The summer was at an end, and it had been three years since the last time we visited, so my dad decided to take me and Sophie to my grandparent’s. It took me a little bit of asking and persuading, but I managed to convince him and Violet to take her with us. In part, I wanted to introduce them to my wife, and on the other hand, it wasn’t really a family trip if she wasn’t going too. It’d be nice to have Papa Stan tagging along too, but someone had to stay behind and hold the fort.
The trip demanded a bit of a long drive and going into the hills, the ups and downs being a bit rough on Violet’s ears, but the private path leading to their house was pretty much flat allowing her body to get used to the height and pressure.
“At least now we know that taking a plane will be a pain,” she said as she pressed behind her jaw and bellow her ears as she tried to relieve the pressure by opening and closing her mouth like a fish.
I was doing fine, Sophie was on the same boat as Violet, and dad wasn’t complaining. In his case, that could mean either.
We passed through the small gate of the low pale, brown, reddish and black schist wall surrounding the property. I had seen it many times, so I didn’t even think much about it, but Violet found it very interesting to look at. Thinking about it, it was amazing to think that people, long, long ago, built such a vast wall with those stones. Did they use the ones they found around? Had they brought them from somewhere else? How many people were involved and how long did it take? Couldn’t they have used some mortar? Those were questions Violet was making as she twisted her head to try and see it for a bit longer after we drove past. The only answer I could give her was that since schist breaks off in flat slabs, it’s quite easy to pile them up in a way that’s quite stable, so no mortar is needed in those types of constructions really.
A few minutes later, the house came into sight after the path contoured a very ancient and just as wide cork oak. At first, she thought it was a tiny little house, white walled and with the roof made out of black schist, but then, we parked at the front and saw that while the house wasn’t wide, it was long. That was because my grandparents’ house was originally three independent houses built glued to one another. As I remembered it correctly, it was initially one single house, but then, one of the son’s built one right next to his parents’ house, and so did his own son. That last generation was who sold the place to my folks, a “buy one get three” kind of deal. What they did after becoming the owners was connect the houses from the inside, rooms at what used to be the back, and a living room by the previous entrance door.
“Granny!” I cheered, being the first to have spotted her coming out of the house.
She was a skinny old lady with a protruding belly, a glassy eye and a big mole on her lip, but despite that making her look kinda like a witch, she was a very nice old lady, that much being obvious by her smile as she returned my hug.
“My, how you’ve grown!” she laughed as she patted me on the back and head. “And you’re wearing a dress!”
“Hehe, do you like it?” I asked, giving us some distance and rotating side to side to show it to her. “It was Violet’s pick when I told her I’d like to start wearing one.”
My grandma looked her up and down as Violet approached and introduced herself. The way my grandma was regarding her with her one good eye was making my stomach tie into knots while my better half had a stiff face I hadn’t seen in a long time.
“You look better than I thought,” grandma said in a bit of a dry tone. “I was afraid you were one of those blue-haired, slightly overweight, pierced and tattooed macho-looking lesbians, but I’m glad to see I was wrong.”
Violet let out a stilted laugh, some of the stress leaving her body. I could see she didn’t particularly like the... “compliment”. Neither did I, to be frank, but as long as grandma didn’t hate her, I’d call that a win. At least that’s what we’ve been telling each other and ourselves.
Still, she was staring at the angel that was my wife, and that was all she could muster? And after Violet took so much care to look good and cause a good impression...
To Sophie, grandma said she had turned into a beautiful woman and asked if she had a boyfriend. I don’t think granny liked much the idea of Sophie dating Papa Stan, but she kept it to herself.
My dad was asked if he was eating well and if he had been taking proper care of himself. The latter got Violet and her own dad a glowing review as he stated that ever since she came into our lives, he has been eating a lot more homemade meals that were just great and that Papa Stan turned into a true friend who taught him not to take everything so serious all the time.
“But what’s with the dog collars?” my grandma asked me next, giving me the idea she was dead-set in being critical of my relationship. God knows she was always critical of my dad’s marriage, and having been proven right wasn’t helping our case. “And what happened to her lip?”
“Grandma, these are not dog collars! These are chokers!” I explained with a laugh. “They are accessories, and we like wearing matching stuff. As for her lip, she got it protecting me.”
“She did?” she said, looking at Violet with an expression of someone who wasn’t fully buying it.
“Trust me granny, no one is causing me any harm without being obliterated by her.”
“A-Abby...!” Violet whined as she pulled me closer by the hand.
I bumped my hip on her as I gave her a playful smile, forgetting myself for a second as I saw her adorable red face. Had she somehow gotten even more beautiful? What a scary but wonderful thought.
“Oh my! What a pretty young thing!” my grandpa’s voice said from behind us.
The tall thin man that he was rested his hoe on his shoulder and just as I suspected, he had his smoking pipe in his mouth. At the moment, he was simply holding it there as there was no puffs of perfumed smoke coming out.
I gave him a big hug after he clarified that all ladies present were pretty and young, he just wasn’t expecting for Violet to be that pretty. He was very sweaty, but he also never refused a hug from me.
“T-thanks. Erm, your house is quite lovely. Oh, and, erm, thanks for having me.”
“Och, don’t mention it,” he said as he leaned his cap back to wipe the sweat of his forehead with a handkerchief, exposing part of his balding head. “I for one was very curious to meet the person that got our Abigail to marry her when she looked like she’d stay single until well into her thirties, if not forever.”
“Gee grandpa, thanks for having so much faith in me,” I grumbled as I returned to my wife’s side, hugging her arm as soon as I could. “I was only waiting for the right person to come along.”
My grandpa chuckled, but before he could get a word in, grandma told us to get inside and out of the blazing sun. She had food on the burner and needed to attend to it too.
“I-I could help!” Violet volunteered.” It’s the least I could do since you let me intrude in your family reunion.”
My grandma looked back at Violet like she was thinking about it. Instead of a yes or no, what came out of her mouth was asking if Violet was having her period.
“In that case, I’ll have to refuse,” grandma answered after Violet told her a very embarrassed “yes” right in front of everyone. “I don’t want to risk having you spoil the food.”
My head dropped to the side and jaw to the floor. What did one thing have to do with the other?
“Yeah, some old folk believe that,” Violet explained to me after we sat down on the couch. “My grandma for example would make me wash my hands twice and pray five ‘Hail Mary’ and ten ‘Our Father’ before she let me anywhere near the kitchen during this time of the month.”
While I appreciated having learned that, I still felt miffed at my grandma. And even with that explanation, it still didn’t make much sense to me. Unlike Violet’s, my grandma wasn’t a religious person, like at all.
“No, I think the praying was just a thing for my grandmother,” she clarified. “It was a way to, erm... ‘purify’ me, in a way.”
Still, it was very stupid. Me and Sophie certainly had been here before while on our periods, and she never had told us not to go into the kitchen when she was cooking.
“Sorry about your grandmother,” my grandfather said as he lighted his pipe. “It was quite the shock for her to have learned that you married another girl. She even cried all night thinking about the great-grandkids she’ll never get.”
I considered telling him about our plans to adopt once we reach a certain age and financial situation, but... that’d likely pour more fuel into a very sensitive fire. Instead, I’d make a joke.
“Hear that sis? I’m counting on you to make up for me,” I told her, looking at my sister with gleeful sadism, ready to see her turn all shades of red.
“I-it’s too soon for me to think about that!” she cried out.
“Hehe, is it really?” I continued, amused by her shifting non-stop on her chair. It was even cleared than the day outside that she had indeed thought about it, and a lot too. “If you’re going to pop out enough babies to make a full football team and with substitute players, you gotta start early.”
“Abby!”
“Honey, don’t make such a ruckus and tease your sister so much,” Violet told me with soft taps on my knee.
I stuck out my tongue at Violet before doing as I was told and rested my head on her shoulder while doing some math.
I looked at my grandpa who had let out another chuckle and was affectionately staring at us as he let out puffs of scented smoke from the corner of his mouth.
“It’s nice to see you all so happy,” he told me as he crossed his legs with an old man’s grunt. “I’m sorry that things didn’t work out between your parents, but even my son looks happier now. Some bad things really happen for the better.”
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Indeed. There was no way that any of us would be this happy were my parents still together.
I still had some worries, but really, calling them that compared to being scared of messing up something and get yelled at or beaten over it is just inappropriate use of the word.
What he was also noticing was that we were a lot freer now. We could freely laugh, talk and act. We could even freely think too.
Like, right now, according to the calculations I had engaged after teasing sis, if someone wanted to do what I joked about, they could get a full team of eleven plus three replacers in about twelve years. No wonder that in the fantasy book I was reading, elves saw humans as a threat similar to varmint in part due to how fast we can reproduce. In the lore of the book, it was one child every ten years versus the hypothetical one each ten months is crazy slow. Instead of thinking about that, I’d have to be alert and mindful to not slouch on the couch or act “too spoiled” in front of grandpa. A different set of calculation told me that I’d have been yelled at three times at least.
If only he knew that the person I was resting my head on and smiling at was the catalyst—rather, the accelerant, that brought all these changes.
Lunch had been the time to inform the elders at the table about what the rest have been up to, and in the youths’ case, also tell them about our plans for the future.
They were pleasantly surprised to hear that Violet and I had things planned out for the next five years and a good idea of where we wanted to be in ten. That’s what I’d like to be saying as being what happened, but my grandma was looking sourer by the second, and I stopped talking after the part of Violet and I living together with me being the—main—breadwinner. I think she was thinking that Violet was taking advantage of me. That’s me trying to be... generous, in my assessment.
Hopefully, having Violet being the one talking about our plans got her some points in grandma’s consideration.
One thing is certain: the lunch was exhausting.
This time around, it wasn’t just Violet being an emotional reck, I too had my stomach twisting and turning, that feeling only getting worse with each interaction we had with grandma. Grandpa was acting like his usual self, enjoying his pipe and fig moonshine, occasionally engaging Violet in a casual talk as he tried to get to know her and feel welcome.
I couldn’t wait for the time to get in bed with Violet and read another two or three chapters as we snuggle to recharge our batteries.
That led to the bedroom assignment... and Violet and I didn’t like it.
“Aren’t Abby and I sharing the room?” Violet asked before she even noticed she voiced her question out loud.
“I’d rather you didn’t,” my grandma said.
The room she had been given was right across my grandparents. Since it was a guest’s room, it was as simple as simple could get, having only the bare furniture for someone to stay a short while. That’s not what was wrong with it though.
One thing I clearly remembered was that it had a couple’s bed. It was, after all, the bedroom my parents stayed in, meaning that grandma had grandpa change them around.
“But grandma, we...” I started. I never finished it because Violet reached out and gave my hand a squeeze, stopping me from loudly arguing with her. Violet looked outwardly calm, but I could see that she was also wanting to argue with her, but thankfully, she was a lot more composed than me in this situation.
“I understand that this is all very new for you and it must have been a great shock, but still, as Abby was going to say, we are a married couple. I’m also menstruating—we both are, so... couldn’t we please have a shared room?”
“...No. You are my guests, but this is still my house, and it’s just for one night. Are you telling me that you can’t sleep alone for one single night?”
Could she? After sharing the bed with my grandpa for over fifty years, could she sleep alone? Especially knowing her partner was sleeping just a few meters away? And the tone she was using...
I wanted to call all of that out, but Violet gave my hand a second squeeze, telling me to leave it to her.
“Anything else we should be mindful of?” Violet asked, trying not to grit her teeth.
“If you don’t mind, leave the door open when the two of you are here.”
There was a slight twitch in Violet’s face after she heard that. That was the sign that she had had it with trying to be as accommodating as possible.
“No,” Violet said firmly but still trying to sound polite. “Only if you do the same when your husband and you are in your bedroom too.”
My grandma had a glaring contest with Violet but didn’t say a word until she left. If she still had doubts about Violet having been punched over me, those doubts surely were put to rest.
“Are you ok?” Violet softly asked after letting out a growling sigh.
“No,” I whimpered as I buried my face in her chest. “I wanna go home... I wanna go home, but I don’t wanna to ruin the trip for the others.”
“I know,” she told me as she comforted me with pats as she sat us on the bed.
“I’m sorry Violet! If I had known she’d be this unfair to you... I’d... I’d...”
“Shh, shh! It’s ok Abby. It’s ok.”
My little crying got interrupted not by Violet’s reassurances, but by a knock on the door.
Sophie came to check on us for some reason that she didn’t finish saying when she noticed the bed.
“Isn’t this your room?” she asked, pointing at the bed.
We explained to her what we’ve been told, and sis didn’t like it. Not one bit.
If we were still friends or simply dating, ok, she could agree with granny to a certain extent, but with us married... yeah, that wasn’t going to fly.
“Me and dad are going to have a talk with her, you two start moving your stuff to what was supposed to be my room. It’s the second one of the second building,” she told us right before she left to fetch our dad.
We followed her, trying to convince Sophie to leave it be because we didn’t want to run the risk of causing bad blood between us all, but that was also when we crossed paths with grandma and Sophie let it rip.
“Grandma, honestly, I’m probably the single person that better understands how you feel about it, but they are married! Can’t you be a little bit more considerate?” Sophie shot at her immediately, not giving grandma time to even ask what was going on.
“Considerate!?” grandma shot back. “I already let that girl come too, what more do you want from me!?”
“Why invite Violet if you’re going to act cold towards her all the time then!?”
“What’s going on here?” grandpa asked, joining in and being followed by dad.
As Sophie explained to the men why she was shouting with grandma, I felt Violet’s arm pull me against her by the shoulder. That’s when I realised that my body was as stiff as stone, and I had been holding my breath. My body was also feeling awfully cold too.
She told Sophie that the argument was setting me off and that she’d take me outside to avoid me completely fricking out.
She pulled me away from the confusion and outside, the bright sun momentarily stinging my eyes and causing me to sneeze.
“Those damn sneezes of yours,” Violet giggled, not able to resist laughing at the squeaky sound I had made.
Hearing her laugh immediately put me at ease and I could relax, shaking my body around to loosen up. Almost immediately after, my body felt like it was warming up again.
With a sharp exhale, I asked if she wanted to me to show her the place.
To start things off, I showed her grandpa’s stone shack. Just like the wall surrounding the property, it was made of schist and no mortar at all, but the roof was wood. In there, he kept his tools, the gas bottles used for cooking and heating the water, and the still and fermenting vat he used for making his moonshine and fig wine.
“Fig wine?” Violet asked, sounding very intrigued.
“Yeah. This land isn’t good for grapes as he had hoped, but excellent for fig trees, so that’s what grandpa went with. You can sort of see the treetops from here, further down the hill.”
“Hmm,” she hummed as she squinted to filter some of the harsh light and better see what I was pointing at. “I wouldn’t mind trying some.”
“Even though minors shouldn’t drink?”
“I’m talking about having just a sip, not the whole bottle,” she told me as she entangled her fingers with mine, ready to resume our walk. “Besides, the law only states that minors can’t buy nor be served alcohol in public, it doesn’t say anything about consuming it in private with supervision of an adult.”
“Pfft, ah-haha! Maybe you should work towards becoming a lawyer.”
“Pfft, no way! I’d have to deal with people’s stupidity for a living if I did that!”
I doubted there was a single job where that wasn’t a thing at any level, but yeah, that career path sounded like one fraught with that sort of stuff.
No, my Violet should instead work on a flower shop or something. Peaceful, surrounded by beautiful things—nice smelling things, just like her, and if she opened her own store, her name would fit perfectly. “Evergreen’s Flowers Shop” has a nice sound to it, does it not? She thought so at least, when I suggested it to her as I guided us to our next stop.
“I must say, this place is quite peaceful,” she commented as we walked down the small path that led us to the small creek a short distance away from the back of the house. “The cicadas are a bit too noisy for my taste, but this is the countryside after all.”
“Should we move to a place like this when we turn into grannies?”
“I mean... that’d depend on so many things, wouldn’t it? Not saying that I wouldn’t like it, but...”
“In other words, we’ll cross that bridge once we get there.”
“...”
“...Hehe, what? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I was just thinking... you’ll be quite the cute granny when you get old.”
“Pfft, hehe! Stop it! Hehehe!”
I didn’t really want her to stop, especially after she leaned down for a kiss. She was tasting a bit salty, but that’s just what love tastes like during summer, a mix of honey-sweet and a tad of salt.
The creek this year was bone dry, unfortunately. It hadn’t rained much during winter around these parts apparently. What a shame that was because the place would be full of dragonflies, and I wanted Violet to see that.
“It’s a shame about the dragonflies, but at least we are less likely to meet a boar.”
“I guess that’ll have to wait for another time to see the dragonflies... assuming we ever come back here, that is.”
“...I’m sorry about your grandmother.”
“Yeah, me too. I had hoped she’d at least think that you’re a good person, but... You know... this place, it used to be a safe place for me on the occasions mum stayed at home... I still think of this place fondly, but... now, I don’t think I can be here and feel fully welcome anymore.”
Violet stared at me for a moment with a sorrowful expression, her thumb caressing the back of my hand.
Finding no words to say, she sat down on a stone and made me sit on her lap, grabbing the free hand I had and crossing our arms over me.
Even if she said nothing, just the fact that Violet was still gently holding me was all the support I needed.
We stayed sat for as long as the still air allowed us before we set our course back.
Sitting at the door with her elbows on the knees was sis, looking listlessly at the horizon.
“We are going back home,” she told us in a drained voice. “Grandma shut herself in her room and doesn’t want to be talked to, but grandpa is in his shack and wishes to give you a present and say goodbye. Haah, what a mess...”
“...I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come after all.”
Sophie looked up at her and stayed still for a moment. Then, she got up and held Violet’s face between her hands as she made her look her in the eyes.
“If she’s being this petty with you around, don’t you think she’d try to convince Abby to divorce you if you weren’t here?” Sophie asked. “She said you could come, she had a chance to get to know you, but instead of trying that, she chose to act immature. It’s her fault, not yours.”
To top it off, she kissed Violet’s forehead and mine too, reminding me that those words were also for me before telling us to go meet grandpa while she told dad that we were back.
We found grandpa where we were told he’d be.
“I’m really sorry about my wife,” he told us as he checked some bottles. “I hope she comes around, but knowing her the way I do... anyway, for me, it was a pleasure meeting you Violet.”
“Likewise. Still, erm, sorry for the confusion we caused.”
My grandpa chuckled again as he turned around holding a bottle of his fig wine. He said that Violet was a good kid and that, despite not being able to understand why I’d marry another girl with so many good guys out there, he was happy that I married someone that stood above most. With those words, he gifted us that bottle as our wedding gift.
“It’s no fancy champagne, but personally, I think it’s just as good, if you forgive me tooting my own horn.”
“Thank you. We’ll be sure to savour every little sip of it,” Violet said as she carefully cradled the bottle in her arms. “And thank you for your kind words. I promise you, I’ll do anything to keep our marriage a happy one that Abby won’t ever regret.”
“Oh-hoho! And that’s all an old man can ask for,” he said, tapping her shoulder approvingly. “I hope I get to see you again. Both of you.”
“Me too, grandpa,” I told him as I dove in for a big hug as tears started running down my face. “Me too.”