Chapter 11 A Man Wearing a Literal Boa #3
“Groff was his first crush. Along with Ripley from Alien,” Lainey interrupted. Elliot’s bright red face looked at her askance.
“Those are two very fine choices.” Gran passed Elliot the box. “This is everything I still have of his. It’s not much, but you might find it interesting.”
Elliot set the box on the hood and removed the lid carefully. “Are these his sketchbooks?”
Gran nodded her head. “The man loved to draw. Late into the night. Sometimes until three or four in the morning. He needed all of the lights on for it. It was actually very irritating. He was an odd man. And quite selfish. But brilliant, of course.”
Elliot’s fingers hovered over the paper reverently. “I still can’t believe you actually knew him.”
“I did, and I didn’t. He didn’t let anyone really know him.
It was a little sad, honestly. At his memorial service, his loved ones weren’t regaling each other with stories of their time with him.
Everyone was asking questions. As if someone else in the room held the answers as to why this figure, who loomed so large in all of their lives, remained such a mystery.
” Gran’s voice had the tenor of a woman dispensing wisdom, though Lainey wasn’t sure what she had to learn from an old recluse who drew all night with no regard for others’ sleep cycles.
“But we all have his scribbles,” she continued. “The important works are maintained in his exhibit at the Groff Retreat, but he left these for me. I do hope you’ll find some inspiration in them.”
Lainey worried Elliot might faint. “I get to take these?”
“I haven’t looked at them since the lawyer gave them to me. I think Vincent would appreciate my gifting them to a true fan of…” She reconsidered her words. “Actually, I don’t think he’d appreciate it very much at all, but he gave them to me, so he doesn’t get to have an opinion.”
Elliot swallowed hard as his eyes glistened in the last of the evening sun. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t need to say anything. Just promise me that if you find something valuable in there, you’ll let me know. I’ve recently gotten into the Home Shopping Network, and I have four more payments on my countertop ice maker.”
Lainey made a mental note to send Gran money the moment she could get her hands on some.
Gran kissed her on both cheeks and then hooked her arm in Elliot’s as he walked her up the path to her door.
He held the box so tightly, like the items inside—whatever they might be—were treasures to him.
Without his having to say a word, Lainey knew to step to the driver’s side and let him ride in the passenger’s seat on the way home.
Sure, it was his truck, but he’d just been connected to his childhood hero.
He couldn’t be expected to wait until they got home.
“Your grandmother is a really special person,” he said. His voice was warm and gentle, like the sun streaming in through the window, dappling his cheeks in soft yellow light.
“Thanks. I think so, too.” The compliment landed squarely in her chest. Gran wasn’t perfect, but she was remarkable. Lainey liked when other people noticed what was so extraordinary about the woman who’d raised her.
She liked that Elliot noticed.
“Are you paying for that place she stays in?” he asked.
“Partially, yeah. She was a modern-ballet dancer with a touring company for years. She danced until her body fell apart and she had to move back to Wisconsin. She’s had multiple knee replacements and now needs a new hip, but that’s a whole other story.
She sued a chain restaurant a while back—I can’t say which one for legal reasons—and we thought that would cover all of it, and it seemed like the right move at the time, but there’s just a million tiny little costs to everything.
It’s like death by a thousand paper cuts, but the papers are medical bills and overdraft statements and garbage fees, and did you know that there is a yearly maintenance fee for the shuffleboard courts? ”
“Seriously?” he responded, adequately enraged on her behalf. “They can’t stand to let the ten-off zone get a little chippy?”
Lainey felt her brows draw together.
“It’s what the tip of the triangle is called,” he explained, his cheeks pinkening.
“I’m still getting to know you, so I can’t tell if you knowing the specifics of a game played almost exclusively by eighty-year-olds is incredibly on-brand or off-.”
His eyes flashed with a mix of amusement and barely concealed irritation.
“Sometimes it feels like I’ll never get on top of all of my money problems.” She let her confession fall out the window and tumble into the wind like a leaf.
“I should probably tell you…” Lainey started.
Elliot was combing through a leather-bound journal in the seat next to her, his hair thwipping in the breeze of the open window.
“The clerk’s reaction, back at the gas station, was not… entirely unwarranted.”
“What does that mean?” he asked.
There was something about staring down the highway with another person that hit her system like a highly potent truth serum. She’d probably give up everything if he asked the right questions.
“It means that Gran has a propensity for stealing convenience store candy. Rolos, specifically. Occasionally, Riesens. Caramellos in a pinch.”
“And the place on Peach Street…” He paused, piecing it together.
“…Is a Kwik Trip where I have a deal with the owner. I do four hours of free maintenance on their cursed car wash every month, and in exchange, they pretend not to notice that Gran is cleaning them out of chocolate caramel candies.”
“Why?”
“Why do I cover for her?”
“I know why you cover for her. She’s your grandmother, and you don’t want her to go to jail. But why candy? Or is stealing something she’s always done?”
“No,” she answered quickly. “She’s never been afraid to take advantage of an opportunity, but she’s never been a thief.
I think she was used to being noticed. She’s always had a presence.
As she’s gotten older, that spotlight has…
dimmed. People don’t notice her the way they used to.
Just as a human. Like with that clerk. He wanted her to leave, and yet he never even spoke to her.
Like she was a child. I think being able to take things from those people, insignificant things, reclaims some of her power. ”
“I can’t imagine her going unnoticed. She’s one of those people who has their own gravitational pull. You both do.”
He said it like an objective observation.
Heat rushed to her cheeks. No one had ever described her tendency to take up space with such reverence before.
She wasn’t sure what to make of that sort of compliment, so she took the simplest course of action: she stared at the highway and pretended not to have heard him.
When she didn’t respond, he added, “She reminds me a little of my grandmother.”
“Is your grandmother also on the razor’s edge of a rap sheet?”
“She was law-abiding, as far as I know.” His voice pitched down the way it did when he smirked.
“She had this way of absorbing the negative energy in the room and transforming it into something better. Just walking into her house made me feel calmer. Like I didn’t need to be so hypervigilant and I could just exist for a little while.
When you were with her, you knew she had you, you know? ”
Even without looking, Lainey could tell that Elliot was offering a rare glimpse of himself. She had the urge to pull over simply to stare at him—to watch the way his face transformed as he let her in—but she knew that something about observing the act of his disclosure would inherently alter it.
The desire to know more about this man sprinted up her chest, but she forced it back down.
Art and people were much the same. They had to reveal themselves to you in their own time.
If she forced it, sure, she might learn some things, but not the right things.
Not the true things. And despite herself, she only wanted to know the true things about Elliot.
“She sounds like she was a special person, too,” she told him, deciding not to push.
···
For the rest of the drive, they rode in silence, her watching the road and him rifling through his box of treasures. The tree branches swayed welcomingly in the evening breeze as they drove up the dirt path leading home.
At the crunch of the truck tires against the rocks, a woman wearing a pink camouflage jumpsuit—tactical gear for an unfathomable natural environment—popped up out of a crouched selfie stance in front of an unruly shrub like a spooked woodland animal.
The two women made brief eye contact before Lainey pointed at the temporary No Trespassing sign she’d painted and nailed to a tree snag she’d carved into the image of Medusa.
The woman mouthed Sorry, then scurried in the direction of the main road in a flurry of magenta.
Lainey groaned. “Seriously? Aren’t they bored yet? Ever since people caught wind of the Groff thing, we’ve had so many lurkers. And always that one spot in front of the window.”
“They think that’s where the bridge is supposed to go,” Elliot said, unbothered by the lookie-loo. He squinted at a sketch pad and shot his eyes between the house and the image like a treasure hunter scrutinizing a tattered map of the Catacombs. “She never told you this place was Forest’s Bridge?”
The truck didn’t lurch or groan menacingly when she shifted it into park. It was difficult not to see how poorly her car handled when faced with a direct comparison.
“I’m guessing she wanted to avoid people taking selfies in front of our house like some sort of giant ball of twine we have to sleep in.”
“You get to sleep in,” he corrected. “You really think this house possesses the same artistic value as a ball of twine?”
“You’re assuming I don’t hold roadside landmarks in high esteem, when, in fact, I have great appreciation for them,” she teased. “Prada Marfa is performance art.”