Grandma was sleeping still, so after the kids and I had dressed, we trooped back downstairs to look around the first floor of the house with dismay. The task of reclaiming the cluttered, chaotic rooms and returning them to their original intention as a space suitable for living in seemed almost insurmountable, especially with the knowledge that I had only the tiny, unfocused hands of two four-year-olds to help me. I wanted to get them busy with a task adequate for their abilities, so after assuring them over and over that it was okay if they got the old clothes I had dressed them in wet and dirty, I set them loose in the kitchen with a big bucket of soapy water and two scrub brushes. I knew it would take them twice the time it would take me to scrub the kitchen floor, but back home, it was one of their favorite tasks. Lily would pretend to be a princess in disguise and Aiden her knight protector, also in disguise, both of them forced to scrub the floors like slaves in order to gain the trust of their enemy. It was a fun game I had introduced to encourage their help back home, and they had quickly latched on. A nd if it kept them busy and giggling happily, it also would give me the freedom to tackle the living room without any little critters underfoot.

There was so much clutter in the living room that I wasn’t ever sure where to begin. I decided after picking my way around for a few minutes that it would be easier for me to decide what to keep in the house, what to box up and stick in storage, and what to throw out if I could see exactly what I was dealing with. So I tried organizing everything into neat, orderly piles. However, that didn’t work for the sole reason that there just wasn’t any space to put the piles. I needed to clear some space out first, so I began lugging things out onto the front porch. I didn’t care that it would make us look like white trash for a day or two –in the long run, it would make my work that much easier.

I wound up with a big pile of blankets and pillows in one corner of the porch, most of which I had never before seen in my life, and about a thousand books in another corner, most of which had never been read. A bunch of my old toys and games had been scattered all over the place, so I saved what I thought Lily and Aiden might enjoy and carted those upstairs, but the rest I loaded into big bags and set to the side to be donated.

Under the debris against one wall of the living room, I found a trunk containing all sorts of old treasures, but I had not the time nor energy to dig through. I opted to push it to the side to sort through later when I felt more like it. However, to get it to the space I wanted it, I needed the coffee table moved, but there was no better place to momentarily move it, and it was continuously getting in my way anyways, so I came to the decision it needed to take a trip outside, at least for a little while. Unfortunately, I overestimated my own strength and, upon reaching the door, realized that although I had turned it on it’s end so that it would fit through the door, I lacked the strength to pick it up by myself even the couple inches necessary to get it over the doorframe. And even had I been able to budge it over the doorframe, I didn’t want to push it along outside as I had inside for fear of tearing it up on the concrete sidewalk.

I had just decided to give it one last try and managed to lift the edge nearest me a couple inches off the ground when suddenly the entire thing lifted up and began pulling me along.

It’s funny, but I knew exactly who it was. I couldn’t see anything but the person’s shoes, since the table was built with only two wide legs stretching the width of the table, and the person didn’t say anything or do anything that would have conjured up any familiarity to anyone else. But when we finally set the table down on the driveway and both straightened up, I wasn’t surprised in the least to see Timothy.

For a frozen moment, we stared at each until, with a broad grin, I greeted, “Timothy Birdsong! What in the world are you doing here?”

“Just visiting my favorite girl,” he returned with an equally large grin, quickly sidestepping the table to wrap his arms around my waist and lift me into the air, pressing me tightly against him. The chubby cheeks and thick torso that had been Timothy’s curse on the playground as a child had, sometime in the past five years, undergone a change of state. Now muscles bulged beneath his tanned skin. His shoulder-length hair had been buzzed off and revealed the chiseled face of a man. He looked nothing as I would have envisioned him, as handsome and clean-cut now as he had been awkward and cumbersome as a teenager.

“Look at you!” I gasped, running my hands up his arm and laughing. “I hardly recognize you!”

His lips parted to show the same gap-toothed grin though as he shrugged, “I maybe hit the gyms a few times since you left. Stopped eating so many hamburgers. And you... you look fantastic! But then, you were always the pretty one of us all.” I laughed and shook my head, though it was by no means the first time I had heard it. He gave me another tight hug, this time letting my feet remain on the ground, and breathed into my hair, “It’s so good to see you again. I... you came back.”

My shoulders relaxed a bit as I nodded, “Yeah, with Grandma so sick, I decided it was now or never...”

“Right, right,” he agreed, pulling back. Otherwise I wouldn’t have come back ever and he knew that, but he at least did a good job of appearing not to hold this against me. “Cleaning house?”

“God, yes. It’s like a junkyard in there.”

He laughed, “Yeah, we’ve been trying to get to it but we didn’t really know what... what’s worth keeping when...”

“I know.” He didn’t specify who “we” were, but I knew as though someone had whispered the name in my ear, running icy fingers up the back of my neck. The base of my spine tingled.

We fell silent for a moment, neither sure quite what to say. It had been so long since we had spoken. He had taken the bus with me to the airport and held my hand as I checked my bags and hugged me as I cried, but we hadn’t spoken a word since then. Timothy had always been my understated friend. Of the lot of us –me, Michael, Zane, Catherine, Alex, and he– I had considered myself furthest from him. But when the shit hit the fan, Timothy had been the one holding the umbrella over my head.

“I missed you. I worried about you a lot, you know. Your grandma’s kept me updated with what you’ve been up to.”

“I missed you, too, Tiny Tim,” I returned with a playful smile. The nickname was still as ridiculous now as it had been when bestowed upon the overweight eighth grader. “But you of all people understand why I–“

”Yeah, I do,” he nodded and reached out to squeeze my hand, hearing the preemptive crack in my voice. “I understand.” I refused to cry but God, this was ridiculous. Standing here, both adults now. I expected Michael to come running out of the house and tackle Timothy to the ground, Alex to leap into the fray, Zane to pull me away from danger, Catherine to laugh at us all from a distance. She was always so distant.

Fortunately, I was saved from having any emotional break down when a little voice from the front door called out, “Mommy?” I turned to see Lily and Aiden both standing in doorway, peering out through the screen to watch me with the utmost curiosity.

“Yes, babies? Come here, come here,” I encouraged, motioning them over once Timothy had dropped my hand.

“Oh my God, look at them,” Timothy muttered, his eyes widening as Lily pushed the screen door open and they came bounding down the steps to crash into me. “They look just like you.” Taking my glassy eyes as a silent cry for help, it was Lily’s instinct to beg me to pick her up so she could kiss my cheek and brush my hair back behind my ear the way I did when she cried, while it was Aiden’s instinct to tackle my legs and then writhe his way around and through them, rolling around on the grass to make me laugh. When I did laugh and smile, he let himself stretch out on his back in the grass, giggling and trying to roll away when I let my foot rest on his stomach, pretending I was going to step on him.

Lily kissed me on the cheek again, then turned to Timothy and asked warily, “Who are you?” no doubt blaming him for my tears.

“I’m Timothy–“

”This is Uncle Tim, a really good friend of your mommy’s,” I introduced, putting my hand on Aiden’s head when he stood beside me to look up at the newcomer. “You’ve heard me talk about him.”

“You did?” Aiden asked, and when I nodded, he made a face that he clearly didn’t remember.

Lily suddenly gasped, though, and cried, “Oh, I think you made a tree house with Mommy!”

“That I did,” Tiomthy nodded, his grin a mixture of awe, surprise, and amusement. “I can tell you all sorts of funny stories about your mom that I bet she won’t tell you.”

“Reeeeally? Like what?” Aiden inquired, taking a step closer to Timothy and away from me, an obvious sign he was interested.

Timothy crouched down to be on Aiden’s level and offered, “Tell you what. I’m going to help your mom clean the house for a while, but later I’ll tell you as many stories as you want, okay?”

“Yeah!” Aiden nodded, then gave a sheepish smile and stepped back closer to me, realizing he had ventured away from the security of his mommy.

I let the moment sit for beat before poking Lily in the side and guessing, “Are you two finished with the kitchen floor?”

“Yes! Now what?” She held her hands up questioningly and made such a sweet face that I just had to blow a raspberry on her cheek to make her squeal with laughter and wriggle around when I bent over to hold her upside down.

“Now what? I’ll tell you what! You two are going to help me in the living room now!” I answered, making sure her hands were on the ground before carefully helping her lower her feet to the ground to fall onto the grass beside Aiden.

“Are you gonna help?” Aiden asked, pointing at Timothy with his foot.

Timothy nodded, “Yep, I’m here to help. The Hideaway Society for Blue-haired Ladies has sent out up the bat signal for the big guns.” He flexed his muscles.

I rolled my eyes and swatted at his arm, then clapped my hands for everyone to get inside and get to work. The twins instantly took off for the house ahead of us in a race that almost ended with disaster had the couch not provided a safe crash zone.

It was still early in the day, so I set Lily and Aiden to work doing little sorting and organizing jobs that kept them happily entertained. Timothy several times made commented on how well-behaved and helpful and mature they were which all made me glow with pride and share winks with them, as if we were all hiding their true personalities from him. Of course, compared to the little terrors we had been as children, I supposed they were pretty angelic.

We took a break for lunch, sandwiches and chips that we ate sitting on the back porch, since the old chairs on the front porch were buried in a swamp of stuff. Lily and Aiden then insisted they weren’t tired and didn’t need naps, so I let them stay up on the condition they help us finish the living room. To be fair, they did help for a while, carrying little things where Timothy or I directed them, but the excitement had worn off after the full morning, and so after another hour or so, I told them they could take their toys into the kitchen and play where I could see them. They happily sprinted off to do so while Timothy and I continued plugging away in the living room, making idle chitchat about what we had been up to, each carefully avoiding the dozens of dangerous topics threatening to leap into full view at any minute

Honestly, I had expected seeing any of my friends from that summer to stir up such terrible, horrible memories that I simply wouldn’t be able to cope with seeing their face. So it was a pleasant surprise that glancing over at him as he would pick up a box or stack or papers gave me almost a relieved feeling. Of course, out of everyone, he was definitely the least controversial. But baby steps.

And where was Grandma during all this working? No, I hadn’t forgotten about her. Several times throughout the course of the day, Timothy or I would venture upstairs to peek into her room, but always she was sleeping or happily watching TV and fussed at us to leave her alone. I wasn’t sure if she was going to the bathroom, and she didn’t touch the soup I had warmed up for her lunch until several hours later, but I decided not to make a big fuss until Connie got home since, much as I hated to admit it, she seemed to know a lot more about what was going on than I did. I had absolutely no experience when it came to caring for the elderly, and for Dad there had been no long, drawn out death during which he needed care like this. At least in that regard, his death had been merciful to us. For Grandma, I wasn’t even sure what care she needed. Connie had made it sound on the phone like Grandma was going to pass on any minute, but in my opinion, she just was acting her age. Forgetfulness and weakness and taking lots of naps all came with old age, didn’t it?

It was a little after five and I had finally decided to call it quits for the day, satisfied that we had moved all the furniture back in and sifted through most of the things, leaving Timothy with about a dozen garbage bags to haul out to the curb, when Timothy suddenly called out, “Hey, look! It’s your grandma’s old record player.” I tossed my armful of blankets onto the couch and glanced over as he tugged my grandmother’s heavy brown record player out of the closet and dragged it over to the space between the back of the couch and the entrance to the kitchen. Lily and Aiden wandered in to see what he was yelling about, though they just squinched up their faces with confusion when he held up the record that had been sitting in the player for probably going on five years.

“It’s a record,” he laughed, holding it out for Lily and Aiden to touch.

“Be careful with it,” I warned them, coming over closer to supervise and make sure they didn’t drop it. “Just touch it. See? It’s like a big CD. It plays music.”

“In that?” Aiden asked, reaching up to finger the big silver horn looming on the top of the box.

Timothy nodded and, setting the record back in the player, wondered out loud, “I wonder if it still works...” When nothing happened, he pursed his lips, scratched his cheek, then shook his head and grinned, “I bet I can fix it.”

“Well while you do that, I’m going to get dinner ready. Are you going to stay?”

“Am I invited?” he teased, only to laugh when Lily rolled her eyes and sighed dramatically, “Of course, Uncle Tim!”

“Uncle Tim...” he laughed. “I’m an Uncle!”

I made Lily and Aiden come into the kitchen with me while Timothy dug around the house for the toolbox my Grandpa had kept. But while Lily happily let me help her onto a chair so she could stand at the counter and help me cook, Aiden wandered over to stand a few feet away from Timothy and watch him work. I smiled over at the two boys, letting out a sweet sigh at the look of pure fascination and curiosity on my son’s face as he watched Timothy fiddle with the inner workings of the antiquated music box. Then I made a face at Lily that made her giggle and stick her tongue out at me, and we were in the middle of this goofy face contest when a loud waltz suddenly rattled the kitchen. Aiden and Lily both shrieked loud enough to wake the dead and jumped up or down from their positions to run over and grab onto my legs, and even after Timothy had scrambled to turn the volume down, continued shrieking in each other’s faces until I popped them both playfully on the butts and told them to hush.

“Well, I got it working,” Timothy laughed, turning it on again but monitoring the sound much more closely this time.

“Good. Dinner’s almost ready, and this way we’ll have some music for our meal,” I grinned, yanking the pot of peas and carrots off the stove as it started to boil over. “Tim, why don’t you show them how it works so I feel like they learned something valuable today?”

He nodded and smiled back at me, apparently flattered at this responsibility of his as an uncle, and began showing them how to put the needle in the grooves and how to change the volume. Lily and Aiden listened with a rapt attention that had me the envy of all their little friends’ mothers whose own children weren’t half so well-behaved. I ached for what I and my friends had put our parents through. Here I was, a single young mother who started as a teenager, and I had been blessed with such amazing children. It was a nice little irony I liked to flaunt when catty mothers were rude to me back home, which was often the case.

“Here, do you guys want to pick a record out?” Timothy offered, pulling the collection off of the shelf built into the record player. The idea thrilled them and they plopped down to inspect the record covers as he held them up until finally narrowing it down to two records. From there they began to argue about which to play. Fortunately, Timothy solved the problem before there even was much of one, explaining they were going to listen to one record before the other because that one started with a B and the other started with a E and B comes before E in the alphabet. It was logic that apparently satisfied my children, and logic I hadn’t expected but goofy Tiny Tim. He helped Lily put the record on the player, then helped Aiden lower the needle into the right groove, and soon the tunes of Bob Dylan floated through the kitchen as the four of us set the table together.

Back Main Next