Part 5 (1/2)

To make a bad night worse, I opened my blinds to a blanket of fresh snow.

On a clear day, from my high-rise windows, I could see two hundred miles of Colorado's majestic Rocky Mountains a” from Colorado Springs' Pike's Peak to Boulder's Flatirons. That gray day, however, was an exception. I could barely see the highway, which was only a mile away. Everywhere I looked, the white film covered the cars and streets and buildings below me. Undaunted, I dressed warmly and left to pick up the kids, hoping their youthful energy would erase some of the terror of the night before.

I wasn't disappointed. As soon as I got to their house, Zeb and Jessica piled on me, first hugging me, then wrestling with me. By committee, we decided to go to Funworld Sports Center, saving the zoo for a drier, warmer day.

In the car, Jessica loudly told me she missed me. That it had been eighteen-hundred days since she'd last seen me. I smiled and said I missed her, too. Zeb, in his infinite six-year-old wisdom corrected his four-year-old sister and told her it had only been three hundred days. Surprisingly, he wasn't far off in his calculations.

Jessica, unimpressed by Zeb's correction, squirmed in the back seat and occupied her time by waving at cars. No one in the cars waved back, but that didn't affect her enthusiasm.

In Funworld's parking lot, as I was lifting Jessica out of the back seat, she quietly said to me, ”I prayed you would come.”

”And I did,” was all I could say as I set her on the ground and quickly turned so she wouldn't see my tears. Holding hands, we ran through the parking lot, trying without success to avoid puddles of slush.

Once inside, we played and played. We swam. We drove b.u.mper cars. We bounced around in a room full of b.a.l.l.s. We ate corn dogs and pizza and nachos and french fries. We drank lemonade and Dr. Pepper and milkshakes.

Over lunch, Jessica told me she had two married cats. She knew they were married because one of the cats just had kittens. I marveled at her right-wing, moral logic. Zeb told me his dog Moe had eaten one of his goldfish. After the fish had jumped out of the bowl and hit the floor, he explained with zeal. We laughed and told more stories.

That evening, after I'd taken them back to their home, I cried and cried. Partly, I cried for how much I missed them.

Mostly, I cried for how much I missed myself.

The next day, which was Sunday, Mich.e.l.le called to invite me to brunch with her and Destiny. They were going to try a quaint restaurant in Park Hill. I declined. I wanted to see them, but not together, not that day. Maybe not until I was done with Destiny's case, I told her.

She accepted that without argument, probably because Destiny's naked body was lying next to her, I thought wryly. As we were hanging up, she told me she was going to see a psychic to ask her about Destiny's childhood. I heard a giggle in the background. Great. I told her I'd be anxious to hear what the psychic had to say. Mich.e.l.le coyly suggested she might not share her information with me, or with Destiny either. Another giggle.

Mich.e.l.le and I set up dinner plans for Friday night, just the two of us, and I put down the phone wondering how Mich.e.l.le had ever come to be my friend.

Feeling lonely and faced with an entire empty day ahead of me, I decided to call Grandma Ashe, my father's mother. She was home, as she almost always was, and eagerly accepted when I invited myself over to her house for dinner and cards.

I spent most of that cold, dreary day snacking, napping, reading and watching TV. By late afternoon, I was feeling queasy from having lain around all day.

I summoned enough energy to put on my shorts and head to the racquetball room in the bas.e.m.e.nt of my apartment building.

In an empty court, I volleyed for an hour before I became bored.

I trudged back up to my apartment, took a quick shower, and drove the six blocks to my grandma's house. I would have walked, but there was an ominous chill in the air that night, a bite from which my car only slightly protected me.

Promptly at 6 p.m. (right after Lawrence Welk), we sat down to one of her typical dinners, high in starch and low in imagination: roast beef, noodles, mashed potatoes, rolls. I happily ate everything on my plate and pleased her by taking seconds. After dinner, we cleared the dishes into the sink and retired to the living room.

My grandma had to go to the bathroom, so I got out the card table. Setting it up reminded me of the first time she let me play cards with her lady friends. One of the eight women in her Canasta Club had been sick and, at the age of nine, I was her subst.i.tute. I smiled as I remembered how my brash style of play had offended everyone, except my grandma.

Grandma and I were partners and we won all afternoon. Having played cards with me many times before, Grandma wasn't surprised by my reckless strategy, but it sure raised a few other whitish-blue eyebrows. I never played illegally. I simply played like the c.o.c.ky kid I was. Hand after hand, I went out, ending the game with the ladies holding fists full of cards and mouths full of air. On the rare occasions when I had a bad hand (and sometimes even when I didn't), I'd loudly announce ”This isn't a hand, it's a foot!” and Grandma and I would both laugh as if it were the funniest thing we'd ever heard. Despite her friends' scrutiny, my grandmother loved me more than ever that afternoon twenty years ago.

When Grandma emerged from the bathroom, we got down to some serious playing, chatting amiably between discards.

At one point, as I watched her lay down her cards, I thought about all the happy hours I'd spent at her house: baking cookies and eating them fresh from the oven, taking walks in Was.h.i.+ngton Park, sitting on her glider in the warm summer evenings. My grandma's favorite story, which she told so often I could almost remember it happening, was about how I was the only grandchild she ever had to spank. When I was three years old, she gave me a swat, so soft it couldn't have hurt a flea. I defiantly told her ”Didn't hurt!” My gentle grandmother said, ”I didn't mean for it to hurt, Kristin,” and pulled me into her arms. Although she was eighty-six and in near perfect health, I worried about the day I would lose her.

”Do you ever think about dying, Grandma?”

She answered my serious question without missing a beat.

”Only when the mortuary calls,” she said matter-of-factly as she laid down a card I wanted.

”They call you?”

”Once a month.”

”You're kidding!”

”I'm not. Honey, do you want that ace or not?” she asked. I'd been so shocked by the thought of a mortuary teleprospecting my grandma that I'd forgotten to play.

”Er, yes. I'm going to pick up the pile. What do you tell them?”

”I tell them I'll get back to them when I'm ready.”

I tried not to laugh because I thought she was serious.

”Won't it be a little late then?” I asked reasonably.

”Oh, well,” she said, laughing mischievously. Once again, she'd fooled me.

We played on, though I'd lost my concentration.

”I do think about what will happen to me,” she said.

”When you die?”

”No, if I get sick.”

”You don't worry about dying?”

”Not any more.”

”You just worry about being alive?”

”Every night, I pray that when I leave this house, it will be feet first.”

”Huh,” was all I could say, knowing what she meant, but unable to bear the picture of my grandma on a stretcher.

”Everyone I know is dead. Most of my friends are dead or dying. Your grandfather's been dead for forty years. I'm glad I never remarried. I would have had to bury two more.”

”You outlived both the men you considered marrying?”

”I did.”