Thank You for All Things Read online

  Clay was on the floor, his Matchbox cars spread out over the carpet. I was standing beside him, the doll I was holding by one arm dangling against my calf. Clay and I were four. Maybe five. It would have been a purposeless memory, really. One the conscious mind would never have cause to keep, if it were not for what happened next.

  Clay was lining his cars up, making them ready for a race, and Dad was in his chair watching the six o’clock news. Ma was making spaghetti in the kitchen.

  “Clay!” Dad snapped, his hard eyes squinted in irritation as he stared at the TV. Clay, who was busy vrmmmmmmmmmming his engines, didn’t hear him.

  “God damn it!” Dad shouted. “Quiet, I said!” I backed away from Clay, my eyes on Dad. His head looked as large and menacing as the horned bison on the farm Marie once took Mom and me and Clay to see.

  There was a loud clatter of pans in the kitchen and Dad bolted from his chair, cranked his leg back, and thrust the steel toe of his work boot against Clay’s thigh. Dad’s German shepherd, Millie, leapt to her feet, snarling, as she did every time there was an outburst of rage. She snarled at Clay, not Dad.

  Clay clutched his leg and let out a wail that brought Ma into the room. I hated it when Clay cried. I hated the way his eyes teared up, flooding bright red as if they were bleeding, drool pooling at the comers of his mouth, his cheeks blotching. He looked ugly when he cried. So ugly that I wanted to kick him too.

  “What happened?” Ma shouted as she burst into the living room.

  “God damn it, keep this little son of a bitch quiet!” Dad shouted, turning up the TV until it smarted my ears, just like Clay’s wailing.

  “He … he ki-kicked me!”

  I expected Ma to cower like she always did when Dad shouted, but she didn’t. She stepped forward, her arms reaching back to move Clay and me closer to the archway separating the living room and kitchen. Her voice rose to the roar of an angered beast’s as she told him that what he did to her was one thing but that she’d not allow him to lay a hand on her children.

  Dad glared at her. There was a twitch under his right eye.

  In one swoop, he crossed the room and wrapped his hand around Ma’s neck, shoving her back against the wall. There were droplets of spit spewing from his mouth as he lowered his face to hers and shouted, “You want the kicks when your little sissy boy won’t shut the fuck up while I’m trying to watch TV? That what you want?” His hand came up to clutch a fistful of hair at her widow’s peak. He jerked her head forward, then slammed it back. There was a sickening cracking sound as the back of her head disappeared into the wall. Small chunks of plaster and its white dust skimmed the wall and dropped to the floor.

  I hate that I remember this scene. And the one that followed.

  That night, Ma winced with each thwack of the hammer she used to pound a nail into the wall, just inches above the hole her head made. As I tried to help her hoist the heavy mirror up to hide it, she told me that she had a headache that throbbed without mercy. “Maybe a drink will help numb it,” she said after she dug through the medicine cabinet for Tylenol and found none.

  The next morning before Dad left the house, he checked that mirror to make sure his thick, dark waves were behaving themselves. It was a ritual he continued from that day on, every single time he left the house to run to his whore.

  That wasn’t the only ritual that was birthed that day either. Every day, from then on, Mother opened her bottle of vodka. Through those years, Clay and I often joked about Mother’s headache, saying that she had the longest concussion in the history of head injuries—seventeen years, which is how long her drunk lasted. We most often came home from school to find her dozing on the couch or at the table, her bottle of vodka (she bought it in the liquor department at the grocery store as if it were a staple like milk or bread) sitting beside her like an obedient dog.

  Ma was too numb during those years to hear him call her an idiot, a worthless bitch, a drunken lush, and the mother of both a whining sissy and a daughter dumber than a turkey, just like her.

  But I heard him. Even when I clamped my hands over my ears, his insults slithered through my fingers and crawled into my ear canals to burrow into my mind, becoming a part of me. They made me hate the half of me that was like her, and then, when I got enraged over having and hating those parts, that rage made me feel like him, and I hated that half of me too, until there was nothing left about me to like.

  I just close the document when Oma calls to me from downstairs, asking if I’ll give her a hand getting Grandpa Sam up from his nap. “Be right there!” I shout in a voice I hope sounds normal.

  I feel shaky and like I might cry. I stand up and take a deep cleansing breath like Oma does, lifting my hands above my head, then whooshing them down to my sides. Then I call, “I’m coming!” because I’m starting to feel better. Better, but guilty.

  “How come we’re not putting him in his wheelchair?” I ask Oma as we lift Grandpa Sam into a sitting position on his bed.

  “He needs to keep his muscle tone,” she says, as she lifts Grandpa to his feet with a grunt, and I hurry to scoot his walker within his reach. Oma is sweet and wise and doesn’t put bad things into her “temple,” as she calls her body—well, except for the carcinogens in her cigarettes—and I can’t imagine her being an alcoholic. The closest I ever came to knowing a lady drunk was the woman who lived in our building for a time. She was the only person I ever heard Oma talk about unkindly.

  Her name was Rose Pottor, and she was a redhead. All seven of her kids had the same clown-red hair, only in varying degrees of color intensity, depending on their ages—the older they got, the duller it got.

  Rose’s oldest child was Lou Ellen. She was tall for fourteen, and her back was slumped from the burden of carrying woman-sized breasts and woman-sized worries. A few times I met Lou Ellen and her baby brother in the hall and tried to initiate a conversation with her. She never even gave me eye contact, though. She just kept walking, four steps behind little Petey, who toddled up and down the hall with his heavy diaper sagging between his horseshoe legs.

  Sometimes at night, I’d sneak out of bed and sit by my window, watching the homeless strolling along with their bags of newspaper, rummaging through the trash cans along the streets. And if it was late enough, I’d see Rose Pottor staggering toward the stoop, a beer bottle swinging from her arm. Folks said that she traded her commodities—a can of beef here, a hunk of cheese there—for beer.

  Every time Oma caught sight of Rose leaving the building or we met her Raggedy Ann and Andy children in the hall, Oma’s face would pinch up tight and she’d make a rude remark. Once Oma even called her a stain on motherhood and said she deserved to lose her kids. I always gave Oma a second look when she said mean things about Rose Pottor, because my Oma never talked mean about anybody. And if anyone within her earshot did, she made them apologize, even if their remarks were made in fun.

  Mom was gone for a couple days with Marcus (the guy who felt like string cheese) and Oma was babysitting us when social services came to haul the Pottor kids away. Oma and I went into the hallway when we heard the ruckus. “Who’s that lady?” I asked Oma, as other tenants lumbered out of their apartments like sleeping bears to see what all the pounding was about. The woman wore bangle bracelets that jangled as she rapped on the door and pleaded with Lou Ellen to open up. A cop waited behind her.

  There wasn’t even a hint of distress in Oma’s voice when she said, “She’s a social worker. They’ve come to take the kids away because Rose is a bad mother.”

  The cop went to get the superintendent when Lou Ellen wouldn’t open the door, even after he ordered her to.

  It was an awful sight, the cop’s beefy fingers sinking into Lou Ellen’s freckled upper arms and pulling her out of the apartment. Lou Ellen didn’t scream words, just wails, as they tugged her to the elevator, little Petey in the social worker’s arms, the rest of the kids following like a trail of muddy footprints. Little Petey was sobbing so hard that his wail
s stopped coming, leaving his mouth a round, silent circle of terror. Oma watched the whole scene with me, and when I looked up at her—my whole insides shaking—I expected her to have tears in her eyes, like me, but her eyes were dry. “Will they find them a good home?” I asked Oma.

  “Hopefully, three or four good homes. They won’t be able to keep them together. There’s too many of them. But even apart, they’ll be better off than they were.”

  Oma’s voice sounded so hard that if I hadn’t been watching her mouth move, I would have sworn those words were said by someone other than my Oma.

  “Keep his walker steady, will you, honey?” Oma says, using the sweet, gentle voice I need to hear right now. I do, and I keep one hand on Grandpa Sam’s back too, as he takes shuffling baby steps toward the living room. “That’s it. That’s it,” Oma says to him.

  I man the controls on the lift chair so the seat rises, and Oma helps Grandpa Sam turn around so his butt can meet it. He teeters a bit, and I reach out quickly to grab his arm, careful not to touch his dangling hand.

  “I’ll bet Rose Pottor got hurt lots of times,” I blurt out without meaning to.

  “Where on earth did that come from?” Oma asks as she lowers Grandpa Sam’s chair. The phone rings then, so I don’t need to answer Oma. While she talks to Aunt Jeana, I stare down at Grandpa Sam. I decide that his left hand is the one that carved beautiful birds and made toboggans, and his right hand—which is equally lumpy and knotted with blue veins but boasts a nasty scar on the knuckle—is the one that put Oma’s head through the wall. So I reach over him and pat his left hand before I leave the room.

  While Oma reassures Aunt Jeana that things are going well here, I gently stroke the back of her head and remind myself that Oma was not a drunk like Rose Pottor. She made chili, and turkey, and gingerbread cookies, and she bought Mom and Uncle Clay a sled when they didn’t get a toboggan.

  chapter

  FIFTEEN

  I DON’T LOOK at Mom’s documents the next day or the day after that. I decide I don’t want to know any more about Oma and Grandpa Sam in the old days—I want to know only about my dad.

  So I resume my Internet search. I’m busy Googling when Oma and Marie come in from outside, where they were planting some flower bulbs that will come up in the spring, even though we won’t be here. I pause to make tea for them both while they scrub the dirt from their hands. Chamomile for Marie—who has a tension headache because Al still won’t take his hernia to the doctor, even though he’s complaining almost nonstop now—and green tea, a natural energy booster, for Oma, who says she’s pooped out from all the work she’s done since we got here.

  “I told Al I’d give him more Reiki. I wish he’d come by,” Oma says.

  “Oh, that stubborn old coot,” Marie says. “I’m ready to give him another hernia, or worse, if he doesn’t stop all his bellyaching and just go in.”

  It’s what Marie calls Indian summer, so they take their teacups with them when they go outside so Oma can smoke. I know they’ll be out there for a while, sitting on the two old chairs Oma dragged from the shed, and I settle in to do my homework, which, for some reason, I don’t mind doing today.

  An hour later, Marie comes in to get her purse because she has to leave. She gives me and Milo each one of her bear hugs, and I go back to my schoolwork.

  I’m reading but can feel Oma staring at me. When I look up at her, she comes to the table and sits down beside me. “Lucy?” she says. “Peter called when you were riding bikes with Milo earlier.”

  “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.

  SHE’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.”

  PETER 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.

  WHEN 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.