Take Me Back

by Sally Mandel

  “Dammit, they’ve moved everything around in here,” Stella protested.

  “Okay,” Simon said. “Let’s split up and meet back at the register.”

  Just at that moment, a young man passed by, an employee who happened to be very handsome and nicely muscular.

  “Excuse me!” she called out to him.

  He turned.

  “Where are your nuts?”

  The boy’s momentary surprise gave way to a grin. She could hear Simon suck in his breath as the hot color flooded her face, which she covered with her hands.

  “Aisle three,” the boy said, carefully neutral.

  Simon had teased her once in a while by asking if she knew where he’d put his nuts.

  She sat back against the sofa pillow and thought about the playfulness that had characterized their relationship. She had forgotten about the fun. They always laughed so much, and then, after Amy was born, she had joined right in, even from babyhood. It had been such a long time since Stella had even thought about that. It made her heart hurt now to remember.

  “BECAUSE YOU DEMONSTRATE EQUAL CAPACITY FOR ATHLETIC GRACE AND FOR EXTREME KLUTZINESS … SOMETIMES ON THE SAME OCCASION.”

  Stella was always sporting a bruise or a scrape from some mishap or other. The example that popped into her head now was the one she earned on that women’s bike race in the Catskills.

  She had used her customary tactic of biding her time, allowing the younger cyclists to exhaust themselves on the early calf-punishing inclines. During the last quarter hour of the twenty-mile course, she pulled out all the stops and slid easily past the finish line, alone. Simon and Amy were waiting for her, cheering and waving balloons. She pumped her fists in the air at them and then, just as the race organizer was approaching to place the winner’s ribbon around her neck, she shifted her weight awkwardly to topple over and break her foot. She had been in a cast for twelve weeks.

  On the rare occasion that she and Simon attended a formal event, Stella would step into her most glamorous cocktail dress—the black one that showed off her slender body—and there, inevitably, on one leg or the other, would be some spectacular wound.

  “Jesus, Stella, how did you get that?” Simon would ask.

  “I don’t know,” she would say.

  “Don’t you want to put a Band-Aid on it?”

  “Nah,” she would reply. “Better to let it breathe.” And off they would go.

  “BECAUSE OF THE TENDERNESS IN YOUR HANDS AS YOU STAND BEHIND YOUR MOTHER, BRAIDING HER HAIR, YOUR CONFIDENCES AND REMINISCENCES ENTWINING TOGETHER AS ARTFULLY AS THOSE SHINING SILVER STRANDS.”

  She thought of the old heart asleep upstairs and felt a lump swell in her throat. This vacillation between comedy and poignancy had her reeling. Even planted firmly in the corner of the couch, she felt she was falling, falling, into a dangerous place. She took several deep breaths and glanced at the remaining pages. Not far to go now. Surely she could summon the nerve to finish. She picked up the next one.

  “BECAUSE YOU ARE THE ONLY PERSON I EVER HEARD OF WHO GOT FIRED BY THEIR DENTIST.”

  Doctor Pascal had asked her if she would consider closing her eyes while he worked on her. When she asked why, he explained that her staring directly into his face the entire time was unnerving. He had beautiful eyes, though, like stained-glass chips of brown and green; and besides, what else was there to look at? She had tried, but failed, and the next time she called for an appointment, his secretary had referred her to someone else.

  “BECAUSE OF THE BATHTUB.”

  With instant recognition, Stella recalled their third anniversary, which they celebrated on a hot August weekend at an upscale bed-and-breakfast out on the north fork of Long Island. She had been in Africa for almost a month, so on Friday night after an early meal in the dining room, they hurried upstairs. There was a charming claw-foot tub in their bathroom, which Stella suggested they share. She turned on the spigots and returned to the bedroom to find Simon stripped to the waist, lean and muscular, his hair streaked from the summer sun. Overwhelmed with desire, Stella had propelled him onto the bed and then they were lost to the world.

  Suddenly, there was a pounding on the door, accompanied by frenzied shouts. Stella grabbed her robe and went to investigate. The manager shouldered past her and headed straight for the bathroom.

  “Wait,” she said, but even in that moment, she understood. She stared at Simon who, already there, had his hands to his head. In the bathroom, Stella’s flip-flops were afloat on an inch of water covering the entire floor, fed by the cascade from the overflowing tub.

  They had thrown themselves on the mercy of the manager, pledging to pay for repairs and apologizing repeatedly. It was worse than it seemed, though. Not only had the flood seeped through to the dining room below, but it had dripped onto the ceiling fan which proceeded to fling water all around the room, drenching every person there.

  “It rained on everybody!” the manager shouted.

  Alas, this information regarding the fan was challenging Stella’s composure. She had glanced at Simon, a mistake.

  “Wow,” he breathed softly, with profound and totally inappropriate pride.

  Stella, undone, let out a strangled hoot, which she proceeded to mask with a coughing fit as she dove for the nearest door—of a closet, as it turned out, into which she withdrew in paroxysms of hilarity.

  Even now, she laughed. What a gift, she thought, to have this memory back. And so she read it again.

  “YOU NEVER MINDED MY CAREER.”

  It had taken a while for Simon to figure out that he needn’t be a businessman like his father or a journalist like his mother. He began showing houses at the suggestion of a friend, as something to do when he wasn’t teaching nineteenth century English lit at the local college. To his great surprise, he had loved it. Stella found it heartwarming that he so enjoyed helping people find a home. She looked forward to his descriptions of the cast of characters, both buyers and sellers, with their dramas, not to mention the houses themselves, and how revealing they were about those inhabiting them. Sometimes, when meeting new people, Stella had seen the conversation die when Simon answered the inevitable question of what he did for a living. Detecting often the edge of inadvertent condescension towards him, she would blaze up protectively. But somehow Simon didn’t mind and told her she shouldn’t either.

  Stella saw that she was at the end now. She picked up the last page reluctantly, aware that this slender thread of words connecting her to Simon would, in a matter of moments, snap. She read the words slowly, reverently.

  “AND FINALLY, MY DARLING, BECAUSE YOU DID NOT BULLY ME ABOUT JEREMY. I WOULD TALK WITH YOU ABOUT HIM NOW, ABOUT HOW I RESURRECTED HIM OVER THESE PAST MONTHS ONLY TO BURY HIM AGAIN, ONCE AND FOR ALL. ABOUT HOW HE NO LONGER STANDS BETWEEN ME AND THE WORLD. ABOUT HOW I AM NOW FREE TO REMEMBER HIM AND HONOR HIM AND HOW I AM NOW, AT LAST, FREE TO LOVE YOU, AND AMY, WHICH I DO WITH ALL MY HEART.”

  Stella curled herself into a ball in the corner of the couch and covered her face with her hands. She had no idea how long she was there, nor even what precisely she was thinking, only that she was exhausted by the time she came to. Feeling Lily’s hand on her shoulder, Stella looked up, took her mother’s hand, and held it in both of hers.

  “Did I make a mistake forcing this on you?” Lily asked.

  Stella shook her head, rose from the couch and headed for the front hall.

  “You’re going out now?” Lily asked. “It’s one o’clock in the morning.”

  “Yes,” Stella said. “I’m going out.”

  “At least put on a jacket!” Lily called after her. But the front door had already clicked shut.

  Inside Out

  Amy: 1994

  It was two years to the day since Amy’s grandmother died. Stella and Simon had worried about leaving Amy alone on the painful anniversary, but in fact it was her parents’ concern that weighed on her most. Amy had plann
ed her own personal memorial, and it did not include anyone else. So last night she had had an early dinner at her childhood home in Hudson, after which a car service arrived to pick up her parents.

  “Sure you’ll be okay, puddlesplash?” her father asked, his pet names meteorological of late. Earlier in the day she had been “blue skies.”

  “Uhh!” Amy responded through the crush of Stella’s bruising hug.

  The taxi tooted outside, and at last her parents set off for JFK. They would catch a flight for London in the morning and make the drive to Devon where her father had grown up.

  Amy slept in her old bed in her old room and woke early, conscious that she had been busy with dreams in the night. Her head was filled with images that tumbled around like clothes in a dryer. She lay quiet for an hour or so, making the transition to reality, but before long, she was on her way to the town of Indian Creek on an unusually warm spring morning. She drove straight to the cemetery. It occupied a gentle hill on the fringe of the local golf course about half a mile from her grandparents’ house, now occupied by a fashionable young couple who had painted the entire interior in an array of whites, including the original eighteenth century pine floors.

  Inching her car up the pitted access road, Amy remembered the countless times she had tagged along with her grandfather as he played the course. The distinction of being his “caddy” had made her feel very grown up. He would ask her what club he should use, giving her a thumbs-up if she got it right, and explaining why if she guessed wrong. She parked now at the fifth hole, which abutted the graveyard. It was a challenging hole, very short—you wouldn’t go lower than a five iron. But the green sat on top of a steep hill, like a traffic cone with its head lopped off. Every single time she and her grandfather had played it, he would stop before teeing off and say, “My gravestone’s going to be right there ….” He would point with his club. “But if I don’t make a hole in one on this son of a bitch before I die, bury me someplace else. I don’t want to have to look at the goddamn thing for eternity.”

  “Grandad!” Amy would chastise him. “You’re not going to die!” But in the end he shot not one, but two holes in one before the fatal heart attack and wound up with a first-class view.

  She got out of the car and opened the trunk, removing a tarpaulin and a carton. She walked them through a break in the hedge and stood for a moment, gazing at the neat rows of graves where she and her friends had spent so many hours during the long summer days, playing hide and seek and inventing treasure hunts. There was an intoxicating smell of recently cut grass. Clusters of daffodils caught the morning sun.

  Amy spread the tarpaulin out between her grandparents’ headstones, noting that her grandfather’s, more than fifteen years old now, could use some attention. She stared at the inscriptions on first his and then her grandmother’s. She accepted the fact of her grandfather’s demise now, though for a while it had seemed impossible that such a force could be so unexpectedly cut down. But her grandmother was an entirely different story; even as a child Amy could be brought to tears merely by imagining Gran’s inevitable departure. Now that the first two years of heartache were past, Amy had work to do, and she planned to complete it today.

  Installing herself cross-legged on the tarpaulin, she removed a hardcover book from the carton: The Children’s Eyes, a novel by Amy Vanderwall. She stared at the cover, a misty photograph of a pair of lovers in a leafy wood. It was beautiful. She wished Gran had seen it in its final incarnation.

  A writer friend had warned her that the appearance of your just-published book in a bookstore window was apt to be somewhat of a letdown. How wrong he was! It was embarrassing how many hours she had loitered in front of various bookstores throughout New York, gazing at her novel and fully understanding what it meant to swell with pride. It was like being pumped full of a giddy gas that lifted you straight off the pavement to bob deliriously around among the skyscrapers.

  She set the book down and peered into the carton, which was crammed with letters, hers and Gran’s. It turned out that they had both been storing them away over the years, so that now there was a comprehensive collection of their correspondence. Amy had pulled a selection from both Gran’s and her own that seemed particularly appropriate for her intentions on this day. She began with an early letter, its disciplined sentences on Gran’s awful blue stationery that she bought each year from the mentally challenged son of a neighbor. She always ordered too much, which accounted for the dozen boxes in her closet when she died. The familiarity of it, the tactile reality, seemed cruel. This was what was left of Gran’s voice, these flimsy bits of paper? Amy held the letter to her chest.

  “Gran,” she whispered, and felt her eyes prick.

  She sat for some moments, calming herself, but soon she became aware that the words in the box beside her were practically jumping off the pages, rattling and rustling and demanding attention. She had come here, after all, to read and to celebrate. There was a rite to complete as well, but that could wait awhile.

  As on most of her letters, Gran had penciled at the top a number representing Amy’s age at the time.

  8

  Dear Gran,

  How is Lord Stingwell? Do you think that there is a Lady Stingwell?

  Love, Amy

  Lord Stingwell, Amy remembered, was a wasp who had bored a hole into an eave of Gran’s house. She and Amy had spent an entire hour sipping lemonade and watching the hard-working creature stuff pieces of leaf and straw into his new home. Gran had remarked that he ought to be knighted for his “enterprise and tenacity,” two words that Amy readily added to her list of favorites. Her grandmother could always be counted on for a fresh supply.

  Gran had replied:

  Dearest Amy,

  Lord Stingwell has indeed been seen about town with a winsome lady friend. I hesitate to elevate her to the status of nobility if only because her clothing leaves much to be desired. Her dress is drab. Her antennae droop. Well, you’ll see for yourself next weekend. Shall we cook something?

  Love, Gran

  Amy set the letter down and sailed off on a memory voyage back into the big kitchen at Indian Creek where she had spent so much time with her grandmother. Some of their concoctions became classics in the family lore—for instance, the peanut butter ice cream that yanked a filling out of William Adams’ bicuspid. Nonetheless, the two persevered. Mostly what they did was laugh.

  9

  Dear Gran,

  Somebody pulled the vine down in Kramer’s Woods! It was the best vine by far for swinging. Why would anybody do that? It made me cry so much my face hurt. It was just lying there in the leaves like a great big dead snake.

  Love, Amy

  What Amy remembered about that incident, along with her outrage, was that the arrangement of words in her letter had mattered. She had struggled over it, trying to work out a way to express to Gran precisely what she meant. The first version had led off with the final sentence. Ultimately, she realized, without quite knowing why exactly, that the dead snake would have more of an impact if she left it for the very end. Funny that all this time later she’d recall that struggle with the language when she couldn’t begin to remember who had actually been with her in the woods that day.

  Dearest Amy,

  Sometimes it’s very hard to understand why people do things. The person who pulled down the vine may have done it very casually, not even thinking about the consequences. Or maybe he didn’t even know what it was used for. Or it could be that he did it to be mean. Sadly, there are some in this world who like to destroy. I believe that they are very unhappy with a big empty place inside themselves that, no matter what, they can never fill. I’m sorry that you lost your vine. Maybe you and your friends should have a little ceremony for it, like you did for Anabel’s turtle.

  Love,

  Gran

  The next was also from Gran. Now and then, she or Amy would dash off a random thou
ght and post it to the other before it slipped away.

  Amy dearest,

  You had mentioned your lack of interest in sports, despite your athletic abilities. It’s not hard to understand. For you, words were and are the thing. You eat them. You gobble them up. You get lost in the dictionary as if you were at Tiffany’s gazing at jewels. But I agree with your mother, that you need a balance to stay healthy. I’m certain that you can come to an agreement that will satisfy you both.

  XO Gran

  Amy could almost hear her grandmother’s voice in the words as she read them. She strained to hear it, longed to hear it, but it just eluded her. She was beginning to feel an ache in her chest like a bruised rib. Suddenly, a raucous cackling noise above Amy’s head caught her attention. She looked up and saw a squirrel perched on a nearby limb. It seemed to be lecturing her.

  “Excuse me?” she said out loud.

  It leapt from branch to branch, then scurried down the trunk, head first. It halted and settled back on its hind feet to study her.

  “You know what?” Amy said, laying her hand against the spot that ached. “This sucks.”

  She had hoped that reading the correspondence might be healing. What was all that bullshit people spouted about memories being a comfort? About as consoling as a poke in the eye as far as Amy was concerned. What she craved was the tangible fact of her grandmother, sitting beside her on the tarp, with the dappled light playing off her aged face.

  “Oh, hell,” Amy murmured to herself. This is what she got for having a best friend nearly sixty years her senior. Just then she saw the number at the top of the next letter and experienced a moment of clarity. The year was 1975, a year in which several memorable events had occurred, all of which Amy had ascribed to her having achieved, at last, the double digits; Ron had kissed her in the science lab, most notably. She still remembered the surprise of his teeth against her upper lip.