All Is Bright (2 page)

I exhaled and felt warmth flood through my body. It was as if I’d been here just yesterday.

* * *

I was working my way through a second sinfully delicious whoopie pie when the telephone rang.

“Griffin!” I heard Janice cry a moment later.

I brushed my hands against my pants to remove the crumbs and stood up. I wanted to say hi to Grif, too. To let him know I was thinking of him. Missing him, even.

“Yes, Dad’s right here,” she was saying. “Come on, honey, Griffin wants to talk to both of us at once.” Stephen bent over and Janice held the phone receiver midway between their ears. They were silent for a long moment, then erupted into cheers.

“Oh my gosh!” Janice squealed.

“Congratulations, son!” Stephen chimed in.

I knew—before Janice called out the news to the assembled neighbors; and even before that, during the pause when the phone had dangled between their expectant faces—exactly what had happened.

“Griffin just got engaged!”

I instinctively took a step backward, then a few more, until I’d moved out of the living room and into the hallway. I slipped into the guest bathroom and stood there with the lights off.

A moment later I heard Stephen’s voice, louder than ever. They’d come into the hallway to continue the conversation privately, I realized.

They don’t know I’m in here.

Their words seemed to float into the bathroom, crowding around me. I could almost reach out and touch the sharp, bright sentences.

“I can’t believe it’s only been five months since you met,” Stephen was saying. “Of course your mother and I dated for seven months before we got engaged. When you know, you know.”

Grif had known about me, too. Or maybe he only thought he had.

“Oh, let me talk to her!” Janice cried. “Welcome to the family, sweetheart! Two weeks? Stephen, Ilsa just said they’re coming for a visit in two weeks so we can meet each other! And Griffin might try to get transferred back here!”

She laughed in response to something Ilsa had said. “Don’t you dare call us Mr. and Mrs. Henderson ever again! We’re Stephen and Janice . . . or you could call us Mom and Dad.”

Those were the words that made me fold my arms across my stomach and bend over, even though it wouldn’t bother me if Ilsa started calling Griffin’s father “Dad.”

I had a father.

* * *

“I wish you didn’t have to leave so soon,” Janice said a half hour later.

“I should get going.” My voice was unnaturally high, and I tried to dial it down a few notches. “I have to get up early. Nana will be waiting.”

“Of course,” Janice said. Her mouth opened, then shut. It was the first time I’d ever seen her at a loss for words. She walked me to the front door, and even though the hallway was only eight or so feet long, it seemed to take forever.

“Drive safely tomorrow, okay?” Janice said as she opened the door. The sky was black and a gust of frigid air hit my face like a slap.

“Oh, sure,” I said.

She hesitated, despite the cold streaming into the house. “How long are you staying in town?”

“I’m flying back on the twenty-sixth,” I said lightly. “I’ll probably head out by noon.”

I could see in her eyes that she wanted to invite me over again before I left. But what if Ilsa didn’t like the idea of Grif’s old girlfriend hanging around? What if
Griffin
didn’t? It was right that Janice hadn’t mentioned to Grif that I was standing five feet away when he announced his engagement. I had no place in that moment. Not in their family, anymore, either, other than as a casual acquaintance.

“Please take care of yourself, honey,” Janice finally said.

My throat was closing up again, this time for the opposite reason than it had yesterday when I’d seen Janice in the parking lot, but I managed to chirp, “Will do!”

She hugged me again, then shut the door.

I began to walk around the block toward home, my head bent low and my hands tucked into the pockets of my red coat. I thought about how the engagement must have unfolded: Griffin would’ve asked Ilsa’s father for her hand, since he was traditional that way. That must have been why they’d gone to her family’s house for the holidays. I pictured Grif inviting Ilsa to go for a walk in the snow, under the stars. They were holding hands, laughing as they stomped their feet to keep warm. Then Grif was reaching into his pocket and dropping down on one knee and looking into her eyes as snowflakes fell on his dark hair. Because it was Minnesota in the winter, Ilsa was wearing gloves. She was pulling them off to put on the ring, and Grif’s knee was getting cold and damp. Later they’d probably laugh about that; it would become part of the story they’d tell again and again, a sweet pivot point in the history Grif and Ilsa were building together.

Grif would be a kind husband, a devoted father. Maybe they’d have three or four kids, and Ilsa’s heart would still leap in her chest when she looked up and saw him enter a room. The way mine should have, but never did, no matter how hard I wished for it to.

Did Ilsa know how lucky she was? Soon she and Janice would start forming their own relationship, through the giddy planning of the wedding. Janice’s white gown was preserved in a box in the basement, waiting for a new bride in the family; she’d offer it to Ilsa to wear. If Grif didn’t get transferred back right away, they’d probably settle into regular phone chats. They’d almost certainly move closer together when grandchildren came along.

Another flash card came unbidden into my mind: this time a memory from when I was a freshman in high school. Grif and I were best friends—he hadn’t yet leaned over on the school bus on our way back from a track meet to kiss me—and I was home from school, burning up with a fever. I was a teenager, certainly old enough to find a bottle of Motrin, a cool washcloth, and the television’s remote control. And yet on the second day I found myself staring out my bedroom window, my eyes traveling in a straight line down our backyard, over the wooden picket fence, through Griffin’s family’s backyard and up to his ranch-style house. A few minutes later, a knock on our front door had startled me.

“I’m making chicken soup,” Janice had said, a sunflower-patterned apron tied around her waist. “I can never remember—feed a cold and starve a fever? Or is it the other way around? Anyway, your dad said you were sick and chicken soup is good for everything. Want to come have lunch with me?”

My face was already flushed, but I turned a deeper red, wondering if Janice had seen my silhouette in the window. “Oh, no, I’m fine,” I’d said.

“Are you sure? There’s plenty. Besides, I’m going to start putting photos into albums—you know how I’ve got them all stacked up on that shelf and they look so messy—and I’d love some company for a bit.”

Somehow I was tying my sneakers and putting on a sweater and heading around the block with Janice. I’d eaten a big bowl of her garlicky soup, and then the Motrin had kicked in, bringing with it a wave of exhaustion. My head dropped down to my chin.

“Why don’t you lie down?” Janet had said. “No, just leave your bowl right there. I’ll take care of it.”
Thank you for taking care of me, too,
I’d thought, feeling inexplicably like crying. She’d led me to the couch and I fell asleep almost instantly. When I woke up three hours later, my fever had broken and a yellow knitted blanket was tucked around me.

“You had such a good sleep,” Janice had said softly, looking up from her book in the armchair opposite the couch. “Ready for some tea and toast?” I’d nodded eagerly, worried I was taking too much from her, but unable to stop. Janice had walked over to stroke my forehead, then looked down at the blanket. “It’s a family heirloom,” she’d said. “My grandma made it when she was a young woman, and my mother gave it to me when I went away to college. I always feel better when I curl up with it and think of all the love stored in it. It’s the most special thing I own.”

“Thank you,” I’d said, reaching out with a finger to touch the satin-trimmed edge of the blanket.

“Two peppermint teas, coming up,” Janice had said, and I’d hopped out of bed to help her.

It was why I’d spent three weekends searching through San Francisco shops for the prettiest teapot and the finest peppermint tea I could find for Janice’s Christmas present. I wanted her to know I would never forget that day.

* * *

The Windham Assisted Living Facility looked like a gracious Victorian mansion, except instead of being surrounded by sprawling green lawns, it was situated next to a strip mall featuring a pizza place, a bank, a pharmacy, a grocery store, and a beauty shop. All of life’s essentials, lined up neatly in a row. Ninety minutes after I’d left my dad’s house, I pulled into the visitors’ parking lot and unsnapped my seat belt, stretching out my arms and rolling my neck in circles.

Nana had moved here from Florida seven years ago, after Grandpa died of Alzheimer’s disease. Usually people live eight or ten years after that diagnosis; Grandpa had held on for seventeen. My father had invited Nana to move in with him, but she’d refused, not wanting to burden him. Dad had borne so much tragedy, I thought. His father and wife were diagnosed with horrible diseases within a year of each other, and he was an only child, so there was no one to share the grief. I felt a surge of gratitude that he was in Jakarta, gearing up to travel to the beaches of Thailand. He deserved happiness.

I stepped out of the Volvo and popped the trunk, reaching inside for the bags of gifts. I felt guilty that I couldn’t visit Nana as often as I used to, and I knew I was trying to compensate by lavishing her with a electronic reader stocked with a dozen downloaded books, lavender bath oils, Godiva chocolates, and a plush velour robe and matching slippers in a leopard-skin print—Nana definitely wasn’t a cabbage-rose pattern kind of woman.

Partly because of Nana, I’d been toying with the idea of moving back home, even though I’d loved everything about San Francisco from the moment I’d stepped into the city, loved the coffee shops and wine-tasting bars, loved the tang of the ocean that swirled around my little apartment on days when it was warm enough to throw open my windows and work on my computer with my new rescue cat, Oreo, lazily winding her way around my ankles.

But now I knew I couldn’t move back to Chicago, at least not anytime soon.

I found Nana in her room, reading a large-print edition of
Gone With the Wind
in an armchair by the window.

“Hey, hot stuff,” I called from the doorway.

“Go away. David Beckham’s on his way here and he’s got a big jealous streak,” she said without looking up from the page.

I burst into laughter and ran toward her as she stood up—less steadily than she had the last time I’d seen her. I folded her in my arms and breathed in the sweet smell of Chanel No. 5.

“Beanpole, don’t tell me you’ve gotten even
taller
?” Nana exclaimed, pulling back to look up at me.

“Hey! I think you must’ve shrunk,” I protested. “Old people do, you know.”

She swatted my rear and hugged me again.

“I was worried you’d miss dinner,” she said. “They have festive red and green Jell-O cubes, you know. You don’t see that every day.”

“Sorry, the roads were slick. It took an extra half hour to get here.”

“As long as you’re safe.” She finally let go and smiled up at me, her eyes almost disappearing into crinkles. “I missed you, sweetheart.”

It seemed like I’d done nothing these past two days but tear up. I turned away and wiped my eyes with my index fingers before Nana could see. “Are we late for dinner?” I asked. “I want to meet your friends.”

“Nah, it’s not for another hour. Plus I like to make an entrance,” she said.

When she’d first arrived here, Nana was depressed—plain worn out from caring for her husband and saddened by the arthritis that left her once-nimble fingers bent and gnarled. Then she began to make friends. Now she had a group of women—the Seven Widows of Windham, they called themselves -- and not one of them had the slightest bit of interest in water aerobics or taking macramé classes.

“So you’re in a gang?” I’d asked when she told me.

“Yup. Those Crups better look out,” she’d said. “We like to play poker and drink bourbon. We’re thinking about taking up playing pool so we can hustle people.”

“Crups?” I’d asked. “Do you mean Crips?”

“We could take ’em both,” she’d said, and I’d smiled. It was as though Nana’s spirit, buried beneath the pain of losing her husband long before his actual death, was finally fighting its way to the surface again.

I was grateful to the widows for that, but it wasn’t the only reason why I wanted to see them tonight. Usually we brought Nana to our house for visits or took her out to dinner, so although I’d waved to one or two of them in passing, I hadn’t spent any real time with them. I wanted to make sure Nana was taken care of, now that I was gone so much.

After I flopped on Nana’s bed and we chatted for a while, we freshened up for dinner and headed for the elevator. I was doing okay, I thought as I watched the numbers on the elevator panel drop from four to one. I could get through tonight with Nana to buoy me, and tomorrow I’d leave for the airport early. When I was back in my new apartment, with no reminders of Grif or his family, it would be easier.

Then, as we approached a circular table in the dining room where Nana’s friends awaited, she uttered two simple, impossibly complicated words: “How’s Griffin?”

I burst into tears. Not the discreet, slowly-rolling-down-the-cheeks kind either.

“Whoa Nellie!” shouted a voice to my left. “Better get her into a chair.”

I felt gentle arms around me, easing me into a seat; hands patted my cheeks with napkins.

“Usually they don’t cry until after they see the food,” someone cracked.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I grabbed a napkin and blew my nose. “I just. . .”

“Say you were cutting onions,” a widow with pure white hair suggested. “Or thinking about Sylvester Stallone’s acting.”

I gave a snort-laugh.

“Ah, now she’s coming around. Get her some water,” another widow suggested.