Page 17 of A Fabulously Unfabulous Summer for Henry Milch

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen it yet. Getting back to—”

“The lasagna’s ready,” she said.

“How do you know that?”

“Can’t you smell it?”

“Sure, I can smell it.”

“It smells ready.”

And when I opened the oven, the lasagna was bubbling hot. How did she do that?

On Friday,Rebecca Jaymes arrived shortly after we finished lunch. We’d had one session with her while Nana Cole was still in the rehab center. Dressed in a plaid short-sleeved shirt and cargo pants, she was short and boyish with a broad smile and an infectious laugh. We made some tea and sat around the kitchen table.

“Tell me how you are, Mrs. Cole,” Rebecca asked. It was a much tougher question than it seemed.

After a long suspenseful pause my grandmother said, “I’m angry.”

“What are you angry about?”

“I don’t remember her name. The girl who was here.”

“She had physical therapy the other day,” I said. “She threw the girl out.”

“Really? Why don’t you like the physical therapist?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t.”

“There must be more to it than that.

“The girl—she was trying to teach me how to use the walker. I know how to use the walker.”

“No, she doesn’t,” I interjected.

She looked at me open-mouthed for a moment and then huffed.

Very kindly, Rebecca said, “I’ll have a talk with them and see if we can’t address some of your concerns. Now, why don’t you tell me how you met your husband.”

Nana Cole seemed confused, which made perfect sense to me. It was kind of a jump. I suppose it might have been astrategy, skipping around like that, I don’t know. I did feel certain my grandmother was going to ask for the question to be repeated. Instead, she asked, “Which one?”

“Which one?” I asked.

Her hand flew up to her mouth and covered it. Suddenly, I could almost see the little girl she’d once been. A cute, pig-tailed little girl, always in trouble.

“What do you mean, which one?”

It wasn’t that I had some great loyalty to my grandfather, I hadn’t spent that much time with him. The times I’d visited when I was younger, my mother and grandmother would fight so much that I’d get dragged back to California early. Those were the days.

No, I was just surprised that somehow no one had ever mentioned that Nana had had another husband. Picking up on my surprise, Rebecca asked, “Do you want to tell us about your first husband?”

Quickly, she shook her head.

“The cat’s already out of the bag,” I pointed out.

Another pause.

“He was a Marston. Will; Will Marston. His family owns the farm and feed store.”