Falling Up (16 page)

“Yeah, right.” This feels like another slap in the face.

“Look,” I say in a firmer voice. “I'm sorry I can't help you through this, Nat. But I just can't, okay Besides, you know how I feel about your, uh, decision and everything. It's not like I'm much encouragement. In fact, I don't even see why you'd want me around right now.”

“Because you're my best friend,” she says in an
angry voice. “And you should be here for me, Kim.”

“Sorry,” I tell her, although I suspect that I don't sound very sorry since I'm actually quite irritated.

“You already said that.”

“Well, I better go. Take care, Nat.”

“Yeah. You too.” But her voice is sharp as a knife as she says this, almost as if she'd rather be saying “Go swim with the alligators, you traitor!”

Then we hang up. And now I feel so angry I want to throw my phone onto the ground and stomp it to pieces. I want to scream and shout and pound my fists on something. But instead I just sit here with my jaw clenched, and I'm sure, my blood pressure rising. I can't believe Nat is acting like this. Like it's somehow rny fault that she's in this stupid situation.

And crud, if she wants to talk about best friends being supportive, what about all the things I've gone through before and after Mom died? Other than Matthew, I was pretty much on my own. Oh, sure, she might've been there for me a couple of times. But most of the time she's been off having one great big pity party for herself. Where does she get off treating me like this anyway?

I realize it's time to head back now. Especially since I told Grandma I'd help her with supper. But I'm still fuming as I rattle and bounce down the road back to her house. But maybe the jolting trip is therapeutic since I feel slightly numb when I arrive. Although I'm not sure whether it's from the ride or my phone conversation with Nat.

I help Grandma get dinner ready without talking much. I guess I'm still upset, still obsessing over the way Nat's treating me. Then as we eat, I am still not talking much. Afterward, Uncle Garth helps to clear the table, then excuses himself out to his shop. I offer to clean up the kitchen, but Grandma says she'll keep me company.

“I can sit here and dry dishes.” She takes a dishtowel and sits at the kitchen table, propping her bad foot up on a chair in front of her. I suppose I'm still being pretty quiet as I scrape and wash dishes, until finally, my grandma wants to know if something is wrong.

And to my surprise, I end up pouring out the whole story of Natalie, the pregnancy, her plan to have an abortion—everything. It's like my cork got popped or something. Even so, I'm thinking that Nat's story should be safe out here in the boonies—who's my grandma going to tell, the gators? Besides that, I'm still angry at Nat. Maybe I don't care who knows anymore.

“Poor Natalie,” Grandma says as I toss a com husk into the compost bucket.

“Poor Natalie?” I suppose I expected my own grandma to feel a little bit sorry for me.

“Well, that's a heavy load for a girl to carry. And you say she's keeping this burden to herself—she hasn't even told her mother or the father-to-be yet?”

“No. I keep telling her that she should. But she's afraid her mom will get upset, and she probably will. And the guy, the father-to-be, well, he doesn't even like Natalie anymore. He has another girlfriend.”

“Poor Natalie.” Grandma makes a tsk-tsk sound. “She must be feeling very lonely right now.”

“But its her own fault. I mean, I still feel pretty lonely too, after having my mom die, but Natalie doesn't even seem to notice or much care most of the time. She's so concerned with herself and her own problems—” And that's when I start to cry.

“Oh, Kimmy, dear.” Grandma sets aside the plate she was drying and gets up and comes over and puts her arms around me. “Yes, I can see how that would make you feel bad. You needed your good friend to comfort you, and there she was off having her own set of worries. Goodness knows, that must've been hard on you.”

“I was trying to be a good friend to her.” I try to sniff back the tears. “But I guess I just don't know how to deal with it, the pregnancy and everything. And then this whole abortion thing, well, it's just so depressing and upsetting.”

“Of course it is. That's a lot for any young person to deal with. Is Natalie quite sure she wants an abortion?” Grandma steps back and wipes my tears with her slightly damp dishtowel now.

I shrug. “I'm not really sure. I guess I felt hopeful when I heard she canceled her appointment today. But she says it's only because she's not ready yet—like she thinks she'll still go through with it, like it's my fault for not being there to help her.”

“There was a time, Kimmy.,.” Grandma eases
herself back down in the kitchen chair and starts speaking in the same voice she uses when she's telling me something from the past, like how her mother made that crazy quilt. “A time when I wished I could have an abortion too.”

I feel my eyes getting big—my grandma wanted an abortion? “Why?” I ask suddenly. “Was it with Garth?” I'd heard she had been getting kind of old when her second son was born. Maybe she had suspected there would be problems.

“No, not with Garth, dear. With your daddy.”

“Really?”

She leans back in the chair, draping the dishtowel across her knees. “Now your daddy doesn't know all of this story, Kimmy. He knows a bit, but there are some things…well, I just didn't think he needed to hear.”

“What?” I ask as I continue to scrub a pot.

“Your daddy doesn't know that I wasn't married when I became pregnant with him.” She pauses as if waiting for me to react, but I just listen. “You see, it was war times, and your daddy's father had just enlisted in the Navy. We were engaged at the time, and I was ready and willing to get married, but Ronald was worried that something might happen to him. He thought he might come home missing a leg or an arm or maybe even his mind, like what had happened to one of his good friends. So for my sake, he wanted us to wait. And although we decided to wait to get married, we didn't wait to, well, I think you understand what I'm getting at,
Kimmy, dear. So it was that Ronald went off to the South Pacific, and I discovered I was in the family way.”

“That must ve been really hard,” I say as I realize what she's saying. “I mean, back in those days especially.”

She laughs. “Well, as surprising as it may sound, it wasn't so terribly unusual during the war years. Still, it was embarrassing, and folks did what they could to cover these things up. Naturally, I wrote to Ronald straight away, explaining what had happened. And he wrote right back promising me that we would get married during his next leave.” She sighs as she begins to wipe the pot that I hand her. “But my dear Ronald was killed before he ever got a leave.”

“Oh, no.” I turn and look at her. “That must've been awful for you.”

She nods. “Yes, it was terrible. I didn't tell anyone, except my mother, what had happened. Then I moved away from my hometown in Indiana before my family could be embarrassed by the situation. I wanted to get as far away as possible, so I looked at a map and decided on Miami. I got a train ticket and came down to Florida with less than a hundred dollars in my purse. I got a job and rented a room, and somehow I managed. Of course, I wore a wedding ring and told anyone who wanted to know that my baby's daddy, my husband, had been killed in the Pacific. And no one ever questioned this.”

“That must've been so hard, Grandma.”

“Life was hard for everyone during that time. But people helped each other. I think the war brought out the goodness in a lot of folks.”

“So when did you marry Uncle Garths dad?”

“Oh, that was some time later. By then I'd taken some secretarial training and had gotten a decent job that supported me and my boy. Your daddy was just starting high school when I met Sid. At first Allen didn't much like the idea of another man coming into the picture. But after a while, he saw what a truly good man Sid was, and he finally came to his senses. Now, I had never dreamed of having more children, goodness knows I was close to forty, but the Good Lord must've had other plans, because just a few years after I married Sid, little Garth came along.” She sighs as she sets the dry pot aside. “And what a blessing that boy has been to me. A real comfort in my old age.”

“He's a sweet guy.” Still, as I drain the soapy water from the sink, I am feeling slightly stunned by this whole story. Who would've guessed that my own dad had been “born out of wedlock”? Maybe he and I have more in common than I realized.

“The only reason I'm telling you all this, Kimmy, is so that maybe you'll understand how it might feel to be in your friend's position. It's a very tough spot.”

“But you said you had wished for an abortion, Grandma. Do you still feel that way?”

She laughs. “Of course not. It was just a moment of desperation that made me wish for that nonsense. And
after I lost Ronald and Allen was born, well, I was so thankful to have that piece of Ronald still with me. Allen looks an awful lot like his father. Remind me to show you a photo sometime.”

“So Dad knew that his father had died in the war, but you never told him that you weren't married?”

“Not that I'd mind if he knew, Kimmy; I've made my peace with all that. I just never saw the need to tell him.”

Then Grandma announces that it's time to check on the gators. “You want to drive?” she asks as she hobbles outside to where Old Nellie is parked.

“Sure,” I tell her. Then with me at the wheel, Grandma gives directions. And after about fifteen minutes, we pull up to the same spot we came to earlier today. Only now, in this dimmer light, the swampy area takes on a different look, kind of creepy with shadowy moss hanging from trees and the haunting sounds of birds and frogs. I really feel like I'm in a foreign country. Maybe Africa.

“Park over there.” She points to a small clearing about thirty feet from the edge of the greenish-looking water.

“Be quiet,” she says in a low voice as I put on the brake. Then she points out to what looks like a partially submerged log, and I realize it's moving—and that it's actually an alligator. Then I notice there's another one halfway onto the shore, making its way to the chicken scraps Grandma tossed out today.

“That's Bill and Gloria,” she whispers.

“How can you tell?”

“You get to know these things after a while.”

And so we sit there just watching in silence as these two munch down and fight for the chicken scraps. And although I know it's wrong and its breaking the law, I have to admit that its kind of exciting.

“We better go before it starts getting dark,” Grandma finally says.

So I head back toward her house. “Do you worry about getting in trouble with the law?” I ask her after we're a ways from the swamp.

She tosses back her head and laughs. “I've never seen any authorities around here, Rmmy. I doubt that anyone even knows about this place sides Garth and me. It was Sid who got us coming here in the first place. I suppose if there were folks living round these parts, well, then I'd surely stop feeding my gators. As it is, I can't see that it does any harm. Just don't tell anyone, Kimmy. I'm too old to go to prison.” Then she laughs again.

And there it is—my grandmother turns out to be even more of a character than I imagined. Besides illegally feeding the alligators, she was once an unwed mother. Who knew? And oh yeah, she enjoys smoking a pipe occasionally. That took me by surprise the first time I saw her light up.

“It's Sids old pipe,” she told me as she leaned back in the rocker on the porch. “Sometimes I miss the smell. I don't really inhale the smoke though, my old lungs
can't take it. But I do enjoy the aroma of a good pipe.”

Tonight before I go to bed, I dig through my big manila envelope of hard-copy letters to see if I can find one of the ones that had to do with being pregnant. I remember skimming over a couple recently. Of course, I set them aside because I was so stressed out by Natalie s problems at the time. But tonight I feel like dealing with one.

Sunday, June 30

I can't believe I've been down in Florida for more than two weeks now. I'll admit that the first week was the hardest, and looking back I think I was actually a little depressed. I guess it was similar to culture shock. Like not only had I gone to a totally different part of the country, but it also seemed as if I'd gone back in time as well. Just the idea of being so disconnected from everyone back home was pretty unsettling. But once I survived the first week, it's like I fell into a routine of sorts. And as it turned out, it's a very comfortable routine. I'm just not sure how much longer it needs to continue.

For the first few days, I felt compelled to go to town every day. I'd get in the old Jeep pickup and rattle down the road until my brain felt like mush just so I could
check my e-mail and see what was going on in the “real” world. But then I started slacking off—it's like I realized the “real” world would go on without me just fine.