The Sky is Everywhere(51)
Author: Jandy Nelson

“He hates me,” I tell her.

“No,” she says warmly. “If ever there was a boy in love, sweet pea, it’s Joe Fontaine.”

Gram made me go to the doctor
to see if there was something wrong
with my heart.
After a bunch of tests, the doctor said:
Lennie, you lucked out.
I wanted to punch him in the face,
but instead I started to cry
in a drowning kind of way.
I couldn’t believe
I had a lucky heart
when what I wanted
was the same kind of heart
as Bailey.
I didn’t hear Gram come in,
or come up behind me,
just felt her arms slip around my shaking frame,
then the press of both her hands hard
against my chest, holding it all in,
holding me together.
Thank God, she whispered,
before the doctor or I could utter a word.
How could she have possibly known
that I’d gotten good news?

(Found on the back of an envelope on the trail to the forest bedroom)

When the tea is in the mugs, the window’s opened, and Gram and I have relaxed into the waning light, I say quietly, “I want to talk to you about something.”

“Anything, sweet pea.”

“I want to talk about Mom.”

She sighs, leans back in her chair. “I know.” She crosses her arms, holding both elbows, cradling herself. “I was up in the attic. You put the box back on a different shelf—”

“I didn’t read much … sorry.”

“No, I’m the one who’s sorry. I’ve wanted to talk to you about Paige these last few months, but…”

“I wouldn’t let you talk to me about anything.”

She nods slightly. Her face is about as serious as I’ve ever seen it. She says, “Bailey shouldn’t have died knowing so little about her mother.”

I drop my eyes. It’s true – I was wrong to think Bailey wouldn’t want to know everything that I do, whether it hurts or not. I rake my fingers around in the remains of Wuthering Heights, waiting for Gram to speak.

When she does, her voice is strained, tight. “I thought I was protecting you girls, but now I’m pretty sure I was just protecting myself.” I lift my gaze to meet hers. “It’s so hard for me to speak about her. I told myself the better you girls knew her, the more it would hurt.” She sweeps some of the book to herself. “I focused on the restlessness, so you girls would wouldn’t feel so abandoned, wouldn’t blame her, or worse, blame yourselves. I wanted you to admire her. That’s it.”

That’s it? Heat rushes up my body. Gram reaches her hand to mine. I slip it away from her.

I say, “You just made up a story so we wouldn’t feel abandoned…” I raise my eyes to hers, continue despite the pain in her face. “But we were abandoned, Gram, and we didn’t know why, don’t know anything about her except some crazy story.” I feel like scooping up a fistful of Wuthering Heights and hurling it at her. “Why not just tell us she’s crazy if she is? Why not tell the truth whatever it is? Wouldn’t that have been better?”

She grabs my wrist, harder than I think she intended. “But there’s not just one truth, Lennie, there never is. What I told you wasn’t some story I made up.” She’s trying to be calm, but I can tell she’s moments away from doubling in size. “Yes, it’s true that Paige wasn’t a stable girl. I mean, who in their proper tree leaves two little girls and doesn’t come back?” She lets go of my wrist now that she has my full attention. She looks wildly around the room as if the words she needs might be on the walls. After a moment, she says, “Your mother was an irresponsible tornado of a girl and I’m sure she’s an irresponsible tornado of a woman. But it’s also true that she’s not the first tornado to blast through this family, not the first one who’s disappeared like this either. Sylvie swung back into town in that beat-up yellow Cadillac after twenty years drifting around. Twenty years!” She bangs her fist on the table, hard, the piles of Wuthering Heights jump with the impact. “Yes, maybe some doctor could give it a name, a diagnosis, but what difference does it make what we call it, it still is what it is, we call it the restless gene, so what? It’s as true as anything else.”

She takes a sip of her tea, burns her tongue. “Ow,” she exclaims uncharacteristically, fanning her mouth.

“Big thinks you have it too,” I say. “The restless gene.” I’m rearranging words into new sentences on the table. I peek up at her, afraid by her silence that this admission might not have gone over very well.

Her brow’s furrowed. “He said that?” Gram’s joined me in mixing the words around on the table. I see she’s PUT under that benign sky next to so eternally secluded.

“He thinks you just bottle it up,” I say.

She’s stopped shuffling words. There’s something very un-Gram in her face, something darting and skittish. She won’t meet my eyes, and then I recognize what it is because I’ve become quite familiar with it myself recently – it’s shame.

“What, Gram?”

She’s pressing her lips together so tightly, they’ve gone white; it’s like she’s trying to seal them, to make sure no words come out.

“What?”

She gets up, walks over to the counter, cradles up against it, looks out the window at a passing kingdom of clouds. I watch her back and wait. “I’ve been hiding inside that story, Lennie, and I made you girls, and Big, for that matter, hide in it with me.”

“But you just said—”

“I know – it’s not that it isn’t true, but it’s also true that blaming things on destiny and genes is a helluva lot easier than blaming them on myself.”

“On yourself?”

She nods, doesn’t say anything else, just continues to stare out the window.

I feel a chill creep up my spine. “Gram?”

She’s turned away from me so I can’t see the expression on her face. I don’t know why, but I feel afraid of her, like she’s slipped into the skin of someone else. Even the way she’s holding her body is different, crumpled almost. When she finally speaks, her voice is too deep and calm. “I remember everything about that night…” she says, then pauses, and I think about running out of the room, away from this crumpled Gram who talks like she’s in a trance. “I remember how cold it was, unseasonably so, how the kitchen was full of lilacs – I’d filled all the vases earlier in the day because she was coming.” I can tell by Gram’s voice she’s smiling now and I relax a little. “She was wearing this long green dress, more like a giant scarf really, totally inappropriate, which was Paige – it’s like she had her own weather around her always.” I’ve never heard any of this about my mother, never heard about anything as real as a green dress, a kitchen full of flowers. But then Gram’s tone changes again. “She was so upset that night, pacing around the kitchen, no not pacing, billowing back and forth in that scarf. I remember thinking she’s like a trapped wind, a wild gale imprisoned in this kitchen with me, like if I opened a window she’d be gone.”