"Thank you," I said, really not sure what I would do. "Well," he said glancing up toward her room and then at me, "you going to be all right?"
"Oh yes, I'm fine."
"Call me if you need anything or anything changes," he said and left.
Twenty minutes later, Mrs. Grafton, a woman in her mid-fifties, stout and very professional and businesslike, arrived. I showed her Grandma Olivia's room and she went in to examine her. I had Loretta prepare the bedroom next to Grandma Olivia's for her as well. Then I went to the phone and called Cary to tell him and Aunt Sara what had happened.
"I'll come right over," Cary said.
"No, I'm fine. In fact, I'm tired and I want to go to sleep. I have a math exam tomorrow."
"Okay, we'll check on her tomorrow," he said.
"I'd like to go up to see Grandpa Samuel in a day or so, Cary, to tell him."
"He won't even know you," Cary said, "much less understand what you're saying."
"Still, we should tell him. No one else will."
"Okay. You can't break old habits, can you, Melody?" "What do you mean?" I asked.
"Even now, you can't stop thinking about other people first," he said and then he laughed. "It's all right. I'm just teasing. I can't imagine Grandma Olivia trapped by a stroke."
"She's human, Cary."
"Could have fooled me," he said.
Afterward, before I fell asleep I thought how terrible it was for a woman to have ruled her family so firmly and authoritatively that they felt no love, sympathy or sorrow for her in her time of greatest need. Surely, no matter how vigorously she claimed it, she couldn't be satisfied with herself and what she had accomplished, even in the name of family.
Grandma Olivia did make some improvement over the next thirty-six hours. The doctor returned and declared that she had regained some of her speech ability.
"It will still be difficult to understand her, but there's been more improvement than I expected," he said.
"She's even gotten more control of her hand. We'll see," he added, not as ready to make dire pronouncements now as he had been before. "The nurse will remain another few days and stop by every day," he promised.
Judge Childs was there most of the day as well. Loretta told me. She said it as if she were complaining he made more work for her. I imagined she thought she would have to do less with Grandma Olivia so incapacitated. When I returned from school the next afternoon, Mrs. Grafton told me my grandmother was asking to see me. I went in immediately. I approached the bed slowly. Mrs. Grafton had her sitting up and had her hair brushed. Her mouth was still twisted and her arm lay awkwardly against her body, but when I drew closer, she fixed her eyes on me and reached out with her left hand to take my hand and pull me closer.
"Naia," she uttered.
"Take it easy, Grandma Olivia," I said softly.
"Naaaa . . . thinssssss chaaaa," she continued. I shook my head. I didn't understand. She tried again and again, but the same confusing sounds emerged. Finally, Mrs. Grafton stepped over and took her hand from me.
"Please try to relax, Mrs. Logan."
Grandma shook her head vigorously.
"She has the spirit," Mrs. Grafton said. "Full of vim and vigor."
Grandma Olivia attempted her sounds again. Mrs. Grafton listened and then she smiled.
"What is she trying to say?" I asked.
"She's said, Nothing's changed.' Whatever that means," Mrs. Grafton added.
I nodded and looked at Grandma Olivia.
"I know what it means. It means that even now, she wants to run our lives," I muttered. "I'm sure she's going to get better."
I shook my head in amazement and left.
The next day, Cary found the time to take me to see Grandpa Samuel. Since Grandma Belinda's death, I hadn't been there to visit and neither had Cary. Now, with Grandma Olivia's illness, I felt even more guilty about neither of us going to see him. There was no one to be sure he was being well looked after, no one except us, I thought.
Returning to the rest home was sad for me. I had to remind myself Grandma Belinda was gone. When we entered the lobby, we saw Mr. Mandel sitting alone on a sofa just gazing down at the floor. He looked up and immediately smiled at the sight of us.
"How are you, Mr. Mandel?" I asked.
"Oh, I'm fine, dear. Fine. It's nice to see you again. Very nice." His eyes seemed to go in and out of focus as he tried to understand why we were there. Had Belinda died or not? I could almost hear him wonder.
"We're here to see my grandfather," I
explained.
"Oh. Oh yes, yes. What's his name?"
"Samuel Logan," I said.
"Oh yes. I don't think I know him," he said and nodded. Then he gazed down at the floor and grew silent. We said good-bye and went through the lobby to Grandpa Samuel's room, where we found him sitting by the window, staring out, a blanket over his lap.
"Hi, Grandpa," Cary said first. He didn't turn from the window until Cary took his hand. "How are you doing, Grandpa?"
Grandpa Samuel stared at him and then his eyes went to me.
"Yes, Melody's here, too, Grandpa."
He looked at Cary and then at me.
"You got her. Good, good," he said before looking out the window again.
Cary shook his head and shrugged. I stepped forward to take Grandpa Samuel's hand from him.
"Grandpa Samuel, we came to visit you to tell you Grandma Olivia's sick. She has a nurse at the house," I said. "The doctor didn't think she would get much better, but she already has."
He looked at me.
"I told her no, but she said it has to be. Tell your mother I'm sorry," he said. "I told her no."
"It's no use," Cary said. "I told you. We're wasting our time. He doesn't even know where he is anymore. He won't remember us being here afterward, Melody."
"I guess you're right," I said.
Suddenly, Grandpa Samuel turned to us again, this time his eyes more vibrant.
"You go look and you'll see it wasn't me. I didn't sign anything."
"Look where?" I turned to Cary. "Why does he keep saying these things?"
"You know he's confused. It probably doesn't mean anything," Cary reminded me.
"I told her no," Grandpa Samuel repeated. "I told her it was a sin."
We spent another fifteen minutes or so trying to get Grandpa Samuel to understand who we were and why we were there, but he never seemed to grasp the present. He was lost in his memories, drowning in them.
On the way out, I complained to Mrs. Greene about Grandpa being stuck in his room on such a beautiful day.
"For your information," she replied, "he was out all morning and was just recently brought in. Unless you plan on being here twenty-four hours, I would advise you not to criticize," she snapped and walked off.
"I'd rather die in my bed than be brought here," I said. "Grandma Olivia is not wrong in being stubborn about it."
"It's just lucky she can afford to have a nurse around the clock," Cary reminded me. "Otherwise, she would be someplace like this by now."
He took me home and went back to work on the boat. I still had a slew of finals for which to prepare, but as I sat in my room studying, my mind kept wandering back to Grandpa Samuel's eyes and his great fear of being blamed. Why was he so adamant now, at this time in his life? Was it because he thought he was soon to meet his Maker?
How had they arranged for my grandmother to be stuffed away at so young an age? I wondered. What sort of diagnosis had the doctors made? What had Grandma Olivia said about her? Curiosity drew me away from my work and I went downstairs and out the back to go around the house to the basement. It was in there that I had found Mommy's pictures and learned about the secrets this family buried in its closets. I thought maybe Grandpa Samuel was right. Maybe I should go back and see what I could find again.
On the north side of the house there was a metal cellar door. I didn't think anyone had been in it since Cary had brought me last year.
&nbs
p; I hesitated in the doorway. What did I really expect to find? Did I want to find it? Did I want to read all the horrible things? I paused and thought about the twisted and sick old woman now trapped in her own body upstairs. Perhaps justice had been done. Perhaps it was time to forget.
And yet, I couldn't turn away. Maybe it was morbid curiosity; maybe it was a need to understand. I continued down the stairs and opened the next door, stepping in to pull a cord that turned on a swinging, naked bulb to illuminate the basement. I stood there for a moment, recalling the boxes on the metal shelves where we had found the photographs. I went back to them and began to sift through the cartons, their sides, tops and bottoms, limp from the dampness. There were so many photographs, old school papers, old bills, delivery slips, a trail of purchases and events that were unremarkable, the same sort of trail every family left, I thought.
All the boxes were the same. Grandpa Samuel's declining mind was filled with corridors of
distortions, I thought. It was all just part of his garbled imagination now. I started to rise to leave when I saw what looked like a metal box buried under some wooden boards on the other side of the basement. I went to it, lifted off the boards and pulled out the box. It was locked and there were no keys in sight.
Why had this been left buried here and why was it the only thing locked? I brushed it off and took it with me when I left the basement. I didn't go back into the house. I went around to the garage where I knew there were tools and found a screwdriver. It took a while, but I worked one between the lid and the box and gradually, after some effort, got the lock to snap open. Then I lifted the lid and looked inside.
There was a small pile of documents in business envelopes. I took one out, opened it and removed the paper. Then I sat and read.
Of course, I always thought it was just an exaggeration to say 'my heart turned to stone' or 'my blood ran cold.' How could a human heart stop, shudder, crumble and regain itself? How could your body freeze and return to warm?
Yet all of that happened to me and I thought I would never stand, never breathe, never be able to utter a sound. My eyes wanted to sink from the words they read.
However, there was no retreat, no denial, no shaking of the head that would change the reality before me.
I caught my breath and sorted through the remaining papers in the box, reading, growing more and more shocked. Finally, trembling so badly I was sure I would stumble before I stepped outside, I put all the papers back, closed the box, and got to my feet.
No hurricane, no tornado, no earthquake would rock this family as much as what I carried in my hands.
18
At Long Last, Love
.
I climbed the stairway slowly, each step more
ponderous, heavier than the one before. My body was trying to resist as ill were carrying myself toward fire. I did feel like someone approaching the doorway to hell behind which I would surely find the devil herself. Under my arm, the metal box and its horrible information burned.
The late afternoon sun had fallen behind dark clouds. Shadows appeared to grow right before my eyes as I started down the second floor hallway toward Grandma Olivia's bedroom. My heart thumped with each step. I felt drugged, dazed, moving through the corridors of a nightmare. I wasn't even sure I could speak. I thought that when I opened my mouth, all I would do is hiss.
Just before I reached the bedroom door, it opened and Mrs. Grafton stepped out. At first she didn't see me in the shadows. Then I stepped forward into the dim hall light. My appearance gave her a start and she gasped, putting her hand to her heart.
"Oh, I didn't see you standing there," she said. She paused, blinking rapidly as she studied me. "Are you all right?" "I have to talk to my grandmother," I said in a dreary, dark tone.
"She's going in and out," she said.
"Nevertheless, I have to talk to her," I said. Mrs. Grafton shrugged.
"Suit yourself. I'm going down to get something to eat and then I'll be bringing her dinner."
I nodded and she walked away. I hesitated, my hand frozen in the air between the knob and myself. I was hoping that at any moment this really would prove to be only a nightmare. Perhaps when I touched that doorknob, I would wake with a shudder and find myself in bed.
I didn't.
I turned the knob and entered the bedroom.
Grandma Olivia was propped up somewhat on double pillows. Her hair lay in loose strands around her cheeks. Her mouth, twisted and puffy, was slightly open and her eyes were closed. Crippled, felled by this illness, she would have resembled any one of thousands of elderly people stored in old age infirmaries waiting for the clock to make its final tick. However, her diamond rings and bracelets, her rich satin sheets and her linen nightgown loudly declared that this was still a woman of power and prestige. She could issue orders from beyond the grave.
I stood by the bedside glaring down at her, watching her small bosom rise and fall. Her nose twitched and her lips trembled and parted showing some gray teeth. Her forehead formed folds, as painful ugly thoughts traveled with lightning speed behind her eyes and reverberated in that darkness closed up within her.
I waited and then I put the metal box down on the bed beside her and opened it. Her eyelids fluttered, opened and then closed before opening again. She gazed up at me, her eyes gathering light as she became more and more aware of where she was and who I was. Her mouth opened and she uttered some sound. Surely, I thought, some command.
"I've come to ask you some questions," I said, "and I want you to know right from the start that your illness won't stop me from demanding answers."
Her eyes widened, both with surprise and indignation. She started to protest when I lifted the metal box and held it up high enough for her to see. Her eyes shifted, studied the box and then returned to my face, her face grimacing with new anxiety.
"Yes, Grandma, I found it. Grandpa Samuel talked about it enough to catch my curiosity and I went down to the basement where you had buried all your sins and I found it and what was inside," I said, plucking the first document and holding it for a moment. Then I put the box down and unfolded the document.
She started to shake her head, but I continued.
"I know you are well aware of what is on this and the other papers, but I want you to look at it again. I'm sure you buried everything downstairs so you wouldn't have to look at it again, but now you do."
I thrust the paper out, holding it in front of her. Her eyes moved over it and then she tried to turn away, but I reached out quickly and put my hand on her forehead, easily bringing her head back so she had to look at me and the paper.
"Who did you think you were? Did you think you were God? What gave you the right to do such a thing, to control everyone else's pain and suffering, to determine someone's whole life and the lives of those who loved her and she loved? From where did you get this arrogance of power?"
She began to struggle with speech.
"Fa ... mmmm . . ."
"How did you get this?" I asked, pulling another document from the box. "How did you get him to do it? It has something to do with all the rest of it, doesn't it? I'm going to find out, Grandma. I'm going to learn every nitty-gritty detail and I'm going to expose all of it," I declared.
Her eyes went as wide as they could and for the first time since I had known her, I saw real fear burning in them. She shook her head vigorously.
"Naaaaa."
"Yes, Grandma, yes. The precious Logan name will be dragged down into the gutter where it belongs. You may have wealth and property, but you're no better than the most common criminal and neither are those who assisted you in this."
"Fammmmmm."
"Oh, you're trying to tell me you did this for the family again, is that it?"
She nodded.
"You were just protecting all the others?" I asked with a cold smile. Once again, she nodded vigorously. My smile evaporated. "That's the biggest lie of all, Grandma Olivia. Whatever you've done, you've done for yourse
lf, to keep your precious high and mighty position in the community, or your precious reputation. Or you did things to get revenge or hurt those who didn't give you the love and respect you thought you deserved. Don't throw the word 'family' at me. Family is just your excuse for evil. I know that now."
She stopped shaking her head and stared. I put the documents back into the metal box.
"I don't know the end of the story, of course, but I will get to the end," I promised.
I closed the box and put it under my arm again.
"As I look at you now, I realize you are only just beginning to get what you deserve, Grandma. I almost pitied you. I almost did what you hate: I almost felt sorry for you, but you don't have to worry about that anymore. I can't find enough forgiveness to sympathize one iota with you. You're home free there, Grandma," I said.
"When I finish this, I'm going to tell the doctor to put you in the infirmary where you belong. You told me not to hesitate when the time came, didn't you? You were so brave then. Well, Aunt Sara, Cary and I will see to it and even Judge Childs will not resist."
I paused.
"I assume he knew about this too, didn't he?" I asked, holding up the box. She stared a moment, closed her eyes and then opened them and shook her head. "He didn't? Why not? You mean there was something he would have denied you after all? Were you afraid of that?"
She nodded and then started to shake her head and reach out for me, but I stepped back.
"There is nothing you could say, nothing, no words, no thoughts, nothing that would justify what you have done and the pain you have caused."
I turned and she cried out in her distorted way, uttering a guttural scream that reverberated through my body. With all her remaining strength, she propped herself up and then cried out again, but I turned my back on her and marched out of the room, the echo of her horrible sound shut away behind me.
As soon as I left her, I went downstairs to the office and called Cary,.
"I want you to come and get me, Cary," I said. "I need you to take me someplace."
"When?"