What I Thought Was True

Perched on our battered front steps that afternoon, Grandpa Ben performs his own ritual as methodically as Mrs. E. enacts her tea one. Emptying out his pipe. Tapping the fresh tobacco out of the pouch. Packing it in.

I told Grandpa everything. Or almost everything. Not about Henry walking in on Cass and me. But everything else, my voice hushed but sounding loud as a scream in my own ears. I expect Emory, crashed early on Myrtle, lulled to sleep by the soporific Dora, to bolt up, eyes wide. But he slumbers on, freeing Grandpa to smoke, which he hates to do around Em with his asthma. Grandpa says nothing for a long time, not until the pipe is lit and his already rheumy brown eyes are watering slightly in the smoke.

Then finally, “We do not know.”

That’s it?

“Well, exactly, Grandpa. But . . . but . . . it’s clear Henry doesn’t want his mother to know either. That can’t be good.”

“There are things you don’t want Lucia to understand. Not all of them are the bad things.”

I feel heat sting my face. “No—but those things aren’t like . . . Those things are personal.”

“Pers-o-nal.” Grandpa draws the word out slowly, as if he can’t remember what it means in English. That happens every now and then. More this year than last, more last year than the year before.

“Personal. Belonging to me,” I translate.

Grandpa Ben tilts his head, as though he’s still not clear, but then he reaches into his pocket, pulls out his worn dark leather wallet, nudges it open, hands me a picture.

Vovó.

Oh. Not that. My stomach hurts.

I think I know what Grandpa’s doing.

I remember my Vovó, emaciated and pale near the end, but in this picture she’s warm and strong, all curvy brown arms holding up a silver-flecked fish half as big as she is and laughing. The grandmother I remember, wholehearted and real, always smiling, not the solemn one formally posing on the wall, frozen in time.

I look at the photo for only an instant before I hand it back to him. I know what he’s saying, without saying, and I don’t want to hear it. Don’t want to think about it. But I say it out loud anyway.

“Other people’s stories.”

He nods at me, a small smile. “You remember. Sim. Histórias de outras pessoas . . .” He trails off.

This is as close as we have ever come to talking about it. Another memory of that long-ago summer, nine years ago, the year Cass’s family was on the island.

It was one of those New England years of weird weather. Hurricane season runs from June to November here, and it’s usually a non-event. Something brews off the coast of Mexico, blows out to sea long before it hits us here. Marco and Tony watch the path on the Weather Cha

Nic and I had the run of the island that summer. We were seven and eight. Marco and Tony hired us to catch blue crabs off the creek bridge to sell, hooking them with bent-out safety pins, piling our catch into Dad’s emptied-out plastic ice cream buckets, but that was pretty much the only structured activity. We could climb onto the Somerses’ boat and jet off when we wanted to. We could have sand fights with Vivie at the beach. Work on swimming out to the boat float, then the breakwater, our biggest goals. Dad was at Castle’s 24/7 . . . he’d just extended the hours. Mom was newly pregnant, with Em, nauseated most of the time. If we left her a box of saltines and a stack of books, cheap and stained from the library or a yard sale, we could go off until sunset.

Vovó was nauseated too, but for a different reason. One I wasn’t supposed to know about.

“It will only worry your mother,” Dad explained to me firmly, looking sharply in the rearview mirror after we dropped Vovó off at the doctor’s. “She’s having a hard time as it is.” Hahd. Heavy on his accent. Which I knew meant he was worried.

“It will be fine,” Grandpa said stoutly. “Your Vovó, Glaucia, she has been fighting germs her whole life.”

But this needed more than Clorox and Comet, of course. Vovó got sicker, and the story for Mom was that she was working longer hours—that’s why she wasn’t coming by as much, looked a little thi

So I told Mom. It felt like she started crying then and cried for the rest of the summer.

It was the angriest I’ve ever seen Grandpa. He threw a pan—he never did things like that—his eyes as wide with shock as my own when it hit the floor, eggs and linguica spattered everywhere. And yelled at me, all these words I’d never heard, strung together in ways I couldn’t understand. Except for that phrase, because it wasn’t the last time I heard it. “Histórias de outras pessoas.” Other people’s stories—Mom would say it later, when Nic and I scrambled to pass on some bit of Seashell gossip, some nugget of information to talk about at di

Grandpa reaches out for me now, nudges his knuckles beneath my chin. Once, twice. But I don’t nod back. I feel a little sick. We’ve never brought that up. The whole topic, my part in it, ended when he threw the pan. Or later that evening when he bought me an ice-cream cone, cupped my chin in his hands and apologized, then said, “We will not speak of it again.”

“Pfft,” he says now, thrusting his hand rapidly through the air as though shooing away flies. “Enough. Enough of the long face. Here, querida.” He hunches back on his hips, reaching into his pocket, pulls out his customary roll of bills, held together with a rubber band—the wallet is only for pictures—extracts two fives and hands them to me. “Go out with the young yard boy. Be happy.”

“What about the Rose of the Island?”

“To grow in the salt and the heat and the wind, very tough, island roses.”

“You sound like a fortune cookie, Grandpa.”

His eyes twinkle at me, and his broadest smile flashes. “Rose is strong, Guinevere. With other things not known for sure, I would rely on that. And here is your boy now.”

Grandpa waves enthusiastically at Cass, strolling up with his hands in his pockets, as if flagging down a taxi that might pass him by. He makes a big production of ordering Cass to sit down on the steps, inspecting his blisters, then punching him on the shoulder with a wink. “Take the pretty girl and go now.” As we walk away, he calls one last phrase after us. “Even though they look like that, eu a deixo em suas mãos.” Heh-heh-heh.

What? I trust her in your hands?

Oh God. What happened to the knife salesman?

“You sure you don’t know any Portuguese?” I ask.

“We really have to work on your greetings, Gwen. ‘Hey there, babe’ would be a lot better.”

“I’m not going to call you babe. Ever. Answer my question.”

“Nope. All I got was that he sounded happy. Phew. Thought he might have heard”—he jerks his head in the direction of the Ellington house—“the Henry Ellington story. Almost got you in big trouble there.”

I’m so grateful that this story is mine right now that I turn, pull him close so quickly, I can hear a startled intake of breath, see a little spot he missed on his chin shaving, see that the base of his eyelashes are blond before they tip dark. “I’d say you’re worth the risk.”

“Forget what I said. Your greetings are great. Perfect.”

I’m just about to touch my lips to his when I hear a loud “None of that fu