Wendy Hornsby - The Color of Light

“I forgot. Gracie told me something about that.”

I knelt down to snip herbs. “How are your beautiful granddaughters?”

“Growing fast,” he said, smiling proudly as he tied the herbs into bundles with garden twine.

“Are they dancing in the Obon Festival this weekend?”

“Oh, sure. To make the old grandpa happy, my son takes them to the Japanese Cultural Center for classes.” He looked up at me. “You know, the kids got baptized Episcopalian by their mother. So, I ask my son, when you’re in that big fancy church, which god does a good Buddhist boy like you pray to? You know what he says?”

“I can’t imagine.”

“He says, Pop, you were a married man. You know damn well it’s the one my wife tells me to.” He tapped his forehead and winked at me. “Smart boy, that one.”

The garden was abundant. It didn’t take long before my bag and his box were filled: young green beans and peas, three varieties of lettuce, peppers, cucumbers and squash, with fat red tomatoes safely nested on top with the herbs.

As I saw him out the gate, he said, “I still keep my greenhouse down south of San Jose. You come see me sometimes, okay? Bring your mom.”

“I will,” I said.

He aimed a finger at me. “You better.”

I held the gate for him.

His parting words were “Lock up after me.”

After I said good-bye to Mr. Sato, I called Gracie Nussbaum to see if she was home and wouldn’t mind me dropping by. Like Mom, Gracie had a full calendar, so it was rare to find her at home during the day. But I was in luck, she was in and yes, she would love a visit.

I washed my hands, found a case for my laptop, gathered up the bag of herbs and vegetables, and set out for Gracie’s house three streets over.

Gracie was waiting for me in the big wood-slat swing on her front porch. On a little iron table beside her there were a pitcher of lemonade and a plate of rugelach.

“What is all that you’re carrying?” she asked as she rose to meet me.

“I was in the garden with Mr. Sato,” I said, opening the bag to show her.

“Lovely.” Gracie kissed my cheek. She let me carry the bag up the steps and said I should just set it beside the front door, she’d put it away later.

“Taking a break from house clearing?” she asked, handing me a glass of lemonade after I was settled on the swing.

“Yes, but I shouldn’t,” I said, steadying the swing so she could sit down beside me. “I haven’t accomplished much today, one distraction after another.”

“You know, dear, I always liked that Kevin Halloran.” She passed me the plate of rugelach. “Ben did, too.”

“Exactly what made you think of Kevin just now?”

“Didn’t he drop by to see you?”

“Yes, but how did you know?”

“I ran into Karen Loper at Beto’s deli. She told me she saw Kevin on your doorstep this morning. Didn’t he marry one of the Riley girls?”

“He did. Lacy.”

Gracie chuckled softly. “So, our boy has had his hands full, then.”

“Seems he has,” I said, biting into a raspberry-jam-filled rugelach and getting flaky crumbs all over my lap. “But Kevin can be a handful, too.”

“I forget, do they have children?”

“Two. A boy in college and a daughter in high school.”

“Hmm.” She nodded, thinking that through. Gracie is a font of information about everyone in town, but she really is not a big gossip. There is never anything malicious in what she says. I think that Gracie is just sincerely interested in people and doesn’t mind sharing benign information with others who might also be interested. People seem to be comfortable telling her the most amazing, sometimes excruciatingly personal things about themselves. Gracie sorts it, keeps confidences to herself but shares various comings and goings, births and deaths with mutual acquaintances.

“Gracie,” I said. “Did you know that Beto asked Kevin to look into his mother’s murder?”

“No.” Her eyes grew wide and owlish behind her thick lenses. “Did he?”

“He did.”

“Do you think that’s wise?”

“Maybe not. But I understand why Beto would ask.”

“I suppose.” She seemed doubtful.

“Do you remember Larry Nordquist?” I asked.

She chuckled. “He’s the boy you made cry.”

“Is that all you remember about him?”

“I remember he had a very troubled home life.” She leaned close as if to share a confidence. “Problem children sometimes are the products of problem parents, you know.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

“You ask, because?”

“The brouhaha that ended with Larry in tears began when he said something crude to Beto about his mom.”

“I can’t imagine anyone having anything crude to say about that lovely woman.”

“At the time, I really didn’t know what it meant. But Beto understood well enough to take a swing at Larry. God, Gracie, you should have seen it. Beto connected with a roundhouse punch right to the kisser. Then he ran like hell. Our Beto was little but, God, he was fast. Larry was mortified, so he challenged Beto to a real fight, Beto’s gang against Larry’s gang.”

“Beto had a gang?” The notion seemed to amuse her.

“Sure. All of the fifth graders on our street.”

“As I recall, Beto was the only boy your age on your street.”

“Yep. It was a dozen girls and Beto against Larry and five or six middle-school bullies. In the end, it didn’t amount to much. I took down Larry with a few cruel words and it was over.”

“Sticks and stones,” she said. “It began and ended with hurtful words.”

“All day I’ve been bothered by what Larry said that started it all.”

She put her hand on my knee and smiled sweetly. “So my darling Maggie has come over to ask her old Auntie Gracie a bouquet of questions about Larry Nordquist?”

“Not about Larry, but yes, lots of questions.” I stuffed the end of the rugelach into my mouth, chewed fast and washed it down with lemonade.

“Gracie, I really know nothing about Mrs. B except that she was very sweet to all of us, very tolerant of the noise and chaos when we were around. But who was she?”

“How do you mean, dear?”

“For one thing, how did she end up with Big Bart Bartolini?” I said. “When we were kids, Mr. and Mrs. B were just Beto’s parents. But when I think about it now, they were an odd couple. She was beautiful, refined, gracious, young. And Bart? None of the above. How did they ever get together?”

“Your mother is probably the best source for that information. She and Tina were quite close, you know,” she said. “They worked together with Father John at your church, helping out Vietnamese refugees after the war over there ended.”

“I’ll talk to Mom later. But I wondered what you might know.”

“Not very much, except that Tina and Bart met in Vietnam. He was a cook in the navy and her father was a food broker of some kind, and that’s how they connected. For all of the differences between them, I can say that there was abundant love in the Bartolini household.”

“Ah yes, love.”

“You doubt it?”

“No,” I said. “I saw it for myself. But when you said that, you reminded me what I said that made Larry cry.”

“What did you say?”

“I told Larry that if he hurt Beto, no one would love Beto any less. But everyone would hate Larry more than they already did. I asked him if that’s what he wanted.”

“Oh, sweetie.”

“I was ten, Gracie.”

“Dear girl.” She cupped my chin in her cool hand and turned my face toward her. “That poor boy went into a battle of the wits unarmed, didn’t he?”

“I just didn’t want to get socked by some pimply-faced boy, okay?”