10. Ten
Ten
When I get to Veda’s house Monday morning, my, “Knock! Knock!” call as I open the unlocked front door is met with her, “Back here!” from the sunroom along with a steady humming noise.
In the sunroom, the wet clay spinning in the middle of the potter’s wheel is being pulled into a cylinder by two large hands.
Bo.
The stool seems too small and his body too big as he rounds over the wheel like some kind of giant. His eyes lift to mine with a playful look, dark hair falling from behind his ears into his eyes, clay still spinning. The sight of him sends a million butterflies fluttering from my belly to my throat.
“Bo.” I say his name like it’s a complete concept.
“Birdie,” he says with a smirk, toothpick perched in the corner of his mouth, before returning his attention back to the clay .
There’s a short silence interrupted by Veda’s, “Well isn’t anyone going to acknowledge me?” which makes me snort a laugh.
“Sorry. Good morning, Veda,” I say with a cheeky grin, holding up the bag I’m carrying. “I brought you something.”
I look at Bo again, watching as he moves his fingers slightly and turns the straight walls of the cylinder into something curvy. Sexy, somehow.
“I didn’t know you knew how to do this,” I say to him.
He looks up at me. “Nowhere near as good as you.” He nods toward my misshapen pinch pot sitting on a shelf while the clay still spins between his hands.
“Ass.”
“Isn’t he though?” Veda laughs softly.
Redirecting my attention to her, I pull a pair of puffy purple gloves out of the bag.
“I did some research, and nothing is guaranteed, or overnight of course, but I read these might help with your hands. They heat up and help with pain relief and mobility.” I take out a box of tea. “And this tea supposedly alleviates the inflammation.”
The only sound is the hum of the wheel spinning while she looks at them. Quietly.
I keep talking because I don’t know what else to do in her silence. “It might take a few months, the reviews I read said six months for some people, but I thought maybe it was worth a shot…” Her expression is unreadable as she looks at them and I wonder if I’ve overstepped.
“Don’t be stubborn, Gran,” Bo calls from the wheel .
He shakes her from whatever she’s been thinking. “Of course. Thank you, Birdie, I was just imagining how ridiculous I’m going to look with those gloves on.” She smiles, but I swear it’s either sad or forced, or both.
“Damn!” Bo’s cry makes both our heads turn to look at him. The former vase is now a mangled blob. “Another one bites the dust,” he says with a grin, standing up.
He washes his hands in the sink, dries them, and gives Veda a hug and peck on the cheek. “Love you, Gran, I’m off to work.” Then, lifting his chin toward me, “Walk me out, Birdie?”
It’s only once we’re outside that I realize I didn’t hesitate to follow him.
“You here to brag about your pottery skills?” I ask, hands on my hips and eyebrow raised.
“That was just a bonus.” He smiles, leans against his Jeep, and crosses his arms. “I just wanted to see you.”
“Liar,” I say, fidgeting with a button on my shirt, noticing for the first time he’s holding a Lincoln Log in his hand. “Looks like you came to get your toys.” I point at his hand.
He chuckles. “Ah, I did need this.” His small smile bleeds into a wide grin as he taps the Lincoln Log against my bicep. “But I meant it when I asked you, and Huck if he’s allowed, to come to dinner.”
All I can ask is, “Why?”
He turns toward the Jeep—doors off, of course—and steps up into the driver’s seat. “Because I like The Office , why else, Pam Beesly? ”
I snort out a laugh.
“I’m serious, Bo.”
“Me too,” he says with a twitch of his lips that makes his toothpick bobble. “I’m helping you, remember? If you want to live, it means getting out and doing things. With people. Without lists.”
“Oh really? Because last time I checked, you’re the one making a list for me.”
He grins as he pulls the seatbelt across his chest. “I meant without your lists.”
My eyes narrow. “Bo, I don’t need your help. I like lists.” God that sounds pathetic. “And I do things…I went hiking with you. And Huck and I eat new foods on Saturdays…” Again, pathetic.
He raises his eyebrows as if I’ve proven every point he’s been trying to make.
I sigh. “Fine. Maybe.”
“See, that’s not so bad.” His voice is teasing before turning serious. “But I’m also here to ask about Gran.”
My chin pulls back. “Veda? Why? Is something wrong?”
He shrugs. “She says no, but something seems…off. Different. I can’t explain it really. It isn’t just one thing—I don’t know.” He shakes his head, blowing out a slight breath. “I’m probably overly worried. It’s part of the reason I wanted to have someone here, to keep an eye on her because I can’t.”
I nod, considering what he’s asking.
“Obviously I’m here to keep an eye on her, Bo. And I’ll help however I can, but you need to know, if she has something going on, that’s between her and her doctors and you. I can’t be involved if she doesn’t want me to be.”
Despite the seriousness of my tone, he laughs as he turns the key in the ignition. “Birdie, leave it to you to bring rules and regulations into this conversation.”
I roll my eyes, hands on my hips. “I’m serious, Bo.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He shifts the gear and the Jeep starts to slowly roll backward. “Let’s find something to mark off that list this week.”
Before I can respond, he lifts two fingers off the steering wheel at me in a wave before he drives away.
“My grandson likes you,” Veda says as soon as I walk through the door.
I scoff. “I do not think so.”
“Do you know how many times he’s come over at eight in the morning to throw a vase on that wheel?” Her eyes narrow. “One! This morning!”
Tension from what she’s implying makes my shoulders creep toward my ears, and I drop my head toward my shoulder to ward it off.
“Coincidence,” I say, quickly diverting with, “What’s on the agenda today?”
She huffs. “Ignore me! Fine! What do I know? I’m just the old lady with crooked hands!” Then said hands are waving above her head .
“I am ignoring you. What do you want to do? I can clean?”
“Have it your way,” she sighs, looking around the sunroom. “I want to teach you to glaze, so we’ll work on that. Then maybe I’ll show you how to throw on the wheel if you want. And it’s nice out, so we can go work in the garden.” I nod in agreement, loving how that whole day sounds. “And then, when I let you put these ridiculous gloves on me, we’ll talk about my grandson.”
Before I can respond, she shoves a canister of glaze in my hands.
Frustration sticks to me like superglue on fingertips all day. Annoying. Inescapable. Obvious.
Veda starts things off easy with the glaze. It’s just painting, but for some reason those three coats on my small bowl feel like I’m trying to recreate the Mona Lisa . There are thumbprints and brush hairs and puddles. I want to throw it against the wall.
Behind the wheel, all hell breaks loose. Veda doesn’t yell, which might have been easier, instead she guides me with a singsong cadence to her voice that peaks with every last word, frustrating me to the point of grinding my teeth.
When the lump of clay floats all over the spinning wheel, her, “You’ve used too much water,” song makes my nostrils flare. “Your elbows aren’t tucked,” is sang on a loop along with, “You aren’t applying equal amounts of pressure with both hands.”
It’s after she asks, “Are you even trying?” that I pull my foot off the pedal and glare from the blob of clay to her .
“I can’t do this,” I snap.
She scoffs. “Of course you can. You aren’t listening to the clay, Birdie.”
I use my clay-caked hand to cup my ear.
“I listened—it said I should quit.”
Another scoff. “You’re fighting it.”
Of course I’m fighting it—this glorified piece of mud is fucking annoying.
“Start the wheel.” I push the pedal, reluctantly. “Now, hold the clay like I showed you.”
I do as she says, making a tight C-shape with my palm and fingers before wrapping it around the wet spinning ball.
“Now, take your other hand and chop down on the center.”
Again, I follow her directions.
“Now, close your eyes,” she says softly.
My eyes narrow, silently asking, How the hell is that going to work?
Her eyes dance with a knowing response of, Your eyes open isn’t getting you anywhere.
On a heavy sigh, I close my eyes.
“Now, feel the clay.”
She pauses as my hands mold to the wet grit of the moving lump.
“If you start to get frustrated—feel the clay. If you start to get distracted—feel the clay.”
So I do.
Spinning beneath my hands, when it gets too wide, I pull with my outside hand. As it gets too tall, I push with the outer edge of the hand on top. Back and forth, back and forth, until my hands find a rhythm with the spinning of the clay.
When I open my eyes, she’s smiling, and so am I.
“Now that that’s over, let’s turn this thing into something, shall we?”
After I successfully make a small bowl, we eat lunch, weed her garden, and start our last hour of the day together in the kitchen. Veda sits at the table, hands wrapped in the puffy warming gloves I bought, quietly watching as I do dishes.
“Let’s get this over with,” I say without looking at her.
“Bo likes you.”
The here we go again groan her words provoke is instant and irritated.
“You have to listen to me talk because I’m paying you and I’m incapacitated with these stupid hot boxing gloves, so you listen,” she says sharply. “ And you like him.”
I open my mouth to defend myself, but the look she gives me stops me cold.
“You like him, and I know what you said—about the testing and your family history and you being some kind of oracle predicting your own death.” At these words, I glare at her, because—what the hell? Through clenched teeth, my Veda goes unheard. As much as I want to remind her that the two greatest indicators of my genetic predisposition died at the same age as me, nothing suppresses her drive to keep going. “But we’re all dying, Birdie. Today, tomorrow, the day after that. We will all say goodbye or get said goodbye to. You can’t outrun it by forcing your aloneness on everyone. That’s a damn goodbye all in itself! Worse, even—a goodbye before hello.” Then, with her hands shoved in big purple puffs on the table, she’s quiet.
I feel more than naked standing in her kitchen as we look at each other. Like my clothes, skin, and bones have been ripped away to reveal whatever it means to be human, and this woman sees it. Me . My aloneness.
“Veda,” I start, through gritted teeth. “We’re friends. As an oracle”—I scowl at her—“I know I can’t get involved with him because of what will likely happen, but did it ever occur to you it’s not what he wants?” I raise my eyebrows. “He doesn’t want anything more because of Mandy. So even if you were right, you aren’t, not really. There’s nothing here. He says he wants to help me—apparently everyone thinks I’m some kind of loser that can’t manage my life—but I’m fine. And he’s nice. That’s all this is.”
She scoffs. “Well, he’s as stupid as you are.”
I glare at her, again , with words that I’ll regret starting to form in my throat before I shove them down.
“I’m going to put the towels away,” I mutter, grabbing the laundry basket and walking out of the kitchen and down the short hall to the bathroom.
At the sink, I splash water on my face and smack my hands against the counter so hard the medicine cabinet door swings open from the vibration of it.
I take a deep breath, trying to level out my frustration, and splash water on my face again.
I lift my chin, face-to-face with the open medicine cabinet, and freeze.
Pills.
Lots of them.
I shouldn’t, but I pull the door fully open and pick up one of the many opaque orange bottles, Veda Monroe written on it, before putting it back. Then I pick up another. And another. I don’t recognize the names of anything, but there are at least a dozen different prescriptions lined up in front of me.
I close the door quietly, my heart pounding in my ears.
Something is wrong. Does arthritis need this much medication? I don’t think so. Does Bo know about all these? He just asked if something was wrong; surely he would have mentioned this much medicine.
I put the towels away, schooling my expression before walking back to the kitchen.
She’s waiting, hands now out of the gloves.
“How about some tea?” she asks, like we didn’t just almost get into a catfight. Like there isn’t a cabinet full of mystery medication just waiting down the hall.
“Okay,” I say with a forced smile, grabbing the box I brought.
Silence is our conversation for the rest of the day.