Read Online 'Til Grits Do Us Part by Jennifer Rogers Spinola - Free Book Online Page A

like archaeological strata. Cross sections showing the final years of her life—a life I’d brusquely ignored on my heady march up the corporate ladder. Without a backward glance or second thought.
    And perhaps, too, in part to numb the pain of my long-ago past—bitter nights of beatings, loneliness, and hunger of the stomach as well as the soul.
    I slipped to my knees and sorted through the stacks of papers and files, lifting off tax documents, income statements, and W-2 copies. Boring safety manuals from work. Social Security statements and school meeting notes. Everything crisp, professional, unemotional.
    Christie poked a curious nose over the edge of the trunk as I piled more papers on the floor, trying not to soil my white, tailored dress shirt with newsprint and the grime of years. “Recipes,” I said, dropping another handful of stuff. “And birthday cards. Lots of them.”
    None from me though. Not after Mom spoiled my growing-up years with her cult chasing, psychedelic tea drinking, and nervous breakdowns. Weeks in and out of mental asylums and leaving me—just a nervous, skinny slip of a kid—rooting through empty cabinets in search of crumbs.
    I put the cards away and tried not to think of the terse phone conversations I’d had with Mom after I moved to Japan. The nervous tremor in her voice when she said, “I’m sorry,” and the cold steel in my heart as I hung up the phone, telling her not to call.
    The memories stung now, making a painful well in the hollow of my heart.
    Especially when I reached into the trunk again and pulled out a thick stack of letters—stamped letters, postmarked and mail battered—bearing my various addresses. Cornell to Nara to Osaka to Tokyo. Tied with a blue ribbon into a tight brick.
    And every single one of them stamped R ETURN TO SENDER.
    I opened one of the envelopes, mailed a few months before Mom’s death, and held the letter a little away from my body as if to buffer myself against the pain. Circling Christie with my arm. And I skimmed the lines with pinched breath, afraid of what I might read.
    Her tomatoes were growing… roses blooming…
    That…that’s it? I snatched the paper closer in surprise. No more sob stories? No guilt trips?
    Stella’s blue-ribbon lemon pie at the county fair…a bald guy…somebody’s broken wrist in a cast…a blind student who got a job as a computer programmer…
    I released my breath in relief at such innocuous topics. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps Mom’s desperate attempts at reuniting were a thing of the past, and by the time she’d mailed me this letter, she’d accepted our differences—our unreconciled lives—and moved on.
    â€œHow do I say it?”
she had written on the first page, her letters large and flourished.
“How do I tell you I’m sorry for the past, all of it? The lost moments and lost days? The words I wish I could take back like a rash promise, made hastily and then regretted?”
    My stomach fell in a sick drop, like when I stood at the top of Tokyo Tower. Looking down over a thousand lights below and gripping the rail with white fingers.
    Please come to Virginia. I’ve found a new life here, in a hundred different ways that I can’t explain on silent, one-sided paper, and I’d like to share it with you. To ask your forgiveness and start again, perhaps, as new people. New people who share by some mystery, under the skin of our many differences and years apart, the same blood
.
    Christie whined and climbed into my lap, her toenails slipping on the smooth fabric of my dark gray dress pants, and nuzzled my chin. She lapped at my cheek with her wet tongue, and I hugged her back—my arms barely fitting around her big-puppy body. Her fuzzy chest rose and fell against mine.
    I shifted Christie slightly so her cold nose and snout wouldn’t stain my shirtsleeve then straightened the