The Stories We Told

My Grandmother died in a kindergarten classroom. She would visit once a month to read her latest stories to the children, before they would be published for the world. She would call them her focus group. If too many children became fussy, she knew the story wasn’t ready. She had begun this practise when I had first attended the school and kept at it long after my graduation. Despite her books adorning the classrooms and bedrooms of children around the world, she always preferred to have them read aloud. She thought it made them come alive.

She had finished her story that day and was sitting in the back of the class, trying to recover some energy before heading home. It came quickly, and she fell asleep. The children did not notice.

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After the service I rushed to my Grandparent’s house, wanting to check in on my Grandpa before the parade of relatives made themselves at home. My grandpa was a resolutely quiet gentleman who would rather suffer the discomfort of a fishbone in his throat than the indignity of shouting at the dinner table. In his ninety-two years I had only heard of one incident where he had raised his voice in fury, and it was in defence of his late wife. She had been midway through an anecdote when she was cut off. My grandmother would later joke that most men let out anger like a steam-valve, whistling and chirping through life. But her husband must have had his valve stuck, and once it blew there was nothing left to build up pressure again. Since then he spoke softly, forcing the listener to lean in if they wanted to understand him. I bowed my head to kiss his cheek and kept my ear close,

“How are you feeling today?”

“Oh, Ava, I didn’t think you could come”

“It’s Emma, Grandpa, Ava’s daughter, do you remember?”

He turned his head to look at me. His eyes were clouded at the edge but his pupils remained sharp.

“You sound just like your Mother” he smiled, “and she sounded just like her Mother. No one could ever tell the difference. Half the time we were invited to do readings on the radio, it was your mother doing them, and no one was any the wiser.”

“Grandmother wasn’t the one reading her books?”

“She did some, but she always thought that Ava read them so well. Your Grandmother wrote those stories for the children, she always said they belonged to them as much as to her.”

“I couldn’t agree more”, my Aunt Sally had snuck into the room, her slight frame had made almost no noise. It gave the impression of a spectre that would flit around the house, never quite there, but never quite out of earshot. “Those were our stories. I think Mother would want to pass them on to us.”

My grandpa’s gaze drifted away to the window, humming softly. Sally smiled at what she assumed was a note of agreement. Sally continued,

“Her books are so popular. We already have offers to sell the rights to three different publishing houses. They also want to make a film, can you believe that, Dad?”

She took off her scarf and coat and tossed them onto the couch. Drops of rain still clung to the fabric and collected into a small puddle.

“I’m sorry I had to miss the service, you know how busy I've been.”

She took hold of the handles at the back of his chair to wheel him away The chair struggled against a stiff lock and when Sally bent down to fuss with it, he turned once more to me,

“Maybe you could read them now, Emma? You sound so much like her. Keep them alive for everyone who listens.”

The lock snapped into place and Sally whisked him away quickly to the next room, eager to get on with the day's proceedings.

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The reading was to take place in Grandmother’s office. Her attorney had arrived early to set up and my cousins, aunts and uncles had slowly accumulated in the room. Eyes darting to every ornament and picture, tallying up the value and each constructing their reasoning for being the deserving recipient. Vultures pecked at the dead with more dignity.

The attorney was a tiny man with a bald head. He had taken up residence behind Grandmother's desk, sitting so low in the chair that all that I could see from my vantage point was his head as it bobbed with each word over the top of his files. He softly cleared his throat to signal that the show was about to begin.

“You have some outstanding debts.”

“I’m glad you like them”, my Uncle sneered from the side of the room. Pipe-smoke swirling around his head. I unlatched the window next to my Grandpa to clear the air. My Uncle rolled his eyes, exhaling a plume in my direction.

The attorney continued,

“The debts owed by the estate would have to be settled before anyone could claim a share of the inheritance.”

At the mention of inheritance the room fell deathly silent. Whispered speculations were cut short, phones were put away and all eyes fell to the attorney. He coughed gently to fill the void, suddenly empathizing with any rabbit who found himself in the company of a pack of wolves.

“Once these matters are cleared up, we will be able to execute the wishes outlined in the end-of-life document.”

My cousin, Nate, was the first to speak.

“I’d like to have my man look over the estate financials, I feel it’s a trifle unfair to saddle the debt onto us. I’m sure a lot of it can be written off. He did wonders last year when we bought the beach house.”

“Sit down, Boy. It’s not yours yet”, my Uncle, Nate’s father, said with his pipe still smouldering away.

Nate quietened down, turning his attention back to his phone the fire off a quick message. The attorney continued.

“The rest of the process is rather straightforward. I have a letter from the deceased that clears up the division of all outstanding assets.”

He withdrew an envelope from his folder, it had been sealed with wax, my Grandmother's signet stamped into the red welt on the back of the paper. He began to read,

“My dearest loved ones. It pains me so much to leave you, but you know I always preferred to leave before the party was over. I will keep this brief. It is my truest hope that you know how I felt about each and everyone of you. I strove to live in honesty and truth, an ironic endeavour given my profession. I spent a life telling tales. But I hope you can see that each story was an attempt at something greater. Many failed at this, I’m sure. But I will rest well knowing I tried my best.”

The family, sensing the moment was nearly upon them, leant in,

“With regard to the estate, the rights to my books and the family trust, I hereby….”

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Each person reacts to disappointment in their own way, even people of the same blood. Nate was on the phone before the attorney had finished his sentence. His father was hammering him with questions, trying to see what leeway his man actually had to help intervene. My aunt Sally stood over the attorney,

“Surely that doesn’t apply to her jewelry, she always promised that to me, at least”, her tone growing more insistent.

The attorney had signatures to collect but after his third attempt to regain order fell flat he resolved to leave the papers on the desk and beat a hasty retreat.

My Grandpa remained quiet in this chaos, eventually taking hold of my hand. I leant down,

“Please take me next door.”

The parlour offered a welcome reprieve as voices could still be heard clashing against each other in the next room.

“Twenty-thousand dollars each is very generous”, I said.

“You may be alone in that sentiment” My grandpa said with a rueful smile, the voices next door were growing louder.

“But, Grandpa?”

“Yes, my dear?”

“I don’t want it.”

My Grandpa smiled again, the smile of a gambler whose horse had come in.

“I don’t need it. Grandma paid for my school, I’ve had more than enough from her. I’d like you to have it.”

“My dear, I am ninety-two years old. You grandmother made sure there was enough for my nurse to continue on, and that not one of those people next door could turf me out of this house. I need for nothing else.”

“Then I can give it to the family, I don’t want it, it’s not mine”

I felt the first tremor of rage that legend said my Grandfather had once possessed,

“I will use my limited remaining breath to make sure you do not give a single extra cent to anyone in that room.”

“Fine, then to that school in the village Grandma would visit. They can have it.”

“She thought you might say that.”

“I’ll speak to the attorney, he can give it to them, Grandma would like that.”

“There’s something else”

He pulled a slim black notebook from beneath his blanket, its cover was worn but the pages were not ragged, it had seen a lot of use.

“This is for you.”

He handed it over. I opened the book to a random page and saw that a delicate spider-web of writing filled every line.

“This is Grandma’s writing, these are her stories?”

“That is your Grandmother’s writing, yes, but no, those are not her stories. None that were ever published anyway.”

I had found the beginning of one entry and ready a few lines,

“But recognize this, I know this story, she must have published it.”

“My dear, those stories were only heard by a handful of people, and I’d be willing to bet you are one of the few who remembers them.”

“She read them to me? I think I remember, she would read to me when I would come to stay, whenever Mom was in the hospital. She wrote these for me?”

“Emma, she wrote those with you.”

“What?”

“Each night she would start a story and whenever she didn’t know where to go next you would yell out. She would ask for a character or a place. She would ask what you would do if you were that little girl fighting a dragon or boy stuck in a cave, and then she would continue on down that road.”

Emma continued to read through the book, flipping back and forward through a childhood of memories.

“Every night, after you went to sleep, she would write them down. I asked her once if they were her next book and she told me no, these ones weren’t her stories to tell. Look at the first page.”

I flipped quickly to the front of the book and found the title:

The Stories We Told - By Joyce and Emma.

Underneath was a small inscription. The letters were a lot shakier than the rest in the book, an unstable hand but unmistakable,

“Emma - Share these with the world or keep them to yourself, they are yours. I love you, Grandma.”