Thank You for All Things Read online

  I glance up at an old grandfather clock when it chimes. I’ve been gone far longer than I should have been for a bike ride already. “Yeah, I know what you’re getting at. But, please, if you could get there a little faster I’d sure appreciate it, because I have to get home.”

  “Truth needs a proper introduction,” she says. “And that is what I’m planning to tell you. The truth. As it was told to me by your grandfather himself. And I do believe he told me the truth too. He didn’t have one reason to lie to me. Not one. He came to me that same night it happened, and he spilled his guts. Sat right in that chair you’re sitting in now, all shook up and disheveled, his left leg sticking straight because it hurt to bend it, and he told me what he’d done.

  “Course, by the time Sam showed up, I’d already heard the rumors of what happened. Word travels like brush fire here. I heard how Sam’s daughter went out to California to go to school, met this guy, got herself knocked up, and came running home to hide when he got nasty. He came for her, though.”

  “Because he loved her and wanted her back. And her babies too?”

  “Because the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and your mom was your grandma’s apple.”

  Loud rapping as sharp as gunshots sounds at the door, startling us both. “Lucy? You in there? Lucy!” Even through the thick old door, I can tell it’s Mom calling to me.

  “Shit,” I say. Out loud.

  “Raid!” Maude says with a chuckle. She lifts her cat and drops her to the floor, then rises and goes to the door, even though I’m pleading with her not to.

  Maude pulls the door until the gold chain is taut, and Mom and Mitzy squeeze their heads together to peer inside. “Lucy?” Mom shouts. “Are you in there?”

  Maude closes the door to create slack on the chain and she unhooks it. Without saying a word to Maude, Mom stomps through the room and yanks me by the arm. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing here?” she says, and Maude Tuttle mimics her “here,” then tells her to … well … she basically tells her to go have sex with herself, only she says it the way a bawdy ex-hooker might say it.

  I look back at Maude Tuttle, who’s standing in the doorway as Mom tugs me down the front steps, hoping she sees the gratitude in my eyes and that she picks up on my silent promise to return.

  Mitzy opens the trunk, and Mom, strong in her anger, hoists my bike into it before Mitzy can even get a grasp on the bike to help.

  “I don’t believe this! What in the hell’s wrong with you? Do you go into just anybody’s house? Is that what you do when you go for a bike ride?” Once I went into the apartment down the hall from ours with the guy who had the parrot, and Mom caught me and went nuts then too, but not quite this nuts.

  Mom doesn’t wait for an answer. She opens the back door and jabs her hand roughly against my back so I’ll get in. “Oma says you took my cell phone; do you have it?” I retrieve the phone out of my pocket and hand it over the front seat. “We’ve been calling it for an hour and a half now. Why in the hell didn’t you pick up?”

  Mom calls Oma quickly to tell her she found me, and adds, “I’ll tell you when we get home.” She snaps the lid shut and pulls away from the curb.

  “I don’t know where your head is at these days, Lucy Marie McGowan. Your grandfather’s dying and the whole house is in chaos. Your grandmother is frantic because you were gone so long and Milo never saw you on the road, and what were you doing? Riding to town, as you were told not to, and getting cozy with Maude Tuttle, of all people. I wouldn’t have believed it myself, if Ma hadn’t called Mitzy’s phone while we were picking up some things at the drugstore for Dad. Barry Olinger, that fat-ass busybody, was standing in line, eavesdropping, and told me he’d just seen you go into Maude Tuttle’s house. I didn’t believe it until we got to Maude’s and saw your bike, half hidden behind her bushes. What in the hell were you doing there?”

  I look out the window and watch as houses and trees blur by. “Just visiting,” I say.

  “Don’t try jerking me around, Lucy. I know you better than that.”

  I spend the rest of the ride home sitting in silence while the trunk lid flaps, Mom rants, and Mitzy tries to distract her so she’ll calm down. The wind that I didn’t feel when I rode into town now feels icy, even through the thick car window, and even though the car’s heater is humming full blast. And I don’t know what to think. Not of what Maude had the chance to say or about the fact that Mom and Mitzy should show up just when Maude was going to tell me what happened when my dad came to get my mom. Oma says there are no coincidences.

  Tiny snowflakes start to fall. I watch them and think of how soon winter will lie down over Timber Falls, and all the little creeks will freeze over. I lay my head back on the seat, and I close my eyes so I don’t have to see Mom’s angry eyes, shining cat-yellow in the rearview mirror, and I daydream of ice skating, Scotty gliding toward me with his arms outstretched.

  * * *

  WHEN WE get back to the house, Marie’s car is parked outside, alongside Mitzy’s van.

  Oma hurries to me and hugs me when I come through the door. “I was so worried about you, Lucy. Milo said he hadn’t seen you on the road. Why didn’t you answer the phone?” She squeezes me again, then says, “Well, at least you’re safe.”

  “I found her at Maude Tuttle’s house,” Mom says.

  “Maude Tuttle’s?” Oma looks down at me. “What on earth were you doing there?”

  I don’t have to answer—either with the truth or a lie—because Marie comes out of Grandpa Sam’s room and interrupts. “Lillian, I think it’s time to call Jeana and Clay. Maybe you want to call the nurse to come look at him to get her opinion, but I think it’s time.”

  Oma puts her hand over the top of her big chest. “I’ll call her to make sure she’s handy if we need her,” she says. “But I trust your opinion, Marie. All those years working in the nursing home. You should know.”

  Marie pats Oma’s back as she scoots around her and then squeezes around the table to get to the phone. She hands it to Oma, who calls Barbara.

  Mom has her arms wrapped around her middle like a shield, though I’m not sure if that shield is meant to keep painful things out or in.

  The minute Oma gets done talking to Barbara, Marie opens the cupboard door to find the numbers that are scratched on Grandpa Sam’s old medicine schedule, and Mitzy gets out the canister of coffee. Marie calls Aunt Jeana, telling her everything she knows—which is plenty—about Grandpa Sam’s faltering blood pressure, decrease in urination, spiked fever, increased restlessness, and all those other symptoms that the pamphlet—page seven, heading title: “One to Two Days to Hours Prior to Death”—says intensify. When Marie is done with the long list of symptoms, she calmly answers Aunt Jeana’s questions and hangs up.

  Marie dials Clay’s number next, using her own cell phone for this call. She knows he won’t pick up if he sees a call come in from Grandpa Sam’s number. He answers promptly—probably because he thinks it’s some frantic mother who just gave birth to a baby with a cleft palate, or no palate at all—and Marie tells him that his dad is dying and he is to come home right away. She doesn’t give him time to counter her orders with excuses. “Your family needs you now, and you need them,” she says, as if that’s all there is to it. “We’ll be expecting you, honey.” She hangs up before he can respond.

  Oma bites her bottom lip and looks close to tears. “Thank you for calling them, Marie. Jeana especially. I don’t think I could have handled her right now.” Oma fidgets. “I knew this time was coming, of course. But now that it’s here, I have to say, I’m a little shook up.”

  While Mitzy pours steaming coffee into cups, I slip through the front door. I sit on the ground, on the lap of my father—right on the spot where Peter’s shadow and mine fell—and I hate the day I’m in.

  chapter

  TWENTY-FOUR

  OH, GOD,” Mom says when Aunt Jeana’s rental car rolls into the drive early the next morning. Mom looks overtire
d, and I know why. Last night there was a blade of light showing under her bedroom door when I got up to pee. She was writing in her digital journal again, no doubt, trying to sort through the tangle of memories and feelings she has as Grandpa Sam’s “time”—as Oma calls it—approaches.

  Oma pats Mom’s arm as she heads to the door so she can help Aunt Jeana bring in her clunky old suitcase and ratty dog bed.

  Aunt Jeana looks stressed and nods her head in little jerks as she says hello to Marie—who has been camped out at our house almost nonstop for the last twenty-four hours, taking turns with Oma so that someone is always keeping vigil at Grandpa Sam’s bedside—and to Mitzy, who has just arrived.

  “Are you the county nurse?” Aunt Jeana asks Mitzy.

  “No, Jeana. She’s Tess’s dear friend.” Oma does her best to smile. “But the nurse was here yesterday, and she’ll come again today if we need her.”

  “If we need her?”

  “Past seeing that he’s as comfortable as possible, there’s really nothing more she can do for him, Jeana,” Oma says. “Dying is as natural as childbirth.”

  “That may be true, Lillian, but we don’t let a woman go through childbirth without medical help, stuffed in some back room by herself, now, do we?” She looks around the room.

  “She’ll bring him morphine, should he need it,” Oma says, but Aunt Jeana ignores her.

  “Who’s sitting in with him right now?”

  “I was with him,” Oma says. “I just came out when I heard your car.”

  Aunt Jeana scopes the room, taking us all in. Her squinty eyes pause on Marie and Mitzy. “I don’t know if it’s a good thing to have the house filled with people who aren’t family at a time like this,” she says, and I wonder if she says it for Grandpa Sam’s sake or because Chico is trembling in her arms, his bony head half buried in the sleeve of her jacket.

  “I’m glad you could be here,” Oma says, ignoring her comment. “Seeing as how Sam’s the only sibling you have left, I can only imagine how hard this is for you, but I’m glad you came. Your brother needs you now.”

  Aunt Jeana bites her lip and nods.

  “Hi, Aunt Jeana,” I say, feeling a wave of pity for her. “I’m sorry about your brother.”

  She looks at me. “You’re the one who was doing that odd thing on the ground, aren’t you? What’s your name again?”

  “I’m Lucy,” I say, suddenly sorry for saying anything to her.

  Oma helps Aunt Jeana off with her coat—no easy feat, since Aunt Jeana won’t put Chico down because she’s afraid he’ll get stepped on—and Mitzy and Mom quietly slip out the back door.

  Aunt Jeana follows Oma and Marie into Grandpa Sam’s room, and, amazingly enough, I hear Grandpa Sam’s voice mingling with their soft murmurs. And what I hear him saying is my name.

  I haven’t gone into Grandpa Sam’s room for a long time, but I go there now, weaving my way through Oma, Marie, and Aunt Jeana to get to his bed.

  Grandpa Sam is sitting up against a wall of pillows—looking nothing like a limp puppet hanging from a hoist—and he’s staring at Oma and talking more clearly than he has since we got here. “Where’s Lucy?” he asks, his breaths a bit hard, but not too bad.

  “I’m here, Grandpa! Right here!”

  He turns to look me square in the face. “Lucy,” he says, and I swear, the corners of his mouth actually turn up.

  I can’t help myself. I start laughing. I look at Oma and she’s grinning too. It’s a miracle! Maybe one brought on by Oma herself, with a prayer she probably offered up to an eagle who maybe happened to fly by while I was at Maude’s. A prayer she forgot to tell me about.

  My whole insides are soaring like an eagle too when I sit down on the edge of Grandpa Sam’s hospital bed and look into eyes that are looking back at me.

  “She’s your girl, isn’t she, Sam?” Oma says, and Grandpa Sam nods and says, “She’s my girl.”

  “Lucy and Sam got quite close in the six weeks we’ve been here,” Oma tells Aunt Jeana. “She helped me feed him and get him around, and she spent lots of time with him.”

  The minute Oma says this, I feel bad. I lean over so it looks like I’m hugging him, but secretly I whisper into Grandpa Sam’s ear, “I’m sorry I haven’t been sitting with you. It scared me to see you so sick.”

  Grandpa Sam looks at me. “Don’t be scared,” he says slowly, his hand—his good left hand, the hand that carved pretty things—coming out and wrapping itself around my wrist, then bringing it up to his chest. I hear Oma sniffle.

  “Clay’s coming too,” Marie says. “He called this morning. He’s taking a red-eye tonight, and he’ll be here in the morning.”

  “Clay,” Grandpa Sam says, and Marie says, “You’re waiting for him, aren’t you, Sam?” Grandpa Sam nods and says, “Yeah.”

  I turn to Oma. “Imagine how surprised Uncle Clay is going to be to see Grandpa all better!”

  The grown-ups exchange glances, except for Mom, who has slipped into the room, unnoticed, and is now watching her dad, her arms folded tight around her middle, her face tight.

  Oma puts her hand on my shoulder and softly says, “Lucy, come with me for a minute, okay?”

  “I want to stay by Grandpa Sam; he wants me by him. Don’t you, Grandpa?”

  “Come on, honey,” Oma says. “Just for a minute. I’ll bring her right back, Sam.”

  She takes my hand and leads me to the kitchen. Marie follows.

  “Sit down, honey,” Oma says, as she pulls a chair out for me. “You want some tea? Chamomile, maybe?”

  “No,” I say, feeling a little scared. “I just want to sit by Grandpa Sam now that he’s better and can talk to me again.”

  Oma glances at Marie, then pulls out the chair at the head of the table and sits down right next to me. She takes my hand in both of hers, while Marie sits down and sets the pamphlet from Ministry Home Care down on the table. “Honey, did you read this?”

  “Yes.” My voice sounds snippy, like Mom’s when she gets defensive.

  “Well, here on page seven, it tells how a dying person may experience a surge of energy toward the end. Did you read that part?”

  I blink fast. I read that whole thing. Not all at once, but in bits. If that part was there, I’d have remembered it.

  Oma makes a soft smacking noise with her mouth, and her eyes get misty. She rubs the back of my hand. “You know what I was thinking of when I went into your grandpa’s room and saw him perked up? I thought of your mom right after she was born.”

  Her tone has that dreamy quality people use when they read a story that begins with a “once upon a time” and ends with a moral, so I know I’m going to be sitting here for a while.

  “Just minutes after she slipped into this world, before they’d even had time to wash the chalky white from her head, they put her in my arms, and oh, my, she was studying me so hard and cooing at me. The nurse walked in, and Tess even turned her head to see where the noise was coming from.

  “Why, I could hardly believe my eyes. I didn’t know much about newborn babies then, but I’d seen enough of them to know that they spend most of their time in a sleepy stupor. Yet there she was, as alert as a baby of six months.

  “Clay was in an incubator because his lungs were giving him a bit of trouble, so I couldn’t tell if he was as ‘smart’ as my baby girl, but I was sure he was, and I knew that would make your grandpa very happy.

  “ ‘Look at her. Look at how alert she is!’ I said to the nurse. ‘It’s amazing.’

  “And the nurse just smiled. Then she explained to me what she’d seen many times before in that first hour or so after birth. How a baby will be alert, wise even. Seeming months older, before they slip into that newborn fog, where they’ll stay for a few months.”

  I’m tapping the heels of my tennies against the linoleum. “Oma, can we talk about this later? I want to go back by Grandpa Sam now.”

  “In a minute, dear. Let me finish my story first.” Oma rubs my forearm, then g
ives it a pat before continuing.

  “Anyway, sure enough, forty-five minutes or so later, Tess’s eyes began to glaze over, and the next time they brought her to me, they were as cloudy and dull as any other newborn’s.

  “The nurse told me it was nature’s way, to make them hyperalert like that right after birth, so they can bond with their mommies and say hello to their new world. Life does seem to move in a circle, and death, well, like Sky Dreamer says, is nothing more than a rebirth. A leaving of this world to join the next. So it only makes sense that a person would become hyperalert again at the end of their life. So they can say good-bye to the ones they bonded with here. Now it’s time for your grandpa to renew the bonds he has with those who are waiting for him on the other side. But he’ll never forget you, just like you’ll never forget him. You’ll both have your memories, and the bond the two of you share will stretch like a rainbow from heaven to earth.”

  I can feel my eyes getting warm and wet. “But he looks all better,” I say. “He even sounds all better.”

  Oma squeezes my hand. “I know,” she says.

  But she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know just how much I need Grandpa Sam to stay, because—as much as I don’t want to admit it—I know now that I’m not going to find my real dad. I can feel that truth sitting deep inside me, in that hollow place that’s filled with nothing but hurt. And I can’t be sure that Mom will let Peter stay in my life either, to fill that space with something happy.

  “Lucy?” Aunt Jeana calls from the other room. “Your grandpa’s asking for you again.”

  “Sweetie,” Marie says, and I look up at her. “At any time, if this gets to be too much for you, you leave the room, okay? Your grandpa will understand, and he won’t be alone. We’ll all be with him.”

  Oma takes my face in her hands and turns it toward her. “Don’t be scared. Death is nothing more than another birth. We have our time with him to say our good-byes. Sad or not, let’s send him off to the other side with love and joy, okay?” She stands up and holds out her hand so I’ll take it. Then she leads me back into Grandpa Sam’s room.