Famous in a Small Town by Viola Shipman

Author:Viola Shipman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Graydon House Books
Published: 2023-04-04T14:14:48+00:00

Mary

I already know where Ollie will be.

When I catch up to him, he is seated in the giant tree swing my mom and I built for him when he was little. After spending all year in the city, Ollie loved the quiet and charm of Good Hart’s summers. Swimming, rock hunting, biking through the trees and reading—right here in this swing—made for a wonderful summer and one he wanted when he grew up. While other friends were traveling to Europe, starting corporate careers or moving with their jobs, Ollie preferred to return to the lake.

“Want me to push you?” I ask.

He ducks his head but does not answer.

Ollie has always been this odd mix of boyishness and masculinity, child and grown-up, push and pull, big city and small town...

Father and grandmother.

I move behind him. He lifts his feet off the ground, and I smile inside.

I give Ollie a gentle push, and he begins to swing. I step aside, and he pushes off with his legs, going higher, higher, the whoosh of the swing merging with the hum of the cicadas.

It feels as if nothing has changed.

It feels as if everything has changed.

I move around in front of the tree swing and watch my grandson. His dark curls are much the same as they were when he was just a boy: bouncy, shiny, edging into his eyes. He spent his teen years trying to alter those family genetics, shaving off his hair one summer for freshman football, growing it into an awful mullet another summer and then straightening it one year to resemble a surfer.

His dark eyes are mirrors to his every emotion, stormy as a summer thunder boomer over the lake one moment and as beautiful as a chocolate iris the next. He’s always been a pale boy with pink cheeks that flush red whether he’s upset or excited. Ollie is a big boy—a linebacker in high school—and he looks as if he’s been hitting the gym of late and gulping down that protein powder he so loves. Although he is now thirty-six, Ollie still looks like a boy. I like to think he gets that youthful spirit from me.

The wind from the swing swirls my hair around in circles. Ollie goes higher and higher, and I have to stick my hands in the pocket of my apron to keep from reaching out and stopping him in order to protect him from getting hurt.

Too late, I think.

Finally, he slows, digging his feet into the ground.

He refuses to look at me, instead focusing on the narrow path that leads down the bluff to Lake Michigan. Through the green, there is a window of blue. He will talk when he’s ready.

Ollie has always been emotional, the exact opposite of my son, who bottled everything up tight as a drum and refused to talk about any of it. If he didn’t acknowledge it, then it wasn’t real, from his drunk, dead father to his kooky, headstrong mother. I used to joke that Jonah should have become a janitor because he likes to sweep everything away.

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