How it Ends (2 page)

And they all lived happily ever after…

It happened painfully and without warning,
this sudden turning of the heart.

It happened as you stood so small and stoic beside me in the driveway, waving as your mother pulled away in her car and then your father in his, your thin, sun-browned shoulders squared, your chin up and your dark gaze riveted to their leaving, oblivious to the clean morning breeze, to shy Serepta, the youngest of the strays, meowing and twining round your bare ankles, and the glittering pink and gold beads of your new Princess Barbie bracelet rattling a hollow farewell.

Your wave never faltered, Hanna, not even after those cars disappeared around the wooded bend and left you behind, watching and waiting as if certain the steadfast devotion in your farewell would somehow guarantee their return.

But it didn’t, it couldn’t, and the road remained deserted, each empty passing second wilting and finally stilling your faithful, fluttering hand.

“Well,” I said briskly, picking up your Princess Jasmine overnight
bag. “I think it’s time for some chocolate chip pancakes. What do you say?”

“My stomach hurts,” you mumbled, fingering your sparkly bracelet.

“It’ll feel better with pancakes in it,” I said.

“Grandma Helen?” You looked up, chin quivering and doe eyes stricken with tears. “This is not a good happily ever after. I’m t-t-too sad.”

It was then, Hanna, as I gazed into your forlorn little five-year-old face that fierce longing surged and, catching me off guard, wrenched free.

You sidled close and touched my hand. “Are you going away, too?”

“Oh, sweetheart, no,” I said, and in that heartbeat the bond was formed, the promise made, and the emptiness inside of me was filled with the rush to comfort and protect, to earn this trust you put in me,
me,
no blood relation, the
Grandma Helen
a courtesy title given by your parents to the childless lady in the neighboring farmhouse with a passion for books, stray cats, and hungry deer, who fed the birds and loved a creaky old man named Lon who sang Beatles’ songs and still had shoulders strong enough for a little girl’s piggyback rides. “No, Hanna. Wild horses couldn’t drag me away.”

You sniffled. “I don’t know what that means.”

“It means you couldn’t get rid of me if you tried,” I said, gently swinging your hand. “Come on, let’s go find us some breakfast.” I led you across the thick grass still glistening with dew, under the smooth gray branches of the copper beech tree, and into the little strip of woods that signaled the end of your property and the beginning of mine.

“I think I might like pancakes,” you offered, flip-flops slapping as you padded along the smooth pine-needle carpet, Serepta swatting playfully at your heels. “Hey, when we get to the meadow can we take the deer path past the pond?”

“Absolutely,” I said and paused to lift you over a fallen hemlock.

“Look,” you said, eyeing a good-sized hole in the mossy, crumbling trunk. “A lion might live there.”

“Or a skunk or a raccoon. They’re wild, so don’t ever try to pet them, but they won’t hurt you if you just let them be. Live and let live, Hanna.” I took your hand, leading you out of the tree line and into the meadow. “One deer path, coming up.” It was almost too painful, this giddy joy at sharing the everyday miracles in my world and the solemn way you soaked it all up as we stopped to consider the zigzag flight of an iridescent dragonfly, the chirp of a startled chipmunk, and the hoofprint pressed in the mud at the edge of the pond.

“Do wild horses take the deer path, too?” you said, pulling free and crouching to study the honeybees buzzing over great drifts of violets and white clover.

“Not anymore,” I said. “They might have, though, a long, long time ago.”

“Back when you were a little girl?” you said, shading your eyes and squinting up at me.

“It’s possible,” I said, lips twitching.

“Oh.” You paused a minute, absently petting the cat, and then picked three violets. “You know what, Grandma Helen? I think when you were little, and your mommy and daddy went away and left you, you were sad and cried, and they came back and made pancakes with
lots
of syrup and you all lived happily ever after again, right?”

And it was then, with a crown of sunlight shimmering in your silky brown hair, the hawk circling high overhead, and your hand reaching up to offer me the tiny bouquet, that I said, “Right,” and told you the first of so many terrible lies.

You practically lived with us that summer while your parents—struggling, bewildered, and unhappy—tried to figure out why the life they’d planned wasn’t the one they ended up with.

It was very peaceful here then—Lon and I hadn’t yet sold that section of acreage on the other side to that liar who said he loved the country and then, once he owned the property, tried to destroy every living thing on it, so this stretch of road was just my house and yours, meadows and woods. Sound carried far in the darkness, Hanna, and in the daylight, too, so when bitter disappointment got the best of your parents and echoed out over the clearing, I would find some reason to call and invite you over just to get you out of the battle zone.

I have to give them credit for catching on quickly and trying to spare you the worst of it, though, because after my first few phone calls, the roles reversed and more often than not it would be your mother calling and asking if you could visit me for a while.

I always said yes, of course, because I could hear how much it cost her to ask, but even more than that, the sight of you trudging through the field grass toward my back door, whether you were smiling and stuffing your pockets with acorns or plodding along like you didn’t have a friend in the world, filled my heart like nothing else.

I would grab some cookies and hurry down the deer path to meet you, Serepta and any number of other strays following along. The moment you saw me your face would light up, and I would smile and wave because truly, is there anything as wonderful as feeling safe and loved?

I gave that to you, Hanna, but make no mistake: You gave it to me, too.

We would meet under the big old catalpa tree by the pond and, if you were especially blue, would sit side by side on the old wooden bench in the flickering shade of those huge, heart-shaped leaves. Sooner or later, if I waited long enough, you would reveal yourself in questions.

More often, though, you would ask me to tell you stories about when I was a little girl. The first time you did this I panicked and
immediately let go of your hand. You didn’t notice my shocked withdrawal; you were too busy rattling the knob of a door I had sealed shut years ago, asking if I was always good or if I ever got into trouble, how I got punished, if I’d had my own bedroom, lots of friends to play with, and if I’d hated peas just like you did.

Your bright chatter gave me time to recover, to breathe deep and force myself to stop and
think
instead of turn and hurry away. That was the closest I ever came to leaving you and I would have if I was still only your babysitter, would have made some excuse to your parents about aching bones or being too busy to watch you and disappeared from your life, but I wasn’t just Mrs. Schoenmaker anymore, I was your Grandma Helen and there was a price to pay for keeping that title.

So while I could never tell you the truth, the more I listened, the more I realized I didn’t have to. You weren’t probing for secrets or judging me; no, all you wanted were happily ever after tales to blunt the sharp edges of your own uncertain days, so I wove you stories of an idyllic childhood with stern but kind parents and loyal, mischievous best friends, of getting into trouble and the crafty ways we wiggled out of it.

“You
never
got into trouble?” you said, wide-eyed.

“Well, maybe sometimes, but if you look hard enough, there’s always a way to get out of it or around it.” I stopped but you begged for more, held out your cupped hands, and so I obliged, filling them with sunny days romping at my grandparents’ farm, climbing trees, and saving baby animals, of the fun I’d had in school, glorious family Thanksgivings, and fuzzy little tuxedo kittens in my stocking on Christmas mornings.

I told these lies and you soaked up every word, eyes glowing and face rapt as if you were there, too, as if we were equal in age and embarking on those merry adventures together.

My house became your second home, and even after your parents reconciled and you didn’t need to be sent to me anymore, you still came regularly because you wanted to, because I made sure there was always something fun to do or read or talk about, something good to eat, interesting questions to ask, and satisfying answers to find.

And of course we had our adventures.

We sat like statues on the bench under the catalpa one June day and watched as a new fawn, dainty and curious, sauntered to within six feet of us. She paused, her wide, black velvet eyes unblinking, ears high and nostrils twitching, gauging our presence, and then, fluffy white tail waving, turned and danced away.

You stared after her in awe and said, “I never saw a real fawn close up before. A wild one, I mean.”

“Beautiful, wasn’t she?” I said.

“Wow,” you breathed.

We spent your tenth birthday eating egg rolls and combing yard sales in pursuit of some elusive, unidentified treasure and it wasn’t until late in the day that we stumbled upon the item you’d been secretly searching for: a chair of your own for my living room. The one you wanted was vintage, a wide, sturdy overstuffed monstrosity in an unsettling currant-and-forest-colored tweed and didn’t match anything I owned, but you loved the brass nail heads pounded in along the arms and the plush six-inch fringe along the bottom, so we jammed it halfway into the trunk of my car and drove home at a crawl. Lon almost popped a disk hauling it up the porch steps and we had to take the front door off its hinges just to get the thing inside, but it fit perfectly opposite my reading chair by the window, creating a cozy little nook with a view past the bird feeders to the pond and became Serepta’s favorite new ambush spot.

When you were thirteen we went grocery shopping and the object of your crush, a cocky teenage produce boy with bleached hair and a
pierced tongue, was there. He was tending the root crops, unloading onions, neatening turnips, stacking bags of potatoes, so I sent you over to pick me out three nice yams.
“Yams?”
you whispered, as appalled as if I’d said
extra-large tampons,
but the lure of him was too strong, so off you went in blushing agony, arms folded across your chest, walking too fast, eyes too bright, lost in the exquisite torment of feeling too tall, too stupid, too hopeful, and too embarrassed to be with an old lady, hating your outfit, your hair, and the squeegee squeak your boots made crossing the polished floor. You couldn’t bring yourself to look at him, not even when he shifted to make room for you, only snatched three enormous yams from the middle of the pile, causing the tubers at the peak to descend in a tumble and scatter across the floor.

You froze, mortified.

“Nice going, Ace,” the kid drawled. “Any more like you at home?”

Your eyes filled with tears.

“Great,” he muttered, setting aside a crate of onions. “They don’t pay me enough for this kind of shit.” He dropped to all fours, groping under the display for the errant tubers and giving you the chance to rush back to me, throw the yams in the cart, and run out to the car.

I wanted to slap him for his careless cruelty, to ask him if it really would have cost so much to smile at a child with such stars in her eyes, but I didn’t, of course. Instead, I discovered that you were mad at
me
that day, me and those stupid yams for making you look foolish. I tried to explain the idea of keeping your composure even when you were embarrassed so no one would ever know you felt small and vulnerable, but you were either too young to get it or too busy replaying the tragic humiliation to listen, because your thundercloud expression never lightened, and so I swallowed my hurt and resorted to a stop at Rita’s Italian Ice for coconut gelatos. By the time we were done eating, most of the storm had passed and the sun showed signs of peeking through again.

When you were fifteen and not coming around to visit as often, I unearthed my old red bicycle from the cobwebby corner of the barn, and huffing, puffing, and wobbling, ringing the old
tink-ching
bell on the handlebars and wearing a violent purple scarf, mirrored shades, and my yellow winter hat with the ridiculous crocheted daisy earflaps, warbling “Dear Prudence” and looking like the village idiot, I rode in circles around your house until you staggered out the front door, weak with laughter, and begged me to stop before anyone saw me.

“Not until you go for a ride with me,” I called, and then, “Oof!” as a vicious rut sent me jouncing over a rock and you into fresh gales of laughter. “Har, har. What a wretched child you are. Come on, where’s your adventurous spirit? Are you really going to let me have all the fun?”

You started down the steps, eyes sparkling and the crisp breeze stirring your long hair, and then stopped, biting your lip as if you suddenly remembered having fun wasn’t all that simple anymore, and as you hesitated on that threshold, Hanna, time shivered and for a moment you were no longer a confused adolescent still wearing a granddaughter’s smudged and rosy glasses but a tall, beautiful young woman whose naked gaze welled with tears as the cold autumn wind tore the brittle, heart-shaped leaves from the catalpa and I gripped the handlebars, silent, paralyzed, and unable to wave as the rattling bicycle carried me past.

We never went for that ride together or any other and we never spoke of why not, but something important had changed, and for the first time in years, I remembered what it was like to be lonely.