“But where was Adele’s brother today, your great uncle? Surely he’s still living?”
“We’re not in touch,” I said, and my tone would have discouraged anyone more sensitive than this lady.
“But her only brother! Surely you . . .” and her voice died away as our combined stare finally sank home.
Several other people had commented briefly on our Uncle Bartlett’s absence, but we had given the “this is family business” signals that cut them right off. This woman—what was her name?—just hadn’t been as quick to read them. She’d brought a taco salad, and I planned to throw it right into the garbage when she’d left.
“We do have to tell him,” Jason said quietly after she left. I put my guard up; I had no desire to know what he was thinking.
“You call him,” I said.
“All right.”
And that was all we said to each other for the rest of the day.
Chapter 6
I STAYED AT home for three days after the funeral. It was too long; I needed to go back to work. But I kept thinking of things I just had to do, or so I told myself. I cleaned out Gran’s room. Arlene happened to drop by, and I asked her for help, because I just couldn’t be in there alone with my grandmother’s things, all so familiar and imbued with her personal odor of Johnson’s baby powder and Campho-Phenique.
So my friend Arlene helped me pack everything up to take to the disaster relief agency. There’d been tornadoes in northern Arkansas the past few days, and surely some person who had lost everything could use all the clothes. Gran had been smaller and thinner than I, and besides that her tastes were very different, so I wanted nothing of hers except the jewelry. She’d never worn much, but what she wore was real and precious to me.
It was amazing what Gran had managed to pack into her room. I didn’t even want to think about what she’d stored in the attic: that would be dealt with later, in the fall, when the attic was bearably cool and I’d time to think.
I probably threw away more than I should have, but it made me feel efficient and strong to be doing this, and I did a drastic job of it. Arlene folded and packed, only putting aside papers and photographs, letters and bills and cancelled checks. My grandmother had never used a credit card in her life and never bought anything on time, God bless her, which made the winding-up much easier.
Arlene asked about Gran’s car. It was five years old and had very little mileage. “Will you sell yours and keep hers?” she asked. “Yours is newer, but it’s small.”
“I hadn’t thought,” I said. And I found I couldn’t think of it, that cleaning out the bedroom was the extent of what I could do that day.
At the end of the afternoon, the bedroom was empty of Gran. Arlene and I turned the mattress and I remade the bed out of habit. It was an old four-poster in the rice pattern. I had always thought her bedroom set was beautiful, and it occurred to me that now it was mine. I could move into the bigger bedroom and have a private bath instead of using the one in the hall.
Suddenly, that was exactly what I wanted to do. The furniture I’d been using in my bedroom had been moved over here from my parents’ house when they’d died, and it was kid’s furniture; overly feminine, sort of reminiscent of Barbies and sleepovers.
Not that I’d ever had many sleepovers, or been to many.
Nope, nope, nope, I wasn’t going to fall into that old pit. I was what I was, and I had a life, and I could enjoy things; the little treats that kept me going.
“I might move in here,” I told Arlene as she taped a box shut.
“Isn’t that a little soon?” she asked. She flushed red when she realized she’d sounded critical.
“It would be easier to be in here than be across the hall thinking about the room being empty,” I said. Arlene thought that through, crouched beside the cardboard box with the roll of tape in her hand.
“I can see that,” she agreed, with a nod of her flaming red head.
We loaded the cardboard boxes into Arlene’s car. She had kindly agreed to drop them by the collection center on her way home, and I gratefully accepted the offer. I didn’t want anyone to look at me knowingly, with pity, when I gave away my grandmother’s clothes and shoes and nightgowns.
When Arlene left, I hugged her and gave her a kiss on the cheek, and she stared at me. That was outside the bounds our friendship had had up till now. She bent her head to mine and we very gently bumped foreheads.
“You crazy girl,” she said, affection in her voice. “You come see us, now. Lisa’s been wanting you to baby-sit again.”