Promises to Keep - Ann Tatlock [7]
Mom was less than enthusiastic at the thought of working retail, but she was willing, since she couldn’t expect Gramps to support us once we were settled in Mills River. If she had to work somewhere, it might as well be with Marie.
That first Saturday afternoon after we’d settled into our new house, Mom and I and Valerie walked over to Grandpa’s so Mom could talk with Marie about getting started at the store. Gramps had given Mom a car, a ten-year-old Chevy with a hundred thousand miles on it, but Mom said every penny counted now, and we would walk to as many places as we could to save on gas. She pulled Valerie in our red Radio Flyer wagon, something that Gramps had thought to give us when he furnished our house before we came down. We had escaped Minnesota with little more than the clothes on our backs, but at least we knew Gramps had made a home for us on the other end.
We were hot and sticky when we reached Grandpa’s house on Savoy Street, and I was glad to step inside the air-conditioned rooms. Gramps swept me up in his arms, lifting my feet right off the floor, and locked me in a hug that nearly knocked the wind out of me.
“How’s my girl?” he said when he set me back down.
“I’m good, Gramps!” I replied happily.
He kissed Mom’s cheek and picked Valerie up and blew a raspberry on her neck to make her giggle. Gramps was a fun-loving guy, a practical jokester, a storyteller, a man who loved to laugh and who could outlaugh anyone hands down, even when he was amused by his own jokes. Mom always said he missed his calling, that he should have been a stand-up comedian, but Gramps only laughed at that, saying show business was no business for anyone with more than a lick of sense and seven mouths to feed.
Gramps no longer had seven mouths to feed; all his children were grown and scattered across the country. Except, that is, for his daughter Janis, whom he had lately rescued and reeled back into the fold – or at least close to it. Once Gramps had learned that Mom wanted to leave Daddy, he and Mom hatched a plan, and here we were, only four blocks away in a house that Gramps had helped Mom buy.
I’m not so sure Marie was as happy to have us around as Gramps was. She got along with Mom all right, but she mostly ignored us kids, as though we were as interesting as toadstools that sprang up in her path overnight. She had no children of her own and didn’t seem to like kids and in fact had never been married before Gramps. She was nearly twenty years his junior but was still, as far as I could see, pretty far gone into spinsterhood when she and Gramps exchanged vows. I wasn’t sure why Gramps had married her, or she him, for that matter. They seemed mismatched somehow. Certainly Marie wasn’t like my grandmother, who was warm and loving and always doting on us grandkids as though we were the greatest thing in the world.
But I had already learned to stop wondering why anyone married anyone else. Grown-ups made a lot of decisions I didn’t understand, and I half believed that most people were rendered senseless by the age of twenty-one.
“Where’s Wally?” Marie asked as she came down the hall to greet us. She gave Mom a stiff hug, didn’t bother to look down at Valerie and me.
“He’s out looking for part-time work,” Mom explained.
“That’s my boy,” Gramps said. “A true Lehman, willing to work hard.”
“But he’s not a Lehman,” I protested. “He’s a Sanderson.” The moment I said it, I was sorry. Mom always looked sad when anyone mentioned the name of her first husband, Wally’s dad.
Gramps took my hand. “Let’s move into the dining room, Rozzy. Betty’s made one of her famous pound cakes. Extra good with a little chocolate sauce!”
Betty was their cook, and when she came into the dining room pushing a little cart with the pound cake on it, I understood for the first time that Gramps and Marie were more than comfortable.