Rom-Com Collection (Part 2). Kristan Higgins
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meeting, the doctor had recommended an assisted living facility for seniors. Noah, who’d lived alone since my grandmother had died years ago, had gone white. Without forethought, I found myself offering to live with him for a while ‘til he got used to his new situation. And though the curmudgeonly old bastard would never say so, I liked to think he appreciated it.
Noah was watching a Deadliest Catch rerun. We both loved reality TV, but this one was our favorite. As the hardy Alaskans battled it out on the Bering Sea, I sat on the couch, Bowie leaping neatly up beside me and laying his beautiful gray and white head in my lap, blinking up at me in adoration. My dog had one brown eye, one blue, which I found very appealing. I made a kissing noise at him, and his ridiculously cute triangle ears swiveled toward me, as if I were about to tell him the most important news ever. “You,” I said, “are a very good dog.” Because really, what message could be more important than that?
Glancing around, I saw that Noah, as usual, had ignored my pleas to keep our place tidy. Newspapers were strewn around his chair, as well as a bowl filled with a puddle of melted ice cream and an empty beer bottle. Yummy.
Noah and I lived in an old mill building, half of which was his workshop, the other half our living quarters. The downstairs housed the kitchen, a den and a huge great room with forty-foot ceilings and massive rafters. The great room was circled by a second-floor catwalk, off which were two bedrooms. My own was quite big and sunny, with plenty of space for my bed, a desk and my rocking chair, which was set in front of two wide windows that overlooked the Trout River. I also had a gorgeous bathroom, complete with Jacuzzi and separate shower. Noah was down the hall from me and mercifully had his own bathroom. There’s only so much a granddaughter will put up with.
At the commercial break, Noah hit Mute. “So? You have a good time?”
I hesitated. “Um … well, the party was at the funeral home. Mom and Dad were there. It was fine.”
“Sounds like a shit bath to me,” he said.
“You were right to stay home,” I confirmed. Noah avoided family get-togethers as if they were hotbeds of ebola. He wasn’t exactly close with my father, his son. Dad’s brother, Remy, had died in a car accident at age twenty, and I gathered from the little Dad said that Remy was the type of son Noah had expected: rugged, quiet, good with his hands. My father, on the other hand, had spent his life schmoozing people as a drug sales rep. And, of course, there was my parents’ divorce. Noah, who had adored my grandmother and nursed her through the horrors of pancreatic cancer, fiercely disapproved. “I brought you some cake, though,” I added.
“Knew I kept you around for a reason,” he said. “Here.” He reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew a little hand-carved animal … a dog. A husky.
“Oh! Thank you, Noah!” I gave him a kiss, which he tolerated with a mere grumble. He’d been making his grandchildren—and great-grandchildren—these little animals all our lives. I had quite a collection.
“You seem down,” Noah observed. This was deep in Dr. Phil territory from a man who didn’t spend a whole lot of time navel-gazing … in fact, Noah was the least sentimental person I’d ever met. He never spoke of my uncle Remy, but there was a picture of him in Noah’s room, the one thing that never needed dusting. When Gran died—I was six at the time—Noah didn’t shed a single tear, but his sorrow was palpable. I’d drawn him a card every week for months to try to cheer him up. Even when the bandages came off his leg for the first time, his only comment was, “Fuckin’ foolish.” No self-pity, no maudlin mourning of his limb. To comment on my emotional state … shocking.
I stared at him, but he didn’t look away from the muted television set. “Um … no. I’m fine.” I glanced at my wrist. Still wearing Mark’s gift, loser that I was. “Noah, I’m thinking I should probably find a …” the word boyfriend sounded so lame “… a special someone.” Ooh. Not much better. Far worse, in fact. “Care to share the wisdom of your long life?”
“Don’t do it,” he said. “Nothing but heartache and misery.” Underneath his white beard (Noah looked like a malnourished, possibly homeless Santa), his mouth twitched. “You can live here forever and take care of me.”
“And I do so love taking care of you,” I said. “How about a nice enema before bed?”
“Watch your mouth, smart-ass,” he said.
“Hey. Be sweet to me. I turned thirty today,” I reminded him. Bowie licked my hand, then turned on his back so I could see that his big white belly was just lying there, all alone and unrubbed.
“On second thought, ‘twouldn’t hurt for you to get a move on with life, Callie,” Noah said unexpectedly. “Don’t have to stay here forever.”
“Who else would put up with you?” I asked.
“Got a point there. You gonna talk all night, or can I watch Johnathan save this guy?”
“I’m going to bed. You need anything?”
“I’m fine, sweetheart.” He dragged his eyes off the TV. “Happy birthday, pretty girl.”
I paused. “Wow. It’s that bad?”
His beard twitched. “Cahn’t say I didn’t try.”
A few minutes later, washed and brushed and in my comfiest jammies (pink-and-yellow striped shorts, yellow cami), I was sitting in my rocking chair. Turning thirty was a momentous event in a woman’s life. Also, I needed to … I don’t know. Process things. And there was no better place to process anything than my Morelock chair, which I’d received twenty-two years ago to this very day.
There are two halves of Vermont—Old Vermont and New. Old Vermont was made up of crusty, rugged people who dropped their Rs and owned the same American-made pickup truck for thirty years, didn’t feel the cold and were immune to blackflies. Noah was Old, of course … he might not speak to his neighbor, but he’d cut and stack five cords of wood if that neighbor became sick. New Vermont … well, they were people who drove Volvos and Priuses, owned expensive hiking boots and hung out their laundry as a political statement as much as to get the clothes dry. They were friendly and cheerful … not like Noah at all, in other words.
Like my grandfather, David Morelock was Old Vermont. He was a furniture maker and Noah’s longtime compatriot. One summer, a reporter happened to be vacationing in St. Albans, where Mr. Morelock lived, and stumbled upon the furniture shop, learned Mr. Morelock had no formal training and didn’t even use power tools … just went out to his barn each day and worked. Two months later, the New York Times featured a story on Mr. Morelock, and bingo! He went from local craftsman to American legend. Suddenly, all those New Vermonters had to have a piece of Morelock furniture, and just like that, the old man had more work than he could manage. Before the story in the Times, his pieces had cost a few hundred dollars apiece. After the story, they sold for thousands, much to the amusement of their maker.
The day I turned eight was a bleak one in my personal history. Dad had moved out the week before, and in all the distress, my birthday was kind of forgotten. Mom was not only pregnant, heartbroken, furious, but also trying to manage a double funeral for a couple who’d died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Hester was away for the summer at some mathlete camp, and the end result was that Mom had hurriedly poured me some Cheerios, then shuttled me over to my grandfather’s. Noah popped me in his truck and drove to St. Albans. I don’t remember the reason.
At any rate, the two men got talking, and I wandered around the drafty old barn, picking up scraps of wood, drawing my initials in a pile of sawdust, trying not to be bothered by the fact that no one remembered that I was eight years old, because even then I understood that grown-ups had a lot of problems. Then I saw the chair.
It was a rocking chair, the type meant for a front porch. Made from honey-colored tiger maple, it was truly a work of art, elegant and slender, almost glowing from within. With a glance at Noah and Mr. Morelock to ascertain that they were too busy to notice, I gave it a little nudge, and it glided back soundlessly. Could I sit in it? There was no sign