Lights, Camera, Amalee

by Dar Williams

  There was still no sign of Sally, but this small office was at least busier than the rooms downstairs. Maps, charts, and photos covered the walls. There was a long, yellowing photograph of a sailboat. There were three pictures of my grandmother and, obviously, my grandfather, one of them standing with President Reagan, one with the first President Bush, and one with President and Hillary Clinton. My grandmother didn’t look like the picture I had of Sally. But then, with her hair pinned up on her head like a flat gray stone and dark red lipstick and powdered cheeks, she wouldn’t look like Sally who had long, loose, unbrushed hair and no makeup.

  I continued pacing around the room. There was a mantelpiece with small china figures on it, of dogs, tea-pots, tiny women with hoop skirts.

  And, finally, in a corner there was a bottle that was almost as tall as I was, with an ancient label peeling off that said MOËT & CHANDON. It was a champagne bottle. And it was filled — filled! — with coins. I gulped and stepped closer, trying to figure out how long it had taken to get so many pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters inside.

  Heather burst into the room with a light laugh, as if my grandmother had cracked a good joke. “All righty!” she said, ushering me in.

  The walls were, again, light blue. The bedspread was white, and my grandmother’s body lay like a snow sculpture under the covers, propped up by crisp white pillows.

  “Hello,” she said slowly. She was the woman in the photos, but her hair was as white as the pillows, and there was no lipstick.

  “Hello. I’m Amalee,” I answered.

  “How do you do?” she asked.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Would you like to sit down?”

  “No, thank you.” She opened her eyes wider, so I quickly said, “Okay, thank you.” I sat in a chair Heather had put out for me.

  Then there was silence. “I have a question,” I said, forcing myself to at least unzip my Windbreaker. I put my hand on the tape recorder.

  “What do you have there?” my grandmother asked.

  I pulled out the tape recorder. “I was wondering if I could tape-record this conversation.”

  “Oh, my, how small it is,” she answered. Then she pointed to it, and her finger looked like an old bird’s talon. “You may,” she finally said.

  I didn’t have any questions prepared ahead of time, and I could see that now she was expecting them!

  I looked at my grandmother. She looked at me. She stared at me, actually. I asked when she and my grandfather had moved into this house. She said they had moved in 1969. I asked when she had started putting coins into the bottle.

  “Pretty impressive, hm?” she asked.

  “It’s amazing,” I told her.

  “My husband and I returned from our honeymoon in Europe and found that bottle waiting with the doorman at our apartment in New York City. It was from my parents. They wrote that we should open it on New Year’s Eve if we were still married. It was a joke, of course. They knew we were very happy. But we did throw quite a gala on New Year’s Eve that year, and George and I made a real show of opening the bottle and pouring it, together, into what must have been a hundred glasses. More, I think.” As she spoke, she seemed dizzy with the memory.

  I didn’t have to ask any more questions for a while. She told me that George had been doing well at the bank, and that he had been married once before, and she had not been married before. She’d been a secretary in one of the science departments at Columbia University, and they’d had friends who had told them they had to meet.

  “And the rest was history,” she said. They went for dinner at a steak restaurant close to his bank, and he had “impeccable” manners. He’d held the door for her and pulled back her chair. They both loved sailing and wanted to travel, and for their first anniversary, he’d surprised her with a boat that they then sailed up and down the Hudson River.

  She said that when they’d moved into their house, she’d supervised the placement of the bottle of coins to make sure the moving men didn’t break it. “George said that a bottle of coins looked frivolous and penny-pinching, but I saw it as a good-luck symbol. I had the girlish fantasy that if George ever lost his job, which of course he never did, we could pack our clothes, take our bottle of pennies, and sail away on our boat. Sally always loved that bottle.” At the mention of Sally’s name, my grandmother stopped talking.

  After seeing how my grandmother had just cut off the conversation, I realized I was right about Sally. I was not welcome to ask more about her. Sarah would have asked, but I couldn’t. My grandmother looked like she might not survive it. I watched her hands flutter in her lap as she stared at the wall.

  I asked if the boat that they sailed up the Hudson River was the boat in the big photograph outside of her room.

  “Oh, yes,” she answered. “The picture’s in poor condition, because it’s clipped from a newspaper. I really should have had it photocopied. The newspaper photographer took that picture of us when we went to go see the wonderful old ships on the Hudson River at the bicentennial. That means the two-hundredth anniversary of this country.”

  “I know the bicentennial,” I told her.

  “You do?” she asked.

  “Um, yes … bi means ‘two,’ cent means ‘a hundred,’ so that means two hundred, and 1976 was two hundred years after 1776, which is when they signed the Declaration of Independence, even though George Washington wasn’t actually the first president until later.” I was scared that I was sounding like a know-it-all, but I wondered how she thought I could have my father for a father and not know about the bicentennial!

  “That is correct,” she said quietly.

  “It must have been a beautiful day, on the bicentennial.” I hoped she would continue, and she did, but as she spoke about the clean white sails, her friends who also had boats, and the fireworks and cannons being fired from the old, historic ships, I could hear her breaths getting weaker.

  She stopped speaking. Then she turned her head and stared at me again. “Do you like history? Is that your favorite topic in school?”

  I told her I liked history, English, and science, and I described as much as I could without feeling like I was just showing off. I was pleased that she smiled when I said I was looking forward to biology in ninth grade.

  She looked like she was about to say something, but instead, she took another long pause. The small plastic clock next to her bed showed that the hour was almost up, and I was scared about what would happen if we went on even longer. I decided to give her the opportunity to end the conversation, and so I asked what Mr. Chapelle called the summary question.

  “I have one more question,” I said. She raised an eyebrow. “Do you have a philosophy about life that you’d like to share?” I asked. It sounded very formal. “That’s the question my English teacher asked us to ask when we did interviews with people this year.” He’d said to ask for “a philosophy” so people wouldn’t think we were demanding that they come up with their one and only philosophy, which usually scared them.

  My grandmother had a glaring look about her, but simply asked, “So you enjoy going to school?”

  “If you take out some of the other kids, yes,” I answered too quickly. “I mean, my teachers are okay, and I liked what they were teaching, but the kids were … uh, confusing to … to me.” What had I just said? I rushed on a bit and said that I thought I would enjoy school more next year and that I wanted to take French or Spanish, and that I wished I had taken it this year, but there was a problem with the schedule, but I heard that if you start when you’re twelve or younger, you don’t have an American accent when you speak. On the word speak, I reminded myself to stop speaking.

  “Biology, French, or Spanish … it sounds like you have some big plans for your life,” my grandmother replied unexpectedly. Then she cleared her throat. “Would you like to hear a philosophy?” she asked, with a hint of amusement in her voice.

  “Yes, I would.”

  My grandmother took another long
, dry breath and said, looking at me, “Look at the world and listen to the world. We set out to teach everyone our lessons, but we need to be taught ourselves. I’ve watched closely in recent years. Without exception, I have learned important lessons from everything I have observed, from bees to humans. Unfortunately, I acquired the skill of watching and listening too late in life. I had already overlooked things and sacrificed them forever, losing whatever important wisdom they were sent to give me.”

  This seemed unusually nice and smart for the woman I had been hearing about. She started to close her eyes, and then fought to keep them open.

  “I’ll let you sleep,” I said, standing. She lifted her hand slightly and let it drop.

  “It was nice to meet you,” I whispered politely.

  “Hm,” she responded with a slight nod of her chin.

  I got up my courage, reached out, and touched her hand. In an instant, she grasped my hand in hers, clutched it, and let it go. She really had wanted to meet me.

  Heather was waiting in the small office, reading a magazine. “Your father and his friend are waiting outside,” she said. I looked out the window and saw them milling around the lawn, talking.

  “She’s asleep,” I told Heather. “You may want to make sure she’s okay.”

  “Oh, she’s fine,” she answered. “I hope she wasn’t cranky! After I’ve shown you out, I’ll make her some yummy cottage cheese and peaches.”

  I walked down the grand staircase and wondered about how a great auk would feel, after living such a fierce, free life, being told now that its behavior was “cranky” and being hand-fed “yummy” cottage cheese and peaches.

  I wasn’t sure I could believe she was my grandmother. She didn’t look like anyone I knew, including me. We hadn’t talked about Dad or Sally or anything like that. She seemed more like a principal who makes you want to be on your best behavior. Maybe I would have felt closer to her if I didn’t know she could send me away at any minute if she disapproved of me. But I could tell she hadn’t wanted to send me away. I could even say that she liked me.

  The confusing letter came a week later. “This is from your grandmother’s lawyer,” Dad began, skimming the stiff cream stationery. “Amalee, did you want to see your grandmother again?”

  My first thought was no way. Was that rude? “To be honest, I was nervous when I met her. I don’t have to do it again soon. Why? Does she want to see me again?”

  “Actually, the reason I asked is that she seems to have been sicker than we thought.”

  “I could tell she was very sick, or at least very tired,” I told him.

  “Well, she was very sick, and now, Amalee, I’m sorry to tell you that she has passed away. She died a few days after you met her.” He studied me to see if I had a reaction. “Are you sad about that?” he asked.

  I didn’t know what to say. I was secretly glad I had our tape recording. I also felt happy that I had shown her, once and for all, that Sally wasn’t wrong to have married my father. Then I had a mental picture of my grandmother just before she died, thinking about her daughter and feeling sad, and then I felt sad, but I swallowed down the lump in my throat, because it all felt too complicated to describe my picture of an old woman looking out the window at the big tree in her yard and feeling sad. “I’m glad I met her,” I said. “And I bet it was good for her to meet me, you know, like finally getting to read the ending of a book she’d started.”

  “Nicely put. And that’s what you feel? Happy for her?” Dad asked suspiciously.

  “It’s not like she acted like a grandmother, Dad,” I pointed out. “She didn’t bake me cookies or take out lots of family pictures.”

  “Do you wish she had?”

  I didn’t want to admit how much I wanted to see some sign of Sally. “I don’t know,” I answered. “It’s just that she didn’t do anything to make me feel related to her.”

  “She was never particularly warm,” Dad observed.

  “She was not warm,” I agreed.

  Dad took one last look at me, then went back to the letter. “This isn’t very warm, either,” he said. “But it’s from her lawyer, and lawyers are supposed to be businesslike and even annoying.”

  I smiled. “What does the annoying lawyer say?” I asked.

  “Well, this letter is telling me right off the bat that I’m not getting any money, but that she instructed that you were to be sent a monetary token that is not a formal part of her estate.” He sighed. “I’m guessing this means she wrote a check to you just before she died and made sure they sent it out before it could go through all the legal rigmarole that ties up inheritances.”

  A check? Before I could imagine how big that check could be, Dad warned, “Oh, boy. Maybe I shouldn’t have even read this to you. She had a ton of money, but she made a point of saying that people should earn their own, so she rarely gave any away. She probably sent you fifty dollars, or maybe a hundred.” That was a lot of money to me, I pointed out. “Or maybe twenty-five. Just don’t get your hopes up.”

  “If I’m really lucky, she left me that house,” I said.

  “No, no, no!” Dad protested. “I don’t think it’s realistic for you to think that. The lawyer would have said —”

  “I was kidding, Dad. I don’t want her house. It’s an icebox.”

  “Oh. You thought so, too?” he asked, smiling. He put the letter in a file of legal papers, and it only took up a small part of my imagination … until three days later, when my inheritance arrived.

  Dad was at work, and I was deciding what to do with myself when the phone rang. I picked up the receiver and said hello.

  “Uh, this is Ronny down at the post office. Is anyone home there?”

  “I am,” I answered.

  “Yeah, well, is someone older than you there?”

  Phyllis always said to never tell anyone that you’re home alone.

  “Of course there’s an adult here. There are two,” I exaggerated.

  “Will they be home in the next hour? I have a very heavy package for an … Amy Lee Something?”

  My heart beat faster.

  “They’ll be here,” I said. How big could the package be? Was it some big book Phyllis had told my dad to order for me? She did things like that.

  I went to the front window and camped out there until the mail truck arrived.

  The postman jumped out, opened the back of the truck, and put something on a cart. I couldn’t see it.

  “Where are your parents?” the postman asked as I walked barefoot down the driveway to meet him.

  I just said, “You can leave that out here on the lawn.” I still couldn’t see what it was.

  He wheeled around a huge crate, bigger than a washing machine. I’d made a mistake — a big crate of a mistake. I’d never be able to move it myself. Still, I nodded to him when he brought it to a place in the middle of the lawn, letting him know he could leave the delivery there. Phyllis would kill me if I let him get too near the house, even in his uniform and even with the mail truck he was driving.

  “You’re going to have a hard time getting it inside,” he muttered, straining to push the cart toward me.

  “We have a cart like that. We can wheel it in,” I told him.

  And then he was gone, and I was alone with a big crate in the middle of a small lawn. This seemed like a good moment for a popular girl to pass by and say something mean, or … oh, no … Kyle, the totally great, nice, and gorgeous sixteen-year-old guy up the street. I looked out toward his house. No Kyle.

  “Hi, Amalee.”

  I swung around and almost tripped over the crate. Kyle. “You’re not home,” I sputtered.

  “What do you have there?” he asked. He had beautiful wrinkles around his dark brown eyes when he smiled.

  “I don’t know,” I managed to say.

  “You want to find out? Looks like it’s addressed to you.” He squinted to read the script on the label. “Do you have a hammer? I could pry this thing open.”

  �
��Sure,” I said, carefully running to the garage. I brought back two hammers.

  Kyle and I started tearing out the nails with the backs of our hammers. A minute later, the crate lid opened easily and I saw a glint of its contents. I didn’t recognize it on its side, surrounded by dark confetti, but when I could see the basic shape, I knew exactly what it had to be.

  This is what I’d inherited. I was looking at my grandmother’s giant bottle of coins.

  Floating around the top of it was a small envelope with the word Amalee written in big, friendly letters, the kind Heather the nurse would write. I opened the envelope quickly so that Kyle wouldn’t have to stand there waiting. The note inside was written in shaky letters, my grandmother’s letters. It said,

  Dear Amalee,

  I hope these help you pursue your interest in the world. I recommend you use them now.

  Your Grandmother,

  Suzanne Weston

  “Wow! Who sent this to you?” Kyle asked.

  “I inherited it from my grandmother. My dad told me she’d left me some money,” I explained. Then I joked, “Just a little spare change.”

  “How does a person collect so many coins?”

  “She’s been doing it since after her honeymoon in 1966. Her husband was a big-deal banker. They believed in saving money.”

  “That’s almost forty years,” Kyle said. “What are you going to do with it now? Put it in the bank for another forty years?”

  I reread the note. My grandmother obviously didn’t want me to wait another forty years. “I’ll see what my dad thinks. He can help me count them and stuff,” I said, already feeling silly that this would be sitting in the center of my lawn for another two hours.

  “Hey, I just got my license,” said Kyle. “Would they count this for you if you took it to the bank?”

  I was so horrified. The idea of sitting in a car with Kyle and coming up with something to say was too much. I couldn’t stand it. But I had to stand it. This might be my last chance to talk with him. I had to. I reminded myself that this was just Kyle, the nice kid who used to shovel our driveway on snowy mornings for a few dollars. I’d hardly noticed him until a couple of months ago when he’d brought our newspaper, looking like a sopping rag, up to the door one morning, bravely telling us that he’d run over it in the rain (the newspaper boy had clearly missed his mark). As he apologized for ruining our paper, I saw a cool, handsome guy with a sense of humor. He even admitted that he’d thought he’d run over a dog, so this was practice for coming to a doorstep with much worse news.