Thank You for All Things (25 page)

“He did? Oh, I wish I had gotten to talk to him!” I expect Oma to acknowledge my disappointment with an empathetic smile, but instead, her smile looks only happy.

“He’s going up to Bayfield for his cousin’s wedding next weekend. His whole family is flying in, so he’s taken some time off, and, if it’s okay with your mom, he wants to stop here on Thursday.”

I suddenly get so excited I can hardly sit still. “That’s just three days away!”

“Peter’s coming?” Milo asks as he enters the kitchen to bring his cookie plate to the sink.

“
If
your mother says it’s okay,” Oma repeats.

“Why wouldn’t she say yes?” Milo says with a blink. I roll my eyes. He’s
so
oblivious!

“I sent your mom to the pharmacy. She should be back in about twenty minutes—if she doesn’t stop at Mitzy’s. But please, children. Let me be the one to bring this up. She’ll need to be eased into this delicately.”

“Okay,” I say. Then, while Oma sits down to read from her
Tibetan Book of the Dead
, I sit and think about Peter’s visit. And of how, if he and Mom were still together, I’d be going to Bayfield too and meeting his niece who’s read
Little Women
fifteen times and his dad who can still walk on his hands.

S
HE’S HOME!”
I shout.

“Already?” Oma glances out the window and flaps her hands at me to settle down. “Go back to your studying, Lucy. And please. Say nothing. Let me handle this.”

I try. I try real hard to keep my mouth shut when Mom comes in, sets down the white bag of pills, and announces, “I stopped at Mitzy’s, but I didn’t stay more than a minute. She’s not feeling well. She’s got a stomach bug.”

“She should try ginger root or charcoal tablets,” Oma says as she lines the new pill bottles on the cupboard shelf.

“Wait, those are mine,” Mom says, grabbing two of the bottles from Oma—Paxil and Ambien. She struggles with the cap on her antidepressant, then grabs a glass from the drainer and turns on the faucet.

Without missing a beat, and while reciting a few more herbal remedies that might help Mitzy, Oma grabs the glass from Mom, pours the water down the drain, then gets the Brita from the fridge.

“Mother! Will you stop doing that? I like the taste of well water.”

Oma’s been wearing a half grin since Mom got in the
door, and I know it’s only a matter of time before Mom gets suspicious and asks why.

“Have you had lunch?” Oma asks. “I made a nice shrimp salad.”

“Later,” Mom says. “I’ve got to get off an e-mail to my agent and tell her what fabulous progress I’m making on my book. Good thing I’m a fiction writer.”

P
ETER CALLED,”
Oma
finally
says, after Mom hits
send
on her e-mail.

Mom stiffens but does not look up. “What did he want?” she asks, trying to sound casual.

I don’t mean to blurt it out, but I can’t hold it in any longer. “He’s coming to visit us!”

“Lucy,” Oma moans, as Mom stares at me, her jaw going slack.

“Well, that’s not exactly what he said,” Oma says. “He’s going to a cousin’s wedding up in Bayfield this weekend. He’s taking a few days off, since much of his family is flying in for the wedding, and he said if you didn’t mind, he’d love to stop in and see you and the children along the way.”

“He thinks Timber Falls is along the way? The guy never did have a sense of direction,” Mom says. She’s composed herself—or so she thinks—but I see the slight tremble in her hands.

“He’s calling you tonight.”

“I don’t know why,” Mom says.

I feel anger crunching my jawbones. “You have to let him come, Mom,” I cry out. “It’s not fair if you don’t. I miss him, and so does Milo. Even Persephone misses him.”

“Will you stop calling her that!”

“She told me to!”

“Well, it’s stupid, a grown woman making her grandchildren call her a Greek goddess.”

“Tell her that, not me. And stop changing the subject.”

Oma, who is now standing at the stove behind Mom, puts her index finger up to her lips to shush me. But it does no good, because I can’t stop. “I don’t see anything strange about it,” Oma says to distract me. “Unusual, maybe, but not strange.”

But I won’t be distracted.

“It’s not fair! You brought Peter into our lives and did everything in your power to see that we liked him. Then when we came to love him, you decided you shouldn’t, and you said good-bye. And because you said good-bye, we had to. That’s not the way it should be.”

“That’s enough, Lucy. Now get back to your studies. You’ve been slacking ever since we got here.”

“Just let him come, Mom. Even if you don’t want to see him. You can go to Mitzy’s or something. Just let Milo and me see him.”

Oma scoots around the table and puts her hand on my head, like we do to Feynman when we don’t want him jumping on people. “Well, you just think about it, honey,” she says to Mom. And then to me, “Lucy, would you check on your grandpa?”

“Why? He’s sleeping. You can tell by his snores.”

“No, I’m sure I heard movement in there. Check to see that he’s not slouched over in his chair, please.”

“You don’t need to bother trying to get her out of the room,” Mom says, closing her laptop. “I’m going outside. Maybe I’ll be able to get some work done out there. Obviously I’m not going to find any peace and quiet in here.”

Mom gets up, grabs her laptop, and heads to the front
door. “Sure! Go hide in your trees like you always do!” I shout.

Mom doesn’t acknowledge my words. She slams the front door behind her, and I thump my book shut and head to the back door, grabbing my own jacket off the hook alongside it.

“Where you going, Lucy? Don’t pester your mother now. It will only make things worse.”

“I’m going for a bike ride!” I shout, even though I don’t mean to shout at Oma.

“But your mother said …” I don’t wait for Oma to finish.

W
HEN MOM
sees me zipping down the driveway, she yells, “Where are you going? And where’s your helmet?”

I ignore her too and keep pumping, the old bike rattling beneath me as I hit the bumps in the graveled drive.

I pedal hard, tears rolling across my temples as the wind blows them out of my eyes.
I hate her
, I repeat with each rotation of my pedals.
I hate her! I hate her! I hate her!

I don’t think, I just ride at the edge of the road until I’m winded, then I stop the bike, straddle it, and wait for my lungs to stop heaving. While I’m resting, I see a mailbox with gold stick-on letters that spell out the name
Bickett.
As soon as I catch my breath, I pedal to the mailbox and turn down the long drive that runs alongside it.

Anger sure does make a person brave—or stupid—I think, when my legs don’t hesitate for even one millisecond after I see Henry Bickett’s beat-up pickup sitting in the drive.

Nordine is in her garden, wearing a straw hat that looks
like it was confiscated from the head of Scarlett O’Hara. I let my bike clank to the ground and head over to her.

“Hi, Mrs. Bickett,” I say. Her white hair isn’t curled today, and it hangs around her head like pulled lamb’s wool. She’s not wearing makeup either, and her cheeks have round brown splotches on them. Somehow, though, she still manages to look pretty.

Nordine is holding a bucket with yellowed fronds spilling over the sides, and a large carrot dangles from her other hand like a headhunter’s trophy. “Hello,” she says. She seems confused about who I might be, but she’s not staring at me in that same vacant way that she did on the day Grandpa Sam drove into her garage.

“Look at this. It must have frozen last night,” Nordine says, looking down at a row of plants dripping with string beans that are scabby and shriveled. It’s frozen many nights in the past two weeks, actually. “All these beans, ruined.” She lifts the carrot in her hand, “These are still good, though,” she says, as she uses her foot to part the fuzzy leaves that are only partially hiding a few pumpkins and squash.

I know from what I’ve read that those in the earlier stages of Alzheimer’s can slip in and out of dementia, and even though Nordine can’t remember me (which is understandable, considering the circumstances under which we first met), her comment about her garden tells me that—at least for the time being—she’s standing in the house of coherency, so I know I’d better start knocking. And fast.

Nordine hands me the carrot she’s holding. “You can have that one … uh … I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”

“I’m Lucy McGowan,” I say, looking at the cold, dirtcoated carrot and not quite knowing what to do with it. “Sam McGowan’s granddaughter. We’re in Timber Falls to take care of him because he’s not doing so well. Sam used to
be your boyfriend, didn’t he?” I don’t know what makes me speak so bluntly—maybe my lingering anger at Mom, or maybe my desperation to leap through this window of opportunity before it slams shut—but I can’t seem to stop the bluntness any more than I could keep from blurting out the news about Peter’s visit. “I know he used to love you,” I say. “Maybe still does.”

Nordine Bickett steps closer to me. “He does?”

My words work like the strokes of a spatula across cake icing, filling in the furrows on Nordine’s face so that she looks younger. “Of course he does. He told me so himself.”

Nordine smiles, but her eyes gather a few tears too.

I wonder if I’m making bad karma by lying, but then I remind myself that Oma says that intention plays some part in karma too. And if she’s right, then I’m probably safe, because what’s so bad about a kid trying to find her dad and giving somebody trapped in a mental fog a little sunshine?

“Sam was my sweetheart,” Nordine says. She looks first to the north and then to the south. “I can’t recall where the school was now. Isn’t that silly? I grew up in this house and walked there every day as a child, but I seem to have forgotten.”

Nordine plucks at the collar of her worn work shirt, her sparse eyebrows dipping in worry.

“It’s okay. Lots of people are poor with directions. Mrs. Bickett, I’d like to know more about my grandpa Sam. I didn’t know him at all until we came here, because we moved away from Timber Falls when my brother and I were babies. I know the two of you were close, so I am hoping you’ll tell me some things about him, since you knew him for so many years.”

Nordine gives me that oh-that’s-nice look that people absentmindedly give someone when they’re not really
listening. “Would you like to go inside for a glass of lemonade?” she asks.

I tell her yes, and I offer to carry the carrot bucket to the house.

When we get to the door, it’s hanging open and clanking sounds are coming from inside. Henry Bickett grumbles a few obscenities, and Nordine stops and turns to me. “Why don’t you wait out here, dear, in the lawn chair. I’ll bring out our lemonade.” I slip the carrot she gave me into the bucket and hand it to her.

I wait at the bottom of the steps. “Who?” Henry asks, his voice twice the size of him. And then, “That kid out there, that’s who! What in the hell does she want?”

There’s more mumbling and grumbling before Nordine appears from the house carrying one glass of lemonade. She hands it to me.

“Thank you. Aren’t you having any?” I ask.

She looks down at her hand, as though she expects another glass to be there.

“Should we get you some too?” I ask. She doesn’t answer, though. She just starts strolling toward two lawn chairs sitting under a large maple, so I follow her.

I’m glad that Nordine is walking ahead of me when I take a sip of my lemonade, because I have to spit it out. Not only does it have no sugar in it, but it’s gone rancid. I don’t think Nordine sees me, but in case she does, I half shout, “Eww, a bug flew into my mouth.”

Nordine sits quietly, her eyes occasionally darting toward the house, where, from time to time, Henry’s head butts up against the screen door to gawk at us.

“He jumped Richard Marbles because he bullied his girl, Louise Treder, in the parking lot. Shoving her so hard
that her thigh banged into the bumper of his truck, and she cried out,” Nordine says.

“Henry did?” I ask.

“No,” she says. “Sam did. He pinned Richard down to the ground and told him that if he was going to get his nose out of joint and shove around some tiny slip of a girl, he’d gladly give him a hand. He punched Richard so hard that his nose is still cocked to one side today.” Nordine rests her hand on her bony chest as she laughs.

“When did he do that?” I ask.

“Last Friday night, at the dance.”

Of course I’m surprised, but not for the reasons Nordine Bickett would think I am, if she were truly thinking. I’m surprised because the same boy who defended a girl who was being shoved later went on to become a man who shoved his wife’s skull through a wall.

Just as I open my mouth to ask her a question, Henry Bickett comes out of the house, carrying a wrench the size of his forearm.

He starts toward the garage, then stops and turns. “You ain’t got time to be sittin’ around gabbin’, woman,” he says, like it’s the 1800s and he’s in the hills. “The rest of those carrots aren’t going to get themselves out of the ground. You gonna let them go to hell like you did the rest of the garden? Huh? You’d best get at it while you still have the wits to do it.”

Henry Bickett spits a wad of tobacco on the grass, then glares at me. I glare right back at him. “Who’d you say you were?” he asks.

“Lucy,” I say.

“Lucy who?”

“Just Lucy.”

He stares at me. Hard. Then his eyes squint until they look shut. “You were with that bunch that came to get McGowan out of my garage, weren’tcha?” He jabs the wrench toward the garage, where plywood is still tacked over the door. “You can tell that son of a bitch that if that damn door isn’t fixed by the end of the week, I’m comin’ for him.” Then he stomps off, his bowed legs and porcupine hair so comical that nobody in their right mind could be afraid of him, which explains why Nordine is.

“He’s not a very nice man,” I say to Nordine, after he disappears behind the garage, where a rusted tractor sits in a group of half-assembled junky cars. I look at her and ponder what in her past made her a woman who found herself attracted to such mean men.