The Sky is Everywhere(50)
Author: Jandy Nelson

I look at the sickly Lennie houseplant on the counter and know that it’s not me anymore. It’s who I used to be, before, and that’s why it’s dying. That me is gone.

“I don’t know who I am,” I say, sitting down. “I can’t be who I was, not without her, and who I’m becoming is a total screw-up.”

Gram doesn’t deny it. She’s still mad, not twelve feet of mad, but plenty mad.

“We could go out to lunch in the city next week, spend the whole day together,” I add, feeling puny, trying to make up for months of ignoring her with a lunch.

She nods, but that is not what’s on her mind. “Just so you know, I don’t know who I am without her either.”

“Really?”

She shakes her head. “Nope. Every day, after you and Big leave, all I do is stand in front of a blank canvas thinking how much I despise the color green, how every single shade of it disgusts me or disappoints me or breaks my heart.” Sadness fills me. I imagine all the green willowy women sliding out of their canvases and slinking their way out the front door.

“I get it,” I say quietly.

Gram closes her eyes. Her hands are folded one on top of the other on the table. I reach out and put my hand over hers and she quickly sandwiches it.

“It’s horrible,” she whispers.

“It is,” I say.

The early-afternoon light drains out the windows, zebra-ing the room with long dark shadows. Gram looks old and tired and it makes me feel desolate. Bailey, Uncle Big and I have been her whole life, except for a few generations of flowers and a lot of green paintings.

“You know what else I hate?” she says. “I hate that everyone keeps telling me that I carry Bailey in my heart. I want to holler at them: I don’t want her there. I want her in the kitchen with Lennie and me. I want her at the river with Toby and their baby. I want her to be Juliet and Lady Macbeth, you stupid, stupid people. Bailey doesn’t want to be trapped in my heart or anyone else’s.” Gram pounds her fist on the table. I squeeze it with my hands and nod yes, and feel yes, a giant, pulsing, angry yes that passes from her to me. I look down at our hands and catch sight of Wuthering Heights lying there silent and helpless and ornery as ever. I think about all the wasted lives, all the wasted love crammed inside it.

“Gram, do it.”

“What? Do what?” she asks.

I pick up the book and the shears, hold them out to her. “Just do it, chop it to bits. Here.” I slip my fingers and thumb into the handle of the garden shears just like I did this morning, but this time I feel no fear, just that wild, pulsing, pissed off yes coursing through me as I take a cut of a book that I’ve underlined and annotated, a book that is creased and soiled with years of me, years of river water, and summer sun, and sand from the beach, and sweat from my palms, a book bent to the curves of my waking and sleeping body. I take another cut, slicing through chunks of paper at a time, through all the tiny words, cutting the passionate, hopeless story to pieces, slashing their lives, their impossible love, the whole mess and tragedy of it. I’m attacking it now, enjoying the swish of the blades, the metal scrape after each delicious cut. I cut into Heathcliff, poor, heartsick, embittered Heathcliff and stupid Cathy for her bad choices and unforgivable compromises. And while I’m at it, I take a swipe at Joe’s jealousy and anger and judgment, at his dickhead-him inability to forgive. I hack away at his ridiculous all-or-nothing-horn-player bullshit, and then I lay into my own duplicity and deceptiveness and confusion and hurt and bad judgment and overwhelming, never-ending grief. I cut and cut and cut at everything I can think of that is keeping Joe and me from having this great big beautiful love while we can.

Gram is wide-eyed, mouth agape. But then I see a faint smile find her lips. She says, “Here, let me have a go.” She takes the shears and starts cutting, tentatively at first, but then she gets carried away just as I had, and starts hacking at handfuls and handfuls of pages until words fly all around us like confetti.

Gram’s laughing. “Well, that was unexpected.” We are both out of breath, spent, and smiling giddily.

“I am related to you, aren’t I?” I say.

“Oh, Lennie, I have missed you.” She pulls me into her lap like I’m five years old. I think I’m forgiven.

“Sorry I hollered, sweet pea,” she says, hugging me into her warmth.

I squeeze her back. “Should I make us some tea?” I ask.

“You better, we have lots of catching up to do. But first things first, you destroyed my whole garden, I have to know if it worked.”

I hear again: I can’t be with someone who could do that to her sister, and my heart squeezes so tight in my chest, I can barely breathe. “Not a chance. It’s over.”

Gram says quietly, “I saw what happened that night.” I tense up even more, slide out of her lap and go over to fill the tea kettle. I suspected Gram saw Toby and me kiss, but the reality of her witnessing it sends shame shifting around within me. I can’t look at her. “Lennie?” Her voice isn’t incriminating. I relax a little. “Listen to me.”

I turn around slowly and face her.

She waves her hand around her head like she’s shooing a fly. “I won’t say it didn’t render me speechless for a minute or two.” She smiles. “But crazy things like that happen when people are this shocked and grief-stricken. I’m surprised we’re all still standing.”

I can’t believe how readily Gram is pushing this aside, absolving me. I want to fall to her feet in gratitude. She definitely did not confer with Joe on the matter, but it makes his words sting less, and it gives me the courage to ask, “Do you think she’d ever forgive me?”

“Oh, sweet pea, trust me on this one, she already has.” Gram wags her finger at me. “Now, Joe is another story. He’ll need some time…”

“Like thirty years,” I say.

“Woohoo – poor boy, that was an eyeful, Lennie Walker.” Gram looks at me mischievously. She has snapped back into her sassy self. “Yes, Len, when you and Joe Fontaine are forty-seven—” She laughs. “We’ll plan a beautiful, beautiful wedding—”

She stops mid-sentence because she must notice my face. I don’t want to kill her cheer, so I’m using every muscle in it to hide my heartbreak, but I’ve lost the battle.

“Lennie.” She comes over to me.