Page 3 of The Cadence
“Yes, you do,” he told me. “It’s normal that you would be.” Then he bent again to fit through the door to exit my bedroomand I spent a moment using the towel to pat off any remaining dampness and to wave some cooler air on my face to take away the blotches.
It was really no use because everyone else could also see it, just like Will Bodine had. “Bug’s been crying, bless her heart,” I heard one of my grandma’s friends murmur when I came out to rejoin them all.
“I’m hanging in there,” I announced to the crowd. Will had positioned himself in the dining room, close to the sweet potato soufflé but not partaking of any. He stared at his phone and, although the other guests had been momentarily distracted by my tears, they quickly returned to staring at him. And soon, he was making his way towards the front door. I put down the dirty plates I was carrying so that I could say goodbye.
“Thank you for coming,” I said.
“I’m sorry about your grandma. One of these ladies told me that she’s in a better place, but I bet you wish she was still here with you.”
I did, so much that it made my throat ache to hear those words. I nodded instead of speaking, which was too difficult. There was a lot I wanted to say to him, things like, “We should see each other again while you’re home,” or “When will you come back to Tennessee?” Instead, I closed the door and turned to face the crowd.
“I remember Calla saying that you knew Will Bodine,” Miss Theresa said. When she talked about Calla, she meant mygrandma; I was named after her but most of these people called me Bug, as she had.
“He tutored me in high school,” I mentioned, and they all slid glances at each other. They already knew that and required more information.
“It was a sweet thing that he came all this way to pay his respects,” Miss Lisa noted, and I said yes and didn’t tell her that he had been in town anyway. Instead, I returned to collecting the dishes.
It was hours later that they all finally left, most of them carrying food in the containers that I’d saved. Miss Mozella had helped me clean up by drying the plates and forks as I washed them. When we were done, she carefully folded her dish towel and hung it over the faucet.
“I don’t want to go,” she confessed. “That makes it feel so final. I’m worried about you being alone here, Bug.”
“I’ll be fine,” I promised, but she grasped my arm again, like she had before.
“I just miss her,” she told me, and I nodded.
“I know. So do I.” I walked her out to her car and waved as she drove away.
The house was now empty, and although I’d been waiting all day to be alone, I didn’t exactly welcome it. The thing to do when you felt sad was keep busy, that was what my grandma had always said, except that I was tired. I changed and then sat down in her rocker on the porch instead of washing the floors, as shewould have done after having so much company. I needed to go through her room, too, but I didn’t feel quite ready.
I sat for a long time, swatting at no-see-ums and thinking as the sun set and dusk slowly settled. We lived on a quiet street but I could hear the sounds of traffic on the interstate not too far away. That was why I didn’t notice the car pulling up until it stopped directly in front of the house, and a large man got out.
“Will?” I called. I stood, smoothing the t-shirt and jean shorts that I’d put on after I’d hung the black dress in my closet. I’d also put away the clean clothes that had been stacked next to my bed, and threw the towel I’d used as a hankie into the bag to bring to the laundromat.
He stood on the little patch of lawn that was now mostly weeds. “Hello, Calla.”
“Did you leave something here?” I asked him.
“No. Can I come up?”
I nodded and he did, so I moved to offer him the larger rocker. The smaller one had been mine when I’d arrived at this house at age thirteen. “You’re so much taller than I expected,” my grandma had said when she’d first seen me. “I don’t think you’ll fit in this.” She had gotten it so that we could sit on the porch together, and I hadn’t cared that it was a tight squeeze. She’d taught me to knit out here…
“Are you still crying?” he asked.
“I just started again.” I rubbed my eyes on my sleeve.
“Wait,” he ordered, and went back to his car. He returned with a box of tissues. “You didn’t seem to have any.”
“You got this for me?” Instead of opening the top, I hugged it to my chest. “Thank you!”
“It’s supposed to be for you to wipe off your face and blow your nose,” he advised. “You had a lot of mucus before.”
“I always drip like a leaky faucet when I cry.” I offered him a tissue, too, but he declined. He also declined a drink and a plate of food, so we settled into the chairs, equally uncomfortable because both of us were too large for them. Will must have been too large for almost anything, including airplane seats.
“Did you fly down here?” I asked.
“There’s a direct route from Detroit.”
“Do you go first-class?”
