Going Vintage (3 page)

The thud still isn’t loud enough to make my point.

Chapter 3

Six things of interest I find while packing up my grandma’s entire life:

1. An old time card of Grandpa’s from when he worked at a grocery store in Oakland
.

2. A clunky camera on a leather strap. Doesn’t work, but makes a great accessory
.

3. A gorgeous fifties or sixties seersucker housedress. This garment needs a new home. Dress, meet Mallory’s closet
.

4. A turquoise ring on a knotted silver chain. Will have to ask Grandma if it’s important to her, because if not, I want
.

5. Notebooks filled with lists
.

6. One particular notebook filled with one particular list
.

Needless to say, I do not work on Jeremy’s philosophy paper Friday night while my dad and I drive up the coast three hours to Grandma’s house in San Luis Obispo. I don’t answer my cell phone any of the ten times my I’m-pretty-sure-he’s-an-ex-boyfriend calls. I also ignore the millions of phone calls from my friends and sister, no doubt in response to my Tool Proclamation. The incident makes me want to detox from the high school gossip loop, at least for the weekend.

On Saturday, I hibernate until eleven, happily wrapped in a dream involving Jeremy’s computer, a hammer, and a Smurf. The Smurf was the one with the hammer. It made sense in the dream.

My dad wakes me up so we can get to work packing up Grandma’s life. She’s already moved into a swanky retirement community in Newport Beach, just twenty minutes away from Orange on a good traffic day, so I’m glad she’ll be close. I’m still puzzled why she’d leave the cute downtown bungalow with a wraparound porch and purple shutters. It was always my grandparents’ dream to retire here and buy a fixer-upper, but Grandma Vivian quit working on the house after Grandpa Alvin died two years ago. Now Dad and I have to sift through her eclectic collection and decide what is a keepsake, what can turn a profit, and what is junk.

After three hours of de-cluttering, it’s all starting to look like junk.

I’d just gone through a box of old electronics when I find an aged spiral notebook. I hold up the discovery in the dim basement light. “Dad, is this anything?”

Dad reads from the first page. “‘Juice. Eggs. Bread.’ Just another notebook filled with lists. You’ll probably find fifty of them. Mom is … was …” Dad pauses, deciding if his mom still makes responsible lists now that she’s discovered her second childhood. “… is … She’s a lister. Just like you, Mal.”

Just like me. Grandma is never compared to me—it’s always my sister. Even though I have the same freckled skin as Grandma, Ginnie has her blond corkscrew hair and athletic build. They have the same laugh, same vibrant energy. But listing? That is me. I write dozens a week—things I need to do, books I want to read, teachers at our school I’m pretty sure are serial killers. Lists add a number to randomness, give ideas the illusion of order. Of course, I never follow through on 76 percent of the goal-oriented lists, and some aren’t very versatile. (Boys I’ve said
I love you
to: 1. Jeremy. Tool.)

“I don’t even know how to price some of Mom’s stuff—there’s a tribal spear from Borneo in her office.”

“Where’s Borneo?”

“Exactly.” He opens another box, a puff of dust circling in the air. “Old toys. These I know.” He analyzes a train set. “I’m going to check some of my collectors’ sources. You good?”

I flash the same fake smile I’d worn all day, intent on covering up the drama that involves things girls don’t tell dads. The swallowed secrets are starting to give me a headache.

Once he’s gone, I flip through the notebook, stopping at a list that isn’t about groceries.

Junior Year: Back-to-School Resolutions:
1. Run for pep squad secretary
2. Host a fancy dinner party/soiree
3. Sew a dress for homecoming
4. Find a steady
5. Do something dangerous

That’s it. Nothing on the page before or after. No explanation why such a big list is in such an unassuming notebook. Tasks, dreams really, to be checked off, accomplished. No mention if they ever were.

My knees are raw from kneeling on the concrete basement floor. I stand and stretch, a thin string of sunlight illuminating the paper. “Dad?” I yell up the stairs. “What year was Grandma born?”

“1946. She’s a baby boomer. Why?”

Grandma would have been sixteen at the beginning of her junior year, sixteen just like me. 1962—this list is over fifty years old. I bet she wore really cute cat-eye glasses and giggled over milk shakes on Friday nights with her quarterback boyfriend who never cheated on her with someone named BubbleYum.

The punched-in-the-gut feeling returns with the memory. Man, where is that hammer-wielding dream Smurf when you need him? He could be my cartoon hit man and teach
Jeremy a valuable lesson. Nothing fatal. A cartoon hammer would be fine, as long as it hurt.

I click a pen and turn to the next page in the notebook.

Mallory’s Junior Year: Early October back-to-school resolutions:

1. Jeremy. Yell at him? Erect a shrine of a marble screwdriver in his honor?
Ask him to take me back? Act like nothing ever happened?

2. Bury my cell phone in the backyard. One more ring and … I don’t know. It really is a good thing I don’t have a hammer
.

3. Be strong. Or at least not weak
.

4. Wear Grandma’s blue dress somewhere where Jeremy will see me, making him forget BubbleYum and remember yesterday, on his bed, when he called me beautiful
.

5. Er, find a hobby?

My list sucks. Every one of the goals accomplishes nothing, just proves how much of my life involves … no,
involved
Jeremy. Grandma’s list is far more dynamic, more earnest. I bet her life at sixteen was better than mine—simple and carefree. Sew a homecoming dress? Seriously? That’s your biggest drama? Golly gee.

I sit down on a rocking chair, rubbing my hands along the seasoned wood. Maybe … maybe my great-grand-pappy whittled soap in this very seat. (Did I have a great-grand-pappy? For this daydream, yes.) The room holds that mildewy sweetness of history, the boxed-up stories and artifacts from a full and rich lifetime, a life spent exploring and traveling and changing the world through Grandma’s work at A Child’s Last Chance, her nonprofit organization. All that potential was reached because of her uncomplicated adolescent beginnings.

I wonder if she found a handsome, caring steady and if they went on a million dates before they kissed and if they spent all their time talking about life and love and the American Dream. All they had was black-and-white TV, so they probably sat around and conversed all the time. On the phone, sure, but more in person. Not like now, where I go to the grocery store to buy herbal tea for my sick sister and the guy next to me starts discussing what flavor of Rice-A-Roni is best. Of course I answer
chicken
, only to find he’s talking to his wife on one of the earpiece thingies. Then he gives
me
a weird look, like talking to the
air
is normal, and buys the beef flavor anyway. Beef rice? Honestly.

I stop rocking. I want to live in a world free of air talkers and technological affairs. Is that too much to ask?

My phone rings for the 1,204th time. I consider my caller ID. Ginnie. My sister is my secret-keeper. If I could tell anyone about BubbleYum, it would be her. It’s worth breaking my phone fast to hear her voice.

“Hey,” I say.

“Where have you been? Did you lose your phone again?” Ginnie asks. “This isn’t a good time to lose your phone.”

“Not lost. Ignoring it.”

“Your fingers were starting to itch from lack of technology, huh?”

It’s not an itch. It’s a burn. I’d reached for the phone seventy-eight times in the past twenty-four hours. Half of those were to call Jeremy, but I’d also had that urge to post on Friendspace every little thing I was doing. Dreamed about a Smurf assassin last night! Found out boyfriend is a cyberslut! Unearthed a fifty-year-old grocery list!

Communicative technology is really just listing, spread out through texts and updates to an assortment of friends, a daily reminder to the virtual universe that I exist. And I also have
no
idea what’s happened to my friends over the last twenty-four hours. It’s like living in a cave and knowing there’s a lightbulb directly above but never turning it on. “I can go one day without using my phone, thanks.”

“So let’s go over the easier things first,” Ginnie says. “Did you find pictures of Grandma’s hidden lover, Eduardo? And if so, is he atop a horse? How many buttons are undone on his shirt?”

The “hidden lover” line gives me a little jolt, but the connection to my situation is thin enough that it doesn’t sting too much. I roll my eyes. Despite the fact that she’s two years younger, Ginnie is wittier than me. Brighter. More mature and athletic. Prettier.

Yes, I still like her. Usually.

“Your silence tells me he’s either completely shirtless or you’re rolling your eyes, which wouldn’t be the case, because that was good stuff,” Ginnie says. “I thought of it, like, an hour ago. Thanks for finally answering your phone so I could use it.”

“Are you done with your monologue? I only had the worst day of my life yesterday.”

“Is Eduardo’s chest hair that frightening? Gross, was it gray and curly?”

“Were you saving that joke, too?” I ask.

“And now it’s out of my system.” Ginnie sighs. “Okay, let’s discuss the Internet Elephant. Are you the one who called your boyfriend a tool on Friendspace?”

“Yes.”

“And you did this because …”

“He is,” I say.

“I agree, of course, but what brought on this change of heart?”

I tell her. All of it—the making out, the James Taylor, the karate outfit—everything right down to the salsa brand. She’s silent except for a few thoughtful
mmm
s. My voice is monotone the whole time. If I can keep the emotion out of my voice, maybe I can keep it out of my heart. When I’m done with my tear-free report, she lets out a breath and whispers, “What a bastard.”

“So I’m not off base for feeling bad?” I ask, hoping she says I’m right, but hoping even more that she says I’m stupid and wrong. That the whole thing is in my head, that everyone has a cyberwife on the side. Maybe I should just call Jeremy back
and say sorry and ask where he’d like to meet for a let’s-make-up make-out session. “We aren’t married. And it’s really just a game.”

“Those e-mails aren’t part of the game,” Ginnie says softly.

I slip lower in the rocker. “I know.”

“I saw this thing on my Yahoo! news feed, one of those ten-ways-to-know-your-guy-is-cheating quizzes.” Ginnie’s voice has gone matter-of-fact. Two things to know about Ginnie—she’s always right. Also, she’s always right.

“Just what I want to read now.”

“I read it for you. Which is probably better. Midway through the list, you would start making excuses for him because of your Jeremy tunnel vision. You’ll see the light now, discover that he’s a tool.”

“Before this, he wasn’t a tool at all. He was always sweet to me, made me laugh—”

“Mallory, he wears deep V-necks.”

“He has nice chest muscles.”

“And Mr. Plunging Neckline wants you to know it. You can’t trust a guy showing off more cleavage than you.”

“Why didn’t you say this to me before?”

“Because you loved him,” Ginnie says simply. “And you wouldn’t have listened anyway.”

I pick at a splinter in the armrest. I’ve just given Ginnie a pass to go off on Jeremy, and who knows how long she’s held that inside. But I don’t think I’m personally ready to bash my boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend? I don’t know what I’m ready for right now. “So this article …”

“This article said that you don’t have to hook up with someone for it to be considered cheating. They can have an emotional affair—like, a connection that isn’t just friendship. All those things he was saying to her, does he talk like that with you?”

“Well, no, but nobody talks like that. We’re sisters, and how often do we say ‘you mean so much to me’? It’s easier when you’re writing it. When we’re together, well … we hang out, and he does say he loves me—”

“But does he say even some of the things in person that he’s saying to
her
in e-mail?”

I flash back to the messages. There were hundreds. “No.”

“Plus, you said they’re all flirty, so maybe there
is
more. Do you think she lives around here? Maybe he met her when he went to hockey camp this summer.”

“She plays lacrosse,” I say.

“How do you know?”

“Doesn’t matter.” I kick at an empty box. “So basically I just wasn’t good enough for him.