Thank You for All Things (18 page)

“You’re not going to believe this one,” she says. “The cops caught up with Dad just across the Taylor County line. He’s driving, and two squad cars are chasing him. He’s going thirty to forty miles an hour, but he won’t stop.
They’ve been following him for about twenty miles now. It’s a low-speed chase.” Mom pauses for a second, then says, “No, I’m not kidding! … Uh-huh. He’s looped around and is heading back toward Timber Falls. I’m going to head downtown.”

Once we get to town, we have no trouble spotting Grandpa Sam. He’s in the truck that’s leading two squad cars down Main Street—sirens roaring, lights blinking—as though he’s a parade marshal. On the street, one little boy lets go of his mother’s hand long enough to wave at Grandpa Sam, and an old guy gawks at Oma’s vintage car.

“I can’t believe this!” Mom keeps repeating as we follow Grandpa Sam up one street and down the other.

“Look,” I shout. “The officer on the passenger side has a megaphone!”

We roll down our windows, and we can hear the officer, even with the wind thumping into the car. “Pull your vehicle slowly over to the side of the road. This is police orders, Mr. McGowan. Pull your vehicle over to the side of the road.”

But Grandpa Sam doesn’t. He keeps driving, right out of town, the cops following him. Mom and I, with Mitzy behind us, add our vehicles to the parade.

I lean my head out the window to get a better view now that we’re on a flat straightaway, and the wind smears my hair away from my face. “He’s turning!”

“He’s turning into the parking lot at Joe’s Pub. Where in the hell does he think he’s going?” Mom says into her cell to Mitzy.

Grandpa Sam’s truck follows the driveway in, then loops back out. Three cars in the opposite lane of the highway are pulled over on the gravel in response to the police sirens, and Grandpa Sam almost sideswipes one of them as
he pulls back onto the road. “For crying out loud,” Mom says, “how stupid are they not to have thought of blocking both entrances with their cars when he pulled in?”

“Oh, it doesn’t mean they’re stupid,” I tell Mom. “Look at Milo. He’s brilliant, yet he couldn’t figure out how to let down a
kick
stand.”

We spin around in the feed mill’s drive too and follow Grandpa Sam back down Main Street, where more onlookers have gathered, gesturing and nodding. “Crissakes,” Mom says to Mitzy. “We’ve got Mr. Magoo on the loose, and no one to stop him but Barney Fife and Mr. Bean.”

As we follow Grandpa Sam and the police out of town again, I grimace along with Mom each time we see his truck veer over onto the gravel or into the left lane. “Where in the hell could he be going?” Mom huffs.

“Maybe he’s headed home,” I say.

But he’s not.

We approach our house, where Milo is circling the yard on his bike.

That is, until he hears the sirens and stops, straddles the bike for a second, stares in our direction, then dismounts his bike to run into the house. We barely pass the driveway when Oma erupts onto the lawn, her hand capped above her eyes so that she looks like she’s saluting.

About a quarter of a mile past our house, there are two squad cars, one parked on either side of the road, and saw-horses painted hunters’ orange strung across both lanes. “Oh, shit!” Mom says, no doubt because there’s no sign that Grandpa Sam intends to stop.

And he doesn’t.

He merely drives into the gentle ditch alongside the roadblock, skirts past them, then creeps back onto the road.

The two squad cars tagging Grandpa Sam don’t stop, so
we follow suit. Down in the ditch we go, and back up on the highway. I turn around to look at the officers standing beside the road as we pass the blockade and see one remove his hat and whack it against his thigh.

Down the hill we go again, and then up and down two more. And when Grandpa Sam reaches the top of the fourth hill, he swirls into the first drive on the right.

As Mom follows the officers into the driveway, I spot the name
Bickett
slapped on the mailbox across from it in gold stick-on letters. Nordine Bickett. The mother of the Tiny Tim, the lucky recipient of Mom and Uncle Clay’s toboggan. Even in the notebook, there was a mysterious feel surrounding her name, and now, as we enter her property, that same feeling returns, only stronger.

“So this is where Nordine Bickett lives,” I say.

“I can’t believe he came here!” Mom says into her cell, then turns to me. “How do you know about Nordine Bickett?”

I cringe a bit, realizing, of course, that I just used a name I knew only from Mom’s notebook.

“Oma mentioned her,” I lie.

I get off the hook for one reason and one reason only: Grandpa Sam has just plowed into the Bicketts’ garage.

We jump out of the car and head to Grandpa Sam’s truck. The front end is embedded in the old wooden garage door, steam sizzling out from the hole and rolling up over the hood. One of the officers has the driver’s side door open by the time we reach him, and Grandpa Sam is sitting behind the wheel, blood seeping from the egg forming over his right eyebrow.

The officers—one tall and chinless, and the other short and shaped like the SpongeBob SquarePants character on my sticker—move so we can get to Grandpa Sam. “Dad, are you okay?”

He doesn’t answer Mom, but his dull eyes find me and he says my name.

I take his hand and squeeze it. “You’re going to be okay, Grandpa Sam.”

A screen door squeals then, and a little man with wild white hair yellowed like a smoker’s fingers and thick, protruding eyebrows that sit like canopies over his eyes comes out of the house. His plaid shirt is only half tucked into his greasy work pants.

“Mr. Bickett,” the chinless officer says. “We’ve had a little incident here, as you can see.”

Moving like a young man, the little old man shoots across the yard and stops at the garage, staring in disbelief. He scoots to the truck and leans close to peer through the windshield. “Sam McGowan, is that you?” His face screws up with rage, creating a million more wrinkles, and his flubbery lips bunch up to hide his bare gums. He lifts his fist—walnut small, like Milo’s—and shakes it before the glass. “Didn’t I warn you that I’d blow your head off if I ever caught you on my property again? You son of a bitch, you!”

“Henry,” the shorter officer says. “No need for that, now. Sam didn’t know where he was going.”

Henry Bickett runs around the back of the truck, slips between the bumper and the squad car, comes up between the officers, and shoves at their arms to weasel between them. The officers are quick, though, and they grab his elbows, yanking him back. “Hold it there, Mr. Bickett. No need for this,” the taller officer says.

I glance at Mitzy, who has a grin on her face, and at Mom, who’s staring in disbelief at the little man who is on his tiptoes, straining to get loose.

“Calm down there, Mr. Bickett. Calm down.”

It seems no one but me notices the small woman standing near the garden. She comes toward us. Her hair is pure white and all one length, parted at the side and neatly curled under just below her ears. She has a velvet bow on one side of her head, level with her eyes. Her face is heart-shaped and girlish-looking, even though she’s Grandma Moses old. While the officers are squabbling with Henry Bickett, the old woman meanders around the garage and comes out on our side. She comes straight to the truck and slips between me and Mom.

Up close, I can see that Nordine’s lips are painted a summery pink and that there’s a hint of blue eye shadow shimmering on her creased lids. She smells like lilac talcum powder. She reaches out and touches Grandpa Sam’s arm with a small, veined hand and says, “Ohhh.” Her deep-set hazel eyes glisten, though I don’t know if it’s tears making them wet or just that watery eyes look that old people get.

“Nordine, I’m warning you. You get away from that scoundrel right now!”

“Now, now, Henry,” SpongeBob says. “Mr. McGowan has dementia and he doesn’t even know where he is, much less who’s talking to him. And your Nordine … well, seems to me they’re in the same boat.”

But the officer’s wrong.

I can see it in Grandpa’s eyes, and feel it in the way Nordine’s body softens as she looks at him, that there’s a flicker of recognition in them both. Grandpa Sam’s memory, though, is erased in a slow blink, leaving me to wonder if I’d only imagined it.

Nordine takes a lace-edged handkerchief from the sleeve of her sweater and dabs at the blood seeping from
Grandpa Sam’s eyebrow. The gesture makes me sad. Not only for them because they are old, but for Oma, because I now believe I know what was true back then: Once, Nordine Bickett was Grandpa Sam’s girlfriend.

Henry Bickett really goes nuts when Nordine wipes Grandpa’s brow, and the officers have to grab him again.

The cops won’t let us take Grandpa Sam out of the truck. “That cut above his eye needs stitches,” the chinless cop says, his head cocked sideways as he talks to Mom and Mitzy.

“I’ll take him to the hospital,” Mom says, but the officers insist on calling an ambulance. “You folks don’t get much action around here, do you?” Mom says, and the tall officer’s already pink cheeks flush to a deep red. He reaches through the opened window of the squad car and grabs his radio.

We have to wait for what seems forever before we hear the siren screaming down the highway and even longer before we see the ambulance coming down the Bicketts’ driveway. Mom cringes at the sound, as if the volume of the siren pains her, even though she’s not profoundly gifted.

While they tuck Grandpa Sam up into the ambulance, Nordine Bickett watches, wringing the blood-splotched hanky in her hands. She sees me looking at her and we share a glance that means something, but I’m not quite sure what, and then she wanders off, walking aimlessly across the yard.

Henry Bickett doesn’t have to be restrained any longer, but he’s still in an uproar about his smashed garage door. The officers assure him that Grandpa’s insurance will pay for the damage, but he’s not comforted. “It doesn’t, and I’ll take it out of his hide,” he says.

*  *  *

A
N HOUR
and a half later, a nurse is pushing Grandpa Sam out to our car in a wheelchair. He has a bandage over his swollen forehead. “He has six stitches,” she says, “but his concussion is a mild one. You’ll want to keep an eye on him for a while, though. Any vomiting and you should call us.”

Mom thanks her, and we slip back into the car. “You’d have thought they would have changed him, for crissakes,” Mom grumbles, because the car already stinks and we’re not even buckled in yet.

When we pull in the drive, Oma rushes out of the house. “Sam!” she says. “I was petrified when the ambulance went by. Thank God Tess called to say you were all right.” She opens the car door and unbuckles him. Oma, I notice, does not look at Grandpa Sam with moist eyes like Nordine did. Instead, she looks like the mother of a toddler who has just fallen and thumped his head.

“So what did he hit? A road sign?” Oma asks. Mom and Mitzy share an unspoken moment, and I know they’re contemplating whether or not to tell her that he ended up in Nordine Bickett’s garage. After much hemming and hawing, Mom tells her. Oma smiles at Mom’s worried look. “Oh, honey. Do you really think that after all this time I’d be upset over hearing that Sam went to Nordine’s?” She rolls her eyes and shakes her head, but when she looks back at Grandpa Sam, she doesn’t exactly look like a loving mother anymore either.

We get Grandpa Sam into the house and into his room so Oma can change him, then Mom helps Oma bring him to his lift chair. Once he’s situated, Mom sits down on the arm
of the couch and stares at him. Mitzy moves to Mom and places her hand on Mom’s shoulder. Mom looks up at her and smiles weakly.

While Mom and Mitzy have tea and Oma cooks supper in the kitchen, I go in the living room and stand by Grandpa Sam. Oma has cleaned him up, and his hair has dried into one wispy curl.

“You went for a drive today, didn’t you, Grandpa?” He looks up at me, and he looks confused, like he can’t remember.

T
HAT NIGHT
I wait for Mom to tell me to go to bed the usual three times before I make my way upstairs. Before getting in bed, though, I sit cross-legged on the floor in front of the closet and search through the stacks of notebooks for any mention of Nordine Bickett or my father—Mom may have known him while she was still a girl, just like Nordine knew Grandpa Sam. I’m so engrossed in finding their names that I don’t hear Mom’s footsteps on the stairs.

“What’s your light still doing on at—” She stops. She looks at the notebook in my hand, then at the opened closet. “Lucy Marie McGowan, what do you think you’re doing?”

She yanks the notebook out of my hand, then scoops up the pile of loose ones from my lap. “I can’t believe you’d have the audacity to dig through my personal things like this, Lucy!” she says. “Haven’t I taught you to be more respectful of other people’s privacy than this?”

“Actually, no, you didn’t. You read my letter to Scotty.”

“That’s different!” Mom says.

“It is not!”

“But I’m your mother!”

“What does that have to do with it?” I’m getting lippy, and I know it, but I can’t help myself. “It’s not my fault I have to go snooping around. I want to know about my family, and I want to know about my dad. You won’t tell me anything, so what am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t care what your reasons are, Lucy. That’s no excuse for poking your nose into my personal journals. You’re grounded off the bike for a week. You hear me? A week!”

“That’s not fair!” I shout, so angry that I can feel my face burning. “The punishment doesn’t even fit the crime. And it shouldn’t be a crime, anyway. My dad could be a doctor, an ax murderer, or your cousin, for all I know. It’s not fair!”

“Not another word, Lucy. Stop it right now.”

But I’m too upset to stop. “You might hate your dad, but at least you know what kind of a person he is. I don’t know one thing about mine, but I have a right to.”

“I’m warning you, Lucy. Not another word or you’ll get more than a week!”

As if the issue at hand—having the search for information interrupted—isn’t bad enough, I suddenly think of how much better at riding a bike Milo already is than me and of how much better he’ll get in another week’s time, and I’m double-fuming. “I’ll bet you even lied about his last name. Smith!” I huff. “The most common surname in this country. You were probably sucking on a Smith Brothers cough drop when you came up with that one!”