Vanessa
My life changed one snowy night in January.
I was returning home from a long day, my body feeling like a well-wrung rag, wanting nothing more than a shower and a mug of hot tea.
I was gunning for a promotion, but it felt like the management had me running in thankless circles.
I clicked the door to my apartment closed, and mused for the millionth time that I should have followed my heart and become a ballet teacher.
I set my keys down on the hall table, and realized that I had placed these same keys in that exact spot every day for the last five years.
There was even a light spot on the table, physical evidence of my miserable routine.
My phone began to buzz in my pocket.
My brow knit as I saw the name on the screen.
My brother hated calling, and never did it unless it was an emergency.
“Hey Ness,”
Tom said, as I brought the phone to my ear. “Sorry if it’s a bad time. I wish I was calling under better circumstances.”
“Oh god, did Grandma die?”
I asked immediately. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, thoughts of this exact call pierced my brain like a spike of ice. Our mom’s mom, Shirley, was my last connection to my hometown of Pigeonpond, and the only family I still felt any real love for. My mother hadn’t been in our lives since she ran off with her minotaur coworker when I was eight, and Tom and my dad lived on the opposite coast.
Tom’s silence made my heart drop to my toes. “No,”
he said after a too-long moment. “But she’s not doing well. Apparently she fell pretty badly last month, but she’s refusing to stay off her feet. She was out walking with a neighbor today, and fell again. He caught her, but when he took her home he got dad’s number off the fridge, and called him, and he called me.”
“Fuck,”
I said, absorbing the information. “What did dad have to say?”
Tom laughed mirthlessly. “What do you expect? He said it’s long overdue that she goes to a home. That if she sold the house it would be enough for her to live on until she dies. I think he’s right, Ness. We need to go back, so we can arrange some care for her.”
I scoffed. “And I’m guessing he won’t do it because-”
“Because she’s our blood, not his. It’s not worth fighting him on this one.”
I wasn’t surprised our father had gone straight to Tom when he got the call.
Tom was always his little deputy, especially since he’d been taken on as a junior partner at our father’s firm.
That, and he knew I wouldn’t have taken his candy ass excuses.
I sighed, and looked around my apartment.
My assembled life here, all the clutter, the keepsakes, photos of friends, the world I’d built in the last ten years, had taken on a strange and unreal quality.
I felt like a kid again, sitting on the train out of Pigeonpond, looking back at the slate rooftops and shining lake for what I thought would be the last time.
A kid, now standing in the home of a stranger.
“I guess something like this was bound to happen eventually,”
I replied at last. “I just hope grandma is okay.”
Tom didn’t reply. After a moment of uncomfortable silence, I continued. “When do you get in?”
“I absolutely can’t miss work tomorrow, but I’ve booked a flight for Saturday. Would you be able to fly tomorrow? I’ll buy the ticket for you.”
This is how Tom was. When his emotions failed, he filled the gaps with money.
“I can tell the company I have an emergency. They can do without me for a little while. That’s what understudies are for.”
We got off the phone, and Tom texted me the flight details.
I showered, made a quick dinner, and sent an explanatory email to my team lead and department head.
Then I began to pack.
What was Pigeonpond like in January? I tried to remember.
Like a dam breaking, images flooded my vision.
Pigeonpond in January was digging tunnels in snow banks with Tom and my dad, it was snowball fights with my mom, shaking ice out of our boots and drinking hot cocoa while our socks and gloves dried over the floor vent.
I shook my head. There was no use reminiscing like that. I hoped this would be a short visit.
***
The following afternoon I was on the train for real.
I leaned my head against the cold window, watching the airport recede in the distance.
It was a couple hours on this line to the Pigeonpond Station stop.
I thought back to my youthful misadventures, I took a sweatshirt from my bag, balled it up, and placed it between my cheek and the glass, closing my eyes.
I had slept like shit the previous night, beset by memories of the town, of old friends, of old boyfriends.
After I’d left for college my brother and dad had moved out of Pigeonpond, and as far as I knew, hadn’t been back.
I’d always been closer to Grandma Shirley, but my visits to her had dwindled, and then stopped entirely.
When she asked about it, I blamed the increasing demands of my job, but I knew better.
Pigeonpond was the last place my whole family had been together and happy.
As I got older I realized that the town was better as a rosy memory than a real place.
I just wanted to plow forward with my adult life in peace.
Lost in thought, my eyelids began to droop.
Maybe a quick twenty-minute nap would do me good.
Of course I didn’t want Grandma Shirley to think I was anything less than thrilled to see her, even if it had been five or so years since I’d been back.
I wondered if she’d look the same.
How old was she now? Seventy...one? Seventy two? She had my mom when she was twenty five, and my mom had me when...
I fell deeply asleep.
***
“Miss? Miss? I believe this is your stop.”
A gentle looking lizardfolk woman in a conductor’s uniform stood over me, shaking my shoulder gently. She pointed at the punched ticket on the seat beside me, as I got my bearings and looked around groggily. “Pigeonpond is your destination, yes? We’re here.”
“Uh, thank you. Sorry, yes. Thanks so much.”
I must have been more tired than I thought. The woman smiled and continued down the aisle as I retrieved my luggage from the overhead rack. Pigeonpond had one small train station on the west end of town, and looking out the window, it looked like very little had changed since I was last there.
In fact, as I slung my bag over my shoulder and rolled my luggage through the station and out to the street, I realized that I had changed much more than this town had in my absence.
Pigeonpond was never a bustling metropolis, but it was definitely an oddity for the region.
With a major university, a thriving arts scene, and a reputation as a great town for families of all races and backgrounds, it certainly punched above its weight.
While the adjacent hills and valleys were quilted with picturesque farmland, Pigeonpond was well-positioned at the edge of a long, deep lake which made it a destination for fishing and sailing, as well as a hub for freshwater merfolk culture and cuisine.
Every time I spoke about where I grew up, someone in the room would pipe up with a fond connection to the town: a bachelorette party wine tour around the lake, childhood family vacations to a cottage on the water, or a family member who got their degree and settled down there.
For me, it was a place I left behind.
I thought about getting a taxi, but decided to walk to my grandmother’s house.
It was only fifteen minutes away, and the sun was lovely.
My rolling suitcase rattled down the sidewalk, and the friendly faces of Pigeonpond smiled as I passed.
I found myself smiling back, heavy waves of nostalgia rolling through me.
There was the apartment building where my family used to live, across from the bridge where Tom and I used to drop rocks onto the frozen river and listen to the crack of the ice.
The small park, the scene of secret late-night meetings with my high school love.
That was so many years ago.
I wondered what he was up to now, that boy?
As sure as I was that he’d be long gone, I found myself furtively scanning the faces of people passing by, wondering if, by some galactically remote coincidence, he would be walking by this park and reminiscing about the same moment.
The thought filled me with warmth, then anxiety.
The boy had been nice, incredibly nice, but sneaking around and hiding ourselves from my brother...the experience had made teenage Vanessa a nervous wreck.
I disregarded the thought, carrying on with my walk.
Wherever he was, I wished him well.
I took the scenic route towards my grandma’s house, a paved path that ran next to the river.
Ice flows raced along with the current, and the sunlight sparkled like a disco ball on the water.
I wondered if kids still smoked pot by this river in the summer?
***
Grandma Shirley’s home had always been too big for her. My dad used to teasingly call it Chateau Shirley, much to my grandmother’s amusement. Although not quite a mansion, it was a grand old Victorian home, with three generous floors full of large windows and winding hallways, and a dining room fit for a family of ten. That family had been Grandma’s, but as her parents died and her siblings drifted away, she was left alone in the big house. Eventually, she made good on a childhood dream of turning that home into an inn, and the moment the ink dried on the liquor license she mounted a beautiful hand painted “Chateau Shirley”
sign over the wraparound porch. There were so many happy memories of sucking down lemonade on that porch, or chasing Tom around the legs of annoyed guests while Grandma told us to “slow down before we killed someone”. I could almost hear her voice in my head.
The Chateau Shirley sign was gone, its metal hooks hanging empty from the roof beam. I was pleased to see that the front walkway was well shoveled, and the exterior paint appeared fresh. Even the long icicles which hung over the porch had been knocked away for safety. One of the neighbors must have been helping her out. I clomped up the front steps as I had thousands of times before, inhaled, and swung the old metal door-knocker against the wood. After a few seconds I heard shuffling inside, then a clacking noise as the door unlatched and swung open.
“Why if it isn’t sweet Vanessa! Oh, it’s so good to see you,”
“Hi Grandma,”
I said, and bent to give her a hug. The skin on her cheeks hung lower and the roots of her auburn hair had gone a starker white in the years since I’d last seen her, but otherwise she was the same crotchety old woman I had always known and loved. I noticed a black medical boot on her left leg, but said nothing of it. Picking up my bags, I stepped over the threshold. The smell of the old house plucked a string deep inside me, filling me with thick nostalgia. The interior looked well-kempt, and I could hear music playing from a distant room. The former front desk, a gorgeous old mahogany thing that must have cost a fortune, sat where it always had to the left of the stairs.
As always, my grandmother’s runecraft skills were hard at work in making the house as cozy as possible. Candles, which I knew had ever-burning and levitation runes inscribed on their bases, floated lazily around the house, illuminating the soft corners and shining off the brass doorknobs and radiators. I could see back into the kitchen, where mugs and dishes were washing themselves, inscribed with gold filigree runes in Grandma’s loose handwriting. I knew there were less-obvious runes in place as well: wards against bad smells, sweetening on the tap water, cleaning and softening runes needlepointed into the linens. She had honed these skills during her years as an innkeeper, and they hadn’t faded with age.
“You look great, sweetheart,”
said Grandma Shirley. “I can hardly tell you just travelled for nine hours. You barely look like you’ve been traveling for eight,”
she teased, making me smile.
“Hey, I slept on the train. I nearly missed the stop, too. Do you have anything to eat?”
Being here was putting me straight back into “entitled grandchild”
mode. I headed for the kitchen, and was happy to see a bowl of pasta salad on the counter. I had a complicated relationship with pasta, but that didn’t stop me from shoveling some onto a plate and into my mouth.
“Wow. This is fantastic,”
I said. It was salty, tender, and loaded with fresh vegetables.
“Isn’t it?”
said Grandma Shirley. “My boarder makes it even better than John did.”
John, my late grandfather, had also been the inn’s cook in its heyday. “If only he had been around during those days, he would have turned the inn into an international destination!”
“Oh, I didn’t know you had a boarder. I was wondering who was clearing the snow and taking care of the house.”
Grandma Shirley began to respond, but was suddenly cut off.
An unbelievable, raucous noise clattered down through the ceiling from upstairs, like somebody stomping cans or maybe jumping on a pogo stick. No, not a pogo stick, because that up-and-down motion would have rhythm. This was more like something over our heads was going through death convulsions.
“Shit! What is that?”
I asked. I felt briefly self-conscious, but remembered that my grandmother had a dirtier mouth than even I did.
“That’s him, the one who’s been shoveling snow and doing maintenance,”
she replied. “Although yes, he sometimes makes noise like a fucking bulldozer.”
“Who is he?” I asked.
“Do you remember your brother’s friend Torwood? He’s been staying here for a month or so. Oh, he’s been so helpful, he shops, and he cleans, and...”
Whatever words came out of her mouth next were lost to me like bullets bouncing off an armored tank. Torwood couldn’t be here. He should have been off in some forest chopping down trees, or fighting fires in a distant city, or being scouted as the first orc male model in history. Instead, he was one floor above my head, making an unholy racket. The same Torwood, whose face I had been searching for by the park. That boy who was my brother’s best friend, the lanky teenager with whom I’d shared a forbidden kiss, and now the man who would be sleeping under the same roof as me for as long as I had to be here.
Was it too late to catch the next flight out?