Following Grandpa Jess Read online

  Table of Contents

  Synopsis

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Epilogue

  About the Author

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  Synopsis

  Jess Madison has problems. His aging parents seem hell-bent on belittling him in new and increasingly infuriating ways, he's fallen for his best—and, unfortunately, heterosexual—friend David, and his grandmother has recently taken to climbing out on her roof in hopes of contacting the spirit of her late husband, the much-beloved Grandpa Jess.

  All Jess wants to do is live his life and feed his goldfish in peace, but instead, he finds himself at the heart of a familial clash that seems ready to tear his family apart. With the help of his two younger brothers, uber-manly AJ and lovably weird Thomas, Jess sets out to reconcile his family, keep Grandma off the roof, and sort out the mess his life has become—with just a little help from Grandpa Jess.

  Following Grandpa Jess

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  Following Grandpa Jess

  © 2013 By TJ Baer. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-62639-026-3

  This Electronic Book is published by

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 249

  Valley Falls, New York 12185

  First Edition: July 2013

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Credits

  Editors: Victoria Oldham and Cindy Cresap

  Cover Design: Lee Ligon

  Dedication

  To my seishi sisters, who have kept me writing and laughing for nearly a decade now.

  To Becca, who deserves a medal for wading through the first draft version of this story, and for inspiring me endlessly with her love and enthusiasm for these characters.

  To Mom, Grandma, Grandpa, Derek, Ryan, Jamie, Tom, Zach, Britt, and all the other wild, wacky, and wonderful people in my family.

  To friends in Chicago, online, and in Japan.

  And to Y, who will never be my David, but was a damned good model nevertheless.

  Prologue

  Second grade, 1997. You know the scene: Tidy little room with ugly brown carpeting, miniature desks full of miniature people waving their arms in the air, pretty lady at the front of the room holding a piece of chalk and looking for someone to call on. Finally, she smiles and points to an undersized kid in the second row.

  Even at age seven and a half, it’s pretty easy to tell he’s headed for social ostracism and general mockery. His hair is dirty blond and kind of stringy, hanging down to his shoulders, and even through all that hair, his ears stick out like round little hills from the sides of his head. His front teeth are oversized and crooked, and although he’s not a bad looking little kid, there’s a delicate quality to his features that puts him more in the realm of “pretty” than “handsome.” Not that anybody can really be called handsome at age seven, but you get the idea. The deck is kind of stacked against the poor kid already, and when the teacher calls on him and he gets eagerly to his feet, it only gets worse.

  “When I grow up,” he says in a proud rush, reading the words off a piece of notebook paper he’s got clutched in both hands, “I want to be a mailman because I really like getting mail so I think it’d be fun to give mail to other people and be a mailman so that’s what I want to be.”

  Silence fills the room. Then, finally, there’s a giggle from one of the girls in the back, echoed by a few others, then a few more. The teacher gets things moving along before the full-out mockery can begin, thanking him for his answer and asking for another volunteer, but the damage is done, and the kid sits down looking hurt and kind of puzzled. As the rest of the class members come out with their occupational dreams, though—doctor, teacher, lawyer, scientist—he starts to get the feeling that maybe, just maybe, the other kids were laughing because they thought his answer was dumb. It could just possibly be that they don’t think being a mailman is cool at all, and in fact, maybe they think it’s kind of a stupid thing to want to be.

  When he gets home that night he asks his grandmother, because she’s the only adult he knows who always tells him the truth, even when it makes him cry.

  “Grandma,” he says, tugging on her sleeve while she’s guessing at Jeopardy answers and thus not really in a mood to be bothered, “is it bad to be a mailman?”

  “Who is Mark Twain!” she barks at the TV. “Who is Mark Twain!”

  “Who is Theodore Roosevelt?” a tinny voice from the TV answers.

  He tries again. “Grandma.”

  She says a few words he’s not supposed to know, then finally turns to him when a shampoo commercial comes on. Her eyes focus on him with a bit of surprise, like she wasn’t sure up until now just who it was tugging on her lacy sleeve and calling her Grandma. She gives him an indulgent—but rather dry—smile. “Oh, it’s you. What is it?”

  “Is it bad to be a mailman?”

  “What?”

  He rolls his eyes and explains quickly. “Today at school Miss Daniels made us write about what we want to be when we grow up, and I said I want to be a mailman, and everybody laughed, and so I wondered if it’s bad to be a mailman. Is it?”

  She blinks at him for a second, then throws back her head and laughs. “Oh, darling, why would you want to be a mailman?”

  “Because I like getting letters and stuff, and so I thought—”

  “Precious, you wouldn’t be getting letters if you were a mailman. You would be giving them to other people.”

  “I know that,” he says impatiently, “but then I’d be making them happy like it makes me happy when I get mail.”

  “Oh, it’s different when you’re older.” She sighs, leaning back against the couch cushions with one veiny hand over her eyes. “Mail is all about bills and sales papers, and it brings joy to no one. Trust me, darling, pick a different career. One with a better uniform, preferably.”

  He goes away with his lower lip trembling and stomps upstairs, wanting to slam his bedroom door but knowing he’ll get in trouble if he does, as it’ll probably wake the baby. So he closes it quietly, then stomps around some more and finally throws himself onto his bed, where he proceeds to pummel his fists into the cheerful faces of all the stuffed animals lined up on his pillow. He ends up kicking them all onto the floor, then has to brush them off and kiss them and apologize a few minutes later when he starts feeling guilty for taking his mailman-related anger out on them.

  Finally, lying on his back with his arms folded behind his head, he stares up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling and swears to himself that he will be a mailman, no matter what anybody else says. It’s his dream, and he knows he’ll be happy doing it, because what’s better tha
n getting mail? Nothing, except maybe being the guy who brings that mail. Just thinking about riding around on his bike with a bag full of letters and packages makes him want to start bouncing up and down in excitement, and he knows that nothing else in the world could be better than that.

  He falls asleep with his arms crushed around as many of the stuffed animals as he can reach, still smiling at the bright visions of the future. It’s kind of like being Santa Claus, being a mailman, except you don’t have to be fat or live somewhere cold. Bringing people happiness… It’s perfect, and even though he knows now that it’ll have to be his own secret dream that he shares with no one, it’s still going to be his dream. He’s going to hold on to it forever and never, ever change his mind, and by the time he’s out of school, he’ll be a mailman. He’s sure of it.

  Chapter One

  “You really think she’ll go for this?”

  I turned to AJ, who was leaning against the car door, arms folded over his chest so his biceps looked all bulging and impressive. “No, not really,” I said. “She’ll probably start swearing and throw stuff at us.”

  Thomas, our perpetually scrawny sixteen-year-old brother, gave me an eager grin. “Want me to wait in the car with the motor running? You know, in case things get ugly and we have to make a break for it?”

  “Thanks,” I said dryly, “but I think we’ll manage. Besides”—I reached out and caught his skinny neck in a headlock—“you’re coming in with us.”

  “I am?”

  “You’re our shield,” AJ said. “You know Grandma’d never throw anything at wittle Tommy.”

  Thomas gave a knowing nod—not so easy to do while still in a headlock, even a somewhat wussy one like mine. “Emotional manipulation. Got it.”

  “Not just that,” I said, releasing him. “You’re the one she might actually be willing to listen to. You’ve got that whole underfed puppy look going on. Who could resist?”

  “Every girl in my school?”

  “Really? Girls don’t go for that?”

  “Oh, they think I’m cute,” Thomas rushed to assure me. “They just usually would rather feed me and tell me I’m adorable than actually go out with me.”

  “Damn. Well, if you ever need any tips…”

  AJ cleared his throat, lifting his chin a bit so his manly, chiseled profile was more visible.

  “Go to the old married man,” I said. “He was a man-slut in high school, and I’m sure he’d be glad to give you some lessons for a very reasonable price.”

  “Hey!” AJ protested, thudding his oversized fist—ow—into my shoulder. “I was popular. Not a man-slut. And what do you know about girls, anyway? You went on one date in high school, and Mom set it up.”

  I flinched, having a sudden, terrifying image of buck-toothed Sally Claremont as she stood, forever immortalized, in our Junior Prom photo: orange taffeta dress with the shoulder pads of a linebacker, blond hair teased and blow-dried into an updo a Chia Pet would’ve envied, one skeletal wrist weighed down by the corsage my mom had insisted I give her. And me, cringing beside Sally in my oversized blue tux, trying to lean as far away as possible from the choking odor of what was probably perfume but smelled more like bug spray.

  I shuddered and wrenched myself back to the present. “My dating record has nothing to do with it. Yeah, maybe I never had a girlfriend, but I was friends with tons of girls. I learned a hell of a lot more from that than you did from four years of tongue-jousting behind the bleachers, little brother.”

  AJ loomed over me, his head blotting out the sunlight like a very manly, pissed off eclipse. “Who’s little?” he asked in a growl. “And the point, big brother, is that I went behind the bleachers with girls. If Thomas listens to you, he’ll probably end up braiding their hair and taking Cosmo quizzes with them instead of actually going out with them.”

  “Hey, I never braided anyone’s—” I began, but broke off as Thomas took hold of my arm.

  “Grandma,” he said.

  My brain, still caught up in the task of trading adolescent insults with AJ, spent a second pondering this alien word. “What?”

  “Grandma,” Thomas said again, and when I looked at him, I found his eyes fixed on something just beyond my left shoulder—and up.

  I spun around. The house looked the same as it always did, a stately old structure with faded blue paint and a slightly slanted roof hanging over the porch. Except now there was someone on that roof, crawling out backward through a second floor window wearing a blue nightgown and bright red stockings.

  “Shit,” AJ said.

  “Shit,” I agreed.

  The three of us took off for the house, sneakers skidding on the gravel of the driveway. “AJ,” I called over my shoulder, “stay down here in case she falls and try to…I don’t know, catch her or something!”

  AJ nodded like this wasn’t a painfully stupid plan and took up a position near the porch. Just above him, Grandma was sliding the window closed and lowering herself creakily to a sitting position on the tiles.

  “Thomas, stay down here and try to talk to her!”

  Thomas gave me a quick thumbs-up and skidded to a halt near AJ. “Hey, Grandma,” he called up to her, “can you see the 7-Eleven from up there?”

  “Oh, Tommy, not now,” I heard Grandma reply impatiently, as I barged in through her front door. “I’m busy.”

  The inside of the house was its usual tidy self, at least, which meant less for me to trip over. Still, with my usual grace, I managed to catch my foot on the carpet, then on one of the stairs, and then crashed into the small table in the upstairs hall and knocked over a vase of flowers. As I was a little preoccupied with the whole Grandma On the Roof thing, though, I ignored the shattered porcelain and charged into Grandma’s bedroom, meeting a wave of dry, too-warm air as I opened the door.

  It was like a sudden descent into the Sahara; the heat must’ve been cranked up to at least a hundred degrees. Then again,Grandma’d never been happy unless it was warm enough to fry an egg on her dresser.

  Trying to ignore the way the air shimmered in front of me, I hurried inside and made my way over to the window. By that time, I could hear Grandma’s voice from outside, presumably talking to Thomas again.

  “Yes, I can see the hardware store from here. Now be quiet! This is very important! Oh, damn it all, now I’ve lost track of where I was...”

  Wrenching the window open ended up taking most of my arm strength—sadly, I had more in common with Thomas in the muscle department than AJ—but I finally managed it and started to crawl carefully out onto the roof. Grandma heard the noise, of course, and turned around with an irritated look.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Jessie. You, too? Is the whole family here? Shall I come downstairs and make a roast?”

  That last was sarcasm and not insanity, thankfully.

  “Grandma, what are you doing up here?”

  “Never mind what I’m doing up here. What are you doing up here? You’ll fall and kill yourself, and then what will your brothers do, hm? You should be more considerate.”

  “Grandma, come inside.” I fumbled mentally for some incentive. “Um…Jeopardy’s on?”

  “Don’t be silly. Jeopardy doesn’t come on until five thirty. Now be quiet and go back inside. I’ve got work to do.”

  “What work? You’re sitting on the porch roof in your nightgown.”

  “I am concentrating,” she said scathingly. “The book said to get as comfortable as I could be, so I’m in my most comfortable ensemble. Stop bothering me. You’re just prolonging this, you know. If you hadn’t interrupted me, I’d be back inside by now.”

  “Or you’d be a Grandma pancake on the driveway. Please, just come inside. You’re, um...you’re really worrying Thomas.”

  Unfortunately, Thomas chose this moment to crawl out onto the roof through the bathroom window, smiling a little and not looking at all worried. And instead of staying by the relative safety of the window like a sane person—like I was doing—he went right
out onto the slippery shingles and started making his way over to Grandma.

  I made a grab for his sleeve when he passed me but missed and had to settle for hissing after him from my place at the window. “Thomas! Get back here!”

  He sent a quick don’t worry wave in my direction and settled in beside Grandma on the roof tiles, slinging one skinny arm over her shoulders as he sat down. I started inching out to follow him, but one glance at the fifteen-foot drop and a rush of irresistible dizziness swept over me. I clung to the window frame and squeezed my eyes shut until it passed.

  Meanwhile, Thomas murmured something to Grandma that I couldn’t make out, then chuckled a little, and I heard Grandma say, “Yes, well, I’m sure he means well, but you’d think he could take a hint and leave me be when I ask.”

  More murmuring. I leaned forward as much as I dared, clinging to the windowsill with the tips of my fingers and keeping my eyes away from the drop, but still couldn’t pick up more than a word or two. Note to self: Get over crippling fear of heights so as to be more useful in situations of elderly relatives marooning themselves on porch roofs.

  “Oh, fine,” Grandma sighed, and as I watched in shock, she and Thomas got carefully to their feet and began to shuffle their way back to the window.

  The kid was a freaking Jedi or something; there was no other explanation.

  I barely had time to haul myself back inside before they reached me, and then Grandma was stepping regally in through the open window while Thomas kept a gentle hold on her arm. Once she was in, I got a good grip on Thomas’s T-shirt sleeve to prevent any last-minute disasters, and then finally we were all safely inside again.

  By the time I’d gotten the window shut and locked, AJ was standing in the doorway looking stern (and probably a little relieved that he hadn’t had to cushion anyone’s fall with his big muscly body), and Grandma had settled herself primly on the edge of her bed, hands folded neatly in her lap and legs crossed at the ankle. Despite the whole blue nightgown/red stockings thing, she looked like a queen about to receive requests and tribute from the humble villagers.