The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show - Ariel Gore [52]
Over a dinner of lamb chops, mashed potatoes, and boiled carrots, I unfolded my cloth napkin only after Grandpa Joe had unfolded his, and I smoothed the white linen square across my lap, imagining what a nice granddaughter they’d think I was.
I spoke only when spoken to and made my bed. I emptied the dishwasher without being asked. I never left my dolls on the floor.
Did I look like my mother?
But Grandma Jeanie never mentioned my mother, and Grandpa Joe cleared his throat and changed the subject when I asked him if this was the house she’d grown up in.
The last morning there at the breakfast table, a bowl of Grape-Nuts in front of me, I sipped my Sunny Delight, waited for an opening.
Grandma Jeanie smiled, tapped a manicured nail on the wooden table. “I’ll bet you’re looking forward to seeing all of your friends at home, aren’t you, dear?”
But I wasn’t looking forward to seeing the fly-children. I set down my juice cup at the upper right hand corner of my yellow placemat where it belonged and piped up, “I would very much like to come and live here with you in Colorado.”
Grandpa Joe folded his newspaper over, looked at Grandma Jeanie.
I sat up straight, held-breath hopeful.
Grandma Jeanie smiled at me. “Well, dear, maybe we can talk to your Nana about that.”
“Oh, my Nana wouldn’t mind at all,” I promised. “It’s real hard work for her, taking care of me. I mean…” I regretted saying the thing about hard work right away. “I won’t be any trouble for you. I promise. It’s just hard for her because…” I trailed off. “I won’t be any trouble at all.”
Grandma Jeanie held her smile. “Of course you wouldn’t be any trouble, dear.”
I bit my lip. “Will you call her now?”
“Soon, dear.” Grandma Jeanie nodded slowly. “Well. We’d better get you packed up.”
Of course. Packed up. I’d have to go back to my Nana’s to get the rest of my things.
At home in our San Francisco apartment, I whispered in the bathroom mirror, “I’m from Colorado,” and smiled the way I imagined girls from Colorado smiled. I could see my future clearly: my suburban life, the giant public school halfway between my grandparents’ house and JC Penney. Sunny Delight and shopping center church.
Grandma Jeanie would call my Nana soon, tell her I was no trouble at all.
What is “soon” exactly? A week? A month? Maybe a season? Easter, when you thought about it, could be classified as “soon.”
We changed our clocks back and we changed our clocks forward, but the black telephone didn’t ring. Cards came on holidays picturing lazy cartoon cats and pink flowers. Thinking of You, Granddaughter, and checks for twenty-five dollars. I sent my thank-you notes on time, but Grandma Jeanie and Grandpa Joe never invited me back to their blue tract house outside Denver.
Now Grandma Jeanie’s voice sounded like an old woman’s. “You’ve been through so much, dear.”
But it was too late. Maybe she knew it was too late—maybe that’s why she offered. What would I do in Colorado now? My orphan’s Social Security check wouldn’t go away just because my Nana was gone. Seven months ’til graduation, my application already out to the University of California. “I’ll be fine here,” I promised.
“All right, dear, but you know our door is always open.”
It’s amazing, when you think about it, what grief can do to people.
Chapter 20
CONFESSION
Maybe I’ve had too much to drink, or maybe silence can only sustain itself for so long, but as I clear the table and rinse the dinner dishes in the blue bucket of lake water on the porch, I have the urge to tell Dorothy everything.
I wipe down the table. Just one candle still burns.
I sit across from her, wait a long time before I break the spell of quiet.
Dorothy sits statue-still as I tell her about the way I never stuck up for Ezekiel Goldstein against the fly-children who swarmed on the schoolyard at All Saints K–8, how I cheated on my tests, letting the saints whisper the answers in my ears and then taking credit like I’d studied all along. I tell her how I never