by L. B. Dunbar
Sound Advice
Copyright © 2013 Laura Dunbar
Cover design by Kari Ayasha of Cover to Cover Designs
https://covertocoverdesigns1.box.com/soundadvice
Interior design by Brenda Wright
Front cover photo © bigstockphoto.com/©keeweeboy
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owner.
All rights reserved.
Taste Test
Fragrance Free
Touch Screen (coming 2015)
Sight Words (coming Spring 2015)
For those who don’t listen to the negative advice of others, and take the risk,
and the state of Michigan.
Despite today’s movement toward the independent woman opening the door for herself, a gentleman should still open and hold the door for a lady as a sign of respect. This action does not show weakness on the part of the lady, but strength of character on the part of a man.
“Matters of Manners,” 1975
THE SOFT CRUNCH of gravel sounded under my Jetta as I pulled into the two-tire-trail lane driveway. Staring out the front windshield, I needed a moment to take in a sight I didn’t recognize before me. A house that had always reminded me of fairy tales suddenly looked old with chips of paint peeling off the siding. Weathered flower boxes stood empty and dry, and what used to be a garden was taken over by weeds. They were lush, green, and everywhere. But the most disturbing sight before me was the woman on the porch.
Dressed in a “housecoat” in mid-afternoon stood my grandmother, Nana. A woman who prided herself on decorum and etiquette would never have approved of this attire after noon, let alone outside the house on the front porch. Buttoned askew, the lime green night jacket hung off what looked like a much frailer frame to Nana’s already shrinking body. Yellow toilet paper curls still in her gray hair, the woman returned my gaze, looking almost as confused as I was.
Nana? I willed her to read my mind.
I wasn’t overly concerned when Sue Carpenter called me to say Nana had locked herself out of the house again, but Sue seemed quite upset. It wasn’t the locking of the door, but the fact that Nana was convinced John, her deceased husband, was inside and had locked her out on purpose. As long time neighbors, Sue and her husband, Joe, were good people and they looked out for Nana. I should have been appreciative. I was appreciative.
Guilt took me over as I continued to slowly scan the yard, needing a moment to further process the sadness before me. I tried to recall the last time I had been here. It wasn’t last Christmas, and Christmas before that I had interviews. Before that was a ski trip with my ex-boyfriend. Had it really been over three years?
I finally found the strength to open the door of my car and was hit with the overwhelming sound of nails hammering on a nearby roof and “Sweet Home Alabama” jamming out into the otherwise quiet area. I laughed out loud. I couldn’t help myself. Welcome to Michigan, I begrudgingly thought. I’d stepped into a time warp and Kid Rock would have been proud.
I rounded the car and approached the front steps slowly as Nana’s eyes followed my every move like a caged animal at the zoo. She didn’t flinch except her eyes, and they narrowed slightly as I drew closer. The day was warm for mid-July in northern Michigan, and I felt a bead of sweat roll between my shoulder blades as I was overdressed in my white pants and a navy blue flowing blouse. I stopped before I hit the stairs.
“Nana?” I questioned her, afraid to come closer. She looked posed to pounce, despite her frailty. Her old, weathered hands gripped the railing of her porch in a strength I didn’t know she possessed.
“Have you come to fix the radio?”
What the...?
“No. Nana, it’s me. Emily.”
Cloudy blue eyes blinked, snapping her into recognition.
“Of course, you’re Emily. How was your trip, dear?”
In utter confusion, I took a deep sigh of relief, and skipped up the steps in my strappy blue sandals to embrace the woman who’d raised me. Elizabeth Parrish had been more of a mother to me than my own during some of the most trying years of my life - adolescence - and I owed her everything. I slipped my arms around her, and my concerns for the delicacy of her body were confirmed. She was skeletal thin under the drooping jacket. I pulled back too quickly, worried I would hurt her, and she swayed from the release.
“Sit down, my dear. You must be tired from your journey. Let’s sit on the porch for a moment. Tell me about Chicago.”
I couldn’t help but notice there was no porch swing. I looked back at Nana with concern, and her own eyes followed my trail to the empty corner. Nana nervously giggled.
“That John, he needs to get the porch furniture out when he returns from work.”
Nana moved toward the front door instead and I suddenly felt like I’d fallen into a bad episode of the Twilight Zone. My grandfather had been dead for nearly seven years, since I was sixteen years old. I followed Nana into the living room, and on the surface things looked the same. Two flowery, overstuffed couches faced off over an antique wooden coffee table, and the ancient Persian rug was faded and worn in the areas where miles of feet traveled to the kitchen from this front room. But underneath the familiar comfort of Nana’s home I noticed the thin layer of dust everywhere. It was on the table and the mantle, a cobweb in the corner, and even on the furniture. I guessed Nana didn’t use this room much anymore, and when she pointed to the couch for me to sit, I reconsidered with my white pants, suggesting a cup of tea in the kitchen instead.
Things were not much better in the kitchen. There were cobwebs in both corners of the window over the sink, and dishes neatly stacked made me wonder if they were even clean. Based on Nana’s thin body, the dishes might have been resting in that dish-drainer for a while.
“On second thought, Nana, how about if you get dressed and we go into town for a cup of tea?”
“Why I am dressed, dear,” Nana replied in surprise, and then she touched her hair. Shaky hands fluttered over the toilet paper rollers and hairpins, and suddenly Nana was horrified, realizing she was dressed for bed. A soft, “Oh,” was her only response.
“Nana, how about a spa treatment? I can take you to your hair dresser and we can fix your hair.”
“My hair doesn’t need fixing.” Nana stared at me like I was speaking a foreign language.
I didn’t know what else to say, so I tried to rephrase my plan. “How about we go to the hair dresser and get your hair all made up? Something special?”
A slow sparkle came to Nana’s old blue eyes again, but it didn’t seem quite like she understood what I was saying. It was as if she interpreted my intention differently.
“Well, Betty only sets on Saturday mornings. But I could call her? John likes it when I do my hair up fresh.” Speaking again as if my grandfather were still alive and going to appear later in the day was starting to freak me out. I wasn’t sure how to respond to this comment either, but I somehow sensed that reminding my grandmother of her husband’s death was
going to be a poor decision.
“Why don’t I call Betty for you while you change into day clothes?” I knew Nana believed one should always be dressed to go out in public, and she wasn’t going to just throw on jeans and a t-shirt. It would be a skirt, a blouse, and panty hose, despite the pleasant 75-degree weather. Elizabeth Parrish had been the award-winning writer for the advice column “Matters of Manners” for over two decades. This column prided itself on dispensing codes of behavior and action, and dressing properly was only one of the many rules that Nana lived by. When Nana was ready, she mentioned the radio again.
“Can we drop off this radio? I can’t get any music on it lately. John loves music.”
Truly saddened, I stared at Nana. What was wrong with her? She continued to speak as if my grandfather were alive. As if he could hear said music today from the old dusty radio resting on the fireplace mantle. At the moment, I was so overwhelmed with the look of the house, both inside and out, and the state of Nana’s appearance, that I could only shake my head. I picked up the 1930-something wooden box radio shaped like a cathedral window and a swirl of dust floated through the air, tickling my nose. The dust rubbed against the front of my dark blouse and the corner of the radio encasement caught in the thin material. I suddenly felt as ragged as the rest of the items in this home, including my grandmother.
WE DROVE JUST outside of town and arrived at the radio repair shop. Its name was Sound Systems. Original, I thought with a smirk. I bumped my head as I dragged the old music-maker across the back seat, dislodging my neatly styled ponytail. Why had I placed this thing in the backseat instead of the trunk? I thought as I smeared more dust on the front of myself. I was truly beginning to look a mess, like a bookend match to Nana. I bumped the car door closed with my hip at the same time the glass front door of the shop opened, and out walked a man with a short ponytail and a bandana tied around his forehead. What is this, a throwback to the seventies? He didn’t look very old. His arms were tan with lanky muscles, and surprisingly without tattoos, despite the more rugged Brett Michaels look he sported. He walked through the doorway and held the door open for me as Nana remained in the car.
Mumbling my thanks, I struggled to walk with the dirty, awkward-shaped radio and I almost dropped it on top of the wood paneled counter when a voice spoke from behind me.
“What can I help you with today?” I jumped as I felt that voice through every part of my body. I thought the man holding the door was leaving, but he crossed behind me and walked through a counter-height swing door to enter the workspace beyond. Looking up, I caught intense gray-blue eyes of denim. They were a color I’d never seen before.
“My grandmother would like this radio fixed. I don’t know what’s wrong with it other than the fact it doesn’t work. I don’t really know if you would be able to fix it, but maybe you could just take a look at it.”
The man seemed to notice my unintentional emphasis on the word “you” and took a quick survey of me. I could almost hear his thoughts. Oh great, another down-state, Northern-wannabe who thinks she’s better than everyone up here. Probably on holiday from Detroit, doesn’t have a clue about this radio, and thinks I’m the one too dumb to understand common English. He might not have been too far off in his assessment.
“Well, let me take a lookie,” he said in his best imitation of a Southern drawl, even though this was the Midwest.
I continued to stare at him like the idiot I suddenly thought he was. Taking a quick glance of the surrounding walls, which were also dark wood paneled with shelves of radios and gadgets for sound, I noticed two worktables behind the counter. One area was cleaned off with items neatly in bins on the under-shelf. The other table was piled with wires, tools, and junk I’d never be able to identify. To the left were new stereos, boxed on the floor with the sound systems above on carpet-covered shelves. The music playing overhead was a heavy metal song from twenty years ago. Typical, I thought. Michigan had famous musicians – the white, bad boy rapper, the cowboy looking rock star, the classic soulful guitarist, the female who made fishnet stockings famous again – but entering Michigan was like a time warp when it came to music. The radio stations seemed to only play music from decades ago.
“Well, I have to tear it apart and look inside at the wiring,” he continued in his exaggerated drawl, “and chances are the wiring is cloth and would need to be entirely replaced. If that’s the case, the radio won’t really have the same sound. You know, that scratching sound of old radio shows.” Here he scratched his chest to demonstrate the sound, and I noticed the potential shape of solid abs beneath his heather-grey t-shirt. “Not to mention that your grandmother would only get a few stations since this has AM frequency only.”
“Can you just rebuild it or something?” I asked, a little too snottily. Another man walked into the work area through a side door, which slammed shut in the background. He strolled to the messy table and put down a thermos and a white bakery bag.
“Well, what do we have here?” he asked.
“Well, I’m Emily Post, and my grandmother is Elizabeth…” I started to reply in a friendly manner, but stopped when I realized the man meant the radio, not me. He looked up from his workstation and smiled. He was as tall as the other man with the same slender muscled arms, but had a tan not quite as dark. His hair was darker and shaved almost to a buzz cut, and he had the same color eyes, but they smiled just as brightly as his mouth. I giggled from nervousness.
“Continue,” he prompted.
“As I was saying, I’m Emily Post…”
“Oh, Miss Manners…” he laughed.
“No, Emily Post of Chicago.” I smiled again in a flirtatious manner, but then heard the crash of tin on the tiled floor from my right. I whipped around to notice a little girl standing by a child-sized plastic table. I hadn’t seen her before, but she had obviously just dropped the little tin coffee cup decorated with flowers and a larger toy coffee pot on the floor. I smiled at her as well, but she just stared at me with the same bluish eyes as the two men. Her bleach-blond hair stood out pale white against her slightly tanned face.
The counter door swung open and the ponytailed man swept the girl into his arms in one quick motion, swiping up the cup and coffee pot in another. The little girl wrapped her arms and legs around him as he carried her through the opening in the counter and out of my view. As the girl looked over the man’s shoulders, she continued to stare at me as if she’d seen a ghost.
“Is everything all right?” I asked with concern.
“Oh fine.” The taller man spoke without conviction. He continued to look after the other two a moment longer as they disappeared into the back.
“Now, the radio,” he said, returning his attention to me. “Fill out this form and we’ll take a look at it, Emily Post of Chicago.” He shook his head as if shaking his thoughts into focus.
I smiled at him again as I took the pen offered, and began to fill in Nana’s information.
“I’ll only be in town a few days. Will this take long?”
“Well, how about if we open it up first? You never know what’s underneath all the dust. And then you have to learn how it’s wired before you can hear it purr.”
There might have been a subtle meaning in his choice of words. A nervous habit made me pull my chestnut colored hair free of its ponytail and shake it out with one hand. I then remembered I was covered in dust so thick in some spots that it actually hung off my dark shirt that also contained a small tear. I would have thought the man was flirting with me if not for the lump in my hair as I pulled it out of the holder, the dirt smudged on my shirt, and a black streak across my white pants. Oh, and the gold band on his ring finger. Looking over at the other man as he walked to the clean table and placed both hands firmly on the top, I couldn’t help but notice his mouth moving in a strange way, as if he were flexing his jaw to calm himself. The motion emphasized a chiseled face and a brooding look that would make male models envious. His grey-blue eyes turned denim blue as he scowl
ed at me, and not wanting to break that stare I blindly reached out for the pink receipt being handed to me by the friendlier man. With a nod of his head in the direction of my new unknown nemesis, he placed a business card in my hand, forcing me to look away. It read: Jess Carter, Sound Systems.
A gentleman should always have on a clean, pressed dress shirt and proper slacks when trying to impress a young lady. A young lady should wear an appropriate length skirt, feminine blouse, and heels to meet a young man. A hat is also appropriate for a young lady out of doors. Although gloves seem to be going out of style, a polite handshake is acceptable for initial greetings.
“Matters of Manners,” 1962
WAKING EARLY THE next morning, I took the time to lie in the four-poster bed and contemplate Nana. She had been much improved throughout the remainder of yesterday after her hair was styled. I suspected that she hadn’t been out of the house for a long time and doing so had refreshed her spirit. Not many people did the “old lady sets” anymore, but in a small community like this, where about fifty percent of the people were retired or older, Nana’s hairstylist kept up the trade. She even went so far as to pick Nana up on some Saturday mornings and drive her over to the shop since Nana really should not drive anymore and admittedly tried to avoid it.
Staring at the wood beamed ceiling, I admitted I had not really thought about Nana and how she got around in the small town of Elk Rapids. How did she get groceries? How was she handling her bills? Who helped her when she was in need? Guilt took over my thoughts as I rolled sideways in the bed I had shared as a child with my older sister, Rosie. This was our room when we visited our grandparents, and it remained our room when we’d returned here for summers after the death of our mother.
Willing away bad memories, I smiled to think of Rosie and me sharing this double bed as little girls with late night forts and pillow fights, lines drawn down the middle and curtains hung to separate the room. I’d never felt the overwhelming absence of Rosie more than I did in this moment. Decisions needed to be made regarding Nana and I couldn’t make them alone.