Later, at the party, someone offered me an Oxy. I think it was a 10, but I could be wrong. It might have been a 20, or even a 40. And I might have gotten one from someone else later, though it could have been something else entirely. That part’s very fuzzy.
The thing is, I don’t remember leaving the party or when I got home. Sometime in the early morning, my roommate, Vinnie, found me on the living room floor barely breathing. Or so he claims. Seriously, I love Vinnie to death, but he’s not the most truthful person in the world.
Anyway, 911 was called, and when my mother showed up at the hospital I was 5150’d (which, if you ask me, is a form of legal kidnapping). Three days later I had to decide between my grandmother or rehab. I chose my grandmother.
Possibly the wrong choice.
“Oh my God, what was that?” I nearly screamed, as we passed by some roadkill smushed in the center of the road. “Was that somebody’s cat?”
“Don’t be… stupid. It was a possum.”
“Ah, well, that’s better,” I said. I was getting used to constantly seeing deer and various other forest creatures dead by the side of the road. They were apparently not very bright when it came to crossing the street. But the idea of someone’s cat—
“Possums aren’t as gross as you think. They eat ticks. Bev told me.”
“Bev would know,” I said. She was my sometime boss at the Wyandot Conservancy. She tended to know a lot about the local flora and fauna. I guess I was supposed to feel bad about the dead possum, but I couldn’t muster the emotion.
“Cats are bad for the, uh, world. Nature.”
“Because they don’t eat ticks?”
“I don’t remember. I just remember Bev telling me… they’re bad. Barn cats. Not inside cats.”
Anyway, my grandmother’s farm was on West Shore Road right outside Masons Bay, a small—and I do mean small—town right below Michigan’s pinky, on the knuckle.
I say farm, but it really wasn’t anymore. Not like it was. There were still two cherry orchards on either side of the long driveway, which she leased to her neighbor Jasper Kaine, who had a large orchard of his own, and with whom she split the profits. The rest of the property, though, was given over to nothing more than a few vegetable gardens that would remain fallow that year. She’d dropped hints about my doing the spring planting, but I chose not to hear them.
“Oh look, my lilacs,” Nana Cole said, meaning the three large pinkish blooming bushes by the house. Then she seemed to fold a bit. “I missed the tulips.”
There had been daffodils and then tulips while she was in the hospital and rehab. I suppose I could have been a better grandson and brought her some. Unfortunately, it hadn’t occurred to me. I suppose it should have.
“How do the cherries look this year?” she asked me.
“I dunno.”
“You didn’t go out to the orchard to look?”
“No. And I wouldn’t know what to look for if I did.”
“For one thing, whether there are a lot of them.”
Honestly, I didn’t know what would constitute a lot, so I didn’t say anything as we drove down the driveway to the two-story, white clapboard house with its large, stone porch—made of what I’d learned was called river rock. Many of the older homes in Masons Bay used these rocks, which had been tumbled in nearby rivers until they were smooth and round.
Reaching Nana Cole’s house, there were four vehicles sitting there in the driveway. As I parked her Escalade, I noted that the cars belonged to Bev, Jan, Dorothy and Barbara. All friends of my nana’s. As soon as we parked, Reilly, her six-year-old yellow lab mix, came running.
“Why are they standing outside?” Nana Cole asked. “Why haven’t they gone inside?”
Except they couldn’t have because I’d taken to locking the doors. I said so and got a very dark look for my trouble.
“Why on earth… would you lock the door?”
“Because I nearly got killed just a few feet away.”
“That’s not going to happen twice,” she said, somewhat exasperated.
Rolling my eyes, I said, “I’ll grab your walker out of the back.”
I jumped out of the SUV and ran around to the rear. Reilly traced my every step, jumping up on me twice.
