by Carr, Suzie
“She left because of me.” He said this in a voice that was too high, like he just hit his toe with one of the golf clubs.
“I don’t believe you.” I wiggled away from him, facing him like a grownup. “She laughed all the time around you.”
He gazed out past me, across the open field. “She’s meant to be on her own.”
I turned and looked out over the same pretty field where the dandelions were dancing in the wind and the blue sky cradled piles upon piles of fluffy, white clouds.
“She’s meant to travel and explore,” he said in a low voice. “That’s what I love about her. I would never want to ruin that about her.”
“Why is she like that?”
He rubbed his chin with his wrinkled fingers, ushering me over to the bench under my window. We sat and he exhaled, looking like a worn-out sneaker, all rumpled and weathered. “Do you remember those outdoor cats we tried to turn into housecats?”
“Yes. Those cats did not like it here.”
“That’s right.” He raised his eyebrow again. “Do you remember how much they whined and cried?”
“They destroyed our door.”
“They wanted out. We were forcing them to live a life they didn’t want to live.”
“Why were they like that? We offered them everything they needed. I even welcomed them to sleep with me. They could eat whenever they wanted. Drink milk. Play with toys and catnip. What more could a cat dream of?”
“Freedom.” He grinned down at me. “They only knew freedom. They were born and raised to roam without limits. This place jailed them.”
I frowned. “So this place jailed Grace?”
“Yes. This place jailed her.”
“She seemed so happy.”
“Most times she did like it. But then there were those times when she hated it,” he said, offering me a polite smile but failing to meet my eyes. “She knows this is my life. She knows I crave companionship. She wants to travel and meet new people and live her life out of a suitcase. That’s the last thing I want.”
He stared up at the sky. I watched him disappear to somewhere up in the clouds. “What do you want?” I asked, pulling him back.
He shrugged, as if to clear his discomfort with this talk. “I want to stay here and cook people eggs and pancakes for breakfast until the day I die. I want a companion who wants that too.”
I studied his expression. “You’re sure she’s not the one?”
“She’s like a wild flower that needs lots of room to grow. This life here would suffocate her.”
“Aren’t you sad?”
“I know she’s happy. So, I’ll be alright.”
“So we need to find you a new girlfriend then?”
“We need to be on the lookout.” He grinned, but I saw no twinkle in his eye.
He never dated another one. Grace had stolen the last bit of his love. Even though he would never admit it, a piece of him died that day we sat on my bench and pretended we didn’t need fancy golf clubs or Grace’s warm spirit to keep us happy.
A part of me died, too. I carried the weight of that day even still. I would never want to get tangled up in some complicated woman’s life as a result. Instead I sought solitude and simplicity. Always.
* *
I pulled up in front of my grampa’s one-story apartment the next morning for Sunday mass, and sure enough, there he stood, nose pressed up against the glass of the door, waiting on me. He rushed out of his door, locked it, and headed to me before I could fully escape my front seat.
“Wait,” I yelled, jumping out of my car. I reached into my back seat and pulled out Bentley.
He halted in the middle of the sidewalk, eyeing Bentley with a flick of caution.
“It’s just for a few days.” I held Bentley up by his armpits showing off his cute, vulnerable, helpless side. We moved in closer and my grampa blinked as if navigating a tightrope. Bentley didn’t exactly shower my grampa with love. Most times he scratched and batted him with his huge claws. “They’re exterminating my apartment.”
He stepped aside. “Just a few days, you say?”
I couldn’t hide my giggle as I passed him. “Just a few days for sure.”
I unlocked his front door and placed Bentley on the Berber carpet. Grampa snuck in behind me. “I’ve still got a litter box in my pantry closet with a bag of litter next to it. I’ll get that prepped for him.” He rushed past us not waiting for my reply.
I batted a wad of paper around with Bentley as Grampa fixed the litter box in his bathroom. A few minutes later he grazed past me, keeping a firm eye on Bentley, and escaped out of his front door with a quick leap.
Outside on the front walk, I kissed his cheek. He smelled like Irish Spring. He glanced at my thin t-shirt and hatless head. “You’re going to catch a sunburn walking around in this heat like that.”
“Yes, sir, I know.” I reached up to his hat and stole it from him and skipped to the car. “Next time, I’ll be more careful,” I shouted over my shoulder.
We drove to church in comfortable silence. He stared out of the window as if in awe of the lush green landscape and wild flowers. His mouth hinged open, his eyes stretched, a sweet smile danced on his wrinkled face.
After church we ended up at our favorite spot. I sat across from him in our usual booth. His eyes drooped more than usual and his skin hazed over with a pale hue, deepening his wrinkles. He looked old and tired.
“Are you feeling alright?” I cupped my hands around his cold fingers.
Dazed, he looked down at our entwined hands and bobbed his head as if convincing himself all was well. “I am, dear. I feel fine. Don’t you go worrying about me.” He stretched his neck over to the kitchen. “Where is Berta with that coffee?”
I clutched his cold hands. “She’s coming.”
My grampa aged before my eyes. New wrinkles had formed every time I visited him. His voice grew hoarser. His hair turned wirier, and his eyes glazed over more and more. I didn’t want him to get old. I wanted him to be that strong man he always had been right up to before he had his prostate cancer and mild stroke last year, and before his eyesight started leaving him.
“So, how’s your newest story coming along?” I asked him.
He cleared his throat and opened his mouth to speak. Sometimes it took him a few tries to get the words out. This time, he got it on the first attempt. “Well, I’m having a hard time figuring out what to do with the cat in this one, you see.” He laughed and his whole face lit up. The color restored and his eyes brightened. “The lead cat is so darned pesky, I don’t know what kind of journey she’s going to take me on next.”
“What’s her name?”
“Dragger.” He cleared his throat again and pointed his eyes at me. “You know why?”
I scooted up taller in the booth. “Tell me.”
“Because she drags the other cats all over the darned house in search of clues. You see, she’s leading the investigation of a string of robberies occurring in the residence.” He said this with the seriousness of a person recounting truthful details of a real-life criminal investigation. “She even has the family dog involved in this one.”
“The kids are going to love it.”
“I’m just a silly old man who likes to tell silly stories,” he said. “These kids don’t want to hear them. I do think they enjoy the chocolates I toss out to them, though.” He winked.
“This one sounds like your best story yet.” I doled out encouragement that a year earlier he would’ve been offering to me instead. Life had turned on us in a flash. For a lifetime he led me, and then suddenly our roles reversed. Out of nowhere the shifting wind came in and toppled the status quo, leaving us grasping onto naked branches and praying the wind would be gentle and keep us close to the roots that defined us.
“My best ones have long been written, dear.” He patted my hand, and then looked out through the window at the tourists strolling by. “I think I’m going to try an omelet today instead of my usual.”
“Good for you, Grampa. Maybe I’ll do the same.” I swallowed the angst building in the back of my throat and blinked away the tears that stung my eyes. When Berta arrived I told her, “We’re going to try something different today. We’d like two omelets.”
“Would you like to go really crazy and add some wheat toast to those orders?” she asked with a happy tune.
“Grampa?”
He looked away from the tourists and back at me, the haze returning to his eyes. “Yes, dear?”
“Want to be different and add wheat toast to this order?”
He nodded to Berta. “Yes, let’s add some variety.”
She jotted this down. Before sweeping away towards the kitchen, she shared a knowing smile with me. We shared this smile every Sunday. We’d been ordering these unique omelets for over a year now, and God bless Berta for pretending we’d just ordered something different.
Things like rolling fields, ripe crops, bountiful fish, and nights in front of a roaring fire with guests at The Rafters used to keep him going. Now, an omelet served as the greatest thrill of the week.
He picked up the newspaper left behind by the last person in the booth. He squinted. “How I miss reading the newspaper.” He tossed it to the side and looked out over the breakfast crowd instead.
I wanted my old grampa back. This one sat prisoner in a sad fog. This one was chained to an existence that trapped him and his big spirit in an old person’s body. This one held all the secrets to living a great life in the reserves of his brain, and I feared I’d be unable to access this information before long.
Why did life treat great people like this? Why did it steal all of their greatest attributes and abilities and sandblast these gifts into a corner in the back of their minds, rendering them incapable of sharing them with others?
Somewhere between those beautiful gray eyes of his still remained the smartest, coolest, most enthusiastic man I’d ever known.
I would reignite that spark in him.
The doctors told me to keep him excited, active, and talking to keep him young and spirited. So, I did. Every Sunday I picked him up at his apartment and took him to Sunday mass where he led me to the first pew, directly in front of the statue of Mother Mary, and insisted that I pray for the entire half hour before mass began. After, we ate our “unique” omelets, and then we got crazy and visited the senior center.
Despite being weak, he still carried his smile around for all to enjoy. The women, some ten years younger, sat next to him and talked his hearing aid off. Some even envied me when Grampa would pay more mind to me than them. They vied for his attention, and my grampa, God love his good soul and wit, would wink at me and roll his eyes, as if saying ‘these freaking women are crazy.’
He sipped his coffee, slurping it like a little kid. His eyes puckered with each sip. “This is good stuff today.”
I sipped mine with equal thought. “Hmm.”
We ate our omelets and drank one more cup of coffee before I braced to ask for his help. I studied the situation. If I asked him for a loan to hold me over, I’d repay it to him along with the other three hundred I still owed him. “Grampa, can I ask you a favor?”
He sat up taller, leaning in with his good ear. “Yes, of course, dear.”
His eyes twinkled. He loved being needed. He always did. Loaning me money lifted his spirits and put a glow on his face. “Can I borrow a little more money?”
“Of course.” He dipped his head. “I’ve still got some back in my apartment.” He leaned in and whispered. “I keep the rest of it in my purple wool sock.”
“Grampa, be careful who you say that to. You don’t want someone taking advantage of you.”
“Yes, dear.” He bowed his head like a child.
I reached out and cupped his cold hands again. “We’re going to have fun today, you and me.”
He looked up and beamed, showing off his white dentures and beautiful smile. “What are we waiting for then?” He jiggled his hands from mine and slid out of the booth anxious to have some fun.
I lived for these moments. He needed me just as much as I needed him.
* *
Once Bentley and Grampa reunited without claws and scratches, I returned to my apartment with five hundred dollars. Grampa had insisted the money needed spending. “It’s just sitting idle doing nothing anyway,” he had said.
I knocked on queen bee’s door and handed her the money. “This isn’t gonna cut it,” she said. “I’ve already rented the attic apartment.”
“You just kicked me out last night.”
“I’ve got bills to pay.” She slammed the door in my face.
I glanced at my yellow car, my new temporary home, and surrendered to it.
* *
I zoomed down the interstate going eighty on my way to nowhere. The open road scared me a little this day. My heart pinched a little tighter. A strange and uncomfortable pain pulsed at my temples. Suddenly, the horizon stretched out much too far with nothing in the middle to cling to. I treaded alone in this open sea, fighting to stay afloat. All that strength that I started out with vanished and left me panicked, flapping my legs like a duck without a mission, pointing towards some far away land that, for the first time in life, I feared I wouldn’t be able to reach.
I pulled over to the side of the road and sucked air into my lungs, willing it to end this dizzy spell. I turned on the radio and breezed through commercial after commercial in search of a song, a debate, a joke, something that would calm me. I landed on Bette Midler’s “Wind Beneath My Wings.” I pulled over, closed my eyes, placed my hands on the steering wheel and bowed into it, resting my heavy head.
My mother’s pretty face flashed before my eyes. She waved that spatula she always danced around the kitchen with. Her bobbed haircut swung in unison. She loved Bette. I could see her, singing along, sashaying her hips, flipping eggs and pancakes, asking me to wipe the table down fast before my stepfather came down for breakfast.
My mother mastered feigning strength among her biggest weaknesses and fears. She put on a good act, appearing in control one second, and the next bowing down to her stupid husband’s insults. She clung to a life of misery, for what? For solace? For safety? For comfort?
Then she died along with my dream for us to live life out on the open road, just the two of us, driving down the interstate singing songs loud and eating popcorn and drinking sodas.
The loss of that dream strangled my chest. I pressed harder against the steering wheel. I wondered if my mother’s life would’ve been different had she gone through something like being homeless. Would she have risen to the challenge?
I sat up and stared at that blank horizon again. “I think you would’ve risen to it, Mom,” I whispered. “You just didn’t give yourself a chance.”
From deep within I started to sob. I continued until the horizon turned into a royal purple and the faint circle of the moon appeared as my guide to carry on with my travels and never settle for comfort, for security, or for someone else’s ideals.
* *
A few hours later, I parked along the Blackstone River Park and ate a sandwich that I bought with my grampa’s money. I played with my cell, searching my Twitter feed for entertainment. As far as I could tell, I could enjoy this simple pleasure for about another week before my cellphone carrier pulled the plug on me, too.
As I read a quote about living with reckless abandon, my cell rang. It was Nadia. Like a fool, I answered her like I’d been waiting my whole life to hear from her. “Hey, you!”
“Um—hey, you.” Her tone was demure. “I was wondering. Um—See here’s the thing, er—I could use your services again. Whatever you did the last time worked. So, any chance you’ll be available this weekend to give me another one of your ten-minute massages?”
A dizzy stupor rose in me. “See, and you doubted me.”
“Hmm,” she replied without much commitment. “I’ve got this terrible kink in my neck and it keeps me up and stresses me out.
Nothing is working. Hot water, heating pad, muscle cream, none of it.”
A sweet current rushed through me. “So I was right.”
“About?”
“You are uptight,” I teased.
“Do you always grill your clients like this?”
I laughed. “Client? So you’re my client now, huh?”
“If you’ll have me?” Nadia’s voice pulled on me.
I held the cell away and drew a large breath. “Same place?”
“Well, don’t you have a massage studio?”
I looked around at my shiny, black leather interior. “I’m a traveling masseuse.”
“So you mean you go to people’s houses and such?” She sounded alarmed.
“Wherever they’re comfy.”
“Isn’t that kind of dangerous for someone like you?”
“Someone like me?” I asked.
“You’re a sweet, innocent woman. We live in a crazy world filled with people who might enjoy taking advantage of that.”
“Oh, I can handle myself,” I said more defensively than I expected.
“I didn’t mean to insinuate that you couldn’t. I’m just curious as to why you’d put yourself in such a vulnerable position?”
“Well, I’m looking for a place,” I answered truthfully. “For now I’m trying to get into corporate settings. Desk massages.”
“How’s that going for you?”
“It’s going just fine. I’ve got a few leads. People seem interested. You know how the business dance goes.”
“Tell me.”
“Oh, well, you know, you pitch the idea. They let it marinate, and meanwhile I offer them a trial period. They perk up and feign a little disinterest even though I can see the wheels in their brains turning, imagining a staff fully relaxed and engaged in their work. It just takes time.” I stopped myself from babbling further.
“Well I’m sure you’ll charm your way into many corporate offices in no time,” she murmured.
“Yes, it’s just a matter of time.”
“Hmm.” Nadia paused. “So let’s say Friday night the lounge again?”
“Friday night it is.”
She cleared her throat. “I’ll see you then.”