Stay Sweet(40)

Grady takes a left into the formal living room, with a striped couch, two matching Queen Anne chairs with floral backs, and a coffee table. This seems to be where he is spending most of his time. His laptop is open, perched on a tall stack of college textbooks. Several pairs of his pants are draped over the backs of chairs, his shirts buttoned up on hangers that have been hooked on the fireplace mantel, on the lip of the bookshelves, on the wooden box of a grandfather clock. Molly’s financial records paper the coffee table, three emptied bank boxes’ worth. There’s also a blanket and pillow smushed up on the couch.

“I tried sleeping in the spare bedroom upstairs,” he explains, “but it’s twice as hot on the second floor as it is down here. I can’t get any of the windows to open.”

She walks over to the mantel, where there’s a line of framed family pictures. In a large silver oval is Molly’s high school senior portrait.

Amelia is pretty sure the photograph has been artificially tinted because it has a watercolor-y look. In it, Molly is wearing a red blouse, and her strawberry-blond hair loops in soft bouncy curls over her shoulders. She’s smiling a closed-lipped smile, red and juicy, her shoulders angled ever so slightly, blue eyes sparkling. She is gorgeous.

“Did you know she was elected homecoming queen and prom queen two years in a row?” Amelia asks Grady. “Supposedly a man from Hollywood once slipped Molly’s dad his business card because he wanted to bring Molly to California and put her in movies.” Amelia’s been told stories like these over the years, by the older customers who show up less interested in placing an order than they are in sharing memories of the Meades.

Grady blinks.

“You don’t see it? She absolutely could have been a movie star!” Amelia is suddenly annoyed at Grady for being so handsome. He doesn’t deserve his good looks if he doesn’t care about where they came from.

“It’s not that,” he says, defensive. “I just feel weird calling my great-aunt hot.” He points out another photo, this one of the three Meade siblings standing in height order on the stairs. “I think this guy’s my grandfather,” he says, pointing to the one on the top step, tall and wiry, in slacks and a boxy button-up. “Patrick. I never met him, but I’ve seen his picture. And that’s for sure my dad’s nose.”

“Your nose,” Amelia says.

“You think?” He runs a finger down the slope. “Sometimes I wonder if my dad and I are actually related. Anyway, that would make this other guy my great-uncle Liam,” he says, pointing to the shorter and stockier of the two Meade brothers. “He died in a car accident a couple years after making it back from the war.”

To Amelia, it seems unfair, how much tragedy has befallen the Meades. She scans the other photos. The last one on the right was taken in front of the stand, and it seems to be the most recent. Molly is laughing jovially at the camera. Next to her, a tall woman in cutoffs and a white linen shirt is smiling at a little boy, who’s bawling because he lost the top scoop of his cone.

Grady.

“That’s my mom,” he mumbles.

Amelia leans closer, trying to match this woman up to the one she first saw at Molly’s funeral.

“So, ice cream,” Grady says, backing up.

“Um. Right.”

Grady leads her down a hallway, past the kitchen, to a black wooden door with a glass knob. It opens to a narrow stairway, walls decorated with a dustpan and broom, some shelves of canned goods. He descends first and Amelia follows, every step getting darker until they reach the bottom. Then Grady walks off and a few seconds later flicks a light switch.

Amelia’s hand goes straight to her mouth.

It’s less of a basement and more of a teenager’s hangout from another time. The walls are pasted with faded magazine clippings of fashionable girls in beautiful outfits alongside images of dairy cows, and the juxtaposition of these subjects makes Amelia smile. A few small windows are up near the ceiling, each one with a set of cute, home-sewn curtains made from pink ticking-stripe fabric with white eyelet lace at the hem. There are a couch and a club chair that exactly match the yellow love seat down in the stand, only not nearly as faded and worn.

Most amazing, though, is the kitchen. This part of the basement is like something out of the future: sterile, clean. There are two large industrial freezers and a stainless steel table that wouldn’t be out of place in a doctor’s office. Underneath the table are stacks of nesting bowls, and hanging from S hooks are several sets of silver measuring cups and spoons. Waist-high containers marked as sugar and powdered milk, each with a huge scoop. A stainless steel vat, large, like a witch’s cauldron with general temperature gauges.

Finally, Amelia notices a silver rectangle sitting on a second table all by itself, unsurprising as it isn’t a friendly-looking contraption. It’s about the size of three microwaves stacked on top of each other. There are a couple of unmarked knobs and gauges, and one big triangular spout in front. It’s old. You can tell by the way the metal is stamped with the company name EMERY THOMPSON AUTOMATED MACHINE.

Grady pats the top of the ice cream maker like a used-car salesman. It seems to be in good shape, not a dent or a scratch on it. It’s like peering under the hood of a classic vintage car, all shiny chrome.

Amelia makes a slow spin, trying to take it all in. This was Molly’s sanctuary, but thinking of her working alone down here for so many years tugs at Amelia’s heart.