(this untitled short story was originally posted May 25, 2011, but due to a ghostly encounter this morning that made my black shard of a heart go ka-thud, I thought I’d re-share …enjoy.– A.A.)

*** 

“What a fucking dump,” Darren said; as soon as it left his lips he knew his sister expected to hear it, because her lips twitched into an oh-here-it-comes smile. “No, I mean it, Kyles. Smells like a crypt. When’s the last time somebody even cracked this door?”

“Dude, hush your face,” she replied, but there was no real force behind it: one of Kindhearted Kylie’s gentle reminders.

Darren answered his own question. “Guess no one’s been here since Gramps kicked it. What’s that, eight years?”

Now Kylie jerked her chin with a meaningful frown at the back door, where Gramma was picking her way down the porch steps. Grams had a few more to clear–was handling them with a spry, eager step Darren hadn’t noticed this morning when they picked her up at the senior’s home in Inverness–and then it was smooth sailing for the old gal across a tiny stretch of grass to the beach, a wide swath of soft beige nestled by a grey-blue Atlantic surf. Neither Kylie or Darren had seen it since before they could ride bikes. Emmy never had.

Darren set his acrylics kit and easel against the kitchen wall, cringed as 5 yr old Emmy did her monkey-leap  up onto the counter top by the back window. “You wanna watch that, kiddo? We’re like a fucking hour to the nearest hospital and I’m not driving on that orgy of potholes again today.”

“Daring said a swear!” Emmy reported dutifully. “I heard the F-swear!”

“I know, sugarplum,” Kylie said. “Why don’t you climb back down and we’ll set the groceries in.”

“I wanna watch Gramma,” Emmy said. “Gramma’s funny.”

Kylie shushed her, but Darren had to laugh.

“Yeah, funny-farm funny, kid.” He shook his head, but his smile was genuinely fond. “Fuckin’ funny farm–”

“Darren,” Kylie sighed, and this time it was her please-don’t-piss-me-off tone. “Could you just bring in the luggage?”

“I don’t even know why we’re here.” His sister, 18 now and every bit the grown up lady with her placid restraint, ignored him. He tried again. “No internet. No TV. No fu–phone. Seriously, I get no signal out here, not one bar, how is that possible?”

“She asked to come,” Kylie explained to the inside of the fridge, unpacking mustard and relish. “It’s the only thing she’s ever asked us for.”

“She might as well have asked us to take her to the moon, she’s out of her mind, now,” Darren insisted, but he dropped his voice to say it. He might be young, and he might be rough around the edges, but Momma didn’t raise no asshole, his memory bank finished the thought, cruelly, in his mother’s voice. She used to say it so flippantly, and their father would tell her to watch her mouth in front of “little ears”. And Mom would laugh, and shrug-wink at Darren, as if to say he was plenty old enough; how fiercely he’d loved her for that.

He brushed aside an unwanted tangle of grief in his chest and said, “OK, I get why we’re here. But you can’t expect me to like it.”

“No, I know you won’t, but you’ll do it for her, Darren,” Kylie said. “She hasn’t got much time left, and she wanted to come one more time. It’s only a weekend. She’s probably thinking about–”

Darren looked away when his sister’s voice broke, and let her have a second to recover.

“About Gramps. And joining him. That’s all.” Kylie unpacked apples and put one on the counter.

Emmy piped, “In heaven, right Daring?”

“Sure, kiddo.” Heaven, right. If you say so.

Darren went back into the sunshine, glad to escape the dreary cottage with its motes of dust clogging the weak beams of light cast by grimy windows. The rental car ticked quietly under the shade of an elm, the hard waxy leaves of which also ticked in a barely-there breeze. The cabin was in rough shape, not ugly enough to be artistically interesting, but the ocean … maybe. He could see the old lady stopped dead in her tracks, one unsteady hand shading eyes that barely worked anymore. Maybe he’d paint her like that: staring out at the old wooden pilings, all that remained of a dock and memories of fishing boats tied off, the water lap-gurgling beneath them, memories of plunging off the end head-first into the salty spray. Grams looked like she was waiting for something. High tide. Low tide. Death, perhaps, he thought morosely. The ghost of her husband, or her daughter Sheila, Darren’s mother. Who knew what was going on inside that head at this point? The doctor said the old lady had weeks left–weeks, not months, now–and she was making less sense when she did talk, which was rare.

He ran a hand through his short spiky hair, regretting the recent black dye job, and wondered how he was going to make it through this weekend.

Emmy was straddling the sink on her knees, watching Gramma on the beach, when Darren came back into the kitchen with their bags. “She’s gonna fall,” he warned, but as usual, neither girl paid him much attention. “At least stop bopping around, Em, eh?”

“But he’s gonna be here soon!” Emmy squealed, and gave a single slap of her hands, clutching them over her heart.

Kylie chuckled. “Who, baby?”

Kylie had gone and pulled out the old stack of photo albums to flip the dusty covers while the tea kettle warmed up. Darren caught a fleeting glimpse of his mother’s dark hair and grit his teeth. With an unpleasant start, he pictured her chopping up that apple on the counter, but for a five year old Darren,  her capable hands making quick work of a simple task of motherhood. Since her passing, the Porter clan had made it through, but Darren hadn’t let a single goddamn person hug him in five years, and today, here, he badly wanted his mother.

He passed his hand through his gelled-stiff hair again. This time he used his nails. “Neighbour droppin’ off the extra key?”

“”Not that I know of,” Kylie murmured, distracted.

“She’s waiting for him. He’ll be here,” Emmy said solomnly over her shoulder at them. “He comes every year. For real.”

Kylie slid a picture out of the album. “You mean this guy, honey? Grampa?”

“Christ,” Darren exhaled hard. “Don’t encourage her I-see-dead-people bullshit, Kyles, c’mon. Gonna be a long weekend.”

Emmy giggled into her palm. “Daring said poo.”

Kylie put the picture in the little one’s hands. “Yeah, he’s a laugh riot.” She shot him a sarcastic grin. “This guy, sugarplum?”

“Nu-uh,” Emmy sang. “Not him.” She shot one chubby finger almost accusingly at the album wedged horiztonally on the bookshelf near the neatly spined back-issues of National Geographic. “Him!”

Darren rolled his eyes and took two strides forward to snag the album before Kylie could touch it. He flipped through the pages, his unease put to rest: the pictures were all essentially the same, and there was no him anywhere to be seen. Gramma standing on the end of that dock, the one that had been reduced to phantom wooden fingers now, bundled in a heavy sweater or cardigan in each shot, one hand on her necklace, the silver one with the square bevelled locket. Gramma at 35, 43, 56, 70. The sea was a fierce backdrop, white-capped and raging behind her, dark and brooding; late autumn, Darren thought. Every photo the same pose, the same smile: beaming and brilliant, warmth to rival the sun. It made Darren think of his mother’s smile and again he was shot in the gut with a bitter-sweet ache.

He said quickly, “There’s no man in these pictures, kiddo, sorry.”

“Well, someone took the pictures, and obviously that someone is Gramps, look at the love in her eyes,” Kylie said, a surprise in that she was so close to his ear and he hadn’t noticed her there. She reached around his shoulder to flip the last few pages, barren of photos but containing folded notes of yellowed paper, and those tiny cards tucked into gifted flowers, always the same note: Hitchin’.

“What do you suppose the old coot meant by hitchin’?” Darren asked, and he could have sworn he felt a draft. His shoulders inched up as his irritation returned. “Is that how they met? Was Gramps a hitchhiker? They were hippies …”

“She’s getting tired,” Emmy said softly, her shoulders falling. “He’s got to come soon. It’s their weekend.”

“Don’t worry, scamp,” Kylie said, and Darren thought he heard his sister’s voice break again. “Gram and Gramps had a lot more than a weekend together.”

“Not him,” Emmy breathed.

Darren didn’t like her tone, not one bit. His irritation shot through the roof, but he couldn’t imagine why. He tossed the album on the table, noted unhappily when Kylie sat down to pour over it some more.  “What’s say we drop the bull– the poo, eh Ems? Kettle’s hot. How about some hot chocolate with little marshmallows?”

“Daring almost said a swear,” Emmy said numbly, barely aware of them now.

Kylie looked up from the album with another card, this one the distinctive blue ofTiffany’s. “Maybe this is from when he bought her that locket she’s been wearing forever. She kept it. She kept all this stuff.”

“He won’t miss it,” Emmy said.

“Wait a minute,” Kylie’s brow furrowed. “1998, isn’t that the year Gramps took that post in the Yukon and didn’t come back until after Christmas? He sent us each money, told us he was getting a fat cheque for isolation pay, remember?”

“So?” Darren folded his arms across his chest.

“So, how could he have taken this picture dated October 1998 if he was in the fu–in the Yukon? Or this one, in 2003, when he took us to Montana?” Kylie wanted to know, and her smile had vanished. “Darren, who took this picture? And this one! Who took these?”

“He wouldn’t miss it,” Emmy insisted. “He just couldn’t. They’re connected.”

“OK, enough,” Darren snapped. “No one’s there, no one’s coming. Get down before you crack your head.” He came at her fast, maybe too fast, hauling the girl by the armpits and setting her with a flat-footed jolt on the floor.  When her little face crumpled and the tears sprang up, Darren’s temper flared. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“He promised!” Emmy shouted, and kicked him hard in the ankle.

“Emily Anne Porter!” he roared, though it had startled him rather than hurt. “We don’t hit in this family!”

“And there’s no fucking swearing, either, Daring Porter! Momma didn’t raise no assholes!” the five-year-old shouted back. She couldn’t have sent her siblings reeling any further if she’d pulled out a ray gun and claimed the kitchen for the alien overlords.

“Holy shit,” Darren breathed, and started to laugh; he wasn’t sure whether it delighted or devestated him, but he was pretty sure he just heard his mother’s voice in Emmy’s mouth. He looked over to see Kylie stammering and blinking, equally at a loss.

Emmy took off, pelting out the back door in her little red sandals with Kylie scrambling after her. Darren followed at his own pace, favouring his ankle, which was starting to throb. Kiddo wouldn’t get far. She wouldn’t go in the ocean, not at this temperature. It was October, and this was Cape Breton Island, not Cuba. Kylie had caught Emmy easily, had one hand on her slim shoulder, and they stood completely still, as though he’d taken out his canvas and painted them: Kylie’s artificial auburn hair swept up off her neck, matching nearly to the shade Emmy’s bright red romper, and Emmy’s dark hair like Mom’s, that true-black hair that had crested into this world like Death’s black cowl while their mother bled out in the back of an ambulance. How morbid his thoughts had become, he chided. It was this place. And Gramma.

And that’s when he saw her. Grams was in the water. She’d hiked her pants up, those easy-on cotton pants in old-lady pastel blue, hiked them up past the knees that had been giving her nothing but trouble for thirty years, and she was dancing. Dancing in the ocean. Darren felt his jaw go slack until the cold air fingered down his throat, but he couldn’t have drawn breath if he tried.

Though the water was calm, all around her splashed the results of her graceful movement, and ripples did the Charleston at her side. Darren’s feet never stopped. He had to see. His gut told him to run, and his heart hammered to a stop, but his eyes … an artist’s eyes must always see. Gramma’s head rocked back and she laughed with delight, the kittenish giggle of a young woman, a sound they’d never heard her make, a sound that made Kylie’s hand fly out to quest for him. Kylie caught him in the midrif, a watchman’s armbar. That’s where he stopped, rooted in place. Because the old lady spun then–fuckin’ spun, how did she do that?–and his traitor eyes could not have missed, down low on her back, the clear wet cupping handprint on Gramma’s shirt.

“Darren …” Kylie choked. For the first time since they were kids, Darren let his big sister hold his hand. It shook as badly as his did. “How?”

“I tole you he wouldn’t miss it,” Emmy said, with relief that bordered on bliss. She nodded once, and turned her tiny face up them smugly. “They’re connected.”

Darren, throat gone thick and heart roaring, could only stare as his grandmother spun in the ocean and laughed once more.

Her feet never touched the ground.