Mrs. MacDougal stood in the doorway, watching us.
“Sometimes, maybe. But do you see that picture of me, there on the piano?”
I picked up the picture, framed in silver. Mrs. MacDougal was young, her mother and father standing formally behind her, her brothers flanking her protectively.
“Don’t we look the perfect family?” I smiled at her and nodded.
“Well, my brother Fergus, there on the left, was pinching the devil out of me when that picture was taken. He did that all my life. He still does.”
I peered at the picture closely, searching for a look that told me this. But there were only smiles.
“Sometimes,” said Mrs. MacDougal, “the truth is somewhere behind the pictures. Not in them.”
In the kitchen, still in his high chair, Emmett began to fuss.
“Ah, well,” said Mrs. MacDougal, “I‘ better go hose him down.” She turned. “It’s early, Journey. Do Marcus and Lottie know where you are?”
“I’m going to ride him home on my bike, Mrs. MacDougal,” said Cooper.
* * *
We ride up the dirt road, me sitting on the seat, my legs out, Cooper pedaling in front of me. I hold on to his waist, and we pass fields and meadows and cows; we pass Weezer, the Moodys’ old dog, who makes a show of chasing us.
“Weezer, Weezer,” chants Cooper, and Weezer stops, stunned by the sound of his name, just before he runs into the mailbox.
We pass the Fullers’ horse farm, and the foals race along the fence, sending up little dust clouds when they stop. Cooper pedals up the long driveway to my house and right up over the grass to my bedroom window. And when I open the screen and climb in, Cooper behind me, everyone is there: Grandma, Grandfather, and Cat, staring into my closet.
Bloom has had her kittens.
Chapter Ten
In the box of pictures, now ruined, were Bloom and her kittens: four tiny bodies, all wet and dark.
“I’ve only been gone an hour,” I whispered.
Grandma smiled.
“That’s all it takes, sometimes.”
“Sorry about the pictures, Journey,” said Grandfather.
I sighed.
“It’s all right. It was impossible. But it was that baby’s hand …” My voice trailed off.
We watched the kittens fumbling to nurse and listened to their soft mewings.
Bloom stared up at Grandma.
“Yes,” Grandma said as if answering a question the rest of us hadn’t heard, “you are a wonderful mother!”
Cat reached down and rubbed Bloom’s chin.
“Who taught her?” I asked suddenly.
“Taught her what?” said Cooper. “How to have kittens?”
“No,” I said. “How to be a mother.”
There was a silence. Grandfather lifted his shoulders.
“Mothers know,” he said, looking at Grandma.
Cat said what I was thinking.
“Not all of them.”
No one spoke, but as if Bloom had understood our words, she began to clean her babies, showing us how to be a mother.
“Grandpa,” I said, “I want to take a picture. With the timer.”
My grandmother and Cat groaned at the same time.
“Oh, no,” complained Cat. “Don’t tell me, two of them!”
Grandfather grinned at me.
“Of course he wants to take a family picture. Out in the hall, Journey.”
In the hallway Grandfather’s camera and his tripod leaned against the wall.
“I’ll take the picture. I’m not family,” Cooper called to me.
I stood in the doorway and looked at Cooper through the viewfinder. His cowboy hat still sat on top of his head.
“Cooper,” I said, “you’re part of the family. But I want to take this picture.”
When I moved the camera, I saw Grandfather smiling at me from across the room.
“Now,” I said. “Everyone …”
There was laughter,
“What?” I asked
“You sound like you-know-who,” said Cat, bending her head toward Grandfather.
“Who?” asked Grandfather.
“The photographer twins,” said Cooper wryly.
“Now,” I said. “Everybody …” I shot a look at Cat.
Grandma sat, Cat next to her, leaning back against her shoulder. Cooper knelt behind them, Grandfather on the other side, watching me closely.
“Ready?” I said.
* * *
Time slows somehow as I look through the camera. I watch Bloom look at her babies; I watch Grandma kiss the top of Cat’s head and Cat turn to smile up at her; I see Cooper with his dumb hat, and my grandfather, smiling at me because he knows I am looking at him.
Smile, I say to them, but I don’t need to say it because they are all smiling. Real smiles, with their eyes, too. Ten, nine, eight, I say, and Cooper’s hat tilts and Cat snorts with laughter. Seven, six. I run to get into the picture, and Grandfather reaches out a hand toward me. I tumble into his arms, across his lap, and he holds me there, looking a little surprised, as if I’m a newborn baby. I stare at the button on his shirt. Then I stare up at his face. Quick, he whispers to me, and I turn and look into the camera just as the shutter clicks and Cooper’s hat falls down.
* * *
The kitchen was dark and cool and quiet. Cooper had stayed for dinner: chicken and mashed potatoes and peas.
“It’s good to eat with people who don’t have food on their faces,” said Cooper seriously. He paused. “But I love Emmett.”
“You do,” agreed Grandma.
Grandfather, his chin leaning on his hand, looked at Cooper.
“You’re a good brother,” he said.
Under the table I felt a sudden brush against my legs. Bloom looked up at me; then she walked to the screen door.
“Where’s she going?” I asked, alarmed.
Cat got up from the dinner table.
“She’s going out, Journey. Don’t fret.” She opened the door, and Bloom went out to sit on the porch. Cat turned to look at me. “She’ll come back,” she said softly.
Cooper got up, too.
“Thank you,” he said. “I like to get home for Emmett’s bath.”
He went out to the porch and stood for a moment next to Bloom. Then he put on his hat.
“‘Bye, Cooper,” said Cat.
We went out, all of us, and waved to Cooper.
“Maybe someday,” said Cat thoughtfully, “I will marry him.”
Grandma, smiling, tapped Cat on her shoulder. The two of them went to their garden.
Grandfather stood next to me, fiddling with his camera. I looked up at him, trying hard to remember something new, something at the edge of my mind. He put the camera around his neck.
“Think I’ll take a small walk to the henhouse.”
I smiled and watched him walk down the steps. Inside, the phone rang, and he turned.
“I’ll get it,” I called to him.
* * *
“Hello.”
I look out the screen door.
“Journey, is that you?” says my mother.
There is crackling on the line, and I stand very still, watching my grandfather walk away from the house.
“Journey?” Her voice is stronger now. “So, how have you been?”
I take a breath.
“A cat has come,” I say. “And the cat is a very good mother.” My voice rises. “And she is staying here with me. Forever.”
Chapter Eleven
Grandfather found me in the barn. Light slanted through the windows, and dust motes floated in the air between us. He sat next to me on the bench in front of the wall of pictures. There were dozens now that spread across the back wall, some I’d never seen.
“That’s a new one,” I said, pointing to a close-up of a fierce-looking chicken.
“That chicken pecked me on the wrist,” said Grandfather. He held out his hand to show me the small red puncture wound. “T
aking pictures is dangerous business.”
I nodded, looking at the picture I had taken, all soft and blurred. My grandfather holding Emmett on his knees.
There was silence.
“She asked me how I was,” I said after a moment. I looked up at Grandfather. “And she never said she was sorry for leaving.”
Grandfather sighed.
“No. Liddie doesn’t want to feel guilty.”
“Well, she is guilty,” I said so softly that Grandfather bent his head down next to me to hear. “And then she said, They were only pictures, Journey.’”
Grandfather reached over and put his arm around me. I leaned against him.
“A picture stops a little piece of time, good or bad, and saves it,” he said. “Your mama never thought there was anything worth looking back on after your papa left. She thought all good things were ahead of her, waiting to happen … just around the corner. Your mama doesn’t really understand about the pictures.”
“But we understand, don’t we,” I said.
Grandfather’s arm tightened around me.
“We do.”
I sighed.
“I sure would like things to look back on.”
It was quiet in the barn. Somewhere in the garden Grandma was playing the flute, the beginnings of a song I didn’t know.
“Grandma’s getting better,” I said.
“Yes,” said Grandfather. “And it’s a good thing, too,” he added, making me smile.
“Mama wants me to visit her,” I said.
Grandfather got up and went to the wall of pictures and bent down as if he were examining them.
“I told her I couldn’t. I told her I have a cat and kittens to take care of.”
Grandfather straightened.
“I told her someday, maybe; if she sent me words instead of money, I might visit. Maybe.”
Grandfather said nothing.
“Grandfather?”
“What, Journey?” His voice was soft.
“I told her that nothing is perfect. Sometimes things are good enough.”
I got up and stood next to him and looked at the family picture of all of us, our necks all white in the sun as we looked up at the airplane overhead.
“I like that picture,” I said.
“So do I. You said it would be a good picture. Remember?”
I looked at the picture of us all framed in the barn doorway, with a blur of chicken flying past.
“Is that the chicken that pecked you?” I asked.
Grandfather began to laugh.
“Might be!”
He threw back his head, and I stared at him, surprised at that sound. It had been a long time since I’d heard him laugh, and suddenly I thought of Mr. MacDougal’s kiss on my forehead, how strange it had felt.
I watched Grandfather. And then, before he stopped laughing—because I wanted to remember what it was like—I stood on tiptoe and kissed him.
Chapter Twelve
Two months. Two months and a little more had gone by. It didn’t seem so long when you said it, but Grandma said that time was different depending on which journey you were taking—a trip to the mountains or a trip to get your tooth pulled.
“Sometimes things happen quickly before you have a chance to think about them. Like the hummingbird that comes to my bee balm in the garden,” said Grandma. “You don’t see him come, and you hardly see him go.”
Like Mama’s leaving.
Two months. The kittens had grown what seemed half a lifetime in that time, staggering around the house, leaping straight up in the air when they came on Grandfather’s boots. Emmett was learning words like “Mama” and “Da.” Cooper was trying to teach him “disintegrate.”
Grandma, in that time, had made it through an entire song, from beginning to end, on the flute. Vivaldi it was, she said.
“My version of Vivaldi,” she added.
Grandfather made several trips to town in the car, alone, giving us all sly looks as he left and sly ones when he returned. He carried packages, and one large box, into the barn.
“Do not follow me!” he commanded in a loud, serious voice, making Cat and me burst out laughing and Grandma smile.
“What’s he doing?” Cat asked Grandma.
“Secrets,” said Grandma. “Secrets even from me, can you believe that?”
She walked to the entrance of the barn.
“Marcus, darlin’ man,” she called. “What are you doing?”
Grandfather’s voice came from the back of the barn.
“Don’t sweet talk me, Lottie.”
Grandma went back to practicing Vivaldi on the porch, surrounded by her claque of cats, and later, when my sister and I went to the barn for raspberry buckets, there was a shiny new lock on the door to the toolroom. Grandfather wasn’t in sight, but we heard sounds behind the door.
Cat knocked.
“Grandfather?”
“I’m busy now.” His voice was muffled. “I’m busy in my office.”
His office? Cat mouthed the words to me, and we grinned at each other and went to pick black raspberries.
The raspberries grew past the pasture, at the far edges of the meadow where wild chicory and Queen Anne’s lace grew, too. Grandma had put a net over them to keep the birds away. Cat and I pushed back the net and ducked under.
“Every third or every fourth?” Cat asked, holding a berry to her lips.
“Every other?”
“Third,” Cat said, popping the berry into her mouth.
We picked for a while in silence. The berries made a soft plunking sound when we dropped them in the buckets.
“Remember when we used to make tents in the backyard?” I said, sitting back, looking up at the sky through the netting.
Cat nodded.
“You liked to build the tents,” she said. “And when you were done you’d sit inside, all restless and jittery, waiting for something more to happen.”
“That’s because I loved to build them,” I said.
“And I loved to sit inside after you’d gone,” said Cat.
There was a silence. Cat reached over to touch my arm.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Something Grandfather said, Mama waiting for things to happen. Remember when Mama got into the tent with us once?”
Cat nodded.
“She sat for a minute, then looked at us and said, ‘Well, what happens now?’”
“You and I,” I said, “we weren’t enough.”
I ate a raspberry. It was sour, and for a moment my tongue stung a little. “Cat.”
She looked up.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t put the pictures together. I wanted to make things all right again.”
Cat smiled.
“I know. You and Grandfather, two of a kind.”
“What do you mean?”
Cat sat back on her heels.
“Why do you think Grandfather takes family pictures?”
“He likes to. He likes the camera.”
“No,” said Cat. “You like the camera in your own way, Journey. Don’t you know that Grandfather wants to give you back everything that Mama took away? He wants to give you family.”
All those times. All those times that Grandfather had rounded us up, gathered us together for family pictures; plucking us out of hiding places, down from trees and from inside the pantry and from under the bed.
“Things for me to look back on,” I whispered.
“Things for him to look back on, too,” Cat added.
Cat dropped a berry in the bucket.
“Cat, do you hate Mama?”
Cat stared at the bucket.
“I hate what she did.”
I nodded.
“You say that, but do you feel that way?”
Cat looked up.
“I’m trying.”
I squeezed a berry between my fingers.
“Do you think she cares about us?”
Cat sighed.
“The only way she can, Journey.”
She ate a berry, and the juice made a tiny rivulet down her chin. I peered up suddenly at the sun shining through the net like an out-of-focus picture, then back at Cat. The pattern of the netting sat like a spider web across her face.
“What? What’s wrong?” she asked me.
“I wish I had Grandfather’s camera right now,” I said, beginning to smile.
Cat’s eyes widened. I got up quickly, and she scrambled up and after me, chasing me out into the meadow. We startled the redwings, and they flew up above us. A woodchuck on the stone wall ducked away.
Behind us the birds began to eat the raspberries under the net, but it didn’t matter.
Chapter Thirteen
It was evening, and the moon hung over the barn. Bloom lay on my bed. Upstairs, over my head in Mama’s room, there were footsteps. Bloom looked up and her ears rose. A drawer opened and shut, then another. I looked up, waiting, and in a moment Grandfather stood at my bedroom door.
“Good night, Journey.”
He held a large envelope and one of the kittens.
“Are you going to bed now?” I asked.
Grandfather, not speaking, stared over my head at the moon out the window. He had been restless and absentminded all day, drumming his fingers on the table at dinner, pursing his lips thoughtfully. Twice he opened his mouth to say something and didn’t. Once, in the middle of our conversation, he said suddenly, “Well, do you think…?” to no one. We had turned to look at him, waiting, but he’d gone back to eating.
“He’s cooking up something,” Grandma had said at the kitchen sink, handing me a dish to dry. “I would spy on him, or better yet, ask him, but it’s too much fun making him wait.”
“You mean he wants to tell us what he’s doing?”
“Maybe. Maybe he wants to be asked, but you can do that when the time comes.”
“When? What time?”
“You’ll know,” Grandma had said.
Grandfather stood still in my bedroom. The kitten in his arms yawned.
“Grandfather. Grandfather?”
“What? Oh, no, I’m not going to bed yet.” He shook his head. “No, I’ve got work to do.”
He put the kitten down and looked at me with a small smile that was more than just a smile.
“Grandfather, were you in Mama’s room?”