Liz's Road Trip, page 6
Grace falls asleep on the couch after calling her husband and having a gushy conversation with too many I love yous.
It isn’t until she’s asleep that I realize I haven’t discussed our trip to Florida when I get Gran’s ashes back. Grace will have to rearrange her schedule. Maybe Ashton would like to go too, I consider.
I’m going to be honest. I don’t want him to go. I want it to be me and Grace. But I’ve already established that I’m an asshole for taking her away from him so much lately. And, he’s a decent guy. I suppose having a man with us while we travel by car would be a good thing.
We’ll discuss it.
Now, laying in Gran’s bed, surrounded by her, and scrolling on my phone in the dark, I decide it’s time to figure out Mark Watts.
I’m not ready to plug in the names I’ve learned in the past day, but I can hear Mark’s voice in my head, and I need to know who he is. So, he and Gran weren’t romantically involved, but he’s someone. He’s someone she trusts enough to tell everything to.
I open the browser on my phone. I get the name Mark typed in, and my fingers start to twitch. Do I want to know?
God, yes!
I add Watts to the search, and of course there are numerous Mark Watts. I realize that the phone has customized my search to my location, so I filter it by adding Florida.
There are three Mark Watts that come up in the search.
Mark Watts owns a plumbing company.
Mark Watts is an author.
Mark Watts died six months ago at the age of ninety-six.
Well, I suppose I have my answer, sort of. He’s either a plumber or an author.
I look at the information that is given for Mark Watts the plumber. The phone number doesn’t match the one in my phone. I’m tempted to call and see if his voice matches WATTS’ voice. It’s one o’clock in the morning in Florida. What a jerk I’d be.
There is a picture of the plumber. It’s an ad. Family owned and operated and all.
This Mark Watts is in his fifties, I presume, and surrounded by said family which includes a wife and kids.
I wouldn’t figure that my WATTS is married, though, who knows. Maybe he lives in Gran’s house with his family.
Mark Watts the author has different head shots that come up. Mid-thirties, maybe even forty. Some pictures look as if they were taken to make him look mysterious. Others have him looking scholarly. But there is one, and it’s candid. It’s also poolside and a beige stucco house is behind him.
He writes biographies of movie stars, and in his biography, it says he’s based in Palm Beach, Florida.
I can’t help myself. At this point, I’m an asshole who hasn’t slept but a few hours in weeks, whose grandmother just died, and who is desperate for answers before she treks to Florida to meet a man and spread her grandmother’s ashes.
I’m going to text, and he’s going to get the text at one in the morning.
So, are you Mark Watts the biography author?
Again, my fingers twitch over the screen waiting for the text to be read. Then I click on the Facebook icon. Nothing. Really? He doesn’t have a stagnant Facebook account?
Instagram.
I’ve hit the jackpot. If that is my WATTS then he’s a nice-looking man. Though why my grandmother has a younger man living in the house I didn’t know she owned, is beyond me. But, I guess an author, researching old movie stars, would be home all the time and could take care of the property. And maybe Palm Beach is filled with old movie stars living out their years. I just don’t know.
His Instagram is filled with photos of him and notable actors from movies of the fifties and sixties. There are a few I recognize that aren’t as old, but this guy is usually surrounded by older people with white hair, or no hair, in his pictures. And maybe the people asking about Gran are the people in these pictures.
But Gran never talked about knowing famous people. Seriously, if you know someone famous, doesn’t their name drop from your mouth? I mean, I’m asking. I don’t know anyone famous.
Yes, the text chimes in my hand and I switch back to my text message.
Really? I text back, both surprised that he’s an author and that he’s texting me back.
Aren’t you a writer? Why are you so surprised?
I sit up in bed, arrange the pillows, and turn on the bedside lamp.
I write for a local magazine, I say. You know famous people.
He sends a laughing emoji. Knowing famous people has nothing to do with the fact that our careers line up.
I’m not published in book form. He has books. He has lots of books.
I’m envious, I text. Someday maybe I’ll write a book. For now they want me to write about going through this grief.
This time he sends a gif of a woman waving her finger.
Not even fair, he says. They should just let you mourn.
Seriously, I don’t know who the hell this guy is to Gran, but having him to banter with is keeping me sane, and that’s crazy.
I’m sorry if I woke you up, I text back, and true to form, my phone rings in my hand.
“Hey,” I say softly, as if I’m going to wake Grace who is in the living room.
“Hey,” he says back in his easy way. “I was awake.”
“Why?” I can’t help myself. I never stay up late, but the past few nights have certainly been an exception.
Mark chuckles. “I keep strange hours I guess. I do a lot of my writing in the middle of the night.”
“What are you working on now?” I ask, truly curious.
“Another biography. I’ll show you when you get here.”
The comment is so intimate that I forget we’re not friends and, in fact, don’t know each other at all. But the calm that fills me when I hear his voice, I just don’t care that he’s a perfect stranger.
“You’re sure I’ll come?”
“I know you will,” he says.
“How do you know?” I challenge. He’s been comforting, but I don’t want to think that he knows me so well that he can predict my actions.
“Betsy asked you to.”
“She did,” I say, and I wonder if he knows she’s committed him too. Gran’s letter said that Watts would fill me in on who she was.
I roll to my side and turn off the lamp.
“How old are you?” I ask, as I settle back into the bed, Gran’s sheets pulled up around me.
“I thought that was a question you weren’t supposed to ask people,” he teases.
“Just women. I’m thirty, by the way,” I say, as if it’ll coax him.
“April fourth,” he adds, and I tighten my hand around the phone.
“You freak me out,” I say. “How do you know my birthday?”
“Liz, I know you,” he says gently. “Your grandmother talked about you all the time. I was serious when I told you that.”
“Then why didn’t she ever mention you?”
“I don’t know,” he says, his voice still soft and patient. “I guess she wanted you to find me on your own.”
My breath hitches at that. He didn’t mean it in a flirty way, I don’t think, but that’s how it came across.
“You didn’t answer my question,” I say, trying to get the flirty out of my brain.
“Which one?”
“Age?”
“How old do you think I am?”
“Seriously?” I ask. “Why won’t you tell me?”
“Because if I tell you then our game is over for the night. I enjoy talking to you.”
Okay, now that’s a little flirty, straight up. “Why?”
“Liz, you seem nice. It’s just been nice to banter with you the past few days, at all hours.”
Didn’t I think that too?
“Besides, let’s be honest, you’re not over the age of eighty,” he continues. “You’ve yet to tell me to eat better, go find a girl, live a little, or that you need me to pick you up for a doctor appointment.”
I actually snort out a laugh when he says all of that. “Is that your real life, Mark Watts?” I use his name as he says it—in that James Bond way. “Helper to the elderly?”
“Living in a gated community of mostly retired, well-to-do people, I tend to be the token guy,” he says.
“It appears you were that to Gran too, even from this far away.”
“Anything for Betsy,” he says, and it squeezes at my heart a bit.
“You’re not going to tell me how old you are, are you?”
“Is it that important?” he asks.
“Since you’re the guy, I’m going to assume you don’t hit the median age of Palm Beach, Florida, which is seventy.”
He laughs. “I’m not seventy.”
“You don’t look seventy.”
“You’ve seen me?” His voice perks up and I cradle my phone against my pillow, pressing it to my ear. It seems intimate, but I’m not going to move.
“Instagram.” My voice has softened even more.
Mark hums into the phone and my eyes begin to close.
“So that’s how you know I know famous people?” his voice has grown lower, softer too. Was he in bed too, I wonder?
“Yes.”
“Mark A. Watts, try that one.”
“Instagram?” I ask.
“One is professional. One is personal.”
“And the personal one will tell me how old you are?” I ask on a yawn.
“You need to go to bed,” Mark says, and I realize that my eyes aren’t open anymore.
“Fine. Mark A. Watts, I’ll find you tomorrow.”
“Hey, Liz?” Now his voice is only a whisper.
“Yeah?” My voice is only a whisper too.
“You were here when you were six,” he says.
That does have my eyes opening. “At Gran’s house?”
“Yes. I was here,” he tells me. “I was twelve.”
There is a smile on my mouth, and when I think of his voice in my ear, the smile grows wider.
“Good night, Liz,” he says, and the call is disconnected.
Mark A. Watts
Grace’s eyes are wide and her smile tight as if she’s trying to keep it from spreading. Her hands are wrapped around a coffee mug that says Get your own grandma. This one is mine. It was something I’d painted for my grandmother, and she’d laughed when I’d given it to her. No matter where I end up, I’ll keep the mug.
“I can’t believe you’ve talked to the house boy this much,” she says, finally sipping her coffee. “Gran is playing matchmaker from the beyond,” she says.
I shake my head and my hair bounces around my face. I should be exhausted, but falling asleep to Mark’s voice seems to have soothed me.
“Wait till I tell him you called him a house boy,” I say, pushing the hair from my eyes. “And I don’t think she’s playing matchmaker.”
“How old is he?”
I sip my coffee and grin at her as I lower my mug. “Thirty-six, or at least that’s the number I’ve come up with thanks to the word problem he gave me.”
Her brows draw inward in obvious confusion.
I shrug. “He said he was twelve when I visited Florida with Mom.” Grace is still staring at me. “I was six when I was there.”
Slowly, she nods. “So he would have been sixteen when Gran left Florida to move here.”
I sit back in my chair, cross my legs up under me, and sip my coffee. “I guess so.”
“No one leaves a sixteen-year-old in charge of a house like that. Mark belongs to someone else that Gran trusted. Or, someone came before Mark as the house boy.”
“I guess we’ll find out when we get to Florida,” I say.
“Who is we?”
I blink a few times, because what a stupid question. “You and me.”
“I’m not going to Florida,” she says, standing and moving to the sink to pour out what’s left of her coffee.
“You have to go. I’m not going alone.”
“Um, yes you are,” she argues. “I have a job that I can’t just walk away from on a whim. And I have a husband.”
“He can go too.”
“You’re driving cross-country, Liz. This isn’t a day trip. It’s not meant to be a day trip. Gran has plans for you, and that doesn’t include a tag-along.”
I shift again, planting my feet on the ground, but I can’t get up from the chair. My legs are numb now, and I’m not sure I’m steady.
“Grace, I need you.”
“And I’m here, babe, but I’m not going to Florida. You need to know that it’s you and Cosmo on this adventure.”
I let out a breath. “I can’t take the cat.”
“You have to take the cat,” she argues as she leans against the counter. “Liz, you’re going to get paid to write about Gran’s death. So do it with some flair. Write about the process. Write out what you learn. Write about the adventure from Colorado to Florida with a cat. Write about not really knowing the people who raise us, the house boy, the pool boy, and a piece on Palm Beach, Florida,” she smiles. “Your whole life you’ve had me or Gran to walk beside you. Do this for you, Liz. Live this adventure just for you. She set it up to be just you.”
I want to be mad. I want to lose my shit on her, but she’s right.
I get it. I really do.
I need to make this an experience.
The words from Gran’s letter replay in my head. A life well-lived means no regrets. Remember that.
I hadn’t realized Gran had had such a grand life either. But her letter said something different. She was much more than a coupon-clipping bargain hunter, I guess.
I’ve had a good life, but I haven’t had a life well-lived. Thirty-years-old and I understand grief. I have a nice job, a home of my own, and a ride-or-die friend, but where is the life?
At the end of the journey is a guy who likes to talk to me on the phone in the middle of the night, and who knows my Gran in a way that I don’t.
What would it hurt for me to take the drive, grant Gran her wishes, and meet the guy?
Of course, I’ll also learn about her life well-lived.
I consider that for a moment. I am the age Gran was when she had my mother. In 1970, thirty was considered old to start a family. So, why had Gran waited? What occupied her? Obviously she never did become a mid-western housewife, just as she said she told her mother she didn’t want to be.
Mom never knew her father, just as I never knew mine. I have to admit, I just thought that was the way of it. It had never been an issue, even when Mom died. I didn’t long for some man I didn’t know to show up and take care of me. Gran showed up, that was all I’d needed.
Grace opens the dishwasher and puts her mug inside. “I have to get ready and head to work,” she says. “Are you going to be okay?”
“I’ll be fine. I’m going to sort through those boxes, and I think I’ll call Mark and ask him about doing something for Gran when I take her back.”
“So, you’re going to go, even if I don’t?”
I nod. “I am. You’re right. This is my adventure, and she made it that way. A life well-lived means no regrets,” I quote Gran’s letter and Grace smiles at me.
“She’s right.”
“She always is.”
“Ashton has some dinner thing we’re supposed to go to tonight. I can get out of it if—”
“Go. I’m okay.” I sigh. “I have to learn to do it all on my own now. And I mean that sincerely. I know I’m a grown up, college degree, blah, blah, blah. But, I have to figure out how to do things without Gran right there. I’m going to be fine.”
Grace moves to me, takes my face in her hands, and kisses the top of my head. “You will be. I cannot wait to hear about your adventure on the other side of it, Liz.”
I don’t like the reason behind the road trip, but Gran deserves her last wishes granted, and I deserve an adventure.
“I have a feeling it’ll be an epic tale.”
Grace gives me a wink as she lowers her hands. “No doubt.”
Once Grace leaves the house, I shower, make more coffee, and then I sit on Gran’s bed and look around at the mess we’ve made. I still need to decide what I want to do with her house. I’m not sure I want to live here again. It’s not that the house is sad to me. I have wonderful memories of Mom here and Gran too, but it’s my past.
My place is mine. I bought all the things inside of it, and I painted the walls. It matters, I realize, now very aware of that a life well-lived mantra.
I reach for my phone, which I’ve left on the nightstand all morning. It’s my feeble attempt to be present in the moment, and not to be worried about what’s outside these walls. I need to document my feelings at this very moment and put it in my article.
Instead, I open Instagram.
The moment I open the app, I type in the name Mark A. Watts. Now, I’m inviting in the distraction.
There he is, and much less formal. He was right. Professional vs. private Mark is much different.
His professional account is stiff. The photos of him with old Hollywood, and what I’d consider getting older Hollywood, don’t compare to the pictures of the pool, the palm trees, and the ocean. There are pictures of Mark, in selfie mode, enjoying his surroundings. He has an eye for unique and an eye for simple. And, just from the pictures, I know he appreciates everything—just as Gran did.
Personal Mark isn’t clean shaven, often. There’s always a day’s growth on his face, and he wears Ray-Bans. Most of the pictures are outside. But there are a couple photos taken inside, and his hair is dark, but his eyes are blue.
If he stands with a woman in a photo, he’s never touching her. Yet there are a few where he’s out with guy friends and his arms are draped over their shoulders.
Maybe he does have a thing for the pool boy.
And that, too, would be living his best life, I think.
But, there is a part of me that hopes he’s not into the pool boy—especially now that I’ve seen this side of him.
Then again, I certainly don’t need any complications in my life right now, but I do enjoy the attention he’s given me the past few days. Attention probably given to me because he needs attention too. It’s been apparent that we both lost Gran.
Those are more feelings I’ll need to address. She wasn’t just mine to lose.
