Thank You for All Things (22 page)

Bingo!

I let my smile wilt for effect. “I don’t know my people,” I say. “Just Oma, and Mom, and Milo. And now Grandpa Sam and Aunt Jeana. You’ve known my family longer than I have.”

Marie gives me a smile that looks bittersweet. “Yes, I imagine that’s true. Your grandma was just newly married when we befriended each other. I was there when your uncle Clay and your mom were born, and I even helped welcome you and Milo into the world.”

“Then you’ve probably met my dad too?” I say, more bluntly than I intended to.

Marie is swirling her dishcloth in circles on the counter, and her hand pauses for a moment while she considers this. Then she clears her throat. She looks at me, and although her eyes have pity in them, the firmness of her mouth makes it clear that she won’t be saying a word about what she knows.

Marie turns her attention to the mound of dishes dripping in the drainer and says, “Maybe you could dry for me, sweetie. Where are the dish towels?” I point to the drawer on the other side of her, and she pulls one out. She sniffs it, mutters, “Mmm,” then holds it under my nose. “I love the
smell of things dried on a clothesline, don’t you?” she says. “They absorb the warmth of the sun and the scent of the breeze. And just sniffing the scent when we unfold the clothes can makes us feel sunny and happy inside.” I sniff, but at the moment—knowing that I can cross Marie off my list of possible informants—the smell doesn’t do much to make me feel sunny inside.

B
Y THE
time Mom, Mitzy, and Milo come inside, Oma has the living room lit with candles, Japanese music is playing, and poor Al is lying on the Reiki table like a sacrificial lamb set on an altar. Oma’s hands are cupped together and hovering over his private parts like a loose-fitting jock. Mitzy giggles with embarrassment.

“Oh, God,” Mom grumbles, peeking over Mitzy’s shoulder into the living room, and Ray (who hurried back to the kitchen with his coffee when Oma got out the table) chuckles.

“Shush,” Oma says, her eyes closed in a meditative pose. She moves her hands as though she’s tugging long, imaginary clumps of rupture from him, tossing them away, then cups her hands over him again.

“Rupture remover extraordinaire,” Mom says, and Mitzy giggles again.

“Do you girls mind?” Oma says. Al opens one eye for a second, so that it looks like he’s winking. We’re hardly back in the kitchen before we hear him snoring.

Mom and Mitzy and Ray visit while I dry dishes and put them away. Ray is attentive. I like the way he keeps his arm on the back of Mitzy’s chair. When I grow up, I’m going to marry a man who does that.

“There, we’re done!” Oma says from the doorway. “I
told Al to just lie and relax for a few minutes.” Al’s still snoring, so this makes everyone snicker. “I’m going to consult my intuitive, Sky Dreamer, to see if there’s anything else I might do for him.”

“You can save your phone call. I’ll tell you,” Mom says flatly. “You can convince him to see a doctor.”

The kitchen is crowded with chairs butted up near the table sitting too close to the doorway, so Oma puts her hand on Mitzy’s shoulder as she shimmies herself between Mitzy’s chair and the counter to get to an empty seat. She stops, still wedged. “Ohhhhh!” Oma says. “Did you feel that? When I touched your shoulder?”

“Yes,” Mitzy says, her voice slow, her eyes expanded.

“Mother,” Mom warns, saying “Mo-ther” in two slow, deep syllables.

Oma ignores her. “I can feel him, Mitzy.” Oma’s words are soft, filled with awe.

“Who?” Marie asks.

“My baby … Dylan,” Mitzy says, her eyes glistening.

Mitzy breathes in slowly, as though she’s breathing in something magical. “I felt him the second Lillian touched me. Right here,” she says in a whisper, tapping her right shoulder.

“His spirit is standing right behind her back,” Oma says, her face filled with the same awe as Mitzy’s but with concentration too.

I feel a little spooked, but more curious than anything. Ray stiffens, his hand moving up from the back of Mitzy’s chair to wrap around her shoulder.

“He’s showing me something,” Oma says slowly. She scrunches her eyes, as though she’s trying to peer closely to see what it is. There’s not a sound in the house but for Al’s snoring.

“It’s a ball, I think? And it has something scribbled on it?” Oma says this more like a question than a statement.

Mitzy’s hand moves up to rest on the top of her chest, and tears spill over her cheeks. Ray squirms in his chair and leans closer to Mitzy. He looks like he wants to scoop her up and run. Mitzy puts her hand on his arm, like a mom does when she is cueing her child to stay put and shush.

Oma cocks her head as though she’s listening.

“He wants you to know that you don’t need to feel bad that he never got it or to think that you did anything to bring on his early birth.” Oma pauses again, cocking her head even more. “He slipped into that defective body knowing he’d not be staying, but he came anyway, because it was his chance to connect with you, even if only briefly. He wants you to know that time is irrelevant. And he watches over you as he always has, and always will, until you meet again.”

Oma looks up then and lets out a big breath. She looks stunned. “He’s gone. Just like that.” She reaches for the back of a chair and Marie pulls it out so she can sit down. “My, I’ve never had anything like
that
happen before.”

Mom hurries into the bathroom and comes out with a stack of Kleenex for Mitzy, who presses the wad to her eyes. Marie and Oma, and even Mom, gather around her and stroke her back, her arm, her hair.

Mitzy blows her nose, then clamps the damp tissue in her fist and drops her hand to her lap. Ray cups his hand over hers, and I decide that I want a man who will cup my hand too, even if there’s a snotty Kleenex clutched in it.

“I can’t believe you saw the football.” Mitzy looks at Mom. “Did you tell her about it?”

I know Mom wants to say yes—to take the magic out of Oma’s words—but she can’t lie, so she shakes her head.

Mitzy tells the bare bones of the story about the football—the story I overheard in the restaurant but am now listening to (hopefully) as if I’ve never heard it before.

“You can forgive yourself for that now, dear. I saw your baby’s spirit standing in a white light. Well, not literally, but as if I was seeing him in my mind yet behind you at the same time. Oh, I wish I could explain it. Like a superimposed photograph, I suppose. But I
saw
him, Mitzy. I felt him. I felt him at peace.”

“Well,
that
gave me the chills,” Marie says finally, filling the gap of silence. Mom opens her mouth to no doubt counter the experience, but then—perhaps so as not to rob her friend of a tiny bit of comfort—she closes it without uttering a word.

Al comes into the kitchen, where everyone is sitting quietly (but for Mitzy, who’s sniffling), his footsteps groggy. He pats his big belly and belches again, causing a nervous twitter of giggles.

“Get Mitzy some water, will you, Lucy? And get Al a glass too,” Oma says, then she asks Al how he’s feeling.

“Full,” he answers.

The second she hears the faucet run, Oma says, “Oh, I forgot to wash after Al’s treatment.” She jerks her hand away from her damp eyelids as though Al’s rupture is contagious and might infect her eye. She gets up to wash at the kitchen sink.

Ray scoots closer to Mitzy and whispers something in her ear, and she nods. They stand up. There’s a silence that sounds awkward, until Marie says, “Good food, good friends, a little hands-on healing, and a psychic experience—boy, Lillian, you sure do know how to throw a dinner party!” Everybody laughs.

*  *  *

O
MA SENDS
me for Milo, so he can be a part of the goodbyes too, and after the hugs and thank-yous, Mom, Oma, Milo, and I stand outside and wave as the night wind blows the leaves and our company down the road. As we head toward the house, Mom says, “Mother? Messing with Al’s rupture is one thing—I suppose—but please don’t toy with Mitzy’s grief. Please.”

Oma takes short, bouncing steps to catch up with Mom, her long tunic billowing. “What is
that
supposed to mean?”

Mom stops. “You know what I’m talking about. The psychic reading—or whatever in the hell you’d call it—on Mitzy’s dead baby. Ma, I know you’re only trying to help, but don’t go there with that magical shit. She doesn’t need that.”

“Magical shit? You think I’m making this up? Why, healing energy and angels are from God, not ‘magical shit,’ as you call it.”

Mom goes up the steps and yanks the front door open. She stops. “Adding a religious element to it is supposed to make it more legitimate? Religion is not a science, and neither is your metaphysical crap.”

“What about the
Christian
Scientists?” Milo asks—making me believe this kid really
is
developing a sense of humor.

“There’s scientific proof that prayer works. Isn’t there, Milo?” Oma says.

“Well, quantum physicists
are
studying many things once considered only paranormal parlor games,” Milo says, his profoundly gifted seriousness safely back intact.

“And there are plenty of scientists who believe in God,”
I add. “Stephen Hawking himself said that when we know what caused the big bang, we’ll be looking into the eyes of God. Isn’t that right, Milo? And Einstein believed that religion, the arts, and science were all branches of the same tree. Tell her, Milo!” But Milo can’t tell her, because he’s darting behind the house to chase after Feynman.

“End of discussion,” Mom says. “Just leave her be, Mother.” Mom slams the door, leaving Oma and me standing in the yard.

T
WO WEEKS
pass, and in that time, according to Oma, Grandpa Sam suffers “ministrokes” and can no longer use his walker without help. He stops talking too, for the most part. Oma—or Persephone, as she insists Milo and I call her now, so she can “try it on” as her new name—arranges for hospice to come. They’ve got a whole team, and Mom says we’ll take help from all of them, except the chaplain, thank you. Aunt Jeana, who has power of attorney for health care, says we’ll take help from none of them (and doesn’t offer a thank-you), and she arranges for the county nurse to come by instead. The county nurse, Barbara, sees to it that Grandpa Sam gets a wheelchair and a bed he won’t fall out
of. Oma orders him a chair he can sit on in the bathtub so she can bathe him more easily too. We all think it’s the chair coming when I see the brown van and yell, “UPS is here, Persephone!”

Mom looks up from her laptop. “Will you stop calling her that!”

“She told me to! And what’s wrong with the name, anyway? Persephone, the joyful queen of the underworld.
I
like it.”

Oma stands at the back door and waits for the delivery-man to reach the house. “Hmmm,” she says. “Two boxes of the same size? That doesn’t look right. Must be something else. But I didn’t order anything besides that chair. You order something, Tess?” Mom doesn’t hear her.

“What’s inside, Persephone?” I ask, as Oma stares at the invoice and I stare at the two good-size boxes.

“Why, they’re from Best Buy and addressed to Milo and Lucy.”

Mom hears that! “What?” she snaps. She grabs the invoice out of Oma’s hand.

“Oh, my God,” she says. “He sent the kids each a laptop!”

“Who sent them laptops?” Oma asks. I suddenly envision my dad having a rush of remorse for ignoring Milo and me since our birth and sending us these special gifts to show us he’s sorry.

“Peter,” Mom says flatly.

“Peter sent us laptops?” I shout, echoing Oma’s question.

“Yes.”

Now I know why people cry when they get good news.

I race to Milo’s study, shove open the door, and shout inside, “He sent us laptops! Peter sent us laptops!”

Milo rips himself from his chair and chases me back into the kitchen. The minute he sees the boxes, he starts in with little asthmatic barklike coughs.

Mom calls Peter instantly. “What in the hell were you thinking, sending expensive laptops to these kids?”

While Mom is talking, I plead to talk with Peter. I bounce rapidly while I wait, and when I can’t take it anymore, I snatch the phone right out of her hand. “Peter! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” I shout. “I’ve missed my computer sooooooo much! As much as I miss you!”

“Lucy, did you just tear my cell out of my hands? Give that back to me now!”

Then I start rambling, trying to fit in everything I can before Mom yanks the phone back.

“I learned to ride a bike, Peter. Milo learned right away, but I had to work at it. I kept falling down, so after I was done being grounded, which was yesterday—I won’t go into that—I went right on the road because there’s a hill, and I forced myself to go down it. It was sink or swim, but I made it to the bottom without falling, and now I can ride! Mom got us helmets and knee pads. Elbow pads too, and we can ride on the road now. It’s so fun!” I’m speaking at such a fast clip that I can only hope Peter is catching it all.

Peter says something, but I can’t hear him because Mom is shouting at me, Oma is trying to calm her, and Milo is whining and wheezing because he wants to thank Peter and open the boxes.

“You won’t ride that bike for a month, Lucy Marie McGowan, if you don’t give me that phone right now!”

But I want to tell Peter something, at least one of my secrets, and quietly enough that Mom can’t hear. I cup my hand over the receiver and yell above the ruckus, “I have to pee! I’m going to take the phone with me so Peter can ask
me my question, then I’ll give it right back. Promise!” I dart into the bathroom and lock the door. Mom bangs on it. “Damn it, Lucy. Open this door this instant!”

“Oh, Tess, don’t swear at her,” Oma says, and then the two of them argue whether Mom was swearing
at
me or just swearing, period.

“Peter?” I say.

“Yes, Lucy?” and I smile, because I love the way Peter says my name. Like it’s a part of a poem.

“If I were to tell you a secret, would you keep it a secret from Mom?”

“That depends,” he says. “If it’s a secret that poses any physical threat to you, I’d have to tell—even though it sounds to me like you’re in enough trouble at the moment as it is.”