Chapter 13 #2
“It was fun?” I asked, but my mind wasn’t on that anymore. I needed to back out of Sophie’s driveway and there didn’t appear to be anyone on her street, but you never knew what was coming, not with all the crazy speeding that went on…holy Mary, that was something Nicola would have said.
He turned around and also checked. “Looks like it’s all clear,” he commented. Brenna, who had parked in front of me, was sticking her head through her window and yelling to ask what was wrong, so I proceeded with caution.
But there was really no rush, because he and I both had the day free.
Granger’s garage was closed on Sundays and Theo had returned to his fake New Year’s resolution of leaving work at work, although I could see that it was hard for him to do so.
He still texted back and emailed, because he knew that patients and their families needed to hear from him, and he didn’t feel like he could leave them hanging.
He was trying to batch things, though, and have more defined parameters of when he was available.
We were heading up to the cabin to see what Keon had accomplished lately. I was still going almost every day, sometimes very early in the morning or late at night, but Theo hadn’t visited in a while and I was excited for him to see the progress.
“What was the speech thing that Addie mentioned?” he asked me as I proceeded slowly down the block.
Brenna was behind me and, in my opinion, a little too close for comfort.
I waved at her in the mirror to stay back but she and her husband only waved in return, as if I’d been saying hi to them.
“What was the problem that she thinks your school should have caught?”
“When I was little, I had trouble pronouncing some things. I said ‘Soapy,’ for example, instead of ‘Sophie.’ It drove her crazy, and there were a few other sounds that I also couldn’t do. I substituted different ones to get the words out.”
“That’s very common in children. Speech development is really interesting,” he mentioned, and I remembered how he had thought about becoming a pediatrician. “Most kids grow out of it by the time they start kindergarten.”
“I didn’t grow out of it, not until my late teens and only because I practiced a lot on my own. Sometimes I still say things funny and if I know that a hard sound is coming, I’ll slow down before I have to get it out.”
“I’ve heard you do that,” he said. “It’s just an extra half-beat before a word.”
“You’re a good listener. Regina told me how you hear things that your patients might want to hide from you.” I sighed, because I had been trying to make friends with her again, but it was a slow and difficult process.
“Your mom and dad missed your speech impairment just like they missed your vision problems.”
“Part of that was because I didn’t talk very much.
In a big family, you don’t really have to,” I explained.
“I kept my thoughts to myself most of the time. I don’t think either of my parents really heard me speak for years, and after Nicola moved out, I didn’t talk that much to anyone.
Oh, I should put this on the list. Can you remind me to add ‘poor pronunciation’ when we stop? ”
“I hate that list. I really, really hate it.”
I had told him about all the “Grace Fixes” that I required, at least, the ones in my phone.
The mental list had a lot that related to him and I planned to keep it to myself.
There were so many things I had gathered from my siblings, from old friends that I had texted, and from issues that I had been noticing lately in myself.
For example? My poor driving. It was only fairly recently that I had begun to see it as a problem.
“What’s wrong with my list?” I asked. As I spoke, I took my foot off the accelerator because we were approaching a stop sign, and Brenna got way too close again. She was turning instead of going straight like we were, and she pulled up next to the truck and gestured at Theo to roll down the window.
“Bye, Grandma,” she yelled at me, and made a quick right. Much too quick, in my opinion.
“The intersection is clear,” he noted in his quiet way, and I proceeded through it. “Your list is too long.”
He only knew about the one in my phone and according to my sisters, that wasn’t long enough. Just today, Sophie had thought of something else. “Grace, did you put down how you always miss the garbage can when you throw away your used floss? It’s disgusting,” she’d mentioned.
Theo also thought of that now. “I think it’s great that you floss your teeth so regularly, because many people don’t,” he told me. “You probably missed the trash because you couldn’t see where the string was falling.”
“I really couldn’t,” I agreed, but I had added my sister’s suggestion to my phone because I wanted to fix all of it.
“I think it’s been a great resource for me.
Not the floss, although that is wonderful as a preventative against periodontitis, but my list. Like, it’s so helpful to have ‘humming’ written there as a reminder to stop.
” Brenna had suggested that I add it, saying that I hummed all the time under my breath and someone might eventually kill me because of it.
“I don’t mind your humming,” he told me. “There are too many things that you’re calling wrong and you have to change, but everybody has faults to fix.”
“You don’t.”
“Holy hell, of course I do! Remember how my car used to look?” He glanced into the back seat of this truck, as if he was remembering the trash that had been in his other vehicle. “I have more faults than I can count.”
“No,” I disagreed.
“Yes, and here’s another. I’m terrible about packing my lunch for work. If I didn’t put reminders in my phone, I’d eat crackers with plastic cheese from the vending machine every day. I also talk back to the TV when I watch hockey.”
“‘That’s tripping!’” I said, imitating him, and he smiled.
“There were some terrible calls last night.”
“Those aren’t real problems, though,” I told him. “They don’t mean anything.”
“And yours do? What does Brenna care if you hum? She doesn’t have to hear it very often because you don’t live together anymore.”
“Humming is a sign of something bigger, just like missing the trash can with my floss. I’m showing everyone that I don’t care about them.”
“Floss on the ground shows that you don’t care?”
“Yes, because I should have known that my siblings who also used that bathroom would find it disgusting. I was already aware that Brenna hated my humming, because she’s never been shy about sharing her feelings when things annoy her.”
“She also shared that you’re wearing her coat right now. She didn’t like that at all.”
I would return it later, but she had allowed me to keep it for today while we toured the cabin. Things had progressed but there was still no heat. There were still no windows, in fact, and no walls in many places where they really were important.
“I must have done things to annoy you when we were living together. In fact, I know that I did.” He sounded a little triumphant. “I came to dinner late almost every night.”
I nodded, because that was true. “You were late because you were so busy helping others, though,” I answered. “It wasn’t really fair for me to be mad about that. I wanted you to have a good meal and I was being selfish in wanting your company.” And that was something else to add.
“Grace, if you put ‘selfish’ on your list, I’m going to delete it,” he informed me. “You’re not.”
“I get told that all the time. Addie is the sweetest, Nicola is bossy, Sophie is smart, Brenna is a brat. I’m selfish because I don’t care about my sisters and I only do what I want,” I recited. “They’ve said it many times and it’s nice.”
“That’s nice?” Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed him shaking his head. “No, it isn’t.”
“I mean that it’s nice how we all have our place in the family. I’m the selfish one.” I stared intently at the car ahead of us in our lane. “Do you think that woman is impaired?”
“Looks like she’s eating fries as she drives. Nothing to worry about,” he answered.
I wanted to focus and so, much like when I was a child, I kept my mouth shut and we rode mostly in silence the rest of the way to the cabin. As he had previously predicted, the driveway had turned to mud, with deep ruts from the many heavy vehicles that traversed it every day.
“Keon’s going to work on this next week,” he noted. “Starting Monday. He’s afraid that one of the subs will get stuck in this mess.”
I nodded and didn’t say that on Friday, the plumber’s assistant had already gotten stuck and it had been a huge chore to get him out.
Theo wasn’t fully aware of all the time I was still spending up here because we weren’t fully spending time together, either.
For one thing, I had my new job, to which I was fully devoted.
I was showing up for it every day and not coming late or following an alternative schedule that I’d created on my own.
And despite his fake New Year’s resolution to limit himself, he was arriving early and leaving late at his office, which was reported to me by Pinar.
It all meant that we weren’t spending as much time together, certainly not as much as when we were sharing this cabin and the nice rental in Detroit.
He was still living in that rental but I was in another temporary place (a room leased out by my friend Harry Bailly).
Theo and I were seeing each other, though—that was what it was, all it was, and that was what we both wrote in the various group chats when my siblings and their significant others asked what the heck was going on with the two of us.
They weren’t shy in expressing their desire to know.