by kc dyer
The rest of her words were lost to Darby as she fled out the front door.
She was half a block down the street before she realized she’d left her skateboard on the porch.
Darby sank down to sit on the curb. What was going on with Gramps? She’d heard of old people losing their marbles, but this was so weird and awful. Her stomach felt like a mass of snakes were coiling and squeezing inside and she wished she were at home, far away from the old man. Now I know why Dad never came back here, she thought.
A door slammed behind her, and with her twitchy nerves on edge, she jumped right to her feet. She had been sitting in front of one of the houses that was built almost right up against the street. No front lawn—just a screened-in porch and stairs. It was cranberry red with blue and grey trim around the porch and gables, and the breeze was rustling a fat bed of tiger lilies against the sidewalk. A woman stood on the steps by the front porch.
“Sorry,” Darby blurted.
The woman grinned broadly at Darby. “For what, may I ask?”
Darby didn’t know what to say. Sorry for sitting on a public street in front of your house? Sorry for having such a weird grandfather? Her mouth opened to speak but nothing came out. In the end, the woman took pity on her and laughed.
“Don’t be silly. You can sit there any time you like.” She stepped down off the porch. “You’re Darby, aren’t you? Vern and Etta’s new granddaughter?”
It was Darby’s turn to laugh a little. “Not exactly new,” she said. It felt so good to be talking to someone normal that she started babbling. “I mean, I’m thirteen, so I’ve been around for a long time. But I’ve only been here a week and a half, even though it seems like longer. I really live in Toronto, and I’m just visiting while my parents are renovating our house.”
The woman nodded, still smiling a little. She looked like she was somewhere in her early twenties. She wore her long hair in two loose braids and she tucked a flyaway strand behind one ear as she spoke. “Renovating, eh? That’s a bummer. But you get to spend time on the Island for the summer, so that’s a bonus. And your grandparents are such great people.”
Man, did she have that wrong. But before Darby could straighten her out she spoke again.
“Speaking of renovations, I’ve been meaning to drop by ever since you got here, but I’ve been so busy at work. I’ve got something I think you might like.”
Darby felt baffled. Something for her?
The woman walked down her steps and heaved the large, black leather bag she’d been carrying into the passenger side of her car. It was a little Smart Car, bright red, so it almost matched her house. There was really only room inside for the bag and the woman. Darby closed the car door for her automatically.
“Thanks, Darby.” She grinned again. “Good Gaelic name you’ve got there. I’ll drop by after dinner tonight. See you then!”
She hopped in the front seat of her car and drove off.
Darby leaned against the splintery wood of the hydro pole and watched her go. She’d been so busy spilling her own life story that she’d forgotten to ask the woman’s name. There had been a UPEI parking sticker in the back window of her car. Maybe she was a student at the university. Darby resolved to ask Nan about the woman later on—when she got the courage to go back to the house.
Somehow, talking with Smart Car lady had made Darby feel a bit better. The sick feeling was gone from her stomach, at least. But she was outside and her skateboard was still in the house, and she didn’t feel like facing up to crazy Gramps just yet.
Darby glanced up the street toward the old blue house, but she wasn’t about to go poking around there yet, either. Just seeing the house reminded her of the killer headache.
She wandered back to Nan and Gramps’s house and sat on the front step, trying to get the courage up to go in to say sorry to Gramps. Darby didn’t think she had done anything really wrong, but she didn’t mean to upset him like that. And she was sorry.
The screen door squeaked a little and Darby jumped to her feet, but it was only Nan. She had a large glass of lemonade in one hand and a small glass of some kind of copper-coloured liquid in the other.
“Oh, girlie, I’m so sorry,” she said. Nan’s voice sounded like she’d been crying and that made Darby want to cry, too.
Instead, Darby tried to cough the lump out of her throat. “Is Gramps okay?”
“Sit down, my dear, and have a sip of lemonade” she said. “I’m so glad you’re here. After what Dr. Brian told me, I was worried the scene with Gramps might bring on another one of your headaches.”
They sat down and Nan had a big drink out of her glass, which made her cough a little, too. “Sherry,” she said, by way of explanation. “Lemonade just isn’t enough for your old nan at a time like this.”
“I’m really sorry I upset Gramps, Nan,” Darby said in a low voice.
“Oh, darling girl, you didn’t upset him.” This was odd, but instead of saying anything else, she had another sip of sherry.
“I made him spill his scrapbooks all over the floor,” Darby said. “He seemed pretty upset to me.”
Nan set her glass carefully down on the step and took one of Darby’s hands.
“I just meant that you didn’t upset him, Darby,” she said. “Your dad may have said something to you about this, but your Gramps has always had a bit of a temper.”
Darby shook her head. “Dad never talks about Gramps, Nan. Mostly he just talks about work.”
She sighed. “I guess that doesn’t really surprise me. Your dad and your grandfather are more alike than either of them will ever admit, and they’ve had their share of bumping heads over the years. I’ve always felt your grandfather’s temper was the reason that your dad never brought you to visit us, dear.”
“He’s never really said anything about it,” Darby answered, doubtfully. Her dad didn’t really say too much about anything, but he never had a bad temper, either, at least that she’d noticed. But maybe that was why Dad never seemed to talk to Gramps on the phone.
“Well, whatever happened in the past, I am very happy to have you with us now, dear,” Nan said.
“Gramps isn’t,” Darby said, and all her worry came blurting out in a rush. “I should never have mentioned the picture. It’s just, well, I’ve never really talked to Gramps about his time in the war and he seems to think about it a lot. But I came from him and from you, and my dad never talked about Gramps, either, really. I mean, I knew Gramps had been in the war, but I didn’t know anything about it. I guess I just thought he might like to tell me some of the details. I didn’t mean to make him mad.”
Nan shook her head and squeezed Darby’s hand. “I haven’t even told your father about this, but after that shameful display today, you are entitled to know. Your grandfather is not just some bad-tempered old man, and you deserve to be treated better than the way things worked out today.”
She sighed again, and her face suddenly looked very old. “I’ve been watching Gramps for the past year or so—he’s not been himself for quite a while. When he and I went to the doctor’s appointment last week, Brian—Dr. Brian—well, he confirmed a very big worry I have had about your grandfather for some time.”
“Is Gramps sick, Nan?”
“Yes, dear, in a manner of speaking, he is. Brian told us that Gramps might have a condition called Alzheimer’s disease.”
Darby had heard that term before. She didn’t really know what it meant, just that it was something that happened when an old person’s brain stopped working right. Poor Gramps. Poor Nan.
She hugged her grandmother hard. “Does that mean he has to go into the hospital, Nan?”
“No, at least not yet. I’ve told Dr. Brian that I can manage Gramps just fine at home. After the incident in the tree the day you arrived, Brian wanted me to have Gramps admitted to hospital. But he has been so normal since then …” She put her face into her hands for a moment.
Darby felt terrible. The last thing her sweet old Nan needed wh
en she was dealing with such a scary thing, was to have some rotten granddaughter around, messing up her life.
“I should go home to Toronto, don’t you think, Nan? Wouldn’t that be easier for you?”
Nan raised her head and actually smiled a little before draining her glass. “The doctor said a glass of sherry every day is medicinal, under the circumstances,” she said, and patted Darby’s hand. “Actually, my dear, it was your presence that convinced Brian to let Vernon stay home. Having your sharp eyes around is such a help. That and the fact that he lives just across the street, himself.”
She stood up. “Time for me to make dinner, darling girl. We can talk about this more another time. Let’s just keep it between ourselves at present, shall we?”
Darby nodded. What else could she do?
“I promise I won’t be responsible for putting a terrible strain on you,” Nan continued. “I hope what happened with Gramps today was an uncommon situation. Brian did say that we should expect some unusual behaviour. For the most part, Gramps is just a little forgetful. And as long as he stays that way, you and I will manage just fine. But if things get worse or he has another episode of anger like today, I want you to know I’m ready to talk to Brian about some of our other choices.”
Darby followed her into the house. “If he’s feeling better after supper, I’ll do the dishes with Gramps, okay Nan? And I can help peel the potatoes, too.”
Nan squeezed her in a little hug. “Peeling the spuds before dinner and doing the dishes after? What more could an old granny ask for?”
How about a husband who isn’t losing his mind? Darby thought. But she didn’t say it. She just smiled at Nan and closed the door.
That night, Gramps seemed completely normal—no sign of any anger or concern toward Darby at all. She said sorry for spilling his scrapbooks, but he acted like nothing had happened and even offered to go through them with her sometime.
How can a person forget a huge blow-up like that? Darby sat at the kitchen table after finishing the dishes and tried to think of a good reason. It seemed so weird; it was almost seemed like there were two of him. Gramps bright and Gramps dark. She smiled a little. Maybe she wasn’t the only one in the family with a dark side, after all.
After dinner there was a knock on the front door. Nan scurried to open it and Darby could hear the surprise in her voice. “Fiona! What brings you here, my dear?”
Nan walked back into the dining room, followed by the woman from the cranberry-coloured house down the street. She was staggering under the weight of a pile of big boxes, so Darby jumped up from the kitchen table to help her.
“Fiona, this is my granddaughter, Darby,” said Nan. “And Darby, this is Fiona Grady, our neighbour from two doors down.”
“We’ve met already, Mrs. Christopher,” said Fiona, propping the boxes between her hip and the wall. “I’ve been meaning to bring these things over for Darby, but I forgot until I saw her today.”
She smiled as Darby lifted the top box off the pile. “You know, after I met you earlier, I realized that we are cousins, in a way.”
This was news.
“Here, let me help you.” Nan bustled over to take another of the smaller boxes from Fiona’s pile. “You know,” she said, “you are quite right about that, dear. Of course, we didn’t really work it out until your grandmother passed on, did we?”
“That’s true,” said Fiona. She turned to Darby. “I think one of my great aunts was a cousin to one of your great grandmas, or something like that,” she said. “Big Irish family. I can’t keep them all straight, to tell you the truth.”
“It’s the Scots that keep things organized,” said Gramps, and he thumped the wall beneath a tartan plaque hanging above his chair.
“I didn’t think Christopher was a Scottish name,” said Fiona.
“My mother made the mistake of marrying an Englishman,” he barked. “But before that, it was all highland Scots. My mother was a MacLeod and her father was from the Urquharts out of Inverness.” He pushed his chair away from the table. “What have you got there, young lady?”
Fiona grinned a little at Darby before answering him. “Well, Mr. Chris, I know you haven’t had any kids in this house recently, so I figured this one might need a little in the way of, uh, contemporary fun,” she said. “I didn’t really have a chance to talk much to you today, Darby, but you should know that I review software for a living. When my grandma died, I inherited her house, so I work at the university part time and the rest of the time I play games on my Xbox at home.”
“Wow! Dream job,” Darby said, impressed.
“Yeah, it can be pretty cool,” she said. “But it also means that I have a bunch of old hardware lying around, so I thought you might get some use out of it.”
Nan and Gramps with a PlayStation in their upstairs bedroom? Darby couldn’t believe her ears.
But Fiona meant every word. She had brought over an old TV, too, and she and Gramps and Darby wrestled the boxes up the back stairs and set it all up on the desk in Darby’s room. Gramps complained the whole time that children today were far too spoiled for their own good. Once the equipment was in place upstairs, though, he patted Fiona on the back.
“Guess this means I won’t have to fight over the remote with the kid anymore, right?”
Oh, right. Like I’d ever get a shot at the remote with him around, Darby thought. But she was too happy—and too smart—to say it out loud.
He hurried down the stairs to catch the end of some movie called Pork Chop Hill, and Fiona and Darby got to work on the hookup.
“There’s no chance your grandparents have an Internet connection,” Fiona muttered after Gramps had stumped off down the stairs, “but even though you can’t go online, this should save you from total boredom on a rainy afternoon.”
Darby couldn’t thank her enough. “This is so cool,” she said, checking out the game packages in one of the boxes. “I can’t believe you’d do this for me!”
Fiona sat down on the bed and rubbed her back a little. “Hey, I spent a lot of time with my grandmother when I was growing up,” she said. “Her family had come here from Ireland a long time ago, and let’s just say it’s not only Scottish people who have a thrifty streak.” She grinned. “I grew up loving computers, but whenever I visited Grandma, there would be none of that nonsense. She’d send me outside to play, which in retrospect was probably a good thing.”
Fiona got up to stretch and leaned out the window. “Look at that! You can see the side of my house from here.”
She pulled her head back in. “Anyway, when I heard you were coming to stay, I thought about all the stuff I have hanging around my place. And it can’t hurt to let you have just a little connection with the modern world now and then.”
“Thank you so much,” Darby repeated, as they walked down the stairs. “There hasn’t been much to do around here, apart from skateboarding. And Gramps doesn’t really like the noise my skateboard makes, so I can only practise farther down the street. I’ve been hanging out with a kid named Gabe, but he’s, uh—”
Darby didn’t know what to say about Gabe and didn’t really want to go there, anyway. “He’s only around once in a while, so this will be great!”
“Oh, yeah?” Fiona said. “Is he the kid with the soccer ball?”
Darby shook her head. “No, that’s some other kid. Gabe lives in the blue house at the end of the street.”
Fiona looked at her sharply. “The blue house? I didn’t think anyone was living there right now.”
Darby shrugged. “Nan says an American family has bought it to use as a summer house, but Gabe’s family speaks French, so I don’t think it’s the same people.”
“Hmm. Maybe his people are renting it before the construction crew comes in.”
“Construction crew?”
“Yeah. I met the American family last summer,” she said. “They showed me the plans for the new house. It’s a beautiful design. It will fit right in on the street and nobody
will know it’s not 150 years old. But it’s going to be all wired up inside. A smart house.”
“Kinda like your Smart Car?”
Fiona laughed. “Kinda.” She put her hand on the doorframe and called through to the kitchen.
“Thanks for letting me share my stuff with Darby, Mr. and Mrs. Chris!”
Nan appeared from the kitchen holding a large plastic container of cookies. “No, thank you, dear,” she said in a loud voice. She thrust the cookies into Fiona’s hand and whispered, “Mr. Christopher is a little old-fashioned, dear. Just ignore his grumbles. It was lovely of you to think of Darby, we do appreciate it.”
“Not at all, Mrs. Chris,” said Fiona, and the moths buzzed around her head as she stepped out of the shelter of the screened porch into the evening air. “If I’d known there would be cookies involved, I would have been over much sooner!”
Darby waved goodbye and bid her grandparents an early goodnight. She’d spied the package for a skateboarding game that looked wicked, so she bolted up the back stairs and spent a happy three hours making virtual ollies and kick-flips off superhuman-sized ramps.
Later, when she stopped to think about it, those were three hours well spent. Because in the end, it was the only time Darby used Fiona’s gift for the rest of the summer.
The next morning Darby awoke with sore wrists from playing with a game controller for the first time in so long. Now that things seemed a bit calmer with Gran and Gramps, she decided it was high time to find Gabe and sort through what had really happened after they had walked through that window.
To be safe, Darby washed and dried the breakfast dishes for Nan, and said she’d be back to help some more before lunch.
But Nan had other plans.
“I have a little surprise for you, dear,” she said, rummaging in her purse.
Darby hated hearing those words from parental-type units. Their idea of a little surprise didn’t usually translate into her idea of fun.
Nan waved a pair of tickets that she had dug out of the deep recesses of her purse. “Shawnie Stevens popped over yesterday while you were out and brought me these,” she said cheerily. “She has a special opening of her art show with her husband, Michael, today. When she was so generous to bring over the tickets, I offered to take her to coffee, and she agreed.”