Previously Loved Treasures (Serendipity #2)(29)
I love being here, and Grandma Ida is really good to me. She makes me feel like she’s loved me all my life. She says she did. She tells me stories about how she used to dream of having a little granddaughter and all the wonderful things they’d do.
I sure do wish she’d found me when I was a kid. We would have done all those wonderful things for sure, but like Mama used to say, if wishes were horses, we’d be riding instead of wearing out our shoe leather.
Grandma Ida is really patient about teaching me to cook; that’s why I don’t have the heart to tell her I don’t like it. I like being with her and doing things but not the cooking. It’s such a temporary thing. You slave over a hot stove and spend hours making a delicious meal. Then you dress up the table with a fine linen cloth and fancy napkins, thinking it’s going to be a wonderful event. But it isn’t. People come, eat dinner, then leave to go do whatever pleases them, and all you’ve got is a big pile of laundry and a bunch of dirty dishes.
One time I asked Grandma if it wouldn’t be a lot less work to send out for a pizza or something, and she laughed like I’d told the best joke ever.
She said cooking wasn’t work. It was her way of showing people how much she loves them. With all the cooking Grandma does, it’s obvious that she’s got plenty of love to give.
Right now I’m lucky to be getting a share of that love, but I’m hoping this isn’t another one of those times when I’m gonna wake up and find out it really was too good to be true.
In The Days That Followed
Three days after Ida returned from South Rockdale, the notarized will appeared in her mailbox. Her intent was to discuss the matter with Caroline, explain that regardless of what happened in the future she’d be taken care of. Ida slid the envelope from Susan Schleicher between the stack of kitchen towels and potholders at the bottom of a drawer.
“Later,” she said and moved on to slicing peaches for the day’s pies. The subject she’d have to discuss was death, and she simply wasn’t ready to look death in the face.
That evening Caroline’s cooking lesson was spaghetti with fat, round meatballs. It was a recipe Ida perfected over the years. Perfected, yes; written down, no.
“It’s easy as pie,” she said, but since Caroline had witnessed Ida’s pie-making ritual that did little to dissuade her fears. Having had a fairly good response with her Betty Crocker macaroni and cheese Caroline would have felt far more comfortable with returning to something that had carefully measured ingredients, but Ida seemed intent on the spaghetti.
“Start with a few cans of tomatoes, a can or two of paste, some fresh basil—”
“Few? Some?” Caroline repeated. “By a few cans, do you mean two, three, or four?”
“It all depends on how much sauce you want to make.”
Although Caroline finally got the sauce mixed and simmering on the back burner, she was nowhere near comfortable with the process. The meatballs fared no better. With pinches and dashes of one thing or another, Caroline knew she could never again prepare such a dish without written instructions. Next time she’d bring a pad and pencil to the kitchen and copy things down in a step-by-step manner.
The following evening Caroline came carrying a pad and pencil, but stopping to write down every single step proved cumbersome and time consuming. That evening supper was again late.
“Maybe we’d better return to using the cookbook,” Ida suggested.
Caroline agreed.
~
And so it went for the next two weeks. At times the sauce was runny or the meat well done, but Caroline was learning and the residents could be forgiving because Ida always served one of her delicious homemade pies for dessert.
The night Caroline cooked up a pot of chili with beef chunks everyone agreed it was her best yet, but the dish gave Ida a serious case of indigestion. After chewing a handful of Tums, it was no better. Figuring a good night’s rest would take care of the problem, Ida retired early.
For a long time she could not fall asleep; the acid roiled through her chest and angrily pushed its way into her throat. At midnight Ida climbed from the bed, chewed another handful of Tums, and swallowed the last sleeping pill Doctor Morgenstern had prescribed after Big Jim’s death. When she finally fell asleep Ida was thinking of Jim, remembering the good times and lonely for the warmth of his body beside her.
He was in her mind when she drifted off, and he reappeared in a dream sweeter than any she’d ever known.
In the dream they were both young and so very in love. Jim wrapped his arm around her, and she held an infant in her arms. They were encased in a protective bubble where the air was filled with happiness. It was a world of their own, a world where none of the happiness could leak out and nothing bad could seep in. The young Ida looked up at Jim, and he bent to touch his lips to hers. In that single moment, the infant became a boy and the boy turned into a young man.
Then everything changed. Angry words filled the bubble, and the young man shot a fist through the glass that held them together. As the glass shattered, Ida felt a sharp pain ricochet through her body. It lasted for a few moments, and when the pain stopped the boy was gone. Jim was once again holding her in his arms.
“It’s okay,” he whispered. “It’s okay.”
Ida felt herself relax into his arms, and the peaceful happiness returned.