Grandma sits up from her spot on the couch and looks at me, her eyes big with amazement, “I was a sex-addict all my life but you know? I never once acted on it.” She lay back down, reclining on the array of pillows that none of are ever supposed to touch. As old as she is, she sits cross-legged and chuckles, “But I sure had fun with your granddad from time to time.” Her glee irritates me no end.She’s swinging that top leg back and forth like she does when she’s happy. My husband Tommy says it’s like watching a cat swish its tail and seems spooky in a person that old. I watch her. He’s right. She is strange, and not just from the Alzheimer’s eating her brains.

“Dr. Phil,” is on the TV. He must be talking about sex addiction or something and I’m baby-sitting Grandma while Momma drives her caregiver home. We don’t call them maids anymore although I wish I had a maid to grade the papers in front of me. I don’t think I’ll ever get to the bottom of the stack I collected this time.

Momma says she’ll pick up something from Piner’s Restaurant on the way home. I swear she needs to pull herself together, she’s gone there every night this week. It’s been over a year since Daddy died and she only seems to be getting worse. She’s not even that old, only forty-nine. What did she think when she married a man old enough to be her daddy? Did she think she was going to outlive him?

But he was a good Daddy and I miss him too.

Grandma’s still giggling and talking to herself or maybe to Dr. Phil. She’s lucid today in the bizarre way she has of being lucid anymore. On good days she lives in a world that none of us ever knew about; a world of drop-dead truths. I don’t know how my old Granny was a sex-addict but somehow it’s true. She tells us to our faces the exact truth about each and every one of us and doesn’t give an inch. We’ve all learned to agree to everything she says and, besides, she’s usually right. She told my brother Lewis he was a self-centered pig and there isn’t much he can say after selling Granddad’s antique shotguns without telling anyone and then pocketing the money. She told me I was a spineless jellyfish and weren’t no saint like I acted. She also said as worthless as we were, Sherlene is by far the most useless one in the bunch and she’s right on all counts.

Still, taking her out in public is getting trickier and trickier. We quit taking her to church a couple of months ago after the incident Momma refuses to discuss.

The phone next to me rings and I nearly jump out of my skin before answering it, but it’s only my best friend Karla checking in with me. We have been best friends since she moved here when we were both thirteen and every night since then I’ve included Karla in my ‘God blesses’.

“So how’s it going today?”

“Alright I suppose. She seems to be in a good mood at least.” It’s the days of endless tears and gut-wrenching despair about something she can never name that are the worst. “How about yourself?”

“I’ve been thinking about what that mystic told us.”

Last weekend, at Karla’s insistence, we’d gone to a psychic fair in Bristol. I’d only gone to get as far away from my life as I could for one afternoon, but since then Karla can’t seem to talk about anything else.

“She weren’t no mystic. She was a psychic intuitive,” I say.

“Whatever. Doesn’t it intrigue you?”

“Not much. Nothing she said made much sense to me.”

“Well it sure did me.”

I’m so sick of this topic. “All the woman said was your heart belonged to someone in your past. That could be anybody. You know everyone in town.”

“Quit it, you know she was talking about Brian.”

“I knew no such thing.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking about it and I’ve decided to write him.”

“Oh Karla, it took you two years to divorce him.”

“I know.”

“What if he’s still drinking?”

“What if he isn’t?” Karla’s voice has the same breathless quality of surprise Grandma’s had earlier and it irritates me all over again.

“Shoot Karla, I don’t know.” And I don’t. I don’t know one damned thing. The mystic told me I’d left myself and my heart wanted me to want to come back, whatever in the hell that means.

“You coming tonight?”

“I guess. Momma got Freda to baby-sit and she’s picking us up something for dinner right now.”

“What’s Tommy doing?”

“Something with the Ruritans, he’ll take care of himself. I can always count on Tommy to take care of himself.”

“Well I’ll see you there. I’ve got a lot to talk about tonight.”

It’s Wednesday and a lady comes from Bristol to do a bereavement support group at our church. It takes her over an hour to make the trip and we are all pretty impressed with that. Tonight is the fourth group. I think there are supposed to be twelve altogether. I really don’t feel like going but I will.

I’ll talk about Daddy and Karla will talk about her divorce. Karla wasn’t sure if divorce was the right thing to grieve over when we first went but the bereavement lady said it was. She said, “Divorce is a loss too, just like a death”.

Karla had to come up with something to grieve so she could come to the group and support me. Of course I said I was there for Daddy but I’m really going for Momma who has come to depend on me a whole lot. Momma is the one who really needs to go. So basically Karla and I both go to support Momma. But now Karla’s taking it seriously and has been sharing a lot and crying and all. Now she wants to contact Brian, what’s going to happen next?

We have a new minister, a woman, and I can tell you that’s something for around here. Some people quit when they heard but she’s alright. In fact I like her a lot. Pastor Richards saved Momma from the depths of her grief when Daddy passed. She also arranged for a Grief Counselor to come and do the group for a bunch of us from around here. She called Momma personally to tell her about it. It may not have been her best idea though because it doesn’t seem to be helping Momma much. If anything she’s only getting worse and when I said so to Pastor Richards she smiled and said, “Sometimes we have to get worse before we get better.” I almost snapped at her, it made me so angry, but I’d die before I’d do anything like yell at a minister, and anyway, for the most part she’s okay.

I’m tired of waiting for things to get better, and personally, I don’t know how much worse it can get. I try not to talk about it but I’ve been wanting to get pregnant for over five years and the invitro we tried, and are still paying for, didn’t take. Tommy says we can adopt but that’s a long-shot for a white baby and I honestly don’t want someone else’s problems with an older white child. I’ll never forget a girl I grew up that was adopted by some well-meaning folks who didn’t understand the devil had gotten to her long before they did. I’m not going through that.

I don’t think Tommy much cares about our child even though he says he does. He’s happy with his friends at the Ruritans, hunting with his buddies in the fall and now that fishing season is on us he spends every night he can out on the river, setting trot lines for catfish and drinking with his pals.

For me, losing Daddy, losing my chance at a baby, helping out with Grandma and supporting Momma is giving me all the grief I can handle.

Momma pulls up and I’m not even half-way done. She can’t carry anything with the canes and all so I go out to the car and get packages, put them on the kitchen counter and then go back to grading. I can tell it doesn’t sit well with her but I can’t be at her beck and call every second or I’m going to be the next one in the family to kick. Besides, she doesn’t have much to do. It’s already cooked. But I know on the off-chance it’s not steaming hot like she likes, she’ll reheat everything anyway.

Still it’s hard sitting in the family room trying to grade papers while listening to her brain in the next room go on and on, “I do all I can for them from the moment they leave my body until I’m hardly able to move from one spot to the next and when I need them just a little, where are they?”

Momma is what you’d call a large woman, having already blown out both knees. For some reason the last surgery never healed right, which is why she can’t to do the physical therapy the doctor ordered. He says there is nothing more he can do, which I think is the wrong thing to say, still the other doctors we talked to can’t find the reason for her pain either. It’s unfortunate, that’s for sure.

It’s also unfortunate that I take after her. “I like big boned women,” Tommy had said when we were dating, but I heard him call me hippo-hips to one of his friends at a wedding we went to a while back. He doesn’t know I heard and I will never let on I did.

Momma seems to have forgotten she’s mad at me by the time we sit down to dinner. Freda’s here and eats with us. She’s a nice person and I think a lot of her. She takes good care of Grandma, we never have to worry.

We say goodnight to Grandma and go to the church. It takes Momma a while to get up the handicap ramp so I always make sure to arrive with plenty of time to spare. It’s embarrassing to stand there while she grunts her way up and she doesn’t want me there anyway so I go on in. The Grief Counselor is there ahead of us and I say to her, “Hey there.”

She asks about my week. I never know how to answer her so say, “Fine, just fine,” even though it wasn’t.

That nutcase Glenda comes in next. Her husband died a few months ago and what a mess she is. She’d been in the same class with my daddy which makes her near seventy-six. Momma says Glenda doesn’t know how to age gracefully and it’s the truth. She dyes her hair shocking colors you wouldn’t believe; different shades of copper and sometimes a burgundy tint in the fall to match a sweater she favors. On top of everything she’s too cheap to go to the hairdressers nearly as often as she needs to so ends up looking like a red-haired skunk from time to time. Her white stripe isn’t wide enough yet to be awkward and I’m glad of it; in small towns we may talk about our crazy people, but nobody else better. She’s rumored to drink which I personally believe is true.

Tonight’s topic is “Coming to Terms with Your Grief.” I know this because I’m watching the Grief Counselor write it on the chalkboard in the Sunday school class where we meet. Everyone else that’s coming gets here and our session begins.

The Grief Counselor seems earnest as hell explaining how we all need to open ourselves up to change. I think it’s real amusing she’s telling a group of Southern women like us to ‘open up’, something that is congenitally impossible for anyone in the room. Opening up doesn’t happen in small, rural communities and you’d have thought an educated person like her would know it.

Glenda begins crying about missing her William and everything he’d done for her. Evidently she’s been so spoiled by the man she’s unable to cope with daily life; he even did all the cooking and now she’s stuck eating out all the time because the fool never bothered to learn. She goes out for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Lord, even Momma does better than that.

I wait for her to finish but then Momma chimes in, clucking with sympathy and talking about the ache she has over my brother and sister who refuse to discuss Daddy, yet also refuse to allow her to remove one item of his from the house. The same brother and sister who are always too damned busy to help with Grandma and I always wonder why Momma cares at all what they think anyway. Momma and Glenda fuss over each other like they are fast friends and each other’s strongest support.

Momma’s saying how worried she is about Lewis and Sandy because they keep their grief to themselves, how worrying about them keeps her from grieving for Daddy. Also with them giving her crap about not getting rid of his stuff it makes it difficult for her to get over him, “How can I get over his death when I have to live with his toothbrush next to mine?”

The Grief Counselor leans toward Momma and asks, “What would you like to get rid of?”

Momma’s shocked. You can tell she hasn’t quite thought this one through; the tears on her face seem to stop mid-way down. I don’t think anyone’s ever questioned her when she’d go on and on about how my brother and sister are destroying her with worry and it’s fairly amazing I never noticed before now either.

I notice it now, I see her scam; she never really gave one thought to getting rid of any of Daddy’s things; she only wanted to milk this stuff for sympathy. Not only Daddy’s death but Lewis and Sherlene too, she’s not worried about them. I wonder if she even cares.

Then I blink out. I mean really blink out. I have no idea what happens next because I black out and come to sometime later with everyone hovering over me and I’m feeling nauseous as hell. They help me off the floor and back on the couch. I’m glad when everyone finally stops fussing over me then Momma says maybe I’m pregnant.

Well, now it’s my turn to cry. From relief, but I can’t tell anyone that. Momma is smiling, sure my tears confirm the blessed event to come. All I can think is, ‘Thank god I’m not pregnant.’ I’m free to leave and I’m going to take myself up on it. No one in the world knows but me right now, not even Karla who will be fine with Brian, I already know. The relief in my stomach feels wonderful.

I can see exactly where I will be this time next year, by myself in Bristol, or maybe even Lexington. Teaching seventh graders like I do now and living in an apartment community to begin with. It won’t be easy, I know that. I’m not fashionable and I’m not a kid anymore but I can have a life. I can find out what interests me instead of taking any old thing that comes along.

I look at Momma with all the sympathy she ever wanted from anyone and smile through the tears dripping down my face. She smiles back, clueless. I hear an echo of my grandma laughing somewhere in the background and know, even without an entire brain at her disposal, she understands.