For the Love of Friends(89)

She would never acknowledge the rest of what I said. It would have confused her own sense of self. But this was enough for now.





CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT


I still couldn’t bring myself to call Megan, so I called my grandmother from my parents’ driveway.

“It’s Lily,” I said.

“Doesn’t ring a bell. Apparently I only call my eldest granddaughter Joan.”

“Can I come over?”

“Why? Do you need more material? Should I invite my mah-jongg club over too so you can write about them?”

“Please, Grandma?”

“Suit yourself.”

But despite the attitude over the phone, her front door was open behind the screen door when I arrived, as it always was when I was expected.

“Grandma?” I called as I came in.

“In the kitchen, Joan.” I didn’t correct her. “Are you hungry? I made a cake.” She was sitting at the table, reading glasses on the bridge of her nose, the newspaper in front of her.

I started to refuse, then realized I was famished and said I would love a slice. She stood, but I told her I would get it, and I cut one for each of us, then brought them over on two tea plates.

“I’m really sorry, Grandma.”

“For what, darling?”

I was genuinely confused—did she not remember? That happened sometimes with her, but my mother always assured us it was just old age, not Alzheimer’s—the same way she didn’t ever remember our names. Or was she being difficult and planning to extract a more detailed apology by playing dumb?

“For—the blog.”

“You got stuck in a bog?”

“Blog. The—the thing I wrote?”

“Oh, the Google thing your mother sent me?”

“I—uh—yeah, probably.”

“It was very nice. But I don’t understand what a blog is.”

“It’s a—oh God, how do I explain it? It’s kind of like a place where you can publish the stuff you write for people to read on the internet?”

“Like the Facebook?”

“No—not exactly—I mean—” How to explain it to a woman who called the internet “the Google” and who insisted, when she had me make her a Facebook page, that I use a picture of her from when she was a dozen years younger than I was now because she looked too old in all the others? “Yes, it’s like Facebook. But for longer stuff that you write.”

“In my day, we wrote letters.”

I debated explaining that this was much more public, but that wouldn’t help my cause any. “Um. Yeah. But I wanted to apologize for what I wrote.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I wasn’t very nice in it.”

“It sounds like those girls owe you apologies, not the other way around.”

“I meant for the parts about you.”

She tilted her head at me. “I don’t follow.”

“I shouldn’t have made fun of you.”

“Who made fun? You wrote what Louise and I did.”

“But it wasn’t nice.”

“You keep saying that—who cares if it’s nice if it’s true?”

“I—” This wasn’t going how I expected it to at all. “Mom said you were mad at me.”

She waved a hand in the air. “Your mother says a lot of things. How I raised such an uptight daughter, I will never understand.”

“You’re not mad?”

“Honey, at my age, who has time to be mad about things like that?” She took a bite of cake and gestured for me to do the same. “Is that why you came over?”

“I—well—yeah.”

“You could come visit without thinking I’m mad or that you need to babysit me on an airplane, you know.” I tried to remember the last time I had been to her house other than picking her up and dropping her back home for the Mexico trip. I had seen her, of course, at my mother’s house and when she came dress shopping. But the last time I came by just for a visit was well before people started getting engaged. Which meant it had been at least a year. And given her age, the opportunities to spend time with her were getting more and more limited by the day.

“You’re right,” I nodded. “You’re really not mad?”

“Did you kill anyone?”

“No.”

“Steal anything?”

“No.”

“Then no. I’ll be a little miffed if you don’t finish that piece of cake though.” I took a bite, feeling somewhat lighter. “Your mother sounded pretty upset, but I don’t put much stock in that. Raises my blood pressure too much. I just take my hearing aids out when she starts going on.”

“Why did you act like you were mad over the phone then?”

She winked at me. “It got you to come visit, didn’t it?” I mentally kicked myself again. But one of my grandmother’s best qualities was that she genuinely didn’t hold grudges. Yes, she might say anything and everything that popped into her head, no matter how inappropriate, but once she had said it, she was done. My weekends might be booked solid for the next month (or might not be, depending on how my friends took my apologies), but I promised myself I would be better about coming to see Grandma as soon as the weddings were done. “But you seem upset. Explain to me why this blog thing is such a big deal.”