by Pamela Morsi
Ellen parked the Chrysler Concorde on the far side. She and Wilma, Amber and Jet got out and began unloading their celebration repast. They had brought charcoal to make a fire, hot dogs to roast, a watermelon to cut, homemade piccalilli relish and macaroni salad.
Once the food was unloaded, they hesitated.
“You want to do it before or after we eat,” Wilma asked Ellen.
Ellen looked at Amber, as if for guidance. “I think we should eat first,” she said. “It’s late and I’m sure Jet is hungry.”
Amber nodded agreement.
Within minutes they got the charcoal going though, of course, it wasn’t really ready for cooking for another half hour.
Jet and her mother spent the time getting a Rugrats kite into the air.
Wilma sat on the picnic bench watching them and smoking. Ellen was watching them, too.
“They are like two kids instead of mother and daughter,” she said. “Amber is having as much fun as Jet.”
“It’s time she had some fun,” Wilma said. “You can’t get too much of it in one lifetime.”
Ellen could not argue with that.
The afternoon was glorious. Officially it was autumn, but in south Texas summer was just beginning to wind down. School was back in session. The absence of other children and the usual crowds made noon on a Thursday the ideal time to visit the park.
Amber was on her new schedule. The previous week she’d taken classes for the first time in five years.
Wilma’s produce spots were running regularly on television. She wasn’t exactly a celebrity, but people recognized her when she and Jet made their visits to the grocery store.
Ellen continued to keep moving forward. One foot in front of the other. She didn’t know where she was going, but she was determined to get there.
Hey up there! Thanks for the sunshine and the cool breeze, she prayed. It’s a great day for moving on.
“I think it’s time to be roasting some dogs!” she called out to the two healthy, laughing children scampering in the grass.
“Let’s roast some dog!” Amber hollered back.
Jet giggled and came running. “I wanna roast a dog,” she said. “Lemme roast a dog.”
Wilma had cut some hickory limbs from their backyard tree for “weinie roasters.” Ellen slid the hot dogs on the end of the sticks and allowed Jet to hold hers over the little fire. The four-year-old thought it was great fun. It would have undoubtedly been quicker just to grill them, but what fun was cooking hot dogs if no sticks were involved.
And fun was what Jet Jameson was after today. She was into knock-knock and didn’t let up once during the meal.
“Knock knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Yaw.”
“Yaw who?”
“You don’t have to get so excited about it!”
Jet squirted more mustard on her buns than any of the women had ever consumed at one sitting in their lives. And she declared adamantly that the only food in the world better than her grandmother’s piccalilli was her mother’s macaroni salad.
For dessert there was watermelon. And once the seed spitting contest commenced, even Ellen was roped into participation.
The meal was one long pleasant memory.
Wilma was hugging Jet.
“You are the sweetest baby girl in the world,” she told her.
“I’m not a baby girl, Wil-ma,” Jet protested. “You forget. I’m four now.”
“That’s right,” Wilma said. “I still owe you a birthday gift, don’t I?”
Jet nodded. “I remember you promised me anything I wanted,” she said.
“That’s exactly right,” Wilma said. “Have you thought about what you want?”
“Uh huh,” the child said. “I’ve been thinking about asking you.”
“Well, ask me,” she encouraged.
Before Jet had time to do that, Ellen interceded. “I hope it doesn’t cost too much money,” she said gently. “’Cause Wilma doesn’t have a lot of money.”
“Just let the child say what she wants,” Wilma scolded. “We’ll worry about what it costs when we go out to buy it.”
“I don’t know if it costs anything,” Jet said. “I don’t think it costs anything.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Wilma said. “What is it that you want?”
“I want you to mind the doctor, Wil-ma, so you won’t die,” Jet said in her sweet, little girl voice. “I want you to quit smoking your cigarettes.”
The silence in the park was nearly deafening.
Ellen wanted to pipe in, to say something, to assure Wilma that they hadn’t put the child up to it, to explain to Jet that some things you ask for, people just aren’t able to give to you. She did none of that. She watched Wilma gaze down into the bright, brown eyes of her little granddaughter for a very long moment. She laid her aged, wrinkled hand over the little girl’s tiny one.
“I…I’ll try,” Wilma said. “I will try.”
Amber set her hand upon Wilma’s. “That’s all any of us can do,” she said. “We just try.”
Ellen topped their hands with her own. “Somehow I just know that we’ll succeed,” she said. “But then, you know what an optimist I am.”
They all laughed.
Wilma pulled the pack of cigarettes out of her pocket and threw them on the charcoal fire. Within seconds they were a brightly glowing flame.
“I think it’s time now,” Ellen said.
From a secured box in the trunk of the car, wrapped in a blanket, Amber pulled out the urn and handed it to her mother.
“You’re sure?” Amber asked. “You’re ready?”
Ellen nodded.
Jet clasped her mother’s hand and held Groovy Girl in the other. Wilma pulled her tank. They walked back to the bridge, stopping in the middle of the span.
“There’s no place that’s more the heart of San Antonio than the river,” Ellen said. “I can’t imagine anyplace else that Paul would rather be.”
She opened the top of the urn. Before she’d even tilted it, the breeze had reached down inside and grabbed the light gray ash and whisked it away. Ellen turned it sideways and in an instant the ashes were a fine cloud floating above the water. And then they were the water.
“Goodbye, Grandpa,” Jet said, clapping, delighted.
Ellen followed her lead. “Goodbye, Paul,” she whispered. “I’m moving on.”
The women stood there on the bridge together for long moments, just watching the water hurrying its way downstream.
“What are you going to do with this?” Amber asked, indicating the urn.
Ellen shrugged. “I’ll keep it as a remembrance, I guess.”
“Paul was in there five years,” Wilma pointed out. “I’ve hardly stayed anywhere that long in my life.”
Her words broke the solemnity of the moment. Ellen hugged her.
“Look! Come look!” Jet called out, motioning to them excitedly.
“What is it?”
“Hurry, come look,” the little girl insisted.
All three women did.
Resting on the pavement next to the curved metal bridge brace were four pennies. Each one face up.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-2835-1
LETTING GO
Copyright © 2003 by Pamela Morsi.
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