Back to Fraser’s Mill
A fter a busy Saturday and a Sunday mostly spent going to Mass and napping (Grace had been short on sleep the last few days), Monday arrived quickly. And with Monday came her plane flight. Jen drove her to the airport.
As usual, LAX was a madhouse. Grace wrestled her three suitcases out of Jen’s little car, hugged her roommate goodbye, and headed into the airport. She checked her bags, made her way through TSA security, and found her gate. So far, so good. She was on time, and her belongings were in order. A lot of experience in airports had taught Grace that a plane trip was one situation where it paid to be organized.
Restaurants were everywhere, but greasy airport breakfasts tended to make Grace feel sick on the plane. She had eaten cereal and an egg at her apartment, and she brought a bag of snacks to eat later. She wasn’t about to pay nine dollars for a tiny tray of cheese, crackers, and grapes on the plane when she could bring all those things with her for a much cheaper price.
She craned her neck to see the screen by the boarding door. It said, “Flight 475, Chicago: now departing at 9:15 A.M.”
Wait a minute. Grace had been supposed to take off at 9 A.M. The flight was delayed.
That wasn’t so bad, as long as it didn’t keep getting delayed. As it was, Grace would have an hour and fifteen minutes in the Chicago airport. That was still a comfortable buffer.
After working so hard to be organized for her trip, of course Grace had forgotten something: she hadn’t brought anything to do while she waited. She’d packed books, but they were all in her checked luggage. It wouldn’t be practical to use her laptop, especially since it had to be plugged in to work. Grace already heard several people complaining that the electrical outlets in the gate area didn’t work. She’d better conserve her phone battery. This was a great time to say her Rosary.
Midway through the second decade, Grace checked the gate screen again. Uh-oh. It said “Now departing at 9:30 A.M.” That left one hour in the Chicago airport. Grace added another intention to her Rosary: “Please, God, don’t let me miss my next flight!”
Grace was beginning to think maybe she’d better rebook her second flight when the woman at the counter announced the plane was boarding.
It was a full flight. Grace squeezed into her assigned seat between a sleeping man with wireless earbuds and a lady with a baby, who had to get up to let her in.
But the plane sat on the tarmac. They were delayed again.
“Do you know what the delay is about?” a woman’s voice asked somewhere behind Grace.
“I heard it was mechanical problems,” a man’s voice replied. “They’re probably still working on it.”
The delay went on. Now Grace couldn’t rebook her second flight even if she wanted to. Great, now she would have four hours of anxiety about missing her second flight. What was wrong with this plane, anyway? Hopefully the mechanics would be able to fix it, and it wouldn’t break again in midair.
The shadows outside the plane window had grown shorter. They were finally in the air. Barring any more problems, Grace would be in Chicago in a matter of hours. She put her head back against her seat, trying to relax.
The baby next to Grace had large brown eyes and a worried expression. She kept dropping her toys on the floor under Grace’s feet, and Grace kept reaching down to get them.
“I’m sorry,” the baby’s mother told Grace. “You don’t have to keep picking up those toys. I should’ve brought one of those ones that attaches to the kid’s outfit so they can’t throw it.”
Grace laughed. “It’s all right. She’s super cute. I don’t mind.”
The mom’s thanks were drowned out by the baby’s sudden shrieks. Maybe her ears hurt from the altitude.
“Ssh, ssh,” the baby’s mom said. “It’s all right, sweetie.” She got up and stood in the aisle, bouncing the baby. The baby’s wailing quieted to a whimper.
The flight went on. Grace shifted in her seat, trying to find a better place for her feet. She couldn’t wait to stretch her legs. She tried to sleep, but she wasn’t used to sleeping at this time of day, and the plane seat was uncomfortable for a nap.
Finally the plane landed. It took forever to taxi to the gate. As soon as the great number of people in front of her had slowly gotten their things together and moved forward, Grace grabbed her carry-on suitcase and followed at their heels. Inside the airport, she looked for signs to direct her to her gate. Rats. It was at the other end, and her flight had been boarding for ten minutes. She had ten minutes to get there. Grace took firm hold of her suitcase handle and ran, weaving her way between groups of people, taking speed-walking conveyor belts as often as possible. Too bad this airport didn’t have a shuttle.
It wasn’t easy running with a rolling suitcase. The thing kept wanting to tip over or twist around, and it slowed Grace down. She nearly collided with several people. A stitch started in her side, but she couldn’t stop now.
She arrived in the right concourse. There, at the end of a long stretch, was her gate. Grace pushed herself to run faster.
The plane was there—she could see it out the window—but the boarding had finished. The gate was closed. Nobody was behind the counter to take tickets. All that running had been for nothing.
Grace sank down on a chair to catch her breath. Clearly, she hadn’t been meant to catch that last flight. She would just have to rebook it. But first she needed a drink of water. And she had to call her parents.
She waited in line to rebook her flight. “You’re in luck,” the man at the counter said. “There’s one more flight to Manistee tonight.”
Thank goodness. Those small airports didn’t have a lot of flights. If you missed the last one of the evening, you had to wait until morning for the next one.
It was late in Chicago. It would be even later in Michigan’s time zone. Grace felt bad for Mom, who would be driving out to the airport to pick her up.
The second flight was uneventful. Almost before she knew it, Grace had landed in Manistee. She found her suitcases and hustled outside into the cool Michigan night.
A familiar car was at the curb—Mom’s Dodge Durango. And there was Mom, waving from the front seat.
Grace’s mother, Liz Murray, had her blonde hair pulled back into a low ponytail, and her usual cheery smile lit up her face—although it wasn’t unheard of that she could lose her temper. Grace had always been told she got a lot of her personality from her mother.
Mom gave her daughter a big hug. “Hooray! You’re finally here. You must be so tired after all that running around and all those delays.” She opened the back hatch of the car. “Can you fit your suitcases in here?”
Soon they were on their way to Fraser’s Mill, the road winding through pine forests and birch groves and little towns. Everything was dark except for the Durango’s headlights. Grace was driving because Mom couldn’t see the road as well as she used to in the dark.
Fresh air blew through the rolled down windows. California’s air always smelled vaguely sweet, especially after a rain. Probably because of all the flowers that grew there even in winter. Lots of people liked the smell, but Grace found it cloying, like too much perfume. The Michigan air was piney and bracing and not sweet at all. It smelled wonderful.
On the way home, Mom regaled Grace with the full story of Dad’s broken foot and told her about the last few days.
“The problem with that man is, he won’t let anybody do anything for him,” she said. “He goes stumping all over the house with those crutches, trying to do all kinds of things he shouldn’t be doing until his foot gets better. Doc’s going to have his hide if he catches him at it.”
That seemed unlikely. Grace remembered the doctor—who lived next door and had his office in part of his house—as a mild man who would usually just shake his head at patients who weren’t following his orders. Maybe he’d gotten crankier with age.
They rolled into Fraser’s Mill, the gas station and garage greeting them, the first buildings at the edge of town.
A new building loomed right past the gas station—a large, dark-colored structure still under construction. According to a sign out front, the building would be a new dollar store.
Other than that, Main Street looked the same as Grace remembered it. She passed the Free Methodist church, the diner, and the hardware store. Almost home.
There was the red pole barn that was Murray’s Grocery, closed for the night. And there, just past it, was the white two-story farmhouse where Grace and her siblings had grown up. A light shone behind the blinds in the living room.
And there was Dad, standing tall in the doorway with his cast and crutches clear in the porchlight.
“That man!” Mom exclaimed. “He’s going to drive me crazy. I told him not to go walking all around while I was gone. He’s probably been doing projects and chores this whole time. That foot will never heal.” She helped Grace get her suitcases out of the back of the car.
Grace left the suitcases on the driveway and ran up the porch steps. “Hi, Dad! I’m home!”
He hugged her as well as he could with crutches under his arms. “Welcome home, Gracie.”
Grace’s dad, Ben Murray, had graying hair and a friendly face. He was known as a mild man, not easily ruffled, and a hard worker. Ben had grown up on a farm in Georgia, in the middle of the Bible Belt, although he and his family were Catholics. After meeting Liz in college, he moved north to Michigan, where she had grown up. They’d married, settled down, and bought the grocery store in Fraser’s Mill thirty years ago now.
“We’ve got dinner saved for you,” Dad told her. “You must be hungry and tired after missing your flight and everything.”
“I’ve just gotta get my suitcases,” Grace said.
Long past midnight, Grace sat at her parents’ kitchen table, eating leftover meatloaf. Dad had gone to get ready for bed, at Mom’s insistence, and Mom was still going through the fridge suggesting anything Grace might possibly like to eat.
“I’m fine, Mom, really—this is great,” Grace told her. “You ought to go to bed. We’ve got to work in the morning.”
Mom closed the fridge and faced her, hands on hips. “I’ve got to work in the morning,” she said. “You’re three hours behind us, and you’ve just traveled all day. You aren’t doing a lick of work in that store until one P.M. tomorrow, and that’s final.”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Now, you’d better finish eating and get up to bed. I put fresh sheets on the top bunk. I’d have put them on the bottom bunk, but I know you never sleep there. There are clean towels in the closet if you want a shower, but you’ll have to use an old towel for a bath mat because the bath mat’s out hanging over the back fence to dry. I’ll go see what your father is up to now.”
Mom bustled away. Grace washed her dishes and lugged her suitcases upstairs to the room she and her sister Katie used to share. The old bunk bed took up most of the small room. Katie had had the bottom bunk, and Grace had had the top. Even when Katie had gone away to college, Grace kept the top bunk and used Katie’s bunk as a place to set things down.
Katie and Grace had decorated the room with all kinds of things that had caught their fancy growing up. Assorted pictures covered the walls—movie stars from Westerns, places the girls had wanted to go someday, quotes they liked. The dressers showcased porcelain figurines, music boxes, old dolls, and little baskets of hair ties. The top of one dresser was a little shrine, with a statue of the Blessed Virgin, a crucifix, blessed candles, a bottle of holy water, and a third-class St. Anthony relic.
It was all as Grace remembered it—cluttered, but full of good memories. She ought to work on her apartment bedroom back in California to make it feel homey like this.
The trip and the late hour had left her exhausted. She left unpacking for tomorrow and went off to get ready for bed.