We Are the Ants(80)

Framed next to the picture was a photocopy of a handwritten journal entry. The boy’s name had been Kenny Highcastle, and Nana had only allowed him to escort her to the dance because her mother insisted, but she’d had the time of her life that night. Each picture we’d hung had a corresponding journal entry, and Nana’s life filled the spaces of all four walls.

“Even if they steal all your memories, they can’t steal the amazing life you led. Whenever you forget, just come in here until you remember again,” I said.

Nana shuffled around the room, moving from photograph to photograph, stopping at some longer than others. “Oh! I remember this. Your father and I bought our very first car. A Pontiac Tempest, Teal Turquoise. I never did learn how to drive it.”

“Yes, but you were the only mother on the PTA who could drive a tractor.” Mom stood behind me and rested her hands on my shoulders.

A few of the other residents trickled in. “Look, Hannah. Charlie found my missing memories. They’re all here.” Watching Nana show off her life, all the things she’d done, was the most amazing feeling in the world. I didn’t even care that she called me Charlie.

Maybe our lives did have meaning. Nana’s did. It meant something to her and to the people in her photographs. Each and every one of those memories was a moment that had mattered, even the ones that hadn’t seemed important at the time.

Mom kissed my cheek before she left. Audrey, Diego, and I stuck around a while longer, listening to Nana recount stories from the pictures. I figured, even if she didn’t always know she was the woman who’d lived this life, she’d know how important it was.

On the way out, Audrey said, “For a guy who thinks the world is going to end in a few weeks, that was a pretty amazing thing to do.”

“Nana deserves to be happy, for however long we have left.”

Diego shrugged and said, “She’s not the only one.”





31 December 2015


Mom decided to celebrate New Year’s Eve with her girlfriends at the Hard Rock Casino, leaving the house to me and Charlie with explicit instructions not to throw a party, which we obviously planned to ignore.

We weren’t going to host a rager—just Zooey, a few of Charlie’s friends who were home from college, Audrey, and Diego. I told Audrey she could go to Marcus’s party if she didn’t want to hang out with us, but she said she’d rather eat a flaming cockroach, which seemed a little dramatic. And gross. Marcus had been bragging about his New Year’s Eve bash on SnowFlake all week. He even texted me an invitation, but I never responded.

After I finished moving Mom’s breakables into her bedroom and locking the door, I checked on the snack and alcohol situation. Between Diego’s Christmas gifts and the picture frames for Nana, I’d blown most of my meager savings. Mom had given Charlie her engagement ring, which was a family heirloom, but remodeling the baby’s room meant he was also broke. Hopefully, no one would notice we’d bought the off-brand sodas and chips, no dip, and liquor so bottom shelf it was practically on the floor. Charlie filtered the vodka through our water purifier—a trick he’d learned from his college--going buddies—and paired it with the off-brand sodas that had names like Pop! and Lemony-Lime Fresh. I checked on the cocktail wieners baking in the oven. Those, of course, were nothing more than a family pack of hot dogs cut up and wrapped in croissant dough. The only thing worse would have been if we’d served ramen, and don’t think we didn’t consider it.

“Charlie! Charlie, where are the cups?” I searched cupboards for the stack of red plastic cups I knew we’d bought.

“In here!” Charlie yelled.

Why in the world did Charlie have them? People were going to start showing up in a few minutes, and I still needed to shower. I stomped back to his bedroom. The plastic sheeting was gone, and Charlie stood in the doorway, grinning. “I wanted to finish before everyone arrived.”

“Finish what?”

“The baby’s room.”

“Oh.” Even though I still had a ton to do, I knew he wanted me to ask. “Can I see?”

Charlie nodded, manic and proud. He stood aside and motioned for me to enter. What had once been his bedroom was transformed from a smelly, dreary man cave into a -simple, neatly organized room. He’d replaced his lumpy twin bed with a new full-size mattress, added curtains to the windows, and bought a new dresser. They’d settled on painting the walls a soft blue. On the baby’s side of the room, they didn’t have much in the way of furniture, but they’d found a crib, a changing table, and rocking chair.

“Isn’t that Nana’s old rocking chair?”

“Mom got it out of storage.” He was beaming. I wondered how many generations of our family had been rocked in that chair. Around the time my mom was rocking Charlie in it for the first time, light from the star Delta Pavonis was beginning its journey toward Earth. From its point of view, Charlie was still a colicky baby who barely slept for his first few months of life. In the triple-star system 26 Draconis, Mom was the baby and Nana the beautiful woman nursing her.

I walked deeper into the room. A mural of a tree decorated the far wall. Its branches reached high and stretched wide, and under it sat a little girl who resembled both Charlie and Zooey, staring at the stars overhead, a secret smile on her face.