The last of the 1870s Barkleys still living, Audra reminisces with the next generations on a special day. Happy holidays to the Audra fans.
1937
"Grandma! Grandma, look at me!"
Audra had to laugh, and was as grateful as all get out that she could still laugh. It seemed like it was just yesterday when she was yelling, "Papa! Papa! Look at me!" while she rode her pony by herself for the first time. Now here was Abby Malone, her most recent great grandchild, peddling her tricycle like mad up and down the sidewalk. How in the world did that ever happen? The years went by in such a blink that now her daughter was a grandmother! And her grandson was a father! Audra just shook her head and kept laughing at Abby. The little girl was laughing harder than she was.
Her daughter, Victoria, sat down beside her, knees and back aching. "Girl, how did you get so old?" Audra teased.
"Have you looked in the mirror lately, Mom?" Victoria asked, and they both laughed. Both widowed long ago, they had each other now at least, and lived together in San Francisco, in the townhouse Audra's brother Jarrod had bought for himself more than 60 years ago and left to Audra in his will. It was a great house, and even if their knees were having trouble with all the stairs now, neither woman wanted to leave. Fortunately, they had male descendants who would check on them, and carry packages, and drive them to wherever they needed to go.
They could still sit on the low wall that hemmed in the front yard that was scarcely the size of a bedsheet and watch Abby roar up and down the sidewalk. "All we Barkleys have always had the urge to move, always move," Audra said, reminiscing.
"And the Iversons, and the Malones, and the Phillipses…." Victoria noted. "At least we can get across country faster than your parents did."
"Oh, my gosh, yes," Audra said. "Even when I was a girl, it took forever to get from one end of the country to the other, and we had trains. Now Abby's father can do it in a day or two – airplanes! I could never imagine such a thing when I was young."
"You remember what day this is, don't you?" Victoria asked.
Audra smiled. "Oh, yes. My brother Nick's birthday. He'd have been 90 years old. Ninety! And to think, he almost made it." Audra sighed. She had lost Nick, her last sibling, only two years earlier. He had lived a hale and hardy life and while she missed him terribly, she couldn't do anything but smile at his memory.
"Uncle Nick was a character," Victoria said. "I'm glad he and Uncle Heath were around long enough for my kids and some of their kids to know them well. They were nuts about them."
"How could they help it? Nick and Heath doted on every child who came along in this bunch, every single one, even if there got to be so many they couldn't remember all of their names."
"I used to love it when Uncle Nick would chase me around and rattle off every one of his nieces' and daughters' names before he got to mine. And I was the oldest! I should have come first!"
"Ah, well, Nick always did have a way of doing things backwards. Besides, he used to get such a kick out of Jarrod saying things like 'She's Nancy!' and Heath would say, 'No, she's not! She's Lisa!' I think Nick was getting your name wrong on purpose, and I suspect Jarrod and Heath were doing the same thing just because you would always stop and put your hands on your hips and say, 'I'm Vicki'!"
Victoria laughed along with her mother. "We had such a happy family. We've been awfully lucky, haven't we?"
"Yes," Audra said, smiling, watching Abby. She mentally tried to run down the names of all her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and nieces and nephews and, as usual, got lost in the fact that there were now tens of names to try to remember. "If my mother had known there were going to be so many of us by now, she'd have fainted dead away. The boys all got started so late, and Jarrod never married after he lost his wife and had no children at all. Somehow we still managed to populate a small town."
A car passed by and began searching for a parking space. Abby stopped to watch it, and so did Audra and Victoria, because they recognized the car.
"Isn't that Bobby and his wife?" Audra asked.
"Uh-huh," Victoria said.
Bobby was Nick's youngest son, a father of five himself and grandfather to eight more. "I didn't know they were coming over," Audra said. And then she saw him park that big Plymouth, and the doors opened and kids came tumbling out like clowns out of a clown car at the circus. "Oh, my gosh!" Audra said. "Are all of those ours?"
Victoria laughed. "Bobby wanted to bring his grandkids over today. We're having a birthday party for Uncle Nick!"
"How did they all fit in that car?" Audra laughed. Nick had lived long enough to see all of these great-grandchildren of his born, and even though a couple of them were too young to remember him very much, they were true Barkleys and never ones to pass up a party. In a moment Bobby and his wife Virginia were herding them all down the street toward the house.
Audra and Victoria climbed slowly to their feet on their bad knees, and then there was hugging and kissing all around. Abby rolled up on her tricycle and joined in. There was a cacophony of noise as Bobby and Virginia helped Audra and Victoria into the house, all the kids following after.
Audra smelled cake right away and knew it must have been Victoria's doing, because it wasn't hers. "Cake?"
"A big fat one," Victoria said. "Enough to feed us all."
"The rest of the gang sends their love," Bobby said. Nick's other children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren lived outside of San Francisco and would not be able to come.
"My gosh, we don't have enough food to feed everybody!" Audra said.
"We just came for cake!" Bobby's youngest grandson, David, aged 3, said eagerly.
"Well, it's not quite ready yet," Victoria said. "You'll just have to settle for some punch first. Let's go get some!"
Victoria and Virginia led the tornado of children into the kitchen. In the meantime, Bobby had wandered to the mantle over the fireplace, to look at the photographs gathered there. He always zeroed in on the oldest one – the photograph of his father Nick, with Victoria, brothers Jarrod and Heath, and Audra, taken not long after Heath had joined the family and Eugene had moved east. It was Bobby's favorite picture. He scarcely remembered his grandmother and hadn't even met his Uncle Jarrod, but he remembered his Uncle Heath very fondly and liked remembering that this was the first family photo Heath was in.
Audra came up behind him and put her arms around his waist. "I remember that day like it was yesterday," Audra said. "It was never tough to get Jarrod into a suit – I think he was born in one. And even Heath seemed comfortable wearing one, but your father? He hated them. I think he ripped that necktie off as soon as the photographer was finished."
Bobby laughed. "Yeah, he would have," he said. "You know, I was really hoping he would make it to this 90th birthday. He was, too."
"Well," Audra said, "when he got so sick, he told me he was ready to go. He'd had a full life and he didn't want to lie around and watch the world go by without him."
"That sounds like him, too," Bobby said, "but I miss him. I'm glad we're having this birthday party, even if he isn't here to enjoy it. I wish Uncle Heath were here, too, if Dad couldn't be. I still can't believe this was the first picture of Uncle Heath with the family. He and Dad always seemed like they had grown up together."
"In a way, they did," Audra said. "They might have been in their 20s when they met, but there was still a lot of kid in them at the time. More Nick than Heath – Heath had had a tougher life up until he came to us. But the things they used to get into – and it was usually your father's doing, not Heath's. Heath was a settling influence on your father, even more so than Jarrod. It was your father who usually attracted the pandemonium."
Bobby laughed. "He always did, up to the very end. You know what his last words to me were?"
"No," Audra said. "What were they?"
"'Get those sheep outta here! This is cattle country!'" Bobby broke up laughing. "More than once he told us that story about winning the sheep in the poker game, and when he said those last words to me, he had the biggest grin on his face. He knew exactly what he was saying."
Audra laughed. "He didn't think it was very funny at the time, and it wasn't, but as time went by, he started laughing about it. He'd bring it up and tell the story on himself if we didn't tell it on him."
"Aunt Audra," Bobby said, "Dad kept a lot of the letters you wrote to him over the years. He had me read them. I hope you don't mind."
"No, I don't mind," Audra said, even though she remembered that some of them were very personal, about family things, about decisions she was having trouble making.
"I'd like to pass them on to my kids," Bobby said, "unless you want them back. I know you might not want everyone to see them."
Audra shook her head, smiling. "No, I don't mind, but I do want you to coordinate with Victoria. She has all the letters your father wrote to me. I think the two of you ought to get them all together and maybe let everybody who wants to see them, see them."
"That's a good idea."
Suddenly there was noise in the kitchen, happy noise, and Audra and Bobby got a stronger smell of the cake.
"Oh, that smells good," Bobby said.
"Be patient, it has to cool," Audra said. "I can't believe all those kids are holding still long enough to avoid getting burned."
"And to keep the cake from falling. Maybe I ought to go see if Victoria and Virginia need a hand."
Bobby headed for the kitchen, but Audra stayed by the fireplace mantle. She took down the photo of her family that Bobby had been looking at. She smiled, a sad smile in a way. They were all so young then. Jarrod had died fairly young and never changed much, never even grew gray-haired. But her mother, Nick, Heath – they had grown old before they died. The lines in the faces deepened, and Nick and Heath both grew more stooped as years of ranching and bad backs caught up to them. Her mother had weakened and taken to a wheelchair several years before she passed. Audra wondered what fate was awaiting her.
Now that they were all gone – even Eugene back east had passed four years earlier – she was the only one left. Audra ran her hand over their faces and remembered when they were all like this, young and alive – even her mother, younger than her years. Audra tried not to think about that very often. She really believed that she had been very, very lucky to have had all of them at the time this photo was taken, and for years afterward. But she missed them so much, and on this day, on his birthday so very soon after he left her, she really missed Nick.
He was the most free spirit in the Barkley family, the one quickest to grin and laugh, the one with the wild streak that was closest to her own. She remembered something he had said when they were posing for this photo – "Will you take the picture already? This tie is choking me to death." And after the photo was taken, he tore off his jacket and tie and impulsively grabbed his little sister up into his arms. "Oh, Nick, put me down!" Audra remembered saying, and laughing like crazy as she did. It made her laugh now.
Suddenly the noise from the kitchen spilled back out into the dining room and into the parlor where she stood. Little voices were full of "Grandma! Grandma!" and this and that, and Audra couldn't help laughing and hugging and kissing everyone she could get her hands on. Except for Abby, every one of these ragamuffins was Nick's, and was Nick all over. How could seeing him in them ever make her sad?
"Do you know whose birthday this is?" Audra asked them all.
"Grandpa Nick's!" the voices went around.
And then they were off like a tornado again, into the back yard to play. Bobby and Virginia went out to supervise, leaving Audra and Victoria alone again.
"Whew!" Victoria said with a laugh. "It's like having eight Nicks, isn't it?"
"It IS having eight Nicks, nine if you count Bobby," Audra said, laughing. "And I'm thrilled to have every single one of them."
Victoria put her arms around her mother. "Are you okay? You're looking a little misty."
"Remembering," Audra said, nodding. "But I wouldn't trade any of these memories for the world. Not a single one."
Audra smiled at the picture one more time, blew small kisses to her mother and her three brothers, and put the photo back on the mantle.
The End