I speak over her, “Stain. God, I loved that dress.”
“Yes,” she says, “The one your mother didn’t wash the way I suggested.” She clicks her tongue, shakes her head. “I digress. I thought I’d make some new hair ribbons for you both. I hand stitched both of your initials on the bottom.”
I run my hand down the length of the fabric, seeing the L embroidered in white on one side and the C on the other.
Jade looks at hers, then at mine, “Wanna swap?”
I nod, passing it over.
“Yes, oh, yes,” Nan says, hand to her heart. “Beautiful girls.” She is passing me, moving toward the camping chair I had not long pulled myself out of.
“I wasn’t sure if you girls still wore ribbons but…” she mumbles off.
We hadn’t for a while, but I wouldn’t tell her that.
“We do,” I tell her, reaching for Jade’s, tying the one with my initials around the elastic at the back of her head into a big voluminous bow.
She does the same for me, then takes one of the mirrors off the table, cranes her neck, staring at her reflection.
“I love it, thanks, Nan,” she praises.
“You’re very—” Nan overestimates the drop into the camper chair and falls into it with a big ‘whoop,’ her legs flying up beneath her, dangling over the ledge.
And I try not to laugh, but when I look at Jade, and see she is fighting the same battle, we both naturally burst at the seams.
Thankfully, Nan has always had a playful sense of humor and knows when to laugh at herself, too.
Still chuckling, I reach for Jade’s mascara at the table, taking a seat on the dead grass in front of them.
“Is she okay?” Nan croaks, and she doesn’t have to say her name for me and Jade to know who she’s talking about.
I shrug, biting the tube of mascara and sliding the brush out with a pop. I wiggle the brush back and forth at the base of my lashes before extending it through to the ends. “She’s out like a light.”
“Of course she is,” she mumbles, seemingly unfazed, though I can tell that the words hurt; who her daughter has become…hurts.
Nevertheless, she pushes the pain away, because there is only so much pleading and begging and crying you could do.
My mother, her daughter, was too far gone.
Nan reaches forward and taps the side of the casserole dish with her short, unpolished nail.
“I made your favorite pasta bake, the one with fresh pesto, sun dried tomatoes, ricotta and chicken.”
“Ugh, that sounds so good,” Jade’s words moan out of her. She pushes up from her seat. “I’ll go grab some pla?—”
Nan stops her with a hand to her arm. “No, no, that’s okay…” She continues holding onto Jade’s arm as she works herself out of the dipped chair, finding her feet. “I’m going to head off, but Laikey…” She pauses, turning to me, adjusting her peach-colored blouse back on her curled shoulders. “Can you ask her to call me, please?”
I nod, feeling tears lick the back of my eyes when I watch Nan’s resurface at the front, dulling the green, turning them into a misty gray.
“Yeah…” I’m still nodding. “Yeah, I will.”
Nan smiles, though it’s sad. She reaches upward, places both of her hands on my cheeks and whispers, “So beautiful.”
Then she turns to Jade and repeats herself.
“Says you,” Jade replies, her sunshine smile extending across her face.
Nan has treated Jade like her own grandchild since the day she met her. And I believe it filled a void Jade never knew was missing. Her grandparents had passed away long before she was born.
