Jake (12 page)

So I said, “Let’s go to the grocery store.” I bought pancake mix and orange marmalade in a little white crock because he’d said to Mrs. Buttermark that he liked it, and another pound of chocolate-covered jellies. The ones we got earlier were already gone.

We bought Meaty Bones and pigs’ ears for Max.

We stopped into a bookstore and got crossword puzzles, and Aunt Ginny got him a dark red scarf
in the same mall. We wrapped those presents for Granddad.

Then I called Mr. G.

It was dicey getting Max together with Mr. G’s dog. Max had that
little dog, big attitude
attitude. Mr. G’s dog was big enough to eat him if Max ticked him off. I hoped Max noticed.

At first he kept his tail straight up in the air, and a little collar of fur rose up around his neck. Mr. G’s dog, named Moose, ignored him.

Mr. G had about a hundred falling-on-the-ice stories to tell me. Talking in the cold didn’t seem to bother his teeth at all. “Uh-huh,” or a shake of the head, that’s all I had to say to keep Mr. G happy.

By the time we got home, Max and Moose acted like they were old buddies, laughing in each other’s faces. I couldn’t get over it. Dogs are weird.

Suzie had also done some shopping for Granddad—including a chess set, a gift from Mrs. Buttermark. That’s what the whispers were about.

Mrs. Buttermark spent the evening with Granddad and Max. They listened to Christmas carols and worked on a jigsaw puzzle of sunny Italy. They’d both been there and were telling each other what they’d done.

Aunt Ginny and Suzie and I sat with Mom. We
opened small presents that were easy to carry. Mom and I gave Suzie a remote-controlled spider we’d bought months before. We could hardly wait to give it to her. It was even hairy.

Suzie didn’t disappoint us with her reaction. She screamed. “We could name it,” I said, and got a laugh.

We gave Aunt Ginny a T-shirt with a picture of Mount Kilimanjaro on it. She plans to climb it one day. And Aunt Ginny gave Mom a set of markers, thirty-six colors, to make her cast look good. I gave Mom the sweater Aunt Ginny helped me pick out, because the hospital could get a little cold.

Suzie gave me a remote-controlled spider too. I screamed like Suzie, on purpose.

We took them for a walk down the hospital corridor and got bigger laughs. I named mine Boris. Suzie called hers Lucy.

That night, after I went to bed, Mrs. Buttermark stayed to watch a movie with Granddad, an old Christmas movie they both liked. They talked through most of it. It’s hard getting to sleep on Christmas Eve, so it was kind of nice to listen to them telling stories about themselves.

I learned Mrs. Buttermark had been a rocket. That
made me sit up. She and Granddad talked about it a little and I realized it was some kind of dancer.

And then Mrs. Buttermark asked what life was like in North Carolina. “I’m a little too set in my ways there,” Granddad said. “Like those fish in that tank there. Easy ways. It could be a lot more interesting and I’d be happier. It’s been interesting here.”

Which struck me as a lot for Granddad to say all at once. He didn’t sound like the words were being yanked all the way from his toes, the way he sometimes did with me. I figured Mrs. Buttermark had been reflecting at him. She brought out the best in him.

Mrs. Buttermark and Suzie rang the doorbell first thing Christmas morning. I’d been lying in bed for a while. Half asleep, just not ready to get up—I could smell custard baking, a Christmas-morning specialty that I figured Aunt Ginny came in early to make. It seemed weird that everything was so different this year. Not terrible or anything. Mom would be home in another day or two.

I heard the apartment door open, and Suzie was talking about learning how to make Mrs. Buttermark’s French toast. Max came skittering along the hall and stopped at my room like he had a message to deliver.

I sat up in bed and stared at him. We were getting pretty friendly, but I wasn’t asking him up onto my bed or anything. I got dressed in the bathroom. I wasn’t missing anything. On Christmas morning, it’s breakfast first, then gifts.

When I came out, I could hear everybody in the living room, and forks hitting plates. I was getting pretty hungry myself. The first thing I spotted, in front of the tree, was a red mountain bike.

“Wow!”

I felt like Aunt Ginny at the top of Kilimanjaro. Like Suzie when she gets her first sight of something amazing. Like Mom when she does her little dance of finding just the right words for a translation.

I felt like I’d just done a cannonball.

I looked at Granddad.

“Not from me,” he said, waving his fork.

“Your mom didn’t want you to have to wait till she came home,” Suzie said. “Besides, you can’t ride anywhere but down the hall and around the lobby until the snow melts.”

“Mom got me a bike?”

“Let’s make up a song called ‘After All These Years,’ ” Aunt Ginny said, laughing a little.

“Your mom got you a bike and I got you a helmet,”
Mrs. Buttermark said, pointing to a big silver package with her fork. “Now come and eat your breakfast. Max has been eyeing your plate.”

I ate fast. I could hardly wait to get to the hospital to see Mom. We didn’t even bother to open any gifts.

Suzie and Aunt Ginny had planned to help Granddad make a Christmas turkey with all the trimmings. The turkey had already been put in the oven when Aunt Ginny showed up. Granddad knew how.

So Suzie and Aunt Ginny were in charge of the trimmings. And Granddad was going to watch a game on television unless they needed some help.

Mrs. Buttermark and I went over to the hospital.

Mom was sitting in a chair with her leg propped up. There was Christmas music playing on the television.

“Mom, the bike is a beauty.”

“I figured you couldn’t go on riding Joey’s bike your whole life,” she said with a grin. “Or how are the two of you ever going to make any time?”

“You knew?”

“I saw you one day, and Joey was jogging along behind. He looked hot and tired and like a really good
friend. I figured you ought to have your own bike, for both your sakes.”

“Where’d you hide it?”

“At my place, of course,” Mrs. Buttermark said. “When you came to stay, I had to fit it in to my bedroom closet. That was a challenge.”

She brought out a refrigerator dish for Mom. Inside it was a glass dish with a baked custard.

I unpacked the presents we carried over to open with Mom. She said, “This is the laziest Christmas I’ve had in a long time.”

In the afternoon, Aunt Ginny and Suzie traded places with us. They brought some Christmas dinner to eat with Mom. Mrs. Buttermark drove me home to eat with Granddad and Max.

I opened two gifts from Granddad. One was a framed picture of Mom and my dad, and I was sitting on Dad’s lap for the photo. I looked a little surprised by the whole thing, but Mom looked proud and Dad looked happy to be there. I’d never seen this picture before.

The other present was a set of small warrior figures on horseback.

Some of the men wore colorful scarflike outfits,
and the others were dressed in blue and white, in white shirts with flowing sleeves. Even the horses were dressed up with scarves and feathers, the wind lifting the scarves and sleeves so men and horses looked like they were in motion. I’d never seen anything quite like them. They gave me a little chill.

They were the Greeks and Persians, Granddad told me. “Your dad was kind of a history buff. These belonged to him once.”

Goose bumps, that’s what they gave me.

That’s what Granddad said his gifts did for him. Mrs. Buttermark had accidentally given him a book he’d been wanting, a book of famous ships.

That evening, Granddad and Mrs. Buttermark went over to the hospital. Suzie and Aunt Ginny opened the rest of their gifts with me. It felt like Christmas was going on and on and on, which was fine by me.

Mom was home for New Year’s Eve and we did the holiday sleepover. She could get around in this narrow little wheelchair that Aunt Ginny had rented.

Granddad’s cold was gone and Mrs. Buttermark was over at our place more than she was at home in her apartment. That was fine with everybody. Especially Granddad.

Joey Ziglar was back from Florida and he came over too, with his dog. He and Aunt Ginny could hardly shut up about Arizona. Which was very cool. Joey has a major crush on Aunt Ginny.

Max hardly knew what to do with himself, visiting with a dog the same size. And Joey’s dog woke up to acting like a dog that had more on his mind than a leash, a food dish, and a nap.

They kept chasing each other all around the apartment, the sound of dog toenails up and down the hallway. Now and then one of them would body slam the other. They would pant hard in that laughing way, but they ran on without stopping.

There was a new jigsaw puzzle on the coffee table, half done. The chess table was out because Mom and Granddad had been playing the same game for two days.

He had another game going with Mrs. Buttermark. And her old set with the salt shaker was under the tree in case anybody else felt like playing.

Around eight o’clock, Mom and Aunt Ginny put on a movie and Joey and I got into our sleeping bags to watch with them.

Joey fell asleep halfway through the second one. Luckily, he was already in his sleeping bag. His dog
was in there too. When we got to the Kleenex part of the movie, I went in and flopped on my bed for a while.

Mrs. Buttermark would sleep there tonight. I had a sleeping bag on the living room floor too. Max followed me in and hopped up on the bed with me. He flipped onto his back for a belly rub. I didn’t even have to think about it. As bristly as most of his body is, the belly hair is soft, like the feathers on ducklings.

I thought, that’s something to reflect back at him. While I was doing that, something weird happened. I saw him really sharp around the edges. I was going to have to tell Aunt Ginny about that.

Granddad came and sat on the edge of my bed. “Tearjerkers not your style?”

I shrugged. “They’re okay.”

“You haven’t caught my cold?”

“Never catch cold,” I said, making my voice deep. I pounded on my chest. “Hardy.”

He jounced on the edge of my bed, jiggling me around. Max barked and jumped off the bed.

Granddad said, “Hey, do you remember this?” He started to sort of stand halfway up and sit down hard on the bed over and over, jiggling me a little. A lot.

Granddad bounced so hard I lifted off the mattress. Not as high as I used to, but that didn’t matter. The jiggling made me feel like I was laughing. Maybe I was laughing. Max barked a few more times.

Mostly, it surprised me. Partly because Granddad was acting kind of silly, and I liked that. Also because I saw my memories weren’t really pointless after all. I was seeing Granddad really sharp around the edges.

Granddad kept up the bouncing and pretty soon I was laughing like a maniac.

“I remember!” I shouted.

*   *   *

*   *   *

Audrey Couloumbis’s
first book for children,
Getting Near to Baby
, won the Newbery Honor in 2000. Audrey is also the author of several other highly acclaimed books for young readers, including
The Misadventures of Maude March
(which was named a Book Sense 76 Pick and a New York Public Library 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing Selection, and won a National Parenting Publications Gold Award) and
Love Me Tender
(a Book Sense Children’s Summer Pick), and coauthor of
War Games
(a
Horn Book
Fanfare Best Book of the Year and a Junior Library Guild Selection). Audrey lives in upstate New York and Florida with her dog, Phoebe, and Phoebe’s two pet parakeets, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.