These are the first chapter out of a book I'm working on. The book is called "Home", it deals with small town life, particularly young people trying to make their lives worthwhile in a declining economy. Some themes included in are alzheimers/dementia, isolation, grief, war, family pressures, and dealing with the past. The ultimate theme, though is "home" and what it is to us.
Chapter 1
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh
- - - - - The phone was ringing. She rolled onto her side and groped for the receiver on the nightstand. “Hello?”
- - - - - There was silence on the other end and then a choked gasp of air. “Gracie?”
- - - - - Grace Watson rubbed her eyes and blinked, clearing the fogginess from her sight. “Who is this?”
- - - - - “It’s me, Lorrie.” Grace sat up slowly, dropping one leg over the edge of the bed.
- - - - - She turned the alarm clock toward her so that she could read the numbers on its face. “God, it’s like 3:30 in the morning. What are you calling me for?”
- - - - - “It’s Grandma. She’s . . . sick,” Lorrie’s voice broke and a new round of sobs came through the receiver.
- - - - - “She’s been sick for a long time. What’s wrong now?” It was still dark outside, but she could see Jake’s cat sprawled out sleeping across the window sill. His breathing was slow and steady, and Grace could hear his whispering snores.
- - - - - “Grace! Don’t be like that,” Lorrie said. There was a pause before she continued. “She’s in the hospital. She just kind of collapsed. We haven’t heard what’s wrong with her yet. But I have a feeling . . . I don’t think she’ll be okay this time. I know you’re busy up there, but please come home. Just for a few days, please? It might be your last chance, you know.”
- - - - - “I don’t want to.”
- - - - - “Please?” Lorrie was begging. Grace didn’t want to, but she could picture her sister easily. She was sitting in that crooked old rocking chair in the living room. It was early so she was wearing her housecoat, with her knees drawn up under it. She would be messy, her hair falling out of her ponytail and her fingernails bitten to almost nothing.
- - - - - “I’ll think about it.”
- - - - - “You don’t have long, Grace,” Lorrie said.
- - - - - “I’ll call you later,” Grace said and hung up the phone without waiting for a reply. For several minutes, she didn’t move, she just sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the alarm clock. She watched the minutes pass by.
- - - - - Beside her, Jake yawned and rolled toward her and hooked his arm around her waist, pulling her back into bed. “What was that?” He tucked his arms around her and held her tightly against his chest. His voice was low, and she could feel the vibration on her back when he spoke.
- - - - - “My sister.”
- - - - - He sighed and rested his forehead against the back of her head. “Everything okay?”
- - - - - “No more than usual,” she replied. After several minutes, Jake was asleep again, but Grace didn’t fall asleep. She just watched the clock measure time until the alarm went off at 6:00.
- - - - - The apartment that Grace and Jake shared in Squirrel Hill was a third floor converted attic. There were three rooms: the bedroom, the bathroom, and the combined living room and kitchen. What had made it so appealing to Grace, though was the walk-in closet. The closet was nearly as big as the bathroom, which admittedly wasn’t exceptionally large. It only had a standing shower, but that didn’t really bother either of them since they rarely had the time to relax and take a bath anyway.
- - - - - Grace suspected that originally the entire apartment had had hardwood floors because even the carpeting in the living room (a mossy gray color that she didn’t particularly care for) was hard and made noise when she walked across the living room in her heels. What the kitchen lacked in counter space it made up for with storage. Whoever had chosen the cabinetry for the room had crammed as many cupboards as possible into the space. The bedroom was also fairly small, and the bed took up most of the room. In order to be able to reach the closet, the bed was against the wall and in order for the person sleeping in back to get out of bed, they had to climb across the one sleeping in the front.
- - - - - The morning sun was coming through the kitchen window and making pale gold rectangles on the tile floor. Grace stood at the counter, one hip against sink as she broke eggs open and dropped them into a large stainless steel mixing bowl on the counter. Every time she added an egg, she dropped egg shells into the batter and had to pick them out before she added the next one. She was already dressed for work in gray dress pants and a light blue button-down shirt. She had pulled Jake’s apron off the hook on the wall where he always hung it and wrapped it around her as she cooked. As she moved around the kitchen, her heels clicked loudly in the otherwise silent kitchen.
- - - - - No one could accuse Grace of being a talented cook. It was for that reason that she usually avoided doing it. Jake was much better at it and did most of the cooking. Grace always kind of felt that God was playing a mean practical joke on her because despite her lack of talent in the area, she found cooking relaxing. There was always something fulfilling about putting various less than appetizing ingredients together and creating something that everyone loved to eat. Of course, no one loved to eat anything that Grace cooked, but the idea was still valid.
- - - - - She stirred the batter absently. Her grandmother was an excellent cook. She didn’t even use measuring cups when she cooked. A pinch of this, a dash of that, stir it together and it was perfection. After her mother died, her grandmother spent a great deal of time trying to cheer her granddaughters up. For weeks after, their grandmother had taught them a new recipe each day. They would crowd around the kitchen table, making messes that stuck to the cheerful blue wallpaper and the cracked linoleum floor. Lorrie, although two years younger than Grace had taken to it much easier and now was an excellent cook. Grace never managed to make things fit together the way that she thought they would and cooking was no exception.
- - - - - She glanced over her shoulder when Jake wandered into the kitchen and gave him a wink. “I’m making breakfast. Sit down.” He smiled at her and pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and put his shoes on. He had to be at the law firm where he worked earlier than Grace had to be at her job and he was already dressed.
- - - - - He was the sort of guy that Grace imagined she would marry when she left for college. He was intelligent and gentle, and considerate sometimes to the point of being annoying. He was one of those people who never seem to be able to keep their appearance in order. He was just a touch on the pudgy side and there was always a cowlick in the back of his hair. Invariably he dumped some sort of drink on himself during the day. People consistently thought it odd that Grace and Jake were a couple because they just didn’t seem to fit together. She was fastidious about every element of her appearance. Her blonde hair was always carefully twisted into a knot at the base of her neck and her clothes were always ironed perfectly and seemed completely resistant to the wrinkles that most people gather during the day.
- - - - - She scooped several lumpy globs of batter into the skillet and gazed out the window at the river in the distance. Their third floor apartment was at the perfect height to be able to see part of one of the rivers through the kitchen window. From a distance, the river didn’t look polluted at all, it just looked like a silvery mass peeking between the breaks in the buildings. The smell of burning pancakes caught her attention and she quickly dumped the contents of the skillet onto a plate.
- - - - - “Here,” she said and sat a plate of what was supposed to be pancakes down on the table in front of him. She paused, as if thinking and ran her fingers along the inside of his neck, smoothing the collar of his shirt. “I hope you like pancakes.”
- - - - - Jake smiled and nodded as he took a bite. “You know I love it when you cook, babe.”
- - - - - Grace nodded and continued making pancakes. “Do you want more?”
- - - - - Jake coughed, “No, I’m stuffed. Besides, I’ll be late. Thanks for breakfast.” He stood and carried his plate to the sink. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and kissed her on the corner of her mouth. “I love you.”
- - - - - “I know,” she said absently. Then she smiled and turned her head to look at him. “Thank you,” she said and laid one hand on his arm still across her chest.
- - - - - Grace worked in the grant management office at UPMC. Specifically, in the Neurology department. Contrary to what the name might have seemed to indicate, she did not decide who got money for Neurology research. Rather, she worked in the equivalent of a giant checkbook. She kept track of all the doctor’s spending. She sent them memos when they went over the limit. Every receipt for purchases was entered into the computer, tagged with account numbers and filed in chronological order so that it could be found later. It was, in her opinion the most depressingly boring job she could imagine. Still, it helped to pay the bills and it hadn’t been particularly difficult to get the job two years ago when she graduated from the pre-med program at the university.
- - - - - The office was located on the tenth floor of the building in which she worked, and it had large windows that overlooked the campus below. Most of the windows were covered with heavy aluminum blinds painted the same dark brown color as the filing cabinets and light fixtures. There were two rooms in the office, one which was the boss’s office and the other contained three desks. The room was divided up into miniature offices by file cabinets. Grace and Norah’s cubby holes faced one another while Vicki’s was on the other side of the room.
- - - - - Norah was an older woman, probably close to sixty and she’d been a widow for five years. Her husband had already died by the time that Grace started working at the office, but Norah talked about him on an almost daily basis. Despite that, she liked Norah. She was an intelligent woman with new stories to tell almost every day.
- - - - - Unlike Norah, Grace did not care for Vicki at all. She was much closer to Grace’s own age, but there weren’t many positive things that Grace had to say about her. Perhaps the thing that pushed her buttons the most is that she was always talking. Sometimes Grace wondered if Vicki even had any work to do, and if she did how on earth she got it done when the woman devoted so much time to irritating the living daylights out of her instead. Her topics never seemed to vary much, either. It was always about the latest romance novel or movie she’d finished, how much weight she was losing, and her boyfriend, Chuck. Grace couldn’t have cared less about how Baron What’s-His-Face saved Lady Whatever and they lived happily ever after, and regardless of what she said, Vicki hadn’t lost a single pound since Grace had known her. In fact, it was fairly clear that she’d gained a lot of weight in that time.
- - - - - “It was the perfect ending. Seriously, I cried,” Vicki said, perching her generous bottom on the edge of Norah’s desk.
- - - - - Norah laughed and leaned back in her office chair, stretching her scrawny arms over her head. “I know, movies like that really get to me. There really are men out there like that. My Robert was that kind of man, flowers and chocolate all the time.”
- - - - - Grace tried to ignore their excited banter. The totals for the account she was working on weren’t adding up. Regardless of what she did on Dr. Morrison’s account, he was missing almost three thousand dollars. If she didn’t find where the missing money had gone, she would have to pull all the files and re-enter them into the program one by one.
- - - - - “That’s the kind of thing I’m waiting for. Chuck’s been talking about getting married again. I love him and everything, but what if I miss out on that big romance? I mean, he’s boring. He doesn’t have a romantic bone in his body,” Vicki said.
- - - - - “Grace! You’re young! You give her advice on this. I’m too old to know what to tell her,” Norah shook her head and then pushed her glasses up on her nose.
- - - - - Vicki giggled. “I know girls like you, Grace. You’re all serious at work, but you’re probably a real hellion when you’re with your man. That’s what I’m after, all that explosion and excitement!”
- - - - - Grace frowned. “That’s stupid. Jake and I don’t have that kind of relationship at all. We’re compatible, have the same values and ideas. We have similar life goals and each of us find the other dependable. We make good partners.”
- - - - - “God, you sound like you’re buying a car,” Norah said.
- - - - - Vicki scooted off the Norah’s desk and wandered over to Grace’s. She narrowed her eyes and thought for a moment. Grace watched her, slowly becoming more and more irritated as the minutes passed. “You’re telling me that no one ever made you light up? Not once did you love someone who wasn’t compatible and dependable to your life goals?”
- - - - - Grace ran her thumb across the scar on her palm and then looked up at Vicki. “No, not once.”
- - - - - Vicki snorted, “Either you’re the most boring person I’ve ever met or . . . or you’re lying.”
- - - - - Grace returned her focus to her computer screen. “Don’t you have work to do?”
- - - - - “Oh yeah, you’re definitely lying,” Vicki laughed and made her way back to her own desk. For the rest of the day, though, Grace kept catching her staring in her direction.
- - - - - When Grace returned to the apartment, she was tired. Vicki’s behavior had worn her down as the day went on until she was so utterly grateful to escape that she felt tempted to cheer upon exiting the building. One of the first things she had done when they moved into the apartment was to put a series of hooks on the wall by the door and a small table with an empty clay bowl on below them. The hooks were for coats since Jake had a cat and the hair would get over them if they were left hanging on the back of chairs. The bowl was for keys, and to her surprise, Jake’s keys were already in the bowl. She dropped her own into the bowl and shrugged out of her coat.
- - - - - Jake was sitting in the living room on the floor playing with the cat. He drew a feather back and forth across the floor. The cat really was huge. His name was Bandit and he had been gift from Jake’s father before Grace had met Jake, back when his father was still alive. Grace had been informed several times that Bandit wasn’t just a “big fuzzy cat”, but he was actually a Main Coon Cat. If nothing else, she had to agree that he definitely reminded her of a raccoon with his black face and tail. “Did you get it buddy?” Jake asked as the cat hooked his paw around the end of the feather and chewed on it.
- - - - - Grace leaned down and gave Jake a kiss. “Hey. How was your day?”
- - - - - “Fine. You?”
- - - - - “Good,” she stretched and cracked her neck. “I think I’ll make some spaghetti for dinner.”
- - - - - “Your sister called.”
- - - - - Grace nodded. “Did she?”
- - - - - “She said that your grandmother is in intensive care. She wants to know if you’re coming home,” he said, scratching the cat under his chin. “Are you?”
- - - - - “No. I’ll call her and tell her later,” Grace said. She turned and walked into the kitchen. She started to search the cupboards for the pasta and sauce to make spaghetti.
- - - - - Jake climbed to his feet and followed her. “Grace, she said that your grandmother is going to die. Are you sure you don’t want to go home? We can take a few days off work and drive down.”
- - - - - “Jake, I said I don’t want to go. I’m sick of both of you trying to make me go back there. I don’t want to go back and I’m not going to, so just let it alone,” she said, depositing the results of her search onto the counter. She didn’t look at him, but instead focused on filling a pan with water from the sink. She transferred it to the stove and sloshed water across the burner in the process. It let out a hissing sizzle and smelled faintly like burnt plastic.
- - - - - “You’ll always regret it if you don’t go, Grace,” he said, laying his hand on her forearm.
- - - - - “Don’t,” she jerked her arm away, and burned her hand on the side of the pot.
- - - - - Jake sighed and took hold of her wrist. She didn’t pull away from him as he held her hand under the faucet and ran cold water across it. “You’re so stubborn sometimes.”
- - - - - “My grandmother won’t remember me even if I do go home,” she said, watching the water run across her hand. He let go of her wrist and she held there longer anyway. Jake didn’t say anything. He just stuck his hands in his pockets. “That’s what Alzheimers does. It takes away everything you love and know.”
- - - - - “Grace,”
- - - - - “Why should I have to go through that, see her like that again? I already know she doesn’t remember me, so she won’t care if I’m not there,” she said. She turned the faucet off and stared at the welt on her hand. It was almost in the same spot as the scar she’d gotten when she was eighteen.
- - - - - “Because you do remember,” Jake answered.
- - - - - “Why does that matter?”
- - - - - “It just does.”
- - - - - Grace let out a single weary laugh. “Why on earth do you bother with me?”
- - - - - He frowned and was thoughtful for a moment. “I think it’s for your cooking,” he said.
- - - - - Grace laughed and turned toward him, resting her forehead on his shoulder. “You’re such a know-it-all sometimes.”
