Thank You for All Things (40 page)

“Of course,” Aunt Jeana says. “I’d never deny him water. Or food, for that matter. I can’t speak for the rest of them, though.”

Marie doesn’t completely shut the door when she goes out, but she closes it within an inch. I think that’s so Grandpa Sam can have a little peace and quiet, because it’s mighty noisy in the kitchen, with Clay’s loud voice, Mitzy’s wind-chime giggles, and Milo protesting, “But you said you’d be my judge!”

“You use the stopwatch, Milo, and I’ll keep checking up on you,” I hear Mom call after him. The back door opens and shuts, and I can hear Feynman barking from his chain.

“No one in this family ever had any respect for you, Sam,” Aunt Jeana says to Grandpa. He slowly opens his eyes but he doesn’t look at her. His face is slack, but when he sees me standing at the foot of his bed, I notice that his eyes still have a brightness about them.

I scoot between his bed and the wall and sit down beside him. “Oh, don’t sit on his bed,” Aunt Jeana says. “Get
another folding chair.” I pretend I don’t hear her, and she loses interest when Chico starts fidgeting, his skinny front legs clawing her sweater.

“I need to take him out to do his business. Is that mutt tied?” she asks.

“I think so,” I say without looking at her, because I don’t like the way she calls Feynman a mutt or the way his dishes were empty when we got here, and I’m afraid I’ll get snippy with her.

The minute she slips out of the room, I lean down and say to Grandpa Sam, “I made an effigy for you, and I carried it to town. So that you would live. Everyone thinks you’re dying, but I don’t think that. You’re more tired now, but you’re always sleepy in the afternoons, and you’ve had a lot of company. Aunt Jeana alone is enough to wear anybody out.”

I swear he smiles a bit after I make that comment about Aunt Jeana.

Grandpa Sam lifts his left hand, and it trembles as it reaches out to me. I take it and rest it on the bed and lay my hand over his. He doesn’t leave his hand there, though. He slips it out from underneath and places it over the top of mine. He gives it two soft pats. “It’s okay, Lucy,” he says in a dry-sounding whisper.

I want to ask him what he means … but I don’t have to. I’m intuitive. Maybe even a little psychic, and I’m people-smart, besides. And I know what he’s trying to tell me. Even though I don’t want to know it. Tears fill up my eyes and trickle down my cheeks. “You’re going to die anyway, aren’t you?”

“Lucy,” he whispers, in between breaths so jagged that the metal bars on the bed rattle.

“Yes?”

He closes his eyes, and he doesn’t say any more, but he doesn’t have to. My spirit already heard him, and what it heard him say was yes. That he’s going to die.

“Honey?”

I look up as Oma enters the room, Uncle Clay and Mom behind her.

“He’s going to die,” I say to Oma, my eyes blinking rapidly. “I made him an effigy from the instructions in your
Book of the Dead
, but it didn’t work. He told me he’s going to die.”

Mom hurries to me and she puts her arms around me. “Lucy, go be a judge for your brother, okay?”

I shake my head, determination that feels older than me suddenly sprouting. “No. I’m going to stay with Grandpa.” His hand gives mine another squeeze. “Did you see that? He squeezed my hand. He wants me to stay by him.”

“It’s okay, Tess,” Oma says. “She needs this time with him.”

“Ma, she’s just a kid. For crissakes, this is too much for her.”

“No.” I look at Mom, and at Uncle Clay, who is standing close to the doorway—where Mom would be standing too, if she hadn’t felt compelled to come to me—and I say, “It’s too much for you, and for Uncle Clay, and for Milo. But it’s not too much for me.”

Uncle Clay fidgets, brushing something from his jacket, and Mom’s lips quiver. I turn back to Grandpa Sam. “I’m going to stay with you, Grandpa Sam. I’m going to stay right here.”

Oma leans down then and says loudly—even though Barbara told us at least three times that hearing is the last function to go in a dying person—“Sam? Look who’s here. It’s your son, Clay.”

Oma steps back and gently nudges Uncle Clay to the edge of Grandpa’s bed. Uncle Clay looks down at Grandpa Sam like he’s a stranger—which I guess in a sense he is. Uncle Clay hasn’t seen Grandpa Sam in sixteen years, and he probably looks a lot different than when Clay was seventeen. He even looks a lot different than he did earlier today. Like fifty years have gone by in just an hour and twenty minutes.

Uncle Clay leans over stiffly and says, “Hi, Dad.”

Grandpa Sam opens his eyes and peers up. He makes his mouth move, but nothing comes out.

“How ya doing, Dad?” Uncle Clay says, which I think is a pretty idiotic thing to say to someone who’s dying. Especially from someone smart enough to become a surgeon.

“Here, you sit by his bed, Clay,” Oma says, shoving the folding chair up against the back of his legs, but he moves away from it. “You want time alone with him, honey?” Oma asks.

Clay shakes his head quickly. “No. No, that’s okay.” He moves back to the doorway.

Mom goes to put her hand on Uncle Clay’s, but he bolts out of the room. Mom follows.

Oma watches them leave, then says to Grandpa, “He must be going to the bathroom. He just got here.”

I take a deep breath. “That’s not true,” I tell Grandpa Sam. “He just can’t be in here because he’s scared and feeling emotional right now and he doesn’t want to cry—or get angry—in front of everyone.”

“Lucy!” Oma whispers sharply.

“He likes to be told the truth,” I tell her. “Like we all do. Don’t you, Grandpa Sam?”

Oma picks at her fingernail, looks at the door, then leaves the room. Grandpa Sam and I aren’t alone for long,
though, because Marie slips inside as soon as Oma leaves. I think Oma asked her to, while she talks to Uncle Clay.

“Mind if I sit with you two for a while?” she asks, reaching over and brushing her hand over Grandpa’s forehead.

“No.” And I don’t mind; having Marie near feels comforting.

Marie hums softly as she tugs the folded blanket from the foot of his bed and lays it over the sheet that’s covering him. He opens his eyes and looks right past me, up at the corner of the room above my head, as though he can see something I can’t. Then he closes his eyes, and his hand goes limp on mine.

Grandpa Sam’s eyeballs bob under their lids. His mouth is almost closed, but his cheeks billow, and his tongue butts against his teeth as though he’s speaking.

“Is he trying to talk?” I ask her.

“Not to us,” she says. “He’s talking to the spirits.”

“What spirits?” I ask, glancing around the room.

“Oh, we can’t see them. But he can. They’re the spirits of his ancestors.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Really. Can you feel how the room has an energy about it? How it suddenly got colder? The spirits always bring a cool wind with them.” She goes back to smoothing his blankets and humming peacefully.

I do feel the coolness, but I was thinking it was only a draft coming from the window behind me.

Oma slips back into the room then. She takes one look at Grandpa Sam, who is still mumbling busily under his breath, his eyeballs bobbing, and she smiles. “Ohhh, they’ve come,” she says.

“Lucy?” Mom is standing in the doorway, her hand on the frame. I look up and she curls her finger at me.

I go to her.

“Come on,” she says. She guides me into the kitchen, where some of Connie Olinger’s nuked casserole is steaming on a plate and Mitzy and Uncle Clay are sitting. “Sit down and have something to eat,” she says.

Milo is at the table too, shoveling the hamburger-and-rice concoction into his mouth, grains of rice dropping back to his plate. He glances up at me with only his eyes. He looks tired and like he needs a shower.

“How’s it going, Wheezer?” I ask.

“You keep calling me that, and I’m going to punch you,” he says.

“They sound like we did,” Uncle Clay says.

“They sound like us now,” Mom says, and they both give short chuckles.

Uncle Clay makes a jittery, jagged-sounding sigh, then sips his coffee.

“You should have tea, instead,” I say. “Chamomile.”

Uncle Clay drains his cup and gets up to grab still more coffee, maneuvering his body between the table and the counter. “Crissakes,” he says, “why in the hell is the table over here?”

“I think it’s a feng shui thing,” I say.

Uncle Clay shakes his head. “Ma should come live out on the West Coast. She’d fit right in with the other New Age nut balls there.”

I shift in my seat. I want to like Uncle Clay, so I hope he doesn’t ruin it by being mean.

I look at Milo, who is draining the last of his milk. “How long are you going to keep this up, anyway? Um, until after Grandpa Sam is dead?”

Milo springs to his feet. “Seventy-two seconds,” he says, and bolts for the bathroom.

“Leave him be, Lucy,” Mom warns.

“Why? I didn’t want to be in there either. At least not yesterday.” I glance from Mom to Uncle Clay. “But Grandpa Sam needs his family now.”

“Mind your own business,” Mom warns. Mitzy strokes the back of my hair, then pats my back.

S
OMETHING STRANGE
and unsettling is happening in the house. I can feel it. And I’m not just talking about the fact that there are ghosts in Grandpa Sam’s room either. I’m talking about the tension that’s building. It feels like everyone in the family is holding an emotional rubber band between their thumbs and stretching it back. Call me psychic, sensate, intuitive, or what have you, but I have a strong feeling that when Grandpa Sam lets go—if not before—everyone is going to let go too, and those rubber bands are going to start flying all over the place, and somebody is going to get stung.

I
GET UP
from my half-eaten food, and Mom stops me before I can even scoot my chair in. “Upstairs for a little rest,” she says. “It’s going to be a long night. Set your alarm, if you’d like, but I want you to sleep until at least five-thirty. We’ll wake you if anything happens before then.”

“I don’t believe this. You’re going to let Milo recite numbers around the clock, but you’re not going to let me stay up to sit with Grandpa Sam on what is probably going to be his last day here?”

“Just close your eyes and rest a little,” she says. “Now, march.”

My back teeth are gritted so hard that I can almost hear
them cracking. “It’s not fair! Just because you don’t want to sit by Grandpa doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be allowed to!”

Uncle Clay gets that my-kids-wouldn’t-talk-to-me-like-that look, and Mom gets all the more headstrong. “What you’re doing is more stressful. Milo’s relaxing himself. Now, go. One hour, at least.”

I stomp up the stairs and flop down on my back, my ankles crossed. I’m good and mad at Mom now. So mad that I think when I grow up and she ticks me off, I’m going to pretend I don’t have time to call her either.

Brave in my anger and determined to get Mom back one way or another, I go straight to the trash can, which I never emptied because there was nothing in it but for that wad of slightly-crunchy-from-dried-tears Kleenex, and I pull out my memory stick. I take it into Mom’s room, plug it into her computer, and lift her latest entry. The one she wrote in the middle of the night—just like I thought. I upload it on my computer and start reading:

I can’t believe Lucy went to Maude Tuttle’s house! Maude Tuttle, of all people. She’s an ex-hooker, for crissakes. And she probably knows every grain of dirt on every family in this town.

I wonder what Maude told her. It was something, you can bet, because Lucy’s got that preoccupied, haunted look about her again. Damn it to hell, why can’t people leave my past alone?

But I can’t obsess about what Lucy might be obsessing about. Not tonight. I have my own shit to deal with. Dad’s dying. And although I know I should feel something, I don’t. Just the tension that comes from having to listen to someone gasp for air for hours on end. I wish he (or someone) would clear his goddamn throat!

I can almost see my karma veering into a curve now, ready to fling itself back to me. Not just for those words, but for the thoughts that go with them. I’m glad he’s dying. It’s awful to admit, but it’s true. I’m glad because maybe it will put an end to this agony that has been with me for most of my life. I just want it over!

“And what is that ‘it’?” God, I haven’t seen that shrink in years, and yet her voice—high-pitched like a drill—still bores into me at times like this.

Even with Dad practicing for his final death rattle downstairs, the kids upset, Ma burning spices in everyone’s faces, I think of him. I think of him, and I miss him.

He called me the minute I got back home, that first day we met, to ask me if I believed in love at first sight.

I smile as I read this. That’s Peter for you—an ENFP on the Jung-Myers-Briggs personality test I took on his behalf when Mom’s endorphins were still raging and I was sure he’d be my daddy. A
Champion Idealist
, the test showed. Extroverted, intuitive, feeling, and perceiving. Only three percent of the population is an ENFP. More proof that Mom is making a disastrous mistake if she lets him go, because the chance of finding someone else just like him isn’t going to be all that easy—as I tried to tell her once. Just reading about him makes me miss him more.

It was explosive, right from the beginning. I saw him first in class: History of Ancient Philosophy 320. How could I not notice him? He was animated. Engaged. Brilliant.

I don’t recall how it was we paired off in the hall after leaving class, but a half hour later we were in his beat-up loft apartment, where books on Socrates and Plato were strewn
here and there, wedges of unopened envelopes thrust between pages he’d marked. How I noticed these ordinary things, with that wall staring at me, I have no idea.

“Your wall,” I said, and laughed, as I fell into one of the two mismatched recliners facing it like theater seats.

He scooted stacks of books, a bong, and empty tuna and fruit cans out of the way with his sandaled foot, so he could better reach the black wall. Simple shapes and scribbles drawn with sidewalk chalk ran nearly the entire length of it. “What is it?” I said, still laughing. “Your cave drawings?”