Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
When I got back to Nana Cole’s, Bev’s ancient Jeep Cherokee was speeding down the long driveway. It was narrow enough, the driveway I mean, that I had to wait out on West Shore Road until she turned toward Masons Bay and sped off without so much as a wave.
Curious. Everyone in Michigan waved. Strangers waved.
Reaching the house, I parked and went inside. One of the kitchen chairs was knocked over, two burners were on, there was food spread out on the counter. Nana Cole was walking around the kitchen collecting things, practically throwing the walker in front of her and then sort of falling into it.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to do it that way. You need to take smaller steps.”
“Don’t you start. I just got an earful from Bev.”
“What did you do?”
“Fine, take her side.”
“I don’t know what you’re fighting about so I’m not taking anyone’s side.”
Not entirely true. Of course, I was going to take Bev’s side. Of the two of them she was the reasonable one.
“I told her that you were asking questions about Reverend Hessel’s murder for me, and she told me I should stop. That it’s bad for my health. I told her she was bad for my health and threw her out.”
“You’re red in the face. You should sit down.”
Surprisingly, she clomped over to the table and did as I’d asked.
“What is all this?” I asked, waving a hand at the counter and stove.
“I want to make sauerkraut. You need to get me ten heads of cabbage.”
“From the garden?”
“No, not from the garden. You didn’t plant any, remember? Besides… if you had, they wouldn’t be ready until July.”
She was confusing me. “You’ve turned the burners on, and you don’t even have the cabbages?”
“You don’t cook sauerkraut. It’s pickled.”
I just lost all interest in sauerkraut.
“I’m trying to cook those brats you bought. What day did you buy them?”
“Yesterday.”
“Oh. So they’re not going bad?”
“No.”
Now she was confused, putting her hands on the table as though to brace herself. They were spotted and gnarled. Honestly, getting old looked like a nightmare. I promised myself I’d avoid it.
I went over and turned the burners off. Then I opened the refrigerator and took out a casserole. Lasagna. We’d eaten half of it a few days before. I turned on the oven to heat it up.
“You have to take that back,” she said, behind me.
“The lasagna?”
“The dish. Did you do what I told you?”
Oh, God—what had she told me? Something about the casserole dishes. Was I supposed to remember who brought which dish? I should have taken notes. Crap, that’s probably what she told me. Take notes.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t been able to understand her at the time. That request was one of many I’d just smiled and nodded agreement to. I did sort of remember when she’d asked that.
I’d told her, “Your friends are bringing casseroles by.”
She struggled with a few garbled words, one of which might have been ‘dish.’
“Yes, it’s very nice of them to make us food. I did check with the nurse, and they don’t want me bringing food into the hospital. I’m going to freeze most of it.”
Actually, that was a lie. They’d told me I could bring her food. But they’d still be charging her for her meals, and I would have had to go out and spend money on food for myself. I decided it was smarter to just freeze what I couldn’t eat and save it for when she came home.
She tried to say something else. Which, looking back, was probably that I should take notes or label the dishes when I finished the casseroles.
Now I said, “I’m sorry, I tried to keep track—”
I didn’t.
“It just, you know....”
She picked up a glass casserole that looked like it had been scorched, even after I cleaned it. Well, rinsed it.
“This is Bev’s.”
“Okay.”
“This red one is Muriel Sanderson’s. It’s hoity-toity.”
I had no idea who Muriel Sanderson was. Nor did I know a baking dish could be hoity-toity.
“This one,” she said, picking up a metal sheet cake pan with a clear plastic lid. “This one belongs to the Hessels.”
“Really? Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. There was a tuna casserole in there, wasn’t there?”
“I guess.”
“Which one of them brought it? Was it the reverend or Ivy?”
I had no clue. I would have remembered Reverend Hessel, I’d met him. And I certainly would have remembered the name Ivy Greene. On the other hand, if she’d come late in the afternoon, I might have been a little… relaxed.
Maybe I already mentioned this, but while Nana Cole was in the rehab center, I would take the occasional Oxy vacay. Late in the afternoon, when I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be needed. Me time.
Maybe it’s pointless, but there’s this feeling I’m chasing.
One I remember from being a kid. I’d get into bed at night, the sheets and blanket would be warm, cozy.
I’d be on the verge of sleep, knowing the sleep would be deep and the dreams sweet, but still I’d try to stay in that spot between wakefulness and sleep.
Linger there as long as I could. A delicious feeling.
I chased it in L.A. I would go out to the bars on Santa Monica, take an Oxy or two, and then have a few drinks. The right combination would get me there. I’d find that warm, cozy, safe place.
But then there were nights where I’d get greedy and have one drink too many, or take an extra Oxy and wake up the next morning, naked, in some guy’s bed. God knows where, having done God knows—well, fine, I always had a pretty good idea what I’d done. Even if I couldn’t exactly remember it.
“How well did you actually know Reverend Hessel?” I asked Nana Cole.
It took a moment before she answered, which struck me as odd since it wasn’t exactly a difficult question. “I saw him every Sunday. And when you did what you did, he came to sit with me.”
Deciding to avoid the reference to my ‘doing what I did,’ I asked, “Do you remember the first time you met him?”
“Well, he played the organ. I don’t remember when we met, exactly. He was just there.”
“Do you remember people saying he’d moved here because he had family in the area?”
“No. I don’t—I think someone said he was a fudgie who liked it so much he stayed.”
Fudgie was the word people used for the tourists who flooded the area every summer. Many of them liked it enough to buy second homes or even stay year-round. “Yes. I’m sure that’s what happened. He fell in love with us.”
“It didn’t seem weird that he took over the choir and then the whole church?”
“Why does that matter? He was killed by a drug addict.”
“If you’re sure about that, you should pay me the money you promised me and we’ll forget the whole thing.”
She did her best to look confused, but I saw right through it. She deliberately changed the subject, “What’s on TV tonight? Is it America’s Best Model?”
“America’s Top Model.” I corrected her. “Yes, it is.” I’d gotten her hooked on the show while she was in the rehab center, even though she’d had to start with episode three—the one where Adrianne gets food poisoning and they posed with snakes.
“Good. What are they doing?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen it yet. Getting back to—”
“The lasagna’s ready,” she said.
“How do you know that?”
“Can’t you smell it?”
“Sure, I can smell it.”
“It smells ready.”
And when I opened the oven, the lasagna was bubbling hot. How did she do that?
On Friday, Rebecca Jaymes arrived shortly after we finished lunch.
We’d had one session with her while Nana Cole was still in the rehab center.
Dressed in a plaid short-sleeved shirt and cargo pants, she was short and boyish with a broad smile and an infectious laugh.
We made some tea and sat around the kitchen table.
“Tell me how you are, Mrs. Cole,” Rebecca asked. It was a much tougher question than it seemed.
After a long suspenseful pause my grandmother said, “I’m angry.”
“What are you angry about?”
“I don’t remember her name. The girl who was here.”
“She had physical therapy the other day,” I said. “She threw the girl out.”
“Really? Why don’t you like the physical therapist?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t.”
“There must be more to it than that.
“The girl—she was trying to teach me how to use the walker. I know how to use the walker.”
“No, she doesn’t,” I interjected.
She looked at me open-mouthed for a moment and then huffed.
Very kindly, Rebecca said, “I’ll have a talk with them and see if we can’t address some of your concerns. Now, why don’t you tell me how you met your husband.”
Nana Cole seemed confused, which made perfect sense to me. It was kind of a jump. I suppose it might have been a strategy, skipping around like that, I don’t know. I did feel certain my grandmother was going to ask for the question to be repeated. Instead, she asked, “Which one?”
“Which one?” I asked.
Her hand flew up to her mouth and covered it. Suddenly, I could almost see the little girl she’d once been. A cute, pig-tailed little girl, always in trouble.
“What do you mean, which one?”
It wasn’t that I had some great loyalty to my grandfather, I hadn’t spent that much time with him. The times I’d visited when I was younger, my mother and grandmother would fight so much that I’d get dragged back to California early. Those were the days.
No, I was just surprised that somehow no one had ever mentioned that Nana had had another husband. Picking up on my surprise, Rebecca asked, “Do you want to tell us about your first husband?”
Quickly, she shook her head.
“The cat’s already out of the bag,” I pointed out.
Another pause.
“He was a Marston. Will; Will Marston. His family owns the farm and feed store.”
“I know it seems like I’m just being nosey,” Rebecca said. “But really we’re exercising your brain. Did you meet him at the feed store?”
“He would be behind the counter when my father would send me to get things for the farm. He was tall, blond, and had these light blue eyes. He was older than me—that seemed important for some reason. He’d been in the army. In Italy.”
“Good,” Rebecca said. “You’re doing very well.”
“It seemed so romantic. Like something out of a book or a movie.”
My grandmother was silent. I wanted to know what happened, how the marriage ended. I was ready to yell “And…” but Rebecca looked at me and gently shook her head.
A tear might have run down Nana Cole’s cheek, I couldn’t tell without leaning over and gapping at her.
Finally, she said, “He beat me up. A couple of times. The last time I was going to have a baby and… I lost the baby. I couldn’t hide that. How it had happened. I spent almost two weeks in the hospital. My father nearly killed him. When I got out of the hospital, Will had left.”
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” Rebecca said.
Nana Cole seemed to wake up, saying, “Don’t be silly. It was all a very long time ago.”
“And what about your second husband? Henry’s grandfather?”
“Samuel Cole. He was just a boy. I’d been in school with him all along. I knew he’d never hurt me. And he never did.”
“The two of you were happy?”
“Not at the beginning, no. But eventually. Eventually, yes.”
“And your daughter?”
“Yes, I have a daughter.”
“She was born during your second marriage.”
“Yes. After a few years. After things got easier.”
Then she looked at me and asked, “Why do I feel so tired? I’m just talking.”
Rebecca explained, “Your brain has been damaged. Normal routes have been cut off. It’s looking for new ways to get to the information I’m asking for.”
“Is it important I remember everything?”
“No, that’s not the point. We’re teaching your brain to look for new pathways. The more you do it, the easier it becomes. Now, do you remember your first pet?”
Twenty minutes and three barn cats later, Rebecca left. I felt like I should say something to my grandmother about the fact that she’d had a husband who beat her. Something like, ‘I’m sorry that happened to you.’ or ‘That must have been awful.’
I went with, “Do you want some ice cream?”
“Yes, that would be nice.”
I took her to the ice cream stand on Main Street.
She got a scoop of locally made blueberry ice cream, while I stuck to chocolate chip.
I had a strange feeling, one that took me a few minutes to understand.
Empathy? Affection. I was feeling affection.
Could I really like her? No, that was not possible.
Seriously, liking her seemed to be a very bad idea, one that I hoped would pass quickly.
Like indigestion.