by Nicole Baart
I stared at the living room wall, mute and numb.
“Julia?”
“No.” I gave my head a clearing shake. “No, Grandma, don’t worry about it. I didn’t really have anything. Just wanted to say hi and see how you’re doing.”
“I’m doing just fine,” she assured me.
“I’m glad to hear that.” I paused for a moment, hoping she’d say something more. When she didn’t, I murmured, “I love you.”
“I love you, too, Julia. I’ll see you in two days.”
“Two days,” I affirmed.
“Bye, honey.” And then the line went dead.
I was left staring at the blank LCD screen, wondering how this unexpected scene fit into the winding narrative of our complicated lives.
The Night Tree
Grandma was discharged from the hospital the day before Thanksgiving. I had hoped that Michael would be able to help me with the transition, but since he was coming home for an extended Christmas break, he was stuck in Iowa City. And I would have asked the Walkers for a hand, but I felt guilty enough for dropping my boys in their laps every time I decided to make the drive to the heart hospital. Besides, though the Walkers celebrated Thanksgiving with their family before the official holiday, in recent years they had begun holding a second feast on the actual day—a gathering of sorts for the castoffs and lonely souls of Fellowship Community. I knew that my longtime friend and adopted auntie would have her hands full with preparing the stuffing, pumpkin pies, and a monumental, seventeen-pound bird. In the end, the task fell to the boys and me, and while I was still nervous about bringing her home, it felt right that my grandmother’s homecoming would be a family event.
I cleaned Grandma’s room from top to bottom in preparation for the move, wiping the walls, cleaning cobwebs out of the corners, and even changing dusty lightbulbs for new, low-wattage lights that glowed soft and golden. Simon helped me rotate her mattress, and the three of us took all of her bedding to the Laundromat in town, where we washed her plush comforter and fluffed her pillows and shams. Then we vacuumed and scrubbed and polished and shined until we could see our reflection in the wood of her heirloom armoire and the glass on her window was as clear as glacier ice.
“Spring cleaning in November,” Simon commented. His voice seemed tremulous to me, uncertain, as if he didn’t understand this new world we lived in. This place where we cleaned as if it were May instead of the beginning of a long, hard winter.
“Just Grandma’s room,” I told him. “We want it to be perfect for her.”
Daniel sniffed the air. “Smells like lemon.”
“Is that perfect?” I asked.
He nodded. “Smells like Grandma.”
I smiled because he was right. I had forgotten in the weeks that we spent in the hospital. Grandma’s signature, and inadvertent, fragrance of cinnamon and lemon dish soap had been replaced by the odor of antiseptic, of sterile rubber gloves and industrial cleaners and sickness. But that would change. She was coming home. It would be only a matter of time before she was up and around, smiling as she baked cinnamon rolls in the kitchen or humming while she helped Simon with his homework.
When everything was exactly the way we wanted it, I made sure every light in the house was off and hung a fresh towel over the handle of the oven. Then I ushered the boys to the mudroom. As we donned our coats and boots, I felt a rush of gratitude that they didn’t have school and I wouldn’t have to bring Grandma home alone.
I knew nothing important had changed—she was still the woman I had always known—but in the aftermath of her heart attack I found myself timid in her company, as if the landscape of our lives had undergone a natural disaster because her heart had stopped working the way it was supposed to. It was ridiculous, I knew, a mixture of panic and worry and helplessness, but I couldn’t seem to talk myself out of it. And it didn’t help that Grandma herself was subdued, tired. Our conversations were brief and graceless, punctuated by long stretches of silence and often cut short when she fell asleep midsentence.
The repercussions of her illness were ripples that hadn’t yet reached the banks of our present reality. It was going to take time to sort out, and I was glad to have my boys at my side. I gave them each a hug as they finished zipping up their plush coats.
We stepped out onto the porch under the cold, midmorning sun and were greeted by a bashful-looking Parker. He was carrying a laundry basket overflowing with incongruous items. Among a half-dozen or so indiscernible objects, I saw a Crock-Pot, a bag of McIntosh apples, a jar of popcorn kernels, and a large package wrapped in white paper like the kind we used at the Value Foods meat counter.
“Hi,” he said. If I wasn’t mistaken, there was a hint of timidity in his careful greeting.
The boys rocketed across the porch and assaulted Parker with hugs and playful punches. Simon poked at the bag of apples, unable to contain his grin.
“What are you doing here?” I was more surprised than upset, intrigued by the odd assortment of things in his basket.
“I know Nellie is being discharged today, and I wanted to make her homecoming special. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, you know.”
“Yeah,” I whispered, stunned that Parker would be so considerate. How did he know we didn’t have any plans for Thanksgiving? And how did he know that Grandma was coming home? All at once I wondered if Parker had taken an even greater interest in my grandmother than I had realized. Maybe his mysterious visit to her hospital room was just the tip of the iceberg.
“I don’t mean to barge in,” he continued, “or to impose. I actually thought you’d be gone by now.”
I glanced at my wristwatch. “They told me to pick her up at noon. We’ve got plenty of time.”
He nodded. “Do you care if I use your kitchen for a little while? I’ll just prep your meal and be gone by the time you get back.”
My jaw felt slack and I realized I was staring at him gape-mouthed. I pursed my lips with a little pop and forced a dazed smile. “I forgot that you cook.”
“Spaghetti and anything I can throw in a Crock-Pot. I’m a bachelor, you know. It’s either that or ramen noodles every day of my life.”
“What are ramen noodles?” Daniel asked, trying to peer over the edge of the basket.
“Nutritionless cardboard,” Parker said. “That’s why I’m making you roast chicken instead. It’s not turkey, but—”
“I like chicken!” Daniel yelped.
“Me too.” Simon fixed me with a pleading look. “Can he stay? Can Parker cook for us?”
“I’ll be gone before you get home,” he promised again.
But the thought of bringing Grandma home to an empty house made a current of dread race through my chest. I shivered. “No,” I said, and Parker’s face fell. I rushed to explain. “No, I don’t mean you have to go; I mean stay. Go ahead and cook your meal, but don’t hurry back to Minnesota. We’ll be back sometime this afternoon, and the boys would love it if you’d eat with us.”
Simon’s eyes went round and even Parker seemed surprised by my invitation. I still felt awkward around him—even more so after the blizzard of emotions that surrounded the night of Grandma’s heart attack and so unexpectedly finding him at her bedside—but I felt like he deserved this much. If he was going to stay and cook for us, the least we could do was share our meal.
Parker regarded me with open curiosity. “What about you, Julia? Do you want me to stay?”
His question felt probing, intimate, though it would have been simple enough to make a joke and laugh it off. But I couldn’t. I brushed past him before he could see the color that had risen in my cheeks and said, “We’ll be back soon.”
The boys assaulted him with a chorus of pleases as I made my way to the car. Parker’s answer was a foregone conclusion, and by the time we were buckled in and pulling out of the driveway, I was sure that he would be around when we came back.
While Parker turned our immaculate kitchen into his personal culinary playground, Simon, Daniel, and
I chauffeured Grandma home. She was still pale and delicate, a frail woman who seemed half the size she had been only weeks before. But she was smiling, and her eyes shone with something that could only be labeled pure joy. She stared at the boys, clutching their hands, their faces, their arms, as if she longed to crush them to her but didn’t have the strength. And she pressed my hand to her lips, murmuring hopes and prayers against my fingers as the nurse pushed her out of the hospital in a wheelchair.
“I’m so ready to go home,” she whispered, just for my ears.
“We’re so ready to have you home,” I said. Gazing at the top of her snowy head, I added, “Don’t ever do that again.”
She laughed. “I’ll try not to.”
The boys were a little ahead of us, taking turns setting off the automatic doors at the hospital exit. I reached down and secured the quilt I had brought along around Grandma’s legs. “I should warn you,” I began, “Parker is going to be at the house when we get home. Are you okay with that? Because I have his cell phone number and I can call him and tell him that—”
“Julia,” Grandma interrupted, “I’m happy that Patrick will be there.”
“You are?” I looked at her quizzically, desperate to ask her about Parker’s visit and why she seemed so open to his presence in our lives. But I didn’t dare.
“He’s a nice boy,” she murmured, patting my hand.
“He’s hardly a boy. He’s thirty-one.”
“You’re right. He’s not a boy. He’s a baby.”
I laughed. “What does that make me?”
“Just starting out, my girl.”
I didn’t tell her that I felt old. Closer to an end than a beginning.
The drive home was peaceful. Grandma dozed a little, and that was fine with me. The boys played travel Yahtzee in the backseat and I snuck peeks at my grandmother’s sleeping profile. She seemed so serene with her head tilted back and her hair like a halo against the crepe of her pale skin. I wished I had my camera with me. I would have loved to capture the way the light fell on her face, the tranquil half smile that graced her lips.
In some ways, she was the grandmother I had always known and loved. In others, she was a stranger to me. Uncertainties aside, I looked forward to getting to know her. To exploring the boundaries of our new relationship.
By the time we got home, I was actually anticipating the noise and chaos that seemed to follow Parker like a whiff of cologne. It was impossible for him to enter our house and not elicit giggles and shouts, and I was anxious for the rowdy games that would undoubtedly take my mind off Grandma’s mortality.
Not to mention the home-cooked meal. Even if it was a paltry Crock-Pot offering, it was better than serving my grandmother frozen pizza on her first day back. Suddenly I remembered the meal plan her nutritionist had drawn up, and I grasped the fact that frozen pizzas were a thing of the past in the DeSmit house. Maybe it was time to dust off our own Crock-Pot and start putting it to better use.
I pulled the car as close to the porch as I could, packing the thin layer of snow into the dead grass of our lawn without pausing to wonder if my off-roading would do permanent damage. I hoped that Grandma felt strong enough to do the steps with a little assistance, but my worries were put to rest when Parker materialized on the porch. He jogged down the wide staircase and opened the passenger door, then offered Grandma his hand like a true gentleman and welcomed her home.
“Thank you, Patrick,” Grandma said, and though I couldn’t see her face, I could hear the smile in her voice.
“It’s a bit slippery,” he told her. “May I do the honors?”
“Absolutely not. But you may help me.”
“Good enough,” he agreed.
I watched as he half lifted her out of the car and wrapped a thick arm around her waist. Grandma didn’t want to be carried over the threshold, but I could see that Parker supported much of her weight as they made their way up the steps. Her doctor had told me to continue slowly increasing her level of activity but that at her age it was unlikely she would ever regain all she had lost. In short, my grandmother had aged ten years in two weeks. The change was evident in the way she leaned into Parker and painstakingly made her way up the same steps she had all but raced up only a month or so before.
By the time I parked the car and took off my snow gear in the mudroom, Grandma was seated at the kitchen table with a cup of tea between her hands. I noticed that Parker had settled her on the seat with the new cushion, a red gingham-patterned pillow that didn’t even seem to compress beneath her petite frame. And through the archway I could see that Parker had turned on the TV for the boys. Not my first choice of activity, but considering the gravity of the day, I could hardly complain that he had given them the chance to unwind.
“You’re so domestic,” I told Parker in greeting. I sank into the nearest chair and marveled at the realization that for once there was absolutely nothing for me to do. The house was clean, the kids were quiet, and supper was made. In fact, the kitchen was thick with the tantalizing aroma of spices and roast chicken, and I could see a chocolate cake on the counter by the refrigerator. “You’d make an excellent housewife.”
“Not really. I tossed a chicken and some onions and carrots into a Crock-Pot. The potatoes are from a box.” He looked at Grandma and mouthed, Sorry. “And I bought the cake from the bakery.”
“Smells delicious,” Grandma told him, and I had to agree. It was three o’clock in the afternoon and my mouth was watering as if I hadn’t eaten in days.
“If all you did was throw a chicken in a Crock-Pot, what did you do with all those hours?” I asked.
“I cleaned the garage,” Parker admitted, pouring me a cup of hot water and passing the tin that contained our tea bags.
“You did what?”
“I didn’t know what else to do. Besides, it was messy.”
It was more than messy. It was a disaster. Since I knew nothing about hardware, tools, or organizing a traditional “man’s space,” I had let the garage go for years. There were coffee cans of rusty nails, haphazard piles of the boys’ outdoor toys, and even old equipment from the days when my grandpa still ran the farm. I had found a rusted scythe in the far corner once and shoved it up in the rafters so that the boys couldn’t get ahold of it.
“It took a while,” Parker said. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“We don’t mind,” Grandma assured him. “We’re grateful. Thank you.”
“Thank you,” I echoed numbly.
We chatted for a bit and Grandma took tiny sips of her tea. I could tell within minutes that sitting up in the kitchen chair was draining her, and when I had counted one too many long blinks, I gently suggested that she take a nap.
It felt good to tuck her into her own bed and pull the crisp sheets all the way up to her chin. I perched on the edge of the mattress for a few moments, holding her hand and watching as she slowly gave in to sleep.
To my surprise, a hot tear slipped down my cheek when her breathing became slow and even. My ribs felt ready to crack at all the emotion I couldn’t contain. It was a building pressure, a geyser of love and hope and grief. But I couldn’t cry over her. Not now. Not when she was sleeping so soundly. So I drew a shaky breath and swallowed my tears, bending for just a second to lay a whisper of a kiss on her cheek.
As I stood up, I wondered how many times she had hovered over me like this. How many nights had she cried at my bedside? spun wishes around me? prayed?
More importantly, when had we switched roles?
Parker was waiting for me in the kitchen with his own unspoken question. I could see it in his face the moment I laid eyes on him, and though I was dying to grill him about his visit to the heart hospital, I simply wasn’t in the mood to talk. I tried to give off an aura of detachment. Maybe if I acted aloof, he’d leave me alone.
He caught on quickly. “Why don’t you go take a nap? I have a little project to do with the boys.”
A nap sounded like heaven, but Parker’s
project piqued my curiosity. “What are you going to do?”
“We’re going to decorate a night tree.”
“Excuse me?”
Parker pushed back from the table and grabbed a pair of cookie sheets that had been resting on top of the fridge. He set them on the table before me, and I marveled at the layers of narrow apple rings that he had painstakingly sliced and laid out to dry. They were crimson at the edges, but curled and browning where the soft ivory flesh had once been. Even wasting away, they were pretty—earthy and honest.
I picked up an apple ring and studied the way Parker’s sharp knife had split the black seeds in two. “What are they for?”
“Garlands.” He retrieved a giant bowl of popped popcorn and the last shopping bag that had been hiding in his laundry basket. Upending the paper sack, he poured out fishing line, a bag of sunflower seeds, pinecones, glue, and dried cranberries. “Haven’t you heard of a night tree?”
“Never.”
Parker shrugged. “It’s a family tradition. My sister and her husband have been doing it with their daughters for the past several years.”
“You have a sister?” I asked, suddenly becoming conscious of the fact that I knew absolutely nothing about Parker’s personal life, history, or family.
“Just one. She’s five years older than me and has two girls.”
“I bet you’re a great uncle,” I murmured.
“I try.” Parker began to gather everything into neat piles. From his back pocket he extracted a small, cardboard folder that contained a few thick needles with blunt tips. “Do you trust Daniel to use one of these?”
I put my finger to the point and pressed. “I think so.”
“I’ll watch him carefully, I promise.”
“I will too.”
“I thought you were going to take a nap.”
“Nah,” I said. “I think I’d rather learn more about this night tree.”
Although I had worried that the boys wouldn’t respond well to Parker’s little art project, their excitement mounted as he explained the particulars of a night tree. While we threaded popcorn, apple slices, and cranberries on the fishing line and glued sunflower seeds to the pinecones, Parker relayed stories of his nieces’ night trees and the Christmas evenings they had spent beneath the boughs of their chosen evergreen.