Summer Snow (38 page)

Grandma had set aside a reclining lawn chair for me, propping up an old egg crate beside it with a jug of lemonade and four plastic cups. It was positioned in the shade, and it looked enormously comfortable and inviting with plump gingham cushions and an oversize pillow. As soon as Michael came, he ushered me into it, insisting that the supervisor had to do nothing but relax and boss everyone else around. And though it felt strange to be pampered and fussed over, it was also fun to sink into the lounger and watch the action unfold.

“It's good wood,” Michael said, examining a particularly bare board. “But we can't paint over the top of this.”

“I thought that might be the case,” Grandma admitted with a sigh. “I borrowed a power washer from our neighbor, but I guess I should have done that first before we dragged you all the way out here.”

“Are you kidding?” Michael laughed. “Power washing is better than painting! Right, Simon?”

“Yeah!” Simon yelled, though I doubted he knew what he was talking about.

“Join Julia in the shade,” Michael told Grandma. “The boys will take care of this.” He struck a comical, muscleman pose and flexed for Simon.

Grandma was chuckling when she pulled up a lawn chair beside me. “Simon just loves him, doesn't he? It's fun to watch them interact.” “I know,” I said softly. “That's something we're going to have to think about now that … now that Janice is gone. Simon needs men in his life.”

“We all do,” Grandma murmured, watching Michael and Simon wrestle with the hose that connected the wand to the generator. Then she caught herself and whipped her head around to smile at me. “Don't read anything into that,” she said, patting my arm with a laugh.

“I didn't,” I reassured her.

Grandma hummed a few notes of a tune I didn't recognize. When she turned back to the porch and the boys, I studied her out of the corner of my eye. She seemed content somehow, settled and peaceful in a way that I hadn't seen in her for longer than I could remember. There was a distinct air of satisfaction, of serenity in her manner, and it touched me so much, it clutched at something small and happy inside of me so urgently, that I reached out my arm and took her hand.

I thought that maybe the gesture would surprise her, but Grandma didn't even look at me. With a half smile playing at her lips, she continued to hum her tune. And then with a movement of careful intention, she brought my hand to her cheek and held it there. She closed her eyes.

We sat in silence for a moment, and I could feel the soft exhalation of Grandma's breath on the back of my hand. “She shouldn't have left,” I said.

Grandma didn't respond.

“I think we could have worked things out,” I pressed carefully.

“Are you angry?” Grandma asked.

I pondered her question. “No,” I said finally. “I feel sorry for her.”

“Me too.”

We were quiet for a long time because, although there was much that could be said, most of our musings would be speculation only or, worse, raw hope. I figured I could come close to guessing at the myriad reasons Janice had left: guilt, inadequacy, fear, a desire for
more.
… And, probably most convincingly, the belief that Ben could meet the agonizing, indefinable need that gouged deep fissures in the earth of Janice's soul.

But while I thought I could look back and decipher why, I found it unbearable to look ahead and speculate about what would happen next. Would Janice come back? Would she send for Simon? Would she bring Ben into our lives? There simply wasn't a perfect scenario no matter how I worked and reworked it in my mind. I couldn't even claim to know what would be best for Simon, what would be best for me.

Even though it was impossible to imagine how we would make this work, how we would bring Simon into our family and help him to understand that in her own broken, unfathomable way Janice loved him very much, I did know that the months, maybe years ahead would be hard ones. When Janice left me, I called her Janice. When she left Simon, he called her Mom. It took her ten years to come back to me. I didn't know how long it would take her to come back to Simon.

Maybe this time the split had been permanent.

But these were things I couldn't say out loud, even as I knew Grandma was carefully contemplating the exact same thoughts. Instead I murmured, “Do you think she'll come back?”

Grandma pursed her lips sadly, but she didn't answer me. And then, with a heavy sigh and an almost dramatic flourish, she squeezed the back of my hand and, still clasping my fingers, lowered it to swing in the air between our lawn chairs. She looked me full in the face and smiled. “We—all of us, even Simon—are strong. We'll make it no matter what. We get to rebuild.” Grandma's eyes sparkled. “We get to be new.”

I believed every word.

As if on cue, Simon's laughter rang out from the porch. Grandma and I looked up in time to see Michael squeeze the trigger on the long wand of the power washer and release a jet of cleansing water. We clapped and cheered.

Stripping off the old paint turned out to be a deafening affair, replete with stinging droplets of water that Grandma and I could feel even at twenty feet away and debris that spun off the porch in a profusion of minihurricanes. Michael helped Simon hold the wand once or twice, but most of the time the dark-haired boy danced behind his new hero, protected by Michael's frame, his mouth open in a shout that was drowned out by the sound of the earsplitting machine.

It was over before too long, and the second Michael switched off the power washer, the air was filled with the happy noise of Simon's hoots and Grandma's and my laughter. The grass all around us was covered with the confetti of grayish white porch paint, as if someone had cried “Surprise!” and opened a trapdoor in the sky. The front porch itself was glistening and wet, the wood mostly bare, but waiting somehow and pretty, almost eager for change.

“That was fun!” Simon yelped, dancing around the porch. “Let's do it again!”

“I think we're done, buddy,” Michael said, wiping his eyes on the sleeve of his T-shirt. “But it was fun. Thanks for your help.”

“Do we get to paint now?”

Michael dropped the power washer on the sidewalk and led Simon over to where Grandma and I were sitting in the shade. He flopped on the grass, on the millions of flecks of paint, and Simon threw himself down beside him. “Sorry, Simon, but we can't paint right away. The wood is wet now from all that water.”

“But we're supposed to
paint
the porch,” Simon complained, his voice taking on an uncharacteristic singsong quality.

“How about if I come back tomorrow and we start painting then,” Michael offered, casting a raised eyebrow in the direction of Grandma and me. “Would that be okay?” he asked, addressing us directly. “I have to work until noon, but I can come after that.”

Grandma consulted me with her eyes. I shrugged. She consented. “If you want to, Michael, we certainly wouldn't turn down your help.”

I considered giving Michael an out again, but then I loosened up and smiled at him. He wouldn't have offered if he didn't want to do it.

“Can we
look
at the paint?” Simon asked, desperate to get started on the real project.

“Why not?” Grandma pushed herself out of her chair and went to haul the bucket of paint back to our spot in the shade.

Michael hopped off the ground and beat her to it, taking the bucket in one hand and giving Grandma the screwdriver with the other so she'd have something to carry too.

“I'm not that old,” she reprimanded him, wagging the tool at Michael in mock disappointment.

“Oh, I know. Just being a gentleman.”

Michael and Grandma pried off the plastic tabs on the paint cover and then gently eased the top off. Long strands of white paint drew lines between the lid and the clean pool of paint below, and a soft, distinct scent filled the air. Simon sighed in approval. Even I had to admit that the porch would look very different swathed in all that shining white. It would make the whole house look different.

“It's
lovely
,” Simon said.

I hid a smile behind my hand.

“It's white,” Grandma said, pretending to blink at the brightness of it.

But it wasn't too bright for Simon. As we watched, the glossy bucket of milky liquid lured him, and he reached out a tentative hand and touched the very tip of his index finger to the smooth surface of the paint. He pulled away immediately, almost shocked at what he had done, and gaped at the white on his finger. Casting around, he looked for somewhere to wipe it off. My leg was the closest thing. Something in his mind clicked. With a glimmer of trouble in his eye, Simon beamed at me and carefully,
carefully
placed his finger on my skin. There was an impish little hum, a tremble in his voice, and then he drew his finger from my ankle to my knee.

“What do you think you're doing?” I howled, but I couldn't disguise the laughter in my voice.

It spurred Simon on and he stuck his finger in the paint again. This time he went for my face.

“Oh no, no, no you don't!” I shrieked. But I only curled up deeper into the chair and let Simon approach me with a slow, deliberate step.

“Get her!” Grandma urged him.

I shot her a look of pretend horror and struggled feebly while Simon pinned my forehead back with one hand. Then he dragged his finger triumphantly across my cheek with the other. “Looks awesome,” he said, backing up to survey his handiwork. He doubled over in a fit of giggles.

And it wasn't enough to stop there. Simon went back for more. “Come on, Michael, help me!”

Michael wavered for a moment, but Simon grabbed Michael's thick wrist and pulled his arm over the bucket of paint. “Come on!” the little boy cajoled.

Tossing a cheerful wink at me, Michael dipped a finger in the paint and walked on his knees to join Simon beside me.

“Make me beautiful.” I closed my eyes and laid my head back, listening to Simon laugh as he touched my other cheek with his cool finger.

On the opposite side, Michael took a deep breath. I felt him reach for me. “War paint,” he whispered, using his finger to dot a line of circles along my hairline.

Not anymore
, I thought.

Hemmed between the heavens above and the earth below, I felt that in this moment, with the sun filtering through the leaves in a glancing touch of blessing, all was well beneath the endless sky. Not perfect. Not exactly the way it should be. But
well
.

Humbled

D
ANIEL
P
ETER
D
E
S
MIT
was born on August 13, shortly after ten o'clock in the morning.

I woke up a few hours before sunrise with contractions that were nothing like the ones I had experienced before, and I knew with an uncanny sense of peace, of acceptance:
This is it
. I stole down the stairs when they were five minutes apart and found Grandma waiting for me at the kitchen table. Her Bible was spread out before her, and there were two glasses of water on the long slats of oak. She sipped out of one and offered the other to me.

“What are you doing up?” I asked incredulously.

“I had a feeling about tonight.” Grandma smiled. And then she rose from her seat to help me into a chair as a contraction nearly sent me to my knees. “Did you know that I was six days overdue with your dad?”

“And the date today is …,” I panted after the peak of the contraction had leveled off.

“The thirteenth. You are six days overdue.”

I narrowed my eyes at my grandmother. “That's superstitious.”

She laughed. “No, it's not. It's providential.”

Though I wanted to talk, though I felt that there was an endless abyss of things that I needed to plumb, to say, I found that everything had turned inside. It was a solitary feeling but not sad. I felt like the world around me had paused in its rotation, checked itself for this brief moment in time so that everything could pull back, make room for me, for the baby. It was matchless and rare, something to be treasured: I was alone in this fold of eternity with my baby and the One who had knit him within.

When I laid my head on my arms and closed my eyes, Grandma simply ran her fingers lightly over my back. She read to me from the book in front of her, and while I didn't hear and didn't understand, her voice was poetry. It was life.

We waited until six o'clock to call Mrs. Walker, and by that time I was so lost inside myself, so anxious to get to the hospital that I wasn't even afraid of childbirth anymore.

“It's happening!” Mrs. Walker shrieked when she bounded through the door moments later. Then she bobbed her head as if someone had smacked it from behind. “Oops! Sorry! Hope I didn't wake up Simon.”

“I'm awake,” Simon called from the hallway, still rubbing his eyes. His hair was plastered against both sides of his head and sticking up on the crown like a Mohawk. Blinking and yawning, he gazed from Grandma to Mrs. Walker to me, obviously bemused at the three of us bedraggled-looking women in his kitchen. His stare lingered on me. I was standing hunched over the kitchen table, my hands flat against the smooth surface and a grim smile plastered to my face. Finally it hit him. “You're going to have the baby!” he yelled. “I'm going to be a big brother!”

“Something like that,” I wheezed as another contraction began to crest over me.

Grandma and Mrs. Walker hustled me out the door moments later.

“Don't worry about us,” Mrs. Walker reassured. “Simon and I will have a great day together.” She gently eased my car door closed as if shutting it too hard would harm me in some way. Crossing to Grandma's open window, Mrs. Walker exclaimed a little louder than necessary, “Promise me you'll call as soon as the baby is born.”

“I promise,” Grandma said quickly; then she threw the car in reverse and sped all the way to the hospital. “I'm not nervous,” she explained as I eyed her speedometer. It was nearing sixty-five, an unheard of velocity for my docile grandmother. “I'm just excited.”