Springvale

Chapter One

I hadn’t made it to Springvale’s city limits before I realized that this was not the town of my childhood. The park I had spent hours at every day for many summers had been bulldozed and tarred over as a parking lot for the sparkling Springvale 20. The antique shop my grandmother had spent hours perusing had been replaced with an expensive boutique I knew only by name. The landmark bakery was now a Starbucks, and the library was a driveway leading to one of the city’s many new McMansions. The anxiety I had finally swallowed before the thirty hour drive to my new home was back in full force.

I weaved through streets now only familiar by name until I hit the western edge of the city. As I pulled up in front of the house I had spent so much time at as a kid, a lump formed tightly in my throat. I wished that, along with everything else in town, the house had changed beyond recognition as well.

I hadn’t so much as opened my door before I heard the familiar squeal of an old friend. “Lisette!”

“May.” I grinned at her, swallowing the lump in my throat and throwing the door open. We met in the middle of the street for a hug not unlike the ones we shared at the beginning and end of every summer during our childhood.

Her brown eyes were twinkling with tears as she pulled back. Her unruly curls were pulled back in a messy ponytail and in her old and torn clothes, she looked exactly like I remembered her. My eyes shifted as someone stepped out of the small sports car she had emerged from. I recognized him, but only from pictures.

“Lis, this is Justin,” May said, suddenly shy. Justin offered his hand and I shook it, smiling up at him. He towered over both of us at well over six feet and their wedding pictures had not done him justice. He had a welcoming demeanor that made me immediately comfortable around him, something I was grateful for considering how much things had changed.

“Okay, where is he?” May asked excitedly, tugging on my hand and Justin’s, yanking us towards my car.

I gestured towards the backseat where Oliver was gurgling happily. At almost eight months, he was the most agreeable baby I’d ever seen, which was ironic considering how disagreeable his mother was. May untangled him from his car seat with ease, picking him up. “God, he looks exactly like you.” It was true that we had the same facial structure and our eyes were the same electric blue, but his hair was a deep brown while mine was on the lighter side.

“So I’ve heard. From everyone ever,” I assured her, turning to Justin. “Please, you might as well just say it. You’ll put the count even closer to one hundred.”

Justin laughed. “Eh, he’s cuter than you.”

May snickered, trying to unwind Oliver’s fingers from her hair. “How was the drive?” she asked as my Bichon-Spaniel mix puppy launched himself over the car seat and out the rear passenger door towards freedom.

“Surprisingly good,” I told her. The typical twenty-six hour drive from Virginia Beach to central Minnesota had only taken an extra four hours with bathroom and food stops. Oliver loved car rides, loved watching things fly past him. I was worried that he and Max, my puppy, would be bored and therefore fussy, but they kept each other company. Most of the drive Max dropped his head on Oliver’s lap, content to have his ears pulled on by Oliver, who loved how soft they were. Their bond had become so strong that their bladders both seemed to cycle together, something I was beyond grateful for.

I glanced up at the house I parked in front of, sighing softly. It had been a couple years since I’d been here, college and summer vacations with friends taking precedence over a town I’d spent so many summers, and occasional winters, before. Nothing appeared to change from the outside. The house was old. Three stories of white-painted wood with deep blue shutters that surrounded huge bay windows. My grandparents had designed the house together in the forties. My grandfather had insisted on big windows, my grandmother on a wraparound porch complete with porch swing. I had spent every summer as a child here with my grandma; it was as much of a second home as I’d ever had.

I fingered the key to the house. My house. When I was young I used to dream about living in it with my rockstar husband and our kids. Grandma would still stay in her room and would make my favorite banana bread at least once a week for all of us to enjoy. The daydream was timeless and naïve. Sometimes the kids came before the husband. And Grandma couldn’t live forever.

May slid up beside me, looking up at the house. “I’m sorry about Pearl, Lis.”

“Thanks,” I murmured, gripping the key tighter in my hand. Oliver gurgled happily and I took him from May. “Ready, little man?” I whispered to my son. He wrapped his hand around my free pointer finger and smiled up at me. “Me too.”

It didn’t take long for the three of us to get my boxes inside. Oliver was content in his playpen with a bottle and a couple of toys. I hadn’t packed up much to bring with; Grandma had all the furniture we could ever need, except for Oliver’s crib. My clothes and Oliver’s had only taken up a few boxes. His toys took up a few more. It was transporting my books that took a little extra work.

“Here’s the last of them,” May gestured with her foot, looking at Justin. He rolled his eyes, mumbling something about chivalry and unfair. “Or you can go change the baby,” she offered. “Up to you.”

Justin hastily grabbed the box, straining a little to wrap his arms around it. He brought it inside, leaving me and May lying in the trailer I’d strapped to my car.

“I forgot how hot it gets here in the summer,” I mumbled, wiping the sweat off my forehead. I knew I needed to get up and check on Oliver, but my limbs weren’t listening to the orders my brain was giving out.

“That’s because you haven’t been here in the summer for years,” May teased, but I heard something else behind it.

I didn’t reply. I didn’t want to feel guilty for not visiting more often. It was hard enough after losing Grandma, but May hadn’t quite forgiven me for not making it to her wedding the previous summer. I couldn’t really blame her, but it had been right about the time I’d found out I was pregnant with Oliver and I was in no shape, mentally or financially, to travel over a thousand miles.

“What’d your mom say about you getting the house?” May asked after a while.

I shrugged. “She said she expected as much. She was glad it was given to me.” I jumped down from the trailer. “Wanna come in for a beer? I gotta check on Ollie.”

May nodded, pulling her hair into a messy ponytail. “That sounds perfect.”

We found Justin on the floor next to Oliver’s playpen. Max rolled over on the ground next to Justin, sticking his belly up to be rubbed. May bent down to pet him and did the same to her husband. I laughed and headed to the kitchen, where I had put the beer I stopped for outside of town.

I had been grateful that the fridge had been emptied out. I didn’t know how I would have reacted to finding my grandmother’s food in the fridge, ready for her to eat. I had already found that the cupboards had not faired the same way. I had come across a box of Grandma’s favorite Chai tea as I shoved Oliver’s rice cereal haphazardly into the pantry a half hour earlier and it had left me unsettled.

I pulled three beers out of the case in the refrigerator, handing two to Justin, who was already sitting at the kitchen table. I set Oliver up in his high chair and pulled out a jar of applesauce. I fed him a little before handing him the spoon. He generally didn’t get much in his mouth, but he loved trying.

May took a sip from her beer and smiled. “Do you remember the…” So many of my adult get-togethers with May started this way. The truth was that she had been a huge part of my youth. These conversations often left us in tears from laughing so hard and though I was grateful for that, I was worried that so many of these stories involved my grandma and I was already feeling more than overwhelmed. “…first time we tried liquor?” She was already laughing. It was something I remember well. We were thirteen. Grandma was out antiquing and I’d dared May to drink something from my grandma’s liquor cabinet. I spent most of my childhood daring May to do things because she never backed down. It didn’t matter how ridiculous the dare was, she’d do it. She picked out a bottle of scotch, not that we’d known what it was at the time. “God, it tasted so bad,” she said after explaining the story to Justin. “But I didn’t want to her to know it so I kept drinking it.”

I smiled. “She took down mouthfuls. I mean, I’m talking more than I’ve seen most seasoned people try.”

“I can’t stomach it now,” she admitted. Justin rolled his eyes playfully, like he was well aware of that.

I didn’t want him to get caught up in the walk down our memory lane, so I intervened before we could get too far. “What the hell happened to this town?” I asked, thinking of the movie theatre and expensive stores that covered Main Street. “I hardly recognized it.”

“Brad Waverly happened,” Justin said, his tone not condemning or approving. “You’ve heard of Waverly Corp., right?”

I shrugged. “On the news, yeah.” I only knew a little bit. It was an up-and-coming company based in Springvale that appeared to be on track to becoming a serious competitor for 3M, particularly in graphics and communications.

“Well, it’s brought in a ton of revenue for the town,” Justin explained. “Over half of the town’s population—me included—work for Waverly. And this is not a company joking around with their money. They pay high, offer a lot back to the community, fund pretty much any retail project around… so the money’s been pouring in. Developers aren’t stupid. They’re putting these huge and, albeit somewhat tacky, establishments in because we can afford to pay for them, and we do.”

“Brad Waverly has been a godsend for this town,” May added. “At least, that’s how most people see it. Your grandma was still pretty well off, but a lot of people weren’t. They were living on farms that were dying and they were looking for work way out of town. But he brought something here in the last five years or so… I guess a little redecoration of Main Street is tolerable for that.”

I nodded, but I wasn’t sure that I bought it. Springvale always held some charm in the old buildings and down-to-earth stores. It was hard to believe that five years was enough time to sacrifice all that. However, the extravagance in May and Justin’s wedding pictures and the carat on her finger were evidence that money could definitely change things.

Oliver started fussing a bit and I knew his diaper needed changing. I made to get up, but May beat me to it. “I got it,” she smiled, taking Oliver out of his high chair.

“This is the icky gross part you said you’d never ever do, if you recall,” I reminded her, speaking of the way she’d felt about babies throughout most of our adolescent years.

She laughed, “Things change.” She took Oliver to the room we’d designated as his nursery.

“May wants kids now,” I said, more to myself than Justin. “Who woulda thought?”

He smiled, “Not for a couple more years.” We fell into a comfortable silence, something I didn’t expect considering that we didn’t know each other well. “What happened to his father?” he asked warily, as if worried the topic would set me off. “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it; it’s just I’ve asked May once or twice and she usually just mumbles obscenities and walks away.”

Max rubbed up against my leg and I dropped my hand to scratch behind his ears. “He didn’t do anything all that unexpected,” I told Justin. “His name is Brody. We were dating, but it wasn’t all that serious. I got pregnant, he got scared. He pretty much signed his rights away the second he legally could.” Justin looked horrified at the prospect. “It really wasn’t unexpected. And really, it’s a lot easier this way. I didn’t have to fight with anyone to bring Ollie here and I don’t have to share him with anyone.”

“Fucking piece of shit,” May muttered as she approached with a cleaner and happier Oliver in her hands.

“I think I kinda agree with her,” Justin agreed. “So he doesn’t have to pay any child support or anything, right?”

“No,” I said. “It probably would have been a bigger issue if I’d stayed in Virginia,” I added carefully, not saying what I really meant. If my grandma hadn’t died and left me everything, it would have been harder than I wanted to admit. But I would have found a way, if it meant she was still alive.

The truth of the matter was that I wouldn’t have to work for the next ten or fifteen years if I managed my money right. Both of my grandparents came from relatively wealthy families and my grandfather had made a name for himself in construction decades earlier. When he died, he left a small fortune to my grandmother. When Grandma died twenty-five years later, she hadn’t touched any of it and had added a decent amount of her own to the total. She left me all of it, only having me and my mother to give her estate to if she wanted to keep it in the family.

“So what’s next?” May asked, looking around for more to do. It hadn’t taken very long to get everything inside. It was obvious she had been expecting more.

“I want to go through Grandma’s stuff, donate it, but…” I trailed off. I wasn’t ready for that just yet. I hadn’t been in the house for longer than a couple of hours; I didn’t want to begin getting rid of her things so soon.

May nodded understandingly. I knew she would get it. I hadn’t realized how much I missed her and her ability to know exactly what I needed. The guilt I felt for missing her wedding tripled as I looked at her. “We can start whenever you’re ready,” she told me.

I smiled my thanks, yawning suddenly. “If you guys wanna take off, that’s okay by me. I’m pretty worn out.” It was true. I’d only slept a couple of hours in my locked car. I was too worried about Oliver to sleep very soundly.

May shook her head. “Go to sleep. We’ll spend a couple hours entertaining Ollie and Max so you can rest peacefully.”

“You don’t have—“

“Shut up, Lis,” May cut me off. “You drove a really long way with a baby who got to sleep whenever he wanted. You know you’re not going to get a decent amount of sleep with him wide awake. He’s not tired yet.”

I wasn’t going to argue with that. “Thanks guys. There’s formula in—“

“We can find it,” Justin assured me. “Go.”

I smiled again and trudged up the stairs to what had been my room while I was here. I paused in the doorway. I’d noticed it before, but it was really remarkable how nothing had changed since the last time I’d spent a summer here. The posters from obscure bands I’d seen were still plastered on the walls. A stack of Grandma’s books that I always read were still lined up on the window sill, the covers almost entirely faded from sunlight. Some of my old clothes were still in the closet, along with the yearbook from my sophomore year, the only full school year I’d spent in Springvale. Part of me wanted to look through every drawer and inspect every inch of the bedroom, but my heart hurt just thinking about it. I wanted to be able to do this with her, to laugh at the memories, but it was too late. I didn’t know how to stop feeling bad about the time I’d wasted. It had been almost a year since I had seen her and I had continued to put off coming back, thinking she’d always be here when I had the time. It clearly wasn’t the case.

I crawled under the quilt she and I made together during the summer of my tenth birthday. The familiar smell soothed me and I quickly fell into a dreamless sleep.

So I started this as a NaNoWriMo challenge. I think I had maybe 2000 words by the time November ended. I'm just not a person who can write that much that fast. But I challenged myself to write something and I think I've done alright. I'm nowhere near finished, so don't expect super-regular updates, but I'm trying, and I'm happy with what I have so far. It's different than anything I've written before, probably because I'm getting older. Anyway, please review, tell me what you think. Hope you like it.