“Everything,” I said and laughed. “Stay away from goats. And guys. Then you’ll be fine.”
One of the best things about Stefia’s visits was she always brought a thermos of hot coffee and a blue and green striped ceramic mug for me to drink it out of. The fourth time she came to visit, Stefia stuck a small cardboard box in my closet and told me that was where I was supposed to hide my ceramic coffee mug when I was done using it.
“You’re a rebel,” I said with a giggle. “Why do you bring me coffee anyway?”
“Because I work at the coffee shop and I know coffee,” she said. “And you deserve coffee that’s warmer than piss.”
That made me laugh.
Stefia served me the best cup of coffee every Wednesday. We laughed a lot on Wednesdays, which is good because as a resident you don’t always laugh a lot.
Being a resident wasn’t all it had been cracked up to be. I had family that visited occasionally. Bill and his wife, John and his kids, Diana and her daughter when they come home for holidays. James and Mary only dropped by when they didn’t have some fancy thespian event to attend. When I was first put in the pink room, my family would visit all the time. But the longer I stayed, the less often they came. I could see the change in people. I’m resident and I won’t ever not be a resident. They know this is where I will spend my end days.
These are my end days.
You could tell it in change of the way they talked to me. It was all together different. Like I was a two-year-old instead of their eighty-three-year-old mother. Grandmother. Great-grandmother.
I’m still here. Don’t you see me?
I have lived a full life of a million things and yet they treat me like I don’t know anything. They turn their voices up into cute phrases and talk louder than they need to. They want to talk about the football game we just watched or someone’s cookies we just ate or who came to visit me yesterday as if my memory doesn’t go back any further than twenty-four hours ago. It’s the same for every resident here. I’m desperate to tell you about my life. I’m desperate to talk about the things that have mattered to me. None of the women in here are sweet little old women who knit to pass the time. That’s just what we look like to you because that’s what you want to see.
I am not the me that you see.
I was a painter, you know. No, you probably didn’t know that. No one did. Because I painted pictures of flowers and horses and mountains I’d never seen while the kids were at school and then I burned the canvases so no one would know. And I wrote poems. I would stand at the sink doing dishes while Helmer was out doing who knows what and the kids were running through the house chasing each other. I wrote a lot of poems.
Stefia said I could still paint now. When I confessed to her that I used to paint, she asked why I stopped and I said because no one ever knew I started.
She said I might have been the next Picasso.
I told her there was no point in talking about regrets once you’re a resident. Because at that point you can’t do a thing about what you haven’t done. And besides, everyone just wants me to sit in the corner and knit, anyway.
My grandson plays bluegrass. He’s an absolute genius on the mandolin. I like bluegrass. Even the new progressive stuff. He once played me his favorite song; deep and pretty and something about how to grow a woman. Then there was this one line that talked about old folks in a home and even though you love them you can’t wait for them to go. He stopped playing and apologized when he got to that part.
“Oh, shit, Grandma. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…” he had said.
“No worries, child,” I had responded. “I get it.”
“You do?”
I nodded.
I told him not to worry his head and to just keep playing. I know my family loves me, but now I’m just a resident. That’s the way it is. You can’t change the way it is.
You can lie about it, but you can’t change it.
On the eighth Wednesday that Stefia came, I asked her why she came to visit me every Wednesday. She had never made me feel like a pity project, and as far as I knew no one had bribed her to come chat with me. I was the only one of forty-three residents with a predictable visitor every Wednesday at 3 pm.
“Aw, now Anna Marie, you know why I come here!”
“Nope, I don’t.”
“I heard there was someone here they were serving piss-warm coffee to, and I knew that just wouldn’t do!”
“They are serving piss-warm coffee to everyone here, Stefia,” I said as I laughed.
She laughed along with me, then after the giggles had subsided, she said, “Anna Marie, you’re the only one who will tell it to me straight.”
“What do you mean?”
“You tell me what you know. You don’t lie. You don’t hide,” she said. “You don’t act.”
I thought for a minute and said, “Come close. I’m going to tell you the two absolute sure things I’ve learned from life.”
“Okay, I’m ready.” She leaned in to glean from me the wisdom I’d gathered in my eighty-three years on earth.
“Number one,” I said, “you will never ever use Algebra in real life. Ever. And number two? There is no way for you to stop your dishrags from getting stinky. Just throw the damn things away and buy new ones.”
Stefia opened up into a laugh that I didn’t think could come out of that petite body of hers. She laughed so hard that she went silent and her body bounced up and down as she held her stomach and said, “Stop, oh my god, stop!” Her laughing got me laughing and I had to take off my glasses and I could hardly breathe. I thought I was going to have to call for oxygen.
After we’d recovered, Stefia poured another cup of coffee for the both of us.
“You must have one hell of a thermos there,” I said.
“It’s biggish.”
“It keeps the coffee hot!” I said. “Maybe the home should invest in those.”
A silence settled in while we sipped at our coffee. And it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, because pauses in conversation with Stefia never felt uncomfortable and the conversation never felt forced. But after some time had passed I spoke up.
“I have another story to tell you,” I said.
“Okay.”
So I began.
“Once upon a time there was a lady. She lived on a gravel road out in the middle of farm country. She was married and had a few kids. She had a country neighbor friend named Julie.”
“Country neighbor?” Stefia interrupted.
“That means you’re neighbors, but the houses out in the country aren’t as close together as in the city. So someone can be your country neighbor and live a mile away.”
“Oh,” Stefia nodded. “Okay.”
“So,” I continued, “this lady had a country neighbor friend named Julie. Her kids and Julie’s kids grew up together, hung out together, played and fought together. You know, like good friends do.”
Stefia relaxed into her chair and sipped on her coffee listening to the tale as I wove it.
“Anyhow,” I said. “So even though Julie’s family and this lady’s family were always together, there was something that just didn’t seem right about how Julie’s husband acted towards this lady. He seemed really stand offish. Really…stuck up. Really…I don’t know, distant. Unreachable.”
“What was the husband’s name?”
“Which husband?” I asked.
“Julie's husband,” Stefia clarified.
“Oh. His name was Grant.”
“Okay,” Stefia said. “Hey, Anna Marie?”
“Yeah?”
“You can just use your real name instead of ‘the lady’. It makes it easier to follow.”
I smiled.
“Can’t get nothing past you, can I?”
“I didn’t think you were actually trying to.”
“I wasn’t.” I winked and took a sip of coffee. “Anyhow, so every time I’d be at Julie’s farm visiting with the kids, Grant always had somethin
g to do. If I walked in, he walked out. If he was in the middle of something and I showed up, he disappeared. Drove me absolutely insane.”
“I don’t blame you,” Stefia said.
“So one day after church, we were having a meal at Julie’s farm. Dinner was ready so she sends the kids out to tell Grant it's time to eat. Well, the kids get sidetracked with something like kids always do. Julie’s hands were full putting the last touches on a pumpkin pie so she asked me to go out to the machine shed and deliver the message to Grant myself.”
I remembered that day like it was only an hour ago. I wandered out to the shed and found him tinkering with the tractor. I stood in the doorway, still in my flowery Sunday dress. He held up his hand to shield his eyes from the sun coming in the doorway so he could see who was watching him. When he realized it was me, he went right back to working on that tractor.
“Julie sent me to tell you dinner is ready,” I said.
“Why didn’t she send the kids?” No emotion. No hi, how are you. Nothing.
“She did. They got sidetracked.”
He didn’t say anything. Just messed with that tractor like I wasn’t even there. And that's what he always did. Pretended I wasn't there. So I got mad. I snapped.
“What is your problem?” I snapped from where I stood in the doorway.
He glanced up at me but made no effort to stop what he was doing.
“Excuse me?”
“You have a problem with me?”
“What do you mean?”
He was trying to spin a wrench on a bolt and not having any luck. He kept forcing it, twisting and turning and gritting his teeth and I started to wonder if the discomfort on his face had nothing to do with the bolt that wouldn’t come off.
“Every time I come here, you walk away. Every time I enter the room, you leave. What on god’s green earth did I do to make you not like me?” I yelled. “What the hell do you have against me?”
He gave one final jerk on the wrench. It flung the wrong way off the tractor, and he busted his knuckles against the stuck bolt. He sucked in his breath, shook out his hand, and then cradled it close to his body. Looking right at me over the top of the tractor with gritted teeth and fixed eyes, he finally entered into real conversation, carrying an intensity I’ll never forget.
“You don’t get it, do you?” he asked.
“Get what?”
“I can’t be around you.”
“Says who?”
He shook his head.
“I refuse to be around you.”
“Why, Grant? Why do you hate me so much?”
“You don’t get it!” he hissed. “I don’t hate you!”
“Then what’s the problem? Why can’t you be in the same room with me?”
“I just can’t.”
“That’s not a reason,” I said. “Tell me why!”
“Because, Anna Marie!” he screamed. “Because! Okay?”
“No. I want to know. I want to…”
“I’m married,” he said.
“What does that have to do with anything? You have to walk out of a room I’m in because you’re married? Grant…I’m married, too! What does that…”
“Christ, Anna Marie. Your pretty head can’t be that thick,”
“I’m not thick, Grant. “ I said. “I just want you to come out and explain yourself. I want you to say it!”
He closed his eyes and balled up his fists. He shook his head, and then he kicked a tool clear across the floor of the machine shed.
“God damn it, Anna Marie! I can’t be around you because I’m afraid of what will happen if I am!”
The words exploded with such a force that I knew closing his mouth around them wouldn't have stopped them from coming out.
“Grant?”
“Damn it,” he said, his eyes fixed on me. “Just go.”
I stared at him, consumed for what seemed to be an eternity. And then another one. And it wasn’t until I heard the kids in the yard barreling towards the machine shed that our eyes broke their hold. It was then I remembered his knuckles, dripping spots of blood on the tractor.
“Do you want me to…” I started, motioning towards his hand, but he shook his head and grabbed a rag to wrap it up in.
“Just go,” he said.
“But…”
“I meant what I said. I need you to leave.”
“Grant?”
“Please. Just go.”
So I did. I walked out of the machine shed and back to the house, each step away from him feeling like a knife through my heel.
“Did he ever come in for dinner?” Stefia asked, breaking into my thoughts and momentarily forcing me back to present day. She was leaning forward in her chair, elbows on her knees, waiting for the next juicy tidbit.
“No, he didn’t come in for dinner,” I said. “I didn’t see him the rest of the day.”
“Wow,” said Stefia. She sat back in her chair, chewing on her thoughts, replaying the story in her head. “So he was ignoring you because he liked you?”
“I don’t think like was quite the right word,” I said.
And in trying to decipher what word would have best explained the aggressive, all consuming, distraction that I was to Grant—or that Grant became for me—I was tossed back into the story and continued telling.
Thinking of Grant and the way he yelled at me to leave him in the machine shed always gave me shivers. And I really did my best to stay away from him. We had an unspoken agreement on boundaries, and an unspoken agreement not to cross them. And it worked out pretty well.
But in July of 1965 there was a summer storm that whipped up from nothing—black skies and torrential rain and wind like I’d never seen before and haven’t ever since. I had run to town quick to get groceries, leaving the kids with Helmer at home. This storm blew in from nowhere. I was driving on the gravel right in front of Grant and Julie’s farm and the road suddenly washed out. Grant saw the headlights of the car and came out to see who was stuck halfway in the ditch and realized it was me. It was pitch black, pouring down rain like something out of a movie and the wind was whipping tree branches across the road and he yelled at me, “Just come inside!”
I knew there wasn’t anyone else home because Julie had taken the kids to her mother’s house for the weekend. She’d told me that.
I knew Grant was there alone.
I was sopping wet standing in the rain. He said something that I didn’t hear and then lightning struck a tree right next to us and I screamed.
“Anna Marie! Just come inside, for Christ’s sake!”
And I thought about what he’d said before about not being alone with me and I thought about what I wanted and I prayed to every saint I knew that the wind would not come up and blow me the wrong way.
It didn’t.
I looked at Stefia. She was holding her breath, waiting. Waiting. Wanting to know the next piece. Wanting to know which way the wind blew.
“James was born the following April,” I said. And I smiled.
Stefia exhaled.
“Did Helmer ever know?” she asked, chewing on the edge of her thumbnail.
I shook my head.
“So he raised James as his own son?”
I nodded.
She flopped back in her chair.
“Oh my god, Anna Marie.”
“See, we all have secrets. All of us.”
“So,” she continued, “if your husband never knew…who did you tell?”
I thought for a minute.
“As far as I know, Grant and I were the only people who ever knew. And at first he didn’t even know. I think he just did the math and figured it out. He never came right out and said it, but I knew from the look in his eyes the first time he saw James. He knew.”
“And how did he take it?”
I looked at my empty coffee cup. I traced the edge of it with my fingertip, thinking on that night during the storm when Grant had done the same with his fingertip along my cheek and around
my mouth and over the point of my chin and down my neck…
“He was devastated. He was never the same after that. Never the same after he saw James for the first time. I think it just…crushed him.”
“Wait a second. You’re telling me no one else knew about this?” Stefia asked. “Why are you telling me about it?”
I kept tracing the coffee cup and thinking. And tracing. And thinking.
“I guess I told you because in the grand scheme of things, I don’t really know you.”
“I don’t get it,” she said. “That’s totally counterintuitive, Anna Marie...”
“It’s not. I’ve only known you for eight weeks, so really we’re not that close. You’re not close, so I can be honest,” I said. “Stefia, the closer we get to people, the less we can share. Surely, you must know that.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s not true,” I said. “I told you we all have secrets, Stefia. Every single one of us.”
I was still tracing the rim of the coffee mug.
Still tracing.
Still tracing.
**
The ninth week Stefia came to visit she walked in with her thermos of coffee without saying a word. She poured two mugs, pushed one across the table to me, and sat down in the chair opposite where I was. She took in a deep breath. Then another.
Then she spoke.
“My mother left home when I was thirteen. I hated that day.”
The time had come for Stefia to tell a story.
“I was really mad about it for a long time,” she said.
“That’s a hard thing to get over.”
“I think the hardest thing was that no one knew where she went.”
But there was a hitch in her breath. A catch. A skip. I watched Stefia’s eyes and tried to read what was behind them.
“There’s more to the story?” I asked.
“Why do you ask that?”
“I can see your eyes."
She took a deep breath. And then another.
“I’ve known where my mom was the whole time,” Stefia finally said. “I found a note in a secret spot. There was a tree in our front yard that had a hollow spot in it. Mom and I built a tiny box one day and hid things in that box just as a game. Sometimes it was plastic little treasures, sometimes it was things we cut out from magazines, but most of the times it was notes.”
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