I’ve just finished towel-drying my damp hair and stepping into a simple, short black dress for the show tonight when my phone rings.
Assuming it’s Dallas calling to remind me that I have to be in the lobby an hour earlier because Ms. Lantram wants us to meet her for dinner, I answer without checking the caller ID.
“Dixie Leigh, what have I told you about siccing that damned woman on me?” My grandfather is exactly as angry as I expected him to be. And he sounds healthy as a horse so I feel like I can finally breathe.
“Papa, we got you the phone so we could check in. You worry me sick when you don’t answer it. You don’t answer, I send Mrs. Lawson. Capisce?”
“She spent forty-five minutes talking about those caterwauling felines. I was trying to listen to the Rangers game. Missed the last inning and the final score thanks to her yammering.”
“Sorry. But you know I worry.” I balance on one foot and slip on a black leather ankle boot while holding the phone to my ear. “You taking your pills like Dr. Rogers told you to? Are you using that case I got you that has the days of the week on it?”
“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbles. “Y’all behaving in Austin? You keeping an eye on those boys?”
“Yes, sir,” I promise him. “Funny thing is, they think they’re keeping an eye on me.”
He chuckles softly. “Well now, they’d have to have two sets of eyes each to keep up with you, wouldn’t they?” He asks how the shows have gone and I recount the past few in vivid detail.
Papa played bass guitar with a group called the Harmless Gangsters. They had a tagline; something about the only thing they stole was hearts. I saw a picture of them in his old things out in the shed once, a discolored black-and-white shot of four guys leaning leisurely against a classic car.
I’d let out a low whistle and handed it to him. Papa had smiled and set the photo aside. Later I’d wished I’d taken it. It was probably packed away or half moth-eaten by now.
My chest aches with missing him. “I miss you. Dallas has a few things lined up after this festival, but then we’re coming home for a bit, okay? I’ll make you that meat loaf you like so much. Like Nana’s.”
He’s quiet for a moment and I wonder if I’ve lost his attention to his talk radio broadcast blaring in the background. It’s been over two years since she passed away, but Papa holds on to his pain the same way that I do.
“I’d like that, Dixie Leigh. Nobody could make it like she did, but yours is pretty close I ’spose.”
“Thanks, Papa. I try.” My throat constricts and I begin to wonder if I’m going to pay for my lie to Dallas by actually starting my period soon. My emotions are running away with me and I can hardly keep up. “I’ll, um, play that piece you like on the Wurlitzer, too. That one by Glass that she used to play.”
He grunts out a sound of approval then lingers a moment, as if he just wants to stay on the line a little longer, but I note the time on the alarm clock on the nightstand and tell him that I need to go.
We say our goodbyes and I sit on my bed and stare at myself in the mirror across from it.
It’s odd, the things we remember and the things we forget. My memories of my parents are like a whimsical montage that plays at the press of an unseen button in my mind. The images of them holding hands in the car, swinging me by the arms, my mom putting on earrings and glancing at me in the mirror with a smile and a promise about getting my ears pierced one day, her musical chiming laughter when my father made a joke, her smiling up at his handsome face before they would kiss. It’s always behind a thick, gauzy haze that feels more like I watched a movie about them than actually lived that life. But memories of Nana and Papa are sharp and well defined—all of them.