“Ooh-wee!” Grandma said, echoing my thoughts and fanning her face with her hand. “Let’s hurry to the car so we can get the AC going.”
Grandma’s house was about two hours from the Dallas airport. It was a straight shot, but the scenery was the same for the entire drive, so once we left the skyscrapers behind I felt like we were driving in circles. The highway stretched on for miles between towns, flanked by green and brown fields and dotted occasionally by low wood fences and brick ranch homes. When we did slice through a town, all that we could usually see of it from the freeway was the giant water tower painted with the name of the town, along with a Conoco station and perhaps a McDonalds or Dairy Queen.
Without any hills to obscure it the sky was enormous, bright blue and filled with clouds puffed out like giant cotton balls floating across the sky. I scanned the horizon on all sides, and with the scenery the same everywhere I couldn’t get a sense of which direction we were heading. At home I always knew where the ocean was and could orient myself. Here I felt lost.
My eyes began to grow heavy from the monotonous scenery, and the next thing I knew Gabby was shaking me to wake up—we were finally in Crisper.
I blinked against the brightness of the sun. We’d gotten off the highway and were rolling along the main street that led from the town to the outlying areas. Many of the stores looked new, and I noticed that there were a lot of chain stores—something I didn’t remember Crisper having too many of. As if she’d read my mind, Grandma piped up and explained that Crisper had been enjoying a little economic boom the last few years, which had spurred a lot of new houses and businesses.
The distance between the shopping centers grew larger the farther we drove out of town, until we were only occasionally catching a glimpse of the homes that sat nestled within ranches and farms, like Grandma’s. With a surge of excitement brought on by memories of childhood visits to Crisper, I started to recognize the homes that we passed.
Grandma slowed down and turned onto the dirt road that led to her house. As many times as I’d seen it, I was still struck by the red color of the dirt in north Texas. Not only was it so different than the dark, moist dirt we had in our coastal town, but with so much more undeveloped land in Grandma’s part of the state there was just so much more of it. As we passed the first house on the road, a man pushing his lawnmower tipped his straw hat to Grandma and she smiled and waved.
“That old Charlie Booker’s going to need some help with his lawn this year. That man sure is getting old!” We giggled at Grandma’s comment. It was funny to hear someone Grandma’s age calling someone else old.
We passed several driveways and I knew we were getting close. Grandma turned into her long gravel driveway and Gabby started squealing with excitement as soon as we saw the familiar house. It was strange—the house, with its white stucco walls and the long, shaded porch with stone columns that wrapped around three sides of the house, seemed so familiar, yet not exactly as I remembered it.
As I scanned the yard, taking in the changes and feeling of nostalgia, I noticed the little house across the yard where Grandma’s brother Gil lived. It was the house they’d grown up in. It wasn’t until years later Grandma and Grandpa had built the bigger house that Mom grew up in and Grandma lived in now. Like Grandma’s house, Gil’s was almost as I remembered it, but not quite. Sand-colored brick covered the base; beige concrete topped off the upper half. I wondered if we’d see Gil on this trip, but before I could think any more about it, I got an odd feeling, like there was someone watching us arrive. I looked at the curtained windows, which seemed to peer back at me like dark, secretive eyes. I reasoned that I, too, would probably peek out my window if someone was pulling into my yard, but for some reason I didn’t think it was Gil who was watching us. I dismissed the feeling as fatigue and imagination, and thankfully Grandma snapped me out of the eerie reverie.
“We’re home!” she announced, guiding her car into the cool, dark garage. “Let’s get inside and call your mother to let her know you’re here safe.”
That night after I’d finished unpacking, I looked around the room that Gabby and I would share for the visit. It had once been our mother’s room, but several years after Mom and her sister Sally had moved out, Grandma moved the twin bed from Aunt Sally’s room into mom’s room, and converted Aunt Sally’s room into her sewing and crafts room.
As I did every time we visited, I picked up the photos that decorated the dresser and studied them. There was one of Mom and Aunt Sally when they were toddlers. Mom was holding a doll and Aunt Sally was holding a ball. I thought that was fitting, since Aunt Sally had gone on to become a college basketball star and was now a famous women’s basketball coach in Kentucky. Another photo showed teenaged Mom and Sally with Grandma and Grandpa. I grew a little sad looking at pictures of Grandpa. He had died before I was born, but somehow I felt like I knew him. One of the largest photos was of Grandpa in his army uniform just before he went to Korea. He looked so sharp and confident I could see how Grandma must have loved him a lot.
The last photo I picked up was a black and white snapshot of Grandma at about my age in a large group of teenagers and kids taken at a church function, according to the inscription taped to the back of the frame. Grandma’s hair was piled high on her head in the style of the day, and black pointy-rimmed glasses framed her beautiful, young face. Her sister Ginny stood next to her. Of the little I knew about Ginny, I knew that she had gone missing during a tornado storm when she was fifteen. I also knew that there was something mysterious about her death, because they never found her body. In the photo, Ginny and Grandma were standing close, leaning their heads together and laughing carelessly. I felt sad knowing that not long after the photo was taken Grandma’s family was devastated by that loss.
On the other side of Grandma was her brother Gil. It was hard to imagine that someone so young and vibrant, with his wide smile and dancing eyes and his hair slicked back perfectly, now lived the life of a hermit in the small house behind Grandma’s. I leaned over to peer out the window at the house in back. All the curtains were drawn.
Great Uncle Gil was a recluse who’d been hiding in his house for the past ten years. He’d been especially close to Ginny, and was crushed by her disappearance. As soon as he graduated high school he left town for college and law school, eventually becoming a powerful lawyer in Dallas representing the cattle barons. When he suffered a heart attack, he surprised Grandma and the rest of the family by coming back to Crisper to live in the house in Grandma’s backyard. The only person he really talked to was Grandma, who brought food over several times a day and made sure he was all right.
We’d never officially met Gil, but I’d secretly seen him. When I was six, soon after Dad died, we came to stay with Grandma for a while. One night I awoke from a nightmare. I called out for Mom, but she had gone to a late dinner with an old school friend. Grandma hadn’t heard me, so rather than wake baby Gabby in the crib next to me, I decided to go in the family room and ask Grandma for a glass of water. As I slid off the bed, I heard a strange voice coming from another room. It was low and soft; a heavy drawl. I thought it was the TV, because it sounded like the newscaster Grandma liked to watch. I shuffled down the hall, and as I drew closer to the family room, I realized the voice belonged to a real person. Not sure if I should make myself known, I hunkered down against the wall and listened.
“I’ll come get you at nine,” Grandma had said.
“I’m fine,” the man protested with a raspy voice.
“You are not fine. You’ve got a nasty bug and you’re going to Dr. Hutchinson’s. Hang on a minute and I’ll pour you some orange juice to take back.”
Tentatively, I poked my head around the corner. Grandma moved around the kitchen, still talking to the man whose back was turned to me. He was only slightly taller than Grandma. His gray hair was greasy, and in need of a trim. One hand rested on his hip, as if he planned to defy Grandma’s plans for the morning.
It’s Gil! I thought with panic. I had heard enough about him to guess