Chapter 10
The next morning, I wake up more refreshed than I’ve felt in a long time.
The guest room here is perfectly dark and quiet, chilled to perfection by the strong but silent AC.
Part of me also wonders if the kiss incident last night released some kind of relaxation hormones in my brain.
I laugh at myself, remembering it. I don’t know what got into me, but I don’t regret it.
I deserve to kiss a hot redhead now and then.
Whatever the reason, I am bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this morning and have no desire to sit around the condo all day.
Gramps has already eaten a bowl of Grape-Nuts, but he agrees to accompany me to the dining room for breakfast.
I know at once that this was a good decision: There’s a buffet of fresh fruit, scrambled eggs, sausages, and potatoes. There’s even a self-serve waffle maker.
I fill my plate, drop it off at the table where Gramps is reading his newspaper, then make a second trip for a glass of cranberry juice and a mug of coffee.
“See, I don’t know why you don’t come here every morning,” I say around a mouthful of eggs.
Gramps sips his black coffee and shrugs. “I have everything I need upstairs.”
I take in the room: It’s pretty empty—it is after nine, which is probably way later than most of the people here have breakfast. But there’s enough gentle chatter in the background to add to the pleasant ambience.
It’s also huge, with a soaring ceiling and floor-to-ceiling windows facing the gulf.
Then again, Gramps has a gulf view from his kitchen, too.
“Okay, well.” I cut into a piece of cantaloupe. “It’s Sunday today. What would you normally do all day?”
He looks amused at the question. He scratches his head, ruffling his thick white hair.
“Let’s see. Breakfast, check. Coffee, check. I guess I might take my paper down to the pool to finish reading it. I like to do the crossword on Sundays. Lunch—maybe a sandwich. Then, I don’t know, I like an afternoon nap. After that, while away the time until dinner, I suppose.”
There’s a long pause. I stare into my creamy coffee, feeling unexpectedly crushed by how sad this sounds. I mean, isn’t he bored? Lonely? He must be, right?
“But we can do whatever you like,” he says. “What tickles your fancy?”
How about if you show me beyond a doubt that you’re doing just fine? How about if you hang out with Angela and your other friends, so I know you have a social life? That would all tickle my fancy, for sure.
Of course, I don’t say any of that. Instead, I say, “Let’s start with the pool.”
I step out of my white cover-up, revealing a black halter one-piece. Then I slather SPF 50 on all my exposed skin as Gramps settles himself in a chair under an umbrella.
“Don’t you want to get a suntan?” His face is mildly amused.
“I mean, that would be great, but not at the risk of skin cancer.” I rub vigorously at my arms.
“Oh, that? They just cut those spots off. No big deal.” He’s openly laughing now. “I’ve had two cut off my nose.”
“Ew.” I pause to rummage in my bag, pulling out the tinted SPF I use on my face. “And also, no. You can die from skin cancer. The bad kind.”
“Yes, well.” He looks out across the beach, still smiling. “You have to go some way or other. Might as well be from sitting in the sun.”
I stare at him. I don’t know if he’s joking or not, but even if he’s not joking, how would I respond to that?
He turns back to me and remarks, “Now you look like Casper the friendly ghost.”
I look down at my legs and try rubbing the cream in more, but it’s no use. The sunscreen is merely highlighting my natural pallor.
“I think that crossword puzzle is calling your name.”
“Ah, yes.” He takes a pencil out of his pocket and focuses on the paper.
I slip into the pool, which feels like bathwater. When I was a kid, I didn’t really like swimming, other than to flip my hair upside down and pretend to be George Washington. But this feels amazing, almost as warm as the hot tub. I swim a few lazy laps.
I hear Gramps greeting someone and pause, hanging on to the far wall of the pool. Two women are crossing the pool deck. It’s Angela, dressed in a pale-pink tennis skirt and polo shirt, and another woman dressed similarly, though not entirely to the same effect.
“Hello there,” he says.
“So nice to see you with your granddaughter,” Angela says.
“Oh yes. We’re having a nice weekend together.” All three seniors turn to look at me, treading water in the deep end. I wave my fingers at them.
“Is he showing you a good time?” Angela calls.
“Almost too much,” I say. “Can’t keep up with him. Never knew he was such a firecracker.”
The ladies laugh like I’ve said something truly hilarious.
Gramps smiles, too. I realize, watching him, that I get a heady sense of accomplishment when he does that.
He doesn’t laugh loudly, like Angela and her friend, but he smiles with all his teeth when he’s amused.
I suppose, now that I’m thinking about it, I always wanted to impress him when I was a kid, knowing that he was a brainy academic, a scientist. I realize now that he probably just has a different sense of humor, and it’s nothing to do with his intelligence. But still, I enjoy making him laugh.
They exchange a few more words, and then the ladies wave goodbye and head for the tennis court.
“What did she say?” I ask, swimming closer to where Gramps is sitting.
“Nothing, nothing. They asked if I wanted to join their cinema thing tonight.”
“Cinema thing?”
“It’s movie night. Sunday. They’re showing a Wes Anderson film.”
“That sounds like fun!”
“I don’t care much for Wes Anderson.” He pauses to pencil in a crossword answer. “Or is that Woody Allen? Anyway, I can watch whatever movie I want right in my living room.”
“Right.” I consider pressing the point—after all, I am here to help him, aren’t I?—but I can tell he’s made up his mind. So I climb out of the pool, spread my towel on a lounge chair, and lay out with a book in hand. If nothing else, at least I can work on this Casper situation.
“Did you know this vinegar expired in 2011?” I’m pulling things out of the pantry, slightly distracted from my mission to make dinner for Gramps.
“Vinegar doesn’t go bad,” he says. He’s on the couch, scrolling through the TV guide with one hand and holding a glass with the other. I’d asked if I could make him a cocktail, to which he’d replied, “I’d love one. Seltzer with lime.”
I made the same for myself and decided I would make a pasta dish. I found an unopened box of spaghetti, a jar of minced garlic in the fridge, and a shallot. Now I’m sitting on the kitchen floor surrounded by dry goods that expired anywhere from two to twenty-two years ago.
“This cardamom is older than I am.” I’m only slightly exaggerating.
“I use that in curries,” Gramps calls back.
“When’s the last time you made curry?”
He pauses. “Nineteen ninety-seven.”
This makes me chuckle. I decide I’ve done enough for now, toss the expired things in the trash, and tie up the bag.
“Be right back.”
I take the garbage bag outside to the trash chute in the hall.
The open-air hallway looks out over the grounds, and the sound of laughter drifts up.
I peek over the railing and see a group of seniors walking up the path from the beach, talking loudly.
The sound reminds me of college, when students traveled in packs and felt like whatever was going on between them and their friends was the pinnacle of sophistication and importance.
It makes me nostalgic for that kind of camaraderie.
It also makes me sad for Gramps. These are his peers, his neighbors, his would-be, should-be friends.
I want him to be part of a laughing group. Not holed up in his condo, alone.
After dinner, during which Gramps gamely eats my concoction of spaghetti tossed with garlic, lemon, and some buttered peas I’d found in the freezer, I broach the topic.
“I was thinking, maybe we should go to that movie night.”
“Why?” He rifles in a kitchen drawer and pulls out a peppermint candy. “We can watch a movie here. What do you want to see? I have all the channels.”
“It’s not about the movie exactly. I was thinking…”
He crunches into the peppermint immediately. My mom eats hard candy the same way. It’s hedonistic.
“What I’m trying to say is, don’t you want to make some friends?”
He finishes chomping on the peppermint and then says thoughtfully, “I’ve lived here for over fifteen years. I’m not the new kid in town, Mallory. I have friends. Or Lottie did.”
His last words hang in the air.
“So, do you feel like they were all Lottie’s friends? Is that why you’ve been…” I gesture around his kitchen and living room.
“Compared with her, who would want to see me?” He shrugs and grins, like it’s a throwaway comment.
Lottie did have a habit of stealing the show. She wore bright colors and had a megawatt smile. She also had this way of making each person she talked to feel seen . I always admired that.
“Angela seemed like she wanted to see you.” I raise my eyebrows suggestively. Gramps just looks at me, his face blank. Perhaps it was insensitive of me to suggest a flirtation with another woman mere weeks after the death of his wife of sixty years.
“Sorry,” I add quickly.
He’s quiet for a while, returns to the living room to fetch his empty cocktail glass, and comes back to the kitchen. He opens the fridge and pours some more seltzer into his glass.
“Lottie was a social butterfly. We met at a party—a dance—in Columbus. She was a sophomore coed and I was a graduate student.” He twirls the ice around in his drink.
“I noticed her right away. She was wearing a purple dress and matching purple shoes. She had a magnetic energy around her that made everyone in the vicinity drift toward her. Including me. I didn’t usually ask girls to dance.
Maybe one at each dance, to get my friends off my back.
But Lottie, I had to ask her. And she said—”
“On the condition that we do the mashed potato.” I’ve heard this part of the story a few (hundred) times before.
“I think she thought I wouldn’t know how. Maybe she wanted to get out of dancing with me,” he laughs.
“Not true. She told me that she’d noticed you on the quad and had been stalking you for weeks.”
He seems pleased by this, although he’s heard Lottie’s version plenty of times before. “Yes, she did say that. Maybe it’s true, I don’t know. Personally, I think I won her over with my mashed potato.”
And to my sheer delight, he sets his drink down on the counter and does a slow-motion, old-man version of the dance, shimmying his knees together with his elbows tucked at his sides. I burst into giggles.
“Like this?” I mimic his dance moves.
“Not even close,” he says. “Anyway, it’s better with the song.”
“Okay, wait.” I grab my phone and pull up the song “Mashed Potato Time” by Dee Dee Sharp.
“This is it,” Gramps marvels. “How did you know?”
“I didn’t. The internet did. Okay, now show me.”
He does the moves again, this time picking up the pace until his feet become a blur. I’m stunned. I’ve never seen anybody move their feet so fast.
“Holy… how do you… what ?”
He’s beaming, wagging his head to the beat as his limbs do their own thing, like he’s possessed by the spirit of the 1960s.
“I practiced in my room every night after that dance.” He’s out of breath now. “Just in case Lottie ever asked me to do it again. The first time I just copied what she was doing.”
I try to keep up with him but I end up tripping over my feet and crashing into the counter, which makes us both laugh so hard we have to sit down. We migrate to the couch with our seltzer mocktails. Gramps flips through the channels.
“You leave on Tuesday?”
“Yeah. I have a meeting tomorrow morning with the property manager. Need to figure out the next steps with the house. And then—” I pause. “And then, yeah, I fly out on Tuesday.”
Gramps nods, his eyes on the TV.
“ The Music Man. Lottie and I saw this on our second date.”
“I’ll make some popcorn,” I say.
“Don’t bother. It expired in 2015.”
My appointment with the property manager, Daniel McKinnon, is at nine A.M. Over coffee, Gramps had given me a Pebble Cottage primer of sorts. I drive up Gulf Boulevard, mentally repeating what he’d told me about the house.
New roof, 2006. Exterior painted, 2015. Needs gutters cleaned. Sump pump is—shoot, what did he say about the sump pump?
As I drive up to the house, I’m nervous, like there’s going to be a test. Really, I’m just worried about exposing how little I know about home maintenance.
There’s a white van parked in front of the lawn. An older man wearing coveralls is leaning against it, talking on the phone. He gives me a wave. I’m unsure if he’s the contractor or Daniel, the property manager.
As I pull into the carport, another man rides up on a bike.
That’s right, Daniel was riding a bike during my first phone call with him.
I notice with mild amusement that he’s wearing a skintight cycling outfit, black with neon-yellow accents.
I guess that passes as professional when it’s eighty degrees out and you commute on your bike.
I give him a friendly and, I hope, confident wave as I turn off the car.
“Hey, Daniel,” the contractor calls, walking over to him and pocketing his phone. “Morning, Ms. Rosen.”
“Good morning,” I call back.
But the property manager hasn’t said anything. He’s just standing there, staring at my red Toyota Yaris.
“Morning,” he finally says, and his voice doesn’t sound confident at all. As I start across the yard toward the two men, it’s just dawning on me that Daniel’s face looks familiar. And then he takes off his bike helmet, revealing a head full of tousled hair. Tousled red hair. I stop in my tracks.
Okay, so small towns have their downsides.