“Oh…oh, what a shame. Is she happy there, at least?” A beseeching, desperate look follows the words, and I’m hit with a penetrating sadness for May. What has her life been like? Where are the friends, the neighbors, the co-workers…the people who should be coming to see her now, out of duty if nothing else? Grandma Judy has at least one visitor per day, sometimes two or three.
“I think she is. To tell you the truth, she was lonely in her home. Now that she’s at the facility, she has people to talk to, and there are games days and parties she can attend. They do craft projects, and there’s a library with plenty of books.” No doubt, they offer some of those options here. Maybe I can gain a little mileage with May Crandall—encourage her to give her new life an honest try and stop battling the staff. The shift in our conversation is leading me to suspect that she’s not as addled as she’s been pretending to be.
She smoothly ignores my implication and changes the subject. “I believe I knew her. Your grandmother. We shared bridge club, I think.” She points the knuckle of a bent, craggy finger in my direction. “You favor her quite a bit.”
“People say so. Yes. I have her hair. My sisters don’t, but I do.”
“And her eyes.” Things turn intimate. She looks through me to the very marrow of my bones.
What is happening here?
“I—I’ll ask her about you when I see her. But she may not remember. She has good days and bad days.”
“Don’t we all, though?” May’s lips twitch upward, and I catch myself chuckling nervously.
Shifting, I hit the bedside lamp with my elbow, then catch it, knocking the frame this time. I grab it before it can fall, hold it, and try to resist taking a closer look.
“They’re always bumping that. The girls here.”
“I could put it over on the dresser.”
“I want it close to me.”
“Oh…okay.” I wish I could sneak a new phone photo. At this angle, there’s no glare, and the face looks even more like my grandmother’s. Could it be her…maybe dressed up for a play? She was president of the drama club in prep school. “I was wondering about this, actually, when you came in.” Now that we’re on friendlier terms, it seems permissible to ask. “The woman in the picture reminds me of my grandmother, a little.”
My phone buzzes, still on silent from the town hall forum. I’m reminded that I’ve left Ian waiting in the car all this time. The message is from my mother, though. She wants me to call her.
“Same hair,” May Crandall agrees blandly. “But that’s not so uncommon.”
“No, I suppose not.” She doesn’t offer any more information. Reluctantly, I put the frame back on the nightstand.
May watches my phone as it buzzes a second time, my mother’s text message demanding acknowledgment. I know better than to leave it unanswered.
“It was lovely meeting you.” I attempt to excuse myself.
“Do you have to go?”
“I’m afraid I do. But I’ll ask my grandmother if she recognizes your name.”
She moistens her lips, emits a small cluck as they part. “You’ll come back, and I’ll share the story of the photo then.” Pivoting with surprising agility and without using her cane, she starts toward the door, adding, “Perhaps.”
She’s gone before I can answer.
I grab a better shot of the picture, then hurry off.
In the lobby, Ian is scrolling through emails on his cellphone. Apparently, he gave up on waiting in the car.
“Sorry that took so long,” I say.
“Oh, hey, no problem at all. It gave me the chance to sort my inbox.”
The nursing home director walks by and frowns, probably wondering why I’m still here. If I weren’t a Stafford, she’d undoubtedly stop and ask questions. As it is, she pointedly looks away and moves on. Even after two months back in South Carolina, it’s still strange, getting the rock-star treatment just because of my family name. In Maryland, I often knew people for months before they even realized my father was a senator. It was nice having the chance to prove myself as myself.
Ian and I proceed to the car, and we’re quickly bogged down in road construction traffic, so I use the time to call my mother. There will be no getting answers from her at home, with the DAR meeting being hosted there. After it’s over, she’ll be busy making sure every china plate and punch glass is back in its rightful place. That’s Honeybee. She’s an organizational whiz.
She also never forgets a name.
“Do we know a May Crandall?” I ask after she has requested that I “happen by” the DAR gathering so as to make an appearance, shake hands, and score a few points with all the right wives. Get the women, and you’ve got the vote, my father always says. Only foolish men underestimate their power.
“I don’t think so,” my mother muses. “Crandall…Crandall…”
“May Crandall. She’s around Grandma Judy’s age. Maybe they played bridge together?”
“Oh, goodness, no. The women Grandma Judy played bridge with are friends.” By friends, she means long-term acquaintances of the family with ties that are generations old for the most part. People of our social circle. “Lois Heartstein, Dot Greeley, Mini Clarkson…they’re all people you already know.”
“Okay.” Perhaps May Crandall really is just an addled old woman with a headful of jumbled memories that bear only a partial resemblance to reality. That doesn’t explain the photo on the nightstand, though.
“Why?”
“No real reason. I met her today at the nursing home.”
“Well, how sweet. That was kind of you to chat with her. Those people get so very lonely. She probably just knows of us, Avery. Many people do.”
I cringe and hope Ian can’t hear my mother’s end of the conversation. It’s embarrassing.
The question of the photograph still nibbles at the corner of my brain. “Who’s going by to see Grandma Judy tonight?”
“I was planning to. After the DAR meeting, if it’s not too late.” Mom sighs. “Your father won’t be able to.” Unfailingly, Honeybee holds down the family responsibilities when Dad’s job prevents him from doing so.
“Why don’t you stay home and rest after the meeting?” I suggest. “I’ll go.”
“But you’re coming by the meeting first?” Mom presses. “Bitsy is back from her trip to Lake Tahoe. She’s dying to see you.”
Suddenly, I have the horrible, desperate feeling a wild animal must experience when the door swings shut on a cage. No wonder my mother wants me to come by her DAR get-together. Bitsy is back in town. Given the party attendees, I can count on a multipronged interrogation about whether Elliot and I have set a wedding date, selected china and silver patterns, talked about a venue and season—indoor, outdoor, winter, spring.
We’re not in any rush. We’re both really busy right now. We’re just waiting to see what feels right isn’t what Bitsy wants to hear. Once she and the DAR ladies have me cornered, they won’t let me go until they’ve used every tool in their arsenal to get the answers they’re after.
I have a sinking feeling I might not be making it by Magnolia Manor this evening to ask Grandma Judy about the photo after all.
CHAPTER 6
Rill
In my dream, we’re free on the river. The Model T engine Briny fixed to the back of the boat drives us upwater easy, like we haven’t got any weight at all. Queenie sits up top of the cabin like she’s riding an elephant. Her head’s tossed back, her hair flowing out from under her feathery red hat. She’s singing a song she learned from an old Irishman in one of the shanty camps.
“Ain’t she pretty as a queen?” Briny asks.
The sun is warm, and the song sparrows sing, and the fat bass jump out of the water. A flock of white pelicans flies over in a big old arrow shape pointing north, which means the whole summer’s still ahead of us. There’s not a paddle-wheeler, or a flatboat, or a tug, or a barge in sight anywhere. The river is ours.
Only ours.
“And what’s that make you?” Briny asks me in my dream.
“Princess Rill of Kingdom Arcadia!” I yell out.
Briny sets a honeysuckle flower crown on my head and pronounces it so, just like the kings in the storybooks.
In the morning when I wake, there’s a sweet taste still in my mouth. It lasts until I open my eyes and think about why we’re all five in Queenie and Briny’s bed, flopped across the mattress like a fisherman’s catch, sweaty and slick.