Grandpa Samuel stared at him and then his eyes went to me.
"Yes, Melody's here, too, Grandpa."
He looked at Cary and then at me.
"You got her. Good, good," he said before looking out the window again.
Cary shook his head and shrugged. I stepped forward to take Grandpa Samuel's hand from him.
"Grandpa Samuel, we came to visit you to tell you Grandma Olivia's sick. She has a nurse at the house," I said. "The doctor didn't think she would get much better, but she already has."
He looked at me.
"I told her no, but she said it has to be. Tell your mother I'm sorry," he said. "I told her no."
"It's no use," Cary said. "I told you. We're wasting our time. He doesn't even know where he is anymore. He won't remember us being here afterward, Melody."
"I guess you're right," I said.
Suddenly, Grandpa Samuel turned to us again, this time his eyes more vibrant.
"You go look and you'll see it wasn't me. I didn't sign anything."
"Look where?" I turned to Cary. "Why does he keep saying these things?"
"You know he's confused. It probably doesn't mean anything," Cary reminded me.
"I told her no," Grandpa Samuel repeated. "I told her it was a sin."
We spent another fifteen minutes or so trying to get Grandpa Samuel to understand who we were and why we were there, but he never seemed to grasp the present. He was lost in his memories, drowning in them.
On the way out, I complained to Mrs. Greene about Grandpa being stuck in his room on such a beautiful day.
"For your information," she replied, "he was out all morning and was just recently brought in. Unless you plan on being here twenty-four hours, I would advise you not to criticize," she snapped and walked off.
"I'd rather die in my bed than be brought here," I said. "Grandma Olivia is not wrong in being stubborn about it."
"It's just lucky she can afford to have a nurse around the clock," Cary reminded me. "Otherwise, she would be someplace like this by now."
He took me home and went back to work on the boat. I still had a slew of finals for which to prepare, but as I sat in my room studying, my mind kept wandering back to Grandpa Samuel's eyes and his great fear of being blamed. Why was he so adamant now, at this time in his life? Was it because he thought he was soon to meet his Maker?
How had they arranged for my grandmother to be stuffed away at so young an age? I wondered. What sort of diagnosis had the doctors made? What had Grandma Olivia said about her? Curiosity drew me away from my work and I went downstairs and out the back to go around the house to the basement. It was in there that I had found Mommy's pictures and learned about the secrets this family buried in its closets. I thought maybe Grandpa Samuel was right. Maybe I should go back and see what I could find again.
On the north side of the house there was a metal cellar door. I didn't think anyone had been in it since Cary had brought me last year.
&nbs
p; I hesitated in the doorway. What did I really expect to find? Did I want to find it? Did I want to read all the horrible things? I paused and thought about the twisted and sick old woman now trapped in her own body upstairs. Perhaps justice had been done. Perhaps it was time to forget.
And yet, I couldn't turn away. Maybe it was morbid curiosity; maybe it was a need to understand. I continued down the stairs and opened the next door, stepping in to pull a cord that turned on a swinging, naked bulb to illuminate the basement. I stood there for a moment, recalling the boxes on the metal shelves where we had found the photographs. I went back to them and began to sift through the cartons, their sides, tops and bottoms, limp from the dampness. There were so many photographs, old school papers, old bills, delivery slips, a trail of purchases and events that were unremarkable, the same sort of trail every family left, I thought.
All the boxes were the same. Grandpa Samuel's declining mind was filled with corridors of
distortions, I thought. It was all just part of his garbled imagination now. I started to rise to leave when I saw what looked like a metal box buried under some wooden boards on the other side of the basement. I went to it, lifted off the boards and pulled out the box. It was locked and there were no keys in sight.
Why had this been left buried here and why was it the only thing locked? I brushed it off and took it with me when I left the basement. I didn't go back into the house. I went around to the garage where I knew there were tools and found a screwdriver. It took a while, but I worked one between the lid and the box and gradually, after some effort, got the lock to snap open. Then I lifted the lid and looked inside.
There was a small pile of documents in business envelopes. I took one out, opened it and removed the paper. Then I sat and read.