Читать книгу The Passing Storm - Emily Rennie - Страница 4

After only a few days I began to get a little bored. The excitement of flying halfway across the country without my parents had worn off, and I’d grown tired of TV and my book. It was too hot to play outside, which bothered me immensely because I played outside all summer back home. Mom had talked me into not bringing my soccer ball, anyway, since it would take up too much room in my suitcase. Despite my boredom I tried to keep up a positive mood for Grandma, because she tried hard to keep us entertained.

I also missed Mom and Alex, even though we had already talked to them twice. Mom said they were painting my room the burgundy color I’d picked out, and that it looked really cool. I also missed my friends, especially my best friend Chelsea. I made a mental note to write her a letter later that day.

I cracked open a soda and picked up my mp3 player. Grandma had surprised me the night before by giving it a listen as she cooked dinner. She listened for about fifteen minutes, set it down, and said thoughtfully, “Not bad for crazy kid stuff.” I had to laugh.

The house was quiet without Grandma and Gabby, who had gone to the grocery store. Gabby was excited because Grandma’s neighbor Libby Watson had invited us over to swim, and Libby’s granddaughter Ashley was only a year younger than Gabby. I looked forward to being outside and floating around in the cool water, but was a little disappointed that there weren’t any kids my age around.

I sipped my soda and walked into the living room, where we didn’t spend much time. It was white and sparse—a stark contrast to the comfortable wood-paneled family room stuffed with plaid sofas and rocking armchairs. The white shag carpet of the living room seemed out of place compared to the plain brown carpet throughout the rest of the house. The shag was thick and cool, and I dug my bare toes into it. I sat down at the upright ivory-colored piano, took my headphones off, and tinkled out a few simple tunes I recalled from memory. I’d had several years of piano lessons, but I really wanted to learn how to play the guitar. Mom had promised that I could start taking guitar lessons before school started.

When I grew tired of the piano I turned to the pile of photo albums stacked under the coffee table. I set my drink down on a cork coaster and chose a red album from the top of the pile.

Pictures of Mom and my real father when they were dating and first married jumped from the pages. At first I laughed at the crazy clothes and hairstyles they had. Then tears started to form as I looked at pictures of Dad, who had died in a car accident when I was six. I remembered him putting me on his shoulders as we walked through the trees on a trail leading to the ocean. I could still feel his strong hands holding my legs, keeping me safe and steady. I could hear his deep and comforting voice asking me if I could smell the salty air as we grew closer to the water. Gabby was the spitting image of him with her blond hair and blue eyes. I took after Mom, with curly auburn hair and dark eyes. Mom called us Fall and Spring because our colors were so opposite. In the pictures, Mom looked so young and happy, unaware that her new husband would soon die tragically and leave her with two young girls to raise alone for several years.

The next album I picked up was one I hadn’t seen before; full of pictures from Grandma’s younger years like the photo on the dresser. As I turned the pages, I got a better sense of who Grandma was. She always had a twinkle in her eye, but I could clearly see that in the years before her sister Ginny died she was truly the life of the party. Her jubilant, bubbly personality shone through in every photo she was in. The last page of the album had a large photo of Ginny. Her brown doe-eyes stared into the camera, forever frozen in time at age fifteen. With just a hint of smile she exuded a look of cool confidence well beyond her years. What I gathered from Mom and Grandma was that Ginny was the shy, quiet match to Grandma’s outgoing personality.

Like Yin and Yang, Grandma had once said.

Like Fall and Spring, my mother always teased Gabby and me.

I tried to imagine what it must have been like for Grandma to lose her. As much as Gabby and I fought and got on each other’s nerves, I couldn’t imagine life without her. I was so deep in thought I barely heard my name softly spoken.

“Yes?” I said automatically, looking up and expecting to see Grandma standing in the doorway, back from shopping.

No one was there.

Slow tingles crept into my legs and arms like icy tentacles, freezing me onto the couch in fear.

“Hello?” I said, straining to hear someone in the other room. My chest rose and fell quickly as I began to breathe faster. The silence in the house was unbearable. I wanted to get up and go into the other room, or outside, but I felt rooted to the spot. After what seemed like an eternity, I set the photo album back under the table, and slowly stood up. Summoning courage I bolted into the family room and turned the TV on just to hear noise. I shivered as the nervousness slowly left me, and cautiously looked around to make sure there wasn’t someone in the house.

The voice had been so real, as if someone standing right next to me had said it. Mom would say my imagination was running away with me. I took deep breaths and tried to concentrate on the television.

“Anna, are you ready to go swimming?” Gabby ran inside from the garage and sped past me to put her swimsuit on, unable to contain her excitement.

“Are we going now?” I asked Grandma, who was following Gabby through the door with her arms full of grocery bags. I headed out to the car to bring the rest of the bags in. The air in the garage was heavy and humid.

“Well, Libby said to come over anytime after two,” Grandma said from the kitchen, “and when Gabby found out it was two-thirty she just couldn’t wait, so I said we could go now.”

“Okay, I’ll help you put the groceries away and get my suit on,” I said, returning to the cool relief of the kitchen.

“Make sure you put on sunscreen, both of you.”

Libby had been Grandma’s nearest neighbor since Mom was a girl, although “nearest” was a relative term, because it took about ten minutes to walk to her house. Libby’s husband had also died, so she and Grandma saw each other several times a week. They got their hair done, played rummy, and generally kept each other company. Libby was tiny. She couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds or been taller than five feet. But her hair added about another foot. It was the biggest hair I’d ever seen. She colored it blond, and if anyone asked her about it, she protested that it was her natural color, then she’d lean over and wink and whisper that she’d been dying her hair so long she had no idea what her natural color really was.

I couldn’t believe how hot it was walking over to Libby’s. I thought my rubber flip-flops would melt right into my feet. I wondered why Grandma didn’t want to drive, but I knew she liked to get her exercise.

“Hotter ‘n Hell’s kitchen!” Grandma exclaimed, fanning herself with her wide straw-brimmed hat. She had long linen pants on, and I couldn’t imagine how much hotter she must be. “Oh Lord, look at my flower bed. Those flowers are as dry as a desert dune. Gabby, you put your sandals back on, girl!” she said, shaking her head. “You’ll be sorry if you step on one of those goatheads.”

Gabby stopped dead in her tracks. “Goat heads?” she squeaked, slowly turning to look for a bloody, severed head on the dirt road.

“Oh, shoot, not a real goat’s head, but a nasty, spiky weed that sure won’t feel good if you step on it.” Gabby’s shoulders relaxed in relief and she quickly put her sandals back on.

After the hot walk, we were happy when Libby opened her door and let us in to the cool comfort of her air-conditioned house. “Well, my word!” she said, looking at Gabby and me. “Y’all can’t be Anna and Gabby. You’re much too big!”

“It’s us!” Gabby protested, not understanding the joke.

“It’s just wonderful to see you again, girls, and Ashley’s happy to have some friends to play with. I’ll get your Grandma some iced tea and y’all go ahead and find Ashley in the family room.”

Libby’s husband had smoked, and the house smelled strongly of cigarettes even though it’d been over ten years since Mr. Watson had passed away. The house was filled with mismatched furniture, overflowing bookshelves, and plants in every corner. Grandma liked to say Libby had more crap than a cow field. Grandma was full of funny old sayings.

“Hi Ashley,” Gabby said shyly.

“Hi Gabby,” Ashley replied without looking at us. I waved and said hello also, and Ashley’s reply was so quiet I could barely hear her. I knew that after about only five minutes both girls would be squealing with happiness as they got reacquainted and remembered how much fun they had together.

“Y’all wanna go in the pool?” Ashley asked.

“Yeah, let’s go!” Gabby replied, her earlier excitement returning.

Gabby wasn’t a very strong swimmer yet, so she had to wear floaties on her arms. I think she was a little embarrassed at first, because Ashley was younger and swam well without any help from inflatable plastic rings. But any self-consciousness was short-lived, and almost immediately the girls were splashing and playing as if they spent every day together.

I floated on my back on a thick foam pad, drifting leisurely around the deep end away from the girls. Above the girls’ splashing I could hear Grandma and Libby chatting about the people and events that shaped their everyday world. Someone was back in the hospital. Someone else didn’t show up at church last week. Another’s grandson was graduating from military school. I noticed that Libby had a lot of flowers in her backyard. I wondered if she took care of them herself like Grandma did, or if she had a gardener to help. I thought about Grandma, up at the first light of dawn spading and raking, digging and watering. By the time Gabby and I woke up Grandma had already been in her garden for several hours.

I closed my eyes against the heat and splashed the cool water on my face and chest. I daydreamed with my hands and feet dangling lazily in the water until my fingers and toes were pruned as raisins. After a while I began to get thirsty, and as I sat up and paddled the pad toward the edge of the pool, I swore I heard my name being called—a slight whisper hidden in the sound of the tree leaves flickering in the warm breeze. I looked around; Gabby and Ashley splashed around in the shallow end of the pool, and Grandma and Libby remained engrossed in deep conversation. I heard it again.

“Aaannnna. Anna, help me.” I swiveled around, trying to find the source of the voice. Suddenly, the sky turned black and the wind picked up. The temperature seemed to drop a few degrees, and the sky began to swirl with leaves and other debris. In the distance, I heard a low moaning, like a freight train making its way across the Texas prairie. I knew it couldn’t be real, so I shut my eyes tight and shook my head to break myself from the reverie. When I opened my eyes again, no one else seemed to have heard or seen anything. Puzzled, I wondered if I’d fallen asleep. Libby called for me to come get something to drink. Grateful for her offer, I made it to the side of the pool and tried to clear my mind of the strange moment.

Later that night as I showered I wondered what my friends back home were doing. With a two-hour time difference I guessed that many of them, including my best friend Chelsea, were probably just getting in from soccer practice. Chelsea and I met at school when we were both eight. On the first day of third grade, she was seated behind me, having the dubious luck of following my last name in alphabetical order.

“Do you play soccer?” she whispered to my back while Ms. Costas assigned the remaining desks.

“Yeah, I played on the Stingrays,” I replied, half turning so she could hear me, but wary of getting in trouble for talking.

“I played on the Cougars!” she exclaimed, happily. “I knew you looked familiar. What’s your name?”

“Anna.” I was a little intimidated by someone my age who seemed to have no shyness whatsoever. But there was something about her I really liked.

“I’m—”

“Chelsea Cheung!” Ms. Costas snapped, double-checking the name on her seating chart.

“Let’s start the year off right by sitting quietly at our desks.”

“Sorry,” I whispered, when Ms. Costas had turned her back.

“Oh, no biggie,” Chelsea replied. I could hear the smile in her voice, and from that day on we were best friends.

I giggled at the memory, and with a tinge of guilt regretted that the visit with Grandma was keeping me from Chelsea, soccer, Mom, and everything else back home.

After I toweled off, I reached for my pajamas on the counter where I had left them, and was surprised to see them neatly folded on the toilet seat. Gabby, I shook my head. I wrapped myself in the towel and opened the bathroom door quickly, hoping to surprise her as she hovered outside the door like a spy. But she wasn’t there.

“Gabby?” I called, expecting to hear her nearby bubbling over with giggles for pulling a fast one. I couldn’t hear a peep, so I knew she must be in the family room with Grandma. Gabby could never suppress a laugh.

Perplexed, I shut the door and dressed. I started wiping down the mirror, which was coated with steam from my shower. Suddenly I shivered, as if a cool breeze wafted through the bathroom. I checked the window, and like every other window in the house it was closed to keep the hot Texas night out and the air conditioning in. I felt as if I weren’t alone in the bathroom anymore, and the hair on my neck prickled. I quickly turned, hoping that Gabby had snuck in and was trying to spook me—but no one was there. I turned back to the mirror, trying to shake off the chills, but I couldn’t help thinking about the episode in the living room earlier that afternoon, and the strange dream I’d had at Libby’s.

Impatient for the mirror to clear, I picked up the colorful jars and bottles Grandma had on the counter, like a miniature city filled with tiny buildings and scaled-down skyscrapers. I sniffed a jar of cold cream and was almost startled at how much it smelled like Grandma. Occasionally, someone or someone’s bathroom smells like that cold cream, and suddenly I’ll feel transported to the dry, flat plains of Crisper; to the comforting feel of Grandma’s soft hands as she brushes my hair. I leaned over the counter and inhaled the scent that drifted over the collection, like a cloud of Grandma’s own fragrance.

As I pulled back I caught something shiny out of the corner of my eye. Tucked in the middle of the beauty products was a silver charm bracelet. Curious, I picked it up and it tinkled softly. It didn’t seem like something Grandma would wear, and it looked quite aged and dirty. Circling the chain at evenly spaced intervals were a horse, a ballerina, a cowboy boot, a book, and a heart—petite metal symbols of someone’s loves and interests; or perhaps simply chosen on a whim, or given as a gift. A broken link dangling from the chain seemed to indicate that a charm was missing. I dried my hair, brushed my teeth, and headed into the den where Grandma and Gabby sat side-by-side on the sofa watching television.

“Grandma, how come you never wear this?” I asked, sitting down on the other side of her and handing her the bracelet.

Grandma put on her glasses and peered at it. Her eyes narrowed and she swallowed hard.

“Well, I’ll be,” she drawled. “I haven’t seen this in quite some time.” She put down her glasses, closed her eyes, and rolled the bracelet around in her hand, feeling the delicate weight of it. She sighed heavily, as if suddenly very tired.

“This belonged to my sister Ginny.” She opened her eyes and handed it back to me. “You can have it if you want to, hon. It’s a bit dirty, though. Let me see if I have any cleaning solution. Where’d you find it anyway?”

“On the bathroom counter,” I replied.

“Really?” she answered, puzzled. “I cleaned that bathroom just before y’all arrived and it wasn’t there.” I touched the bracelet and thought about the chills I’d experienced just before I saw it. An inexplicable feeling made me want to put it on right away; maybe to feel closer to Ginny, or to honor her memory in some way. I’ve got it Ginny, I thought, I’ll take good care of it. A warmth filled me, as if from somewhere far away—yet intimately close—Ginny was smiling.