Chapter 15 #2
“I hate how you go on and on and on!” she’d screamed once. “You never talk about anything real. Living with you is like shouting into a void.”
Of course, she’d only accused him of that after he found out she was screwing his best friend and before that, a string of other guys, off and on, for pretty much their whole relationship—during which time he’d been so totally, pathetically, stupidly happy.
Trying to sound matter-of-fact, not overly morose, he explained as much to Madeline.
“Sounds to me like an excuse, a way to justify her own bad behavior, more than any flaw in your actual topics of conversation.”
Grant’s head jerked up. “You think?”
“Well, yeah. How could Holly fault you for not talking about anything “real” when she was the furthest thing from that herself?”
It was a small revelation for Grant—and no less a miracle than the patch of bare floor that suddenly came into view as Madeline stuffed another stack of recycling into a bag.
She turned to a new mountain of clothes, then paused mid-fold of a pair of pants that could’ve fit two or three of Grant’s skinny father, so obviously hadn’t been his.
“I didn’t mean to imply you talk too much.
Having someone to talk with . . . Well, it’s one of the reasons I decided to help you, but I do like quiet too. ”
Grant smiled. “Ah, a bit of the mystery becomes clear then.”
Madeline cocked her head, not getting it.
“You accidentally let slip one of the reasons you’re helping me—didn’t just add to your list of things that are not why you’re helping.”
Madeline laughed. “Good catch. I’d better be more careful, or you’ll discover all my secrets.”
Discovering all Madeline’s secrets. That sounded perfect to Grant, but he was starting to know Madeline a bit by now and figured saying anything remotely like that would make her retreat.
He decided now was as good a time as any to transfer the full bags to the back of his truck to get them out of their way permanently.
He inched his way through the path in the hallway with two bags in each hand, completely disagreeing with her.
He was not “good” to spend a lot of time in his head.
He loved it when they were together, sharing their heads.
When he returned to grab the next batch of full bags, she looked up. “You never need to feel embarrassed around me. Not about anything.”
She had misread his quick exit entirely.
And maybe it was presumptuous or a bit patronizing of her to assume he felt embarrassed.
Or was it? Tone said so much, and hers was matter-of-fact, not condescending.
And he did often feel embarrassed and ashamed of himself.
Meanwhile, she was already ignoring him and intent on folding the next article of clothing in the new mountain that barely looked changed, despite how many bags had gone out.
“Thanks,” he said finally. “Back at you.”
She smiled and nodded. Then she held a raggedy pair of bagged out, holey long underwear against her body and did a little dance. “Whaddya think? Are they me, or what?”
“Definitely you. Definitely.”
Something about the afternoon caused a subtle but seismic shift between them.
Over the next days, as Madeline continued to blow his mind by joining him every evening after her store closed, they began to talk more and more, the way they had that first night at his house.
It wasn’t alcohol that softened their natural reserve with each other now, though.
It was the fact that they really were becoming . . . friends.
They ate take-out dinners together, alternating who chose what food and picked it up—him insisting on paying only because she refused to take any kind of wage for her work, and it was almost literally the least he could do.
They took Grover—and Boots, weird walkable cat!
—for walks to give the pets exercise and provide themselves with a break from the house’s musty confines.
They even started listening to an audiobook together, limiting it to just a few chapters a day because they were both enjoying the story so much they wanted to prolong it.
And through it all, Grant managed, mostly successfully, to keep his memories of their physical chemistry and the sizzling kiss they’d shared pushed to the furthest recesses of his mind.
Madeline herself helped with this because, while she was friendly, she was also cool and collected.
It was obvious to him that their so-called “moment” had been one-sided.
One night, Madeline came across a box of extra bulletins leftover from his father’s funeral.
Grant was to blame for this particular addition to the glut of stuff in the house, though Madeline didn’t seem to have a low opinion of him for it.
After confirming the box only contained said bulletins and sliding three pristine copies into a plastic tote with a taped label that read “Personal paper mementos – KEEP,” she added the remaining ones to a blue recycling bag.
It was just one of countless many that they’d already filled—and one that Grant would take with him and drop off as he did every night when they were done because of Madeline’s very sensible conviction that there was no purpose in moving stuff into recycling bags, only to keep them around clogging up the place.
She was busy with a new pile of miscellanea when she spoke softly. “Your dad hasn’t been gone long. This process must feel very raw.”
“It does, and it doesn’t,” Grant admitted.
“We were estranged for a long time—had only reconnected a little, like to the level of having lunch once every couple weeks or so, in the year before he died. I keep telling myself that should make it easier.” He broke off with a shrug, feeling like a weak idiot.
But Madeline was slowly shaking her head. “Not at all. Sometimes I think death hits harder when there’s . . . unresolved stuff.”
Grant glanced over at her. Was that the source of Madeline’s sorrow? Not just loss, but guilt and confusion, like he sometimes felt? “Yeah, maybe.”
A day or two later, Grant came in from outside, where he’d been directing a local salvage company to drop a massive scrap bin that they’d pick up again once he and Madeline had filled it—another one of Madeline’s ideas: to remove metal in significant quantities, rather than by inconsequential pickup load after pickup load that hardly made a dent.
The money he got for the scrap wouldn’t be much, but it would help cover the dump’s tipping fees, at least. He was embarrassed that he hadn’t thought of it himself.
He poked around on the main floor but didn’t see her.
And he checked the laundry room. No luck.
Her van was still outside, though. He’d passed it on his way in, so it wasn’t like she’d left for the evening without saying goodbye.
Finally, he wound his way into the smallest bedroom instead of merely sticking his head in and giving a cursory glance over the piles of stuff.
And there he found her. Sitting on the floor, almost inside the box-filled closet, a packet of old photographs in her lap.
Her face was blotchy with tears. She was oblivious to them—or maybe just didn’t care if he saw her cry.
“You guys were happy once,” she said simply, passing Grant a picture.
In it, his twelve-ish self, shirtless and skinny, his sister in rubber boots and a floral print bikini—that Grant still remembered because it was her first one and she was so proud of it—and their dad stood on a riverbank, side by side.
They all wore wide grins, proud as punch of the row of rainbow trout laid out on the gravel in front of them.
It was a great picture, and now that Grant saw it, he remembered the day—a perfect one—like it was just last week.
Where did time go? Something else occurred to him. He waved the photo at Madeline.
“That makes you sad?”
She laughed a little and wiped her face with her sweatshirt’s sleeve—a tad self-conscious now, Grant thought and regretted bringing attention to her tears.
“No, it just made me remember happy times of my own. We—Lyle, Lauren, and I—had so much fun together. I even have my own catch-of-the-day photo somewhere.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Well, not sorry. Happy you had the memory, but you know . . .”
“Yeah, well . . . ” Madeline trailed off and handed him another small stack of photos. “Another batch for the Keeper box. It’s just behind you, by the door.”
Grant motioned at another pile of photographs beside her, the top one a nondescript blur of grainy gray. “What about those?”
She shrugged. “You can go through them, of course, but I don’t think you’ll want any of them.
They’re either overexposed or just blah.
No people. No buildings or scenery that really show anything.
I have a stack of maybes, though, over there.
” She pointed to a chair. “Those I didn’t feel comfortable culling until you look through them. ”
Grant put the keeper photos into their box, then scooped up the discards and deposited them in a black garbage bag also near the door, trusting Madeline’s discretion totally.
“You’re really good at this.”
She looked up, and he noticed that when she’d rubbed her damp face, her sleeve had left a smear of dust. He wanted to hug her and wipe her face and never give her reason to cry anymore. “Good at what?”
“You know.” He gestured to encompass the whole of the room but meant far more than that. “I was just treading water, barely making progress, till you leaped in like The Flash.”
“The what now?”
“You know . . . The Flash. A superhero.”
“I know The Flash is a superhero, and I’m glad you’re finally starting to recognize the worthiness of superheroes as reference points, but how and why is that me?”
Grant grinned. “You really don’t know?”
“Are you referring to my hot flashes? You know about those?”