It was weird to get to know someone after the fact when they weren’t dead yet, but being in Grandpa’s garage was a way for Edna to retroactively get to know him. He had been some kind of nutty tool collector, he had a mountain of rusty implements. Edna wasn’t sure how long it had been since Grandpa did things. Grandma seemed pretty organized, so the mess was probably his after years of neglect. Maybe it was left like this because of his illness. Edna wasn’t handy, but she put the different rusty items that looked alike together and created a tidy workshop a little at a time. She wondered if Grandpa would appreciate this, or if he was the type of person who clung to his chaos.
A sheet-metal case dominated a part of his worktable. She opened the bottom drawer first. It was mayhem, packed crusty batteries, flashlights, wire, more rusty tools, nuts and bolts, markers and pencils. She couldn’t even open it without emptying some out. Edna normally hated any kind of disorganized clutter, but this could be information. The air hung still and sweat dripped down her nose. Edna was so interested in Grandpa’s things, she didn’t even notice.
The second drawer was filled with cassette tapes. They were deteriorated; Edna couldn’t play them even if she had the machine to play them on. She decided to put Grandpa’s music on her phone when she got home. She found an old notepad from the Sand Castle Inn of Pismo Beach and wrote down what Grandpa’s music was. Edna had heard of Elvis Presley, the Beach Boys and the Rolling Stones, but she’d never heard of Jan and Dean, Hank Williams, the Kinks or the Ventures.
There were nails sticking out of the wall behind the table, and Edna hung tools on them as she thought about the logistics of her doomed party. Grandma was making Pineapple Upside-Down Cake for fifteen people, and it had to be fantastic. She couldn’t do that and be much help with anything else while she still had to take care of Grandpa. Anyway, Edna had promised to do “everything.” She couldn’t imagine what could change between today and then. It would have been easier to cancel the party when Johnny was the only one coming. This problem was not going away like it was supposed to.
She heard a faint, chirping sound coming from the loft, but she didn’t see the bird making it. The garage was so cluttered, she’d never looked up and noticed all the stuff stored above. Three surfboards rested on the rafters, each with a colorful design that had dulled over the years. They didn’t seem to belong in the desert, but they probably went fine with San Diego and Pismo Beach. Beneath the surfboards, bundles were tied off to the beams in a messy web of straps and bungees. The web held two metal folding tables.
Johnny had gotten a haircut. Edna was shocked, though she knew boys often cut their hair short in the summer. She wasn’t sure if he was cuter with his hair long and wild or cropped short because he looked so good both ways. She might like it better long, but she liked it even better that he wasn’t attached to his hairstyle. She liked seeing more of his face. She liked seeing him.
“Hey, Edna.”
“Hi. How was your ride out?”
“Just fine.”
He always said it was just fine. It was a boring question, but she was still trying to sound easygoing and not too challenging. The breezy personality was working well. Johnny’d kissed her with the breezy personality. The breezy personality reminded her to act like a viable young woman and not an anxious, silly girl. Johnny went to get Grandma’s packages from the back of the truck.
“Nice haircut.”
“Thanks.”
“Johnny…”
“Yeah?”
“Would you help me get something down from the garage, for the party?”
“Sure. Be right out.”
He brought Grandma’s packages inside. Moments later Edna and Johnny walked down to the garage. Holding his hand would have been natural. It was only inches away from hers.
Johnny raised his eyebrow when he looked at the complicated bundles strapped to the beams. Edna loved to see his eyebrow go up when he was thinking, but this time she knew it was because the favor was more than he’d bargained for. She’d become a nuisance. She hadn’t considered the ton of random junk stashed up there in the way of the tables. She had been so excited about the tables to begin with, and then that she could ask Johnny to help her and have an excuse to interact with him. He got a big ladder and had to unhook a horse’s saddle and some fishing poles. He carefully handed them down to Edna. He looked around the rafters.
“Holy sh—there’s a bunch of guns up here.”
He took out a rifle from a long case that was dried out and falling apart. It was tied next to the surfboards. Johnny evaluated the rifle and saw that it wasn’t loaded. Clearly Johnny had handled guns before. Edna wasn’t sure, but this might have been the first time she’d ever seen a real gun and not a picture of one, or one that was a toy. No, she’d seen handguns on police, but not rifles or shotguns like these. Guns, in Edna’s realm, were part of what was wrong with the world, and no one should have them. Grandpa had a few different kinds. Johnny’s comfort with them mystified her. He checked them one at a time and set them on the area of the counter Edna had recently cleaned off.
“What do you think they’re doing here?”
“I don’t know. Zeke probably shot a little bit.”
“Oh.”
“Everybody has guns.”
“They do?”
“Uh-huh. Do you shoot?”
“No. Never.”
“It’s fun.”
“Really?”
Edna couldn’t imagine why it would be fun. Moments later Johnny set some cans from Grandma’s recycling out on rocks.
“That’s about fifty feet, a pretty good distance for a BB gun.”
He put some BBs into the gun, pumped it and handed it to Edna, who immediately recoiled from it.
“Tsk. No way.”
“Take it.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Go ahead and aim.”
Edna took it. She found one of the cans in its sight.
“That’s pretty good. You even have the butt tucked into your shoulder.”
“I’ve seen people aim rifles on TV.”
He moved her elbow down.
“Take a shot.”
She took one and looked after it. She’d missed, but she couldn’t tell by how much.
“These aren’t the right BBs for this gun, so it might be spinning off a little high and right.”
He looked into the sight and re-aimed the gun.
“Try to compensate a little low and left.”
Edna tried to compensate for the spin and for being thrown off with Johnny so close to her. She pulled the trigger. The can flew off the rock. She’d shot something, and she was actually proud of it.
“I did it!”
“Try it again.”
She missed the next two shots in a row.
“Pull the trigger after you exhale.”
“Seriously?”
He shrugged. “Yeah.”
Edna took aim.
“Don’t forget to compensate.”
She looked down the sight and estimated what she thought Johnny would have compensated. She inhaled, exhaled, and in a moment of stillness she pulled the trigger. The can flew off the rock.
“You’re a good teacher.”
“No, you’re a natural.”
“You go.”
“Finish ’em off.”
“No, you go.
She had to see him shoot. He aimed the gun and shot the first one clean. He missed the next one but tried again and hit it. He got all the cans that were left from where he stood. He thought it was funny that Edna was so impressed.
“It isn’t hard. You just did it.”
“Hey!”
She gave him an affectionate push. A quick memory of being on top of her in the Bronco flashed through his mind.
“Come on,” he said, “let’s get the tables.”
The mundane chore was a thrill for Edna. Johnny got on the ladder and reached up to undo the worn, leather straps holding them, which were actually old belts buckled together and knotted around the beams. The belts were so dried out, it was probably good they were taking this stuff down. Edna wondered if Grandpa did all this or if Grandma could have done it, or if her father or some other crazy person had. It was hard to imagine someone fastening these belt buckles together or understand why they didn’t just use rope. She tried to picture her grandparents storing their things or walking into the garage for the first time, but she abandoned that pursuit when she noticed Johnny’s T-shirt hiking up as he fought with the belt buckles. She could see his stomach.
Edna had seen boys in bathing suits year-round all her life, but she had never taken particular note of any boy’s stomach before. It was flat and had a faint line of hair beneath his navel. He reached higher, exposing more of it.
“Watch out, there’s a lot of—”
A dove flew out of the beams, startling Johnny, and he dumped years’ worth of old birds’ nests and debris that was trapped behind the tables onto Edna. Twigs, dirt and feathers fell onto her face. She felt a hundred little pricks in her eyes, and she gasped as she was momentarily blinded, breathing in dirt. A nest filled with chicks landed next to her, and their piercing squeals terrified her more.
“Edna. Oh my…let’s get you to the house.”
Johnny got down the ladder just in time to keep her from stepping on the nest. He picked Edna up and put her into the Bronco. She didn’t take her hands away from her face while he drove up the slope.
“What was that noise?”
“There were some chicks. Are you OK?”
“I think so. Did the chicks die?”
“No. Edna, I’m sorry—”
“It was an accident.”
She went straight into the bathroom. Edna cried intensely. She had reasons to be upset, but none of them seemed to justify such deep emotion. The dirt came off easily. She couldn’t stand to think about what she must have looked like with that dirt all over her. It was a slap in the face from fate, really, when she tried so hard to look good around Johnny. The worst thing was that he’d picked her up and she didn’t even enjoy it. Still, none of these things matched her distress. She didn’t come out of the shower for a long time. Grandma knocked on the door.
“Are you all right, Edna?”
“Yes.”
Crying over boys was exactly what Edna had been avoiding for the entire last year. She missed her old self, who couldn’t care less about a boy. Her old self might have gone as far as to think Johnny was an idiot for dumping dirt on her, but now she would never think that. If she hadn’t met him in the first place, she’d have easily convinced her parents to end this stupid punishment and she would have been out of there weeks ago, but she would never think of that now either. Edna didn’t know what to think. She came outside in her bathrobe. The heat felt good after crying for so long in the shower. It was good to dry out.
The red truck was gone. Johnny brought the tables up to the porch. He’d opened them and hosed them down. At least Edna assumed he had, because it probably wasn’t Grandma. Together the sturdy, metal folding tables would be long enough for everyone at the party to sit at. A note on one of them was held down with a rock, written on a blank Bishop’s receipt:
Edna, Really sorry again. Let me know if you need anything else for the party. J
His handwriting was blockish and looked like a boy’s, but it wasn’t sloppy. It was perfect, like everything else about him.
“Grandma, do you have any idea where we can get fifteen chairs?”
“Well, I think I have four or five chairs. Some people could sit on the couch inside or on the porch steps.”
This marked the end of Edna’s interest in Grandma’s opinion of anything to do with the party.
While Bishop’s was called a general store, it was really more of a supermarket. It probably did not sell folding chairs like other variety stores might. Still, the Bishops were the only people Edna knew who might help her with chairs. It would be the final favor she’d ask of Johnny. He said she should let him know if she needed anything else; in fact, he’d put it in writing. She definitely needed chairs. She had to order groceries for the party anyway. She dialed the store.
“Bishop’s.”
It was him.
“Hi, Johnny. It’s Edna.”
“Hi.”
She thought this was a more special “hi” than he might give anyone else, that he sounded happy to hear from her.
“Thanks for bringing the tables up last week. And for cleaning them. And for getting them down.”
“Sure. Sorry again about…what happened.”
“It’s OK. The chicks were gone when I came back.”
“I put the nest back up there.”
“Oh.”
She liked picturing him doing that. Edna was sure a coyote had eaten them. There was a lot of proximity to death in the desert, but not this time. She went over her party list. Johnny was cute with the attentive way he said “uh-huh” to everything and wrote it all down, even if this was normal behavior for someone taking an order over the phone.
“And can you think of anyone with chairs that I could borrow? Or where I could buy some?”
“I could borrow some from Betty. How many do you need?”
“Fifteen. Please.”
“Big party, Edna.”
Edna was well on her way to becoming a new girl: she was excited about getting tables and chairs for her party and did not take them for granted. Still, tables and chairs were not nearly enough to transform the place. The next mission was to decorate.
“Grandma, do you mind if I use stuff from the garage for the party?”
“No.”
“I can use whatever I want?”
“If it’s in there, Edna, you can use it.”
Edna abandoned the rusty tool section she had been working on and rooted through the garage like the mouse in Grandma’s pantry.
She thought a box of Christmas decorations would be a jackpot of possibilities, but Grandma’s ornaments were sad and covered in a film of oldness, like all of her things. The yellowing balls were painted with somber images of Jesus in the manger or on the cross. Edna’s family had much cheerier ornaments for Christmas. The only things she liked were Grandma’s white lights. They had big bulbs, which Edna preferred. If she could string them from the cabin to the eucalyptus trees, they would look nice lit up at dusk. Edna went outside to see if she thought she could. She needed the big ladder. It was heavy, and she probably couldn’t carry it to the cabin all the way from the garage.