Sorry, I said.
Her face so mean and old. She finally let go, went back to her garbage bags.
At the kitchen phone, I dialed Shalini, then went as far as the cord would stretch away from Steve and my mother.
I cried, Shalini said. You made me cry, when I heard you weren’t coming.
Oh, I said, and I felt this overwhelming sadness at the thought of her crying. It made my heart hurt. I’m sorry, I said. My mother did that. We’re moving to my grandpa’s house. You have to come there tomorrow and spend the night. He’ll take us to school on Monday. I have to be quick. The address is 1621 24th Avenue, a small blue house, old and really beautiful. I have a big bed. But I have to go now. My mother can’t know I’m calling.
Wait, Shalini said.
Sorry, I said. Just come tomorrow as soon as you can.
~ ~ ~
My suitcase and backpack, one box from the kitchen, and my mother’s garbage bags of clothing. That was it. All that we owned, except my mother’s car. We’d sell the old TV and cheap furniture.
We didn’t need three cars for the move. Everything fit in our own backseat and trunk. But we followed my grandfather, and Steve followed behind us, up Alaskan Way and then angling over on East Madison, an expressway. We turned off on East Olive. His house was only a block or two away from auto stores and old high-rise apartments and the expressway, just around the corner from a YMCA, an area not much better than what we had left, but you’d never know that once you were on his street. It was tucked away just enough, and there were nice houses close to us, and all the trees that shielded us from the neighbors. A small paradise. And no planes thundering overhead at takeoff.
We parked in the driveway behind my grandfather, but my mother didn’t turn off the engine. I don’t know if I can do this, she said. I’m trying it for you, Caitlin. I’m really trying here. I know you’ve always wanted a bigger family.
Thank you, I said. I had more to say, of course, about her getting a house and my grandfather giving up everything and agreeing to everything, but I didn’t dare.
And we didn’t have it so bad, she said. I’m sorry you didn’t get a flute. But you had everything you needed. It’ll be nice to have more, but you had everything you needed.
My grandfather walked past, not daring to look at us. He went up the steps and opened the front door.
Okay, my mother said, turning off the engine. Let’s see what happens.
The day cold, the sky in close, a dull gray-white, but inside the house was everything warm.
Welcome to your new home, my grandfather said and winked at me. It was just like when Charlie inherits the chocolate factory and Willie Wonka is finally friendly after being so mean, even though my grandfather was never mean. But it was that same feeling of suddenly inheriting the entire world and having endless possibility, all limits and poverty and fear gone.
I went to my room and closed the door, just so it could be mine for a moment, only mine. Even the light was warm. A small chandelier above and a standing lamp in one corner, by the lounge. I reclined on the lounge like a Hollywood star and looked at my enormous bed and the dark beams above. This is me, I said softly. This is my life now. I was trying it on, a new life the same as a new outfit, something that changes you and you can’t ever see yourself the same way again afterward. I knew this would be a moment I’d remember forever, and so I still see now exactly what the trees and sky looked like outside the windows, muted and fading and calm, without wind, and the white windowsills, a perfect milky shining white, new, and the walls not blue but papered tan in an endless pattern that shifted in light, a pattern made by texture only, silky-smooth swirls in what otherwise was a matted surface. Over the years, I would see anything and everything in that wallpaper, the walls themselves a kind of mirror, and on this first day I knew it would be that way. I knew I could fall into the walls endlessly, and the beams above, and the soft bed and comforter, and this lounge, and I knew that the wood floor, also, by being so old and having patterns of dark knots and old nail holes would shift and never be the same floor twice. A home rather than a box, and infinite what tan and cream and brown could be, as infinite as anything Charlie or any prince or princess ever knew. And someday I know I will live there again, in that same room, when my mother is gone. I want to finish there. That will be the room to take me to the end, the home given by my grandfather. He’s gone now, but he left us something, a place to remember him. Every surface here finished by his own hands, dreaming of us.
But that day I was just settling in with my grandfather and thought he would live forever. I came out of my room and he was standing there smiling at me, as happy as I was about my new home.
Thank you, Grandpa, I said, and he didn’t say anything but just hugged me.
My mother and Steve were putting things away in her room. My grandfather and I went to sit on the couches by the front window to wait.
Do I have any other family? I asked. Cousins or aunts or uncles?
I’m sorry, Caitlin. Your grandmother did have a sister, but I lost touch with her decades ago, and I don’t know whether she ever married or had children. I don’t think so. And I didn’t have any brothers or sisters. We just both came from small families. When we moved here, we were on our own.
Where was she from? I asked. I loved that he would talk with me and tell me anything. My mother was never like that.
Louisiana, same as me. Seven years younger. We had no money, and only occasional jobs, and we wanted to get away. We wanted new lives. I was thirty-six and she was twenty-nine. This was the end of 1958, beginning of 1959. We didn’t know how cold it would be here. We wanted somewhere no one would know us, but she got pregnant early on, so we were struggling. The freedom never really happened.
I tried to listen to everything carefully, but I don’t remember all that he said. Lives so far in the past and removed, and this grandmother I always imagined as old but who had never been old.
Do you have photos of her? I asked.
Sorry, Caitlin, he said. I ran away and didn’t keep anything. I tried to forget my whole life and start a new one, and it wasn’t my first time doing that, either.
When was the first time?
When I left for the war. And the second time was when I came back. And then moving here to Seattle with your grandmother, that was my third time running away. And then leaving her was the fourth, and then coming back here from Louisiana was the fifth. All my life I’ve been running, but I promise you this is it. I’m staying this time, until the end, no matter what happens. You can count on that. I won’t run away from you, ever. I know I did that day in the aquarium, but it won’t happen again.
I was leaned in against him and he had his arm around me, so comfortable. I remembered the policewoman and all her questions, and I realized my mother wouldn’t like seeing this either, so I straightened up and then stood as if I wanted to look out the window. I went up close to the glass and looked at the long front yard covered in snow. What war? I asked.
The big one, World War II.
You’re that old? I turned and looked at him, and I just couldn’t believe it. World War II is in the oldest movies, I said.