by Terra Wolf
“We can’t just move there and take care of her, Gwen. I know she’s your mother, but my job is here. And what about your job? In this economy, we can’t just pack up and leave!”
My mother replied, “I know we can’t, it’s just… you know she can’t be there on her own anymore.”
“Then why don’t we move her here? Sell that old place? It’s a beautiful estate, I’m sure she would get top dollar for it. We could put it towards Paige’s college fund.” I listened as I heard him pause, and I assumed he saw that distraught look in my mother’s eyes, so he continued with, “Or Gran could go to Florida and visit friends. Something fun for her, a vacation.”
I moved from my spot on the top of the stairs and descended as fast as I could. Like hell was I going to be part of the reason Gran had to leave Salem. Besides, I had an idea I’d been working on since the last time she fell.
“Mom, Dad! Stop, please. Why don’t I go stay with Gran? I’m done with school in just a bit anyway. It would be good for her, and for me.” I only had a week left of classes and then finals. I’d been doing really well and I was sure I could hand in the assignments online to my professors.
My parents looked at each other, plagued with uncertainty. They didn’t want me to go, but at the same time, they couldn’t make me stay. I was twenty-one years old, still living at home, with no purpose in my life. I had no idea where I was going. Why not go to Salem? Maybe Salem was the answer I had been looking for.
My mom sighed. Before looking at me, she ran her hands down behind her head, stopping at the edge of her dark brown pixie cut and settling on her neck. “How about this? We’ll think about it. But, I’m going to see Gran in the morning, so if you want to come, pack a bag.”
“Gwen,” my father protested, “you can’t be serious. She has to at least finish out the semester.”
“I can hand my stuff in online. Professors are really good about this type of thing, trust me. It’ll be fine. Gran needs me. I have to go be with her.”
My dad looked defeated; he could never beat us girls. Constantly two against one, the story of his life. “Just for the summer, okay? You have to go back to school in the fall.”
“Yeah, whatever, sounds good!” I yelled as I climbed the stairs two at a time. We would see where this summer took me, the fall could be discussed another time.
2
It took a little over two hours to get to Gran’s. My mom never talked much in the car so mostly I watched the cold New England landscape as we drove. The colors flowed into each other as they rippled in a sea of green. It was raining, as per usual for this time of year in Massachusetts. The trees drooped sadly against the harsh but refreshing water. My mom finally decided to say something as I leaned my head against the cool glass of the window.
“You didn’t have to do this, you know. We would have worked something out.”
“I know. That’s not why I’m going Mom. Maybe Gran isn’t the only one who needs saving here. You have to admit, I haven’t exactly been a shining example of a daughter lately.”
My mom looked over at me, concerned. “Paige, no one blames you. As soon as you stop blaming yourself, things will get better, you’ll see.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Paige,” she continued in a more authoritative tone, displaying exactly where she was going. She had this sort of quiet strength about her. She got it from my grandmother who’s always been more of the stoic type. But, she had to be. My grandfather passed away when my mom was only twelve and since then, it was just the girls. My mom wasn’t alone, since she had this excellent support system in my dad, but she still felt the need to run the show.
“Really, Mom, I’m fine. This has nothing to do with Nick.”
I sighed without even thinking about it. Just saying his name made me feel like something was missing.
“Then what is this all about, Paige?” She looked away from the water splashing on the windshield to check my eyes, as if they would tell her all my secrets.
I looked directly at her and said, “This is about me getting my shit together and my life back on track. Not to mention this is a great excuse to give you and Dad some alone time, that you deserve.”
I’d given them a rough year, it was true, and they needed a little drama-free time. If that meant Paige-free time, then that’s what I needed to do. For them and for me.
“Oh, honey, you know we don’t mind you living with us, it’s fine!”
“I know you guys don’t mind, but I’m starting to. I mean come on, I’m almost twenty-two, I should be on my own, or at least moving towards it.”
Okay, so I was going to be the loser living with my grandma, but at least I wasn’t the creepy grown up child living in my mom’s basement anymore.
My grandmother had a lot of money so there had always been people around to help her do things. As Gran got older, she’d started to worry about people stealing her money, so she’d allowed for fewer people to help her. As a result, when she broke her kneecap last spring, we didn’t even know for three days. When one of her neighbors went over to play Bridge with her and saw the swelling in her leg, she was immediately rushed to the hospital and she had to have emergency surgery. Of course, she had looked at it as an adventure, just like she always had.
Mom gripped the steering wheel tightly, her knuckles becoming white from the pressure. I could tell that this whole thing had left her pretty shaken up. I felt bad for her. We had left Salem so my dad could find a better job. Salem had become mostly a tourist trap. My dad worked in computer engineering and Salem’s not really the place where you’re going to find some big warehouse, filled with a bunch of geeks, working on computers. So, we moved down right outside of New York City and have been living there ever since. I was maybe nine when we moved, but I still saw my grandmother all the time. I used to stay with her until I was about thirteen, since then, I hadn’t gone up without my mom. I felt bad about that, I should have gone to see her more. She was all alone up in Salem, she moved there to be closer to my grandfather’s family, not hers. At least that’s the way my mom always explained it. Her loneliness only furthered my decision to get out of my parents’ house.
They’ve been totally on my ass lately about picking a real career, finding a good job, building a life for myself. But, what if that’s not what I want? I mean, yeah, the white house with a picket fence and one point five children, I look forward to things like that. But right now, what I looked forward to the most was getting some of my paintings in an art show. The thing about living outside New York City was there’s not a lot of opportunity, or maybe there’s too much. There was so much competition, so many people moved in just to go to art school, or just to show their work at a fabulous New York City gallery. So many people are trying to be discovered in New York, so I was interested to see what a smaller field had to offer. Show my things in a small gallery where people would really appreciate them.
My mom let me bring four paintings with me, she said they’d be good for my grandmother, that they would make her feel better. I closed my eyes for a moment to visualize them. There was the large one of the poppy and another of my friend Julie’s fish, Swish. Then there was the small black and white I painted over a year ago. Finally, I let my mind float to the last one, an eight by ten of Nick in his full glory. He was standing in the sunshine, hands in his pockets, wispy blond strands flying into his face. My eyes brimmed with tears as I let my thoughts linger on him. I rubbed them so I looked sleepy and Mom wouldn’t notice my pain.
I remember that day so clearly, like a photograph in my mind. A perfectly wonderful summer day, we had lain out by the lake on a blanket all afternoon. I asked him to pose near a Willow by the water while I painted his portrait. It took hours, but he said he didn’t mind because he liked what he was looking at. He always made me blush like that. That day was the first time he kissed me. He looked at me, biting his lower lip, like he had a secret he couldn’t tell me.
I smiled sweetly back at him and he said,
“Paige, you may very well be the most beautiful girl I have ever known.”
I laughed lightly, thinking he was joking, but then he put his calloused hand on my cheek and pulled my face slowly to his, kissing me. It was beautiful and passionate and full of emotions I didn’t understand then. I didn’t understand any of them until the night he disappeared. Then they came to me in waves, love, loss, lust, grief and one so new to me I hardly noticed it at first, anger. All the crazy things that make you want to hold onto someone even tighter than before, but when that person is gone — you can’t. Some people in our upper crust community said he had run away, because he was “that type”. I knew better. I knew he had been taken because otherwise he would never have left without me. We weren’t meant to be apart.
3
As we pulled into the space in front of the house, I realized how difficult it was going to be without a car for the summer. Gran had never learned how to drive. I remembered her telling me as a child, “Ladies do not drive vehicles. That is for the men to do.” My grandfather had carted her around his entire life and after he passed, she called a service whenever she needed to go out of town. Sometimes we would send a town car to get her, or I would drive up. But, after Nick disappeared, I thought a bit of frivolous shopping would cheer me up, instead I ended up with a massive credit card bill. The only way to pay it off was to sell my car. It wasn’t a good car anyway, but I hadn’t realized how difficult it would be to not to have wheels until now.
We mounted the stone steps leading up to the old Victorian. I gazed up at the pale green home with much darker green shutters. The rain had stopped and it was getting humid already. I avoided a particularly large puddle and said to Mom, “Some of these stones need to be replaced. How can anybody walk up here?” I caught my heel in some leftover mud and had to lean over to pull myself out.
“Well, put that on your list for this summer Paige. I’m sure she could use the help doing it.”
Also known as, Paige hire someone. Handy is definitely not my middle name.
We approached the large wooden door to enter Gran’s home. It was one of the few original fixtures remaining on the house. It had a large iron handle with a push down lever for entrance. I ran my finger over the small pentagram located just above the handle before knocking and entering. There were pentagrams all over the house, inside and out. Gran believed they kept, “Evil spirits at bay,” claiming there were a lot of ghosts in the old home. I thought she had just fallen victim to the tourist trap her small, beloved town had become. You couldn’t walk ten feet without stumbling into a Wicca shop. Most were frauds and only out for the summer, but some stayed year round and believed in their craft. I thought they were all nuts.
I walked in first, Mom trailing behind me. I put my bags by the door before crossing underneath the large chandelier in the foyer, yelling for Gran. “We’re here Gran! Where are you?” I looked into the burgundy living room. It had a lush carpet and matching floral furniture. Some would call my Gran’s taste tacky, she would call it lavish.
I paused at the grand staircase and yelled again. She was usually up on the second floor or in the kitchen. I heard banging coming from the back of the house so I made my way to the kitchen. Once in the doorway, I could smell cookies baking, a welcome relief to my nose after the musty old house smells in the foyer.
Gran had her back to me, a robin’s egg blue apron tied loosely around her waist. She was muttering to herself about burnt cookies, but when she turned around to greet me, I saw a tray filled with perfectly golden, round confections.
“Darling! How good to see you! Your mother didn’t tell me you were coming with her!” She embraced me in a one handed hug, still maintaining her grip on the tray of cookies with the tips of her fingers. She always had amazing balance like that, she would always catch something right before it hit the floor, where most people would’ve let it drop and smash. Her skills were almost feline like in her precision of movement and speed. It didn’t matter how old she was, nothing ever fell in this house.
“Gwen,” she called, “where is that gorgeous daughter of mine?”
“Here Mom, here I am,” my mom said as she entered the kitchen. “I can see you’ve made cookies, mmm... chocolate chip, my favorite.” My mom plucked one off the plate and took a huge bite. “Delicious as always.” She kissed Gran on the cheek before sitting down at the kitchen table. It was a vintage set with a striped patterned that my mom had bought Gran.
Mom had a plan, butter Gran up with chit chat before delving into the more serious topic of her falling. “How have you been?”
Gran flashed a smile, her wrinkled face hardly showed her true age. She had my mom a little later in life and must have been at least eighty-five now but she didn’t look a day over sixty. “Fabulous. There’s a new diner in town, so I haven’t had to cook as much. Their pie is almost as good as mine, but don’t tell ‘em that.” She winked at me and offered me a cookie as well.
“Gran, no one’s pie compares to yours.”
Mom took a deep breath and gave me a look out of the corner of her eye. I knew it was time for her attempt to conquer Gran. “How is your hip, Mom?”
She waved her hand in my mother’s direction. “It’s fine, you worry too much.”
“But Mom, you didn’t call us, you promised after your knee you would call. What happened to our agreement?”
Gran set down the cookies on the counter and turned her back to us, “I never agreed to you babysitting me like a child,” she responded quietly.
“Gran,” I said, “no one thinks of you that way. We just worry is all.”
My grandmother turned to my mom and let anger surge through her veins. “Gwen, will you listen to her? You’ve made her believe I am some broken, old woman! I am no such thing and I won’t be treated like that. I fell on the back patio, that’s all.” She stomped out of the room towards the formal dining room.
I sat down next to my mom. “Well, that went well.”
“About as well as I expected, I suppose.” My mom pinched the bridge of her nose. “What are we going to do with her? She can’t be here alone.”
“Mom, I already have a solution to that. Please, just let her calm down a bit and then we’ll talk to her about it.”
“Fine,” she agreed, “but don’t get your hopes up.”
“Don’t worry Mom, I won’t.”
We spent the next ten or fifteen minutes cleaning up Gran’s kitchen. We were just putting the cooling rack away when Gran walked back in.
“My my, you do not have to do that. But I can sure get used to a little bit of help,” she added looking directly at me.
I wondered at the time if she knew what was coming, she always seemed to have a sixth sense about these things. Picking up the phone before it would ring or knowing who was on the other end without caller ID. Answering the door just two seconds before the doorbell would ring, was just kind of her thing. She made it really hard not to tell the truth when you broke a vase playing baseball in the house, after she reminded you three times not to.
My mom decided to use a different tactic, something that might convince Gran that I really should stay here. “We have something to discuss Mom. Paige has decided to fly the coop.”
My grandmother sat down tenderly. Her age showed in her slow movements. “And where would that be to? Somewhere fabulous I hope? Someone finally invest in your craft?” Her blue eyes caught mine, she had always believed in my art and I truly appreciated that about her.
I shook my head, “Sorry Gran, but not yet. Got anywhere around here I could throw some of my stuff?”
She looked taken aback. “You’re letting her move in here? Gwen, are you sure about this?” Concern etched into the wrinkles around her eyes.
“I have to say this wasn’t the reaction I was going for Gran, I thought you would be excited.” I was disappointed in her lack of enthusiasm.
“Of course I am dear,” she quickly changed her attitude and took my hands in hers. “I just want t
o be sure that this is what your mother wants.” She gave Mom another look of death.
Something weird was going on here. I had always stayed here as a kid, but I guess the last time was maybe when I was like thirteen. Maybe she didn’t feel like she could handle an adult grandchild, especially a depressed one. Or perhaps she was catching on that I was here to watch her, not the other way around.
“You won’t even know I’m here, promise.” I squeezed her hands for emphasis. It’s this or a home, I tried to tell her with my look. She must have understood it because she said, “Well, don’t just sit here with us old people, go upstairs and pick a room!”
I laughed and practically skipped back to the stairs. I took them two at a time, just like I always had since my legs could reach. I was finally getting the escape I needed. Moving out of my parents’ house was quite possibly the best news I’d heard in about nine months.
As I rounded the corner, I noticed something had changed on the second story. All of the doors to the eight-bedroom home were closed, and what furniture was in the hallway was covered with thick white sheets, a layer of dust covering those. I tried opening a few doors before I realized they must all be locked. Where was Gran sleeping then? She had always stayed in the bedroom at the end of the hall, the one with a small balcony. Judging by the dust on the rug, no one had walked up here in months. It appeared she was in more physical trouble than she was letting on, perhaps she couldn’t even get up the stairs anymore. But then why stay in this huge house? She could easily sell this place and get a nice little rancher closer to us. But as I turned to walk back to the stairs, I saw the exact reason she was staying here.
A large family portrait of my grandfather, Gran and my mom was hanging above the staircase. She has so many great memories in this house, I thought to myself, there’s no way she could leave. So it would become my job to make it as easy as possible for her to stay here, with me. It would be kind of like a girls’ getaway. I was getting away from my parents and in a way, so was she.