Chapter 30
“Oh my,” Grandma says, smacking the wooden spoon against the glass bowl.
Like so many women of her generation, my grandma wears her auburn hair in tight curls, permed and cropped close to her head. Flowy blouses and slacks fill her wardrobe, mostly florals and stripes, the occasional solid. Loafers, thin belts, and chunky gold jewelry, always.
Today, mixing cookie dough here in her kitchen, she’s in a white button-down and blue apron. She looks so much like Mom, with a touch more Audrey Hepburn and less Sophia Loren. Less exotic, more girl next door, but no less classically beautiful a brunette.
Just as I hoped, I found her here this morning, in her cozy home, squarely in the summer when I stayed with her for two weeks, a few cities over from us.
We all took a rotation after Grandpa died of a sudden heart attack at seventy-five.
She’d never say it, but she needed the company.
We quietly made a schedule, Mom, me, and the cousins.
The women in the family. Grandma had always cared for us.
It was our turn.
“Sooooo.” She draws out the syllable. “You’re here. From the future. You’ve been reliving your twenties, in another life, in which you never met your . . . supposed husband and love of your life. With whom you have three children.”
“That’s correct,” I confirm, sipping my glass of milk like a child. Fittingly, because my story sounds rather kiddish, pumped with imagination and outlandish to my own ears. I left no chapter unread: Quinn, Sierra, Camila, Parker, Charlie, Holden, Mom and Dad.
Now, I just need to know: What would she do if she were me? You’ve always been so wise, Grandma, tell me! How can I find Reid and tell him that we are soulmates? I think that will seal the deal.
“You know you’re currently dating this Holden fellow, right?” She whistles. “He’s one good-looking boy. He’s been here a couple of times. Plays the piano?”
I blanch.
Oh my word.
I’m twenty.
It’s the summer before my junior year of college.
How could I have forgotten?
I frown and stick out my tongue. “He is not welcome here.”
How dare he play my grandmother’s piano.
“Well,” Grandma says, “I don’t think that’s the vibe you were giving him last night.” She wiggles her eyebrows.
“Grandma!”
“I just mean . . . he stopped by to say hi and I saw you kissing on the porch. You seemed quite . . . enraptured.”
“Well, I hope the rapture happens and he gets left behind.”
“Oh, my! So, what I’m hearing, sweetheart, is that you really like him.” She winks.
I scrunch my face in disgust one more time. “He’s fantastic. Real gentleman.” And great. Now I have to worry about leaving before Holden finds me here, in a sure total waste of my time and energy. This is getting so complicated.
“Anyway,” I say. “Back to Reid. How am I going to find him? And . . . do you think I should?”
She ruminates, palms on her apron. “There was no sign of him whatsoever in the previous . . . lives you’ve explored?” She gives a cough. “In the other balloons, other places?”
“Correct.” I nod. “Well, I did run into his mom, Tabitha, who confirmed his existence. But nothing more. I’ve tried looking him up, and no luck.”
It’s the dark ages of technology once again, which makes this stop extra tricky. I tried explaining smartphones to her, but she just said, Well, I’ll be darned. Tiny computers in the palms of our hands? I can hardly turn on the email! Lord, take me home before then!
No, God, please, don’t you dare. It’s hard enough when we start to lose her in seventeen years.
Reaching across the counter between us, Grandma hands me the yellow bag of semisweet morsels. She knows it’s my favorite part, adding the chocolate chips. I dump them into the mixture but don’t take my eyes off her face, her rosy cheeks and brown eyes.
Seventy-one.
Here with me now, younger than Dad.
“I really miss your blonde hair,” she remarks. “By the way.”
I pull at the ends regretfully. “Me too.” I remember, with a gag, that Holden had urged me to dye it, always wanting me edgier.
I’ll always regret it, this summer of my almost-black hair, halfway through college, briefly feeling a little rebellious and full of risk.
In addition to my boyfriend’s influence, I was very into The O.C.
—a TV show about my hometown!—and Rachel Bilson.
I thought since I had her brown eyes, I could pull off dark hair like she could.
No, it turned out, I could not. I looked like Wednesday Addams instead, and not the updated cute one played by Jenna Ortega.
“I forgot about this era. It’ll be blonde again soon—but the stylist has to do it in phases. ” I roll my eyes.
She smiles. “Some decisions take an amount of undoing. You’re still beautiful. It’s just a bit harsh.”
“Don’t remind me. Thankfully it should be blonde again by the time I meet Reid. Ugh—meet him again.”
She bends into a cupboard and retrieves a fresh cookie sheet. “Speaking of phases,” she says, “it sounds like this process—as you relay it—has led you through many different alternate choices and possibilities. Yes?”
“Yes. Too many. I’m done.”
She laughs. “Okay. Well, what about this husband? Reid? Have you thought about his life, without you?”
“A little. Of course.” Not in excess, though.
Dwelling on it felt like a beesting to my already-tender insides.
Immediately I pictured him dating a bunch of supermodels, for absolutely no reason.
He was more realistically probably playing Scrabble somewhere or running the finance world or surfing his brains out, but still.
You could do all those things with a supermodel.
Grandma unpeels a fresh stick of butter and starts greasing the pan. “Maybe you need to try—really try—to imagine what paths he might’ve taken without you. And without young fatherhood. Unless, of course, he married someone else in the meantime. Surely that’s something you have considered.”
Yes, Grandma, thank you, I have.
I grimace. “I’m trying not to think about it. I’m planning to . . . proceed as though it’s not too late. Glass half-full.” I lift mine in the air. “But of course, yes, I know I must weigh that risk.”
“Good girl.” She has always condoned practicality. “So, are there any other lives you could envision for him? Alternate jobs, places, dreams?”
I contemplate the suggestion, a greedy finger outstretched for cookie dough.
What did Reid love?
Surfing. The Alchemist. Business.
And . . . I squint. “He travels to New York for work a lot. For his finance job.” I sift through our years of conversations.
“A couple years ago, he was on a kick of wanting to move our family there. Cash out for a brownstone on the Upper West Side.” My eyes pop.
“There was a job opening in his company. I didn’t really let him entertain it, with three kids in the middle of elementary school, but—”
“Maybe New York was calling to him?” She hands me a tiny ice-cream scooper. “Lady Liberty?”
I take the scooper and clang it onto the counter. “Grandma!”
“Yes?”
“That’s it!”
“What, dear?”
“The Statue of Liberty.” My heart thuds.
“Yes, that’s her.”
“No, I—one of the four balloons left. It’s the Statue of Liberty.”
“Oh!” Her eyes gleam. “Well, that certainly sounds promising.”
“Eight million people in New York City, though?” I moan, swallowing my snitch of the batter. “Sounds like a wild-goose chase. Needle in a haystack.”
“Spilled sugar on the beach before high tide,” Grandma adds, at which we giggle together.
Grandpa loved that saying.
She takes the scooper back and plops down another round dollop. “More so, however, it sounds to me like you’re running out of options, young lady. Or should I say”—she winks—“old lady.”
“Hey.”
I’m sensing the pull, though.
New York.
My heart pounds with the epiphany.
But first . . .
I grow serious. “Grandma?”
“Yes?” She smooths the lap of her apron.
“You and Grandpa. You were married fifty years.”
“That’s right.” Her smile turns wistful. “Almost fifty-one.”
Their anniversary vow renewal on a sunset yacht ride in the harbor left no dry cheek on deck. Their words to each other, their laced wrinkly fingers, both swaying to Frank Sinatra.
“And you married him at nineteen.”
“You bet I did. I wasn’t letting that soldier leave me without a ring.”
I laugh. Grandpa had been a stallion indeed, angled jaw, bright-blue eyes, sharp brows.
Grandma still kept the notebook of their handwritten letters spanning the years he served as a pilot in the Korean War.
After his time overseas, they had six children together.
Raised them in San Diego until the 1970s, at which point they moved to Newport Beach.
“Did you guys have any years that were hard? In your marriage?” I’ve never asked her this before.
Come to think of it, I’ve never veered anywhere near the personal territory of their relationship.
They always just seemed so . . . aspirational, almost mythical.
Grandma and Grandpa. Unshakable. No questions asked.
Her hearty cackle surprises me.
“Of course we did!” she says. “Every marriage goes through hard times.”
I know that cognitively, of course I do, but hearing it—from her, no less—comforts me in an instant, more than I can express, like the smell of warm cookies beginning to fall around us.
“Tell me about it, then,” I say. “I want to hear about one of your hard times.”
She turns on the kitchen faucet, thinking.
“When he returned from the war?” she says finally.
“Well, he was still my husband—but I didn’t know him.
” She falls quiet. “Not for a while. His nightmares and moods and—well, I forced him to get help. It was less common back then, you know. Psychology. Naming trauma. But he did the work. He healed. Became the best father. And husband. Most of the time.”
She winks again.
I hinge forward, rapt by her words. I wish he were here with us now, so I could ask him more questions. Thank him for his brave service.