On the way into the building, Graham took my hand and gave it a squeeze. Oddly enough, he didn’t let it go. We all approached the information desk together, where I learned that Gran had been transferred from the ICU to a regular room on the fourth floor.
“It’s good news that they moved her, right?” I asked as all four of us waited for the elevator.
“It’s awesome,” Skippy agreed.
Graham squeezed my hand, which he was still holding. Weird.
On the fourth floor, we looked around for the right set of room numbers. And I was so eagerly scanning the signs that I didn’t notice the woman standing outside a room at the end of the hall until we were almost upon her.
My mother.
As we moved toward her, I watched her mouth fall open.
Nice to see you, too, Mom
. “How is she?” I asked without preamble.
“What is
he
doing here?” she asked.
Beside me, Graham’s body went completely still. But he did not remove his hand from mine.
There was a nasty silence, and then I felt Skippy push past my other side, as if to get a better look. “That’s her?” he asked. For obvious reasons, he’d never met my mother. “That’s the crazy bitch who calls herself your mom?”
“Skip,” Ross warned. “Simmer down.”
“You think I should be
polite?
” My ex-boyfriend spat. “Fine. Thank you, Mrs. Rikker, for kicking your son out when he was sixteen. Because if you hadn’t, someone else would have had to take my virginity.”
My mother gasped, and clenched her fists. And it seemed entirely possible that I was about to witness a physical altercation between my mother and my ex-boyfriend, who was currently wearing a pink t-shirt reading
Power Bottoms for Jesus
. The dog, sensing trouble, chose that moment to let out a high-pitched yip. And Graham squeezed my hand as if he meant to solder himself to me.
At that moment, I felt as if I was looking down at my whole life from above. And what I saw was
hysterical
. A gurgle of inappropriate laughter contracted my stomach.
“Don’t
laugh
, Rikky,” Skippy said, his voice tight.
But why not, right? Because the only thing really wrong was the fact that my grandmother had just had a stroke. All the rest was, as Coach liked to say,
noise
.
Ross put two meaty hands on Skippy’s shoulders and eased him back. “You’re upsetting Bella,” he said. “And if that happens, we’ll get thrown out of here.”
“It would be worth it,” Skippy snapped.
My mother spoke again. “You are not welcome here,” she said. And something in her tone made me pay attention. To my horror, she was pointing at Graham.
I didn’t even know that it was physically possible to go so quickly from zen to absolutely enraged. My chest squeezed like a vice, and I actually gagged for a second on my own haste to shut my mother up. I was finished being wounded by her. But you do not get to
say
that shit to Graham.
But it wasn’t me who told her off. And it wasn’t Skippy, either.
“Oh,
hell
no,” Graham spat. His hand finally let go of mine, but only because he wrapped it around my shoulder instead. “That is not
even
true
.” His voice was shaking, the same way mine would be if I even tried to speak right now. “It took me six
years
to realize that I am welcome here, and
you
are not going to change that.”
My mother’s face was bright red. “You’re not helping,” she whispered. “Except to condemn him to hell.”
And there it was. No appeal to my mother could ever breech the seawall. Her Bible was her rulebook. And it wouldn’t even help if Skippy started in on his list of all the contradictory shit in the Bible: thou shalt not eat bacon, or wear clothing of mixed threads. That wouldn’t matter to my mother. Because she had been taught to fear rather than to think. And she was good at fear. A real pro.
“BOYSSS!” came a warble from inside the hospital room.
My grandmother’s voice woke me from my stupor. I gave Graham a little nudge toward the open doorway. We went inside, where my father and my uncle Alan stood, their asses parked side-by-side against the windowsill. “Gran,” I said, coming over to kiss her. She looked bright-eyed today, although her face was pale and puffy.
Skippy and Ross followed, and it was now quite crowded.
“I need to talk to John,” Gran said, her words not quite clear. With her left hand, she shooed my father and uncle toward the door.
Skippy took the hint, too. “Good to see you, Mrs. Rikker,” he said. “My mom will be by later.” He gave her a wave and tugged Ross out the door with him.
My father followed them. But on his way past me he stopped. Then he put a hand on my shoulder. “John,” he said simply. And I could feel his eyes heavy on my face. But I couldn’t go there right now. I wasn’t ready to have a Moment with this man who had not stood up for me when I needed him. After a few seconds, he reluctantly let go of me and walked out.
Graham also detached his arm from my back, but I caught him by the hand. “Stay,” I said. I didn’t want him in the hallway with my parents. I shut Gran’s door and faced her.
“I haven’t done the right thing,” Gran said.
“What? Sure you have.”
She gave her chin a little shake. “I let your father off the hook because I liked your company.” Her speech was slow, as if it took more concentration than normal. “Should have forced the issue before now. The longer you avoid each other, the harder it gets.”
Oh, hell. My eyes were getting hot. “I loved living with you.” Wait, I didn’t want that in the past tense. “I
love
it, and I’m spending the summer in Vermont.”
She shook her head again. “Taking care of an old lady is not what you should be doing.”
I yanked the only chair closer to the bed and sat down beside her. “That’s not your call. I like it here. My friends are here. And Graham is going to visit me.” I looked over my shoulder, up into the serious face of my boyfriend, who nodded.
“Your father needs to see you,” she said, clearing her throat. “And I need more care than you can give.”
“So what? We’ll get a part-time nurse. That pantry off the kitchen can become a main-floor bathroom, and you can move into the sewing room. It’s not that tricky.”
Her eyes were soft now. “Your father,” she repeated.
“I’ll visit him. A little. A week or two,” I promised. “I’ll try it. And if it’s awful, Graham’s mom will let me crash at their place. But you’re not throwing me out, Gran. You wouldn’t do that.”
Her eyes teared up. “No, I wouldn’t.”
“So cut it out,” I said, wiping mine.
“All right,” she sniffed.
“You just folded like a bad hand of poker,” I joked.
That earned me an eye roll. “I will throw you out now, though,” she said. “You should be at school.”
“For five more weeks,” I said. “How long are they going to keep you here?” For all my big plans about keeping Gran in her home, I didn’t know if it would actually work.
“There’s a rehab unit I’ll go to,” she said. “Then maybe Gertie’s.”
“Okay,” I said, because I was in over my head.
“School,” she said, squeezing my hand. She looked exhausted now.
“I’ll call tomorrow?”
She smiled at me, and I stood up.
“See you soon, Mrs. Rikker,” Graham said, his hand on the doorknob. “Feel better.”
“Wait,” I said, stopping him. I stepped into Graham’s personal space and wrapped my arms around him. “Thank you for telling off my mother instead of strangling her, like I wanted to. Because now I don’t have to visit you in prison.”
Chuckling, he hugged me back. Right in front of Gran.
Outside the hospital room, my parents and my uncle Alan were standing around looking tense. I pulled Gran’s door shut behind me. “What did the doctor say this morning?” I asked.
My dad cleared his throat. “The anti-clotting medicines are working for her. There will be a lot of recovery time, but they like what they see so far.”
“Good,” I said.
“I’m sticking around for the week, to see her settled into a rehab program,” Alan said.
“We need to put in a bathroom downstairs,” I said.
He smiled. “I’m on it, kid. I’ll call around today, unless you want to steer me to any particular guys?”
“Gertie is the one to ask,” I told him. “She knows all the gossip. And maybe Skippy’s mom.” I glanced at Graham, who was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, and staring down my mom. “We have to get back to Connecticut,” I told the group. Then I grabbed for Graham’s hand and turned toward the elevators. I wouldn’t have minded talking to Alan a bit longer, but I’d reached my breaking point. I couldn’t handle my parents on top of Gran’s stroke. That was just more than I could take.
“I’ll walk you out,” my father said, jogging to keep up.
Great
. I pressed the elevator button and prayed for deliverance. Graham squeezed my wrist. Then his hand came to the small of my back, where he rubbed a reassuring circle. It was both sweet and devious at the same time, because my father would not appreciate the PDA, no matter how mild.
“You look good, John,” my father said.
I said nothing.
“I want you to come home this summer,” he added.
“What, did she threaten to cut you out of the will?” I tapped a rhythm on the elevator button like an impatient fool.
“John,” my father sighed. “I do love you.”
“Got a weird way of showing it,” I said. “Although the tuition checks are always on time. So I suppose Mom wants me to be grateful.”
“Your mother thinks…” he sighed.
“That is debatable,” I argued.
“She believes in tough love.”
“…Which worked so well.” I wasn’t going to make this easy for him. “You are never going to change me, okay? Not about this. So you can take me or leave me.”
“I’ll take you, then.” The elevator doors opened, finally, revealing four other people. I stepped in, and Graham and my father followed. “Will you please come home this summer?” my father asked.
Ugh
. I could just picture it. Tense silences at the dinner table, or worse. If my mother campaigned for me to attend a Healing Camp, I was not going to be nice about it. “I will visit,” I said. “Because Gran wants me to. But not right away. I need to be around for her.”
The doors opened, and we all got out. I plowed forward toward freedom. The automatic doors parted, and then I was sucking down the fresh Vermont air. That helped.
“John?”
God, he was like a dog with a bone. “Yeah?”
“You’re a good grandson.”
“I know that already.” I patted my pockets. “Car keys?” I asked Graham. He held them up. Because I couldn’t avoid it any longer, I finally met my father’s eyes. He looked a lot like me, actually. And I spent a long second wondering if someday I’d have worry lines on my forehead, like him. “I’ll see you. Maybe in August.”
“I hope so, son.”
It shouldn’t have made a difference to me that he called me “son.” But somehow, it did. “Okay,” I said, my voice gruff.
“I look forward to it,” he said.
* * *
I drove us out of town and onto the highway. We didn’t speak, probably because I was thinking too hard. And when I checked Graham’s face, I found him dozing in the passenger seat. Eventually I pulled off the highway, and up to the drive-through window of a fast food restaurant.
When it was almost our turn to order, I put a hand on Graham’s knee to wake him, because I didn’t know what he’d want. “Lunch time, baby. What do you like from Wendy’s?”
He shook himself into consciousness. “Um, taco salad?”
I just stared at him. “Really? A salad?”
Graham gave me a sleepy grin. “I have a lot of salads for lunch. But never for dinner.”
“I didn’t know that. We never eat lunch together.”
A sad expression passed through his eyes, but then he smiled again. “Some idiot thought we shouldn’t. Can’t remember why.”
My heart gave a little kick just to hear him say that. “We’ll start now.”
“Okay.” Graham leaned toward me then, cupping my chin in his hands. Then he kissed me, just like that. In front of God and everybody.
“
Ahem
.”
I pulled away from Graham to look up into the face of the pimply young man in the Wendy’s window. “Sorry,” I said automatically.
“You could let me join in,” the guy said. “Or order your food. One or the other.”
I just blinked up at him, too surprised to go on. Graham leapt in, ordering his salad, and then I pulled it together, adding my order.
As soon as I pulled ahead to wait for the food, Graham began to laugh. “The look on your
face
,” he chuckled. “I thought I was the prude.”