by Diane Adams
"I'm worried something will happen to you and since I don't know my way around in the garden, I won't be able to find you on time to save you," Rose said. Her fear wasn't entirely make-believe. If something happened to the grandparents, what would happen to her?
"I'm worried too," Alex tried to help.
"This girl at school? Her little brother fell off the roof and nobody found him for two hours!"
"He fell off the swing set, not the roof," Meemaw corrected Rose, without looking up from her knitting.
"You know him?" Rose said with surprise.
"I don't actually know him, but someone told me about his accident. He's going to be fine, by the way."
"Yes, but what if that happened to you?" Rose persisted.
Meemaw laughed merrily. "I never go on the roof!"
Rose clenched her teeth for a moment. "I'm thinking about if you go work in the garden when Pops isn't home. You could trip over something and fall. A person can trip over just about anything. A tree root, or a big clump of grass."
"I even tripped over a shadow one time," Alex said. "I thought it was something on the floor so I tried to step over it but it must have been my shadow because when I moved, it moved too."
Rose glanced at Alex and they both frowned. It didn't seem that their latest plan to get into the garden was going to work.
"How sweet you are to worry over me! Both of you!" Meemaw said, smiling first at Alex, then at Rose. "But I don't ever go into the garden when Pops isn't home. And he doesn't ever go into the garden when I'm not home," she added, before they could say another word.
Rose gave up. She popped a final bite of soggy chocolate chip cookie into her mouth and drank her milk, keeping the glass tipped until the dregs of the cookie crumbs slid down her throat. "Yum. Thanks, Meemaw." Her grandma had baked a double batch of cookies that morning, while Rose was in school.
"Yeah. Thanks, Meemaw," Alex agreed, reaching for just one more. "You make the best chocolate chip cookies in the whole world."
Meemaw laughed. "I don't know about that, but I'm glad you enjoyed them. Now put the jar in the pantry, under that checkered tablecloth, where Pops won't find it."
"We don't mind sharing," Alex said, sounding very mature.
"He has his own jar," Meemaw explained. "Had, I should say. He polished them all off a little while ago."
Alex and Rose stared at the jar of cookies - it was a huge plastic jar, packed very full.
"Was it the same size jar?" Alex wondered.
"Yes it was, so don't feel sorry for him."
"If I ate that many cookies, I'd puke," Alex told Rose a few minutes later, as they climbed the stairs to the second floor.
"Pops never gets sick," Rose said, dropping her book bag just inside the door to her bedroom, where it would remain until Monday morning. Rose always did her homework during free time at school, since she didn't have any friends to talk to. "He eats about a hundred cookies every day. Sometimes he eats three pieces of chocolate cake. Big pieces."
"I hope I inherited Meemaw's baking talents," Alex said, stretching out on top of Rose's bed. "Where are we gonna sleep tonight?"
There were five guest rooms on the second floor, and the girls were allowed to sleep in any of them, so long as they cleaned up their mess the next day.
"Maybe upstairs," Rose said thoughtfully. "On the balcony."
"They wouldn't let us do that," Alex scoffed.
"Probably not, but maybe." Rose knew her grandparents felt bad about her hairdo so it was a good time to ask for special privileges. She exchanged her skirt and blouse for a pair of jeans and a T-shirt that said 'Keen Kid,' then stood before the mirror to study her reflection. "What did Meemaw say to you about my hair?" She had seen Meemaw take Alex aside and whisper in her ear.
Alex sat up. "I'm supposed to convince you to let Pops go buy another home perm so she can curl the right side."
"I'm scared something worse will happen," Rose admitted.
"Like what?" Alex said.
Which told Rose just how bad Alex thought it was. "Let's go up on the balcony and watch Pops for a while, want to?" she suggested.
"I'll tell Meemaw," Alex offered, jumping up and heading down the stairs.
Whenever the grand-girls wanted to sit on the balcony, their grandmother came along to 'keep them company.' Rose thought it was part of the garden mystery, but Alex thought it was just typical grandmotherly behavior - Meemaw was probably afraid they would lean too far over the railing and fall off the balcony. The truth was, sometimes the grand-girls grabbed Meemaw's elbows because they were afraid she was going to fall.
Rose went to the door that hid the stairway to the third story and twisted the knob, surprised to find it unlocked. Though she knew she should wait, she stepped quietly into the stairwell. For some reason, it made her think of the night her mother went away.
Rose had already fallen asleep, but she woke up when she heard her mother yelling at Pops. Pops was so mild-mannered and gentle, Rose hadn't thought he could ever make anyone angry enough to yell. His voice responded, but Rose couldn't make out what he said. Then her mother shouted, 'They aren't real! They aren't real!'
Rose wanted to know what her mother meant. What wasn't real? She was afraid to ask Pops. She didn't want him to know she had heard the argument and she didn't want him to worry that she was going to have a nervous breakdown too.
"Where's Rose?" Meemaw said outside the door.
Rose sat down on the first step and tried to look bored.
"Oh, there you are," Meemaw said happily. "Alex said you want to go on the balcony?"
"Do you mind?" Rose asked politely.
"Not at all. I just put the potatoes on so we have about half an hour before I mix the biscuits."
Rose went first, holding the banister as the stairs became steeper and more narrow. She didn't understand why Pops didn't rebuild them, to make them safer. He said he didn't understand why they hadn't been built safer to begin with.
At the top of the stairs was a long, skinny room with sloped ceilings and wooden floors. Like the attic of any old house, it was full of upholstered chairs sprouting tufts of stuffing, antique trunks filled with musty-smelling quilts, boxes of broken toys, old lamps with frayed black cords, and a variety of odds and ends that most people would throw into the trash.
Meemaw went straight to the French doors, which were always propped open, and stepped onto the balcony. She leaned on the railing and squinted in the sunlight, gazing around in search of Pops.
"Be careful, Meemaw," Alex cautioned.
"Thank you," Meemaw said, stepping back a few inches, tucking her hands into the pockets of her sensible denim skirt. "I don't see Pops. I wonder where he's gone."
Both girls joined her at the railing, searching the garden for their grandfather. There were so many bushes and trees that could hide the stooped figure of an elderly man, especially from the third floor.
"I don't see Pops, but I see someone," Rose said, pointing her finger beyond the fence, beyond the cornfield, into the yard of the neighbor next door.
"It's a boy!" Alex said, leaning over the railing for a closer look. "He's going into the Simmons' shed!"
"That's because he's their grandson," Meemaw explained. "His name is Neal and it isn't a shed. It's a clubhouse."
"I didn't know they had a grandson," Rose said with surprise. "I didn't think they had kids."
"They had one son," Meemaw explained. "He was killed last month, on September 11, when the airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center."
"Really?" Alex and Rose said in unison.
"Really," Meemaw said sadly. "His mother is having a hard time getting over it, so she brought Neal here to live with his grandparents for a while."
"How'd you find out about it?" Rose asked suspiciously. She knew that Mr. and Mrs. Simmons didn't talk to Meemaw or Pops, even when they practically ran into them at the grocery store.
"I heard it from someone who knows them very well," Meemaw answered vaguely. "Po
ps and I are worried about Neal. He lost his father in such a tragic way and now it must feel as if he's losing his mother too. Do you think you girls could try to make friends with him this weekend?"
Rose inhaled noisily. Maybe she hadn't lost either of her parents in some dramatic tragedy, but that didn't mean she wasn't suffering. She wondered why nobody ever urged their children to be nice to poor Rose, whose mother was in the hospital. "Will he be attending David City Public School?" she asked.
"Most likely," Meemaw said.
"What's he like?"
"He reads a lot." Meemaw smiled, because she knew that Rose also loved to read.
Rose considered this. What if they liked the same books? Maybe he'd want to share a seat on the bus and get together after school to do homework and study for tests. Maybe they could meet on the playground during recess, talking about the tragedies of their young lives. Maybe Neal was the answer to the prayer she had prayed on the bus.
"Do we have time to go and meet him before dinner?" Alex asked.
"I think it would be best to wait until tomorrow," Meemaw said, but she was obviously pleased by their willingness.
"I guess when he watched the Twin Towers collapse on TV, he kept looking for his dad," Rose speculated.
"I don't think I'd mention that," Meemaw advised.
Rose sighed. She knew it wouldn't really matter what she said or didn't say. He wasn't likely to want to be friends with her once he realized what a 'loser' she was.
"We'll go over tomorrow, first thing," Alex said brightly. "Maybe we could invite him on a picnic."
"I'll have plenty of turkey for sandwiches," Meemaw promised. "And I told Pops I'd bake another batch of chocolate chip cookies in the morning."
"Meemaw," Rose said thoughtfully. "Isn't all that sugar bad for Pops? I mean, don't old people catch some kind of disease from eating too much sugar?"
"Is that right?" Meemaw said with a touch of concern. "Could you look it up on the intercom and tell him about it?"
"You mean the 'Internet?'" Alex asked, pressing both hands over her mouth to smother a giggle.
(( 5 ))