Two Coffee Cups
After that conversation, I backed off.
And I started noticing things.
Grandma occasionally declined dinner invitations because she already had plans.
She began keeping fresh flowers on her kitchen table.
Once, I stopped by unexpectedly and noticed two coffee cups in the sink.
“Had company?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Anybody I know?”
“At my age, honey, I know practically everybody.”
Another afternoon, I found her humming while she folded laundry.
“What’s that song?”
“Something a friend recommended.”
“What friend?”
She looked over her glasses.
“Are you interviewing me?”
I laughed.
I figured she’d made friends through swimming or dancing.
But one afternoon, something happened that made me question whether I’d understood her birthday at all.
We were walking past the community center when Grandma stopped to look at a notice about an upcoming dance.
“Want me to ask your brother to go with you?” I offered.
“No, thank you.”
“Still nervous about dancing in front of people?”
She gave me a strange look.
“Why would I be nervous?”
I reminded her about the birthday incident.
She was quiet for several steps.
Then she said, “You know, I never actually asked Arthur whether Darlene was right.”
“What do you mean?”
“I let somebody else tell me what he thought of me. Then I canceled without giving him a chance to say anything.”
“Did you ever explain why?”
Grandma looked ahead.
“We’ve talked.”
I stopped walking.
“You’ve talked to Arthur?”
“Of course. He lives down the street.”
“About what happened?”
She smiled.
“Some things are between two people, sweetheart.”
I wanted to ask more, but I remembered what she’d told me about managing her happiness.
So instead, I asked, “Are you okay with how things turned out?”
She looked at me.
“More than okay.”
For the first time, I wondered whether the story we’d been trying to fix had already changed without us.
I still didn’t suspect anything romantic.
Grandma had always been friendly with neighbors, and I assumed she’d made peace with Arthur.
But I stopped bringing up the canceled dance.
Around the fifth month, Grandma asked my middle brother to help get the blue dress altered.
She’d lost enough weight that it needed taking in at the waist.
He offered to buy her something new.
“No,” she said. “I still like this one.”
A few weeks later, she called all three of us.
“Come over Saturday afternoon,” she said. “I’ve got something to show you.”
“What is it?”
“You’ll find out.”
I assumed she wanted us to see the dress.
May you like
My youngest brother thought she might have bought a new outfit for a dance.
Neither of us guessed the truth.
