Following Grandpa Jess

by TJ Baer

“Fair enough.”

  Silence fell between us; from out in the hallway, I could hear the nurse on duty laughing with Thomas, and gathered he’d be tied up for a while until she’d managed to feed him a few more doughnuts. And now was as good a time as any…

  The book was still sitting on the bedside table, a slender black volume with the kind of papery cover that made me wonder if it had been printed up by some random basement cult with PhotoShop and a laser printer. I picked it up on my way to the window, and soon was kneeling in front of Grandma’s chair with the book in my hand.

  “Grandma,” I said, trying to catch her eye but not really managing it, “why is this so important to you?”

  She glanced at me, caught sight of the book, and hastily turned back to the window again. Her expression seemed a little taut, but she still managed to answer in a cool, everything’s-fine-why-do-you-ask kind of voice when she said, “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

  I hefted the book. “This. This crazy idea about the séance, and calling up Grandpa Jess. You don’t…” I almost didn’t say it, a little afraid of how she might answer, but in the end I knew I had to. “You don’t really think it’ll work, do you?”

  There was a long, long silence. Finally, Grandma sighed and lowered her eyes, her gaze falling to the faint blue veins that lined her hands. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

  I put the book down on the floor and reached out to take her hands, squeezing her fingers gently in mine. “Try me.”

  She looked at me then, really looked at me, and for all that her eyes were getting a little rheumy with age and her skin was pale and wrinkled like old paper, the gaze she turned on me was sharp and absolutely lucid.

  “Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and could swear he was lying there next to me,” she told me, very quietly and seriously. “I was sure it was just my imagination for the longest time, but then one night a few weeks ago, I woke up in the middle of the night and I was absolutely sure he was there, in the room with me. I couldn’t see him, but…I could feel him, and after a while, after he’d gotten my attention, I felt him leave the room.” She paused, swallowed. “I knew somehow that he wanted me to go with him, so I followed him downstairs. He led me through the house and out into the garage, and when I went to turn on the light, my foot caught on a cord and a pile of boxes fell from a high shelf. Three huge, heavy boxes, and not a thing fell out…except that book. We bought it ages ago at a used book sale—your grandfather was always interested in silly things like that—and I hadn’t given it a thought for years, but there it was, at my feet, and when I looked at it, I knew.”

  Her eyes seemed to glitter. “He wanted me to find it, Jessie. He wanted me to find that book and do what it says, no matter how insane that may seem. There’s something he wants to tell me, or…or something I have to do. I don’t know. Whatever his reasons, this is important to him, and so it’s important to me. Even if I’m ninety-nine percent sure this is crazy, I still have to do it, because he’s my husband and I would give everything I have just for that one percent chance of talking to him again.”

  Her energy seemed to drain away all at once when she was done talking; she sank back in her chair, her eyes moving back to the world outside the window, and carefully drew her hands away from mine. And before I could think of anything to say—before I could decide if she was genuinely making sense or just experiencing a whole new level of insanity—the door swung open and Thomas came back in with the tissues, sucking bits of powdered sugar from his fingers.

  I got to my feet and, in a feat of dexterity rarely known to me, managed to catch the tissue box when Thomas pitched it to me. I was on my way to return them to their spot on the table when Grandma shifted in her seat with a soft rustle of fabric.

  “If you don’t mind,” she said, her voice gone cool and a little flat, “I’d like to rest for a bit now. And I’m sure Tommy needs to be getting on to school.”

  I glanced back at her, wanting to say something reassuring, or maybe just let her know that I hadn’t written her off as a complete whacko. I was still absorbing everything, trying to sort through it and make sense of it. But she wasn’t looking at me and didn’t seem like she planned to do so, and she did look tired.

  “Sure, yeah, okay,” I said. “We’ll come visit again soon, though, and there’s still that one thing I’m going to try.”

  She nodded but didn’t really seem to be paying attention. Thomas and I took turns kissing her on the cheek, and with a last set of quiet good-byes, we went back out into the hallway and closed Grandma’s door behind us.

  We stood in the hallway for a long moment, not moving, and then I wrapped my arm around Thomas’s shoulders. He leaned into me for a second, then straightened up and led the way back to the car.

  *

  “‘Please excuse Thomas from his morning classes,’” I muttered as I wrote, “‘as he had a family commitment.’ Should I say ‘unavoidable family commitment?’”

  I glanced over at Thomas for input, but found him staring out the car window with his hands in his lap, his eyes fixed on the dusty red wall of the school building like he thought he might find some vast secret of life hidden in the patterns of the brick.

  I let him sit in silence for another few seconds, then nudged him gently with my elbow. “Hey.”

  He took in a sudden deep breath, like someone coming out of a deep sleep, and blinked at me like he’d forgotten I was there in the car with him. Or possibly that he was even in a car.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  It was strange, what happened then. I flattered myself that I knew Thomas pretty well, maybe better than anyone else did, but at that moment, it was almost like I didn’t recognize him. The expression on his face was taut and serious and somehow determined, and for the first time, I didn’t see my weird little brother staring back at me as I looked at him. Instead I saw someone who was very nearly an adult, very nearly a man, and who—no matter how much I might want to—I could never protect from everything. Or anything, maybe.

  “I’m okay,” he said in a low, steady voice, and I believed him.

  “All right.” For once, I had no desire to ruffle his hair or put him in a headlock or any of the other usual indignities. “But you know you can talk to me. You know. If you need to.”

  “I know.”

  I finished scribbling the note, signing it with the usual illegible flourish that both our parents favored, then handed it over to Thomas. Once he’d tucked it into his pocket, he flashed me a crooked smile, and the serious stranger vanished like he’d never been there.

  “See ya later, Jessie,” he said, and after a quick struggle to get his seat belt unfastened, he got out of the car and pushed the door shut.

  I sat there with the engine idling, watching him walk up to the school building like I’d never seen him before. For all that he was chronically scrawny, there was a strength and casual assurance in the way he walked that I’d never noticed before, and something about the way he held his head made him look like someone totally comfortable with himself. The baby fat he’d had as a kid had melted away over the last few years, leaving him with a nice, sharply planed face and high cheekbones. He’d inherited Mom’s straight dark hair, and for all that it was getting a little long, he’d been right before—there was no way anyone would mistake him for a girl, no matter how long it got.

  This was Thomas. I’d been looking at him almost every day for the last sixteen years, and yet somehow I’d missed this happening. Somehow I’d missed that moment when he stopped being a kid and became something more, something deeper…

  God, I was getting sappy. Deciding that the whole thing was a bit too our little Thomas has become a man, I gave myself a little shake and flipped the car into reverse. Since I’d called in sick to work, I had the rest of the day to work up the courage to do what I’d been avoiding doing for a long, long time.

  I was going to go to my parents’ house and have a conversation with my father.
Not because I had to, but because I wanted to.

  God help me.

  Chapter Eight

  AJ looked a little too self-satisfied as he joined me in the car. This gave me the impression that maybe, just maybe, he’d heard it when half the construction squad had wolf-whistled at me as I walked by, this when I was innocently looking for my stupid beefy muscular man-slut of a brother.

  Not that I was bitter or anything.

  Aforementioned man-slut gave me a totally unapologetic grin as he settled into the passenger’s seat and closed the door. “Take it as a compliment,” he said, starting to unwrap a sandwich that was buried under a small mountain of cellophane. “They don’t whistle at just anybody, you know. Only the really pretty—”

  “Anyway,” I growled and vowed to grow a thick, bushy beard at the first available opportunity. “I came here to talk about something. Something not related to your construction buddies’ crap eyesight.”

  AJ looked me up and down, but didn’t say anything. Probably because his mouth was stuffed full of chipped beef.

  “Right,” I said, taking the food-induced silence as agreement. “So, I’m going over to Mom and Dad’s.”

  AJ opened his mouth, then remembered it was full of food and took a second to chew and swallow. “You’re going to Mom and Dad’s,” he said. “Voluntarily.”

  “Wow, five syllables. An AJ record.”

  “Bite me, college boy.” He finished another mouthful of sandwich, washed it down with a slug of cola, then looked at me with something I was almost tempted to call brotherly concern. “So, what’s going on? Why the sudden need to see Mom and Dad?”

  I leaned back in the driver’s seat, listening to the pounding of hammers and the scrape of metal and feeling strangely soothed by the sound. “Grandma. Thomas and I went to see her this morning.”

  AJ nodded and said nothing, waiting for the rest.

  “She doesn’t belong there, AJ,” I said quietly. “There are people there who need to be there, but Grandma’s not one of them.”

  “And you’re going to try to talk Mom and Dad into letting her come home?”

  “Something like that. And I was hoping...”

  For a second, I found myself looking at him with the same outsider scrutiny as I had Thomas, taking in the shaggy brown hair, the square jawline, the thick dark eyebrows. Then came broad shoulders, arms that you could tell were muscular even through the baggy gray-green jumpsuit everyone at the construction site wore, and finally, long legs ending in dusty black boots of some large, manly shoe size.

  There’d been a time, around when AJ was eight and I was ten, when we’d been the same size, evenly matched and with equal chance of winning if a sudden bout of wrestling broke out. And then we’d branched off in opposite directions, me going the way of studying and grades and peeking at guys in the locker room, him going the way of football and parties and girls.

  But somehow, no matter how far our school lives had separated us, he was always my brother, and there was never a time when I felt like I couldn’t rely on him one hundred percent to be there when I needed him.

  “I was hoping you’d back me up,” I said.

  He nodded, and I knew that for all that things seemed hell-bent on changing lately, some things would always stay the same.

  “You got it. What do you want me to do?”

  *

  AJ and I made plans to meet up the next afternoon, at which point we would head over to our parents’ house and bring the full force of our brotherly powers of persuasion to bear on Dad. Which gave me approximately twenty-four hours to figure out what the hell we could possibly say to change his mind.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon lying on my couch, staring up at the ceiling and trying to remember if there had ever been a time when Dad’s mind had been changed by something. It had to have happened, right? I mean, human beings are adaptable, changeable creatures, and so it would stand to reason that even someone as set in his ways as my dad would have some sort of capacity to change.

  By the time three o’clock rolled around, I’d doodled on six pages of notebook paper, eaten two bologna sandwiches, taken an unplanned (but highly enjoyable) nap, and come up with absolutely zip. I couldn’t recall a single instance of Dad shifting his stance on anything—he’d never changed a punishment, altered a decision, or professed even the slightest doubt in his choices in my entire twenty-four years of living. The man spent every second clad in an Iron Man suit of certainty. How in the name of all things holy were we ever going to persuade him to do anything?

  When my cell rang a little while later, I was sitting slumped on the couch in a fog of despair and it seemed to take an immense amount of energy to coax the phone from my pocket and bring it up to my ear.

  “Yeah?” I said in a monotone.

  There was a pause from the other end, then an uncertain voice said, “Jess?”

  David. A warm rush of comfort and good feelings flooded through me just from the sound of his voice. “Hey,” I said in more normal tones. “Sorry for the zombie greeting. Guess I’m a little out of it.”

  “Well, I guess that’s to be expected, given how sick you’ve been.” There was a wry note to his voice, and I grinned.

  “So, what’s up?” I said. “Still at school?”

  I heard a drawer sliding shut, then the jangle of keys. “I’m just finishing up now, and I was wondering if you were feeling up to going out.”

  “Out?”

  “On a date. A real one this time.”

  My heart fluttered in an embarrassing way, and I closed my eyes, allowing myself one girly moment of bliss before answering casually, “Sure, sounds like fun. What’d you have in mind?”

  “I was thinking I’d pick you up and we’d go have a romantic dinner at a fancy restaurant somewhere. Sound good?”

  “I don’t have to wear an evening gown or anything, I hope.”

  “Not unless you really want to. And feel free to veto the fancy restaurant if you want. I’d be just as happy to take you to Burger King, though the screaming kids might make for a slightly less romantic setting.”

  “Fancy works for me. Are you heading over here now?”

  “I have to stop by my place first, so I should be there in…say, half an hour?”

  “Great,” I said, already off the couch and heading for my bedroom, all Dad-related misery forgotten. “I’ll be ready.”

  *

  When I opened the front door some thirty minutes later, there was a long, wonderful moment when David just stared at me, a look on his face that very clearly said, Wow.

  I grinned and felt a little heat rising to my cheeks. I rarely bothered to dress up for anything, but for some reason I’d found myself reaching to the back of my closet and pulling out a special outfit for our very special first date.

  I was wearing a dark blazer, a silky white shirt with the first few buttons undone, and my very own pair of black leather pants, which an old boyfriend had purchased for me in the misguided belief that I actually wore such things. I’d even taken some time on my hair, using an actual comb (instead of just relying on gravity and my fingers) and also applying some hair gel David had left in my bathroom. Strangely, the styling made me look more masculine than usual, and for once in my life, I knew there was no chance of anyone mistaking me for a woman. There was even a faint shadow of stubble on my chin, which gave me a somewhat pitiful feeling of manly pride.

  “You look great,” David said, and I watched as his eyes darted down to my leather-encased legs, then back up again, then down one more time. “Really, really great.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’m not one hundred percent sure I’ll be able to sit down in these pants, though, so I hope you won’t be too disappointed if I have to take them off.”

  David slid forward and kissed me, his arms sliding up and down my sides for a warm, tingly moment. His lips grazed my cheek, my temple, and then he breathed into my ear, “I can pretty much guarantee you that you’re going to be taking
them off.”

  The words were still echoing in my ears when he took a small step backward, his cheeks flushed, and held out his arm. “Shall we?”

  For a second, I seriously considered grabbing him by the collar and dragging him back to my bedroom so we might skip right to the pants removal phase of the evening. But in the end, I took the classier route and linked my arm in his, giving a charming smile. “Let’s.”

  *

  We ended up at a nice Indian restaurant near the lakefront, and since David had actually called ahead to make a reservation, we were able to bypass the crowded waiting area and go straight to our table. They seated us near the windows, from which we could see the lights of the city just starting to come on, office buildings lighting up one by one as the last rays of daylight faded to a blue-gray dusk. It was a pretty stunning view, but I only looked at it for a second, finding it much more enjoyable to keep my eyes on David.

  David. Here with me on a real, honest-to-goodness date, looking gorgeous as usual in a soft blue sweater and jeans. Holding my hand in full view on the table, his thumb gently stroking my skin, his eyes fixed on mine. Looking at me like…

  I felt a sudden lump in my throat.

  Like everything he’d ever wanted was right here in front of him.

  “So,” he said, dropping his eyes from mine to examine the menu, “do you want to get separate dishes, or share?”

  “I love you,” I said.

  David’s eyes went wide, and he kept his gaze on the day’s specials for a second longer before slowly looking back up at me.

  “I just wanted to tell you,” I said, thinking about Jen’s brittle smile and wondering when he’d realized what it meant, and how he’d felt in that moment. “In case there was any doubt in your mind, or in case you…I don’t know, somehow missed me drooling all over you for the past year. I wanted you to know.”

  David closed his eyes and let out a shaky breath. “This is going to sound silly, but would you say that again?”