I swallowed hard, thinking of him working a long day on the boat and lifting crate after crate for hours after that, and then getting in his truck and driving a half hour in the other direction from home just to bring me the soup he knew I liked.
He worried all day while I was sailing. Sailing in a boat he’d given me years ago when I’d asked him to teach me to sail. We’d stayed in the river at first because I was afraid of the dark water, fearful of how far it stretched in front of the Salt House.
But after a month, my father convinced me to go out in the bay, reassuring me that we were just fine. That he wouldn’t let anything happen to me. That it was his job to keep me safe.
We sailed in the harbor all of July. By August, we were past the breakwater. The last sail we took that summer, we were so far out in the Gulf of Maine, I couldn’t see land.
Across the table, my father caught my eye and winked. The bowls of soup between us. The air around us filling with the smell of home.
?14
Kat
Grandma was going back to Florida in a couple of weeks and moving in with Roger, and Mom was saying that she hadn’t heard anything as ridiculous as that in a long time. They were in the kitchen, and when Mom said this, Grandma patted my arm, in a soothing sort of way, like I was the one getting spoken to.
My cereal was getting soggy, but I didn’t want to crunch too loud and miss something. I hadn’t seen Mom this fired up since that night she fought with Dad.
“Tell me you’re not serious,” Mom said.
“Why would I say it if I wasn’t serious?” Grandma gave her a puzzled look.
“You’ve only been dating for a year!”
“We’ve been dating for a year and a half, and I’ve known him for ten. Longer than I knew your father before I married him. For the record.”
I’d never met my grandfather. He died when mom was Jess’s age, but this seemed to make Mom even madder.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means time is irrelevant when it comes to love. I knew your father ten minutes, and I wanted to marry him. And we’d still be going strong if he was here.”
“But why now? I mean, it’s sort of out of the blue.” Mom squeezed the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. It was a habit she got from Grandma, but I didn’t think it was the right time to point that out.
“Well, because he asked,” Grandma said. “Just last night. He asked and I said yes.” She took a sip of her coffee, winked at me over the rim of the mug. “I’ve lived alone for thirty years. A lot of those years I spent missing your father. There wasn’t room for anyone else. And now I feel that there is. And you know what I always say. So much of life is just finding that balance. The balance of holding on and letting go.”
Mom put her chin in her hand. “You do say that. All the time, you say it.”
“Well, I say it because it’s true. Those words helped me enormously after your father died.” Grandma looked at me. “Did your mother ever tell you this story?”
“Here we go,” Mom said.
“She was sixteen,” Grandma said to me, pointing at Mom. “And dead set on not moving out of Alden, away from her friends. I didn’t have a job, any family of my own up here. My parents were livid that I wasn’t coming back home to Alabama with their only grandchild. Livid! My father could have bought and sold Alabama twice over with his money, and he told me he wouldn’t give us a dime unless we moved back. It didn’t matter to them what was best for you. Or me. I was almost forty years old by then. Can you imagine moving back home after you’ve had a husband and a child. A life!”
I didn’t know if this was a question, but she was looking at me, so I shook my head. I heard Mom let out a long breath.
“So one day the phone rings, right in the middle of this whole mess, and it was your uncle Pete, Petey we called him, your grandfather’s brother. He died soon after in a car accident. Anyway, he was asking how I was holding up, and I just lost it. I mean, crying and carrying on, talking about how I was tired of fighting with my parents, exhausted of explaining why I needed to do what I was doing. Finally when I was done, he just said in the simplest of ways into the phone, ‘Then stop.’ And I said, ‘Well, stop what?’ and he says, and I’ll never forget this, ‘Well, stop explaining, Barb. It’s your life, after all.’?”
Grandma got up from the table and poured herself another cup of coffee from the pot on the stove, held it out to Mom, who covered her cup, shook her head.
“So anyway,” Grandma continued after she sat down again. “I hung up speechless. Just speechless. I was a forty-year-old woman asking permission to live her life.” She stopped talking, and I waited, but when she looked up at me, she smiled, finished with her story.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “What does that have to do with that thing that you say. About balance or whatever.”
“Oh. There was a book of poetry on the table that I was reading at the time, and it was open to that page. Sort of a sign, I think.”
Mom lifted her eyebrows at me, and then looked at Grandma. “Are you getting married too?”
“Oh, I suspect,” Grandma answered. “But one thing at a time. I don’t want to get overwhelmed.”
“No, that’s prudent,” Mom said.
“You make Jess go to her room when she’s sarcastic,” I told her. I didn’t know what prudent meant, but the way she said it was definitely sarcastic.
Mom groaned. “I’m sorry for being sarcastic. I’m just surprised. I know you told me a few weeks ago that you were serious about Roger. I just love having you here. I thought maybe you might reconsider moving back. Even spend half the year here. Lots of people do that—”
Grandma held up her hand, interrupting her. “I love spending time with all of you. But I despise Maine. You know this. Your father loved it here, so I lived here. And I visit for all of you. But that’s where my ties end.”
“You’re so dramatic,” Mom said.
“And you hate change,” Grandma said, folding her arms across her chest.
“Can we go now?” I asked.
“Go where?” Grandma asked.
“My fun day,” I told her.
She looked from me to Mom.
“I told Kat we’d spend the day together,” Mom explained. “Do whatever she wants. Her choice.”
“Anything?” I asked.
“Anything that is within driving distance and not dangerous.”
“Well, then. Where to?” Grandma asked me.
“I wanted to go to the water park.”
I looked out the window at the rain, the sky bright from a flash of lightning.
“Dangerous,” Grandma said.
“How about a movie?” Mom asked.
“Can I get gummy bears? The big box?”
She never let me eat them because they stuck to my teeth and caused cavities, or so the dentist said. Her mouth twisted, but she nodded glumly.
“Okay,” I said, and hopped off the chair while Mom went to get dressed.
Grandma motioned for me to come over to her. “After the movie, tell her you want to go to Bert’s for ice cream, and then to the Salt House,” she whispered.
The Salt House was my favorite place on the planet. Well, besides the water park, but that was out anyway because of the rain.