Following Grandpa Jess
Page 19
“You know,” I murmured a long time later, “when I was a kid, I really wanted to be a mailman.”
David gave a soft little laugh and nuzzled his face against my neck. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. It was my dream for, I don’t know, maybe two or three years. I really loved the idea of being that person who connected people—the one who tied them together, even if it was just through a letter in the mail. After a while, though, the dream kind of faded, or I grew out of it, and before long, I guess I just forgot about it. But it’s always been there, inside of me. It never left, even though it seemed like it was gone. And I think a lot of things are like that. They seem to be gone, but they’re not, not really. Maybe they never go away at all.”
David was quiet and very kindly did not laugh at my sudden attack of philosophy. Finally, he said, “Do you usually think about this kind of thing after sex?”
I grinned and rolled so I was lying on top of him, our faces close enough for me to kiss him, quickly and warmly, on the lips. “No. Only after really good sex.”
David smiled, and we spent a wonderful moment just lying there grinning at each other. Then I sat up and gave him a saucy waggle of my eyebrows. “Now,” I said softly. “Your turn.”
Epilogue
Three car doors slammed, and although we were already late, somehow the three of us ended up standing there on the sidewalk together and just staring up at Grandma’s house. There was a light coating of December snow on the porch roof, fluffy white lines tracing shingles that thankfully hadn’t had to support anyone’s weight recently.
“You know,” I said, my breath coming out in a frosty white puff of air, “it looks different somehow.”
“Uh, yeah,” AJ said. “It’s covered in snow.”
I elbowed him in the ribs, which of course resulted in a flash of pain from my elbow and a calmly arched eyebrow from AJ. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I know what you mean,” Thomas said. He’d recently gotten a haircut and—God help us all—was actually sporting a little bit of stubble. This, combined with the fact that he’d stopped slouching and had recently taken up weight lifting, for crying out loud, made him look disturbingly tall and grown-up. “It’s like, ever since Grandpa Jess died, Grandma’s house has seemed kind of sad. Lonely. But now…”
The words trailed off, and we all stared up at the house in a companionable silence.
“But now,” AJ said, his voice gentle, “it’s like Grandpa Jess has finally come home, and there’s no reason for it to be lonely anymore.”
Thomas and I both turned to stare at him.
“What?” AJ muttered, shoving his hands deeper into the pockets of his leather jacket. “I can’t be deep, too?”
I grinned and gave his hair a good ruffle, which led to AJ having to turn around and spend a few seconds glowering at his reflection in the car window, trying to get his hair back to its usual gelled perfection.
“Now,” I said, while AJ was grumbling to himself about having forgotten to bring a comb, “let’s talk game plan. Thomas, if Mom starts talking about my ‘girlfriend’ again—”
“I’ll ask you how David is doing, and Grandma will say again what a wonderful guy she thinks he is. Check.”
I nodded. “Exactly.”
“And if Mom starts trying to steer the conversation toward me and Daphne—”
“I’ll ask Vivian to tell us that story about her affair with the Navy Seal again. Last time it took, what, twenty minutes? And by the end, Mom definitely wasn’t thinking about you and Daphne.”
AJ shuddered a little. “I don’t think anybody was. That lady’s sure been around.”
Thomas and I looked at him again.
“What? Okay, yeah, I’ve been around, too, but that was in high school. Not when I was all old and wrinkled and working as a nurse…”
I sighed and started leading the way up the front walk. “Do we have to have another Golden Girls marathon? There’s nothing wrong with a little elderly romance. It’s kinda nice. You know, something to look forward to when we get all old and wrinkled.”
“If you say so,” AJ said with a grimace. “Just don’t expect me to stay in the room if she starts talking about that time she sneaked into the army base and—”
“Hey, look,” Thomas said, thankfully cutting AJ off before he could finish the sentence. “Grandma’s got mail.”
I followed his gaze and saw a stack of envelopes sticking out of the snow-covered mailbox, which the mailman had very kindly left hanging open.
I took a quick detour off the front walk and into the yard, my sneakers sinking through the soft, fluffy layer of snow and into the muddy ground below. A handful of freezing steps later, I managed to dart my hand around the side of the mailbox and pull out a handful of bills, sales papers, and what looked like a few straggler Christmas cards. The envelopes were ice cold, so I tucked them into my coat as I struggled to get the mailbox closed up again.
Thomas and AJ were waiting for me on the walk, AJ shivering in his thin leather jacket but trying not to show it, Thomas with a faint smile on his face and both hands buried in the pockets of his coat.
Looking at them standing there, I found myself thinking about all the changes, good and bad, that had happened over the course of our lives, and how there really was nowhere to go but forward. And somehow, this prospect wasn’t anywhere near as scary as it had once been.
AJ interrupted my warm thoughts with an irritated, “Are you coming or what?”
I wiped the mud off my sneakers as best I could on the snow, then joined my brothers on the walk and headed up to the porch.
When the front door opened, Grandma was standing there wearing a new green dress and a light dusting of makeup that made her look years younger. “Glad you could make it, finally.”
I opened my mouth to mention that we were, in fact, only six minutes late, but at the last second remembered the envelopes and fished them out of my jacket instead. “Delivery,” I said, giving my best jaunty postman salute as I held up the mail.
For a long moment, she just looked at the envelopes, a secret kind of smile tugging at her lips. Then, in one smooth motion, she took the mail from my hand and drew me into the house, where it was warm and smelled like pine needles and baking ham. Through the living room doorway, I could see Dad sitting on the couch with a glass of eggnog in his hand, a soft smile on his face as he watched Mom adjusting the tinsel on the tree with her usual OCD need for decoration perfection.
Behind me, AJ and Thomas were working at getting their shoes off, and Grandma was taking advantage of our momentary distraction to leaf through her mail. As I watched, she drew a tree-shaped card out of one of the envelopes and flipped it open to read the message, a slow smile coming to her face as her eyes drifted over whatever words waited inside.
From the kitchen came a friendly shout of, “Is that the boys? Could one of you come help me get some plates down? I swear this kitchen was built for a family of giraffes.”
“I’ll go,” Thomas said with a grin, and brushed past me with a quick, “Coming, Vivian!”
With the sounds of Vivian fussing over Thomas in the background (anyone under two hundred pounds was in desperate need of feeding, according to Vivian), I shrugged out of my coat and headed into the living room to join my parents. Grandma followed, and soon was sitting on the couch next to Dad, leafing through the rest of the mail and making occasional sharp comments about the highly questionable behavior of Mrs. Whats-it or Mr. Whoever at church that day, while Dad sipped his eggnog and looked as contented as I’d ever seen him.
Before long, Thomas and AJ joined us, Thomas munching on a Christmas cookie and AJ still smoothing at his hair, and a long moment passed when there was no sound but the tinkling of the Christmas tree decorations, a tinny version of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” coming from the radio, and the warm silence of a family of completely insane people all gathered together in holiday harmony.
I leaned my head back against the c
ouch cushions and closed my eyes, letting the feeling of being here soak into my muscles with a feeling like sinking into a hot bath at the end of a long day. And while there was something to be said for being on a tropical beach somewhere with David instead, I could safely say at that moment that there was nowhere else I’d rather be than right here, in this room with these people. My family.
Once Mom finally got the tree decorations positioned to her liking, she sat in the recliner and turned to me. “So, Jess,” she said, “why don’t you tell us about that girlfriend of yours?”
I hid a smile and waited for Thomas to start the latest offensive of the Jess is gay and that’s okay campaign, but to my surprise, it was Dad who came to my defense.
“He doesn’t have a girlfriend, Susan,” he said mildly. “From what I understand, he has a boyfriend named…David, is it?”
A shocked silence filled the room.
Mom’s mouth had dropped open, and I wasn’t in much better shape. As Dad was apparently actually expecting me to answer, however, I worked to find my voice.
“Uh, yeah. His name’s David. David Keagan. We’ve been dating for about two months now.”
“He’s a great guy,” Thomas said. “You guys should meet him sometime.”
“A very classy young man,” said Grandma. “Excellent manners, very well-spoken.” She winked at me. “And handsome, too.”
“Maybe we should have the two of you over for dinner one of these days,” Dad said. “Wouldn’t that be nice, Susan?”
Mom stared at him for a long, long moment, then looked at each of us in turn—AJ, Thomas, Grandma, me, and Dad, all of us gazing fearlessly back at her in a united front of David approval.
Finally, she sighed and gave a small, grudging smile. “I suppose. If he’s so important to you, Jess, I suppose we’d better meet him.” She looked over at the tree. “Darn, those ornaments in the back aren’t straight.” She hurried back over to make a few more adjustments, and Dad and I exchanged a glance that left both of us grinning.
Outside, a light snow began to fall, and I knew that in a few hours, the footprints AJ, Thomas, and I had left in the front yard would be completely filled in, covered over like they’d never existed. But that didn’t change the fact that we’d made them, leaving our brief imprints on the world.
My thoughts traveled back in time, then, to a long-ago winter when Grandpa Jess and I had been in the garage together, me watching in fascination as he took apart an old car engine piece by piece. Snow had been falling all afternoon, and by the time Grandma called us in for dinner, it had piled up all the way to my knees. Grandpa wanted to carry me to the house at first, but I was just old enough to be proud—I demanded to be allowed to walk, to make my own way through the drifts.
Grandpa gave a gentle smile and let me do it, but he made sure to walk a few steps ahead of me, his huge boot-prints spreading out like stepping stones in front of me. I struggled a bit in the snow but didn’t want to give up, not with Grandpa watching, so I stepped from one boot-print to the next, hearing Grandpa calling encouragement from up ahead and knowing that I’d be okay as long as I just kept moving forward, just kept following the sound of his voice.
When I made it to the porch, he was waiting there for me, grinning his crooked smile and looking inordinately proud.
“You did it, Jessie,” he said, ushering me in through the front door. “You did it all by yourself.”
I knew that that wasn’t quite true, but I didn’t argue. I just smiled and let the warmth of the house wash over me, the snow slowly melting off my coat.
About the Author
Born in a small town in Pennsylvania, TJ Baer wrote her first novel-length work at the age of thirteen, and spent the majority of her teenage years writing stories, poems, and a rather dramatic emo diary that she would now very much like to burn.
After graduating from college and spending a dull handful of years working a computer job, she ran off to teach English in Japan and ended up living there for four years. She’s been teaching ever since, and now lives in Chicago with her cat, who is a decent enough roommate but never chips in enough for rent.
Her debut novel, Talking About Fungus, was published in 2005. Prior to that, her writing was featured in various chapbooks and literary magazines, and her one-act play, Alison’s Box, was performed at a 2004 theater festival in her hometown. She is currently working on a GLBT fantasy novel and a non-fiction account of her time in Japan, though these days most of her time is spent watching episodes of Community and neglecting housework.
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Table of Contents
Synopsis
Dedication
Prologue
Chapte
r One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
About the Author
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