Free Call Me Tuesday by Leigh Byrne Page B

because I believed him. He was all I had to believe in.
    He picked up one of my arms and began rubbing it, smoothing out the scraggly blonde hairs. “I’m sorry your mama is always mad at you.”
    “Why is she mad at me?” I asked, pretending like I didn’t know. “What did I do?”
    “You didn’t do anything, honey.” He stopped rubbing my arm and turned his head away from me, as if to collect his thoughts. “It’s just that she’s still upset about Audrey.”
    Then he changed the subject, and with it, the timbre of his voice. “How would you like to go to Nashville to visit Grandma Storm for a while this summer?”
    I loved Grandma Storm, and I hardly ever got to see her. “Stay at her house all night?” I asked, barely able to contain myself.
    “Sure, maybe for several nights.”
    I threw my arms around his neck. His cheeks were smooth, clean of the scratchy whiskers he often had at night.
    Then a thought quelled my excitement. I pulled away from his embrace and eyed him in disbelief. “Mama won’t let me go.”
    “Yes, she will. I might have to work on her, but she’ll let you.”
    “Please, Daddy,” I begged. “Please take me to Grandma’s house right now!”
    He chuckled. “No, you have to finish out the school year first. And I’ll have to talk it over with Grandma Storm to make sure it’s okay.”
    He gave me my morning kiss good-bye and left for work. I savored the smell of his spicy cologne for as long as I could after he was gone.

17
     
    In June, as he had promised, Daddy made the arrangements for me to visit Grandma Storm at her house in Nashville. He got me out of bed early one Saturday morning before anyone else in the family awoke, threw my clothes in a brown paper bag, and drove me there.
    In half an hour, we were at Grandma’s. As the station wagon pulled up her bumpy, gravel driveway, I marveled at all the flowers in full bloom in her front yard. There were pink petunias in a circular bed around a dogwood tree, and three side-by-side symmetrical islands of red geraniums, one with a birdbath in the center. Red and white peonies lined the stone pathway leading to the front porch, and roses of every color climbed trellises close to the house. I rolled down the car window and stuck my face out, breathing in the fragrant air.
    Daddy parked the car, and together we made our way to Grandma Storm’s front door. He carried the paper bag with my clothes in it in one hand, and pulled me along behind him with the other. We took a shortcut, hurrying across a patch of dewy grass between the house and the driveway, and my feet slid around on my rubber flip-flops as I struggled to keep up with him.
    The door to Grandma’s house was open, as it always was to family, and we went right inside without even knocking.
    The furniture in her living room was grand and large scale, and out of proportion with her tiny, cottage-like home. That’s because she’d once lived in a big plantation house, but it had been all but destroyed by fire in the early 1900s. The living room furniture, including a baby grand piano, was practically all she had been able to salvage.
    When the tragedy struck, Grandma refused to leave what was left of her home, and the flower garden that had taken her years to perfect. She and my grandfather a successful lawyer, decided to rebuild on the same property, and as much as they possibly could, put everything back the way it had been before the fire.
    That was their intention, but before they could get started, the Great Depression closed in, and my grandfather became ill, dying in his fifties of complications from diabetes. Without his income to finance the project, Grandma had to settle for much less. The garage, which was the only part of the house spared by the fire, was sectioned off into two parts to become the den and kitchen of the new house. The living and dining rooms, and two bedrooms, were added on to complete it.
    Daddy’s older sister, Macy, was seated at the