Thank You for All Things (39 page)

I hurry into the house, to where the vase of fake flowers made of dyed feathers now sits beside the door, waiting to go to the shed, because Mom said she didn’t care how many shars it removed, it was butt-ugly. The book said to use the feathers of a gull, but I know I’m not going to find one of those here, and besides, underneath the bright orange and red dye, these feathers
could
be from a gull.

As I’m contemplating how many flowers I’ll need to pluck to give me seventy-eight feathers—one for every year of Grandpa Sam’s life—Milo slips by me and into the bathroom. He’s in a rush, of course, because he only has a
ten-minute break, and I hear the toilet seat crack hard as he flips it up.

It’s no coincidence that he is taking his break from reciting pi at this very moment either, I tell myself, and I go to the bathroom door, leaning close.

“Milo, how big is one cubit?” I yell through the door. One cubit is how big the book said the dough effigy should be, but I don’t know anything about cubits, except that it is a biblical measurement.

“About eighteen inches,” Milo calls back as the toilet flushes. He pops out of the bathroom without running water in the sink and scurries through the kitchen, yelling, “That’s not an exact measurement, though,” as he goes.

“You’d never know Sam was on his deathbed, looking at this family, now, would you?” Aunt Jeana says to Marie, as she walks into the kitchen. She goes to the fridge and pulls out the small package of raw hamburger she brought, struggling to open it without dropping Chico, who pokes his head out of Aunt Jeana’s jacket only long enough to bark at me. “It’s disrespectful.”

I follow them to the counter and reach for the canister of whole-wheat flour. The instructions said to use seven grains when making the dough for the effigy, but is whole wheat a reasonable substitute? “How many grains are in whole-wheat flour?” I ask Marie, who is pouring Aunt Jeana a cup of fresh coffee. She says she doesn’t know, and Aunt Jeana shakes her head.

I put the lid back on the canister and grab the bag of pancake/waffle mix, which is stamped with the label from Nature’s Garden’s health-food store on the front. Underneath the logo is written
7 whole grains of goodness.
No coincidences, I tell myself as I grab a mixing bowl and start pouring.

“What are you making there, young lady?” Aunt Jeana snaps. “Other than a mess.”

“Something for my grandpa,” I say, knowing Aunt Jeana wouldn’t understand if I tried explaining it to her.

“He can’t eat pancakes now!” Aunt Jeana snaps.

I take my bowl and dash out the door, grabbing the feather flowers—vase and all—on my way out.

I hurry out to the shed because, although the book didn’t say the effigy needs to be made in the dying person’s private sanctuary, I think it will give it more power if it is.

I mentally go over the instructions the book gave as I clear a spot on the worktable. I’m to create an effigy one cubit big out of dough made of seven grains. I’m to fashion it in the shape of a lion’s open jaw, then poke one gull feather for every year of Grandpa Sam’s life into it. Then I am to carry it down a main street to a royal manor at the north end of town. And I know just what manor house I’ll bring it to too: the Millard mansion!

I run water from the spigot on the side of the house into an old tin dish, then carry the bowl back into the shed and get to work. I add only drops of water at a time, knowing that if I add too much, I’m going to make pancakes.

It’s not easy making a lion’s open jaw with no illustration to follow, but I do my best. And every time I get frustrated, I remind myself that I’m lucky that the hand that was missing in Grandpa’s cloud image was his mean right hand and not his good left one. Had it been the other way around, I’d have had to find the fang of a black-striped tiger, which would have been impossible, of course, and the fang of a black dog, which would have been almost as impossible, since Feynman doesn’t like his mouth messed with, and Grandpa’s urine, which would have been particularly tricky, since I heard Oma say that he’s not urinating anymore.

While the dough is still sticky, I start ripping feathers from the flowers and poking them into the lion’s head. When I finish, my lion’s jaw looks more like a lame science project of a mountain range made by some nongifted five-year-old, but, maybe like all gifts, it’s the thought that counts.

I can’t wait for the effigy to dry before I move it, so I dig in the burning barrel until I find a brown paper bag with damp coffee grounds stuck to it, and I tuck the effigy carefully inside. Then I get on my bike and pedal as fast as I can toward town, pretending that I don’t know who’s pulling into our drive when I get to the end, even though Mrs. Olinger is waving at me.

T
HE MILLARD
mansion sits just down the street from Maude Tuttle’s house. Even though I’d wanted to hear the rest of her story in the worst way, at the moment I can’t think of anything but seeing to it that Grandpa lives, and I know I won’t stop in to see her.

I park my bike three blocks from the Millard mansion, anyway, because the book said to walk down the main street with the effigy. I’m hoping three blocks is enough, because the late-October sky has clouded over, and all I’m wearing is my thin windbreaker. I flex my right hand, stiff from the cold and from holding the top of the paper bag folded over the handlebars so I wouldn’t drop it.

I take the lion’s jaw out of the bag, scooping up the feathers that fell to the bottom and poking them back into the dough. Then I hold it in the palms of my hands, away from my body—like I imagine an effigy should be carried—and for three blocks, I say prayers as Oma would: to the Creator, to my dead ancestors, to God, to Jesus, to
Buddha, to my guardian angels, to Mohammed, and to a couple of Catholic saints and Hindu gods whose names I happen to know. And I beg and plead for them all to use their power to help Grandpa live, because he’s the closest thing to a father I’ll probably ever have.

When I get to the Millard mansion, I don’t know what to do with the effigy, so I say a final prayer and I set it down gently on the steps. I pause and I wait without knowing what I’m waiting for. Probably not for anything dramatic, like the gray clouds to part and some wise voice to call down to me, “You asked, now you shall receive” (because any god, I’m thinking, would probably use the word “shall”), but maybe something subtle, like a private inner feeling that makes me sigh with relief and cry happy tears. But I don’t hear anything special at all. Just the whistle of the wind and the hum of cars on the street. And I don’t feel anything but the cold wind nipping at my hands.

W
HEN I
get back home, there’s a white car with a Hertz license plate sitting in the driveway. A tall man is standing beside it with his hands in his pockets, looking out over the yard, the wind ruffling the top of his neatly groomed hair.

“Excuse me,” I say. “Are you my uncle Clay?” There’s little ticking noises sparking under his hood, telling me he just got here.

He turns. He looks like Grandpa Sam used to look, yet his mouth and chin are shaped like Oma’s. His nose and teeth are perfectly straight, which leads me to believe that
he had them fixed after Grandpa Sam broke them. “If you’re Lucy, I am,” he says.

I don’t know what the proper greeting for an uncle you’ve never met is, but what I want to do is hug him. Instead, I tell him that Mom and Oma are inside. He nods, smiles with his lips shut, and with his hands still in his pockets, he follows me to the house, then removes one so he can hold the door open and I can slip in first. I’m not thrilled to go inside, since I know it’s likely I’m about to get a tongue-lashing for disappearing again.

I don’t, though. Not when Oma looks above my head and sees who’s standing behind me. “Clay!” she cries, her hand going to her chest. Oma doesn’t wait for him to offer her his arms. She goes to him, kisses both of his cheeks, then hugs him, rocking him from side to side. “Oh, Clay … Clay.” Marie and Mitzy watch them and get smiley and teary-eyed, then wrap one arm around each other, as if this makes them part of the hug.

“Your dad’s waiting for you,” Oma says. “He was faltering, but I told him you were on your way from the airport, and he rallied around.”

“How long ago?” I ask.

“Huh?”

“How long ago did he rally around again?”

“I don’t know. A half an hour ago? Forty-five minutes? I’m not sure.”

I grin to myself. The effigy! It had to be! The pamphlet never said a thing about a dying person having
two
bursts of energy!

“Welcome home, Clay,” Marie says, before she crushes him to her.

Clay asks where Mom is, and I glance at the clock. It’s nineteen minutes to three, so I tell him that she’ll be out in
nine minutes. He looks confused, so I explain just the basics of what Mom and Milo are doing. “We all cope differently,” Oma says to him, since he still looks confused.

Mitzy hugs Clay a bit too, then she offers him coffee. “You hungry? The Olingers brought by a casserole and a chocolate cake a bit ago,” she says. “And there’s pumpkin bread.”

“I’m not hungry, thanks,” he says. “But I’ll take a coffee.” His hands are back in his pockets.

“I thought I heard you,” Aunt Jeana says as she hustles into the kitchen. Chico is barking like a lunatic, but she ignores him long enough to give Clay a one-armed hug.

“I’m glad you came, Clay,” she says, her eyes red-rimmed. “The place looks good, doesn’t it?”

Clay looks around the room and nods, even though I can tell that he’s thinking it’s a rat hole, just like Mom thinks it is.

“Do you want to see your father now?” Oma asks.

“I think I’ll have that coffee first.”

Mitzy pours him a cup, and Marie offers him her chair and says she’ll go sit with Grandpa Sam while they all visit. Uncle Clay’s eyebrows dip and one corner of his mouth cranks over toward his cheek when he looks at the table butted up against the cupboards.

“How’s work?” Mitzy asks, and Clay pulls his hands out of his pockets and starts talking about his job, his voice sounding happy and sure. I watch him as he talks, hands gesturing the whole time. He looks like a very nice uncle. He reminds me of Mom. But then, I remind myself, he is her twin.

“We’ll have to go make arrangements tomorrow,” Aunt Jeana interrupts. “Most churches won’t bury someone if they’re not a member, but I’m a registered Methodist back
home so I’m sure the Methodist church here will bury him. We can have the church ladies provide the luncheon afterward.”

Her words make me angry. “Grandpa’s not even dead,” I blurt out. “And who knows. Maybe he’s not even going to die.”

Aunt Jeana’s head snaps toward me. “This is an adult discussion,” she says. Then she looks at Uncle Clay. “I hope you don’t allow your children to be disrespectful like this.”

“Oh, Jeana, don’t,” Oma says, hurrying to put her arm around me. “Lucy’s a sensate, like me. This is difficult for her.”

“A what?”

“Highly sensitive,” Oma says.

Uncle Clay glances at the door like he wants to run right through it.

The plastic grandfather clock in the living room sounds, and right on schedule, ten minutes to the hour, Milo rushes out of the room, Mom following. “I’m about to start position 11,111 plus,” he announces, as he races to the sink for water.

“Good heavens,” Aunt Jeana says. “Does no one in this family have any respect for the dying?”

“He’s not dying,” I say between gritted teeth.

Mom stops when she sees Clay. Her chin quivers. Uncle Clay gets up and gives her a hug. “Sissy,” he says.

To my surprise, Mom allows her tears to come as he hugs her, making me wonder if I will ever be separated from Milo by hundreds of miles and almost as many years someday, and, if so, if we’ll hug when we see each other. I look at Milo, who is waiting impatiently for Oma (who dumped his tap water down the drain) to pour him a glass of Brita water, and I have my doubts.

The minute Feynman moseys out of the library, looking all droopy and sleepy, he sniffs the air and picks up the scent of another dog. He wakes up then and runs to Aunt Jeana, his front legs hopping off the floor. Chico goes nuts, like maybe he’s afraid he’s going to become hamburger himself.

“Get that mutt out of here!” Aunt Jeana snaps above Chico’s whining. “What’s he doing inside, anyway? He’s not supposed to be in the house.”

Milo hurries to grab Feynman’s collar, and Aunt Jeana starts heading back to Grandpa Sam’s room, speaking into Chico’s papery triangle ear loud enough for us all to hear her say, “We’ll go sit by Sam, where you’ll be safe, since it seems that no one else in this family intends to go sit with him.”

I watch Aunt Jeana’s bony back as she leaves, and I feel bad again, because she’s right. No one in the family—except for Oma—wants to sit with Grandpa Sam, and at the moment even she wants to sit with Uncle Clay instead. “I’ll come too,” I say.

Grandpa Sam is no longer propped up on pillows but lying flat on his back, a thin pillow tucked under his head. His feeding tube dangles from the metal pole, the end of the tubing capped and lying on the floor. Marie is standing at the side of his bed, holding up the covers and examining his naked skin. I don’t want to be looking at him, but I look anyway. His body looks like those starving people in Ethiopia that I saw on Oma’s TV. He has a washcloth sitting over his private parts, like it’s been hung there from his protruding hip bones. His legs are skinny sticks like Milo’s, and there’s a bunched scar on his thigh. “He hasn’t started mottling yet, anyway,” she says as she drops his covers.

“My dad didn’t start that until minutes before he died,” Aunt Jeana says.

Marie sees me and leans down. “Sam? Jeana and Lucy are here now, so I’m going to step out for a bit and get some coffee.” She talks loud so he can hear her above his noisy breaths. “How about a drink first, though?” She picks up one of the short plastic sticks with a small blue sponge at the top that the county nurse left us, dips it into the plastic cup of water on his nightstand, and places it against lips that are dry on the outside of his mouth but glossy closer to the inside. He opens up and roots for it like a baby roots for his milk bottle, and sucks on the sponge. “Be sure to offer him water now and then,” she tells us.