Thank You for All Things (43 page)

“Who’s to say? But the important part is that, one way or another, Sam didn’t let it come to that.”

“You mean my grandpa Sam prevented him from taking
Mom and us back to California, so he couldn’t hurt us anymore?” I ask, feeling a sudden wave of love for Grandpa and a sudden wave of guilt for leaving him.

“You could say that.” We hear soft sizzling sounds, and Maude gets up to pour milk into three cups with powdered chocolate at the bottom. She gives me a cup and a spoon, then starts stirring the two in front of her, alternating a few twirls in each cup. I don’t stir, though. I wrap my hands around the mug to warm them.

“Your dad told your mom that he couldn’t live without her—which those types always say, and probably believe—and that he loved her, which is also what they say, even though they don’t know one shittin’ thing about love, except how to suck from it. But he wasn’t in his right mind, Lucy.”

“So Grandpa Sam kicked him out, didn’t he? And probably threatened to hurt him if he ever even thought about coming around Mom again. My grandpa was big and strong then, so my dad was probably too scared to ever come around again.”

“You could say that. Now, drink your hot cocoa before it gets cold,” Maude says. “You too, Nordine.”

“But the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. You said so yourself. What if my brother goes crazy like our dad? Or I do?”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“How do you know? You turned out to be a—well, like your mom, didn’t you? Even though you didn’t know her either?”

“For different reasons, not because it was stamped in my blood. You’re going to be okay, kid. You just are. And so is your brother. You aren’t living your dad’s life, whatever that was. Your mom’s seeing to it that you don’t.”

I look at Maude hopefully, then take my spoon and stir the powder that is clinging to the edges of my cup. “I still don’t understand why my mom hates my grandpa, if all he did was chase Howard away because he was crazy.”

“Well, young women are pretty dreamy, kiddo. All that love-conquers-all bullshit. You’ll see what I mean when you’re a little older and fall hard. It happens to the brightest of us. I suppose she believed that in time he’d have gotten his head out of his ass and come around so they could live happily ever after.”

I stare down at the white milky swirls in my cup. “But my grandma did leave Grandpa Sam, so I guess that means she eventually stopped being dreamy.”

“Well, I’d guess, more than that, she looked at her daughter and realized she was living the same life she’d been taught to live by example.”

“Sam?” Nordine asks, as if his name was just mentioned. She’s cocking her half-rollered head from side to side, then gets up and turns around, as though maybe he’s in the living room waiting for her.

Maude shakes her head. “That poor woman,” she says. “Loved that man from the time she was a girl. She’s got one foot in the grave, and still she doesn’t realize that she was better off not having him, even if her daddy did marry her off to that piece of trash Henry. She never was overly bright, but she’s always been a sweetie.”

I watch Nordine as she shuffles back to the table. Maude goes behind her and sections another clump of damp hair to roll.

“Did my grandpa love her once? I mean, really love her, not just to … well, you know … but did he really care?”

“He did. And he beat himself up every day for not
marrying her when he should have, in spite of what her daddy said. But who’s to say if things would have been any different with her. And if they hadn’t … I don’t know. This poor woman is as delicate as a rose, not strong like a weed, like you and me and your grandma.”

“I’m glad my mom and dad loved each other once, but I wish they’d gotten married. Even if he was … well, you know …” I take a sip of my drink. “He’s never tried to see my brother and me. Not once, that I know of. Maybe he’s in a mental hospital. I don’t know. But maybe I can look on the bright side and hope that, if Mom marries Peter, our real dad will let Peter adopt us, since he doesn’t want us anyway.”

Maude smiles sadly. “Drink up,” she says, as she pokes a little pink pick into another roller on Nordine’s head.

“I’m not feeling so well,” I tell her. “My stomach hurts. I think I should call my mom now.”

“You do that, kiddo. It would probably be best if you were gone by the time Henry gets back from town, anyway. You’ve had a hard enough day already.”

Milo answers the phone, and I ask him to send Mom for me. He must be on one of his ten-minute breaks from reciting pi, because he’s too rushed to ask me any questions, which is all right by me.

I hang up and take a sip of cocoa just so I’m not rude, and I watch Maude roll another piece of Nordine’s white hair. I watch the stones from her heavy rings flopping and spinning as she works. I know what those hands did long ago. They touched men’s private parts, then they folded the money they gave her afterward. They flipped off people in restaurants and petted animals with runny eyes. But at this very moment, they are rolling Nordine’s hair gently, so they won’t hurt her tender scalp. “You have pretty hands,” I tell
her, and she does, even if they are spotted and old and have done some not-so-pretty things.

Maude—probably because she’s a sensate, a psychic, or just plain smart—says, “We’re all a little of both, Lucy. Good and bad. Some of us, though, like your grandpa and me, we’ve just got bigger parts of each.”

M
Y STOMACH
hurts worse as I climb into the backseat of Roger’s car.

“What in the hell are you up to, Lucy?” Mom asks as I fasten my buckle and she glares at me in the rearview mirror. “First I find you at Maude Tuttle’s, now Nordine Bickett’s. You call Peter, like there’s some sort of emergency going on that only he can handle … What in the hell’s wrong with you? And whose car is that in the driveway, anyway?”

She looks over her shoulder at the driveway as she backs out. “Crissakes, as if this day isn’t stressful enough …” She hits the brakes when she looks at me. “Are you okay?”

Mitzy looks in the backseat too. “Lucy?” she says. “What’s wrong, honey?”

My abdomen makes a fist, and something damp squeezes out to sit between my underwear and my skin. “I think I just got my first moon time,” I tell Mom.

“Moon time?” Mitzy asks.

“Her period. Your period, Lucy. It’s called your period.”

All the way home, Mom and Mitzy remind me that getting your period is a normal part of growing up.

Mom and Mitzy hustle me inside and straight to the bathroom, where Mom tugs down my jeans and looks at the splotch of blood glossing the crotch of my pink panties. Marie and Oma talk in excited whispers outside the door while Mom roots around in her bag, then pulls out a tampon. She holds it up, looks at it, then stuffs it back in her bag. “Mitzy? Can you grab a few sheets of paper towel?”

“You should have come to me,” Mom says as Mitzy slips out of the bathroom door. “Not run off like that. I was scared too when I got my first period, but, Lucy, I prepared you for this. And what exactly did you think Peter could do for you?” Mitzy hands Mom some sheets of paper towel through the door, and Mom folds them into a cylinder-shaped pad. “Here. Wear this for now. Mitzy and I will run to town and get you some real pads.”

Oma hugs me when I step out of the bathroom. “She even looks more grown up, doesn’t she?” she says to Marie. Marie eyes me carefully and nods. I think, though, that Marie senses that it’s more than the blood seeping onto sheets of paper towel decorated with teapots that has made me appear older.

“I want to go sit with Grandpa now,” I say.

“Okay,” Mom says. “We’ll go to the Rexall and get you
some protection. We’ll be right back.” Mom grabs her purse and Mitzy and hurries out the door as though it’s vital they go immediately, leaving me to suspect that she’s wanting to run to town for
her
protection, not for mine.

As I pass Milo’s door—he’s been at it for eight hours now—he’s resetting his timer. He sees me and calls out, “I’m just starting position 48,551 plus. I’m averaging six thousand digits per hour, right up there with the current record holders.” He sets the timer down and starts again: “Three, SEVEN, two, FIVE, four—I really like that part!—EIGHT, two, FIVE …” The sounds of Grandpa Sam’s rutted breaths and rattling bed bars are filling every corner of the house, and Milo’s working hard to drown them out. I can tell by his eyes that he can hear them too and that he’s struggling hard to see the numbers in his mind rather than his grandpa fighting to breathe. I feel sorry for him, so I say, “Good job. Catch you later.”

In Grandpa Sam’s room, Aunt Jeana is sitting on the folding chair, bouncing Chico as though he’s a squalling infant. There’s a horrid odor in the room, and I think it might be the smell of death that I read about in one of those Mom-or-Dad-is-dying novels Mom picks up at the library for me to read when it’s book report time.

When Milo has an asthma attack, his eyes bulge and his whole body strains for the next breath, but that’s not how Grandpa Sam looks. His face has gone to bones, his eyelids are hanging at half-mast, and he can’t breathe, yet he looks peaceful. As if his mind, or maybe his soul, is resting comfortably, even though his body is not. I want Milo to come see, so he can stop picturing Grandpa Sam struggling to breathe like he does during an attack—only worse—but I know it’s futile to ask him to.

A forty-watt bulb on Grandpa Sam’s nightstand supplies
the only light in the room, but it’s enough to cast a shadow on the wall. One that shakes with each breath, then freezes as his breath stops. When Grandpa Sam’s breathing pauses again, Aunt Jeana rotates her wrist and peers over Chico’s bobbing head to stare at her watch, stealing quick glances at Grandpa Sam’s still body. When he inhales, she sighs. “Sixteen seconds this time,” she says, before easing back against her chair again.

“My mother was buried in a brown casket,” she tells me. “She hated brown, but that’s what she got, because Sam said it was the cheapest and what did it matter, since she was dead and didn’t know what color coffin she was being buried in, anyway. I won’t bury Sam in something like that, though. Even if I have to dig into my savings. He’ll have a nice black casket with white satin lining.

“You’d think Clay would offer to pitch in for this funeral,” she adds. “He makes enough to pay for it with the change in his pocket. Everybody in this town loved Sam, and they’ll all be there. He didn’t have enough in his burial fund to go extravagant, and I have to watch my money, but he’s my brother.”

Grandpa Sam’s leg moves, his heel scraping against the sheets, and Aunt Jeana stops. “Is he in pain?” she asks, just as Marie steps into the room.

“I don’t think so,” Marie says. “But the nurse is on standby—she’s only two miles away. If he starts looking uncomfortable, we’ll give her a call and she’ll come and give him morphine.”

Aunt Jeana’s thin lips part, and her two wisps of eyebrows crouch down over her deeply sunken eyes. “What are you all waiting for? He’s dying, for God’s sakes!” Aunt Jeana’s voice is so shrill when she raises it that I flinch, just like Chico.

“Well, she said it will compromise his breathing even more.”

“I want to be alone with my grandpa now,” I say, before Aunt Jeana can harp at Marie again.

“Excuse me?” she says.

“I said I want to be alone with my grandpa now. Please.”

Aunt Jeana lifts her chin. “What kind of a world has this turned into, when you have kids telling their elders what to do?”

“A break would do you good,” Marie tells her. “Come, let’s go see if we can round up another cup of coffee. It might be a long night.”

I want to talk to Grandpa, but aside from telling him that I know the story of my dad, I can’t find anything else to say. So I just put my hand over his instead. And again, Grandpa Sam slides his hand out from under mine and rests it on top.

Grandpa Sam starts moving his legs again. Both of them. His eyes open wider, and he turns to me. His mouth starts moving, but no words come out. Just the gurgling, raspy breaths that rattle his hospital bed.

His hand leaves mine and begins groping the sheets. I glance at the door, then stand up and lean over his bed. “Grandpa Sam? Are you in pain? Do you need your medicine now?”

His mouth moves and his eyelids open wider. He looks right at me and strains again to say something.

“I’ll get Oma,” I tell him. “She’ll call the nurse to come give you something so you don’t hurt.”

My upper body turns, and before my feet even have the chance to follow, Grandpa Sam bolts up so that he’s almost sitting erect, and his hand clamps around my wrist. I gasp,
because the suddenness scares me. “No,” he says, in a voice more powerful than I’ve ever heard him use. “I’m okayyyy!” He falls back against his pillow, and after a couple more jagged breaths, he tries speaking again.

I can feel his frustration as he struggles to find the energy to get more words out. “What is it, Grandpa?”

And then, just like that, I
know
what he wants to say.

I lean closer. “Grandpa Sam?” I say in a rush. “You want to tell me that you love me, don’t you? And you want me to let Mom and Clay, and even Oma, know that you love them too.” He turns toward me, his eyes saying, “Yes!”

“And you want them all to know that you’re sorry too, don’t you? And that you understand why Mom and Uncle Clay can’t be in here right now.” Grandpa Sam’s whole body sighs with relief against his pillow when I say the words he can’t. His face looks peaceful again, even though his breathing has worsened.

Grandpa Sam—though his body is mummy-dry now—leaks one tear from the outer corner of his left eye, and it slips down across his bony temple. The sight of it makes my eyes tear too. “I’ll tell them, Grandpa Sam,” I say. “I promise I will.”

And then he drifts off. Not to death, but to that place that feels halfway from here, and halfway to there.

Oma slips into the room quietly. “Ten one thousand, eleven one thousand,” I count under my breath, as Oma pulls his hospital gown down to expose his chest. “Fifteen one thousand, sixteen one thousand.” There’s only one patch on his skin, about the size of a grown man’s hand, that has any pink left in it anymore. The rest is blotched with black, and his hands and arms are cold. He’s mottling, just as described in the pamphlet, page eight, seventh paragraph.