Coming Home Page 8

Startled, she noticed an elderly man in a cowboy hat push through the gate, carrying a giant wrench-type thing in his left hand. Had her grandmother sold her own house?

  The tall, lanky man strolled across the street with a bright smile. Jessie registered the shiny belt buckle, plaid shirt, cowboy shoes, and faded jeans but was still trying to digest his greeting.

  She smiled stiffly at the man, her mind racing with stories of malevolent strangers. “I’m sorry. I was just leaving.” She shifted into drive, but just before she depressed the accelerator, she paused. The man puzzled her. When he reached the car, his smile broadened. Silvery hair peeked out from beneath his hat and deep lines surrounded his cheery eyes. Looking like an extra in a cowboy western, he stuck out his free hand almost like a dare.

  After eyeing it skeptically—we’re in a public place, she reminded herself—she shifted quietly back into park. She reached up through the window and shook it. His hand felt like coarse sandpaper, but strong and firm. Her own hand nearly disappeared into the cavern of his burly mitts.

  “Pleased to meetcha. Name’s Bill. I’m your grandmother’s whatchamacallit.”

  She was taken aback. My grandmother? How could this man have recognized her from across the street? No. There was some mistake. A freaky coincidence. He was looking for someone else.

  “We’ve been expecting ya.”

  “Listen, there’s been some—”

  “You’re Jessica, right?”

  “Oh …” Jessie said, confused again. Then suddenly, she put it all together. Betty must have called. “I’m sorry … who are you?”

  “I work for your grandmother—gardener, handyman, chauffeur, tree trimmer, cook, and bottle washer. Actually, I don’t do much bottle washing, but I suppose I would if she asked me.”

  Jessie smiled nervously.

  “You plan on coming in?”

  “I was just … passing by.”

  “Why don’tcha see what it looks like on the inside? Dip your toe in, check the temp. Frankly, water runs hot or cold most of the time—wouldn’t mind something in between on occasion—but I guess I’ve gotten used to it!” Bill laughed and then his face turned oddly crimson.

  Jessie resisted the urge to frown, but her mouth must have dropped open. What was he talking about? She glanced at the giant wrench. The plumbing? “I think I should go… .”

  Bill, the whatchamacallit, crouched, setting the tool on the ground, and removed his hat. He suddenly seemed sober. “Listen, Jessie—if I may call you that—I meander when I’m nervous. And I can say the darnedest things when I’m trying to … uh … it’s just that … well, I’d—we’d—be delighted if you might see fit to actually come inside.”

  He put the hat back on, nodded, and looked away, seemingly embarrassed. She stared at him for a moment. In spite of his touch-

  ing little speech, going inside was out of the question, but she could only imagine what her grandmother might say to this Bill person later: “Are you kidding? She just left?”

  “I can’t,” she said, feeling stupid. “I thought I could.”

  Bill shifted his weight, his eyes betraying disappointment. “Would you like me to tell her you was here?” Jessie shook her head. “Please don’t.”

  Another quick nod. “Then I won’t.” He stood up and began backing away. “It was my pleasure indeed to have met you. Short as it was. From what your grandmother has said, I consider it an honor.” He smiled again, dipped his hat, and headed back toward the gate.

  She watched him walk away, his gait steady and confident. What did he mean? “What your grandmother has said.” She heard the scrape of iron as he opened the gate, then saw him turn back and wave at her. Her own emotions were an enigma to her. Was she scared? Still angry? Curious? They all coalesced into an indeterminate lump of indecision.

  “Bill?” she whispered, worried that he might actually hear her and surprised when he did.

  Her next question was as nonsensical as driving by and then leaving. As foolish as meeting her grandmother’s handyman and practically pouring out her heart. But it just came out. “Do you like George Strait?”

  Jessie cringed, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment. What a stupid question.

  Bill was like a dog wagging his tail. He approached the car again, all smiles. “Well, as far as I’m concerned, he’s the king of our day, Miss Jessie. Never did fancy this newcomer, what’s-his-name …”

  She thought a moment. “Garth Brooks?”

  Bill laughed. “Hit the nail on the head. A little fancy for my blood.”

  Jessie forced a smile. She glanced from Bill to the house again. What about this picture doesn’t fit?

  “But we know the real king, don’t we,” he said, winking. It felt like a secret handshake.

  “The man in black.”

  Bill smiled reverently, almost proudly, and gave another curt nod. He thumbed toward the house. “And I’m sure that place must look like the ring of fire itself.”

  Jessie broke into a grin in spite of herself, and a strange sense of relief fell over her. She hadn’t come for a social visit. She’d come to confront her grandmother. But now that she was here, something else tugged at her.

  Another moment passed. Bill’s mouth was working in a nervous fashion, but his eyes seemed sincere. “Between you and me, Jessie girl, nothing’s going to happen to you, okay? I know what you’re thinking, and I don’t blame you one teeny-weeny bit. You go in there with me and the moment she steps out of line, she’s going to have me to contend with, okay? I can roar like a lion if I need to, but I really think you’ll want to stay once you try it on for size. Like I said, the water runs hot or cold most of the time, but once you get in, the swimming ain’t so bad.”

  Jessie nodded and pushed the car door partly open. “May I park it here?”

  He looked ecstatic. “You can park it anywhere you want. Do you have a suitcase?”

  “Oh, Bill—”

  He raised his hands in a mock defense. “Say no more. We’ll take it slow. You decide later.”

  Jessie closed the door and for the first time wondered about her appearance, strangely worried about making a good impression. Why?

  Bill made small talk as they walked, pointing out the various flowers he’d planted, talking as if they’d known each other a lifetime.

  When they arrived at the door he rang the bell and winked at her. “She’ll want to show you everything the moment you set foot inside. She’s got an order to her madness, or should I say, a little madness to her order. Either way, I may have to catch her fall when she sees you.”

  A few moments passed, long enough for Jessie to wonder if she was crazy. A thin elderly woman in a brown wool skirt and a light tan blouse answered the door. Her immaculately styled gray-blond hair contrasted with her light brown penetrating eyes. Her pleasant expression disappeared, and her eyes widened.

  She turned to Bill, and he nodded proudly. “Spittin’ image.”

  “Jessica?” Doris seemed to recover and held out her arms, and for a brief moment, Jessie wasn’t sure what to do. The two hugged quickly and uncomfortably. Her grandmother smelled of the kind of perfume that costs a fortune. Jessie’s mind flipped through images of the past, trying to reconcile the reality of the woman who stood before her. Like Betty Robinette, her grandmother seemed much smaller than Jessie had imagined. The word frail crossed her mind.

  Doris held on to Jessie’s arms and studied her face. She shook her head, as if amazed, or was it chagrined? “You’re so thin,” she finally said.

  Jessie forced a smile. “I’m not a chubby little cubby anymore.”

  “No, I should say not.”

  Bill broke in. “Thin is power. Just look at all those paper-clipthin New Yahk models.”

  Doris gave him a disapproving glance. “Bill, most of those emaciated girls are on drugs.” She poked a thumb toward him. “Don’t you mind Bill. He’s still finding his way off the ranch. Hope he didn’t frighten you out there. I bet he threatened to lasso you.�
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  Jessie chuckled nervously. Close. They stepped through the portico, beneath a narrow second-story balcony, and in through the double doors. Immediately, Jessie was reminded of the movie Gone With the Wind and Clark Gable’s famous utterance: “Frankly, my dear …” She also remembered feeling rather witty one night when at the age of seven she’d asked her grandmother if Rhett Butler might be persuaded to make an entrance. Her grandmother had tartly replied, “Honey, you’re thinking of a southern colonial home. World of difference, you know.”

  “Oh yeah, of course,” little Jessie had said.

  The entryway was ridiculously spacious but smaller than she’d remembered. The vast mahogany floor greeted spindled double staircases, one on each side of the large room. In a magnificent sweep they curved upward, joining at the second-floor balcony, overlooking both the entryway and the grand room below.

  This is crazy, she thought again. Why did I come here?

  “Have you eaten?” Grandmother asked.

  The memories were like dominoes again. She was eleven. Her grandmother had stopped by the Rock House Ice Cream Shoppe, for some reason Jessie couldn’t remember now. Jessie and Andy were slurping on bubble-gum ice cream. Grandmother gave a fierce look of disapproval. “Oh my, Jess. If you want your mother’s figure, you can’t eat Mrs. Robinette’s ice cream.” Already self-conscious about her weight, she’d nearly died of embarrassment.

  Jessie glanced at Bill. His eyes twinkled and he nodded again.

  They were staring at her. Waiting. The question registered.

  “Oh no. I haven’t eaten yet. But please don’t—”

  “Join us,” Bill interjected. “We’re gonna dine out with the common folk tonight.”

  “Bill, for pete’s sake.”

  Jessie stammered. “Oh, I didn’t mean to impose… .” Sure you did, Jessie. You intended to be quite the imposition, as a matter of fact.

  She could barely catch her breath. Only a minute ago she was waiting in the car across the street and now … “We’ll see the house later,” her grandmother explained while Bill retrieved the car—a Lincoln Town Car, it turned out, complete with “bells and whistles and a few party kazoos,” he said before leaving, and Jessie noticed the warning smile he gave her grandmother. “Behave, now. I’ll be right back.” Grandmother had clearly bristled at his remark.

  As they waited for him to pull out of the garage, the moment was as awkward as any Jessie had ever experienced. Her grandmother made pointless small talk.

  Once they were situated inside the plush interior with leather seats, they headed down Lake Avenue, the wide and grand street Jessie had traveled on the way to the house. Sitting in the backseat, she felt safer, removed from her grandmother’s direct observation.

  Her grandmother handled the conversation as if they’d never lost touch. She talked about growing fuchsia in the garden and her failed effort at blue hydrangeas, an apparent attempt to mimic the oceanfront beauty of her vacation home in Groton, Connecticut.

  Jessie tried to pay attention, but her mind was spinning. She felt overwhelmed, unable to sort things out on the fly. I’m making this up as I go, she consoled herself.

  Bill chimed in. “I was misting those bushes three times a day.”

  “And I’m up for trying again.”

  “I’ll build you a greenhouse.”

  “I don’t want a greenhouse.”

  In the course of the next few minutes, Jessie discovered that her grandmother spent two months out of every year in New England, daring the humid weather to play havoc with her arthritis. Eventually, the climate won out again, forcing her to yield to Colorado long before she was ready. She kept in close touch with a dozen friends in southeastern Connecticut, friendships made thirty years back, because, as she put it, “Friends from the East are friends for life.”

  The memories came back to Jessie like a thousand pinpricks. She felt like she was sinking as she continued wrestling with a mixture of emotions. She kicked herself again and again, wishing she had reconsidered. “Sorry, Bill, thanks for the invite, but I have to be going… .”

  Bill motioned toward his left and playfully taunted Doris. “They got mountains like that in Connecticut?”

  Jessie looked out the window. The mountains seemed to loom over them, closer now than when she’d traveled down I-25—almost menacing.

  “The mountains are overrated, Bill,” her grandmother replied with a tone of finality.

  “Well … maybe that’s why everyone’s moving here,” Bill said, chuckling. Jessie held her breath, expecting a sharp-tongued retort, but her grandmother was silent.

  They stopped at an all-you-can-eat buffet just off I-25. Bill dropped them off in front of the restaurant and went to park the car. Grandmother prattled on with trivial matters as they waited alone for the second time. Once again, Bill’s return was a welcome rescue.

  Later, after they were settled by a corner window in the safety of a noisy restaurant, Grandmother accompanied Jessie to the salad bar. More small talk followed. Bill ordered a rare steak, and when it arrived, it was so bloody Jessie had to avoid looking so as not to lose the remainder of her tiny appetite.

  “Comes from living on a Montana ranch,” her grandmother offered, as if reading Jessie’s mind. “Bill could eat the flesh off a living bull.”

  “But I wouldn’t,” Bill said, digging in with fork and knife.

  “They bite back.”

  Her grandmother leaned over, whispering conspiratorially, but within Bill’s hearing, “He’s come a long way, but you can’t tell from here.”

  At that comment, Bill dropped his utensils and pulled up his pant leg. Doris winced. “Oh, Bill …”

  “What do ya see there?” he asked.

  “A cowboy boot?” Jessie ventured, grinning.

  “The day I give these up is the day I die. I plan to be buried in ’em. You can take me off the ranch, little girl, but you can’t take the ranch outta me.” He finished with a curt nod.

  Jessie smiled as an old Hank Williams Jr. song began playing through her mind: “You can do anything … but oh, don’t you step on my cowboy boots.” Too many tumbles off the wild bull, she thought, but Bill’s eyes twinkled as if he’d caught his own joke.

  “Bill, you’re a walking cliché,” her grandmother said with a look of embarrassed disgust.

  “I’m proud of you, Bill,” Jessie said. “Stick to yer guns. Yee ha!” In the next breath, she was surprised at her own behavior and with how easy it had been to develop a solidarity with her grandmother’s handyman.

  Bill laughed. “I had to give my guns up.” He took another bite of rare meat. “They got laws in these civilized parts, you know.”

  The same pattern unfolded over and over again throughout the meal—Bill’s humorous bantering, her grandmother’s dismayed responses. Jessie felt as if she’d stepped into the twilight zone.

  Chapter Eleven

  THEY FINISHED SUPPER a little after nine. By then, Jessie’s grandmother had hushed Bill into sociable behavior. A few times, Jessie was tempted to ask, Why did you buy my parents’ house? but she realized that she would be poking merely at the tip of a very angry iceberg. Besides, the question itself sounded petty and immature.

  Mostly, Jessie wondered if she could trust herself to maintain her composure. She imagined her grandmother answering flippantly, “Well, I own everything else; thought I’d snap that up, too.” In the end, Jessie bit her tongue.

  On the way back to the house in the Broadmoor, the elite section of town, Doris launched off on “the problem of city congestion,” lamenting the California migration. “They’ve turned our midsized town into a mini—Los Angeles,” she complained. She dropped the mayor’s name more than once, implying a few “private discussions.”

  By now the mountains were variegated purple silhouettes against the backdrop of a star-speckled sky. When conversation died down, Jessie found herself wondering again how it was that she’d left Kansas for Oregon just this morning and ended up
here.

  When they returned to the stately house, Bill pulled up to the front steps and jumped out, hurrying to open the doors for Jessie and her grandmother. “I don’t understand this stucco craze,” Grandmother was saying, getting out of the car before Bill could work his way around to assist her. “If I wanted to live in Santa Fe, I’d move there.”

  Bill closed Jessie’s door and whispered, “Calls it Adobe World.”

  “I’ve never been,” Jessie said absently, already planning her getaway. She looked longingly at her car across the street.

  Doris was moving up the sidewalk when she turned back to them. “Telling secrets out of school, are we, Bill?”

  He brightened. “Just saying how much you enjoy New Mexico.”

  Doris made a dismissive grimace and shook her head. “What I need is a serious handyman.”

  “Where do you live, Bill?” Jessie asked, assuming he might be leaving soon for home.

  Her grandmother broke in. “I rent him the bonus room on the second floor. You may remember that’s where Maria once stayed but we—I—only need her twice a week now.”

  Bill winked. “Did I forget to tell you I’m also half maid?”

  Doris looked like she might swat him with her purse. “I didn’t have the patience for him to drive halfway across town. My garden would be brown and wrinkled by the time he arrived.”

  “I only lived three miles away,” Bill said.

  “Still …”

  “You still employ Maria?” Jessie asked, remembering the sweet Hispanic woman who once told enchanting stories of her childhood in Mexico.

  Doris nodded. “No point retraining these people. I pay her well. She raised a family on my salary alone. You’ll see her tomorrow.”

  Jessie cringed. These people … Like a slap in the face, it all came back to her, as if she hadn’t heard enough already. In her grandmother’s world, not only was it important to travel in the right circles, talk to the right people, and wear the right clothes, but by all means, you never made friends below your class. And those who helped you maintain your appearances were referred to as these people. Her mind whirled so fast she almost didn’t register the word tomorrow.