Finding Grace (3 page)

Chapter Eight

A few days later, just before the last bell, the principal, Mr. Hubert, comes to our classroom. He talks in a low voice to Miss Noonan, who is sitting at her desk marking exercise books while the class copies a poem off the blackboard.

They both look at me. I can't think of anything that I have done wrong, but my cheeks burn. I slide my eyes around the room. A lot of kids are staring at me.

Mr. Hubert leaves and Miss Noonan calls me up to her desk. “Your grandmother's been taken to Vancouver General Hospital,” she says. “You're supposed to meet your mother there after school.”

My heart leaps into my throat. Questions fire out of me. “What do you mean? What's wrong? What happened?”

“Take a big breath, Hope,” Miss Noonan says. “Try not to always overreact to everything. I'm sure she'll be fine.”

Easy for her to say. It's not
her
granny.

“How will I get there?”

“Your mother wants you to take the bus. She said you're good with buses. It's not very far.”

Miss Noonan starts writing instructions on a piece of paper, but she must be able to tell that I'm not taking any of it in because she finally sighs and says, “I'll drive you.”

• • • • •

A bunch of kids, including nasty Barbara Porter, stand around while I'm getting into Miss Noonan's bright red car. They must be dying of envy, but I'm way too scared to enjoy this.
Please, please let Granny be all right!

Miss Noonan is a very fast driver. I'm a bit frazzled when she cuts someone off, but I keep my mouth shut. When we're sitting at a red light that's taking ages, she suddenly says, “So how are things going, Hope? Generally?”

Generally?
What does that mean? I freeze.

“Do you feel like you're settling in okay?”

Doesn't she know I have no friends? The first week, a girl called Nicky smiled at me a lot and asked me if I wanted to go to her house after school one day. I said no because if I said yes, I would have to ask her back to my place, and I never know what kind of mood Mom is going to be in. What if it's one of those days when she stays in her nightie and looks like a mess? Anyway, the other girls in the class have pretty well left me alone since then.

“I'm fine,” I say stiffly.

“A little bit of advice,” Miss Noonan says. “Try not to be so prickly. You have a beautiful smile. Show it to the world a little more.”

I look out the window and don't answer her.

The light changes and Miss Noonan spurts across the intersection. A few more blocks and we're there. She parks in front of the hospital and comes inside with me.

Except when I was born, I've never been in a hospital. It's a very busy place. Most of the people milling around are in ordinary clothes, but I spot some nurses and an important-looking man in a long white coat, who just might be a famous heart surgeon.

Miss Noonan takes me over to the elevators. “You go up on your own. Your mom said fourth floor. Go to the nursing station. I'm in a no-parking zone and I don't want to get towed away.” She squeezes my arm. “Everything will be okay.”

The elevator stops at the second floor and a nurse pushes on a man in a wheelchair. All he's wearing is a short blue thing that looks like a nightie. He winks at me. I blush and pretend not to notice his hairy legs.

When I get off on the fourth floor, I spot Mom right away in a little sitting area with plastic chairs and a table of magazines at the end of a long hallway. Her eyes are rimmed with red, she's wearing one of her oldest dresses and a brown cardigan, and her hair isn't brushed. “You're here,” she says, standing up.

I take a big breath. “It's cancer, isn't it?”

She stares at me. “What?”

“Cancer. I just know it.”

“You don't get cancer in one day, Hope, and end up in the hospital. She's had a stroke.”

“What's a stroke?”

“It's some kind of brain thing.” Mom doesn't sound exactly sure. Tears slide down her cheeks, which scares me to death.

“Is it bad?”

“Not too bad,” she whispers. “The doctor said it was a small stroke. They've done a bunch of tests and now she's resting.”

I start to cry too, and we wrap our arms around each other and have a great big hug.

“Now,” Mom sniffs, “we've got to be brave for Granny.”

There are four beds in Granny's room. Two are empty, the blankets and sheets neatly folded. In the third bed there's a very old woman with a halo of gray hair. Her hands are fluttering and she's mumbling, “Nurse, nurse.”

There's a curtain around Granny's bed. Mom pulls it back. Granny is lying under a brown blanket and she's asleep. Quite honestly, she looks the same as ever. Her mouth is open and she's snoring. I admit that a teeny tiny bit of me is disappointed. I didn't want to see anything really scary, like tubes going in and out of her (like I saw on TV once), but she doesn't even look sick.

“There's really no point staying,” the nurse whispers behind us. “She'll sleep until morning. And you must be exhausted. You've been here all day.”

“I suppose you're right,” Mom says. She leans over the bed and kisses Granny. “Bye, Mother. I love you.”

I kiss Granny too. The smoke smell is gone and she smells quite nice. Even her orange hair doesn't look all that bad today.

“Nurse, nurse,” calls the old woman in the other bed, loudly this time.

The nurse rolls her eyes, which shocks me. I thought all nurses were supposed to be like Florence Nightingale. “I'll be there in a minute, Mrs. Markham,” she says.

On the way out, I notice that Mrs. Markham has a lot of flowers, arranged in vases on a shelf and on the little table beside her bed. A woman in a suit is just coming in, carrying more flowers and chirping, “Hi, Auntie!”

In the elevator, Mom leans against the wall and says, “Let's not go home right away. Let's go to a restaurant for supper.”

Did I hear right? We never eat in restaurants, except on very special occasions. It costs way too much.

“You pick where,” she says.

I think about Jake's Steakhouse
and The Pancake Palace. My mouth waters.

Then I think about Mrs. Markham's flowers.

“If we didn't go to a restaurant, could we use the money to buy Granny some flowers?” I ask slowly.

Mom's eyes fill with tears and her voice comes out kind of hoarse. “Of course we could.”And she adds, “Oh, Hope, you're so much better than I am. I don't deserve someone as special as you.”

There it is again: Mom's dark secret.

• • • • •

Jingle sleeps with me, not close enough to touch but draped over my feet. He wouldn't eat his dinner and he stalked around the apartment, yowling at nothing for hours. Mom says this may be the first night in his memory that he has spent without Granny. She says that cats sense things.

“It's okay, Jingle,” I whisper, reaching down to pat his thick fur. He hisses and scratches my hand. I go to sleep thinking about Granny.

• • • • •

Mom comes into the living room really early in the morning, when it's still dark, and sits on the edge of the pull-out couch.

“I'm awake,” I say. “I heard the phone ring.”

“It was the hospital,” she tells me. “Granny had another stroke. A big one this time. She's gone, Hope.”

It takes me a second to understand what Mom means.

Then I burst into tears.

Dear Grace,

Do you believe in heaven? I don't know if I do or don't. I've never even been inside a church and I don't have a clue about that kind of stuff. Right now I really, really want to believe.

I'm so scared because I just can't imagine living without Granny. Sometimes she did embarrassing stuff, and I'd roll my eyes and she'd get mad. Now I just wish I could take all that back. Granny has been in this apartment forever, and she was always the same. She was never sick, or lying down, or not happy to see me. I'm so worried that somehow this is our fault. Would Granny have died if we hadn't moved in here and made her life so crowded with our problems?

It makes me feel sick how much I miss her. Why did she have to die?

Your best friend,

Hope

• • • • •

Dear Grace,

Mom could only think of three people to invite to Granny's funeral service: Mrs. Pingham, Mrs. Tomlinson, and Mrs. Ladner. They are Granny's only friends, and they always got together once a week to play bridge.

Maybe not having a lot of friends runs in our family. Look at me. And then there's Mom who has
boy
friends but no real friends.

A fourth person showed up, a man in a black suit. He stood quietly at the back and I kept peeking at him. He was bald except for a fringe, but he had a dashing black mustache. I made up a story that he was a long-lost relative of Granny's, but Mom said that his name was Mr. Pinn and he was Granny's lawyer. He gave Mom a card and told her to call him. He's quite good-looking up close, with very twinkly blue eyes, but unfortunately he's too short for Mom.

Granny was cremated, which means BURNED. Mom says it's what Granny wanted, and I hope she's right. It's awfully final.

The service was at a funeral parlor. I hated the man who was in charge. He talked in a yucky voice, and he mixed up Granny's name and called her Lillian
Janice
King instead of Janet. Granny would have been wild.

Afterward no one knew what to do, so we all (except Mr. Pinn) went to The Pancake Palace, where I had peanut butter-and-banana waffles and a chocolate milkshake.

I threw up everything when I got home.

Granny's ashes are in a box. Mom says that one day we are going to go to New York City and scatter them from the Empire State Building. I absolutely cannot picture this, but she says Granny's dream was to go to New York City and see a play on Broadway, but she never made it. For now, I make Mom keep the ashes in her bedroom where I can't see them. But I can't stop thinking about them.

It seems like all Mom and I do is cry.

Your best friend,

Hope

• • • • •

Dear Grace,

Jingle died yesterday. He stopped eating four days ago and already you could feel his bones under his thick fur. Mom took him to the vet and the vet said he was really, really old and his kidneys were failing. He put Jingle to sleep. Failed kidneys might be the official reason, but Mom and I think he stopped eating because he couldn't bear to live without Granny. I know how he felt.

Your best friend,

Hope

• • • • •

Dear Grace,

There's only one week left of school. Mom phoned Mr. Hubert and told him I'm too upset to go. The class made cards and Miss Noonan dropped them off at our apartment. I don't feel like looking at them, but Mom says to save them because one day I will want them.

Mr. Hubert said that next year I have to do something called remedial math, but because my reading, writing, and verbal skills are so strong, I get to pass into grade six. Whew!!!

Your best friend,

Hope

P.S. I don't have to see nasty Barbara until September!

• • • • •

Dear Grace,

Mom and I got in a horrible argument about Granny's bedroom. Her bed, to be exact. I refuse to sleep in it. I know I'll have nightmares.

“It's silly to keep sleeping in the living room,” Mom said.

“Then why don't
you
sleep in Granny's bed and I'll have your bedroom?”

She gave me a long, hard look. “Sometimes, Hope, you say the craziest things.”

Me? Crazy? If Granny were here, she'd say, “That's the pot calling the kettle black.”

Your best friend,

Hope

Chapter Nine

Yesterday, Mom found the card that the lawyer, Mr. Pinn, gave her in the bottom of her purse. She phoned him and made an appointment to see him this afternoon.

“Can I go too?” I asked her.

“No,” she said.

“What do you think he wants?”

Mom shrugged, but her cheeks were pink and she seemed excited so I guess she was hopeful.

Please let it be good news.

So now I'm waiting for Mom to come back. I hear her key in the door (I have strict orders to keep it locked when I'm home alone), and I jump up from my book to let her in.

“Well?” I demand.

“Put the kettle on,” Mom says, “and make some tea and I'll tell you all about it.”

This is totally maddening, but the tea is finally ready and we sit down across from each other at the kitchen table.

“Okay,” she says.

“Okay
what
?”

“Granny left a will. She had a tiny bit of savings. Enough to pay the rent for a few more months.”

“We won't have to move right away,” I say.

“That's right.” Mom takes a sip of tea and I see that her hand is shaking. “But there's more, Hope. Mr. Pinn says the last time he saw Granny, about ten years ago, she told him she had purchased a life insurance policy.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that when she dies, a sum of money goes to her beneficiary. I'm pretty sure the beneficiary would be me.”

I digest this astounding news. “How much money?”

“He doesn't know. He doesn't even know for sure if she took the policy out. He has no paperwork for it. He suggested we look through Granny's things to see if we can find something.” She blinks back sudden tears.

I gulp down the last of my tea. “What
exactly
are we searching for?”

“Official-looking papers.” Mom wipes her eyes. “They might say
Sun Life
at the top. Mr. Pinn says lots of people take out life insurance policies with that company.”

It's like a treasure hunt.

I leap up. “We can start now!”

• • • • •

Mom goes right to the big old roll-top desk in the living room. It's our best bet. I tackle Granny's dresser in her bedroom. There are five drawers, all of them sticky and hard to pull out.

The first drawer is full of panties, slips, and stockings. It's embarrassing to paw through them. I would be mortified if someone touched my underwear, and I can imagine Granny peering over my shoulder with her lips pursed. It also makes me feel a little sad because the truth is, Granny's underwear is very plain. I've seen Mom dressing up to go out on one of her dates and she has gorgeous things: black slips, bras with lace, and silky stockings.

Flannel nighties fill the second drawer.

The next two drawers are stuffed with cardigans – all the same but different colors. I pull all of them out. They smell of cigarette smoke. The wool has gone pilly, and one cardigan is missing three buttons.

The fifth drawer is empty except for a plastic bag containing the pieces of the Royal Doulton figurine I smashed. Cripes.

No official papers of any kind.

Mom appears in the doorway. “Don't put Granny's clothes back in the drawers,” she says. “We'll donate them to the thrift shop.”

I know Granny's dead, and I know she's never coming back, but I feel sick when Mom says that.

I don't tell Mom that the thrift shop won't want most of this stuff. She's been crying again. Tears have left a smudgy trail through the powder on her cheeks. She watches me while I stack the cardigans in a neat pile.

“Did you find anything in the desk?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “Just a lot of old bank statements and stubs from bills. Envelopes. And elastic bands. Granny had eight unopened packages of elastic bands. Now, why would she want all those elastic bands?”

Her voice goes funny and her shoulders collapse. “I can't face this right now,” she says. “I need to go out.”

My heart sinks. I know exactly where she means, and I don't want to go.