and markers when the child needed—who would have guessed—acrylics!
The colors in Monet’s painting are like a rainbow, a promise of hope. I imagine her holding the brush in one hand and dipping it into the pools of paint the way she dips her hot dog slices into ketchup. She’s even given the fish eyes and fins.
If the original Claude Monet were here, what would he title little Monet’s masterpiece? I’d like to think he’d agree with me and name it Beauty Within.
———
Harrison wonders why I haven’t written. “I guess you’re busy preparing for your trip,” his message says. “I do miss hearing from you. I’ll see you soon. I can’t believe how much I’m looking forward to your visit.”
His words stir within me an excitement—a feeling of magic—like a child experiences on Christmas morning.
I haven’t written to him since Ducee has been hospitalized. I guess I don’t know what to say. I do not know if I will go to Japan after all this. My longing is for my grandmother to be back on her tennis-shoes-encased feet.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Mrs. McCready is a dear woman in spite of the recent trouble she has had with hair conditioner. Forever this woman will be esteemed by all of the clan because twice now she’s found Ducee, called 911, and overseen Ducee being lifted into the ambulance and taken to the hospital. There is no way we can repay her for being a neighbor that is like a sister to my grandmother. But as kind as this elderly woman is, she’s not going
to look after a donkey. That much is clear.
It is up to me to feed Maggie McCormick while Ducee’s in the hospital—only because, perhaps, I am the only one dumb enough to volunteer.
I brush the animal and give her clean water. I let her eat a baked potato, taken from Ducee’s hospital tray at dinner, and a carrot, out of my hand. Before leaving, I guide her out into the field by Ducee’s house. The rustic barn door is ajar; Maggie can go inside if she needs to. But the weather’s so warm that Maggie will be just fine in the grassy land enclosed by the fence.
“Maggie, you are more than a beast. You are a lifesaver,” I tell her as I hand her the apple, the gift Mr. McGuire gave me yesterday for her. I stopped by his store for fish food. Eagerly, he told me he knew that Clive had been in the ER. Nothing stays secret in this town.
“I hope,” Mr. McGuire said, “that Dennis ended up in the ER, as well.”
I told him that, according to Iva, Dennis threatened to take out a gun but punched Clive in the jaw instead. Clive fell backward and landed on his arm. Clive knocked Dennis in the teeth and possibly, although no one knows for sure, a few of them broke.
Maggie McCormick chews the apple, shows her large teeth, and gives a slight bray. She must know she is special to have alerted Mrs. McCready about Ducee.
I check Ducee’s doors to make sure they’re locked. Everything seems secure and tranquil, right down to the two dormer windows protruding out from under the black roof. Even the wreath is hanging squarely on the lavender front door this June evening, but the door doesn’t look inviting now, perhaps because no one is home.
The gardenia bush on the side of the house fills the air with its sweetness. Now, that is a fragrance that can calm any uneasy nerve. If Ducee dies, I’ll take the gardenia and plant it in my yard. Each day as I walk past it, I’ll be filled with an aroma that will soothe me almost as well as watching my fish swim.
When I back out of the driveway, I take one last look at Ducee’s house. Part of me fears that Ducee will never return to it again. Perhaps the nine lives we’ve kidded her about having have come to an abrupt end.
I feel badly that I even considered taking the gardenia bush if Ducee dies.
I drive home unaware of my surroundings, making the familiar left and right turns. When I pull into my driveway, Hilda waves from her open garage. She’s standing over a stack of cardboard boxes while a burly man I’ve never seen before washes her van. He soaps up the body, his large muscles flexing. I bet lots of people are willing to wash Hilda’s van. They may even think that cleaning the vehicle of a saint secures a place for them in heaven.
Before I take the keys out of my car’s ignition, the dashboard’s Check Engine light ignites. Oh no. I wait for the light to disappear as though if I stare at it long enough it’ll fade. Cars are fine, I always say, unless they refuse to run smoothly and need servicing.
Luckily, I can call Great-Uncle Clive. He’s still in pain and doesn’t sleep well since the fight with Dennis, but maybe he can come by and take a look under the hood.
———
Inside my house, I settle in my fuzzy chair to check for email messages. There’s a pink-and-purple-colored message from Kristine asking how my summer is going. She adds that her car is in the shop because she backed into a telephone pole after her salsa lesson last night. She hopes the repair won’t be costly. I can relate. She and Salvador just returned from three days at Emerald Isle and they’d like to bring over a gift for me. “We might just stop by and surprise you one of these days,” she writes before ending her message.
I hope their visit isn’t too much of a surprise. I would hate to have just stepped out of the shower when they arrive, or burned something on the stove.
The phone rings.
Aunt Betty heard from Iva about Ducee and wants to know how her mother is doing. “Should we come now?” She poses this question a few times, using a variety of intonations. “We could come earlier than planned for the reunion. I can fly out tomorrow. How is she? What do you think? Should we come now?” Her questions spill into each other, and I don’t know which one to answer first.
One thing I do know is that my grandmother would prefer that people not make such a fuss over her, even if one of those people is her own daughter.
“She’s going to be fine.” Who am I trying to convince? “Just fine.”
“How is her heart?”
“The doctors are going to change her medication.”
“Oh, should we come now?” I hear the worry over the phone lines.
I firmly tell her to wait. “I’ll call you tomorrow. Meanwhile, don’t worry.” I hope I sound as calm as anyone, even though I’ve twirled my index finger around a strand of hair so tightly that my finger, for a few seconds, is stuck.
Uncle Jarvis gets on the phone and, true to character, tells a joke about two men who went fishing with an elephant. The joke is wasted on me because I don’t think it’s funny. But when my uncle roars with laughter, I can’t help letting out a little laugh. His next joke is about a bottle of Tabasco and a moose; it must be only for those in Wyoming to understand. I pretend it’s a good one. As he delves into a joke about a buffalo in hiding, I realize my mind is a thousand miles away—somewhere over the Pacific Ocean.
Aunt Betty yells in the background, “That’s enough, Jarvis! You need to mow the grass.”
Uncle Jarvis chuckles, says he’ll see me at the reunion soon. He wonders if he should bring some buffalo steaks for the grill. “They might taste good with that chutney Ducee makes.”
I take a thumbnail from my mouth and say, “Sure.”
When we tell each other good night, I wonder what kind of shape Ducee will be in for the reunion. Although we’ve already made the chutney for the event, she’s not going to be able to make the casseroles, the gallons of iced tea, the egg salad sandwiches. She might still be in a hospital bed. The weekend is just around the corner and how can she possibly get things ready when she sleeps half the day?
It’s ten-fifteen at night eastern time, eleven-fifteen in the morning Japan time.
I wonder how Harrison’s church picnic at Minoo Park is going today. He wrote that this particular mountain park has monkeys that roam freely. They often grab food from visitors. He said once a tiny monkey crept up to his picnic table, snuck under his elbow, and ran off with a whole bag of potato chips.
Smiling at the thought of a monkey stealing chips, I wonder if Harrison thinks of me as much as I think of him.
I can’t believe how much I’m looking forward to your visit.
I would never admit that sentiment to him in a message across cyberspace. I would hold it tightly, secretively, in my heart. As I already do.
Chapter Thirty-Four
In two days, on Thursday, July first, I have a flight to Japan. And except for Ducee and me, no one in Mount Olive knows. This must be the best-kept secret of the whole McCormickDubois-Michelin clan. It will go down throughout the generations as the story of Nicole Michelin’s trip to Japan. Families will crowd around the tables eating chutney, drinking ginger tea, wiping their mouths on linen napkins, saying, “She and her grandmother Ducee didn’t tell a soul. Nicole applied for her passport and purchased an air ticket and planned her trip just like that. No one knew. Isn’t that amazing? The whole time everyone thought she was going to be at the family reunion, bringing that Mount Olive centerpiece. You know, the one with the olives on a large fresh pineapple? But no, she was on her way to Japan. And that is the story of how Nicole missed the reunion and went to Japan.”
The downside of a well-kept secret is that there is no one to talk this over with.
Do granddaughters leave their grandmothers in hospitals and sail across the skies, away from them? If I could ask Grable, or even Iva, what they think of me leaving at a time like this, that might help me know what to do.
Maybe the tale of how Nicole skipped the reunion and flew to Japan will never be told.
My new clothes are still in the striped pink-and-bl
ue bags with Julianne’s written in gold on them. The drugstore bag holding lipstick, perfume, and nail polishes sits next to them on the kitchen floor where I dropped them when the phone call from Iva about Ducee being in the hospital arrived. They are crouched together, expectant, waiting to hear. What is the verdict? Will the items remain in the bags forever, or do they get let out and have their price tags clipped off ? Will they get placed in the large gray Samsonite suitcase?
I stare blankly at the bags. What was I thinking? What possessed me to buy nail polish? Why would I paint my nails and draw attention to their short, stubby characteristics?
After buying clothes at Julianne’s, I guess I went crazy. Stopped at Franklin’s Drug and came out with three bottles of nail polish. And a tube of coral lipstick. And Elizabeth Arden’s Green Tea perfume. When was the last time I purchased any of these products? I’ve prided myself on not needing any of them. These frou-frou products of society are for other girls, not me. Not Nicole Michelin, the simple English teacher.
The bags bulge and beg with wanting to know if they will forever hold their contents.
So what is the verdict?
Bits and pieces of Harrison’s previous email messages start to pop up in my mind, the way the letters pop over when Vanna turns them on Wheel of Fortune.
We can take the train from Kyoto to Tokyo. For lunch we can eat the obento they sell at the stations. Rice, pickles, fish, and seaweed, I tell you, it is a traveler’s delight. There is nothing that can be compared with riding on the shinkansen, looking out the large glass window, watching rice fields and bamboo groves, little towns and children on bicycles, as you eat an obento.
I want you to meet my koi. I know as an expert in fish care, you will be able to convince them not to eat the plants. They’ll listen to you.
Nicole, it will be so good for you and Watanabesan to reconnect and talk together. Of course, I won’t mind translating. Watanabe-san appears a bit confused at times, but seeing you will make her so happy.
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