I flashed back on the time when I graduated from eighth grade, and my sister was graduating from high school. My dad rented a 35-foot cabin cruiser. The whole family, including my great-grandmother, went on the boat and cruised through the Canadian San Juan Islands for a week. That trip made a real impression on me. I loved watching my dad steer that boat. He was so smooth and confident and in control, it made me feel really safe on the water. I still carry that with me.
And I loved having all that time with Great-grandma Mimi. I could sit and listen to her tell stories all day. Great-grandma Mimi came to Washington State in a covered wagon. A covered wagon! I could just see her – in a kid’s mind, of course, your great-grandmother is always an old lady – but I’d try to picture her as a young woman, and as she’d tell me her stories, I’d imagine what it must have been like at those moments of her life – when she first heard a radio, when she first got a telephone. She was there when the automobile was invented, when men went off to the First World War, and when they came home. And there I was, just a kid cruising on the open sea between beautiful islands, the cool Canadian breezes giving you a little chill, even on a summer’s morning, the sun gleaming off pristine green waters, and my great-grandmother Mimi touching my cheek and telling me what it was like the first time she heard a phonograph.
A few years back, I was talking with my kids about the moon landing. It was the fortieth anniversary or something like that, and it was all over the TV, and they were asking me about it, and I told them to try to imagine what it was like for my great-grandmother that day. She came to Washington State in a covered wagon, and now she was watching a man walk on the moon. That’s really something. I know people talk about all the technological advances we have today, with computers and all, but to me it’s nothing compared with what my great-grandmother lived through. The changes she saw unfolding around her.
I looked over at Edith. She had turned her back to me; to gain her composure, I thought. But then I noticed a little dog in her yard, and Edith was walking toward it.
It was a cute dog, one of those Lhasa Apsos, only about seventeen years old, missing most of its teeth, and blind as a bat. It was a stubborn little dog, too. There was a cart out in the front yard, and the dog was walking along and, because it was so blind, it bonked into the cart. Instead of going around it, the dog just walked forward and bonked its head on the cart again, over and over. It would be a while before I figured out that the dog had got its stubborn streak from its owner.
“What’s your dog’s name, Edith?”
“Oh, that’s Mimi,” she said. “Mimi’s been with me forever.”
“You’re kidding! That’s was my great-grandma’s name. Mimi.”
Edith smiled. She seemed to take some kind of special pleasure in that coincidence.
For the next hour or so, we chatted about nothing. Edith wanted to know all about my family: my son, Willy, who was sixteen, pitching and playing middle infield for the baseball team; and my daughter, Kelsey, a year older, who was into what they call competitive cheerleading. I would never in a million years have heard of competitive cheerleading if my kid hadn’t been into it, but now I was becoming something of an expert. And of course my wife, Evie, the one who holds us all together.
When I mentioned Evie’s name, Edith’s eyes opened wide. “That’s just quite remarkable,” she said. “One of my best friends was named Evelyn. We called her Evie, too. One of my best friends in the world. That was back in England, of course. Those were some days we had, Evelyn and myself.”
It all started to make sense, in a way. I hadn’t put two and two together the first time she mentioned she worked for the British government, but from the way she spoke, not with an accent but with such precise and unusual diction, you could guess that maybe she had lived somewhere else for a long time. “When did you live in England, Edith?” I asked.
“Yes, yes,” she said, not really answering my question. “I haven’t thought about Evelyn in a long time. You know, these kinds of connections are important. People think they aren’t, but they really are.”
It was comforting, in a way, hearing Edith talk like this. A little like being back with Great-grandma Mimi. I didn’t feel right then that I could ask Edith any more about Britain and Germany and all that, but I knew it would come up again. I got a little bit of the thrill of anticipation: I couldn’t wait to hear more of her stories.
I suppose it had been a long time since anyone had hung around Edith’s fence just to pass the time of day. I think maybe when you get old, people make assumptions about you – that you’re crochety, or solitary, or that you don’t want to talk to people – and then those assumptions get in the way. In Edith’s case, I guess she’d given people lots of reasons to make those assumptions – but still, as I got to talking with her, I realized that there was a lot more to her than just that. Maybe it was just like the mall project that was taking shape behind her house: in spending afternoons talking the way we had, we managed to clear away some old obstacles, to break some new ground. It was a nice feeling. Like starting out on a long walk, and knowing you’re headed in the right direction.
Maybe it was because of all that, or maybe not, but about 10:30 one morning, my cell phone rang.
“Hello, Barry? Is that you?” I didn’t know the number, but I recognized the voice right away.
“Morning, Edith. This is Barry. Everything okay?”
“Why yes, Barry, everything is fine. Thank you so much for asking.”
There was a long pause. I had the feeling she was searching for the right words, so I just held tight and waited.
“I would like to ask you something,” she finally said. “I don’t feel comfortable driving today. I was wondering if you might drive me to my hair appointment. I’d certainly understand if it’s too much trouble, of course. I know you’re a very busy man. I certainly don’t want to be a bother.”
I was surprised at the request, because I already had figured out that she valued her independence above just about anything else. Like when I’d go check on her, I had to make it look like I was just happening by, or she’d get angry. Edith seemed like the kind of person who didn’t like you to do things for them – or didn’t want to appear to be asking, anyway. So that’s why the call kind of caught me off guard. Still, it was almost a relief to me, because every time I saw her get in the car to drive, I had the sense that the opportunity for an accident was pretty high.
“Sure thing, Edith. No problem. What time?”
“The appointment is at one thirty,” she said. “Perhaps you could meet me at a quarter after.”
“Not a problem,” I said a second time. “I’ll meet you by the car. See you then.”
“Thank you,” she said, slowly and sincerely. “That’s very kind.”
A few minutes later I told my project manager, Roger, why I’d be gone for a little while that afternoon. No sooner were the words out of my mouth than he started giving me the business. “Hey, so you’re going to be driving Miss Daisy, huh? Well, I’m gonna have to record this moment for posterity.”
At a quarter after one, I was out in front of Edith’s house, standing next to her 1989 blue Chevy Cavalier. It was a sturdy little car, with a dent in the right front fender. She’d inherited it from a friend she had taken care of; she’d helped him through his dying months, and when he passed, he left her all his stuff, including the car.
As I helped Edith into the car, there was Roger, grinning from ear to ear, snapping away with a little digital camera. He was being polite about it, so as not to embarrass Edith, but after I got her into the car and was walking around