Liesel Schmidt - Life Without You

I felt my eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “ Walt bet on the race?” I squeaked.

“Not on this race, maybe,” Grandpa said, shaking his head as he spoke. “He and Harry have started betting on them, though; and last week those two fools lost their shirts in a bet they had going with two of the boys down at the church.”

“Say what?” I knew I sounded stupefied, but truth be told, I was. There was really no other word for it.

Especially knowing Walt. And Harry. The two brothers had been in my grandparents’ circle of friends for more than fifty years, so I had no memories of a summer passing without them in it. In fact, for as long as I could remember, I’d always called them Uncle Walt and Uncle Harry. I’d gone through much of my childhood thinking they must have been blood relatives.

Silly, perhaps, since the two men were light-skinned African-Americans, but with a family tree as odd as mine, you never knew exactly where one branch might lead. And Lord, if there weren’t things buried deep in family histories that no one ever talked about. They just were. And, as inconceivable as they might have actually been, some things were just glossed over.

Like mom’s cousin Jean, who was three months “premature.” ’Cause goodness knows, her mama walked down that aisle a virgin, pure as the driven snow. It didn’t matter that Jean weighed a healthy eight pounds when she was born. Nope. That cute little butterball of blondness was born three months early .

Also a subject never raised at the dinner table was the fact that Great Uncle Billy was looking mighty chipper in the months before he died. No one ever talked about that one, no ma’am. His buxom twenty-five-year-old home healthcare worker wasn’t responsible for that in any way . It didn’t matter that no one had ever heard of the company she worked for, and that Uncle Billy’s buddies had knocked on his door one day with her in tow—looking mighty professional in thigh-high hooker boots and a skintight nurse’s uniform. The minute the bubble she’d just blown into her bright pink Bubble Yum bubblegum popped and Billy could see the face that went along with the bosoms, she was hired. She was his angel from heaven, bless her heart. She ministered to him in his last days and eased his passing.

Uh-huh.

And now, she was mourning his loss just like the rest of us. Only she was doing it from somewhere on a beach in St. Thomas.

But I digress.

“Since when do Harry and Walt bet on races? Or anything?” I demanded.

Grandpa shook his head, obviously aggrieved. “Since Evelyn died and took Walt’s sense with her. Now he and Harry are running around acting like idiots. Doing things neither one of ’em would’ve done when she was alive. Jackasses,” he spat.

“Grandpa!”

He shot me a look. “What? It’s true.”

“Still.” I paused, studying the ceiling. “Is there something to worry about with those two?” I asked quietly.

I saw him shaking his head out of the corner of my eye. “Worry? No. They’ll come to their senses after they lose enough times.”

“Let’s hope so.”

“She’s only been gone for a few months,” Grandpa said. “They’ll come to their senses,” he said again, a little more quietly this time.

“Don’t we all,” I whispered, not taking my eyes from the ceiling. “Don’t we all.”

I woke up drooling thirty minutes later, startled by a warm hand on my cheek. Grandpa’s hand, gnarled with age and peppered with liver spots. A Band-Aid was wrapped around the knuckle of his left index finger, covering a cut he’d gotten earlier in the week while he was replacing some rotting wood on the deck outside. The man was never idle, never really still. Even when he was outwardly still, there was the underlying hum of some pent-up energy just waiting to be released. It was an inherent part of him, and I wouldn’t have recognized him without it. No one would have.

I smiled sleepily at him. “Oops. I guess I was drooling, huh?” I sat up, uncurling my legs from where they’d been tucked up under me in the recliner. My eyebrows knotted together. “Please tell me I wasn’t snoring. Or talking in my sleep. I was, wasn’t I? I do that sometimes, I’m sorry,” I babbled.

“No, no. No snoring.” He smiled. “Or talking. Don’t worry.” He stopped and looked up at the clock on the mantel. The room had gotten darker without the glow of the TV, which now sat black and hulking from its corner perch on the entertainment center. “It’s just late, and I think we both might be ready for bed now, huh?”

I nodded, stretching as I rose from the chair.

“Bed. Good idea,” I agreed. “Very good idea. Good night, Grandpa.” I leaned forward on my toes to kiss him on the lips.

“Good night, Dellie,” he said, returning my kiss. He pulled me in for a hug, wrapping his warm, strong arms around me. It felt good, safe—familiar. And I breathed in the scent of him—an indefinable mix of soap from his shower earlier that evening and Grandpa .

“I love you,” I mumbled into his neck.

“I love you, too, Dellie. And I’m glad you’re here.”

I moved my head from the crook between his neck and shoulder to look into his eyes as they glittered in the darkened room. “Me, too,” I said on a whisper. A smile wavered across my lips, unsettled by feelings of fear that were encroaching, but I held on. “Very glad.”

And I was. Glad to be there. Glad to be looking into the eyes of my grandfather, hoping that he would still be there to smile back at me for many years to come.

Chapter Seven

It was, in some ways, I supposed, my grandfather’s way of laying claim to a long and bright future ahead, this newly acquired truck in a bold shade of candy-apple red. He had traded in his own truck, an earlier iteration of this one, without all the bells and whistles and info-tech gadgetry that came with the newer models. Ever the die-hard Dodge Ram man, Grandpa had been unwavering in his decision with what make and model he wanted to bring home, no doubt putting the salesmen on the floor at Tidewater Dodge through their paces to earn every single solitary cent of their commission.

What was missing now—leaving a noticeable hole in the old, detached garage—was a minivan. It wasn’t out on errands, traversing some stretch of Hampton between Food Lion or Walmart or Costco. It wasn’t on its way to church.

Or maybe it was.

Wherever it was headed, though, it was never coming back to reclaim its space within the walls of this aluminum-sided garage, such a familiar sight in its dated shade of what was once called avocado green during a heyday of decades long gone by. Someone new had claimed the minivan, moving the mirrors and shifting the seat, erasing her preset buttons on the radio. No key rings dangled a declaration of Mom’s Taxi from its ignition. No box of tissues claimed the space between the front seats and the console.

Instead, there was nothing but emptiness beside this shiny new specimen of steel. Nothing but emptiness and an old tube sock, stuffed and dangling on a string from the ceiling in anticipation of meeting the slight curve of a windshield, guiding it to a safe stop.

I stared at the tube sock, then felt my gaze inextricably drawn to the scarred and stained concrete floor. Ghosts of puddles, faded reminders of the inner workings of so many minivans over so many decades.

It was like the vehicular version of the empty pillow on the empty side of the bed. Stark and lonely. Almost rude in its announcement that something—someone—was missing.

“How do you like my truck?” Grandpa asked, the suddenness of his voice almost jarring.

I blinked, forcing my brain back to the present, to the upcoming outing with my grandfather. I wasn’t going to wallow here, in this loss. Grammie would have stood for none of it.