Free Thank You for the Music by Jane Mccafferty Page A

ma.”
    Berna reached out to shake my hand. Her eyes were dark and warm. As she opened her coat I saw her sweatshirt was covered with decals of cats.
    â€œI wasn’t able to dress appropriately,” she said. “I’m coming from work, you’ll pardon me, I hope?”
    â€œWork?”
    â€œShe’s a vet,” my son jumped in, beaming at her. He was more animated than I’d seen him in years. “She makes housecalls. A traveling vet. I went with her today. She’s excellent. Harry—that was his dog—loves her. That’s how we met. She’s the only traveling vet in town.” He took a deep breath; he seemed filled with a kind of desperate, nervous excitement—so different from his usual taut calm.
    â€œA traveling vet,” I said. “Well well. That’s something. Please, come in, sit down.”
    The two of them followed me into the living room. I felt I was dreaming. Berna sat down. She made no noise as she sat. No little groan of pleasure. No sigh. She sat with her long back as straight as the poised tails of the cats on her sweatshirt, her eyes and the eyes of the cats too alert, so that I felt like a small crowd was quietly assessing me. Griffin sat beside her, and held her hand, and suddenly I asked him if I could speak to him in the kitchen. I felt toyed with, and wanted him to know.
    â€œWhy didn’t you mention she was old enough to be your grandmother?” I hadn’t meant to hiss at him. In the kitchen light his brown eyes widened.
    â€œWhat’s your problem?” he said. “Did you turn into Dad or something?”
    â€œGriffin, this is ridiculous! Don’t act like you’re not enjoying the shock value of this! She looks like my childhood pediatrician, who was old then, and dead now!”
    He scrunched up his face in a sort of disgusted confusion. All the composure I’d seen for the past two years, composure that had struck me as false, had left him. I knew his palms were sweating. I felt for him, but it struck me as comical, his expecting me to take this in stride.
    â€œI want to marry this woman,” he said. “I want to marry her. This has nothing to do with your childhood doctor, or shock value.” I saw he was deadly serious. So, I thought, this is how his strangeness has found itself a home. Let’s hope it’s temporary, a pit stop.
    Berna appeared in the doorway, a tall, long-limbed sixty in a cheap, baggy cat sweatshirt that somehow was dignified enough on her.
    â€œLook,” she said. “Let’s be up front here, shall we? Let’s get it all out on the table. Go ahead and tell me what’s pressing in on you: I’m old enough to be his mother.”
    â€œGrandmother,” I said.
    â€œGrandmother then,” Berna said, with a kind of pride that lifted her chin. “Though I’d have to have given birth at an awfully young age to make that a true statement.” Her voice was soft and steady with confidence.
    â€œI’ve finally brought Berna here because she’s the first woman I’ve really loved. That needs to be known and digested.”
    â€œThat’s what you’re telling her?” I said to him, remembering a string of girls named Cindy, and the three Jens, two of whom I’d become quite friendly with.
    â€œI told her because it’s true, Ma. Okay? Now it’s all out in the open. You want a beer, Bern?”
    â€œSure,” said Bern.
    And I heard my husband coming down the steps. Here we go, I thought.
    My husband and son never got along. I used to blame Jude— he’d been so absent during Griffin’s childhood, so self-absorbed, and my son had been born, it seemed, awestruck by his father. Terrible combination. In those early years we lived out in the country and Jude painted in a large shed; Griffin was like a dog, waiting too patiently for the master to finally notice him and play. The more absorbed his father