“What?”
“He said, ‘Great. Because I know a place full of fresh air you’d love.”
I smiled. “Wyoming?”
She sighed. “Wyoming.”
“How did he get you to move out here?”
“He wore tight jeans, a cowboy hat, and a teasing grin. We didn’t have too many of those in Chicago and it turns out, I was a big fan.”
Grandma’s face lit up before bursting into giggles–high-pitched cackles that only came out on special occasions. Cackles that never failed to make me laugh along with her. She put her hand over her mouth and blushed like a fourteen-year-old girl. As her painted, wrinkly white face dissolved into fits of laughter, she seemed years younger to me and my heart burst in a thousand pieces with love for her. There would be many memories to look back on regarding this week-long visit to my grandparents, but I knew without a doubt that sharing a loveseat with Grandma before the fire, giggling like a bunch of school girls, would be one of my favorites.
She wiped at her tears and turned to me, putting her arm around me like a child. I leaned into her embrace.
“The boys will be in any minute, so I’ll say this one last thing. I know you hardly know Dusty. It’s been a long time since you’ve both been under this roof. But sometimes fate has a nice way of showing up just when we need it. If it seems too easy between you, don’t fight it. Maybe you’ll just rekindle a friendship or maybe it will become something more. But don’t be afraid of what might come out of it. Either way, you come out a winner.”
She stood up and patted my knee. “Now excuse me while I go prepare our cereal for supper.”
I smiled. “I know you meant that as a joke, but that seemed a very normal thing to me.”
“Where did I go wrong?”
“Love you, Grandma.”
“Love you too, Lou. So much.”
The firelight caught me in a trance. The light out the window was fading, casting with it long black shadows dancing from the flames. My life felt like a puzzle strewn out over a table. There were some parts connected, the picture was starting to take shape. The puzzle was a long way off from being completely finished, but it felt like I had just found a key piece.
* * *
The men camein with red noses, stomping their feet and wiping off the snowflakes attached to their coats. Their low voices talking about cattle and corn prices filtered in toward the kitchen. I looked at Dusty immediately upon his entering, unable to help myself. His dark eyes were already on me, turning my stomach into mush. I forced myself to look somewhere else. Grandpa shouldn’t have been out in the cold, but something about the brisk weather had seemed to revive the spark in his eyes and put a touch of color in his sallow cheeks. He walked into the kitchen, giving my grandma a light pat on her butt.
“Bob,” she scolded, slapping his hand away while he looked every bit the part of a rascal. “If you end up in the hospital with pneumonia it’s your own darn fault. I wash my hands of you.”
“Fresh air is the best cure-all there is. I’ve been cooped up long enough.”
We all pretended not to notice the hacking cough that overtook him for the next ten seconds. Except for the exasperated huff of my grandma, you wouldn’t have thought we heard anything at all.
Grandpa took in the lanterns strewn across the room and the boxes of Cheerios and Special K on the table. “Ohhhwee! What's the special occasion?”
This time,shesmacked his butt.
Dusty and I smiled at each other, probably not unlike the proud smile of two young parents musing together over the antics of their young children.
“Well, food’s ready,” Grandma said, much depressed at her meager offering. She had spent the past ten minutes in the kitchen slamming cupboard doors, searching desperately for something hot and delicious she could feed her charges. No electricity really puts a damper on a homemaker who thrives on the self-confidence given through providing a show-stopping meal. Though a few more options for cereal wouldn’t have been the worst thing, I wasn’t about to complain.
We spent the evening living it up with my grandparents. After our dinner of cereal and tepid water with a stale pop tart chaser, we busted out the cards. Grandma and Grandpa were a hoot and a holler playing Rummy, dropping wit and smack-talk like the best of them. We kept the fire burning hot to heat the whole first floor. It did its job warming the house, but I think the heat in my heart ran hotter. It was the coziest of nights spent laughing and teasing with the safest of people. Holed up together, outlasting the worst of nature.
Or the best of nature.
Seriously. Well done, nature. Thank you for your service. I couldn’t have imagined this week going better in my best and wildest dream.
“I’ve got a question for you,” Dusty said as he sprawled out on his sofa, blanket up to his waist, his hands clasped behind his head. It was 10 pm. My grandparents had just gone to bed, once they piled extra blankets on both of our couches and sounded off a warning to behave that only resulted in making Dusty grin and my grandpa shake a finger in his direction.
I smiled, adding another layer of socks to my feet that always seemed to be cold. I put on a pair of gloves before crawling under the pile of covers I had stacked on my couch. “What’s that?”
Is driving a tractor like riding a bike?”
