Nan's Story by Paige Farmer

hello. It was a rare occasion to see her parents in the same room together, which was perfectly okay with Nan given the edgy undercurrent that was present when they were.
    Despite the new normal for Nan’s family, she had her friends, did well enough in school to pass year after year and worked as hard as any other fifteen year old girl to be as average as possible. She tried to make herself believe that the fact they were poor, her father was a drunk and her mother had soured were no more noteworthy than the color of her hair or the size of her feet.
    In the aftermath of her father’s accident though, the quiet resignation Nan had settled into was violently snapped and twisted. The shuffling ghost of the man who’d been her father was now gone and he’d left behind a swirl of pent up anger that bordered on rage. Not her own, but her mother’s. Nan had long forgiven her father for his shortcomings and in his death, felt nothing but grief. Elsie, however, seemed to see it as Sam’s final and most audacious slap in the face.
    Because of the weather, the service was cut short and everyone scurried to their cars. Back at Nan’s house, an assembly of neighbor ladies were readying a small reception. They couldn’t afford to pay the funeral home for use of their vehicles so one of Sam’s friends, a beefy guy named Earl, picked them up for the service and was now driving them home. Nan had wanted to ride with Buddy, but a vague sense of loyalty kept her in close proximity to her mother.
    They pulled up to the house and Nan saw her brothers solemnly standing side by side on the barren front lawn. As she and her mother got out of the car, the boys walked toward them.
    “Ma, let me help you,” Buddy said, reaching for Elsie’s stuck umbrella.
    “I’ve got it,” she snapped, yanking it away. Buddy stepped back and shook his head lightly.
    Nan didn’t bother trying to protect herself and ignored the cold drops of water that pelted her.
    “You okay?” Buddy asked her.
    “Fine,” she replied before hurrying ahead of them.
    The smell of casseroles was overwhelming as she stepped through the front door. The food that had been arriving for days was laid out around the living room in Elsie’s chipped serving dishes and on an eclectic arrangement of trays people brought. The scent and the sight of them turned Nan’s stomach.
    “Here dear, sit here,” said Mrs. Glenn, the kindly woman who lived next door, ushering Elsie to her rocking chair in the corner. “Please, let me make you a plate.”
    Elsie declined the food, but sat watching people slowly fill the small room. Light from several lamps created small pockets of illumination but couldn’t penetrate the grayness of the day that seeped through the windows. Nan was sort of glad it was dark. It made it harder to see the holes in the walls and the shabbiness of the furniture.
    The guests, a mix of neighbors and Sam’s friends from the docks, spoke in hushed tones at first, but eventually the conversation grew louder and snippets of Sam’s life began taking shape. Nan’s mother seemed not to hear anything and stared blankly out the window. Nan though was intrigued by things being said.
    She tiptoed around the room listening to stories shared about her father, some by people she’d never met. They painted a picture of Sam that she couldn’t quite reconcile with the man she knew. She heard about a raucous sense of humor and the keen ability to tell a story. They spoke of his generosity (a toast had gone up to that), and his work ethic. One man told of a time that Nan’s father risked his own life to save someone whose hand was cut off on the docks.
    “Guy fell over the side…ya know, passed out from shock or somethin’ and Sammy boy, well he just jumps into the drink like there’s no tomorrow. Swims Jonesy over to the rocks and uses his own belt to slow up the bleedin’ til the ambulance came. Never thought twice about nuthin,” the teary man conveyed in a voice