Papaw sits slowly back, with a mixed expression of wonder and surprise. He whistles softly.
“It’s ridiculous, right? I don’t belong—”
Papaw raises his hand to halt me, his brow furrowed. “Just…”
“It’s nuts,” I murmur.
“Full scholarship?” He sounds optimistically skeptical.
“Sounded like.”
“Good school?”
“Apparently one of the best in America. That’s why I’m saying—”
“Hush, now.” He says it firmly but not unkindly, like he’s trying to tally something and I’m making him lose count.
After a safe amount of time, I say, “Obviously, I’m not gonna—”
“This ain’t the sort of opportunity that comes along ever’ day.”
“I know, but—”
“Sure ain’t the kind me and your mamaw could give you. Much as we’d’ve liked.”
“Never bothered me.”
“Well? What do you think about all this?”
I draw a deep breath. “Don’t know. I heard about it maybe two hours ago.”
A long pause. “Now, mind you, I ain’t got all the information. But I think you might oughtta do it.” His eyes are intense. Like how Moses would look after coming down from the mountain, having spoken with God. He nods to himself. “I think you might ought to,” he says softly, as if the opportunity is something he’s afraid to startle, like the deer.
I thought he’d laugh with me. Who knows what goes on in Tess’s head? he was supposed to say. Tell her that that’s mighty kind of her but you’re needed at home. He’d be the stalwart, sane balance to the erratic, staccato electricity of Delaney’s thinking, which causes her to do something as bewildering as what she did. Panic rises into my chest, into the back of my throat.
“I’m happy here,” I say unsteadily.
“I kindly believe you are. But ever’ so often, God opens a door.”
“I can’t go to a school like that.”
“Seems they beg to differ.”
“No, I mean I’m not like the kids who go there.”
“Now you listen. You’re pret’ near one of the smartest young men I ever knew.”
“Everyone’s papaw thinks that about them.”
Papaw coughs for a while and then continues. “You get good marks. Way you use words? Remember that essay you wrote for your English class about your mamaw? Made her cry. You started your own lawn business. Your best friend is the damn town genius. You think she’d run with you if you wasn’t bright?”
“I don’t know how she thinks.”
Papaw’s getting short of breath and wheezing. All this impassioned talk. He hacks and pauses to let a coughing fit subside. “That Tess is something special,” Papaw says, chewing on one of the homemade cinnamon toothpicks he’s started carrying around to help him quit smoking. He pulls it from his mouth and points at me with it. “I ever tell you she reminds me of your mama?” He returns it to his mouth.
“How?”
“Always asking questions. Trying to figure out how the world works.”
“Mama didn’t seem like that to me.”
“By then, the dope stole a lot of her. When she was a little girl, though? Shoot. Never without a book.”
“Where’d they go?”
Papaw shakes his head and looks down. “She sold them.” He rubs at a spot on the porch with his foot, like he’s buffing out a burr. “Ever’ last one. They wasn’t fancy books, and they wasn’t in great shape from being read so much. I don’t guess they fetched much.”
“I wish I could have known her before.”
“Me too,” he murmurs. He gazes off, his eyes clouding and forlorn. He coughs. “You got your mama’s quick mind. It’s why you and Tess are Butch and Sundance.”
It breaks my heart how extraordinary he thinks I am. It’s worse than being ordinary. I flash to a vision of myself wearing my soiled, sweat-sodden lawn-mowing T-shirt and grass-stained jeans and boots, standing in a huge library. All around me are kids my age, dressed like celebrities, polished and gleaming. Their hands are uncallused, their eyes clear, their minds unburdened with worry. They stand in small groups, chatting breezily about lavish vacations—summer homes and beach homes and ski homes—their backs to me.
Their life stories have no chapters on mothers chasing that Cadillac high and succumbing to an overdose of heroin, fentanyl, and Valium mixed together. No fathers who ran off to work on an oil rig shortly before they were born. No slowly dying grandfathers on disability and exhausted grandmothers who work too hard at Little Caesars, to try to maintain some dignity and quality of life in aging and rebuild the nest egg that their addicted daughter decimated. No lawn mowers—used to make those grandparents’ lives easier—in the back of pickups that need to make it another year, always another year. No humiliating encounters with drug dealers in RiteQuik parking lots. None of it. They have lived free.
Life has given me little reason to feel large, but I see no need to make myself feel smaller.
A rising glow appears at the edge of our property, and a pair of headlights illuminate the driveway. Mamaw’s blue Chevy Malibu creeps up in a crunching of gravel.
“How about that timing,” Papaw says. “Let’s see what she thinks.”
I’m already heading down the steps to help Mamaw in with her things.
“Hello, lovin’,” she says, rising slowly from the car, trying to balance a large pizza box.
“That everything?” I take the box and hug her and kiss her cheek. Her short gray hair smells like warm pizza crust and artificial roses. She’s wearing a black polo shirt, similar to Delaney’s, and khakis.
“Thank you, sweetie. I believe so. Y’all in the mood for pizza?”
I smile at her joke, like always. “Might could be.”
She presses on her knees as she climbs the porch steps. She shuffles over to Papaw, bends down, and they give each other a peck on the lips.
“Pull up a chair, Donna Bird,” Papaw says.
I grab a rocker from the other side of the porch and slide it over.
Mamaw sags into the rocker with an exhale, leaning her head back and closing her eyes. “Mmmmm, tell you what,” she says, trailing off. That’s how you know she’s really tired. When she’s only moderately tired, she finishes the sentence—Tell you what. I am tuckered out.