*
“Gran?”
“Yes?”
Neva was watching me with an expression that made me nervous. “Why would you travel across the other side of the world with a brand-new baby?”
Silence engulfed us. I realized my misstep. Like Grace, Neva saw the parallels between our situations. But Neva’s secret gave her insight Grace didn’t have. She was right, of course. It didn’t make any sense for me to cross the ocean with a new baby in tow.
Unless I had something to hide.
“What aren’t you saying, Gran?”
I shrugged a little. “Perhaps it was a strange thing to do, but hindsight has a way of making things clear. In the moment, things are muddier, less obvious.”
Neva nodded, but her face was still wary. It worried me. She wasn’t like Grace. She wouldn’t press me on an issue I didn’t want to discuss. But she also wouldn’t forget about it the way her mother would. Her unresolved questions would sit, just under the surface, a palpable but invisible wall between us.
This wouldn’t be the end of it. My granddaughter was on to me.
10
Neva
It was the first time I’d been home in days. Usually as I dashed from here to there, always late for the next thing, I courted a healthy lust for the idea of free time, the sleep-ins, the lazy breakfasts, the newspaper reading. Not today. The day ticked by in seconds, not minutes, and by late afternoon, I was climbing the walls.
When the buzzer rang at five P.M., I perked up. A visitor. I heaved myself into a standing position, and then I found the button and tapped it down. “Hello?”
“Hi, darling.”
I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t seem to project any words. Grace hadn’t been to my apartment in years, not since she’d moved to Conanicut Island and developed a sudden intolerance for the “big smoke” of Providence. “Grace? Is that you?”
“Yes, it’s me.”
Suddenly it was crystal clear. Grace was staging a surprise visit to try to catch me off guard. Perhaps she thought she’d find my baby’s father crouched behind the sofa or, failing that, his wallet or football jersey in the bedroom. “Okay. Come on up.”
“Oh no, I can’t stay,” she said. “Could you come down?”
My finger froze, poised over the button. Seriously? She’d come all the way to Providence and she wasn’t even going to come inside? “Er … sure. Just a sec.”
As I took the stairs, it occurred to me that I liked the fact that my mother could still surprise me. Like the time when I was in the third grade, and as the rite of passage went, asked my parents for a dog. We were all living in Providence back then, and Dad said our yard wasn’t big enough. Grace asked if I was upset and I remember saying “I guess not.” Being upset, I figured, wouldn’t change the size of our yard.
That night, when Dad and I were watching TV, Grace crawled into the room on all fours, dressed in a white, furry bunny costume. Before we could even ask what she was doing, she barked, said they didn’t have any dog outfits at the costume store, and that we could call her Rover. I had a strong urge to hug her, but instead I patted her furry back.
The next day she met me at the school gates, still dressed as the bunny. That, in essence, was the problem with Grace. She never knew when to quit.
I peeled open the door, and there she was. In her slightly too-long tie-dyed sundress with her wild strawberry hair, Grace looked small. Innocent. Well meaning.
“Well,” I said. “This is unexpected.”
Grace reached into a bag and produced a yellow Tupperware container. “Bell pepper and bean sprout soup. Rich in folic acid, vitamin A, vitamin C.”
“You made me soup?”
“Got to make sure my grandchild is getting its nutrients.”
Her smile was full and wide, exposing two rows of teeth. The steel gate around my heart opened and I stepped back, allowing the door to open further. “Come in, Grace. Have some soup with me.”
She pressed the soup into my hands. “I wish I could, but I have to get back. I don’t want your father attempting to cook again.”
With a hand on each cheek, she kissed me. She smelled like essential oils—lavender and perhaps cedar. Grace loathed perfume, but thanks to the oils that burned constantly at her house, she always smelled lovely. “Let’s talk soon okay, darling?”
I nodded dumbly as she turned and hurried away, her tangled hair trailing after her like a leashed puppy. As I watched her, I had an overwhelming urge to scream, Wait! Stay. Have soup with me. But it was too late. She was gone.