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  Grandpa is answering questions, and the room is filled with the kind of giggles that happen when tears are interrupted.

  Someone asks where Milo is, and Mom says he’s in the study.

  “He should come spend this time with his grandpa,” Oma says.

  “I’ll get him,” I say, because suddenly I want Grandpa Sam to take memories of both of his grandchildren with him when he leaves.

  I find Milo standing in front of his desk, chin up and shoulders back. He has Oma’s round hairbrush held upside down and propped nearly against his chin.

  “Hey, Lucy. Can you sit in as a judge? I’m going to do a practice run reciting pi. I’ve been experimenting with two methods. Remembering the digits in groups of ten by pretending they are the phone numbers of my favorite scientists, and converting the numbers into consonants and making words out of them. You’d think that the phone-number method would work best for me since I’m good with numbers, yet I seem to be equally good with the consonant-conversion method. To be honest, I actually find it more fun.”

  “I can’t. We’re supposed to—”

  “Come on!” Milo whines. “All you have to do is follow along to make sure I don’t screw up and watch the clock because I’m taking a ten-minute break every hour, just like they do in real competitions. I need to get used to the pause. Other than that, you just have to recite my position at the beginning of each hour.”

  “Milo, Grandpa Sam is dying. You’re supposed to come and see him.”

  Milo blinks at me, his eyes round enough behind his spotty glasses to let me know my words scare him.

  “Milo?” Mom is standing in the doorway, her arms still wrapped around her middle. “What are you doing?”

  “I was getting ready to start my practice run reciting pi,” he says. “I asked Lucy to pretend to be my judge, but she won’t. She says I have to go by Grandpa … I don’t want to.”

  “I’ll do it,” Mom says, flashing him a smile that looks carved from wax. She grabs a metal folding chair that is propped up against the wall and unfolds it. “Just tell me what I have to do.”

  Milo grins.

  “But Oma says he should be with Grandpa Sam now, to send him off with love and joy,” I say, interrupting Milo’s instructions.

  “It’s okay, Lucy. You go sit with him.”

  I stand in the doorway for a second and watch as Mom sits with the stopwatch on her lap and Milo stands before his desk, reciting the first few digits of pi into the hairbrush handle. He emphasizes every other digit as though it’s a period: “One, FOUR, one, FIVE, nine, TWO, six, FIVE, three, FIVE …”

  I walk out of the room, not bothering to shut the door, because I know that, for both Mom and Milo, the door is already closed.

  chapter

  TWENTY-FIVE

  MARIE IS in the kitchen pouring water into the teapot when I step out of the study.

  “Milo is reciting pi,” I say. “And Mom’s sitting in as a judge. I don’t know why they’re doing that now.” I’m scratching my earlobe, which is itching. Maybe because it’s true that cells remember, and even looking at Marie’s big chest and strong arms makes my ear remember being crushed. Or maybe, just maybe, my ear is itching because it wants to be crushed again.

  Marie smiles a bit. “I don’t even know what that means,” she says, and I tell her that she probably doesn’t want to know, because it’s boring.

  “You want to help me make tea?” she asks.

  “I should go sit with Grandpa Sam. He wants me to.”

  “Sometimes a little break at times like this is good,” she says.

  I stand near the sink and reach up into the cupboard for the bin that has our tea. “Back at our house, we had a tea basket. I like baskets for tea better,” I say.

  Outside the window, I see Mitzy’s legs as she sits on the edge of the porch, bobbing them. I contemplate telling her that Mom won’t be back out for hours upon hours.

  “Honey?” Marie is saying. Her hand comes down on my shoulder, and I turn and look up at her.

  I expect her to say something, but instead, she wraps her arms around me and gives me a hug. Not the kind she gave me that first day—the kind that fit like a straitjacket—but one that fits more like a seat belt, making me feel securely held in place if there should be a crash.

  “I know this is hard,” she says, her voice a deep rumble in her chest. “You just remember that you only have to do the best you can do right now. That’s what your mom and your brother are doing. The best they can do.”

  She loosens her grip on me and brushes away the clump of hair that is covering my eye. She smiles at me sadly. “It’s going to be okay,” she says.

  “The cycle of life,” I say, and she nods.

  The teapot whistles, and Marie lets go of me so she can snatch it off the stove. She sets it on a cool burner, then takes down mismatched coffee cups and lines them on the table in case anyone else wants some. Mitzy comes into the kitchen then. “Oh, tea,” she says, as though she’s pleased. “I brought a loaf of pumpkin bread this morning. I’ll slice it.”

  While Marie fills our cups, I help Mitzy with the pumpkin bread, lining the slices up on a plate like digits.

  “Ray and I picked a wedding date,” she tells Marie, who squeals and gives her the kind of hug that could squish an ear.

  “I’m so happy for you, honey!”

  “In six weeks. That’s not a lot of time to plan a wedding, but Ray has ten days coming, and he has to take them before the end of the year or he’ll lose them. He wants us to go to Hawaii for our honeymoon.”

  “Wonderful!” Marie says, then adds, “I can see you now …” She puts her hands out to the side as though she’s waving and sways her wide hips back and forth to do the hula dance, singing “Ooo La La, Ooo La La,” to a melody that almost sounds Hawaiian.

  Mitzy and I laugh. A little too hard.

  Marie stops her dance and eyes Mitzy carefully. “Honey, you okay with all of this now?”

  “Mostly,” she says. “But yesterday I didn’t feel right: I had a backache and I panicked. I left work, without even talking to anybody, and I raced to my doctor’s office and insisted they hurry me in. They asked if I had any spotting, but I didn’t, so they told me to take a seat. I got hysterical and they took me in the back room to wait until the doctor finished up with a patient. Everything was fine, and I felt so stupid afterward.”

  “Aw, honey,” Marie says, and she gathers Mitzy in her arms to squish her ear.

  Mitzy grabs an empty cup and pours herself tea. “I hope Tess will stay awhile after this—or at least come back for the wedding. I want her to be my maid of honor and Lucy and Milo to be my miniature bride and groom.”

  I don’t know exactly what a miniature bride is, or does, but I know it means I’ll be in Mitzy’s wedding, and that makes me happy. “Since I was married before, I’m not going to go overly fancy,” Mitzy tells Marie. “I’m thinking of a nice fifties style, maybe a three-quarter-length dress. Puffed sleeves, a full skirt, a bow at the back. And pale pink for Tess, and a dress that matches mine in the same pink for Lucy.” She turns to me. “I like pink, do you, Lucy?” I nod, even though it’s not my favorite color.

  “You’ll carry a basket of rose petals to toss on the white carpet before I walk down with my dad.”

  “Oh, that will be sweet,” Marie says.

  I’ve never been to a wedding before, but I saw one on TV once. I’d slipped into Sonya-who-skipped-Barbies-down-the-steps’ apartment one day and there was one on the soap opera her mother was watching. The camera shifted from the bride and groom to a bridesmaid who was trying to avoid the look of one of the groomsmen. But as someone with too much makeup sang, the bridesmaid looked up at him and, probably because she was caught up in the romantic moment, she gave him a look that was as good as saying, “Yes, I want to marry you too.” Just the thought that this could happen at Mitzy’s wedding makes me flood with happy feelings, and I know that if it happens between Mom and Peter, I’d
get so happy, I’d probably toss every one of those rose petals straight up into the air as my way of saying, “Amen!”

  “There you all are,” Oma says, coming into the kitchen. She looks pale, wounded. She picks up her lighter, and I expect her to grab her cigarettes, but she doesn’t. Instead, she grabs her conch shell and sage. “Lucy?” she says, pausing in the doorway. “Where’s your mother and Milo?”

  “In the study. Milo’s practicing reciting pi, and Mom’s helping him.”

  “What?” she says. “But Sam—”

  Marie stops her. “We all handle death in different ways, Lillian,” she says. “You know that.” And the way she says it stops Oma from addressing me, even though I know that she was about to ask me why I’m not in Grandpa Sam’s room either.

  “Of course,” she says, and floats back into Grandpa Sam’s room with her sage. Aunt Jeana is breathing enough negativity in that room to choke them all.

  Mitzy slips right back into talking about her wedding plans—where they’ll have their reception, who will supply the food, what kind of music they’ll have.

  “I suppose it’s silly to go all out like this for a second wedding,” Mitzy is saying, “but it’s Ray’s first marriage, and—”

  “Oh, I think it’s wonderful,” Marie says. “I’m so glad, dear, that you set aside your fear and agreed to marry the man you love.”

  “Set aside my fears?” Mitzy gives a nervous twitter. “I’m scared shitless, but I am doing it, aren’t I?”

  “Yes, you are!”

  I’m happy for Mitzy, but I wish it were Mom saying these things instead. If it were, maybe the thought of Grandpa Sam dying wouldn’t hurt quite so badly.

  All this wishing makes me think of Peter.

  Once, a bird hit our window while Peter was over. I saw it happen and rushed across the room to peer down at the sidewalk, trying to see if he’d fallen or flown off.

  When Peter saw that I was upset, he took me downstairs so I could check. The bird was lying near the stoop, his eyes open, but there was no life in them anymore. Two little boys from the second floor were bending over him, one of them poking him with a stick. Peter made him stop, then he picked up the bird.

  There was no dirt to bury him in, but we walked down one block and Peter stepped right over the tape sealing off a new tree that had just been planted to replace the diseased elms, and he dug a grave for the bird, patting a nice little mound over him. Then we walked back to our place, his hand holding mine. He never said a thing the whole time, but I felt better just having him there, knowing what to do.

  Marie and Mitzy don’t ask where I’m going when I open the back door and go outside.

  The shade to Grandpa’s room is open, the window reflecting the sun so I can’t see inside, and I’m glad for this.

  I feel bad, because Grandpa wants me with him, but I can’t seem to make myself go back in there, now that I know he’s still dying. Instead, I sit on the ground, right in my safe spot. A bird squawks and I look up, hoping it will be an eagle. It’s not. It’s a crow.

  I settle back to lie in the lap of my father and look up at the clouds rolling by. When Milo and I were little and would get impatient waiting at the bus stop, Mom would have us look at the clouds and find pictures in them. I could never look too long, so Milo saw more pictures than me—usually stupid things, like a science-lab beaker or a telescope. If I looked too long, I’d get scared that maybe I’d fall right into that sky, as though it were the floor and the ground beneath me were the ceiling. I don’t get scared as I look up into it now, though. Not with my father at my back. I tuck my hands under my head and stare above me.

  I think Oma believes that heaven is in the sky, because she looks up there when she talks about spirits and the afterlife. Wherever it is—if it is—the only thing I know is that I don’t want Grandpa Sam to leave here to go there.

  I watch as the wind kneads the clouds into first one shape, then another. Then, suddenly, there he is. The image of Grandpa Sam himself forming in a cloud! It’s the Grandpa Sam from Nordine’s picture: big, and bulky.

  One cumulus cloud makes up his head and torso, and poufs of wispy clouds drift together to give him arms. There’s even a curled tail that forms his left hand. But on the other side, there’s only sky where his right hand should be.

  It’s synchronicity. Pure, sweet synchronicity! Before Oma took The Tibetan Book of the Dead away, I’d read a section of it while sitting at the table. page 191, third paragraph down. The section on averting death! It said that if you see an image of someone in the sky, and the image is missing a hand, you can keep them from dying by making a peace offering. Specifically, by creating a dough effigy.

  It’s like Oma always tells me—there are no coincidences! First I read a portion of Oma’s book, even though she obviously didn’t want me to and even though it seemed like a frivolous distraction at the time. Then I heard the squawk of a bird, coaxing me to look up, and then I saw Grandpa Sam’s image in the sky, with the right hand missing. It’s a sign! A sign that I should make Grandpa Sam a dough effigy to keep him alive.

  I hurry into the house, to where the vase of fake flowers made of dyed feathers now sits beside the door, waiting to go to the shed, because Mom said she didn’t care how many shars it removed, it was butt-ugly. The book said to use the feathers of a gull, but I know I’m not going to find one of those here, and besides, underneath the bright orange and red dye, these feathers could be from a gull.

  As I’m contemplating how many flowers I’ll need to pluck to give me seventy-eight feathers—one for every year of Grandpa Sam’s life—Milo slips by me and into the bathroom. He’s in a rush, of course, because he only has a ten-minute break, and I hear the toilet seat crack hard as he flips it up.

  It’s no coincidence that he is taking his break from reciting pi at this very moment either, I tell myself, and I go to the bathroom door, leaning close.

  “Milo, how big is one cubit?” I yell through the door. One cubit is how big the book said the dough effigy should be, but I don’t know anything about cubits, except that it is a biblical measurement.

  “About eighteen inches,” Milo calls back as the toilet flushes. He pops out of the bathroom without running water in the sink and scurries through the kitchen, yelling, “That’s not an exact measurement, though,” as he goes.

  “You’d never know Sam was on his deathbed, looking at this family, now, would you?” Aunt Jeana says to Marie, as she walks into the kitchen. She goes to the fridge and pulls out the small package of raw hamburger she brought, struggling to open it without dropping Chico, who pokes his head out of Aunt Jeana’s jacket only long enough to bark at me. “It’s disrespectful.”

  I follow them to the counter and reach for the canister of whole-wheat flour. The instructions said to use seven grains when making the dough for the effigy, but is whole wheat a reasonable substitute? “How many grains are in whole-wheat flour?” I ask Marie, who is pouring Aunt Jeana a cup of fresh coffee. She says she doesn’t know, and Aunt Jeana shakes her head.

  I put the lid back on the canister and grab the bag of pancake/waffle mix, which is stamped with the label from Nature’s Garden’s health-food store on the front. Underneath the logo is written 7 whole grains of goodness. No coincidences, I tell myself as I grab a mixing bowl and start pouring.

  “What are you making there, young lady?” Aunt Jeana snaps. “Other than a mess.”

  “Something for my grandpa,” I say, knowing Aunt Jeana wouldn’t understand if I tried explaining it to her.

  “He can’t eat pancakes now!” Aunt Jeana snaps.

  I take my bowl and dash out the door, grabbing the feather flowers—vase and all—on my way out.

  I hurry out to the shed because, although the book didn’t say the effigy needs to be made in the dying person’s private sanctuary, I think it will give it more power if it is.

  I mentally go over the instructions the book gave as I clear a spot on the worktable. I’m to create an ef
figy one cubit big out of dough made of seven grains. I’m to fashion it in the shape of a lion’s open jaw, then poke one gull feather for every year of Grandpa Sam’s life into it. Then I am to carry it down a main street to a royal manor at the north end of town. And I know just what manor house I’ll bring it to too: the Millard mansion!

  I run water from the spigot on the side of the house into an old tin dish, then carry the bowl back into the shed and get to work. I add only drops of water at a time, knowing that if I add too much, I’m going to make pancakes.

  It’s not easy making a lion’s open jaw with no illustration to follow, but I do my best. And every time I get frustrated, I remind myself that I’m lucky that the hand that was missing in Grandpa’s cloud image was his mean right hand and not his good left one. Had it been the other way around, I’d have had to find the fang of a black-striped tiger, which would have been impossible, of course, and the fang of a black dog, which would have been almost as impossible, since Feynman doesn’t like his mouth messed with, and Grandpa’s urine, which would have been particularly tricky, since I heard Oma say that he’s not urinating anymore.

  While the dough is still sticky, I start ripping feathers from the flowers and poking them into the lion’s head. When I finish, my lion’s jaw looks more like a lame science project of a mountain range made by some nongifted five-year-old, but, maybe like all gifts, it’s the thought that counts.

  I can’t wait for the effigy to dry before I move it, so I dig in the burning barrel until I find a brown paper bag with damp coffee grounds stuck to it, and I tuck the effigy carefully inside. Then I get on my bike and pedal as fast as I can toward town, pretending that I don’t know who’s pulling into our drive when I get to the end, even though Mrs. Olinger is waving at me.

  THE MILLARD mansion sits just down the street from Maude Tuttle’s house. Even though I’d wanted to hear the rest of her story in the worst way, at the moment I can’t think of anything but seeing to it that Grandpa lives, and I know I won’t stop in to see her.