Work Text:
One time, when Uncle Rhodey comes to visit, he brings the oldest man Morgan has ever, ever seen with him.
Morgan’s hiding in the climbing tree, the one closest to her tent. She didn’t know it was a climbing tree until Pete came last month and showed her how to find all the good footholds in the trunk and where to put her hands and how to hold on tight tight tight until she got to the branch that was good for sitting. It’s autumn now and so the leaves are starting to fall, but there’s still enough left that she thinks it’s a good hiding place. Mommy doesn’t like it when she hides - her voice gets loud and scared and sharp in a way that hurts Morgan’s ears - but Morgan likes to see the world from up here. It’s quiet and she can see so much and sometimes she pretends she’s like Uncle Rhodey or Uncle Sam and she’s on a secret mission and she has to stay super quiet and observe.
So when Uncle Rhodey pulls into the yard, Morgan doesn’t say anything. She stays really still and wraps her legs a little tighter around the tree branch she’s sitting on, hugging them close to the bark so that the leaves will cover her pink leggings and Uncle Rhodey won’t spot her. Mommy usually tells her when Uncle Rhodey is coming to visit, so she can draw a picture for him, but she didn’t say anything this time, which means Morgan needs to spy.
Uncle Bruce got her a pair of binoculars for her birthday, along with a book about birds. The book is okay - it has a lot of words in it that Morgan has a hard time sounding out - but the binoculars are fun and they’re red and yellow like Daddy’s suit and they came with a cord that she can hang around her neck, so it’s easy for her to bring them up in the tree when she climbs. She watches Uncle Rhodey speak to someone else in the car for a minute, then get out of the car and walk up the steps of the porch. Mommy is waiting for him there and they hug and then they go inside.
Morgan forgot to bring her spy notebook into the tree with her today, but she thinks about what she would write down if she hadn’t forgotten.
1. Mommy didn’t tell me Uncle R was coming
2. Uncle R is walking funny - metal legs needs fixing again? Ask DUM-E.
3. Uncle R brought someone with him
She can’t see into the kitchen windows from the climbing tree, so she can’t spy on Mommy and Uncle Rhodey. She could climb down from the tree and try to sneak onto the porch and spy from there, but she likes the tree and if she gets down, the person in the car will see her.
That leaves the person in the car.
Morgan turns her binoculars from the porch to the car, and that’s when she sees the old man in the passenger seat. He’s wearing a blue jacket and he has his hands folded in his lap and he’s old . He's old old, like Sierra-from-school's grandpa old. Morgan doesn't have any grandpas but Sierra has three and she brought them all for Grandparents Day at school and one of them looked almost as old as this man. Morgan wonders if maybe he is Uncle Rhodey’s grandpa. Why would Uncle Rhodey leave his grandpa in the car, though? Mommy is very nice and would let Uncle Rhodey’s grandpa come inside, and Morgan could draw him a picture, or maybe play Fun Checkers with him while DUM-E fixed Uncle Rhodey’s metal legs.
And then the old man looks at her.
Morgan startles, seeing his face looking right at hers in the binoculars. She tries to stay really, super still, though, because spies aren’t supposed to get noticed and also because Pete said he would be the saddest person in the world if she ever fell out of the tree. The old man is looking right at her and it’s not that Morgan’s scared - the man doesn’t look scary at all - it’s just that she’s supposed to be invisible, so she drops the binoculars and hugs herself to the tree branch. Maybe he’s not looking at her; maybe he’s just looking at the leaves. She can’t see the man quite as well now, without the binoculars, but she can still see him sitting there in the car. He waits for a moment, then raises one hand in a wave.
Morgan knows she’s been spotted, and surely Uncle Rhodey’s grandpa will tell Uncle Rhodey and Mommy where she is, so there’s no sense in hiding anymore. She waves back, and the old man smiles.
He gets more wrinkles - Morgan didn’t think that was possible - around his eyes when he smiles. She likes his smile. She hopes Uncle Rhodey’s grandpa is nice because he looks nice and she would like to meet him.
“Morgan? Morgan! ” Mommy’s voice is sharp, which means it’s time to stop hiding. Morgan got so distracted by the old man that she didn’t even notice Mommy and Uncle Rhodey coming outside again. That’s not very good spying. She won’t tell Pete about this.
“Coming!” Morgan calls, then makes her way very slowly and carefully from the branch to the trunk and then jumps part of the way down. Mommy has one hand over her face as Morgan sprints across the yard into Uncle Rhodey’s arms.
“Oh, hey, kiddo!” He says, hugging her tight. He stumbles a little when he picks her up, but Morgan tries really hard not to squirm because she knows sometimes it’s hard for him to balance. “Don’t scare your mom like that, okay?”
“I’m a spy.”
“Well, good spies tell their moms where they’re going before they go to work.”
Morgan leans close and cups her hands around Uncle Rhodey’s ear before she whispers: “But sometimes I have to spy on Mommy. Because she doesn’t tell me when she cries.” Uncle Rhodey’s face looks weird for a second, then he glances over his shoulder to look at Mommy, and then he hugs Morgan close again.
“How about this? How about no spying in trees without telling Mommy first? Does that work?”
Mommy never cries outside, not that Morgan’s seen; it’s usually in her and Daddy’s room after bedtime. Morgan figures she can tell Mommy when she sits in her tree without compromising the mission.
(She doesn’t know exactly what “compromising the mission” means, but she heard Uncle Sam say it once when they were playing with her green army men.)
“That works,” Morgan says, and Uncle Rhodey smiles and sets her back down on the porch. “Why is your grandpa in the car?”
“What?”
Morgan looks at her mother: “There’s a really old man in the car. I saw him with my binoculars. I think he’s Uncle Rhodey’s grandpa.”
And then Mommy laughs, bright and loud, with a big smile on her face and Morgan doesn’t know what she said that was so funny but she loves making Mommy laugh, she loves making Mommy smile, and Morgan can’t help but start laughing, too, and hug Mommy’s knees. Even Uncle Rhodey is laughing and he puts his hand on Morgan’s head and musses her hair a little.
“What’s funny about Uncle Rhodey’s grandpa?”
“He’s not my grandpa, Morg,” Uncle Rhodey says. “But he is a friend of mine, and your mom.”
“And Daddy,” Mommy says, when Uncle Rhodey doesn’t. “This friend has been away for a while but he wanted to come back and visit. Do you want to meet him?”
“Okay,” she says, because Mommy holds her hand. Morgan has met a lot of people who knew Daddy since he went away, and sometimes they’re weird or sad, and sometimes they make Morgan feel weird and sad, too, but it’s always better when Mommy is there with her. The old man had a nice smile, though. Maybe he won’t be weird and sad.
The old man gets out of the car when Uncle Rhodey waves, and he doesn’t move like all the grandpas at school did, slow and careful and hunchbacked. He walks straight and sure-footed across the uneven yard, hands jammed in his jacket pockets; the closer he gets, the more Morgan has to tilt her head up. He’s taller than Daddy. Not as tall as Uncle Bruce, though.
“Hey, Pepper,” the man says, and Morgan looks up to see Mommy smile. “Sorry it’s been a while.”
“Looks like it’s been longer for you.”
“I, uh…” he scratches the back of his neck. “I hope this is okay. Coming by. I was going to call but Rhodey said--”
“Steve, really. It’s good to see you. I’m…” Mommy takes a deep breath and Morgan squeezes her hand. Mommy looks down at her, then smiles at the old man again. “I’m glad you took advantage of your second chance.”
All of the adults just stand there for a minute, being quiet and smiling in that way that says they’re probably thinking about Daddy, but Morgan is tired of being ignored.
“I’m Morgan!” she says, louder than she probably should, but they’re still on the porch so Mommy can’t get mad at her for not using her inside voice.
But Mommy doesn’t get upset with her and the old man doesn’t either, he just bends down a little so he’s easier to see and holds out his hand. “Hi Morgan, I’m Steve.”
Morgan shakes his hand, like she was taught to do, and says, “Uncle Rhodey says you’re not his grandpa, even though you’re old like Sierra-from-school’s grandpas.”
“Morgan,” Mommy whispers, but Steve just stands up straight again and chuckles.
“He’s right, I’m not his grandpa. I’m just a really, really old friend.”
“I don’t have any old friends.”
“Would you like one?” Steve offers. “What do you do with friends?”
Morgan has two types of friends; she separates them into school friends and hero friends . All of her hero friends, people who knew Daddy and still work with Mommy sometimes, they’re all grown-ups - well, except for Pete - and they help people. Steve is a grown-up and Uncle Rhodey and Mommy said they were old friends, so Morgan figures he’s a hero friend. She’ll have to ask him if he helps people later. He asked her a question, though, so she tries to think of what she does with Pete and Uncle Rhodey and Uncle Sam and Uncle Bruce and--
“We play in the yard and sometimes we go in the garage lab and play with Daddy’s toys that I’m not supposed to call toys and if it’s raining I can teach you Fun Checkers and sometimes we tell stories.”
“That sounds like very good stuff to do with friends.”
Mommy squeezes her hand. “Why don’t we all go inside and have some food first, huh? Maybe Steve has some stories he can tell over lunch.”
He does tell stories over lunch, but they’re kind of boring. Morgan sits in her chair and eats macaroni with her fingers because Mommy and Uncle Rhodey aren’t really paying attention to her at all; they keep asking Steve about people she doesn’t know and places he used to live and Morgan thought having an old hero friend would be more interesting than this.
When there’s a lull in the conversation, Morgan asks, “Did you know Daddy? Mommy says you did.”
Steve ducks his head a little, wipes his mouth with the napkin in his lap, and then looks Morgan straight in the eye and says, “I knew your dad very well. We were... well…”
“Friends,” Mommy supplies, nodding a little. Steve nods back, which Morgan thinks is weird; how come he didn’t know they were friends?
“I actually knew your dad when he was your age,” Steve says. Mommy gasps a little, and her eyes get all shiny, and Morgan knows what that means but she’s too excited about what Steve said to go check on her. Morgan stands up on her chair at the dinner table - Uncle Rhodey wraps his hand around her right knee to make sure she doesn’t fall - and leans forward across the table with a wide grin on her face.
“You knew my daddy when he was little ?” Morgan asks, awed. Then, quieter: “Daddy was as little as me?” Uncle Rhodey laughs, but not at her, so it’s okay.
Steve winks at Mommy and then whispers: “Actually, your dad was even smaller than you.”
“Can you tell me all the stories?”
“Well, maybe not all of them today but,” he takes a deep breath, “but if your mom doesn’t mind, maybe I can come visit every once in a while and tell you about your dad when he was your age.”
“Mommy, can Steve come visit like Peter does?”
“Well, we’re not going to hold him to a schedule,” Mommy says gently, “but if Steve wants to come visit, he’s more than welcome.”
Morgan cheers, both hands in the air, and Uncle Rhodey makes a weird noise in the back of his throat and his hand gets tighter around her knee, and so Morgan gets down off the chair because she knows Uncle Rhodey doesn’t like it when she stands on things. He says it’s dangerous, even though Daddy used to let her stand on the workbench in the garage lab so she could see cool stuff all the time. She crawls down off her chair and then checks to make sure Steve is done eating - he cleaned his whole plate, which means Mommy will let him have dessert later - then grabs his hand and tugs. “Come on, Steve, I will teach you Fun Checkers now and you can tell me a story.”
“What do you say?” Mommy asks, and she’s not quite using her inside voice, so Morgan stops pulling on Steve’s hand.
“Please will you come with me and play Fun Checkers and tell a story?”
And Steve does , he gets up and follows her into the living room, and Morgan sets up the checkers board on the coffee table while Mommy and Uncle Rhodey clean up all the stuff from dinner. Morgan’s chore chart says it’s her night to help dry the dishes, but maybe Uncle Rhodey will do it for her so she can listen to a Daddy story from Steve.
He makes her explain the rules of Fun Checkers first, so they can play while he talks, but Morgan doesn’t mind because that’s the best part of Fun Checkers: there are no rules. Morgan made up the game with Daddy one afternoon when it was storming really bad, and the lightning was really scary and the thunder was really loud, and she could see the lake getting dark and splashy, and so Daddy said they should make up a brand new game that they would always play when it rained. Steve leans forward and looks right at Morgan the whole time she talks about Fun Checkers, and when she’s done she tells him he is a very good listener, because Miss Daisy at school says listening is an important part of learning and that they should compliment each other when they do things right because it’s nice.
Steve smiles and tells her she is very good at explaining Fun Checkers, and that she is a good storyteller, too.
Morgan moves her first piece - a black one in the back row that she jumps halfway across the board, just because she can - and then motions for Steve to go.
“So what kind of story do you want?”
“A kid Daddy story.” Morgan doesn’t get to hear those very often. Actually, now that she thinks about it, she hasn’t heard a story about Daddy as a kid since Daddy was here. Nobody else that Morgan knows knew Daddy when he was little. “Any story? Please? You said he was smaller than me?”
“So small,” Steve says, and nudges a red piece one block forward. Morgan nods like that was a good move, because all moves are good in Fun Checkers, and then rockets another of her black pieces among his red ones. “He was very good at hide and seek when he was your age, because he was so small. Do you like hide and seek?”
Morgan shakes her head. “It makes Mommy nervous. I play at school sometimes during recess, but there aren’t many good hiding places there. I play spy, though; that’s why I was in the tree.”
“You don’t tell your mom or your uncle when you play spy, huh?” Morgan shakes her head. That’s the whole point of playing spy. You’re a spy . It’s a secret . “I guess your dad played spy; that’s probably more accurate. He wouldn’t always tell us, or your grandparents, when he was playing hide and seek; he’d just run off and hide and then everyone would panic because we couldn’t find him and we didn’t know where to look.”
“So he was good at hiding?”
“Very good.” Steve smiled, moving another piece, “until he started always hiding in his father’s lab. Then it was pretty easy to find him.”
“I like to go to the garage! That’s like Daddy’s lab. He was just like me!” Morgan says, jumping two of Steve’s pieces and sweeping them up off the board. Steve looks a little confused, but he slowly moves one of his pieces on top of one of hers and Morgan nods so he takes it off the board, too.
Morgan smiles. Steve is very good at Fun Checkers. She hopes he was telling the truth at dinner and he will come visit and tell more stories.
“Steve?”
“Yeah?”
“If you’re not Uncle Rhodey’s grandpa, whose grandpa are you?”
Steve chuckles: “You think just ‘cause I’m old, I’m a grandpa?”
“Aren’t all old people grandmas and grandpas?”
“Not always,” Steve shrugs.
“Oh. Well, I guess that makes sense because not everyone has a grandma and grandpa.” Steve nods like her logic is sound, and it makes her feel smart. “I don’t have a grandma or grandpa,” Morgan tells him. “They all died before I was born.”
“That happened to me, too.”
“Do you want to be my grandpa?” Steve looks up at her sharply, but Morgan is suddenly consumed by the idea. “All of Mommy and Daddy’s grown-up friends are my aunts and uncles, because Mommy says you don’t have to be related to be family, so I have a big, big family, but you’re way too old to be my uncle, and I don’t have a grandpa. You can be my Grandpa Steve!”
Steve looks around, back towards the door to the kitchen where Mommy and Uncle Rhodey are still talking and cleaning up from dinner, and he says, “Well, I… would your mother be okay with--”
“You wouldn’t be Mommy’s grandpa,” Morgan sighs. “You’d be my grandpa. You and me should decide.” Steve still has a funny look on his face, and Morgan wonders if maybe he doesn’t want to be her grandpa. “You don’t have to,” she says quietly. She fiddles with the red pieces she’s stolen from the board and stacks them up and then knocks them down again, not looking at Steve because her face feels hot and he doesn’t want to be her grandpa and now she’s embarrassed and maybe she should just go get a hug from Mommy.
“Hey. Morgan. Eyes up here, kid.” Steve reaches across the table and taps the underside of her chin gently until Morgan looks up. “I can be your Grandpa Steve if you want.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Morgan narrows her eyes at him: “ Really really?”
Grandpa Steve laughs. “Yeah, Morgan, I would be honored to be in your big, big family.”
Grandpa Steve comes and goes.
Morgan’s not sure where he goes when he’s not at the lake house, but he doesn’t keep a set schedule like Pete does, or invite them over to his house for Sunday dinner, like Uncle Bruce does sometimes. He does always come when Morgan is particularly bored, though, or when Mommy is really tired and sad; Mommy says she doesn’t know how he does it, but he always shows up just when they need him.
“Same old Steve,” Mommy says, when FRIDAY announces that Grandpa Steve’s car is coming up the driveway one afternoon when Morgan has been stomping around the house, cranky and bored. Mommy makes her stop and put on her rain boots before she runs outside to meet him at the car; it rained all day yesterday and the ground is still soggy and muddy, but the porch is dry so Mommy stays up there in her bare feet and lets Morgan tacklehug Grandpa Steve back into the front seat of his sedan.
“Did you come to play with me?”
“I came to give your mother a break, kiddo,” Grandpa Steve teases, and Morgan sticks her tongue out at him, but it’s okay because Grandpa Steve never gets mad at her when she does that. He just laughs, head tilted back, like it’s the funniest thing she’s ever done.
(She overheard him tell Mommy one night, when she was supposed to be asleep, that her Daddy used to do the same thing. He was always sticking his tongue out at us, Grandpa Steve said with the same kind of soft voice Uncle Rhodey gets sometimes when he talks about Daddy. Drove Howard nuts, but for some reason Peggy thought it was hilarious. When Morg does it… I dunno, Pepper, it’s like I can see him and hear her all at once. )
He carries Morgan back up to the porch where Mommy is waiting. “Always right on time, huh?” she says, leaning in to kiss Grandpa Steve’s cheek. “Captain America goes where he’s needed?”
“Uncle Sam’s not here, Mommy,” Morgan says, but then she looks around the yard just to check. Sometimes Uncle Sam likes to sneak up on her, but no, he’s not here. “Grandpa Steve is here to give you a break!”
“Is that so?”
Grandpa Steve smiles: “A little bird told me you have a presentation for the board on Monday and that a certain little miss was on school break.”
“Was it one of Uncle Sam’s birds?” Morgan asks, even though that’s interrupting and she’s not supposed to interrupt. Mommy says she’s supposed to say “excuse me” first but she forgot. Before she can apologize, though, Grandpa Steve looks at her very confused. “You said a little bird told you about Mommy’s big speech, and Uncle Sam can talk to birds.”
“Can he?”
“They taught him how to fly,” Morgan says. Grandpa Steve smiles.
“Did Bucky tell you that?”
Morgan nods: “Did he tell you that, too?”
“Lucky guess.”
Grandpa Steve shoos Mommy towards the house, back into her office, and says he can handle things for a while. Mommy looks relieved and kisses his cheek and then asks him if he’s sure and Grandpa Steve messes with Morgan’s hair and says, “Go knock out your presentation; Morgan and I have plenty of things to do.”
They play Fun Checkers first, because Grandpa Steve remembered that you’re supposed to play Fun Checkers when it rains, and it was raining yesterday so they have to catch up. Morgan thinks maybe that’s why she’s so grumpy today, because she and Mommy forgot to play when it rained, but Grandpa Steve says it’s okay if they play now. After Morgan beats him three times, Grandpa Steve goes out to the car and comes back with a big box of crayons and a pad of paper and asks if she wants to draw. Morgan doesn’t tell him that she has crayons upstairs in her room, because he brought her a gift and she knows it would be rude to tell him that she already has them, and Grandpa Steve smiles really big when she says yes, she would love to draw. The crayons are brand new, which are Morgan’s favorite, and she opens the box carefully and smells them before she takes one out.
“Do they smell good?”
“The best smells are crayons and cheeseburgers and engine grease,” Morgan tells him, because it’s true and Grandpa Steve should know this already. Grown-ups are supposed to know things. He smirks and shakes his head, like maybe he doesn’t believe her, but when she holds the box of new crayons up to his face, he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.
“Smells like crayons,” Grandpa Steve says, and Morgan sticks her tongue out at him again.
Morgan draws robots, because those are her favorite things to draw. Miss Daisy at school tries to get her to draw other things, like flowers or her house or her family, but flowers are boring and she would only get to use the brown crayon if she drew the lake house and Morgan has already noticed that people act weird when she tries to talk about her family, because of her Daddy and all of her hero friends, so she sticks with robots. Once, she drew robot versions of her and Mommy and Daddy, and she made the robots kind of look like the armor that Daddy made, and when she gave it to Mommy after school Mommy got really quiet but smiled really big and she put the drawing in a really nice frame and put it on her desk in the office upstairs. Morgan was really proud of that.
“What are you drawing?” Morgan asks, carefully selecting the silver crayon out of the box. Grandpa Steve got her the big box of crayons that has special colors in it. The silver will make her robot look really shiny and cool.
“It’s a dog.”
Morgan leans over the table and looks at Grandpa Steve’s drawing.
“You’re a really good drawer.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you draw a lot?”
“I used to,” Grandpa Steve says. He picks another color and starts shading over the first and, wow, Morgan stops working on her own drawing just to watch him. “I wanted to be an artist when I was little. I never did get around to it, not professionally, but I still like to draw.”
“That’s a really good dog.”
“All dogs are good,” Grandpa Steve says, “but this one was very good.” He turns his piece of paper around so Morgan can see it right-side up. “I had a dog that looked like this once, not long after I got married.”
“Mommy says we can’t get a dog until I can help take care of it.”
“That’s smart. Dogs are a lot of work. I bet when you’re a little older you’ll be good at helping take care of it.”
“What was your dog’s name?”
Grandpa Steve turns the paper back towards himself and he just looks at it for a minute, and he looks really sad, and Morgan thinks he must have loved his dog very, very much to be this sad just drawing it. Then he takes the red crayon from the box and writes a name at the top of the paper.
“Her name was Tasha.”
Morgan puts her hand over his, because he still looks sad, and Mommy always feels better when Morgan holds her hand. “That’s a pretty name,” she says, and Grandpa Steve nods once, then looks at her and smiles.
“Okay. Enough about me. Tell me about your robot, Morgan.”
“It’s a robot I want to make someday, to help DUM-E in the lab. It can be DUM-E’s brother! And I’m going to name him SMART-E.” Morgan grabs a blue crayon and hands it to Grandpa Steve. “Can you write that at the top of my paper?”
(Mommy hangs both of their drawings on the fridge, Tasha and SMART-E next to each other by the ice dispenser.)
In the spring, Grandpa Steve brings fishing poles and a big canvas bag of smooth, flat stones. The fishing doesn’t go over so well; Morgan thinks fishing is boring and involves too much sitting and doing nothing, not to mention you have to touch gross worms. Grandpa Steve doesn’t get mad when she tells him that, though, which is good. He says he doesn’t like sitting and doing nothing either, but it’s good to try new things and see if you like them or not; now they know they don’t like fishing.
The rocks, though, are fun, because Morgan likes to stack them up and see how high they can go, and when she gets tired of stacking, or the big, big stack falls over, Grandpa Steve shows her how to hold them just right and then throw them at the lake so they skim across the top of the water. It’s hard and fun, Morgan’s favorite kind of fun, and Grandpa Steve can make the rocks skip six whole times before they sink to the bottom of the lake. It takes her a while to get the hang of it because the rocks are kind of big and her hands are kind of small, but she manages to get one to skip three times before Mommy calls them in to dinner. But then the rocks are all gone and Morgan is sad because they can't skip rocks anymore.
Grandpa Steve holds out his hand and she takes it and they walk back toward the house. “We can find more rocks,” he says. “We can walk around the lake next time I’m here and look for good skipping rocks.”
“Can I make a robot that will go to the bottom of the lake and find the rocks we skipped and bring them back to us?” Morgan asks, because getting the rocks they threw back sounds a lot easier than hunting for new rocks. Grandpa Steve must find it funny, though, because he starts to laugh and he pulls Morgan close so he can give her a half-hug as they climb the porch steps.
“Honestly, kid, building a robot to find skipping stones sounds like the most Stark think you could do.”
After dinner, Grandpa Steve brings Morgan and Mommy outside and says he has one more surprise and he pulls these long metal forks out of the trunk of his car. Mommy looks at him with her eyes all narrowed, the same way she looks at Morgan when Morgan says she hasn’t done anything but she definitely has, and Mommy asks what those are for.
“C’mon, Pepper, you didn’t think I was going to let those toaster s’mores slide, did you? S’mores should be cooked on a fire, and you’ve got a pit right here in the yard.”
“Seen a lot of firepits in Brooklyn, did you?”
“I was in the Army.”
“You ate s’mores in occupied France?”
“Now you’re just messing with me.”
Morgan doesn’t understand the conversation, which isn’t so surprising because adults are always saying weird things, but there’s a fire in the yard and Grandpa Steve is talking about s’mores, which are her favorites, and she reaches for one of giant forks but Grandpa Steve pulls it away right before she can wrap her little fingers around it.
“Hey, little miss, I don’t think so.”
“You said they were a surprise for me.”
“Weren’t you surprised?”
“Surprise means gift.” Morgan holds out her hands and flexes her fingers, and Mommy laughs.
Grandpa Steve doesn’t laugh, though; he kneels down in front of her and gives her a better look at the skewer. “See how sharp this is?” He asks. “It’s really sharp, and I don’t want you to hurt yourself on it. I think maybe me and your mom are big enough to use it safely, though. We can toast marshmallows for you.”
“How big do I have to be to use one?” Morgan’s fingers flex at her side because she knows she is little but she feels really big and Daddy used to let her help in the garage but she’s not supposed to tell Mommy about that. Morgan thinks she could probably handle toasting her own marshmallows but she doesn’t want to get in trouble, so she’ll settle for finding out the rules.
“A lot bigger,” Mommy says, taking a skewer from Grandpa Steve.
“How much bigger?” Morgan asks.
“Big enough to beat me at Kings in the Corner,” Grandpa Steve says, but he makes it sound like a question and he looks at Mommy. Mommy nods, which isn’t any fun at all, because Grandpa Steve just taught Morgan Kings in the Corner and she’s no good at it yet because it has lots of rules, way more rules than Fun Checkers. Grandpa Steve says she’s smart enough to play, and that made her feel good, but she still hasn’t won yet.
Morgan crosses her arms and sits down in the grass and opens the box of graham crackers while Mommy and Grandpa Steve start toasting marshmallows.
“Grandpa, will you write down the rules of Kings in the Corner so I can practice for next time?”
Grandpa Steve pulls a marshmallow from the fire, and it’s on fire, and he blows it out so it looks all black and gross, but Morgan knows it will be super gooey on the inside, just the way she likes it. He holds it out to her and Mommy shows her how to put the chocolate and graham crackers on either side and slide it off the skewer.
“I’ll write them down when we go inside.”
“Tha oo,” Morgan says, with a mouthful of s’more, and Mommy doesn’t even tell her not to talk with her mouth full.
If Grandpa Steve stays late enough, he gets to put Morgan to bed.
Mommy always makes a big show of it and sighs and says "yeah, fine, Grandpa can tuck you in I guess," and Morgan was really worried that she had hurt Mommy's feelings the first time, but Mommy had said she was just joking and gave her a big hug and kiss and told her she loved her three thousand and then sent her upstairs with Grandpa Steve. Morgan changes into her jammies, and then meets him in the bathroom to brush her teeth; Grandpa Steve sings a really old song that he said his wife used to like to keep time and make sure she brushes long enough, and then he always asks to see her teeth and tells her how clean they look.
(The last time Morgan went to the dentist, she made Mommy take a picture of her teeth and her new toothbrush and send it to Grandpa Steve and he sent back lots of smiley emojis and it was awesome.)
They go back to her bedroom and Grandpa Steve tucks her in, then leans down and checks for monsters under the bed. Morgan tried to tell him once that Daddy made a monster catcher that attaches to the door, so monsters can't even get into her room, let alone under the bed, but Grandpa Steve said he still checks under his own bed for monsters so it's just a habit. Then he'll kiss her forehead and ask if she wants a story: sometimes when Grandpa Steve visits, Mommy lets her stay up really, really late past her bedtime, so she's already heard a bunch of stories, and so she'll say no and roll over and go to sleep, but sometimes she has school the next day and Mommy is very strict about bedtime so she'll beg for one story before sleep. Either way, before he leaves the room, Grandpa Steve squeezes her hand, kisses her one more time, and then stands.
Every time he puts her to bed, Grandpa Steve looks down at her and says, "You know your Daddy loved you more than anything else in the universe, right?"
And Morgan says, "He loved me three thousand."
And Grandpa Steve nods and turns out the light and closes the monster catcher door.
(One time, Morgan was thirsty after Grandpa Steve put her to bed so she went to the stairs and she was going to call down and ask Mommy for some water but she could hear Mommy and Grandpa Steve talking and she didn't want to interrupt so she just sat at the top instead and listened to them. Mommy was telling Grandpa Steve about the art show at school, and Pete's grade in Pre-Calc, and the newest project that she's started on at work. Grandpa Steve said all that stuff that grown-ups say when they just want to show that they're listening, and Morgan was ready to go downstairs and ask for some water because it didn't sound like they were talking about anything really serious, but then it got really quiet for a minute and Grandpa Steve said, "You know I'm sorry.
"You don't have to be," Mommy said, "because it wasn't your fault. It happened."
"Doesn't mean I still can't be sorry."
"I know. But he wouldn't want you feeling guilty."
"Eh, I don't know about that." And even though they both sounded really sad, Mommy and Grandpa Steve laughed. Grown-ups are weird.
"What I do know," Mommy said, "is that he would have been proud of you for getting a life. Finding what you were looking for. I think he would have liked that. Might not have liked you coming back and telling Morgan all those embarrassing kid stories but..." Grandpa Steve laughed again, and Morgan snuck down a few stairs until she could see Mommy and Grandpa Steve sitting on the couch. Mommy leaned against Grandpa Steve's shoulder and he put an arm around her. "He would have appreciated you keeping his memory alive for her. And if you need to hear it: I don't blame you."
"I know."
"But thanks for saying sorry anyway."
Morgan went back upstairs to her bedroom and dragged the little step stool in her closet into the bathroom and got herself a drink of water and didn't say anything about sneaking out of bed in the morning because sometimes she knew that grown-ups needed to talk without little kids around and she didn't want Mommy to know.)
In the winter, Grandpa Steve brings a big present and doesn’t even make Morgan wait until Christmas to open it.
He lets her walk him around the house and show him all the decorations, and the tree with the ornaments she made in school and the ones she and Pete made the last time he visited. The mantel has so many stockings on it, because Morgan said they had to have one for everyone in their family, even if they couldn’t come visit for the holidays, like Uncle Thor and Aunt Nebula, and Mommy said okay and they spent a whole afternoon writing names in puffy paint on felt stockings so everyone felt included.
(There is one stocking, really old and long, that Mommy puts up for someone named Jarvis and Morgan doesn’t know who that is, but when she asks Grandpa Steve he smiles and says he has some little Daddy stories he can tell her at bedtime to try to explain.)
But there on the mantel, between Uncle Happy and Harley, is a blue stocking that says GRANDPA STEVE in pink glitter puffy paint, and when Grandpa Steve sees it he claps one hand against his chest and smiles really wide.
“Is that for me?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Wow, that’s a heck of a stocking, Morgan. Thank you very much.”
“There’s something in it for you. Mommy says you’re not going to be here on Christmas so you can open it now.”
Grandpa Steve pulls Morgan into his lap and then lets her help him pull the gift out of his stocking. Morgan got to wrap the gift all by herself, and the paper did not want to cooperate so she had to use a lot, a lot of tape, and she feels like maybe it looks kind of messy, but Grandpa Steve laughs in a good way when he tries to open it. He pretends it is really hard and she has to help him rip the paper and tape and Morgan laughs, too, because Grandpa Steve makes it fun. Finally, when all the paper and tape is off, he flips over the gift, which is a picture frame that has a drawing she made in it.
Morgan had drawn Grandpa Steve holding Morgan’s hand; he’s wearing his blue jacket and she has on the pink leggings that she wore the day they met. On Morgan’s other side is Mommy, and she’s wearing her blue and yellow helmet and holding one of the big firepit skewers with three marshmallows on the end. On Grandpa Steve’s other side, he is holding hands with Daddy, only Daddy is little like Morgan because Grandpa Steve knew Daddy when he was little and those are Morgan’s favorite stories.
Morgan’s never seen Daddy when he was little, though, so she mostly drew him how she remembered him, just small. He still has the little beard thing that tickled her face when he kissed her goodnight. Morgan scratches her chin idly while Grandpa Steve inspects the drawing. He’s quiet for a really long time, so long that Morgan starts to squirm in his lap, and then Grandpa Steve kisses the side of her head and asks: “So…. who are these folks?”
“It’s us, silly!”
Grandpa Steve claps a hand to his forehead. “Of course! Of course it is!”
Morgan giggles, but just in case Grandpa Steve still can’t tell, she points to each person in the drawing. “See, that’s Mommy and she has marshmallows because she beat you in Kings in the Corner last time you visited, so she is allowed to roast marshmallows now. And then there’s me and you and then Daddy is with you, too! And he’s little like me.”
“With a goatee,” Grandpa Steve notes, smiling. Morgan nods.
“Did he not have that when he was little?”
Grandpa Steve laughs. “No, he didn’t have facial hair until he was grown up. C’mon, Morgan, you know… wait.” He curls one hand around Morgan’s stomach and tickles her lightly, jostling her a little until she stops looking at the drawing and looks at Grandpa Steve instead. “Have you never seen pictures of your dad when he was your age?”
There are some pictures of Daddy before he was a grown-up in the office, in glass frames up on the wall, but not many. They’re mostly him and DUM-E, and he’s still bigger than Morgan is in those pictures, so she shakes her head. “He’s Pete-sized in the ones in Mommy’s office.”
“Well, hey, that’s-- that won’t do. I think, um…” Grandpa Steve takes a deep breath, then looks over towards the kitchen; Mommy is standing in the doorway, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed over her chest. She nods a little and Grandpa Steve keeps talking. “You know, Morgan, I think I might have some pictures of your dad from when he was really little. Would you like me to bring them next time?”
“Yes!” Morgan takes the framed drawing from Grandpa Steve very carefully and sets it down on the coffee table and then leaps back into his arms. “Yes yes yes, please!”
“I can’t believe I never thought to bring them before,” Grandpa Steve says, but his voice is kind of quiet now, and Morgan thinks maybe he’s talking to Mommy because Morgan’s face is buried in his chest and her arms around his shoulders and he’s rubbing soft, slow circles between her shoulder blades, just like Daddy used to. Morgan pulls back just enough to look Grandpa Steve in the eye. “Is that my Christmas present? Daddy pictures?”
“Well, I suppose it can be part of your present, but I have this big gift here…” And he gestures toward the large, round gift he had carried into the house that Morgan had already forgotten about in the excitement of giving Grandpa Steve his own gift. “Of course if you don’t want it…”
“I want it! I want it! Mommy, can I open it?”
Morgan slides on her knees across the carpet before Mommy can say anything, and she and Grandpa Steve laugh as she tears open the paper. Even though the gift is kind of weird-shaped, there is what Mommy would consider a “perfectly normal” amount of tape on the wrapping paper and Morgan is going to tell Grandpa Steve he is very good at wrapping presents but then she sees what her present is and all she can manage is a softly exhaled, “Oh.”
“You know what that is?” Grandpa Steve asks.
“Is it a sled?” Morgan asks, though she already knows, because she went over to Henry-from-school’s house for his birthday party last week and everyone went sledding on the big, big hill in Henry’s backyard and Morgan got to use a sled just like this one, a big silver disc with strong black hand-holds. She’d spent the whole drive home from the birthday party telling Happy about how fast she went and how she bumped bumped bumped down the hill and how she wished she had a sled of her own because there were some little hilly parts of their yard that she might be able to slide down if she had a sled.
And now she has a sled!
“Flip it over, Morg,” Grandpa Steve says quietly, and when she does Mommy makes a funny noise but Morgan just laughs, delighted.
“It looks like Uncle Sam’s shield!” Morgan shrieks. “Like the one that was in the garage a long time ago!”
“Got it in one,” and when Morgan looks over at Grandpa Steve he looks happy and sad all at the same time, so she drops the sled and crawls back over to him and throws her arms around his neck.
“This is a very good Christmas present, Grandpa Steve,” she whispers into his shirt collar, and Grandpa Steve sighs and leans back against the couch, pulling her with him, and he relaxes so much that Morgan wonders whether Grandpa Steve was nervous about the gift. “I love sledding,” she says, just to reassure him. “Do you want to come sledding with me? I don’t know if you’ll fit on my sled but you could help me find a good place to slide.”
“I think that sounds like a very fun thing to do. After dinner,” Grandpa Steve adds when Mommy clears her throat.
When Grandparents Day rolls around again the next school year Morgan is very excited because this time she has a grandpa that she can bring. She gets FRIDAY to call Grandpa Steve on his phone and she asks him very politely if he would like to come to school with her next Thursday afternoon, because Mommy said she had to ask instead of tell , and when Grandpa Steve says yes Morgan yells so loud that she wakes Mommy up from her post-board meeting nap.
Morgan has a whole paper that she has to fill out for school about Grandpa Steve, and the paper will go up on the wall with everyone else’s so her classmates can learn about everyone’s grandparents. She has to write his name and how old he is, and those are things she knows, but when she gets to things like “favorite color” and “favorite sport” and “job,” she has to call him again. Mommy says Grandpa Steve is “hanging out with Sam and Bucky” this weekend, so he can’t come visit, but he still answers the phone when she calls.
“What is your favorite color?” Morgan asks, instead of saying hello, and Grandpa Steve immediately answers with “blue,” which is one of the reasons Morgan likes him so much. He doesn’t make her stop and say silly grown up things if she doesn’t want to.
“And what is your favorite sport?”
“Baseball.” Morgan draws a little baseball and bat in the appropriate box.
“And what was your job?”
The line goes quiet for a moment and Morgan is afraid that he hung up, or didn’t hear her, or maybe FRIDAY is broken, because she calls out, “Grandpa Steve, are you there?”
“I’m here, Morg. I, uh…” Grandpa Steve sighs, and Morgan thinks she hears someone talking in the background but she can’t hear what they’re saying. “I had a lot of jobs, kiddo.”
“Should I write that on your paper?”
“I suppose you can just pick one.”
And then Morgan remembers when she met Grandpa Steve, and how she divides up her friends into school friends and hero friends , and how she just shoved him into the latter group because he was a grown up without ever asking if he helped people, too, like the rest of her family.
“Were you a hero, Grandpa Steve? Like Daddy?”
Someone on Grandpa Steve’s end shouts “Yes!” but Morgan can’t tell who it is; she can hear Grandpa Steve telling them to quiet down, though, and then he sighs. “Yes, I guess you could say that.”
An impossible thought occurs to Morgan: “Were you a hero with Daddy?”
“I worked with your dad, yeah.”
“How come you’ve never told me bedtime stories about that?!” Morgan shouts and Mommy pokes her head out of her office to mouth inside voice . And Morgan is getting better about remembering to use her inside voice, she really is, but how can she right now when Grandpa Steve is telling her he really is a hero friend and he didn’t just know Daddy when he was little like her but also big and Iron Man? “You have to have good hero bedtime stories,” Morgan insists. “Like the ones Uncle Rhodey and Pete tell. Don’t you?”
“I think I have a couple you haven’t heard,” Grandpa Steve says. “But I… listen, Morgan, maybe let’s not put that on your paper for school.”
“But it’s true and I have to put true stuff on the paper. Miss Jenna said we weren’t allowed to make things up.”
“That’s a good rule, but I was also a therapist. I helped people by talking to them. Why don’t we put that on the paper?”
“You don’t want everyone to know you’re a big hero,” Morgan says, rather than asks, because she remembers suddenly that she’s not allowed to tell anyone about what Pete does after school, because his mask keeps him safe, and maybe Grandpa Steve never told anyone that he fought bad guys with Daddy.
“Not anymore,” Grandpa Steve says, and Morgan can hear him smiling across the line. “I really liked working with your daddy, and your aunts and uncles, but nowadays, I like painting and making s’mores with you. Hey, can you put on your paper that we make s’mores together?”
Morgan sounds out the word ‘therapist’ and writes it in the box labeled Job, then skims the rest of the paper and reads, “There’s one at the bottom that says ‘A Fun Activity We Do Together.’”
“Hey, there you go.”
“Can I also put skipping rocks and drawing and sledding and Fun Checkers?”
“I think you should write all of it,” Grandpa Steve says.
“Can I write that you tell me stories about Daddy, even if I don’t say what those stories are?”
“Yeah, I think that sounds like a great idea.”
Grandpa Steve stays on the line the whole time Morgan writes, and he reminds her there are two Ps in ‘skipping,’ and he doesn’t rush her or tell her he has to go, even when she hears shouting in the background. He just stays on the line, listening to the scratch of her pencil on paper and when Morgan says she’s done he has her read the whole thing out to him so they can make sure it’s all true together.
“Okay, kiddo, I think Sam and Bucky have ants in their pants so I’m going to go now.”
“Okay. But I’ll see you on Thursday?”
“Morgan, I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”
Morgan kisses the air and Grandpa Steve chuckles and the line cuts out and when Mommy asks to check over her homework that night and helps her erase ‘therapist’ and spell it the right way, Morgan leans into her mother’s shoulder and says, “I really like having a Grandpa Steve.”
(He brings cupcakes for the whole class to Grandparents Day, and nobody else’s grandmas or grandpas brought anything so Morgan is very, very proud. The icing on the cupcakes is blue and gold, and red and gold, and some are red and white and blue, and when Grandpa Steve opens the lid on the box and Morgan sees the colors on the cupcakes, she looks up at him and he winks at her and Morgan loves her hero friend so very, very much.)