Clara

Robert’s flight home took a total of thirty hours because he couldn’t avoid the second layover in Chicago. He’d passed through customs at LAX, and the tired TSA agent had given him a wan smile with a generic, “Welcome home, Mr. Elliot,” after stamping and handing back his passport. In Chicago, he just waited by the gate. He bought a terrible coffee and a magazine because he found the cover model attractive. She had light brown skin and very long legs. Was she a model or an actress?

The magazine remained unopened, and his coffee became cold after a couple of sips because he could not stop staring at the three-inch-long message bubble on his phone. The bubble had arrived thirty-eight hours ago in Seoul, South Korea. Robert, in the middle of his English writing lecture, didn’t hear it until class was over.

There’s no easy way to say this. There was a break in at G-ma’s house, and the intruder shot her when she came out of her bedroom to check on the noise. The paramedics said she didn’t suffer. The funeral is in three days. Please come home.

Robert hoped he’d be able to cry soon, but right now the only pain he felt was the ache behind his eyes from lack of sleep. When he arrived in Alabama, and he saw his sister, Laura Jean, he would be able to grieve. He was sure of it.

Eugenia Ella Elliot, or G-ma to Robert and Laura Jean, had been the life force of their entire family for decades. Robert and his sister had spent most of their childhood at her sprawling ancient house despite their own home offering modern comforts like air conditioning just down the street. G-ma’s love for him and his sister had been so obvious and pervasive that everyone in the neighborhood had loved them simply because she had.

Robert closed his eyes and tried not to think about the sadness mixed with joy in G-ma’s eyes when he told her he’d accepted a lecturer position at a university in Seoul five years ago. He’d made her the proudest she’d ever been of him, but he’d also broken her heart.

“We will now begin priority boarding for flight 3507 to Birmingham,” the flight attendant said over the intercom. Robert pulled out of his memories and grasped his personal belongings tightly. He was going to make it home in one piece. G-ma always said one needed their wits about them when things got difficult.

_____

Laura Jean had offered to drive down to Birmingham to pick him up when his flight arrived, but Robert had refused. He wanted, or rather needed, to rent a car and drive up to North Alabama alone. Also, Laura Jean was most likely on the verge of a breakdown from trying to make arrangements while pushing back the grief that was constantly threatening to break through her polite southern manners. The hour and a half drive was perhaps the only silver lining of not being able to fly directly into his small city’s international airport.

Despite five years of taking public transportation or taxis in Seoul, the grip of the steering wheel felt familiar as he drove out of the car rental company’s parking lot and onto the freeway. It was late afternoon and already muggy for May. He would most likely pull into his parents’ home at dusk.

Robert reveled at the amount of land that spread out from either side of the freeway. He’d forgotten about open spaces and greenery that stretched out to the horizon. Growing up, the underdeveloped land had felt tacky and boring, but now the countryside allowed Robert to breathe deeper, as if the density of Seoul had somehow unknowingly compressed his lungs.

Landmarks began to look familiar about an hour into the drive. At the Piggly Wiggly located on the edge of the county line, Robert veered into the local road that cut through G-ma’s land. Lavender still dotted the fields marked off by old wooden fences with barbed wire. Robert cracked the windows to let the smell of early evening, grass, and lavender in. He almost forgot about his exhaustion, and his lips curled up at the nostalgic smells, but then the top of G-ma’s old barn appeared, salmon colored from the sun, but still standing.

Robert’s first instinct was to press down on the gas pedal as hard as he could and speed by without thinking about the barn again, but he’d seen it, and his blinker to make a right turn into the gravel path was already on. The car tires crackled over the stones as he pulled to a stop in front of the decrepit double doors. It should have been padlocked, but the metal chain was drooping off the right-hand door, and the left-hand door was ajar. Maybe G-ma was inside getting the barn ready for a sleepover he’d requested for him and his middle school friends. Or maybe G-ma was stringing up fairy lights and setting up the projector to face the smooth west wall to have movie night with family and friends.

A figure stepped out of the barn door, and they cupped their hands over their eyes to peer into the car’s windshield. Even though Robert couldn’t see the person’s face, he knew it was Clara.

“Bobby?” Clara called out, her voice exactly the same. Robert didn’t know if he could get out of the car and face her. He had not seen her in seven years, and she was supposed to be in Los Angeles. However, she was standing outside of his grandmother’s barn like she used to when they were young and naïve to the hurricane that was to be their relationship.

“Hey,” Robert said. He teetered backwards on his heels from standing up too swiftly. He gripped the car door and regained his center of gravity. Clara walked towards him with an awkward smile on her face. She was in jean shorts and a white frilly shirt.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. The question came out more hostile than intended, but Clara didn’t notice.

“What am I doing here in your grandmother’s barn or what am I doing in Alabama?” she asked.

“Both, I guess,” Robert said.

“I moved back last year. I wanted to message or call you, but it felt selfish. As for why I’m at the barn, I don’t know. Maybe I knew you’d stop by. Laura Jean told me you were flying in tonight. I am so sorry for your loss, Bobby.”

The earnestness in Clara’s voice should have made Robert angry. She’d shown zero empathy when she left, despite all his attempts at a compromise. She didn’t want to listen. She didn’t want to stay. She didn’t want him.

“Do you know what happened?” he asked, his voice cracking.

“Do you remember Luke from our Algebra II class?”

“Yes. He used to stutter a bit,” Robert said.

“He’s the sheriff now, and he said it was a robbery gone wrong. The person who hurt your G-ma was an addict. Luke said he was looking for pain killers and money.”

“Do, do we know the addict?” Robert asked.

Clara paused before replying. “It’s Hank. Do you remember Hank?”

“Hank’s an addict? When did he become an addict? Didn’t he go to Texas on a full ride?” Robert asked. The idea that their high school former quarterback and salutatorian murdered his grandmother while high on opioids was more surreal than G-ma’s actual death.

“He replaced his knee a while back and couldn’t quit the narcotics. Hank’s really broken up about what happened. He’s on suicide watch at the county jail.”

“He’s broken up? He’s broken up?” Robert’s voice became shrill and unrecognizable.

“Bobby –”

“You think it’s OK for you to tell me my grandmother’s murderer is feeling bad about what he did? That’s like you telling me I should tiptoe around your feelings when you’re the one who destroyed our relationship and ran off to the other side of the country. Why are you back here, Clara? Why aren’t you in California? Why are the people I don’t want to see alive and the person I shouldn’t have left dead?”

The top of Clara’s head smelled like coconuts as Robert tried to struggle out of her hug. But she held on, her arms squeezing around his waist. He could feel her heartbeat against his diaphragm, and she was shaking with him, crying with him.

“I loved her so much too, Bobby. She was an amazing human being. I’m so sorry. I’m so so sorry,” Clara said.

G-ma had loved Clara. She’d loved Clara’s wit and creativity. After Clara broke his heart, G-ma had asked Robert to drive up from Tuscaloosa to visit with her. He’d been cooped up in his graduate school apartment for days, unwashed and miserable.

“Let her go, baby. She needs to feel the world with her own skin before she comes back and appreciates what she left behind,” G-ma said.

“I’m never going to take her back,” Robert replied.

“That’s fine.”

“I’m not joking, G-ma.”

“I’m not either. But I want you to promise me that you’ll still say hello and be cordial when you see her again. She’ll be hurting then.”

“I doubt that, but I’ll be cordial.”

“That’s my baby.”