Better Late than Never

Better Late than Never

She'd had it with her son's calls and excuses. Business meeting this, project due Monday that, anniversary with Sylvie later, fixing the garage door after…

If he couldn' take the time to give his poor, frail, elderly mother a hand, then the poor, frail, elderly lady would do the job herself. Start the job, at least.

Lucy was done waiting. She put on some tattered working clothes, articles clearly belonging to the good-to-go category, and was about to squat to it when the doorbell temporarily saved her back.

For one brief moment, she allowed herself to think, to hope that Brian had changed his mind and found the time. But, alas, the person on the other side of the door was noticeably shorter, younger and female.

“Hello, Lauren,“ Lucy fixed her most grandmotherly smile and the tweenager simply nodded.

“Dad told me you needed some help or something…“

Dad paid her to come here, Lucy realized and called her in.

It was obvious the granddaughter didn't want to be there from the way she shrugged off her jacket, and consequently the grandmother felt she didn't want the girl there, either – but help was help.

The tween took in her grandmother's apparel critically. “Don't tell me we're gonna clean the attic,“ she moaned. “You look like that woman on that old yellow poster.“

Lucy racked her brain.

“Ah, you mean the We can do it! poster?“, she recalled and chuckled. She had tied a dramatic headscarf in her gray hair, yes. “Funny. The style never really caught on 'round these parts during the War.“

“What war?“ Lauren blinked.

“Never mind,“ Lucy refrained from rolling her eyes. “In here…“

She brought the girl to what had once been a “library“ to Morris, a “book room“ to her mother and a “dust closet“ to Pam, who actually did the cleaning.

One overcluttered room too many in an otherwise overcluttered family home.

Generations had been adding to it, and she felt both interest and dread at the thought of dismantling the heritage. Lauren seemed to be stuck on the “dread“ step of the way.

“Why even bother? This'll take forever!“

“Not if we both put our back into it. Come on. Let's start at the bottom. We can do it!“ she grinned and struck the pose. Lauren's irises rolled too close to her brow for her to appreciate the humor, and Lucy grimaced behind her back.

* * *

The bottom shelves carried the thickest and most boring set: dictionaries, lexicons, vocational manuals and encyclopaedias… Mouldy pieces of worldly knowledge.

“And people actually read these…?“ Lauren gasped in horror at a copy of a Complete Guide to Stain Removal.

“Not only read – learned from them. … I hated this one with every inch of my sorely abused digits,“ Lucy lowered her voice conspiratorially as she pointed out a crocheting handbook.

“What good is krutchetin' for, anyway?“ Lauren leafed through the unintelligible schemata.

“My sentiments exactly… But sewing comes in handy. Do you know how to sew?“

“People stopped sewing in schools like a decade ago.“

“Well, that's no good. What do you do if you lose a shirt button?“

“Put on somethin' else. People only wear shirts at weddings and church stuff, and then only if they can't help it, anyway.“

“Okay. What if it's a button on your favourite coat?“

„I don't wear a coat. I've got a zip-up parka.“

„All right! What if you lost a button on your very favourite clothing item, which happened to have buttons, decorative or otherwise?“

The 12-year-old considered it a moment and grabbed her phone. She soon showed her grandmother the search results which displayed half a dozen “sewing places“ in their close proximity.

Lucy had to concede this one:

“Fair game for the throwaway box.“

The shelves above proved mildly more interesting: travelogues and travel guides from various places Morris had visited during his twenties. The travelling Aunt Natalie had also contributed.

Lauren skimmed through a pile of colourful travelling magazines, boasting the now-faded azure of the Indian Ocean or the off-white of the dated Alps. “Meh“ was the appraisal.

The middle shelves held the meat of the whole endevour, in Lucy's opinion. They were certainly the most difficult to sift through. Fiction, novels both standalone and book series… Things she had read and loved (and couldn't simply pass on), things her loved ones had read and loved (so she couldn't simply pass them on), titles she hadn't read yet (and thus she couldn't simply pass on).

“Ugh, why don't you get just one big companion of this lot?“ Lauren groaned, forced to dust all 13 sequels of The Angélique book series.

“Compendium, you mean. Also – sacrilege! These ones are indispensable.“

“Okay, okay, but Bambi? When have they turned that one into a book?“

The Bambi, a Life in the Woods had been the first book Morris had ever read…

Somehow, she didn't care to share this precious bit of information with their careless granddaughter.

“I'll take over here. There, Lauren, just sift through that pile. Those are the ones we've never finished. Look if you'll find an old dollar bill or something, grandpa had an interesting choice of bookmarks.“

“Can I keep what I find?“

“Sure.“ Good to know some forces still move the world.

It was more than an age gap. An entire culture gulf lay between her and her granddaughter. Even though Lucy had never been easily given to emotions, the fact overcast the dusty room.

She didn't expect to hear Lauren chuckle. Not at the unfinished pile.

“Wha'd'you find?“

„Somebody wrote in this one. Buy bananas!“ the girl snickered.

Morris had always been reverent with his reads, Lucy frowned.

“Which one is it?“

“All Quiet on the Western Front. Some weather forecaster's memoir or somethin', I'd expect.“ It was a wonder the child hadn't dislocated her eyeballs thus far.

Lucy took the small, thin book with its rust-reddish cover.

Now, where did that one come from? Morris had disliked 20th-century war accounts ever since a beloved uncle left his bones somewhere in Belgium.

It must have been… Yes, it was given to her, by Will Hartley. Of all her acquaintances, only he had had the nasty habit of dog-earing the pages so viciously.

And this particular book had been dog-eared so badly that it must have been his personal copy. Yes, it was all coming back to her slowly… He did give her the book at the farewell party, just before he and the boys left for Vietnam. At the time she thought it another show of his weird sense of humour, but he had urged her to read it quite earnestly.

Better late than never.

Lucy moaned about a stitch in her back and settled into an armchair. She leafed through the booklet while Lauren continued her treasure hunt.

Glimpses of particular sentences painted a pretty harrowing read, and she felt herself too old and weathered for the harrowing, but the notes in the margins proved a more engaging discovery. Pencilled in Will's tiny, nearly indecipherable scrawl – she used to tease him he would do best as an encoder of secret war messages.

Sweet, scruffy, dimple-smiled Will's secret messages.

For the most part, painfully simple. For the most part, painfully everyday.

Buy bananas.

Nice quote.

436-470.

Call Alec on Thur.

And then, in the upper left corner on page 47:

“Lucy, Will you marry me?“

With W in capital letter – that weird sense of humor of his.

“Lucy, Will you marry me?“

She forced herself to push the hitched breath out of her nose, and take a fresh gulp of air. She forced herself not to drop the rust-reddish book as swarms of goosebumps slid down her arms. She bit into her lower lip hard, to keep herself grounded in the here and now.

A decade – no, several decades too late.

A lifetime too late.

A what if too late!

She had kept postponing reading the book. At first, due to lack of time (the fifties had proven busy). Then due to misplacing it for a while, and finally due to Will being gone out of her life and life in general. Yet another victim of the battlefield, yet another lad perished in the Remarquese whirl of war.

An acquaintance, a neighbour, a childhood crush.

Never a fiance – because he had never asked.

And she'd waited him to ask.

She'd anticipated him asking in each and every one of those few battlefront letters, back while they were still coming for a year or two.

“Grandma! Are you having a heart attack?“ a girlish squeal brought her back.

* * *

“So, he was your beau, basically?“

“Do people still use that word?“ Lucy wondered, mostly at what possessed her to share the revelation with Lauren.

„Would you have said yes?“

„… Yes.“

Lauren processed that a while.

„Did you know grandpa at the time?“ The older woman couldn't mistake the worried undertone in the girl's voice. Even though Lauren had never met Morris in person, she clearly felt some territorial concerns on his behalf.

„No. Grandpa came into the picture way later.“

„So, what happened to this Will guy?“

„I don't know. How do people die in a war? Guerilla attack, friendly fire, a snake bite…? I don't know. His letters just stopped coming after a while.“

Lucy's eyes turned dangerously misty and she wondered if she could excuse it with dust in the air or a cataract or somethin'.

Lauren spoke after a spot of silence:

“That must have sucked.“

“Sucked?“ Lucy noted the sharpness in her tone and bit her tongue. No reason to take it out on an ignorant dummy.

“Yeah… I know it must've 'cause… There's this one guy, moved West Coast…“ Lauren dropped her voice and started inspecting the upper shelves. “… doesn't answer my DMs anymore…“

“And you think he might've died?“

Morris would have cringed at that precise moment and later on admonished his wife, who could be as blunt as her granddaughter at times.

„No, grandma!“ Lauren twirled around with anger in her voice. “I'm just sayin' it sucks!“ The young girl bristled in her corner.

Lucy marvelled at the tween's hunched back.

Some forces still move the world.

„Yes. That it does,“ Lucy walked over to place her hand on Lauren's shoulder after a while.

“Wanna show me your beau's picture? Come on… I'll show you mine if you show me yours. Will had the nicest smile even if Morris had a better profile, overall.“

“No, thanks,“ the granddaughter shook the hand off.

„You've got grandpa's face. Come on! Don't you wanna see what you'd look like a boy?“

„There are apps for that now.“

“Ops or not, isn't it better to check out an old photo rather than go under the knife straightaway?“

„Apps, not ops, grandma!“

With copious mutual eye-rolling, the two crossed into the living room.