Before We Were Yours(25)



It’s morning, of course. As I’d predicted, the DAR meeting ran late last night, and try as I might, I couldn’t get away from the wedding interrogation. I was like a hapless grasshopper dropped into a henhouse. My head is now full of suggestions, dates I shouldn’t plan on because someone important will be out of town, and offers to loan china, silver, crystal, and linens.

“Wonderful, thank you,” I tell Grandma Judy, and cross the room to hug her, hoping the moment of closeness will draw a memory from her.

For an instant, it seems to. She looks deep into my eyes, then finally sighs and says, “You are so very pretty. What lovely hair you have.” Touching it, she smiles.

Sadness expands in my chest. I came here hoping for answers about May Crandall and the old photograph on her nightstand. That doesn’t look very likely now.

“There was a little girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead.” My grandmother smiles up at me. Cool fingers with paper-thin skin stroke my cheek.

“And when she was good, she was very, very good,” I add. Grandma Judy always greeted me with this poem when I visited her house on Lagniappe Street as a child.

“And when she was bad, she was horrid,” she finishes, and grins and winks, and we laugh together. It’s just like old times.

I sit in the chair across the little round table. “I always loved it when you teased me with that rhyme.” In Honeybee’s home, little girls were expected to be anything but horrid, but Grandma Judy had always been known for having a spunky streak that bordered on impropriety. She’d spoken out on issues like civil rights and education for women long before it was acceptable for a female to have an opinion.

She asks if I’ve seen Welly-boy, her pet name for my father, Wells.

I fill her in on yesterday’s press op and the town hall forum, then the long, long, long DAR meeting at Drayden Hill. I skip over the wedding chatter, of course.

Grandma Judy nods with approval as I talk, narrowing an eye and offering shrewd comments about the town hall meeting. “Wells mustn’t let those people run riot over him. They’d love to catch a Stafford meddling in the dirt, but they won’t.”

“Of course not. He handled it beautifully, just like he always does.” I don’t mention how tired he looked or his seeming mental lapse under questioning.

“That’s my boy. He’s a very good boy. I don’t know how he could’ve given rise to a girl who can be horrid.”

“Pppfff! Grandma!” I slap a hand over hers and squeeze. She’s actually cracking jokes and drawing connections between us. It is a good day. “I think it skipped a generation.”

I’m expecting a quick-witted retort. Instead, she says blandly, “Oh, many things do.” She sinks back in her chair, her hand pulling away from mine. I sense the moment fading.

“Grandma Judy, I wanted to ask you something.”

“Oh?”

“I met a woman yesterday. She said she knew you. May Crandall. Does that sound familiar?” The names of old friends and acquaintances she can often recall with ease. It’s as if her memory book has fallen open, a persistent wind tearing out the most recent pages first. The older the memories are, the more likely they are to remain intact.

“May Crandall…” As she repeats the name, I can tell immediately that she recognizes it. I’m already reaching for my phone to show her the photo when she says, “No…it doesn’t ring any bells.” I glance up from my purse, and she’s looking at me very directly, thin white lashes narrowed over seawater eyes that suddenly seem strangely intense. I’m afraid we’re about to have one of those moments where she stops in the middle of a conversation and without warning starts the visit over with something like I didn’t know you were coming by today. How have you been? Instead, she says, “Is there a reason you would ask?”

“I met her yesterday…at the nursing home.”

“Yes, you said. But many people know of the Staffords, dear. We must always be careful. People look for scandal.”

“Scandal?” The word jolts me.

“Of course.”

The phone suddenly feels cold between my fingers. “I didn’t know we had any skeletons in the closet.”

“Gracious. Of course we do not.”

I scroll to the photo, look into the face of the young woman who reminds me even more of my grandmother now that I’m right across the table from her. “She had this picture. Do you know the person in it?” Maybe these are woodpile relatives? People my grandmother doesn’t want to acknowledge as part of the family tree? Every clan must have a few of those. Perhaps there was a cousin who ran off with the wrong sort of man and got pregnant?

I turn the screen toward her, watch for her reaction.

“Queen…” she murmurs, reaching out to pull the phone closer. “Oh…” Moisture wells up in her eyes. It beads and spills over, sketching trails down her cheeks.

“Grandma Judy?”

She’s a million miles away.

Not miles, years. Years away. She’s remembering something. She knows who that is in the photo. Queen. What does that mean?

“Grandma Judy?”

“Queenie.” Her fingertip trails across the image. Then she turns my way with an intensity that bolts me to my chair. “We mustn’t let people find out….” she says, her voice lowered. She glances toward the door, leans close, then adds in a whisper, “They can never know about Arcadia.”

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