“This is what keeps me up nights. Thinking of you on forty-four dates with strange men.”
“You and me both,” I say. I tuck the phone under my chin and cut the stems off the mushrooms. “Believe me, it wasn’t all that much fun. I’m just coming home from the forty-fourth one now. With a New York City firefighter. Should have been great. But wasn’t.”
“And did you really think you and some anonymous firefighter were going to immediately find—what? Passion and sex? That’s what you’re going on these dates for?”
“Mags. Of course that’s what I’ve been going on these dates for.”
“But is that more important than a companion you feel good about? Somebody you know and trust to always have your best interests at heart? Maybe you’re the one discounting love, did you ever think of that? Love is what you’re left with when all that goes away.”
“Okay, then, now we’re getting somewhere,” I say. “You’re decidedly, then, in the category of marriage can work between friends. Yes?”
“Well, let me put it this way. I think it can work between you and Judd,” she says. “I always thought he was such a nice kid. He’ll take care of you, that’s for sure.”
“Ugh. I don’t need taking care of,” I say. Old argument.
“I know you don’t. But you know what I mean. Everyone needs taking care of. Can’t you take it in that spirit instead of getting offended? He’ll be your partner. He’ll be there for you, as you young folks say.”
And then speaking of people needing to be taken care of, I can hear my father’s voice in the background. Asking her a question. She needs to get off the phone and make him some food. Or just pay him some attention.
Just like that, the call is over. My dad comes first. Always has, always will.
Before she hangs up, she whispers into the phone, “Just say yes. And bring him home for Thanksgiving. Promise me.”
“Of course,” I say.
As soon as I get off the phone, I call the memory care center at Hallowell House just because I miss my grandmother, and sometimes I can reach her if she’s having a good day. She might be in the sunroom right now and they could take the phone over to her because she’s doing fine, and why yes, the nurse on the floor will tell me, yes, she might like a call from home.
“It’s your favorite granddaughter!” I always say when I get her.
And she used to say, “Ah, my darling. You aren’t just my favorite granddaughter, you’re my favorite human!”
But it’s been months now since that has happened. Mostly, if I get her at all, she tries to talk to me and then gets frustrated that she can’t make the words come out like she wants them to. There are long gaps. I don’t mind the gaps; I’ll wait patiently for however long it takes for her to get the words out. But it’s hard on her. She was always so smart and so precise in her speech, so good at articulating her feelings, that I can’t even imagine how tough it must be for her to be stuck inside her own head, with so many words already gone.
Sure enough, that’s what today is like. They hand her the phone. I can hear her breathing, hear the little noises she makes.
“Bunny, I miss you!” I say. “And I have some news!” I always feel like I’m shouting when I talk to her, as if all it takes is a louder voice to reach her. “Judd and I—do you remember Judd?—he and I are going to get married! Isn’t that wonderful?”
There’s a little mewing sound. Like she’s crying.
“Bunny? Are you okay? I’ll come and see you at Thanksgiving! Like I always do! We’ll have dinner in your dining room and then I’ll bring you home with me to see the rest of the family! And that’s when Judd and I are going to tell everyone!”
“Oh,” she says. “Ohhhhh.”
There’s a muffled sound, the phone falling onto her wheelchair perhaps. And then after a moment, someone must have come and picked it up. They hang it up again, and I’m there with only silence.
CHAPTER SIX
I was five years old the day I finally got up the nerve to ask my grandmother if my mama was dead. I whispered the question in case I wasn’t allowed to know. Nobody ever mentioned my mama anymore.
But Bunny wasn’t one of the people, like my daddy and Maggie, who had so many rules about stuff you could and couldn’t talk about. She let me spend as much time in the Bunny Barn as I wanted to. I sat on her lap while she read me stories or put my hair in braids.
Her barn was my favorite place to be because it smelled good in there, like new sawdust and lemon Pledge and oatmeal cookies. There were shiny floors and new lights in the ceiling. Bunny had made the workmen put in a window seat, which she said was just for me, and we sewed a blue calico cushion. Hendrix was not allowed to go near the window seat, or so I told him; it was just for me and Bunny. He didn’t want to anyway. Hendrix had the fields and the corncrib and the other barn. He had Daddy; I had Bunny.
In the barn, the air felt like it was soft and pink. My stomach didn’t hurt when I was over there. At my house, just across the yard, the air sometimes felt all gray and cloudy, and it was hard to breathe sometimes.
When I asked her the question about Mama, she was ironing some shirts. I felt her stop and turn and look at me. She took a deep breath like something sad was stuck in her throat, and she said, “No, no, honey. Of course she’s not dead. Your mama is just fine.”
I said this next part very, very carefully, smoothing my dress over my knees, and not looking at her. “Then why doesn’t she come and get me and Hendrix and take us home?”
“Well, sweetie, this is your real home now. With me and your daddy and Maggie.”
“But she said she would come and get us.”
She put the iron down on the ironing board and wiped her hands on her apron and looked at me. “The truth is that your mama and daddy both agreed you should live here with us. Your mama misses you, but she thinks this is the best place for you. And you and Hendrix will go and see her every summer when she doesn’t have to work so hard and can put all her attention just on you.”
I wasn’t sure how far I could push this, but I took a chance and said to her, in a very low voice, so low that maybe she wouldn’t hear it at all, “I heard him tell Maggie that my mama is a bad mother. He said she’s a witch. The real kind.”
“Oh,” said Bunny, and the air around her head turned a different color. “Well, she’s not a witch. Your mama is a very nice person. She’s just a little bit different from some other people, but that is not a bad thing, and your daddy knows that. He didn’t mean that, I’m sure.”
But Bunny hadn’t been there the day when Daddy came to visit us at Mama’s house and then made me and Hendrix go home with him. She didn’t know how mad he was. He did mean it.
Usually when Daddy came to visit, it was kind of a nice time. He sat on the porch, and we sat on his lap, and he talked to Mama and to all her friends. Sometimes he played music with everybody. Sometimes he was having such a good time that I thought he might stay, but then he didn’t. He always said he had to go back to the farm, but that he’d come again to see us.
But then one day he showed up when we were playing outside in the field next to our house, and it was the day after our birthday—we were four now!—and Hendrix and I wanted to run over to his truck to hug him. But as soon as he got out of his truck, I got scared because his face was hard and angry, and he didn’t even say hello. He said, “What are you doing outside by yourselves?” in a voice that was so hot and mad it was like it burned a hole in the air.