Chapter Sıx
Chapter
six
“NO, GRANDMA, JENSEN WON’T BE coming over today. Remember, we broke up?”
“You broke up?” Her eyes went glassy. “Why?”
We sat in my room at my desk. I hooked up the headphones and microphones and powered them on, making sure everything was properly plugged into the soundboard.
“Long story, Grandma.” And regardless of the things I was doing to get back at him, like the call Max had placed after school on Monday, leaving a bad review at his work, making him pay was still the first thing I thought about when I woke up. It didn’t help that the gossip and comments hadn’t settled at school even though it had been almost a week.
She flipped the headphones over but didn’t put them on. “I like long stories.”
It hadn’t occurred to me at first, but I now realized that at this stage in my grandma’s illness this would be a story I was going to have to tell over and over again. So far, I had told her every day since Friday. It was now Wednesday. And yet my stomach still clenched as I said it. “He didn’t care about me. That’s the bottom line.”
“Of course he did, honey. He told me he did all the time.”
“But at the end of the day, when he had to show it, he proved that words are just words. Actions are more important.”
“Actions are very important,” she said.
“Let’s talk about you now,” I said, ready to change the subject. Maybe this would help me forget about my problems for at least a little while. I put my headphones on, and she followed suit.
My interviews with my grandma were a history of her life. We’d talked about her parents and their love story and what she remembered about them; then we’d moved on to her and her childhood. Her early school years. We’d left off with her moving with her family to California from the Midwest when she turned fourteen and how out of place she’d felt.
“How long did it take you to make friends once you were here, Grandma?”
“We moved into this little yellow house by the beach. You’ve seen it.” Grandma always played with the cord of the headphones when she talked. Sometimes it made a scratchy sound on the recording that I had to minimize in edits.
“I have. It was so cute.”
“I miss that house.”
“Did you love it right from the start?”
“I didn’t love anything about this place from the start. I missed my friends and my grandparents. I missed the trees and how it would get so cold in the winter that I could feel it in my bones. I didn’t feel that here. Every day I would go out to the beach and wish I was back at my old house in my old life.”
“The Pacific Ocean is very offended by that,” I said with a smile.
“The ocean got over it years ago,” she joked back.
“What happened to change your feelings about this place?”
“Time, I guess. And exploring. I’d spend hours in the rocks and tidepools. Sometimes the sand on the hill was smooth like glass and I’d slide down it on my bare feet, leaving trails behind me. During off season, I’d sit on the deck of one of the locked lifeguard towers and watch the surfers. It was there I met a surfer named Andrew for the first time. He walked over, his board tucked under his arm, and asked if I was ready to save him should the need arise.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said, I’m not equipped to save anyone. We’d both end up drowning. Then he said, So you’d just watch me go down. I responded with I’d scream, at the very least. ”
I laughed. “A very morbid first conversation, Grandma.”
“He liked to joke around, I learned. It was part of his personality. Everyone seemed to know and like him. He’d secure us free baked goods from the shopkeepers and free boat rides.”
“You went on boat rides with strangers?”
“Yes, especially during whale-watching season. The wind was cold and would whip through my hair as I stood searching the water for them. We once went on a fishing boat too and helped pull up traps. It was a different time.”
“Not that different. Never go on boat rides with strangers, listeners.”
“Who is listening?” Grandma asked. “Anyone we know?”
“Basically Mom,” I said. “Maybe Corey if he’s not too busy forus.”
“Hi, Corey,” Grandma said. “Come visit me.”
“He was just here,” I said.
Grandma was thoughtful for a moment. I’d edit out her silence later. It was interesting to me how she could remember her childhood in detail but last week was hard for her. The doctor said that was typical of her illness.
“Tell me more about this surfer,” I prompted. “It sounds like you became friends.”
“Yes, we did. He was a firecracker.”
“Like you?” I asked.
She patted my hand. “Like you, baby girl. Keep your explosive spirit. It will help you make your dreams come true.”
I swallowed, a lump rising up my throat. Maybe I wasn’t like my grandma thought because all my dreams seemed to be slipping through my fingers. Maybe I’d never had a tight hold on them to begin with. “I’m trying, Grandma.”
“I know you are.”
I shifted the subject back to her. “So, uh, Andrew?”
“That first meeting was an entire year after we moved here. I was fifteen. I would walk the beach as the sun rose, and he was out there nearly every morning. I’d end up at that lifeguard tower, watching. He was like a skater on ice, graceful and athletic.”
“Sounds like he was a pro or something.”
“He was very good. I didn’t think he noticed me. But then he came out of the water, asking me if I’d save him. Months later, he approached me again with his board and said, Do you want to take it for a spin? I said, I don’t know how to surf. He said, You learn things by trying them, not by watching them. ”
I took her hand in mine because she was twisting the cord again and I didn’t want the feedback. “What did you say?”
“I said, I learn things faster with a teacher. ”
“Grandma, you were a flirt,” I said with a laugh.
“He was very handsome and I hadn’t experienced much rejection yet, so I was bold.”
“Is that what makes us less bold? Rejection?”
She met my eyes, and it was like her soul could see into mine. “It certainly has the ability to make us second-guess ourselves, doubt our abilities. Don’t you think?”
I nodded, which was such a rookie podcast move. Listeners couldn’t hear a nod. “Yes, I agree,” I said, finding my voice.
“But I was fifteen and I thought I could conquer the world,” she said.
“What did he say when you implied he should teach you?”
“He said, I’m an excellent teacher. And he was.” She pointed to some pictures I had up on my wall of me and Deja and Lee and Maxwell. “Can you get my pictures, hon? I have some from that summer.”
I cringed. I hated reminding her of this fact, but she forgot often. “Um, you had a house fire and lost your pictures.” She seemed to be having a good memory day today, so I thought she could handle thatnews.
“Oh…right. My surfboard? That wasn’t in the fire. I can show you that.”
“Uh…I don’t think you had a surfboard,” I said. I didn’t even know my grandma had ever surfed. This was the first I was hearing about it. “Did you actually learn how to surf that summer?”
“I did have one,” she said. “Andrew gave it to me. He’d painted on it. It was beautiful. I had it.”
Sometimes she went from zero to agitated really fast, and I sensed that was going to happen now. “You did,” I said, trying to appease her. “I don’t know where it is.”
She settled a bit. “I better go ask Debra if she’s seen it.” Debra was my mom. Grandma took off her headphones and left me sitting there at the desk.
“That’s it for today,” I said. Her exit might’ve been abrupt for me, but I needed to make it a little less so for my audience. “Thanks for listening. If you have any questions you’d like to ask my grandma, feel free to DM me on my linked socials.” I almost felt stupid saying that. My family could text me if they wanted Grandma to answer specific questions. They’d yet to do that.
I stopped the recording, then went back and listened to it from the beginning to make edits. The episode was about ten minutes. Keep them short to match people’s attention spans was my thinking. But that strategy obviously hadn’t helped. No new listeners were adding my podcast to their queues. Nobody was stumbling upon it. Not that I thought my grandma’s story was a gripping tale, but I did think, even by accident, that it might get a few more listens.
My stats hadn’t budged, though. Two whole listeners had heard the last episode.
I sighed as my recorded voice said another uh. I needed to curb my use of filler words. And when had I started laughing like that?
There was a knock at my door followed by my mom stepping into my room. “What’s so funny in here?” she asked, obviously having heard my attempts to rerecord the perfect laugh.
“How come nobody told me I laugh like a hyena?”
“What?”
I pointed to my recording equipment.
“I love your laugh. It’s cute.” She kissed the top of my head.
“Real-life cute, not on-air cute.”
“Not sure what that means,” she said. “But Dad made dinner. It’s ready.”
“Okay, I’ll be right there.”
She walked back to the door. “Don’t fake your laugh,” she said, and then was gone.
I listened one more time to the replacement laughs I had recorded. I decided on one, then meticulously blended it into the existing dialogue. “Yes, better,” I said when I listened this time.
I stared at the publish button, ready to release the episode into the world, but I paused. What was the point? I could just email it tomy mom and brother. They were the only ones who cared.
I closed my computer without pushing publish.