by Terry Lee
“You be nice to him,” Quinlan instructed. “He’s had a rough time.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Ruby said. “Hey. The reason I called is because, as your contact person,” Ruby’s voice dipped into serious for a nano-second and then reverted back. “I’ve got questions to ask you, okay?”
“Can it wait till tomorrow? I’ve had a long day.” All Quinlan wanted was to get into bed and try to recoup her energies for tomorrow.
“Uh, excuse me…no.”
Quinlan sighed. “Okay, go ahead.”
“Let’s see.”
Quinlan waited impatiently while Ruby thumbed through her notebook.
“Oh yeah, here it is,” Ruby said. “You ready?”
“Yes!” The woman’s intentions were good, but geez, she had one nerve left and darn if Ruby wasn’t sitting on it.
“Okay, okay. Keep your shorts on.” Ruby cleared her throat. “The question is…what have you learned?”
Ruby’s words had taken aim and hit the bulls-eye pinned to Quinlan’s heart, and all the heaviness tonight. She felt her eyes well again. “I don’t know how to answer that,” she said. The truth.
Ruby’s chomps fell silent for a moment before she replied. “You don’t have to.”
“What do you mean?” Quinlan asked.
“You don’t have to,” Ruby said.
“But you just asked—”
“They know.”
“Who knows?” Quinlan’s mind felt mushy.
“The Council. They already know what you’re going through.”
“But how?”
“I don’t know,” Ruby replied, drawing out the response. “I don’t make the rules. I’m just givin’ you instructions. Ya know what I’m sayin’?”
Quinlan sunk back in her chair. “I see.” Her words were barely audible. “What is the next question?”
“That’s it,” Ruby said.
“That’s it?”
“Yep. Isn’t that enough?”
“Yes, quite.” Quinlan thought about sleeping in her clothes. None of this was turning out how she planned.
“Over and out,” Ruby said. “Oh, by the way, Meghan says howdy.”
Quinlan doubted her sister had ever used the word howdy. “Give her a hug for me, okay Ruby?”
“Sure thing. Take care.”
“You too.” Quinlan pushed end, sending Ruby away.
CHAPTER 39
GRACE
“What do you know?” Grace sniffed the fall air. Since Adam left for Beijing life had kept her so busy she failed to realize the change in seasons. It wasn’t the temperature drop, which was only slight, or even the leaves collecting in the yard, but more the hazy stillness in the late afternoons. Houston summers were brutal and long. Fall, her favorite and shortest season, could come and go in hardly more than a weekend.
Grace didn’t have many fall decorations, but enough to make the effort up to the attic late Friday afternoon worthwhile. She found the container nestled next to the dozen or so boxes filled with her mother’s belongings. She sat back on her heels and chewed on her little finger before pulling the fall box and three of her mother’s to the attic opening.
“Josh,” she yelled down the pull-down stairway. “I need help with some boxes. Get your sister, please.”
By sheer force of necessity Grace had learned to put a command in her voice. Without Adam around she didn’t have the luxury or time to meekly ask the kids if they minded giving her a hand. A totally new concept she had learned—asking for what she needed, a huge move for her. Adam would be proud…so would her mom. She would, wouldn’t she?
Grace relayed the boxes to Josh who, in turn, passed them down to Hannah. Riley, who insisting on being in the middle of everything, had managed to wiggle between Hannah and the attic ladder. Josh had nicknamed their loveable mutt Snoop Dogg, with good reason.
“Thanks for helping,” Grace signed to Hannah. “Thank you,” she yelled at Josh who had already retreated to his room.
Hannah noticed the boxes labeled ‘Mom.’ “Grandma?”
“Yes,” Grace said.
“Can I look?” Hannah asked.
“Maybe tomorrow, okay?”
Hannah nodded and headed back to her room.
Grace easily carried the fall box downstairs, the lightest of the four from the attic. With minimal effort she hung an autumn adorned wreath on the front door and halfway arranged the centerpiece and votive candleholders on the dining room table. Digging through her mother’s sideboard she found brownish-orange votives and dropped them in the candleholders. Only mom would stock season-appropriate candles.
She stepped back to survey her work. “Not too bad.” Her mother would probably rearrange it, but it would do.
~~~
The following morning Grace stirred her first cup of coffee and checked her to-do list.
Two chapters-read and outline
Boxes upstairs
Wash clothes
She braced her chin with one elbow on the counter and ran her finger around the rim of the coffee cup. Thoughts of last night’s strange dream filtered in.
It must have been a dream, but it all seemed so real. She had clearly heard her mother singing. Although it was no secret her mother couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket when she was alive, the beautiful and perfectly pitched voice in her dream definitely belonged to her mother. No doubt. And the song:
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.
You make me happy, when skies are gray.
You’ll never know dear, how much I love you.
Please don’t take my sunshine away.
After the singing something startled her awake. She sat completely still, taking in the feeling around her. There was nothing visible except the beam from her digital alarm clock…and a sense, a strong sense of her mother’s presence. She remembered sitting in the darkness, basking as the comfort and warmth wrapped around her like a plush fleece blanket. At some point she fell back into a deep sleep.
Grace finished her second cup of coffee just as a sleepy-eyed Hannah walked into the kitchen. Wrapping her arms around her mother, she dropped her head on Grace’s shoulder. Grace reached up to smooth the unruly mass of hair and felt the warmth of her daughter’s slumber-ridden body.
Hannah gently pushed away. “I smell,” she sniffed, “cinnamon rolls?” She peeked in the oven. “My favorite!” Pulling milk from the refrigerator, she dropped on the stool next to Grace.
“You sleep good?” Grace signed.
Hannah poured milk into a glass and took a sip before replying. “Had dream. Grandma.”
Grace’s spine straightened. “Really?” She waited a moment. “About?”
The buzzer sounded, breaking Grace’s concentration. Pointing to the oven, she rose to silence the intrusion. Placing the round cake pan on a trivet in front of them, she spread icing over the hot rolls. “What was your dream about?”
Hannah ran a finger through the white goo. “Don’t remember,” she shrugged. “But Grandma was in it.” She pulled away the first cinnamon roll from the pan and took a bite. “You sleep good?” A new tradition between the two of them since Adam had been gone.
“Okay,” Grace said.
“You dream?” Hannah asked.
Strange we both had a dream about Mom. She pulled a hot sticky roll toward her and took a bite. “It’s silly.” Grace’s turn to shrug. “No big deal.”
Hannah hit the counter twice. “What?”
Grace wiped icing from her chin. “I heard someone singing an old song. I thought it was your grandma, but she couldn’t sing, remember?” She gave Hannah a smiley face.
The raised eyebrows from Hannah was code for, “and the name of the song?” Grace squirmed in her seat, crossed and uncrossed her legs. She scratched her nose and signed, “You Are My Sunshine.”
Hannah sat her milk glass down, her eyes silver dollar wide. “Your little-girl song with Grandma.”
Grace’s mouth opened and then closed like a blowfis
h. “You knew that?”
“Grandma told me,” Hannah signed with a ‘duh’ look. “You know, like the one she and I have.” And with the wisdom of one far beyond her years Hannah’s next statement almost blew Grace off her barstool. “Maybe Grandma wants us to look through the boxes.”
~~~
Saturday afternoon Grace sat cross-legged on the game room floor and opened the first of the three boxes. She handed Hannah fine old linen tablecloths, matching napkins, and hand-made doilies. “These were my grandma’s…my dad’s mom.”
“What about Grandma’s mom? Hannah asked. “Your other grandmother.”
“Never met her.” Grace pulled out two flowery waist aprons her mother had made long ago. Both made with identical vintage print designs with over-sized flowers and pieces of fruit on a garden lattice. Only the colors varied. One lavender, the other yellow.
Hannah’s head tilted. “You didn’t know your grandma?”
Grace shook her head. “I don’t know why, but she and your grandma didn’t get along.” She added the folded aprons to the pile of linens and reached for the second box.
“How can you not get along with your mother?” Hannah signed, her expression blank.
Thinking first of several on-again, off-again tumultuous times she’d had with her own mother Grace’s thoughts jumped to Cherry and her mother. “It happens,” she signed, then pulled two plastic containers of DMC thread and at least a dozen unopened packages of Aida cloth from the box.
“Wow. Grandma had a lot of stuff,” Hannah signed before pulling out a large Ziploc bag. Its contents were concealed with layers of tissue paper.
Grace saw the curiosity in Hannah’s eyes. “Go ahead, open it.”
Hannah pulled apart the sealed edges and removed the contents, setting the tissue-wrapped prize in her lap. She brushed back the folds of thin paper to reveal a stack of starched, delicate, hand-made snowflakes. Hannah’s eyes lit. “Beautiful!” she signed. “Crochet?”
“Macramé,” Gracie fingerspelled. She remembered her mother had starting making the snowflakes long ago. She had somehow forgotten the hours her mother had labored making the delicate ornaments after her radiation treatments. She had preferred macramé to crocheting at that point, for whatever reason. The project helped fill the time while she waited for her strength to return…which of course, it never did. A small ache found its place in the middle of Grace’s chest.
“Maybe I can have these?” Hannah signed.
Grace smiled and nodded, despite the heart pain. “I think Grandma would like that.”
“My own special Christmas tree,” Hannah signed. “Only for….” she pointed to the snowflakes. “Okay?”
“Okay.” She felt a wave of love for her daughter, for the joy Hannah brought to this otherwise laborious and painful task of sorting through her mother’s belongings.
“One more.” Hannah pointed to the last box.
Pulling the remaining box closer, Grace noticed the word fragile printed in large black letters on each side. She peeled off the sealed tape and thought of all the other boxes upstairs. There are some things a person has to do for themselves, but packing up her mom’s personal belongings hadn’t been one of them. Luckily, her mom’s close friend, Dorothy, had stepped up to the plate. So the contents of the box in front of her and those in the attic were a mystery.
She opened the box to large wads of crumbled newspaper, which they tossed aside before pulling out two cylinder shaped gallon apothecary jars with fitted lids and one large over-sized brandy snifter. All three jars were filled with seashells.
Hannah lifted one of the heavy apothecary jars to examine it and then excitedly tapped Grace’s leg. “Look!” Pressed against the outside and nestled among the array of whitish-sand colored seashells lay a dark-brown, heart-shaped sea bean “Same as yours!”
Well, what do you know…Mom had a sea bean too. It looked identical to the one she had in the votive candleholder by the computer. She took the jar from Hannah, carefully pried open the lid and ever so gently freed the sea bean. “I’ll keep this one,” Grace signed.
Hannah nodded agreement and then dug down in the box, bringing out two flat-wrapped items. She released the paper from the first to uncover a regular-sized spiral notebook. She handed it to Grace. “What’s this?”
Grace shrugged, flipped through the pages and found the entire spiral filled with notes in her mother’s handwriting. She lowered the notebook to her lap to read one of the entries when Hannah grabbed her arm.
Hannah hugged a book to her chest. “Now I remember!” She smiled a long moment before turning the book around. The familiar jacket cover came to life right before Grace’s eyes. “I told you. Familiar,” Hannah signed.
She took the book and smoothed her fingers across the well-known title. Gift From The Sea. Opening the front cover she found a series of dates penciled in her mother’s handwriting covering a fifteen-year span. How could I not have known about this? Grace held the book to her own chest, almost feeling the warmth of her mother’s arms around her. Tears spilled down her cheeks.
Sadness painted Hannah’s face. “Sorry,” she signed.
“No. No.” Grace smiled in spite of the tears. “They’re good tears. Promise.” Grace hugged the book closer. “I guess this is Grandma’s special book. Yes?”
Hannah nodded. “But it makes you sad.”
“Sometimes, yes.” Grace wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. “But that’s okay.”
Hannah thought for a moment. “Because we love her, right?”
“Right.” Grace put an arm around her daughter and pulled her in for a hug. “Right,” she whispered, catching another faint whiff of her mother’s perfume. It didn’t shock her as much this time.
CHAPTER 40
QUINLAN AND GRACE
Quinlan and Angela sat on top of the big screen TV in the game room watching Grace and Hannah finish sorting through the third box.
Angela crossed her legs. “Is this too high for you?”
She shook her head and blew her nose, again. Her eyes were puffy and her nose felt raw. She was down to her last Kleenex.
“So, what’s going through your mind?” Angela asked. “Why the tears?”
Quinlan pointed to the middle of the room where Grace hugged Hannah. “Just look at them.” She blew into the last Kleenex. “It’s so emotional.” Taking off her Catwoman glasses she used the edge of her jacket to wipe her watery eyes. “And the notebook….” A fresh round of tears surfaced.
“You’re back on Earth now,” Angela began. “You’ve had your life, for better or for worse. And even though you’re no longer in your physical body you’re tapping into all the human emotions. Good and bad, happy and sad…the full spectrum.”
Quinlan blew out air, hoping to lessen the knot in her throat. “Does everyone have this much difficulty?”
Angela rubbed her chin before she answered. “You mean the ones we send back?” Angela paused. “No.”
“No?” Quinlan watched Grace and Hannah place the shell-filled apothecary jars around the game room.
“In fact, hardly ever.” Angela said.
“Then…why?” Quinlan asked. None of this made sense.
“You’re on,” Angela paused, “you know…special assignment, remember?”
“But how am I going to help Gracie if I’m the one who’s an emotional wreck?”
“Good question.” Angela smiled. “What do you think?”
Quinlan scanned the game room. “I think that’s a bad place to put those shells.”
Angela snapped her fingers and they glided down to the floor.
“In fact, they really need to be washed and set out in the sun for at least….” Quinlan turned and realized she was talking to an empty room. Angela had disappeared and Gracie and Hannah were heading down the stairs.
“Now that’s just wrong,” Quinlan huffed, hands planted on her hips. “I didn’t raise my daughter to walk away from me like that.”
Angela’s voice piped through Quinlan’s earpieces. “Meet me tomorrow at one o’clock. The Commons area.”
“Meet here, do this, report to Ruby, blah-blah-blah.” She tapped her chest with her finger. “I’ve got questions of my own, you know,” she grumbled. “And I’m not getting any answers.” She had moved downstairs to address Grace’s mess of a centerpiece.
“Not altogether true.” A man’s voice seeped into her head through the earpieces.
Quinlan’s spine straightened. “I beg your pardon?”
Silence.
“I beg your pardon?” Quinlan repeated, irritated.
Still silence.
“Now that’s rude.” Quinlan pulled the iPod out of her pocket and flipped the off switch. “There.” She said and then remembered. She turned the switch back on, got herself back to her living quarters, then switched the dang thing off. Again.
~~~
Everyone had gone to bed early, including Grace. She no longer needed romance novels or crochet squares to fill up time and space at the end of her day. Tonight she surrounded herself with her calendar and the two books she and Hannah had uncovered this afternoon. She penciled in “Cherry” on the calendar for Tuesday, having agreed to volunteer an extra day this coming week. She was anxious to try a new behavioral modification technique she had learned in her Special Needs class. Both the school counselor and Cherry’s teacher welcomed Grace’s initiative.
Making a few quick notations on her calendar, she reached for her mother’s Gift From The Sea. The copy looked just as frayed and yellowed as hers. She thumbed through the book and smiled. Her mother had highlighted many of the same quotes. Once again, she held the book to her chest…no tears tonight.
Next, she picked up the spiral notebook. The first two pages were family trees from both sides of the family, tracing back nearly four generations. The third page contained short paragraphs of historical information acquired over the years—date of births and deaths. Grace flipped to the middle of the notebook and read a page.
“What is this?” She scanned the pages for dates. None surfaced. She turned back to the beginning of the handwritten entries and read for the next hour and a half.