Chapter 49
Greta
After saying goodbye, I went upstairs to my room, grabbed a piece of paper, and wrote down the word confrontation.
The idea of it was spinning around and around in my head.
Never had I been so conscious of the antagonism between people.
My blindfold had fallen off and there was no way to put it back on.
I could if I didn’t care, the way I don’t care about Taylor.
I could if I were the same person I was months ago.
But not now…and not with Will.
Two days have passed, and still, confrontation is all I can think about. I’ve taken shelter in Grandpa’s house because I needed to get away from the noise, from my worries about my mother, from the talk I need to have with Dad, from Will and his issues.
In a trance, I watch Grandpa with his chisels.
He’s making a jewelry box for the neighbor at the end of the street, out of limewood I presume, because that’s the wood whose texture he likes best. Sometimes he works in cherry or walnut, or oak or poplar, but those are all harder.
After all these years watching him work, I know each and every one of his movements: the way he runs the file over the edges, how precisely he cuts his straight lines, how delicately he works with the sandpaper and sponge.
“How long are you going to sit there watching me?”
I don’t respond. I just hold my glass of warm milk and let it heat up my hands. Grandpa’s a few yards away at his worktable. I’m in a chair close to the wall.
“Greta…”
“I’m thinking,” I say.
“Now?”
“Not just now. I’ve been thinking since I got here.”
“You’ve been thinking for two days?”
“Yeah.”
Grandpa sighs and picks up a different tool. “You want to talk about it?”
I know this was hard for him to ask. He’s not the type to dig.
He’s the waiting type. The last time we had a major talk like this was when I forced him to tell me what he thought of Will after they both came over for dinner.
He’s got a good heart. But he’s got a mixed-up head, he said.
I think he was right, but back then I was trying to ignore the glaring evidence.
“I’m feeling mixed up,” I say.
“Why?”
“Because I’d like things to be different, but if I ignore reality, it’ll only get worse.” I’m feeling my way, putting this into words.
“We’re talking about Will, I suppose?” he says without looking up.
“I don’t want to mess it up. It’s important.”
Grandpa continues carving. “What’s got you worried, then?”
“That he’s with me for the wrong reasons.”
“He’s got things he needs to take care of,” Grandpa guesses.
“Yeah. Quite a bit. And he should have done it while I was dealing with my things, with the Map of Longing and all. But…”
“It’s not easy for two people to meet on the right road at the right time.”
“Exactly.” I look at the wood shavings on the garage floor, lying there with no idea that a broom will soon sweep them up and they’ll be gone.
And life’s that way too, I think. And so is love.
What Grandpa said is true, it’s hard for two people to meet in the same place at the same time for the same reasons.
And if they don’t, what happens? What happens when you’re in love with someone and they’re not walking at the same pace as you?
Or when they’re like Will and they’re at a standstill, and you don’t know whether they’re just gathering their strength or whether they’ll be stuck there forever. “Grandpa, did you always know?”
“Are we still talking about love?”
“Yeah, we’re still talking about love.”
“Then no, Greta, of course I didn’t. And it wasn’t always easy, either. I was wrong many times, and we had our disagreements, and we argued the way all couples do.”
“Do you regret it?”
He puts down his tools and looks at me with a grave expression, and I know he’s about to say something important.
“My mistakes, maybe, but if I hadn’t made them, I wouldn’t be human.
Do I regret not always meeting in the middle?
No. I mean, I guess it would be nice to tell you if I could go back in time and see your grandmother and she told me the sky was green, then I’d agree, but think about it: Would I be doing her any favors?
Probably the opposite. Being someone’s companion in life isn’t easy because you know each other best and that includes knowing each other’s strengths and weaknesses.
The good moments are happy, and the bad ones…
They tell you whether you’ve got a strong bond and whether you know each other well enough to admit and accept your imperfections. ”
That’s probably the most words Grandpa’s ever uttered at one time. I squeeze my now-cold glass.
“Thanks,” I whisper.
“Anyway.” He picks up his chisel again. “I need you to tell me if you’re planning to stay here much longer because I’ll have to go get groceries.”
I shake my head and smile. “I’ll be gone soon. I think.”
“All right. If you change your mind…”
“You’ll be the first person I tell.” I get up and kiss his soft, wrinkly cheek.
Then I reach into the back pocket of my pants and take out the letter I grabbed before leaving.
It’s in a pale blue envelope. I hand it to him.
He looks at it, perplexed for a moment, then his face soon changes, softens—the corners of his lips fall, his eyes glimmer, and his hands freeze, as if he’s forgotten everything else around him.
“For me?” His voice is gravelly.
“Yeah. I finished the game. Lucy left it for you.”
His hand’s trembling. He’s so excited, so nervous… I tell him I’ll leave him alone so he can have some privacy, but he can’t hear me. He’s too busy tearing away the envelope. I smile and walk out of the garage.
The sky is pearl gray. I walk inside, to the room upstairs that Grandpa keeps for me, and put everything I brought here back into my backpack.
It’s time to get my life in order.
I go back home, but nobody’s there. I take a long shower and dry my hair, looking in the mirror, focusing on the parts of my body I don’t usually want to see.
Then I go downstairs. There’s a pizza in the freezer.
I put it in the oven. I’ve barely eaten in two days because I’ve been so worried, and now I’m starving.
I’ve just taken it out when Dad walks through the door.
“Greta…” His keys are still in his hand as he walks into the kitchen. “I’m glad you’re back. I was worried about you.”
“How so?”
“I just don’t want you to be suffer because of this.”
Any thoughts of forgiveness suddenly vanish. I don’t bother trying to understand. I just ask, “What about Mom? You don’t care if she suffers?”
“I do.”
“Seriously?”
“Greta, I love your mother. Maybe not the same way I used to years ago, but I do love her the way you love the people who matter in your life. Maybe you don’t believe me, but I wish everything had been different. It’s just that sometimes…” He trails off.
I don’t say anything, either. I look down at my pizza: the tomato sauce, the rings of olives, the sliced mushrooms, the stringy cheese—everything’s had to go through a process, that’s the only way it can all fit together.
I look up at him and remind him of when he told me Mom had been his lighthouse in the storm.
“She is. She still is, but things have changed, and she knows that too. It would be easier to blame it all on someone else, but that’s not true, really.
We’ve been exhausted for years. When life takes so much from you, sometimes the person next to you reminds you of all that you’ve lost. Your mother needs to start from zero, and so do I. ”
I nod, but I’m depressed, and I imagine my parents in a way I never saw them: when they met at that party, and she was all dressed up, and he was so elegant and handsome.
They dance and laugh till the wee hours.
He moves to Ink Lake to be closer to her.
Then she’s pregnant: I watch her belly grow, and I know it’s Lucy inside her.
And one day that tiny, perfect baby comes into the world.
They must have been so happy. At least until they had me because my birth and my sister’s cancer will always be fatefully intertwined.
I see the sweet moments mixed with the bitter: UTIs, pneumonia, desquamation, jaundice.
Work, hospitals, a weariness so extreme that I can’t even grasp how they could hold up through the end, the day we buried my sister and had to stand there, powerless, staring at the tombstone that read: Lucy, today the stars shine brighter with you in the sky.
“So now what?” I ask.
“I don’t know. We’ll take it one step at a time. You’ll go to Europe, your mother will go back to work…” He grins. I can tell he’s happy for her.
“Everything’s changed so much.”
“Yeah.” He nods. “Everything’s changed.”
I put a slice of pizza on a plate for him and then get one for myself. As we chew, we seem to be reaching some kind of truce. When I’m no longer hungry, I tell him to wait and go to my room to get the red envelope Lucy left for him. He’s still in the kitchen when I hand it to him.
His expression is different from Grandpa’s. Not sweet. But heart-rending. His eyes fill with tears and they slide down his cheeks in silence. He doesn’t open it immediately. He runs his fingers over Lucy’s tiny handwritten letters, two D’s, one A, Dad.
I don’t leave. He doesn’t ask me to. I just sit there until he decides to open the envelope and take out the letter.
It’s long. He cries as he reads it, but slowly, that anguish on his face turning to something resembling serenity.
I don’t know what the words are, but I can see their effect clearly, and when he’s done, he puts the paper away carefully.
“You okay?” I dare to ask.
“Yeah. Your sister was very special.”
“I know.” I nod.
“You are too.”
“I mean…”
“Come here, Grasshopper.”
I don’t move, but he does, getting up to pull me into his chest. He feels solid.
Memories come like a deluge: Dad playing with the two of us on the living room floor, Dad humming while he cooks, Dad at Lucy’s bedside with a deck of cards in hand, Dad planting Mom’s favorite flowers in the garden, Dad fighting with the insurance people on the phone, Dad taking me to the skating rink…
It’s true what Will told me one day.
We’re all versions of ourselves.