“Yes, at his head,” I said. “You would have gotten him, too, if he hadn’t ducked.”
“And just because he bought Joel a secondhand guitar?” Mike asked.
“Not just any guitar,” Joel said. “A Les Paul.”
“Well, then. Maybe you should have thrown the whole meat loaf.” Mike winked at Mom.
“Anyway, we are not going to spend this entire evening discussing my temper tantrum. And we are certainly not going to talk about Frank,” Mom said. “We are going to celebrate Michael being home for a whole week.”
“A whole week and a day,” I said, raising my glass.
“Yeah.” Mike nodded and smiled, but it wasn’t his real smile. And his eyes seemed to focus on nothing in particular.
As far as I could tell, neither Mom or Joel noticed it. The look on Mike’s face was passing, fleeting. Then he was back to himself again.
But I couldn’t seem to shake the heavy feeling in myself.
Dear Friend Annie,
I’m thinking of you this week while Mike’s home. I hope you have all the good times in the world and that the week feels a lot longer than seven days. Don’t worry about writing back to me while he’s there. I wouldn’t want to take a moment’s attention away from him.
After he leaves, though, I want to hear everything!
I wanted to send you an article I had printed in the university newspaper. Can you believe it? I’m published somewhere other than Fort Colson! My column appeared on the back page, but at least it’s something! I clipped it for you. I hope you like it.
I’m well here at Taylor. A bit lonely even with people around all the time. My roommate is nice, but she likes to stay up late and talk when all I want to do is sleep. Oh well. At least she isn’t mean.
Oh, when you think about it, let me know if there’s anything new with David. I really think he likes you. How could he not?
Write back soon,
Jocelyn
30
Bernie had given me Wednesday off, insisting that I spend the day with Mike. He’d even threatened to fire me if I dared to come in that morning.
“I’ll manage by myself,” he’d grumbled. “Ran the place for ten years before I hired anybody else. Somehow I’ll make do without you for one day.”
So, first thing Wednesday morning, Mike and I headed east on the highway, toward Grand Rapids, to visit Grandma at Aunt Rose’s house.
Mike drove his Corvair through the rain until we got halfway there and found bright skies and soft-looking clouds. His shoulders relaxed once he had wheels on drier pavement, and he eased up his grip on the steering wheel.
“Joel grew over the summer, don’t you think?” he said, glancing at me. “He’s nearly as tall as me.”
“I think his voice got deeper too.” I crossed my legs and angled my body so I was half facing him. “And he almost has to shave every other week or so.”
“Our baby’s getting to be a man, I guess.”
I chuckled. “I wouldn’t go that far.”
“I asked him what he thought of Frank.”
“Huh.”
“He said he was underwhelmed.”
“He said that?” I asked. “Underwhelmed?”
“I swear, that’s the word he used.” Mike shook his head before changing lanes to pass a slow-moving station wagon.
“Well, he was sufficiently impressed by Frank at first.” I used my forefinger to push up my glasses. “Joel was sure he’d come to stay.”
“Poor kid.”
“Yeah.”
“Sure wish I could’ve been here,” he said. “I’d have liked to see Frank again. Just, you know, see what he’s like.”
“He’s a bit moody.”
“Huh. I guess that doesn’t surprise me so much at all.”
“Me either. He was kind of quiet sometimes too.” I shrugged. “Quiet like Henry Fonda.”
“You think Henry Fonda’s quiet?” Mike smirked at me. “I think he’s grumpy.”
“Well, just quiet and intense and—” I took a second to think. “And sullen. But kind of easygoing. And sometimes he wasn’t quiet. He was almost charming.”
“Sounds complicated.”
“Maybe.” I watched a field of wheat speed by on the other side of the window. “Maybe that’s why I can’t seem to figure him out. Like I said, he’s moody.”
“He wrote to me,” Mike said. “Did you know that?”
I told him I didn’t.
“He asked if I’d list him as my secondary kin.” He licked his lips.
“What does that mean?”
“That if something happens to me while I’m over there, he’ll get notified.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” I said.
“We don’t know that, do we?”
I didn’t answer him. He was right. We didn’t know. And it was that not knowing that made my stomach lurch.
You can’t worry about something that might not happen.
It seemed like years since he’d said that to me.
“Anyway,” Mike went on, “I listed him. So, if anything happens, you won’t have to worry about getting ahold of him. He’ll know as soon as you do.”
We didn’t say anything for at least three miles, just the humming of the Corvair’s engine filling the silence.
“You’ll let Mom know, right?” he asked. “Not now. Just, if something happens. You’ll let her know that Frank’ll find out too?”
“Of course.”
I didn’t know if I was carsick, but I cracked the window, needing a little fresh air.
31
Aunt Rose lived in a beautiful and expansive two-story house in a pristine suburb of Grand Rapids. All the lawns were trimmed and edged perfectly; the autumn leaves seemed to have been removed from the premises the moment they fell. Shiny cars were parked in the driveways, and every porch had set out the welcome mat.
It was as if there was a book of rules that instructed on how all things must look. Everything was just so. Perfect.
“It’s like Camazotz,” I whispered.
“What?” Mike asked.
“It’s from A Wrinkle in Time,” I answered. “Don’t tell me you haven’t read it.”
“Sorry, pal.”
“You have to read it.”
“If you say so,” he said.
“Anyway, Camazotz is this planet where everything is perfectly and terrifyingly the same. All the people there are controlled by an evil called The Dark Thing that has a stranglehold on everyone, forcing them to conform.”
“Speaking of which,” Mike said, turning into a driveway. “We’re here.”
As if on cue, or as if she’d been waiting, Aunt Rose opened wide the front door as soon as Mike cut the engine. She wore her hair in a perfect bouffant and her lips were perfectly red and spread in a wide and less-than-convincing smile.
“You found it,” she said, her smile not fading but looking increasingly like it pained her to hold it. “I’m so glad.”
“Uncle Eliot gave us great directions,” Mike said, shutting his car door.
“Perfect,” she said. “Come in. Please come in.”
She welcomed us inside with such urgency I thought she was afraid the neighbors might see us and judge her unfit for having such country-bumpkin family.
“Mother is in her room,” she said, shutting the gleaming white door behind us. “That’s where she likes to spend much of her time. I’ll get her and we can all have tea.”
If it was possible for someone to glide up the steps, Aunt Rose had found a way. Watching her walk in her pumps, I imagined she’d been the kind of girl to practice gliding with a textbook balanced on top of her head.
I was glad that God had been wise enough to allow me to be my mother’s daughter instead of Aunt Rose’s. I simply was not created for such poise and grace. Although, had I belonged to her, Aunt Rose would have found a way to mold me into such a creature even if I resisted with all my strength.
I felt a bit stra
ngled just thinking about it.
“Are we supposed to wait here?” Mike whispered. “Or should we go sit down?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. “We should probably wait.”
“This house is huge. How does she clean it?”
“I’m sure she pays someone.”
“You think Uncle Eliot makes that much money?” Mike asked.
“I wouldn’t know.”
The entryway, what I was sure Aunt Rose called a “foyer” with a flawlessly smooshy French accent, was as big as my bedroom and full of antiques that probably cost more than Mike’s car. Everything about her, from her ever-present string of pearls to the Oriental rug on her immaculately waxed wood floors, spoke of wealth.
I thought I understood why Uncle Eliot missed out on most of our family gatherings. He had to have been constantly working to afford Aunt Rose’s expensive taste.
Aunt Rose glided back down the stairs, her fingertips barely skimming the surface of the ornately carved wooden banister. Grandma followed behind her, taking the steps with great care and with a firm grip of the handrail.
I was surprised that Aunt Rose didn’t scold her for getting fingerprint smudges on the polished mahogany. Or whatever kind of wood it was made of.
“Look at you,” Grandma said, her eyes on Mike while she made it down the last few steps. “You look so like your father.”
I stepped out of her way so she could walk across the foyer to be near him. Looking up at him, she beamed. He was her favorite. Always had been. I liked to pretend that it didn’t bother me. That it little mattered. I wasn’t sure that I had anyone fooled.
“How are you, Grandma?” he asked, leaning down to give her a kiss on the cheek. “You holding up?”
“I suppose,” she answered. “Rose takes good care of me.”
“I bet she does.” Mike raised his eyes to look around. “This is quite the place.”
“Oh, it’s nothing special,” Aunt Rose said, fingering the pearls at her neck. “I’ll get the tea ready. Mother, you can have them sit in the parlor.”
Aunt Rose swooshed away toward what I imagined was the kitchen.
“This place is cold,” Grandma said, taking Mike’s arm and nodding to a room toward her right. “Always cold. I need an afghan on me all the time.”
“Have you asked her to turn up the heat?” I asked, following behind them.
“As if she listens to a word I say.” She pointed at a wing-backed chair. “I’ll sit there.”
She eased herself into the chair, seeming more stiff and weak than I’d seen her before. It was as if the past few months since Grandpa died had aged her rapidly. She told me to hand her the off-white blanket that had been draped across the back of a rocking chair.
“Just put it over my legs,” she told me, flapping her hand in the space beside her head.
“Annie,” Aunt Rose called to me from wherever it was she’d gone to make tea. “Would you mind giving me a hand?”
Mike took the afghan and nodded at me. “Better you than me,” he said, winking.
Back in the foyer, I followed the hallway to a brightly lit room full of chrome appliances and avocado-green laminate countertops. Aunt Rose stood at the counter, her back to me, pouring steaming hot water into a fine china teapot.
Her spine was perfectly straight, but with one shoulder slightly lower than the other and her head tipped to the side. With the top of her right foot, she rubbed at the back of her left calf. She looked altogether normal and I didn’t know what to think of that.
“Aunt Rose?” I asked, my voice soft as if it felt timid in such a large room. “Did you need me?”
She finished filling the pot and fit the lid on top with a clinking of china on china. Then she turned, a smaller, much more believable smile on her face.
“She isn’t happy here,” she said, hardly moving her lips. “I’ve tried everything to make her happy.”
Her eyebrow flicked up and down, and I wondered if she knew she was doing it.
“Maybe she still misses Grandpa,” I said, putting my hands into the pockets of my jeans. “I don’t think she’d be happy anywhere right now.”
“I thought I was doing the right thing by bringing her here.”
“It was nice of you to invite her to live with you.”
“All she does is criticize me.” She blinked a half dozen times fast, her false eyelashes flittering. “All my life, I’ve never done anything good enough.”
“I’m sure she doesn’t mean anything by it.”
“And then there’s Frank.” She was going to keep going, I could tell. “He runs off without a trace. Not just once. Twice. And you’d think he hung the stars. Ever the perfect son.”
“Do you want me to carry something?” I asked, hoping she’d just stop talking.
“There are cookies on the counter over there,” she said. “Did I make a mistake? By having her move here?”
“No.” I picked up the fancy dish with an assortment of cookies placed just so. “But it might take time for you two to work things out.”
“She stays in her room all day.”
“She likes to go shopping,” I said. “She didn’t get to do much of it when Grandpa was sick. Maybe she’d like to go with you.”
“So she can complain about how much money I spend?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It was just an idea.”
I took the cookies with me back down the hall and toward the sound of Mike telling a story and Grandma giggling.
I knew that if I turned around I’d see a sour-faced Aunt Rose following behind me, tea service in hand.
It wasn’t enough for her to resent Frank, she needed to resent Mike too.
Grandma took us up to her room. It was a good size with space enough for all she’d brought with her from her old house. She had her bed, dresser, vanity, and a nice sitting area.
“I have something I want to show you,” she said, crossing to the vanity and picking up an ancient-looking metal box. “Sit down.”
Mike and I took the settee, and Grandma sat on the edge of a matching armchair. She put the box on the coffee table between us. Its hinges rasped as she lifted the lid. Inside was a mess of papers and odds and ends. Pushing aside a few things with her fingers, Grandma grasped what looked like an old coin on a chain.
“Your great-grandfather Jacobson wore this in WWI. And my nephew Tobias wore it in WWII,” she said, holding it in the palm of her hand. “And your father wore it in Korea. They each made it home in one piece. Now, I don’t know that I believe in lucky charms, exactly, but if I did, I’d think this was a pretty successful one.”
She handed it to Mike. He felt of the metal, flipping it one way and then another to see what was on each side.
“Saint Michael,” Grandma said. “The patron saint of soldiers.”
“I didn’t know we were Catholic,” Mike said, handing it to me.
I felt of the pendant with the pad of my thumb, feeling the image of a warrior holding a sword and ready for battle.
“We aren’t,” Grandma said. “Never were, as far as I know. But your great-grandfather figured it couldn’t hurt to wear it.”
I made to hand it back to her and she shook her head. “It’s for Michael,” she said. “To wear when he goes to war. It’s tradition.”
Mike pulled the chain over his head, letting the pendant rest on the outside of his T-shirt. “Thanks, Grandma.”
“I’m going to tell you the same thing I said to your father,” she said. “You bring that medallion home. Whatever it takes, you bring it home so I can put it back into my box.”
“I’ll do my best, Grandma.”
“Jacobson men always come home.” As soon as she said it, she put a hand to her heart and frowned.
Mike stood up and knelt down beside her. “Don’t be worried about me. I’m going to be all right.”
She took the hand that was on her heart and patted the Saint Michael medallion on his chest.
“I
know that can’t protect you,” she said, her voice raspy. “It’s just metal.”
But by the way she kept her hand on it, I thought maybe she did put a better part of her hope in the pendant. As if it held some sort of magical power.
If only it was true.
If only.
32
It rained nearly every day that Mike was home. The skies cast a gloom over all things and the red-orange-brown of autumn leaves hung from the fingertips of trees, drenched and sad.
Still, there was sunshine and laughter and good feelings inside our house while Mike was there. Every evening Mom ordered takeout if Oma hadn’t made something to bring over. We sat at the table, sharing stories that we’d told a hundred times over. But then they were fresh, new. Joel’s homework went undone. I lacked sleep. The mail stacked up, envelopes stayed sealed.
“We’ll get to that later,” Mom said about nearly everything that needed to be done. “Let’s not worry about that right now.”
And whenever someone brought up Mike going to Vietnam, she’d say the same thing.
Time was shorter than we wanted it to be. The days fell into each other, ending before we were ready for them to. Before we knew it, Mike would have to go.
I felt on the edge of panic whenever I remembered it.
It had to have been after two in the morning. Something had jostled me from sleep. Thinking it was from my dream, I shut my eyes, trying to settle back into my deep slumber. But then I heard it again, a thunking sound. A scratching, rustling thud from above me.
When I heard the laughter, I groped around on my bedside table for my glasses. Sitting up, I pushed aside the curtain over my window, flipped the lock, and pushed up the pane. Sure enough, I heard Joel and Mike, their deep voices coming from the roof.
“Shhhh,” one of them hissed. “Don’t wake up Mom.”
“All right.” Then another bout of laughter.
Their voices had the same tone and, just from listening to them, I couldn’t tell which was which.
“Oh man,” one of them said. “It’s wet.”
“Don’t worry,” the other said. “Your rear end’ll dry out eventually. Just lay back and look at the stars.”
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