“Hey ya, Big Ray,” said the man, his face lighting up as if someone just handed him a newborn.
Her grandfather’s eyes drifted up to the man. They became larger and more alert than Ava had seen in weeks. Water pooled and rolled out of one of his eyes and into his pillowcase. Ava took a gauze pad from the nightstand and dabbed his temple.
“It’s okay, Pop-pop. He made it work again.”
Her grandfather’s mouth began to open. Then with all the effort he could muster the loose pipes of his neck let him choke out three words. “He. Fixes. Everything.”
None of them had heard her grandfather speak in weeks. Berta clapped her hands once in joy as she proudly looked down at her mother. “This is good. Yes?”
Ava kept patting down her grandfather’s face before her mother shooed her away.
“Let’s let them visit Pop-pop for a while, okay, sweetie?” she said as she waved her out of the room. Ava took the racer and begrudgingly walked past the men and out of the door to the racetrack of the living room rug.
Ava plopped down on the rug and turned the car around the groves of the braided rug, its wheels moving in perfect rotation, in sync and in grove with the width of the carpet. A smile crept on her face as the old metal midget racer with the chipped red 8 took a victory lap around the track, passing all crowds that sat at attention, each member of the crowd frozen in time in their frames. The racer passed by people she knew and some she did not. It passed Hal and Estelle on their wedding day. It passed Pop-pop and Aunt Olive during their high school graduation. It passed a worn ripped picture of her Pop-pop as a boy and his mom that he said used to be in his daddy’s army helmet and it passed a picture of her grandfather’s good friend in Germany who mailed it to him. It passed old pictures of Ava’s mother in faded tones with thick white edging and new pictures of Ava in bright clear color. Finally, her car and attention stopped on one picture. It was a picture taken a long time ago of a little boy in a checkered coat and a man leaning over with one hand on the boy’s shoulder and the other holding up a glove. A man with kind eyes and wearing only a white shirt during a snowy day. A man who seemed to be missing half his index finger and the top of his thumb. Ava picked up the frame and slowly walked back to her grandfather’s room.
Ava stood in the doorway and looked up at John Charles, who was still leaning against the chest of drawers. He looked over at Ava peeking in and gave her a knowing wink as he touched the tip of his nose with his index finger. The other man remained on the bed next to Pop-pop. The two men seemed to be talking to her grandfather as if they were giving him directions to the corner store. Neither man looked like they would cry like every other person who came to visit. They were not embarrassed by the state of his body or the level of his illness. They were not bothered by the smell of him breaking down. Both of them were visiting an old friend. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing frightening. Nothing scary. Ava walked to her mother, who stood next to Berta and tugged at her shirt.
“Not now, sweetie,” her mother said, her focus firmly on her father.
“But Mom, that man is here,” she whispered, pointing to John Charles.
“What?”
“That man. He is here.”
“What man?” her mother said, still concentrating on the conversation happening across the room.
“That man talking to Pop-pop. He’s here,” Ava said, poking her finger at the glass of the frame. “He’s him.”
Ava’s mother began to reach for the frame until the loud chime of a cuckoo peeking out of the clock on the wall interrupted her thought.
“Must have had one left in it,” she said. “We haven’t pulled the weights on that clock in at least a year.”
John Charles looked at the clock on the wall and then at her mother. “I guess that means it’s time to go,” said John Charles as he patted her grandfather’s feet. “It was great seeing you, Raymond.”
Ava watched the two men leave the room silently, say a few quiet words to her mother and then leave the house through the front door. Ava ran out of the room and looked out of the living room window at the men’s departure. The man in the overalls turned back to get one last look at the house. He saw Ava in the window and waved. She stood amongst the billowing sheers and waved back as she watched the two turn and walk to the end of the long dirt driveway.
“Hum,” said Berta as she roughly smoothed back the curtains in her grandfather’s room. Ava saw both of Berta’s profiles as she looked up and down the front yard. “I don’t see them. They must have left out the back. They’re gone.”
“Really?” her mother said as she walked up to Berta. She too surveyed the land around the front of the house. “I bet you’re right, Berta. They must have parked in the back. That’s why we didn’t see the car.”
Ava cocked her head to the side. She turned and looked out of the window again. She saw a car. An old fashioned car. One that looked like the cars in her grandfather’s pictures. It sat idling on at the end of the road. Next to the car stood a woman in a purple winter coat wearing a hat with a feather sticking off the top. She was busy smoothing the collar of a little girl with black hair, as if she were about to get her picture taken. Next to the little girl stood a boy as blond as snow hopping up and down in place with excitement. The men did not appear to talk as they marched side by side towards the group. The man in overalls walked with his hands still stuffed in his pockets. John Charles patted him on the back as if to let him know he did a good job. The sky grew pink as the sun began to cast splashes of color across the sky over the potato fields that extended on either side of the road. There was nothing out there but the group. Her grandfather’s bedroom windows faced the same direction. Ava scratched her head. How could they not see these people standing in the middle of the road?
Then Ava heard her mother say a word that she heard her say a thousand times. This time it sent a cold shiver into her ears and made her hold her breath.
“Dad?” Ava’s mother called out. Her voice was quiet and high. “Dad?”
Berta’s shuffling stopped. Ava looked across the room into her grandfather’s doorway. Fear gripped her feet and planted them to the floor. Something happened. Something changed. Ava stared from across the room and watched Berta turn from the window and look in the direction of the bed, her face hard and jaw clenched. The beeps and clicking of the room seemed to quiet. All she could hear was her mother’s voice softly call out. This time in tears.
“Dad?”
Ava watched Berta put her hand in her apron pocket and pull out a rosary. Her head dropped as she sat on the bed facing the direction of her grandfather. She put her hand up on her mother’s back as she kissed the small cross on the line of beads.
“Dad?” a teary voice pleaded. “Dad?”
Ava’s chest began to hurt. She was too scared to go to her mother but her mother needed someone. Someone who was not there. She wanted her mommy but she did not want to see Pop-pop on the bed not breathing. Ava felt her lower lip began to tremble as she pried her maryjane off of the floor. Then she heard the screen door slam shut.
“Dad!”
The word did not come from her mom. It came from a boy. Ava whirled around and whipped the sheers out of her way.
“Dad!” the boy cried out as he took off running from the house. Although Ava could only see the back of his head he appeared to be only a few years older than her. His Buster Brown shoes kicked up dust as his feet pounded the dirt driveway. He waved his arms in the air as he ran, making sure they wouldn’t leave without him.
“Dad!”
Then the man in the cap stopped walking and turned around. His face burst in joy as he laughed and cuffed his hands to let out a hearty clap. His smile was so bright it even managed to lighten the gloom that had settled over her house. And with that smile, the man gave one big clap before he opened his arms. The boy cut across the end of the long driveway and
up the road towards him, yelling and waving to the group as he ran.
The woman by the car stood with a large smile as she held the two excited children close to her. They all seemed to want to run to the boy, to greet him, but they appeared happy to wait their turn. It was clear whose arms the boy was running towards. It was the man whose arms stretched as wide as a net. The man who clapped like he was packing a snowball. The man who fixed everything.
The End
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With a full heart, I would like to thank the towns (and especially the public libraries) of Southold, New York, and Clinton, New Jersey, for being the best places in the world to live and grow. I would also like to thank my family, my father, and my friends, especially Marcia Hansen, who had to listen to me tell and retell this story for years in order to get it right. Thank you to Gretchen Young, Anthony Ziccardi, and Susan Raihofer for believing in me and my book. And most importantly, thank you to my writing group—Patty Smeltzer, Ingrid Pierson Massey, Jennifer Exley, and Kala Hill—for keeping me honest and writing Christmas stories in the blazing summer heat.
I heard it said that authors write the books they need. This was the case with my book. Many beloved members of my family passed too soon. Five in particular are Evan, Tim, John, Tom, and my mother, Marion. I hope that anyone who has a difficult time finding magic during the holidays finds some small comfort in this tale and in the hope that maybe, just maybe, we will get it all back.
The Light in the Woods Page 22