Thank You for All Things (6 page)

I stare out the window, my face so close to the glass that I can feel my breath against my lips. The stores lining the streets are small, the tallest of them only two stories high. Behind the storefronts’ masks of fresh paint and pretty stenciled lettering, the sides of the buildings are shabby, their rear ends sagging.

There are fewer people milling around Main Street than what I’d see out in front of our apartment building on sweltering summer days. As I gawk, Oma does too. She says things like, “Oh, look. The Rexall drugstore is still here,” and, “Oh, my, now, does any town this size need both a Hardee’s and a McDonald’s?” And Mom says, “What an oppressive dump.”

When we get almost to the north end of the main street, the road veers off to the east, and at the bend there’s a landscaped yard and a big, beautiful, Victorian-style house. “Look at that!” I say. “I wish that was the house we were going to inherit from Grandpa Sam.”

“We’re not going to inherit anything from your grandfather!” Mom snaps.

Milo winces because, once again, the volume in our voices is cranked up enough to put his ears on overload.

“Oh, look, Tess,” Oma says as she points to the house I’ve just singled out. “They’ve turned the Millard mansion into a historical landmark. Harlan must have passed on, then.” Oma turns to me. “Joseph Millard built that home, along with most of the town. He was a timber baron and the founder of Timber Falls. Your grandfather went to school with his great-grandson, Harlan.”

“Harlan and Samuel,” Mom huffs. “Wisconsin’s own Hatfields and McCoys. Legends in their own mind.”

“Who are the Hatfields and the McCoys?” I ask, but Oma ignores that question and addresses Mom’s grumble.

“Your father and Harlan sure did carry that ruckus into their generation, now, didn’t they?” Then she looks over her shoulder into the backseat. “Harlan and your grandfather didn’t get along. Something about Harlan’s family and ours and land that our family believed was taken out from under our noses by the Millards during a bout of bad luck.”

“Dad wanted that stupid mill just so he could become a somebody and keep Harlan from gloating about our family’s downfall. And that’s what made him turn into such an asshole, when—” Mom stops. “Oh, let’s change the subject,” she says as we swing around the bend. I turn around in my seat to catch a last glimpse of the remarkable house.

Oma’s still cranked around to watch the house pass. “Harlan must have given the house to the city. He never married and didn’t have any children, so I suppose …”

“He was probably gay,” Mom says, but Oma shakes her head. “Oh, Tess, you know that’s not true. He was in love with Maude Tuttle.”

Oma points ahead to a house we’re approaching. It’s large, three stories, painted pale yellow with white trim,
and though not as grand as the Millard manor house, it’s easily the second most extravagant house I’ve seen in this town so far. “That’s Maude Tuttle’s house right there,” she tells me. “It used to be … well … a house of ill repute.”

“What’s that?” I ask, and Mom scowls at Oma.

Oma giggles. “Good heavens, when I first moved here, they were still doing raids on that place when a complaint came in, though halfheartedly, since on any given night you could bet that one of Timber Falls’s most elite would be found there.

“Well, anyway,” Oma says, stifling her laughter. “The only woman Harlan ever loved lived there. Maude Tuttle. I wonder if she’s still alive. Hmmm. Anyway, what a beautiful woman. She’d cut you like broken glass if you looked at her twice, but she was absolutely gorgeous. Had she been in her prime today, she’d be the hottest plus-size model this country’s ever seen. Harlan loved her dearly.”

“Why didn’t they get married, then?” I ask.

Oma starts giggling again. “Oh, he couldn’t marry a girl like Maude Tuttle; he had his family name to protect.”

“Crissakes, as if they were the royal family,” Mom says.

“She loved him, though—or at least what he did for her. Enough that after he became her only … well … 
boyfriend
she dyed her pretty blond hair red, because Harlan liked redheads.” Oma leans across the console and whispers (but loud enough for me to hear, because what I wasn’t given in ankle strength, the acuteness of my hearing makes up for), “Women said that the hair on her head wasn’t the only hair she dyed red for him either,” and Mom says, “Too much information.”

Oma tips back upright in her seat. “She stayed loyal to him, though, and I’d like to believe that it was because of love rather than that he bought her out of the business and
set her up pretty for the rest of her life. Harlan was one good-looking man in his day. Marie said once that Harlan was good-looking enough to make even Mother Teresa tingle in her naughty places.”

“Mother! I hardly think this story should be part of the kids’ educational tour of Timber Falls. For God’s sakes, keep your voice down when you talk like that.”

Oma taps Mom on the arm. “Oh, Tess. Loosen up. Sex is a natural part of life, and the children are already pubescent. Why, soon Lucy will begin her moon time, and—”

“Her
menstrual cycle
, Mother. Her MENSTRUAL CYCLE!”

Milo glances up. “Do you people have to talk about such things in front of me?”

“Oh, so you mean Maude Tuttle was a prostitute and that she turned tricks like a crack whore!” I say, finally getting it.

“Lucy Marie McGowan! Where on earth did you hear such a term?” Mom shouts.

I don’t dare tell her it was online—not with Mom confident that she has all the bad sites blocked—so I say, “From the stoop downstairs.”

Mom growls under her breath, and Oma shrugs. “You can’t protect them forever, honey. Even though I agree that children are growing up too fast. Good Lord, I was in the store last week, and they had thong panties in a children’s size four. What are they thinking? When did kids stop being kids, anyway?”

“When people like you started talking about things they shouldn’t in front of them, that’s when!” Mom snaps.

O
UR NEW
home—if only Mom will have it—sits just a short distance beyond the cluster of new constructions about two miles west of town. The small house, two stories high, is dingy white, like city snow. It has shabby, barn-red shutters alongside the front windows, one pulled loose and cocked, and a small entranceway that juts out from the front of the house like a dog’s snout. The lawn is spacious, the tall trees fringed with long blades of grass a mower couldn’t reach. The same shaggy fringe clings to the half-dilapidated fence that boxes in the house.

“Oh, look how the house has fallen to ruins,” Oma groans.

“It looks exactly the same as it’s always looked. Like a dump.”

Mom pulls the car down the drive and brings it to a stop. She opens her door but just sits there, staring at the house. I don’t wait for her or Oma to get out before I shove against Mom’s seat and squeeze by, then rip off my shoes and socks, even though it’s chilly and windy, and step onto the cool grass. And then, for reasons it would probably take Sigmund Freud himself to figure out, I flop down on my belly, press my cheek against the ground, and skim my arms and hands over the silky grass.

One car door slams. “What are you doing?” Milo asks. I feel him standing beside me, but I don’t open my teary eyes, and I don’t answer, because I have no answer. Instead, I feel the earth solid under me and the grass pricking against my clothes. I hear the scattering of a few dried leaves making soft tinkling sounds as they skip past me, and I want Milo to shut up so all I hear is their sound.

A screen door squeaks, followed by the yips of a small dog. I turn my other cheek to the grass, open my damp eyes, and see a tiny dog charging toward me, followed by a little woman every bit as skinny as the dog, with gray hair almost as short. “Chico! Chico!” the woman calls. Her voice, too, is every bit as high-pitched and yippy as the dog’s.

The dog reaches me, still yipping, his diminutive body popping off the grass with each one. He’s a homely thing, with bulgy eyes and a red rhinestone collar around his neck that looks big enough for him to jump through.

The other car doors slam as Aunt Jeana reaches down to scoop up the dog hopping at her feet.

“Jeana,” Oma says. I close my eyes again but know they hug politely.

“These are Sam’s grandchildren. This is Milo, and that’s Lucy.”

Milo shows his good manners by saying hello, but me, I just keep my eyes closed and wish them all to go away, because lying here feels more prayerful than giving tobacco to an eagle, and more personal than using the bathroom.

“You’re looking well, Lillian,” the yippy voice says, and then it lowers. “Tess,” she says, her mouth making the
s
’s in Mom’s name sound like the hiss of a snake. “I’m glad you decided to come.”

“Aunt Jeana,” Mom volleys, in a voice cooler than the air.

“Did she fall?” Aunt Jeana asks, talking about me.

“No,” Mom answers.

“Then what’s wrong with her?”

Oma’s voice is blissful as she says, “She’s just savoring her first real meeting with Mother Earth.”

Aunt Jeana says, “Hmmm,” and Mom snaps, “Lucy, get up. Now!”

There is the chatter of Aunt Jeana’s and Oma’s voices and the
whomp
of our trunk slamming. The voices and yip-ping fade, then disappear behind the clack of the closing screen door, and still I lie on the grass, stroking, sniffing, and loving the ground I lie upon.

When I was six years old, Marcus, a man Mom was dating, took us on a train trip to the East Coast to see the Atlantic Ocean. Marcus was thin, fair skinned, and rubbery to the touch, like a piece of string cheese. We traveled there on a vintage passenger train with red velvet seats and hanging chandeliers in the dining car that rocked above our heads as we ate our omelets. I don’t recall much about the trip itself, except that Milo vomited most of the way and
that when you flushed the toilet, a trapdoor opened and the water and waste splattered onto the rocks and railroad ties bumping by beneath us. I excused myself often, flushing and watching, and wondering how it was that the health department could allow such a thing. But what I remember most of all about that trip, our only vacation ever, is the ocean. I didn’t know how to swim, so Marcus carried me out ’til the water was washing his colorless chest hairs, then he stretched me across his arms and just held me there. I closed my eyes as the waves lapped over me, and I went as mute as I am now and wished for the moment to last forever. It didn’t, of course, nor did Marcus, though I’d wanted him to be my dad too.

Only when my belly cools to the point where I start to shiver do I roll over and sit up. I draw my legs up and wrap my arms around them. I tuck my chin on my knees and look past the yard, past the patch of trees, at the rolling hills dotted with houses that, from this distance, look as tiny as the houses on a Monopoly board.

It is quiet here. Peaceful. I smile as the breeze brushes my cheeks and dries my eyes as if I’m ice skating. I look to the north of the house, where the red maples in low-lying spots are blotched with deep red, and to a patch of sugar maples that are just beginning to tinge with a brighter, orangier red, and I wonder how tall those trees were when Mom was a kid and if she climbed them or raked their leaves into piles and jumped in them, as I’ve always heard country kids do. I look at the line of upstairs windows and I wonder which of them belongs to her childhood bedroom and if Oma ever read her
Goodnight Moon
before tucking her in.

I head to the house. Inside, it smells like frying hamburger, oatmeal cookies, and poop. I stand inside the
entranceway and see shoes—including Milo’s tennies, Mom’s loafers, and Oma’s beaded slippers—lined up on a rug alongside a narrow, short pair of oxfords. I take off my tennies and pair them up with Milo’s, and hang my jacket on the coatrack beside the door. There is a man’s hat propped on the tip, wool and charcoal gray. I lean over and study it. The silk band rimming the inside is stained darker in the front, as though it has sopped up a million drops of worry.

I can hear the women’s voices, and when I step into the living room, I can see into the kitchen. Oma is standing at the sink, running her hand up the tiny shelves that sit beside the window. Mom’s shoulder and hip are peeking out from behind the door frame.

Milo comes into the living room and looks at the TV, from which an excited man standing before a rotisserie oven is shouting, “That’s right, just set it and forget it!”

“It’s an infomercial,” I explain, knowing he doesn’t get it by the way he’s blinking at the screen. “I studied them for my paper on pop culture.” Then, “Where’s Grandpa?”

Milo shrugs and sits down on the couch, refusing to allow his back to rest against the orange and yellow afghan that looks older than us. He opens the top book on his stack, but his eyes keep darting around the room. He looks like a fish on pavement.

My eyes wander above him, where a plaque hangs next to a gob of artificial flowers. The plaque bears my grandfather’s name, Samuel McGowan. “Milo, look at this.”

“What?”

I try to keep my voice quieter than the ones coming from the kitchen, and that’s no easy feat. “Grandpa’s last name! It’s the same as ours!”

“Yeah? So?”

I’m almost shaking. Around the same time I learned
that Scott Hamilton was not my real dad, I asked Mom and Oma what my grandpa’s name was. I asked because a girl my age, Sonya, had moved into apartment #426, and for a short time I entertained being her best friend, like she asked me to. That notion didn’t last long—mainly because her idea of fun was making her Barbie doll hop up and down the front steps, and a girl named Lativa found that game more to her liking than I did, and also because after just five short weeks she announced that she and her mom were going to go live with her grandpa in Minnesota. The mention of her grandfather was the first time that it really dawned on me that just as I had to have a father someplace, so did Mom. So I asked if I had a grandpa and what his name was. Mom didn’t answer me, but Oma did. And all she said was, “Yes,” and, “His name is Sam.” I never thought to ask his last name. I just assumed that it was the same as Oma’s—Larson.