“I’m Joan Sully,” I announce.
I can’t say another word because Mom comes in from the bedroom and takes the phone and hangs up. Her hair is in a ponytail and her skin is pink and she’s wearing her black leggings and her bouncy sneakers. She used to belong to a gym but she stopped going because they wouldn’t give her a good deal. Now she just exercises at home and she hates that Dad doesn’t exercise but still stays skinny. She says that isn’t fair.
I follow her down the hall to her bedroom. “It was for me.”
“I’m sure it was,” Mom says.
“Why can’t I talk to them?”
The lady on the television is frozen and Mom is about to unfreeze her with the remote but first she needs a few more seconds to catch her breath. She answers me in a quiet voice, which is her favorite move when I get loud. “Do you want to?”
I wasn’t expecting that.
“Maybe we should set up a meeting,” Mom says, shrugging. “They might finally stop calling. If it’s something you really want to do, I have a whole list of people who are itching to talk to you.”
“That man said something about old-timer’s disease. That’s what Grandma Joan had.” I know it’s called Alzheimer’s but Dad calls it old-timer’s instead because he says it helps to make jokes when life gets too sad.
“Yes,” Mom says. “That’s what your grandmother had.”
I wish I had met Dr. M before Grandma Joan started forgetting because maybe he could have figured out how to capture all her memories and put them inside my brain so I could keep them safe.
“Maybe this Dr. Robert guy thinks I can help old people remember,” I say. “Wouldn’t that be great?”
She takes a long look at me. “Tell you what—write down the man’s name and I’ll give him a call.” Mom pulls her ponytail tighter and gets back to her video. “By the way, I heard you and Gavin playing in your room today. The song sounds like it’s really coming along.”
I leave her bouncing in her bedroom and my legs take me slowly down the hall. The sun is shining through the blinds but it looks cloudy to me. I love thinking about my grandmother but I also hate it, because what happened at the end of her life makes all the other memories I have of her feel less special. It’s like we were playing this great concert together and when we got to our last song of the night, she just left the stage and now I have to face the crowd by myself and sometimes I just don’t feel strong enough to do it alone.
But I can’t quit now, not when Gavin and me are finally getting somewhere with our song. Mom even said so.
16
The street is mobbed. Men, women, children, and dogs all crammed onto eight blocks of urban road for an arts fair.
Paige is with Joan in line for kettle corn. Looks like they’ll be there a while. In the meantime, I’m browsing the offerings, or pretending to. Amid the funnel cake and brick-oven pizza is every kind of craft and tchotchke you could imagine. It’s all a bit dizzying.
I wasn’t going to come. I was planning on finally chipping away at the avalanche of e-mails smothering my in-box. My agent has been trying to get me to give an interview about the fire. My mother keeps asking when I’m going to visit her. Sydney’s cousin wants my help in starting the Sydney Brennett Fund to benefit families who’ve lost loved ones to sudden cardiac death.
But Joan convinced me to join her and her mother. She said if I had any hope of writing good lyrics, I had to keep having new experiences. Smart kid. Once again, she’s coaxed me into doing something I didn’t expect to be doing. First I’m facing Sydney head-on, welcoming his memory when I had sworn to outrun it. Now I’m writing song lyrics, something I haven’t done in almost twenty years, and, what’s more, writing about the very things I’ve been trying not to dwell on.
I pass by vendors of all types, surveying their wares from a distance, careful not to make eye contact with the artists. I feel too guilty not buying their stuff.
One artist’s tent finally intrigues me. I’m particularly drawn to a painting of a woman surfing a wave. The ocean is achieved with haphazard strokes. In contrast, the woman and her surfboard are ultra-precise, even down to the thin strands of hair. I can’t tell if it’s the artist’s style that’s familiar or the feeling it evokes. Either way, I think it would make a nice gift for my sister.
On a table below the surfer painting is a box of prints containing smaller versions of the larger works hanging around the tent. Now I’m wondering if a bulky painting is too ambitious. I decide to look for an eight-by-ten instead. I leaf through the cards until I find a copy of the surfer painting.
“Those are twenty-five each,” says a voice. “The postcards are five.”
It’s a girl. A young woman, rather. Probably my sister’s age, in her twenties. But there’s something old-soul about her eyes, like she knows more than her years might suggest.
“Gavin?”
I’ve been recognized. Ever since my video aired on the news and gossip shows, I swear people have been looking at me funny.
“Sorry,” she says. “You don’t know me. I knew Sydney.”
I remove my shades, turn again to the surfer painting. The loose ends start to connect. “We had one of your paintings in our house,” I say. “The one with the forest.”
The trees were a smattering of messy green jutting up against a starry night. The moon, meanwhile, was rendered with photorealism. It was a dramatic piece. The key word: was. I set it on fire.
“Mara,” she says, reaching out her hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“You too.”
There were artists of all types at Syd’s funeral, many of whom I’d never met before. Syd had championed their work, nurtured their creativity, and they all came to show their gratitude.
I hold up the eight-by-ten print of the surfer. “I’d like to buy this one for my sister.”
“Awesome,” Mara says. “Does she surf?”
“I don’t think so. But she loves the beach.”
She smiles. “It’s a nice gesture.”
I look again at the box of prints. “And do you have any postcards of the forest painting?”
Syd loved that painting, hung it in a prominent spot in our home. It took him several years to find something worthy of placing on that central wall.
Mara leafs through the box, keeps shuffling, seemingly without luck. Then, toward the back, she spots something. She reaches in and removes a card sheathed in plastic.
“On the house,” she says, hesitating before adding, “I’m sorry about what happened. I didn’t know him that well, but he meant a lot to me. In a weird way, he sort of made me realize how much I’m capable of.”
I know the feeling. How unlikely to share it with a stranger on this day, in this random place. And I almost didn’t come. Syd would say it was meant to be.