Knox
As I go to ring the doorbell, I realize I’ve made no emotional plan for what I’ll do if a stranger answers the door and tells me she bought the house at an estate sale after the old lady who owned it died with no heirs.
Actually, I have no plan of any kind for what I’m going to do if she doesn’t answer.
I ring the doorbell.
Nothing.
I wait. I open the screen door and knock on the door, in case the doorbell doesn’t work anymore, which is entirely possible from the look of things. My heart thuds in my ears. I look back at Sylvie just to make sure she’s still there, at least.
Maybe Mamaw’s not dead. Maybe she’s just at the grocery store or a late church service. I can’t tell if there’s a car in the narrow garage.
I’m about to turn and walk back to the van when I hear slow shuffling; pained, laborious steps. The door opens. A hunched old woman comes into view as she struggles with the weight of her front door while gripping the rails of her walker.
It makes me not recognize her immediately because she never used one before. My throat constricts. “Mamaw?” I venture quietly.
She meets my gaze and stares through the screen door, mouth agape, as though questioning what failing eyes are telling her.
I swallow hard. “It’s Knox. Your grandson.”
She fumbles again with the screen door and I help her open it from my end. She’s trying to speak but nothing is coming out but whimpers of excitement that sound like distant seagulls.
We embrace. She holds on to me for support instead of her walker. She smells like peppermint muscle balm and the faint mustiness of wrinkled skin.
“Knox,” she says, weeping now. “Knox, sugar. Oh sweetheart. I thought I’d never see you again.
” Her voice is higher and thinner than I remember.
She grips my neck as tightly as her arms will allow.
She feels fragile, brittle in a way she never used to.
Her body trembles. She cries in the unrestrained, unashamed way that old people do—like young children.
The way you do when you’re either too young to care what people think of you or too old.
She wipes her eyes under her glasses and grips her walker again.
“Come in, come in.” She turns slowly and leads me inside.
I enter and a rush of nostalgia floods me.
Her house feels creakier, more rundown than in my memory.
It’s stuffy like it’s no longer worth the effort of wrenching open windows and smells like mold and thick carpet that doesn’t often get vacuumed.
The thrift-store oil painting of a moonlit old-timey sailing ship still hangs on her wall, though. I always loved that painting.
She sets her walker beside her orange velvet sofa, the same one I remember, and lowers herself painstakingly to a seat.
I sit beside her. For a long while we don’t say anything but just embrace and cry.
“This is a miracle. Thank you, Jesus,” Mamaw says finally. She touches my cast. “What happened to your arm, sweetie?”
“I broke it helping a girl find her dog. She took care of me.”
“Are you hurting? I have my arthritis medicine.”
“I’m okay.”
“Your mama isn’t here too, is she?”
“Just me,” I say.
“You know I looked for you at your daddy’s funeral. Not seeing you broke my heart all over again. I thought that might be my last chance ever to hug you.”
My eyes well. I try to speak but nothing comes out for a while. “I miss him real bad, Mamaw. I never stopped. I would have come if I could. Mom said we’d get arrested if we came.” Tears escape and slide down my cheeks.
“No, you wouldn’t have at all. Your daddy never got the police involved.
He loved your mama so much. Even after she took off with you.
He didn’t want her going to jail. He hired a private detective to try to find you but no luck.
His drinking got worse and worse and—” She pauses to muster herself.
She dabs at her eyes with a tissue from a box on the end table.
I ask the question I’ve been carrying for eleven years like a sliver embedded too deep to remove. The answer to which could heal me or break part of me forever. “Did he know it wasn’t my choice to leave him?”
Mamaw covers her mouth and nods and fresh tears cascade down both of our cheeks. We hug for a long time.
After we’ve cried ourselves out for a couple of minutes, she says, “You remember those cookies you used to love? The oatmeal creme ones?”
I smile and wipe my eyes with the back of my good hand. “I used to sneak them like you’d be mad if you caught me. Getting caught with my hand in the cookie jar.”
She chuckles. “You could have gobbled down every single one if you’d have wanted.
I wouldn’t have minded a bit. They were all for you.
” She pauses and grips her tissue in a ball.
“I wisht I had some to offer you now. I stopped buying them after—” Emotion overwhelms her and she can’t speak. She presses the tissue to each eye.
“It’s okay. Seeing you was always my favorite part, and you’re giving me that now.”
“I don’t get out and about to the grocery as often as I used to. I sometimes get Meals on Wheels delivered here. I don’t get round to much of anywhere anymore. Not even church but every now and again. I’ve not been doing so well healthwise lately.”
There is such a palpable and suffocating air of loneliness and decline here.
“Mamaw . . . could you use some company?”
“I’ll take every bit you got.”
“It’s why I came. I was thinking . . . maybe I could live here with you, if you got room. I’m ready to settle down. I want to get a job and go to school and live a normal life. I want . . . a home.”
Mamaw looks at me like she can’t believe her ears. “You mean that?” Her voice teeters, like it’s about to fall off a shelf.
“If you got space and don’t mind. I could take that little room in the basement. I always loved it down there.”
She sobs, face buried in her hands, her stooped frame quaking. She nods. “I thought I’d die without seeing you again.”
And I begin sobbing too. “I’m here to stay. I promise.”
When we finally compose ourselves with deep, shuddering breaths, Mamaw says, “Won’t life here get awful dull for you? You’re a young man.”
“I’ve been almost everywhere in the country. Waking up in a new town every day gets old. I’m ready for some boring.”
“There’s something nice about a place and folks you know.”
“I hope Mama leaves and comes back home too someday.”
“I wisht I could see her again; work out our differences. I bore her ill will for a long time but with Jesus’s help and seeing you here, not no more.”
“I have Mama’s email. I’m going to talk to her. You never know what’ll happen. And speaking of, remember how I said there was a girl who helped me when I broke my arm trying to find her dog? She’s out front in her van. I’d love for you to meet her. She’s become someone special to me.”
Mamaw and I stare at each other for a second, taking each other in.
I reach over and take her wrinkled hand. “You’re not gonna be alone anymore.”
Mamaw gives me a strange, almost mischievous, smile. “Well now, I haven’t exactly been alone.”
“You don’t have a boyfriend, do you?”
Mamaw snort-laughs as she pulls herself to her feet. “Heavens no. Wait here.” She shuffles back down the hallway.
“Can I help you, Mamaw?” I call after her.
“Just you wait.”
After a moment or two, she returns to the living room, a jingling sound following her. At her heels, a speckled dachshund, his face a gray mask, waddles laboriously. He gives a couple of short barks when he sees me.
My breath catches and I slide to the edge of my seat. “No way,” I whisper. “No way no way no way.”
“In my excitement, it clean slipped my mind.”
I drop from the couch to my knees with a joyous yelp. “Bilbo. Bilbo.” I smother his silvered muzzle in kisses. His tail whips furiously back and forth and he whines and licks at my hand. I lift him and hold him to my heart and sob. “How?” is all I manage. “How?”
“After your daddy passed, I took him in. We’ve been keeping each other company.”
“I can’t believe he’s still alive.”
“He’s around fifteen now. He wasn’t but four or so when you and your mama left.
He’s in about worse shape than me. He’s deaf as a post, which is why he didn’t notice you come in.
He don’t like walking much. He sleeps near to twenty-three hours a day.
You can see he remembers you, though. I think the thing keeping him alive was hoping you’d come back. ”
“Well I did, didn’t I, Bilbo.” I weep into the top of his little head. “I came back. Thank you for waiting for me.”