Day 4

My conversation with Robbie was interrupted when we both became aware of Mrs. Fisher trying to unobtrusively tiptoe into the kitchen behind us.

“Mrs. ----‘s drifted off to sleep now. How about some lunch?”

Robbie slid to the end of the couch near the door and shook his head.

“No, I’ve got to be getting to class, and—“ he said, as though he knew exactly what the next question would be, “I can’t make it for dinner tonight, either.”

Robbie turned to me and added with a wink, “Rose and I have plans tonight.” And he continued, to both of us now,

“But since Gennie’s back in town, I’ll definitely be coming around here a lot. You’ll be sick of me.”

Mrs. Fisher, in the kitchen now, peered around the corner, smiling. “We could never get tired of this one. He’s too handsome.”

Robbie blew us both kisses as he disappeared around the door.

Suddenly exhausted, I told Mrs. Fisher that I was going upstairs. She promised to save some lunch for me in the refrigerator. I ascended the stairs, made it to my room, and nearly instantly fell asleep with the weight of the day.

My dreams were blurry and incoherent, the way afternoon naps often are. Imbued with the sense of hot sun streaming in, the dreams were tropical and foreign. And yet, familiar faces appeared and reappeared throughout. At one point, I dreamt that I stood out in the water, while John stared at me from the shore. Farther down the beach, Robbie, my mother, and Uncle Paul danced in a circle while dressed as island natives. I felt the water rise around me, but I was immobilized.

I woke up when phone rang. I knew it was John before Mrs. Fisher knocked on the door to say that the call was for me. John and I had always been on the same wavelength. Or at least we were once. I was surprised he hadn’t called sooner.

“I wanted to give you your space,” he explained. I was silent. “To spend time with your family.” Again, I could not speak. John continued, “I wish you could talk to me. I can’t take the silence.”

“I want to talk to you, John, I do. But I need time to think.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong, and I don’t know why you felt you had to go, but I just hope you remember that I love you. You remember that, right?”

Tears rushed to my eyes, and my voice choked. “And I love you. But I have to do this right now. I just have to.”

“How long will it take, Gennie?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry.” I knew that I was causing him pain; I knew that my explanations were insufficient. But I couldn’t offer him the words he wanted to hear; I couldn’t talk to anyone about it. Not yet. Not until I knew what I was going to do.

The first week of college classes can be confusing, exciting, and overwhelming. But I didn’t expect it to be so exhilarating. Before I began, I dreaded the bus ride from Nona’s house to campus every day. But that all changed.

Yesterday, I boarded the bus and found it packed with people. There were only a few open seats. Luckily, I saw a man I recognized from one of my classes. He was tall and handsome with gold rimmed glasses and hair cropped close to his head. His eyes were crystal blue, and I felt instantly safe when I sat down next to him.

I began talking about our Sociology class. At first, he nodded, but eventually, he stopped me in mid-sentence, and said,

“I should tell you; I’m not in any Sociology classes. In fact, I’m a graduate student in English Literature.”

I was mortified. I’d felt so sure. “Sorry,” I stammered, “I thought you looked so much like someone in my class.”

“Actually, my younger brother is taking some courses at Amesville State, and people always say we look like twins. I should have said something sooner; it’s not often such a gorgeous girl starts talking to me on the bus.”

I was relieved that he was so kind about it, and I couldn’t help blushing at the compliment. We began to talk about ourselves. He described his research on the writings of James Joyce and his desire to teach at a small liberal arts college when he was done. I told him about the classes I was taking and my uncertainty about what the future held. That bus ride went by faster than ever.

We both got off the bus at the university. He asked me if I’d like to go to lunch sometime. I was nearly speechless with excitement, but I managed to stammer a “yes.” He told me when and where, and I agreed wholeheartedly.

As he prepared to walk off, he said, “By the way, I’m John.” I think I’m in love.

Day 3

I was shaken out of my reverie by the familiar creak of the door. A tall figure appeared, a shadow against the bright sunlight. Robbie.

He swaggered into the living room, leaving the door slightly ajar behind him. Robbie had always been a charmer, and from my first glance at his dimpled smile that day, my spirits picked up.

“You’re home,” he exclaimed, and for the first time, I believed it. “What are you doing here, when did you arrive?”

“I missed home, and so I called Uncle Paul last week, hopped on a Grayhound, and here I am.”

“After all this time, you just felt like coming back for no reason,” Robbie asked, and I could tell that he knew there was more to the story.

“I wanted to see Nona, to see you. And look how different you are. You’ve gotta be at least 6’3’’. Tell me about school.” And so Robbie and I sat on the couch for a long time, and he described his college courses, his friends, and the girl he was seeing.

“And I’m not the only one seeing someone; even Uncle Paul has a lady friend these days.”

“What? I don’t believe it!” Uncle Paul had always been an attractive man, but despite his 40-some years, I had never known him to date. He was shy around people generally, and women always had the particular effect of making Uncle Paul turn beet-red. He never approached them.

“She asked him to escort her to church, he said yes, and they’ve been seeing eachother ever since. “ Paul turned suddenly serious.

“You know things are different around here now. We’ve all changed. Nona isn’t the same, not since Grandfather… not for awhile.”

“I know,” I replied. It was the only thing I could think of to say.

Robbie stood up, and I did too. “No, Gennie, you don’t know. You left. You took off with John and barely wrote or called. You didn’t even come back for the funeral. You haven’t had to watch Nona slipping away.”

I was silent, surprised by the emotion in Robbie’s voice. Despite its depth, his voice sounded like a child’s now, petulant and pleading. “That’s how things work around here, though, isn’t it—everyone leaving, I mean. Father left, Mother left, then Grandfather—and look what it’s done to Nona—“

“They died, Robbie, they didn’t leave…”

“It works pretty much the same, though, doesn’t it? They don’t have to watch Nona drift off into oblivion, and neither do you. Some of the time she’s still here, but more and more Nona’s in her own world. She hears things, sees things, the rest of us can’t see. And you can tell, they’re real to her.”

Robbie was crying now. He was a man, but all I could see is the little boy who would ask questions about the mother he couldn’t remember. Tears began to stream down my face, as I realized how much I ‘d hurt him. Robbie saw my tears and grabbed me in an enormous, enveloping hug. I felt my tears falling on his shirt, and he hugged me tighter. We stayed locked like that for a long time.

Finally, Robbie released me, still holding me by the shoulders. His face was apologetic,

“I’m sorry,” he said, “It’s not your fault. Sometimes I want to get as far away as possible, too. I used to come by all the time, but it’s gotten too hard now. There’s nothing left here besides ghosts.”

Robbie and I sat back down and talked some more. I felt anxious to keep the mood light, so I questioned him about his girlfriend. Her name was Rose, he told me. She was studying psychology and they had been lab partners together in his biology course. She planned on getting a Ph.D. after college, which, Robbie told me, would match up well with his plans for medical school.

“Sounds like you’re serious about her,” I teased, and almost instantly regretted having turned the subject to romance.

“Well, I’m not ready to run off and marry her like you did with John. We’re not that crazy in love.”

“How is John anyways? How did he feel about you coming out here? We’re a long way from California.”

“He understands. You know John.” I tried to say it in as casual a voice as possible, but Robbie knew I was hiding something. Something was going unsaid.

I’m babysitting Robbie. It’s not fair that I’m always stuck with the little runt. What can you do with a 6 year-old anyways? And at 12, what will my friends think if they see me with him? Probably that I’m playing with a baby.

He’s running around in the yard, as usual. Feather in the hair, no shirt. Same old game where he pretends to be an Indian. He loves that game. Last week, we visited Grandma and Grandpa, and Robbie asked if there were any Indians in the family. Grandma laughed, and said, “No, Robbie. Maybe a few cowboys, though.” Robbie moped for hours.

Today, he asked Nona the question while she was baking a pie. Nona stopped, looked down at him and said, “Children should not be asking questions. Didn’t you ever hear that curiosity killed the cat?” Then she sent him outside with me.

I wish Robbie had just kept his mouth shut. Asking questions just causes trouble.

Day 2

Father is gone, and now Momma too. Phillip down the street says that it makes me an orphan, an orphan at eight years old. Father died so long ago, he is a blur to me. At least I remember Momma; little two year-old Robbie will never know the woman who had us.

All of our things have been moved from Momma’s house. My dolls, my toy chest, Phillip’s fire truck. Now they are all in this one little room at Nona’s. Everything that belonged to Momma or Father has been sold or moved into Grandfather and Nona’s house. Or gone far away, into my other grandparents’ house.

I miss Momma.

Nona tells us not to be afraid. That everything will be alright. That we are home now.

I opened my eyes at the smell of bacon. Light streamed in the window with the straight, soft light of morning. I hadn’t been aware that sleep had come, and I found with surprise that I had managed to unconsciously curl up under the sheet.

I heard the sound of voices down the hall. The intensity seemed to pick up, reaching a crescendo and then fall. I listened to the pattern repeat a few times. Finally, I started walking down the hall, following the sound of talking. I went past Uncle Paul’s closed door, and saw that the next one was open. I found Uncle Paul standing at Nona’s bedside, his back to the door. He did not see me standing there.

Uncle Paul was a lanky man, with dark black hair circling the rim of his head where balding hadn’t set in. His big forehead, serious brown eyes, and sharp nose didn’t prevent him from looking constantly cheerful. There was a reason his nickname was “Happy.” Uncle Paul bent over Nona, and his tenderness reminded me of a mother bird looking over its young.

“Momma,” he whispered gently, “did you see? I got it. The bug’s gone now.”

Nona squeezed his hand, saying, “Thank you, dear.”

I began to feel as though I was intruding on a personal moment, and I was about to turn around, when Uncle Paul must have sensed me behind him. He wheeled around.

“Oh, Gennie, you’re up. Wonderful. I’ll be right back.”

I moved to Nona’s bedside, sitting down in a wicker chair. Her wrinkled face lit up at the sight of me, and she grasped both my hands. Nona was clad in a crisp white cotton nightgown, with a crocheted green blanket pulled up to her waist. Her bright blue eyes were set off by the dramatic shock of white hair on her head.

I looked over Nona’s head out the open window, and the sky was a deep azure. The yellowish grass in the yard below was clearly moist from an evening rainstorm. But the morning air was still clear and hadn’t yet acquired the heaviness that comes with hazy summer days.

“Oh, how I’ve missed you, my girl. It’s been too long that you’ve been away. Your brother comes for visits when he can, with his classes, but you’ve been gone for so long, now.” She wasn’t remonstrating, I knew, just speaking with the full heart of a woman who has nothing to hide. Her eyes caressed my face, and she seemed to be trying to reconcile the 25 year-old woman before her with the young girl she had once tended.

“How is John? “ Nona asked, peering into my eyes.

“Okay,” I murmured as I got up, and, feeling the need to avoid the depth of her gaze, walked toward the window. When I turned back, Nona was staring upward, her face taut with anxiety. She looked strange and unfamiliar now, as her narrowed eyes darted across the ceiling.

“What are you staring at, Nona?” I asked.

“It’s that bug on the ceiling. It won’t go away. Would you please kill it?” I looked toward the ceiling, but I saw nothing there. I felt powerless, unable to do even this small thing for her. Perhaps it was a vision problem, perhaps it was a trick of the mind. But there was no bug. I recalled her conversation with Uncle Paul moments earlier, and I saw then that I was losing her.

I felt instant relief to see Uncle Paul arrive again at her bedside.

Uncle Paul and I went downstairs to the kitchen. The yellow tiles around the room were as bright as I remembered from childhood. Mrs. Fisher had spread out a breakfast feast for us: there were eggs, bacon, pancakes in large heaps, sausages, and glasses of orange juice. After getting us settled in, Mrs. Fisher disappeared up the stairs, and Uncle Paul and I ate in thick silence. I surprised myself with my hunger, and I ate with my face towards the plate, allowing me to scoop the food in quickly. A few times, I looked up and saw my uncle watching me. Eventually, he put down his orange juice glass with an air of finality, and said,

“I’m glad you’ve come back, and I know your Nona is too. This will always be your home, no matter what.”

Uncle Paul looked me over, and he seemed to be waiting for me to say something. I knew he wanted an explanation, answers of some kind. But I couldn’t give him any of those yet. He smiled at me. He was always smiling, and I couldn’t help smiling back. We sat there smiling silently for a few moments. I realized how much I had missed Uncle Paul.

The big grandfather clock in the living room struck seven, and Uncle Paul pushed himself up from the table. “I’ve got to be getting to the plant now,” he told me.

The plant was the local aircraft manufacturer, where Uncle Paul had worked for the past fifteen years. Once he had installed parts, but by then, he was a supervisor, a position he would have preferred not to have. He couldn’t stand firing people.

“Little Rob will be over sometime today. He didn’t tell us you were coming this week.”

“He didn’t know.”

“Well, I’m sure he’ll be as glad at the surprise as we were. It’s been too long.” Uncle Paul grabbed his summer work jacket off the coat rack, turned for one last goodbye smile, and headed out the door.

The door slammed shut, and the old house shook and sighed in protest. I stretched my legs out luxuriously under the kitchen table, and enjoyed the peaceful stillness of the new day. Mornings had gotten easier since the sickness had subsided. After I finished my breakfast, I cleared the plates from the table. Listlessly, I moved from the kitchen into the adjoining living room. There was no door, only a change in paint colors to mark the shift from eating space to company room. The house also had a formal dining room, but I could not remember the last time it had been used.

I circled the living room, my eyes grazing over the photographs and decorations that littered the walls. I came upon the photograph of my mother which hung over the old brick mantlepiece. In August, the fireplace below seemed a dull echo of the warmth and intimacy it conveyed during winters past. I lingered over my mother’s image. She stood in front of a car, bundled in a thick coat, with a beret askew on her head. Her long black hair was pinned up, but wisps of it escaped defiantly from out of the beret. Her brown eyes stared straight into the camera, as though daring the viewer to be the first to look away. I saw her face, and in it, I saw my own. She must have been around my age when this was taken, I thought.

I wandered toward the over-sized, gilded antique mirror that resided in the nook by the stairs. I stared then at my own image. I traced in air the outline of my straight nose, my dark brown almond shaped eyes, and I ran my fingers through the thick length of my own black hair. I could see my mother’s photograph, a tiny blur, in the reflection of the mirror. She had been gone for so long, and yet as I stood, I could see her living, breathing, through me. We seemed likenesses of one another, divided by the hard wall of death and time.

Day 1

The afternoon air was thick and heavy when my Greyhound rolled into town. The whole city seemed braced for a thunderstorm; the streets were mostly empty, except for the couple of cab drivers impatiently waiting outside the bus station. I hopped into the first cab I saw, and as the driver steered us through downtown, I stared out the mud-splattered window.

Everything seemed eerily familiar. So little had changed in the four years I’d been away, it seemed as though time had iced over Amesville, leaving everything but the old movie theater (which was now a burlesque house) unchanged. The absence of people made me feel as though I’d stepped into a ghost town, not the friendly Midwestern burg of my childhood.

The heat and humidity felt even more oppressive as I stepped out of the taxi in front of an old, paint-chipped Victorian. I dropped my duffel on the ground and took in the whole building before me. For a moment, the house seemed so much smaller than I remembered, that I wondered whether it was the right place. I shook the impression away, and handed the waiting cabbie his fare. I stood on the empty driveway as he veered off, half-wishing that I were headed back to the bus station.

The whole street seemed deserted, and as I made my way up the front steps and onto the porch, it occurred to me that perhaps no one was home.

“No, of course Nona is home; where else would she be?” I thought. Unconsciously, I touched my belly, which didn’t yet betray a hint of its future swelling. Would Nona live to meet the child that waited inside? An unanswerable question--only time knew. I automatically reached for the doorknob, and felt a tinge of surprise when it didn’t turn.

I am no more than six. I have scaled the heights of the beautiful elm. I can see down the stretch of road all the way to the Bermans’ house on the end. Without looking groundward, I crawl out to the edge of the branch, trusting my feet and arms to guide me. Who knows how long I stay up. Finally, I begin my descent. I am still several feet up on the trunk, when my legs go loose, and I am sliding, sliding, sliding. I can’t hold on, and I fall to the grass.

Picking myself up, I examine the scrape on my hands, and I see where the blood drips out from my torn pants. I run past a blur of houses, up the steps, past the porch swing, and push through the unlocked door. Inside, I head straight for the kitchen, where Momma sits at the table. I careen straight into her, my head at her lap, tears running down her gigantic pregnant belly. I am home.

Knocking yielded no answer, so I rang the doorbell twice. The doorbell had always been reserved for company. The old building creaked and groaned, and, eventually, a woman I had never seen before appeared, blurred behind the cut glass window in the door. The blur took shape as she opened the door wide, and I could see a short, round fifty-ish woman with graying brown hair and smiling eyes.

“Why it’s Gennie! I recognize you from all the pictures, of course. You’d be hard to miss with that hair. Besides, you look exactly like the photograph of your mother,” the woman announced, pointing to a framed photograph over the mantle. She had taken my bag out of my hands at the first word and had already steered my onto the couch before taking her next breath.

“My name’s Mrs. Fisher. I’m minding the house and taking care of your grandmother, while your Uncle Paul works. She’ll be thrilled you’re here, but I’m afraid you’ll find her to be rather weak-- time is taking it’s toll on her body, but her heart is still quite strong.”

“Paul will be home late. He told me you’d be coming, but he wasn’t sure when. Would you like anything from the kitchen?”

I shook my head, and said nothing. “Well, let me bring this bag to your room. Are you tired from your trip? Do you want to rest?” Mrs. Fisher started up the stairs, and I followed, listening to the floorboards sound with each of her steps and echo with my own. She led me down the hall, past the room that had always been Nona’s, past another room with a closed door, and to the end of the hall.

We entered the room I had once shared with my baby brother. All the old decorations were gone. Now, it was filled with scores of trophies, proud relics of my uncle’s many victories in the local tennis circuit. Placing my bag on an empty chair, Mrs. Fisher asked if there was anything I needed. Again, I merely shook my head.

“Well, I’ll be down in the kitchen. Your grandmother is still asleep, but I’ll have dinner ready in a few hours, and you can come down if you like. Of course, I feed her in bed.” I thanked her, and she shuffled out of the room.

I sat down on the edge of one of the two beds in the room. I was not tired, but the hot, humid air made me feel drowsy. Still no air conditioning, I thought. It was strange to think that I was in my uncle’s home now. I always thought of it as Nona’s house. My house.