Open My Study
My sister climbed out of the moving truck the morning after we buried our grandfather, pushed her oversized designer sunglasses up on her head, looked at the second floor of his house, and smiled.
“I call the master bedroom.”
I was standing on the porch in one of Grandpa’s old flannel shirts, holding a cup of coffee I hadn’t touched. The black funeral wreath was still hanging on the front door behind me. The ribbon on it said Beloved.
I hadn’t seen my sister in seventeen years.
I hadn’t seen my parents in seventeen years either.
They came up the porch steps like they already owned the place. My mother looked me up and down. My father didn’t look at me at all. Two men in gray coveralls were opening the back of the truck, pulling out blankets and dollies.
Then my mother pushed two black garbage bags into my arms.
“Pack your things, Emily,” she said. “Clothes, toothbrush, that ugly quilt. Whatever belongs to you.”
I just stared at her.
She leaned closer. Her voice dropped.
“You were Grandpa’s burden. He’s gone now. This house is ours.”
I didn’t argue with her.
There was no need.
Because a few days before he died, lying in a hospital bed with tubes in his arms, my grandfather had told me exactly what to do when they came back.
And he’d been right about every single word.
I was five years old the last time my parents drove away from me.
I remember it the way you remember a dream. Pieces. Colors. A feeling more than a story.
I remember a pink suitcase with a cartoon cat on the side. I remember the back seat of a brown car that smelled like cigarettes and French fries. I remember my big sister, Brianna, who was seven, sitting next to me with her headphones on, ignoring me, the way she always did.
I remember pulling into the gravel driveway of a white farmhouse with green shutters and a big maple tree out front, and an old man coming down the porch steps with his hands in his pockets.
“This is your grandpa,” my mother said. “You’re going to stay with him for the weekend. Be good.”
I’d never met him before. I didn’t know I had a grandpa. My mother never talked about her family. When I asked once, she said, “I don’t have one,” in a voice that made me never ask again.
He crouched down in the gravel so we were the same height. He had a white beard and bright blue eyes and big rough hands, and he smelled like pipe tobacco and cut grass.
“Hi there, Emily,” he said. “I’m Walter. But you can call me Grandpa, if you want. Or Walter. Or Hey You. I answer to all of them.”
I giggled. I couldn’t help it.
“Hey You,” I said.
“Yes, ma’am?” he said, very seriously, and I giggled harder. 