Page 4 of The Lost Hours
I heard the sound of a honking horn and then Mr. Morton spoke again. “Your grandmother was a lot stronger than you think, Piper. Maybe you should go visit her.”
The sound of a car honking sounded again through the receiver.
“I really must go now, Piper. Don’t hesitate to call George if you should need anything. Good-bye, dear.”
I kept the receiver pressed against my ear, listening to the dial tone for a long time, trying to figure out what in the hell Mr. Morton had been trying to tell me and why I should even care.
I made myself go to the grocery to buy more Coke and frozen dinners, the thought of heating up a casserole just for me completely unappealing. My conversations with Mr. Morton and my discovery of the blue sweater had made me think of my grandmother and I found myself purchasing cornmeal, okra, and green tomatoes—the old comfort foods that she had made for me as a child.
I knew that I should visit her, but her presence at my grandfather’s funeral had been exhausting as I fielded her repetitive questions and reintroduced her to relatives and friends she’d known for fifty years. She’d been utterly lost, and after a while I stopped reminding her whose funeral we were attending. To her, Granddaddy would always be alive, and it gave me some comfort to know that she would never be truly alone.
But I needed to go visit her. I would do it soon, if only to ask her why she would have thought to caution me about patience, strength, and pain.
I placed my grocery bags in the backseat of the old Buick, trying not to see my grandfather in his worn straw hat at the wheel, signaling his turns with his left hand because the fuse for his blinkers had blown out and he hadn’t wanted to part with the cash to replace it.
As I drove around our square toward East Taylor, the moss-draped oaks teased me with intermittent sun and shadow, the old houses staring stoically at the square and at me as I passed, defying time and climate simply by remaining. In front of my house I paused, the antique beauty of the Savannah gray brick town house and delicate wrought-iron railings never lost on me. I think it was because the first time I’d seen it, it had been a place a refuge following the death of my parents. Even afterward, when I’d begun to think of my grandmother’s house as a place of sadness and shadows, it was still the place I called home. If it held any secrets, I was kept blissfully unaware of them.
I pulled into a spot on the curb, belatedly remembering that I had given my front-door key to the funeral director so he could unload the funeral flowers and place them inside for the wake while I wasn’t home. I sighed heavily, eyeing the three bags in the backseat and deciding whether I could balance all three while I cut through the side garden and made my way to the backyard.
I had set down one of the bags in an empty flower bed in the backyard to readjust the load when I heard the front doorbell ring. Leaving the bag on the ground, I unlocked the back door and ran inside, dropping the two bags on the kitchen counter before rushing through the house to the front door.
George Baker, an associate in Mr. Morton’s law firm in addition to being Mr. Morton’s grandson, stood on the front steps with an appropriate look of condolence on his face and a blue-and-white seersucker suit on his thin-framed body. He wasn’t a bad-looking man, but his relentless pursuit of me since I had returned to Savannah six years before had made me wary and I avoided any contact with him with the same amount of effort I applied to avoiding any reminders of my past. He was also the only person of my acquaintance who insisted on calling me by my given name instead of the nickname my grandfather had given me the first time I’d sat on a horse.
“Hello, Earlene. I’m glad I found you at home.” He held up a foil-wrapped casserole dish. “Mama thought you might get hungry, so she sent her tomato-okra casserole for you. There’s a lot of food there, so if you don’t think you can eat it all, I’d be happy to stay for dinner and help you out.”
I took the casserole and forced a smile on my face. “Thanks, George. That was real sweet of your mother to think of me.”
He stood facing me, obviously waiting for an invitation to come inside.
I indicated the space behind me. “I left a bag of groceries in the back garden and two more in the kitchen and I need to go put them away before they spoil.”
“You know you’re not supposed to be carrying anything too heavy. Let me help you.”
Resigned to submitting myself to his company, I moved back to allow him in. “Let me put this casserole in the fridge if you wouldn’t mind getting the bag I left outside.”
He followed at my heels like a lost puppy as I made my way to the kitchen and he went out the back door. I added the casserole to the collection in the refrigerator and started unloading the bags. When George returned he began organizing the groceries on the counter by the section of the kitchen where they would be stored. It annoyed me and I pretended not to notice his system when I put the can of peeled tomatoes in the pile with frozen peas and ice cream.
“You gave a beautiful eulogy at the funeral, Earlene. You’re a very strong woman, saying those words and not crying at all. I said that to my grandpa Paul and he said that you would have made your grandfather proud.”
“Thank you,” I said stiffly as I stuffed a plastic bag inside another. How could I explain to him that it wasn’t at all because I was strong? To be strong I’d have to feel something.
He stacked the two boxes of Froot Loops on the counter. “Do you really eat this for breakfast?”
A sarcastic comment came to my lips but I bit it back. I simply didn’t have the energy to apologize later. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.”
He pursed his lips. “I think your doctor would agree that a diet filled with fresh fruits and vegetables as well as whole grains would contribute to your healing process a lot quicker than all these processed foods.”
I gritted my teeth and began folding the plastic bags, knowing what was coming next.
“You know, your accident was close to six years ago. You should be walking with a lot less pain by now. Maybe you need to go back to your physical therapist to go over some exercises. . . .”
“Thanks for your concern, George. I appreciate it. Really. But I can take care of myself.”
His perusal of the kitchen countertops with crumpled fast-food bags made me a liar but I chose to ignore him as I bent under the kitchen sink to throw in the pile of plastic bags.
“Have you thought much about what you’re going to do now?”
I rose slowly, looking out the window over the sink into the bare garden, its beds as abandoned and neglected as a childhood dream. His grandfather had asked the same thing and I think I hated them both a little bit for it. For so long I’d existed with a wall between my present and my future and I had neither the will nor the strength to tear it down. It was so much easier to simply be.
