Excerpt: Default.Hope

Grandma would always wait. We would be sitting in the kitchen talking, maybe drinking something, maybe eating something she’d cooked up for me and had ready the very second I’d come through the door, or just relaxing and enjoying the bird feeder she had in the backyard. Either way, she’d wait, just for five o clock when the rumble of the Harley Davidson Roadster would rumble past the house. It was like she could hear those screaming Eagle tailpipes from a mile away. They would rumble and she would hear them, snap up to her feet and dash to the front door, her long, graying hair tied in a braid and flailing from behind her. Around the corner she’d disappear and it would take me at least a couple seconds more to catch up and round the kitchen corner myself. But there I’d find her, nose pressed up against the window elegantly placed in a flower pattern on the top third of the sturdy wooden door.
“Look at that Emiline,” she’d say, and press a thin wrinkled hand to her chest, touching the gold lined locket my Grandpa gave her and squeezing it tight in her hand. “George would love to be riding that thing.”
Her sigh afterwards always gave me comfort. It made me think of all the memories she must have been remembering in that moment, happy memories of her with my Grandpa George.
“Nice Roadster isn’t it, Grandma?”
“Oh, plenty nice Emi. Plenty nice.”
I watched the bike leave and Grandma would linger just a moment longer at the door. I watched her face closely.
“Why do you run to the door so fast Grandma?” I asked her one time. I was young then and curious but Grandma James was patient and just looked at me with a smile.
“Oh, I suppose its hope,” she said.
“Hope? For what?”
“Hope your Grandpa George will come home, I suppose. Riding that Harley of his, just roaring down the road until he got to our house and then puttered into the driveway, still decked out in his leather jacket and chaps. Silly isn’t it?”
Silly, she’d say. But I didn’t think so. Not in the least bit.
“Emiline,” she’d tell me, “You gotta hope sometimes, even when you know what you want isn’t going to happen. I hope everyday that your Grandfather comes home even though I know he can’t. But I can’t help it. It’s what my old heart wants to believe.” She’d look out the window again and this time her eyes would sparkle with something different, something longing and far away. I knew she saw Grandpa George in the driveway just like she pictured, just like when he was alive. I’d see this and hug her and burry my face in her bushy, green sweater.