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  “Don’t complain,” Marie says. “I’d take that any day over a man whining like a teething baby over every little thing.”

  Oma successfully inverts the cake and taps it onto the cookie sheet with only one circle of pineapple sticking to the bottom of the pan. She returns it to the white circle shape it was pulled from, then sticks the maraschino cherry back in its center. “Oh, it doesn’t pay to think of death like that. Remember, Tess, when I bought enough deodorant at one time to tide me over for the rest of my life?”

  Mitzy laughs, and says, “What? Why?”

  Mom laughs too. “Yes, I remember.” She gets up to get dishes and forks and asks me to get the napkins. While she slips small plates from the cupboard, she tells them the story—one I haven’t heard before. “So, Ma uses this special deodorant. All because some retired mortician in her apartment building told her that when he cut into the armpit of a woman, she had aluminum an inch thick in her underarms from her antiperspirant. Ma was suddenly convinced that that’s what killed the woman—even if she was ninety-two years old—and she rushed off to the health-food store to find an alternative to the antiperspirant she’d used for years.”

  “They still bleed people under the armpits?” Marie asked. “I thought they drew blood from their veins now.”

  “I don’t know,” Oma says.

  “Anywayyyy,” Mom says, to draw Marie’s attention back to her story, “so Ma comes back with this mineral stick—”

  “Did I show you that, Marie?” Oma interrupts. “It’s amazing. I’ve been using it now for about seven years. You just dip it under the faucet and put it on like you would any deodorant. You don’t even notice you’re wearing it—it feels like water when it goes on, no smell, no feel but the water—and the whole stick lasts for a year! Here, smell. I haven’t used it since my shower yesterday morning.”

  “Mother, for crissakes!” Mom says as Oma lifts her arm and sticks her pit in Marie’s face.

  “That’s incredible, Lillian,” Marie says. “Simply incredible.”

  I laugh with the rest of them, the lightness of the conversation and their laughter melting the ugly pictures I had in my head just minutes ago—well, except for the image of the mortician cutting into the armpit of the dead lady.

  “Which gets me to the point of this story—which I’m going to forget in about ten minutes if you two interrupt me again,” Mom says with a laugh, her eyes crinkled at the corners, as if she wasn’t upset earlier either.

  “Ma was so in love with that damn mineral stick that she suddenly started worrying about what she’d do if they stopped selling it. And since it lasts for a year, she calculated how many she thought she’d need for the rest of her life—”

  “Thirty-five,” Oma interjects.

  “She bought twenty-five sticks—that’s all they had on hand—and she ordered ten more,” Mom says. “She dropped one hundred and ninety-nine bucks that day!”

  “Oh, my God,” Mitzy says, leaning over sideways as she giggles, holding her belly.

  “You didn’t!” Marie says incredulously.

  “I did!” Oma says.

  “Wait, wait!” Mom says. “That’s not the best part of the story. Two months later, I’m at her house and there they are, stuffed under the sink in her garbage can. All twenty-five of them!”

  “Not all twenty-five. I kept five of them,” Oma says.

  “Why’d you throw them away?” Marie asks, and she’s laughing heartily, just like Mitzy.

  “Well,” Oma explains, “it dawned on me that they were just like one of those Advent calendars that mark the days until Christmas, and I knew that every time I opened that cupboard to get a new one, I’d see them staring at me, counting down the years until my death.”

  Oma is standing at the stove, a spatula poised in the air. “It was a good lesson for me, though. And I decided right then and there that a person is best off not thinking of those things. We have as much time left here as we have, and we should spend it living, not fretting about dying. You tell that to Al, Marie. You tell him the story.”

  “Shit,” Marie says, “I tell him that, and he’ll start tallying up how many deodorant sticks he thinks he’d need, just to prove that his death is coming sooner than yours!”

  The ladies are still laughing as Oma and I pass out the warm cake, then the laughter turns into soft “mmmmmms.”

  “So,” Mitzy finally asks. “Did Al’s mother die of cancer?”

  Marie swallows her mouthful, takes a quick sip of water, then says, “Hell, no. A brain aneurysm. She was eighty-seven years old.”

  Oma makes me bring Milo a slice, along with a glass of milk I have to pour—as if he doesn’t have the nose to smell it and the legs to come out and get it—and when I come back, they’re all looking oddly at Mitzy, whose cake plate is pushed to the center of the table, half full. “I, I don’t know …” Mitzy says, then she bolts up and darts into the bathroom, her hand clamped over her mouth. She doesn’t even have time to shut the door before she starts heaving.

  “She should be over that stomach virus by now,” Marie says, confused, and then her eyes go wide. She looks at Oma, who is nodding knowingly.

  “I told you,” Oma says in a hush to Mom. “Didn’t I?” The women exchange looks, Marie and Oma nod some more, and Mom winces.

  When Mitzy comes out, her face is water-damp and her eyes red and puffy. “I swear I’m never going to get rid of this damn bug,” she says. “Sorry, Lillian. It wasn’t your cake. I promise.” Mitzy stops, because everyone is staring at her.

  “I know. But I don’t think you’re sick either,” Oma says. Mitzy looks confused.

  Oma goes to her and puts her hand around her shoulder, leading her to her chair. “Honey. You’re pregnant. I should have known by your aura alone.”

  Mitzy shakes her head. “No. It’s just a bug. A girl in the office had it, and hers hung on for a good week.”

  Mitzy looks at the women one at a time, looking for affirmation, I suppose, that it could be a virus. And when she doesn’t get any, she bursts into tears.

  I don’t think it’s polite to keep eating cake while someone is sobbing, yet I like upside-down cake best warm, and since no one is paying an ounce of attention to me, I keep eating. I’m still listening, though.

  “How long have you been throwing up?” Marie asks her.

  “I … I don’t know. Not long. Two, three days.”

  “Longer than that, Mitzy,” Mom says.

  “But not every day, and not usually in the mornings.”

  “You on the pill?” Marie asks.

  “I can’t take it, but we’re careful. Really careful.”

  “Oh, honey,” Oma says, hugging her. “Don’t cry. It’s a blessing.”

  Mitzy starts shaking her head. “But we’re so careful. And I was never regular, anyway.”

  I press the back of my fork against the remaining crumbs and slip the fork upside down into my mouth. Mom moves to Mitzy, stroking her hair as she does me or Milo after we throw up. “It could be a bug,” Mitzy says. “Couldn’t it?”

  “Yeah, the love bug,” Marie says, and she grins at her own joke. Mitzy isn’t amused. “Oh, God,” she says. “I can’t go through another loss like that again. I can’t. I asked Doctor Peel to tie my tubes after Dylan, but he wouldn’t. He said I was too young and that I might marry and welcome a pregnancy again. I asked him to do it, damn it.”

  And then they’re all talking at once, and somewhere in that buzz of conversation it’s decided that Mitzy needs a pregnancy test. Marie and Oma decide they’ll run to town and get one, and I can keep my ear out for Grandpa Sam.

  The house gets considerably quieter after Oma and Marie leave, and it’s apparently only then that Mom realizes I’ve been listening this whole time. She asks me to go upstairs.

  “I’m supposed to be listening for Grandpa,” I say, so she tells me I can go into the living room and watch TV. PBS, of course.

  PBS has a dumb sewing show on, so I only pr
etend I’m watching it as I keep my ears on the conversation in the kitchen.

  “Oh, Tess. It can’t be, can it?”

  Mom tells Mitzy she’ll know soon enough.

  “Oh, God,” Mitzy says. “I’m scared to death. Look at my hands.”

  “You want me to call Ray?”

  Mitzy must shake her head, because Mom says, “Okay,” and she doesn’t call.

  When Oma and Marie get back with the kit, the noise level skyrockets again, and I slip back into the kitchen to cut another piece of cake and get the lowdown on what’s happening.

  Oma tears the box open and hands a small vial to Mitzy, then nudges her toward the bathroom. Mitzy shuts the door, and Oma and Marie are pressed up against it, chattering at Mitzy that everything will be okay. Mom props her hands on her hips and wrinkles her brow at Oma and Marie. “Hey, you two. How’s she supposed to pee with you hovering like that? Come sit down, for God’s sakes.”

  While Mitzy is peeing, Oma looks for the kitchen timer. “Remember when a rabbit had to die to find out if a woman was pregnant, Marie? How cruel was that! Think of how many of them died.”

  “Rabbits?” Mom asks.

  “It’s how doctors used to determine if a woman was pregnant in our mothers’ day,” Oma says. “From the late twenties to the early sixties. They injected the woman’s urine into a rabbit.”

  “People used to say, ‘The rabbit died,’ to tell someone that they were pregnant,” Marie added.

  “Yes,” Oma says. “But the fact was, the rabbit died whether you were pregnant or not, because they cut the poor little creatures open to examine their ovaries to see if they had enlarged, then just left them for dead. Just think of how many of them died in those years between—”

  “Ma, don’t start counting again—remember the deodorant sticks,” Mom says, and Marie and Oma laugh. Mom scolds them again, but in a whisper. “Please. She’s really upset.”

  When Mitzy steps out of the bathroom, she looks like a scared rabbit about to have her ovaries split open. “I can’t even look,” she says when Oma sets the timer.

  Mom goes to her and gives her a hug. “Let’s go outside for a bit, Mitz,” she says.

  “Poor thing,” Marie says quietly. “She’s so scared of going through the heartache of losing another baby,” and Oma nods.

  “Yes, yes.” Then Oma looks at me. “Honey, usually waiting to see if you’re pregnant is a happy, happy event. But poor Mitzy, she lost a pregnancy, and then she had a baby that was born too early, and she’s scared at the thought of losing another one.”

  “Was my mom happy when she found out she was pregnant with Milo and me?” I ask, and Oma says, “I’d imagine she was,” like she doesn’t really know.

  When the timer goes off, Mom and Mitzy come inside. “You look,” Mitzy says to Mom.

  Oma and Marie are on Mom’s heels as she hurries to the bathroom, and they bump into her when she reaches the door and stops abruptly. “Do you two mind? Geez!”

  When Mom comes out of the bathroom, her face is the reversal of Sammy the wooden puppet’s, in that her mouth is not smiling, but her eyes are.

  Mitzy puts both hands over her mouth—as if there’s double-danger lurking—and she breaks into fresh tears, and Oma and Marie swarm her as though she’s just won the Miss America crown.

  Mitzy asks Mom to drive her home, and she’ll have Ray drop her off in the morning to pick up her car. As Mom gets her purse, Oma and Marie smother Mitzy with more hugs and reassurances that everything will be okay.

  Oma stands at the kitchen sink, peering out the window as Mom and Mitzy leave. “Such scared young women,” she says.

  “We had our share of fears at that age too, remember?” Marie says.

  “We did. But I guess after a while you just learn how to roll with the punches.”

  Marie pats Oma’s arm and says, “Or we get better at learning how to avoid the punches in the first place.”

  chapter

  EIGHTEEN

  WHEN MILO and I were little, we were both afraid of storms, Milo more so than me. The second we heard the low rumble of thunder, we’d freeze, and by the time lightning was flashing and the wind was rattling our windows, I’d be hovering close to Mom, while Milo stood next to her, his arms wrapped around her thigh, his face buried as he screamed. And even when we got to be about seven or eight—long after he was too old to clutch Mom’s thigh—on those hot, humid days when Milo saw thunderheads forming above our building, he’d hurry for his inhaler. And by the time the storm broke and unleashed its winds, he’d have his inhaler almost down his throat. I was still scared of storms by that age too, but no matter how scared I was, when Milo started shaking and wheezing, I’d calm right down. That seems to be the way it is with people. Probably it’s a survival instinct; let’s face it, somebody in the tribe has to keep a level head, because if the whole tribe panics, they’ll all be toast when danger threatens.

  I guess that’s what happened to Mom when she saw how scared Mitzy was to be pregnant. When she got back from Mitzy’s, the phone rang and it was Peter, asking Mom if he could stop in on his way to Bayfield. Mom didn’t look nearly as frightened as she was when Oma first told her about Peter’s request, and she told him he could come.

  ON WEDNESDAY, Mom comes downstairs while Milo and I are eating our breakfast and announces that she’s off to the salon to get her hair trimmed. Oma, who’s paging through her gourmet cookbook, grins, and Mom snaps at her. “It’s needed cutting for a month now, so wipe that grin off your face.”

  “Did I say anything?” Oma says, a smile still tickling her lips. She sets aside her cookbook and wheels Grandpa Sam into the kitchen. “Tess, I wish you’d have a good breakfast too,” she says, frowning as Mom washes her Paxil down with a gulp of tap water, then starts filling her travel mug with coffee. Mom ignores her, until Oma asks how Mitzy’s doing.

  “I don’t know. I called her last night, late, but she and Ray were still talking. I told her I’d see her this morning since she was going to call in sick today—she was so drained—so we’ll see.”

  “Poor dear,” Oma says. “I pray she’ll be able to see this in a different light soon.”

  “Me too,” Mom says. She plants kisses on Milo and me, then says, “Be good, and get your work started right after you eat.”

  “Hey, why you telling me?” Milo says.

  “I’ll get my work done,” I say to Mom as she hurries out the door.

  “I don’t see why she says that,” Milo repeats. “I always have my work done ahead of time.”

  I roll my eyes. I’m not explaining it to him again.

  I swallow my last bite of wheat toast, and as I watch Grandpa Sam waiting to be fed, I think about how hard it is to see things in a different light. For the moment, all I see when I look at Grandpa Sam is an overgrown toddler who can’t fend for himself. Ever since I started reading Mom’s journals, my image of him has been switching from the infantlike grandpa who I want to hug to the mean dad who kicks and shouts bad things and makes me want to hide.

  In an old psychology textbook I had before the fire, on page 397, there was an optical illusion that promised to deliver two different images, depending on how you looked at it. One was the profile of a beautiful young woman, and the other, an old, ugly, crook-nosed crone. I saw the young woman first, but I had to try for what seemed forever before I saw the old crone. Then there she was. Sharing the same scarf, feather, and fur as the beauty, but the young woman’s cheek and chin had become the crone’s big nose, and the young woman’s necklace had morphed into her face. I remember how once I saw the old woman, I had to struggle to find the lovely lady again. Back and forth it went, the figure changing shape right before my eyes, until I got frustrated and slammed the book shut.

  Now I know what that book was trying to illustrate. How our minds interpret what we’re seeing, and how once it has an image ingrained and a new image is introduced, it will struggle hard between the two images until it decides which image i
s the real one. It’s what my mind does with Grandpa Sam, until I’m no longer sure who I’m looking at. And I know that for Mitzy right now, all she can see when she thinks of having a baby is dead little Dylan. And then there’s Mom, who is trying to see love in a different light, but her mind can’t switch over from some painful image of her past.

  I look up and see that Oma is struggling to tie the dish towel that will serve as a bib around Grandpa Sam’s neck. And because Grandpa Sam is that sweet grandpa that I love at the moment, I say to Oma, “I’ll do that.”

  “That’s okay. I have it now,” she says, as she pats his bib in place.

  “No, I meant I’ll feed him.”

  Milo’s fork stops midair. “I thought that grosses you out?”

  “You’re so dumb!” I snap, and Oma tells us to be nice. She hands me Grandpa Sam’s spoon and gets his dish of yellow mush and gives it to me, but not before touching a spoon of it to her lip to test the temperature. “He’s not swallowing very well,” she says quietly. “I’ve asked the county nurse to come check on him tomorrow.”

  And Grandpa Sam isn’t swallowing very well. In fact, twenty minutes after Milo and Feynman go out the door for their seven-mile jaunt, I swear I’m still scooping the same spoonful into his mouth. Finally he starts sputtering and coughing, and Oma gets fretful and takes the bowl away. She carries over a can of protein drink and pours a little into a plastic cup meant for babies—the kind with a lid and an upraised spout with tiny holes lined on it so the drinker can’t get too much at one time and choke. She gives him as many sips as he’ll take, then wipes rivulets of thin milky liquid off his chin. “Time for your nap,” she says to him, in a voice much too cheerful to come from a battered woman.

  Oma and I get him onto his bed, his weight making squeaking noises as it slides across the plastic mattress liner. I wait outside his room ’til she changes him, then step inside as she goes to scour her hands.

  Grandpa Sam is getting littler by the day. I tuck his blanket up over his sunken belly and lift his arms out of the blanket. I set his good hand, his left (the one I’m now convinced carved the nice things), over his right hand (which I’m sure is the hand he hit with), and I pat them.