Page 31 of Skeletons in the Closet

That was my life growing up. Picture-perfect from the outside. A nightmare on the inside.

My childhood home was a two-story split-level, beige brick and white siding. The same as every other house on the block save the color. The basement had been renovated into an apartment four years earlier after Nana had been diagnosed with dementia. Grandpa Boone was long dead and buried, or he would have undoubtedly had an opinion.

Ihad an opinion on the matter, but since I couldn’t afford my own apartment and lived at the office, I certainly couldn’t afford a nice nursing home for Nana.

I let myself in the side door and took the stairs down as quietly as I could. The TV was on in the upstairs living room, which meant Mom was home. She watched soaps all day and catered to my father all night. Mom didn’t drive or work—she’d never been allowed. If she knew I was around, she would guilt me into visiting. It sounded awful, but she was a depleter of spoons, and I didn’t have enough to begin with on a good day. My therapist long ago suggested I stop handing them out willy-nilly. It was okay to hoard them. It was okay to say no.

At the bottom of the stairs, I rapped a knuckle on the door leading into Nana’s apartment before letting myself in. I didn’t want to startle Birdie. I’d done that before. The aging nurse was jumpy, and when she had a scare, she tended to revert to her native language to reprimand me. My Spanish was nonexistent, but I hated being called names in any language, so I avoided startling the poor woman.

Nana’s apartment was warm and smelled of rich, savory spices, artificial lilacs—from the plug-in air freshener she favored—and wilted old lady. I wasn’t sure how else to describe the scent, but it was distinctive.

Something was cooking, and my stomach grumbled. “Hello?”

“D-ham?” Roberta Guerra, Birdie for short, poked her head around the corner and smiled. She always added an odd emphasis to my name using an unsuspectingH. I’d corrected herat first, but she couldn’t seem to remember from week to week, so I let it go.

“Hey, Birdie Bird. How’s Nana?”

Birdie waved a cooking spoon in the air. “She needs help with the knitting.” She mimed knitting in case I wasn’t following. “You help. I’m cooking roast tonight. Enough for you too. You are staying.” Not a question.

Birdie had come to Canada in her late twenties with a husband whom she soon divorced. She had learned enough English to get by, trained to be a nurse, and barreled headstrong through life as a single mom, raising five kids while working full-time. Nothing could stop her. After Nana, she was one of my favorite people.

Birdie didn’t wait for me to agree or disagree about dinner. She vanished back into the kitchen. The banging and clanging of pots and pans soon filled the air.

I found Nana in the cozy living room, sitting in her rocker by the space heater I’d bought her, making a mess of her yarn as she struggled to fix whatever had gone wrong with her knitting. Nana was ninety-one, and her vision was going along with her mind, so she couldn’t often see her mistakes until it was too late.

Her hearing, however, was impeccable, and when I entered—despite not making a sound—her rheumy-eyed gaze moved from her knitting to me. Her wrinkly face broke into a bright smile. “Boone! You made it home. How was your day?”

“It’s Diem, Nana.” The doctor had advised me not to correct her when she thought I was her husband, but it didn’t feel right to pretend I was someone I wasn’t. I was Grandpa Boone’s spitting image, and since taking up private investigation, I was also in a similar line of work. It made sense she got confused.

I sat on the edge of the ottoman and adjusted the afghan over Nana’s legs. She’d made it decades ago, long before she struggled to keep her stitches straight. It didn’t do for Nana toget cold. At her age, it took forever to warm her back up. It was why the apartment was stifling all the time.

“Why’d you go and cut your hair off?” Nana reached out and ran her fingers over my scalp. “Looks better longer, Boone. Hides the nasty scars. No one needs to see those.”

My grandpa had had his own collection of scars, but his were won from fighting in battles during World War II. Mine were from being taken prisoner by a single enemy. Boone hid his scars under a mop of brown hair so he could forget he was a hero. I kept mine on display so I could look at them in the mirror and remember I was a victim.

“I always wear my hair shaved, Nana. It’s Diem, remember? Your grandson. Boone’s not here.”

“Oh. He’ll be back soon. Must be working late. I tell ya, if he’s schmoozing the ladies, I won’t be surprised. He always was a ladies’ man. Good thing I snagged him when I did, huh?”

“Good thing.”

“Got my wool in a tangle again. See this?” She displayed the mess. “Don’t suppose you can help me out, can you?”

“I sure can. Let me see it.”

I relieved Nana of her knitting and spent a few minutes untwisting the yarn she’d looped over the needles by accident. She’d lost a few stitches trying to correct the problem, so I found a crochet hook in her knitting basket and fished them up through the rows where they’d fallen back, ensuring they sat correctly before placing them on the needle. Then I worked a few stitches to get her on track. She could only manage to work in stockinette. She didn’t trouble herself with complex patterns anymore. Couldn’t follow them.

Nana hadn’t lost the skill to knit. The doctor said it was likely ingrained in her mind at this point. She could do it in her sleep. But she couldn’t fix problems when they arose anymore. Couldn’t wrap her mind around them.

Nana had taught me to knit when I was a boy. It wasn’t something I went around bragging about. On the bad nights, when Dad was especially drunk and violent, I would run away from home and land on Nana and Boone’s doorstep. She would take me in and feed me oatmeal cookies and cocoa. We never talked about Dad, but I knew Nana sent Boone after him a time or ten. Not that it had mattered or made a difference.

On those nights, she would turn on the radio and give me two knitting needles and a skein of yarn before instructing me in the craft. Despite having overly large hands and too much awkwardness, I managed fine.

Had Grandpa Boone been home, he’d have probably taken me to the shop to putter around, but he’d worked long days until the day he died, so it was often Nana and me.

Once I got her knitting squared away, I carefully maneuvered it back into her hands. Her bony, trembling fingers moved the needles without missing a beat, making stitches faster than the eye could see. It amazed me, even though I’d watched her knit my whole life.

“I hear Birdie’s cooking roast for dinner. Are you going to eat tonight?”

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