Tending Roses by Lisa Wingate Page B

“Well, very good. I guess that’s a problem solved, then.” She squared her shoulders so that she could look at Brother Baker more directly. “Now, if any of the church elders have a question about him using the facility, you have them call me.”
    “I’m sure things will be fine,” Brother Baker said, then told us good-bye and scooted into the grocery store, clearly relieved to be escaping the conversation with Grandma unscathed. “You ladies have a good day now.”
    Grandma nodded after him, then proceeded to the car, and the three of us headed back to the farm with our loot.
    By the time we arrived and carried the baskets to the kitchen, Grandma and Josh were both exhausted. Grandma padded off to the little house to rest, and I put Josh in his crib, then retrieved the paint from the car and started on the utility room.
    An hour and a half later, the room was greatly improved, and I had touched up around the outside doorframe and ceiling too. It looked pretty good, except for the burn damage on the wall where the ironing board had been. Since I know nothing about replastering walls, there wasn’t much I could do about that, so I set the new stand-alone ironing board in front of the hole and went outside to clean the paintbrush and put the paint away. I heard Grandma coming in the front door as I went out the back, so I hurried to get out of sight. The less Grandma was reminded of the fire damage, the better.
    When I came onto the porch again, she was in the front yard near the rose trellis, carefully pruning the winter-browned vines with the tenderness of a loving parent. A pair of squirrels, accustomed to her throwing out corn, dashed back and forth around her feet, looking for food. Every so often, she paused and reached into her pocket, tossing out a handful of seed to keep them busy.
    Her hand reaching into the printed blue polyester brought a memory to me with startling clarity. I could see her in that very apron on some long-ago summer day, tossing bits of corn to the guinea hens that years ago roamed the farmyard. In my ears, I heard the sputter of the old red tractor and the rattle of the wagon puttering down the lane. I could see my grandfather motion to me, then stop the tractor and wait by the gate. I remembered running across the lawn with my hand in Grandma’s and laughing when she swung me into the wagon for a ride. As we left, I saw her squeeze Grandpa’s hand and give him a peck on the cheek.
    Then the memory dashed away like one of Grandma’s squirrels.
    I found myself standing with one hand pressed against the screen. The memory was one I never knew I had, from a summer visit when I was only three or four years old. It was the only recollection I had of my grandparents together—surprising in its tenderness, considering that no one in the family ever talked about how they were toward each other. I guess I’d never thought that they might have been in love, and never considered how truly sad it would be to go on for almost thirty years after the one you loved was gone. I wondered if that was the source of the melancholy that had been with Grandma ever since I had known her. I remembered her as solemn and rigid, fussy about things and critical of people, often difficult to be around. I just assumed she had always been that way. I could not remember a time when she would have burst into laughter and run across the lawn with me on her arm.
    Leaving her there with her roses and her squirrels, I went inside to fix myself a cup of tea and air out the utility room. The kitchen was quiet and peaceful, no overflowing dishwater or lakes of coffee on the floor—just long rays of late-afternoon sunlight streaming through the tall west window, and the dishes still there from lunch, waiting to be washed, and several baskets of slightly unappealing fruits and vegetables waiting to be stored, or canned, or whatever Grandma had in mind. Choosing to ignore the mess a little longer, I poured the tea, then