Whiskey Lullaby(10)

“I know you, Hannah. You used to go around and find all the chipmunks Mr. Moses would start to eat and then just leave to die, and you’d want to fix them all up.”

I deadpanned her. “You’re comparing Noah to the cat with the glass eye?”

“No.” She glared at me. “The chipmunks. Noah is the chipmunk here.” Closing her eyes, she shook her head. “You like broken shit, Hannah, and that boy is broken. You can’t fix him.”

“You don’t fix people, Meg—”

“Well, whatever, just as long as you don’t try to fix him. You’ll end up broken in the process.”

__





Meg left an hour later, begrudgingly. I told her I’d be happy to let her take my shift if she wanted and she flipped me the bird.

After I tied my hair in a messy bun, I grabbed the electric piano from my closet and carted it down the hall. From the hallway, I could hear the theme music to Jeopardy coming from Momma’s room. She smiled when I pushed the door open. “Hey, baby.” Her gaze fell to the keyboard and her grin deepened, her eyes glistening with tears.

“I thought you might like some music.” I placed the piano on the dresser and she muted the television.

“I would love to listen to some music.”

I flipped the switch and the little red light glowed. “I’ll play your favorite,” I said, placing my fingers over the keys. The soft melody of “What A Wonderful Life” filled the room. I glanced up at the mirror and saw Momma with her eyes closed, her head slowly bobbing along with the tune. After the first line, she quietly sang the words, and my throat tightened on a silent sob.

Growing up, I sat next to Momma at the piano while she played. When I turned six, she started sending me to lessons. She told me she enjoyed listening to me play more than she enjoyed playing herself. She’d sit in formal living room with me while I practiced. She’d listen, providing encouragement when I’d grow frustrated because I couldn’t get a chord. She’d applaud when I finished, and when I got the song down just right, she’d sit and sing the lyrics. The piano was our thing, I guess. I closed my eyes, my fingers still tapping over the keys as I listened to her sing. Even with her voice hoarse, it was still beautiful, but the longer I played and the more she sang, the words hit me. Hard.

I fought the tears pricking my eyes. I fought the sob lodged in my throat, and when the last notes played, I took a deep breath and forced it all down because I couldn’t make her feel guilty.

“Thank you, Hannah,” she whispered. When I turned around, she was wiping tears from her face.

“Please don’t cry, Momma.” I went to the side of the bed and wrapped my arms around her. “Please…”

“I never wanted to leave you and Bo.” She choked back a breath. “Not this soon.”

“Don’t talk like that.” I pulled back and swept a tendril of her salt and pepper hair from her face. “You aren’t going anywhere.” Guilt plucked at my heart because I was lying to her. There may not have been much I could do about her physical suffering, but I could lessen the pain to her soul. “If you get on that clinical trial up in Birmingham, you’ll be better in no time.”

A sympathetic smile slowly worked over her lips. “Okay, baby.” And there she was, trying to make me feel better. She rubbed her hand over my cheek. “You better get to work.”

I kissed her forehead. “I love you, Momma.”

“And Lord knows I love you.”

I walked out of her room. Out of the house. The second I got inside the solitude of my car, I completely broke down. I cried until I was gasping for air. I cried until my throat burned, and then I cleaned my face up and put the car in drive, because no matter how my world may be crumbling, life went on.





11





Noah





There it was, five ‘til six and I was speeding down the road trying to make it to Grandma’s in time for dinner. It was just the two of us, but still, she hated when people were late for anything. I slammed on my brakes and turned into her drive.

It was six on the dot when I pushed open the door and stepped into the small living room, taking a deep breath. I loved the smell of her fried—Where’s the greasy smell?

“Grandma?” I rounded the corner and found her sitting at her card table, reading the Bible. I glanced through the doorway of the kitchen. The counter was covered in flour, but there was nothing simmering on the stovetop. “Grandma...”

She glanced over the rim of her glasses. “Hmm?”

“You uh...” I placed one foot over the threshold to the kitchen. “You want me to cook?”

“I ordered pizza.”

“Pizza?”

“Yes, boy, that’s what I said, pizza. Ain’t that what you kids live off of anyways? Pizza and beer?”

That woman had never, in her life, ordered food. Never. Not even for my thirteenth birthday when all I wanted was a pizza from Dominos. No, the woman had me in the kitchen helping her roll out enough dough to feed six teenage boys.

She narrowed one eye at me before going back to the Bible.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” she griped. “I’ve just decided it’s high time I get a lazy streak in me.”

Studying her, I walked to the table and dragged out the chair next to hers. She side-eyed me. Something was off with her.

“What are you looking at me like that for?” she huffed.

“Nothing.” I looked away and leaned back in the chair.

“Pizza should be here any minute.”

“Alright.”

An awkward silence settled between us, and I watched her from the corner of my eye. When she finally turned the page, she used her left hand.

“Let me see your hand,” I said, holding out my palm. Knowing her, I figured she’d accidentally chopped a finger off and was trying to use some damn liniment to stave off the bleeding. She slowly placed her left hand on the table. “Nuh-uh. Your right one.” I wriggled my fingers. “Grandma.”

Huffing, she pushed up from the table and headed into the kitchen, that right arm of hers as limp as a noodle.

“Were you gonna tell me?” I asked, standing and following her into the kitchen.

“Ain’t nothing.” She stood on her tiptoes to open the high cabinet above the sink. She moved the CVS brand of Tylenol out of the way along with the St. John’s Wart, and she came out with the bottle of whiskey she’d had hidden up there since I was a kid. The only reason that didn’t get drank when I was a teenager was because I respected her too much.

Shaking my head, I walked up behind her and took the whiskey from her hand. “I’m taking you to the hospital.”

“I’ve got Bunko tonight.”

I closed my eyes and tossed my head back on a groan. “You can’t be serious, Grandma.” I looked at her and pointed at her drawn up hand. “You’ve had a stroke!”

“Since when you been a doctor?”

“Grandma, don’t make me call the ambulance.” I cocked a brow and she glared at me, her jaw clenching.

“Don’t you dare.”

I pulled my phone from my pocket. “I will and then when you get back home, Patty Wilder will be over here asking you a thousand questions.” Grandma couldn’t stand Patty Wilder—she called her a curtain twitcher, said Patty was always standing at her window trying to see whose business she could get in, ‘just a twitching her curtain.’ If there’s one thing Grandma couldn’t stand it was being the topic of the gossip circle.

She grunted. “Fine, take me on in, but I’d be just dandy taking a shot of that whiskey. It’ll wear off.”

“Grandma, strokes don’t wear off.”

She hmrphed at that.

“Come on.” I grabbed her purse from the counter and tucked it under my arm before I gently took her hand.

“Always making a fuss about things, I swear, can’t nobody age with dignity no more.”

_





The antiseptic smell that seems to linger in ERs always nauseated me. And it was unbearably strong that night.

They had just put Grandma into a room and started an IV. Oh, Grandma was all sweet smiles and ‘yes darlin’s,’ but the second the nurse left the room, she attempted to yank the IV out of her arm.

“No, Doris,” I smiled and gently moved her hand away. “You can’t leave.”

“Don’t Doris me, and I most certainly can!” She frowned as she shifted in the hospital bed and huffed.

“You had a stroke. You can’t leave.”

“A minor stroke.” Another agitated huff. “I ain’t got time for this mess. I done told you, I’ve got a Bunko game tonight with the ladies from church.”

“Grandma…” I narrowed my eyes at her.

“Fine.” She shrunk down into the bed and crossed her good arm over her chest. Ill as a hornet. “My granny had a stroke back in nineteen-thirty-five and she just drank a shot of whiskey and went on her way. If it’s my time to die, it’s my time to die. At least I could die playing Bunko. They’ve got one of them Instapots as the prize and I had to go and have a stroke. Lawd have mercy.”

I dragged a hand over my face because I didn’t know what else to do.