Thank You for All Things Page 7

  Oma laughs softly and pulls me to her. “My little Lucy,” she says. “As bright as the stars.” She gives me a kiss on the top of my head. “There are no accidents. Just remember that.”

  “Wanna bet?” Mom says as she comes into the kitchen to refill her coffee cup. “I think the old man just crapped his pants.”

  chapter

  SIX

  THAT NIGHT I sleep downstairs with Oma (who snores!) so she can hear Grandpa Sam if he needs her, and Mom sleeps up in her old room. Milo beds down on a roll-away in Grandpa Sam’s study, even though there are two empty bedrooms upstairs. Mom doesn’t like dogs, so she wouldn’t have told her secrets to one of Grandpa Sam’s but to those notebooks instead. Secrets that will tell me why she looked at Grandpa with an odd mixture of fear and revulsion as Oma steered him into the bathroom for his shower. A reaction, I think, that stems from something deeper than the fact that he smelled worse than a neglected baby.

  When I wake in the morning, Oma’s side of the bed is empty. I go into the kitchen and see Oma out the window, doing her tai chi in the backyard. Grandpa Sam is still asleep, and Mom is at the table, her hair damp from a shower, her “breakfast” before her: a cup of black coffee, a Paxil, and three ibuprofens (they mean her neck is stiff and sore again, which Oma says represents her stubbornness and inflexibility, her resistance to “seeing what’s back there,” and which Mom insists stems from nothing more than her poor posture at the computer). Mom gets up to get a glass of water so she can down her Paxil. She gives me a morning hug as she waits for the water to cool. “Know when I love you best?” she asks.

  “When I’m sleepy and squishy,” I answer while rolling my eyes because I’ve had to answer that question every morning for as long as I can remember. I go to the cupboard and root around inside, looking for cold cereal.

  Mom fills her glass and shuts off the faucet. She gazes out the window, her Paxil momentarily forgotten. “You ever notice how after your Oma finishes one of her wacky rituals, she wears the same glazed expression as a fundamentalist after a revival?”

  “I’ve never seen a fundamentalist after a revival,” I say, as if I’m every bit as left-brained as Milo. I open the next cupboard.

  “Well, they look just like … well, never mind. Now she looks more like a—” and she stops. I shut that cupboard, because the only cereal I can find is a tub of oatmeal and a yellowed box of Cream of Wheat. I slip over to the window to stand alongside Mom. Oma is wearing a silk kimono-style negligee, scarlet red, and she’s got one hand on her hip while the other one floats a cigarette from her hip to her mouth and back again, strings of smoke wafting.

  “Like Maude Tuttle?” I say, and Mom whacks me lightly on the back of the head.

  Oma comes in, humming, while Mom is digging in her gray leather purse. “Oh, you must be about ready to leave,” Oma says.

  “Where we going?” I ask, my body and voice instantly tightening at the thought that Mom is taking us home already—giving credibility to Oma’s belief that the mind and body are one, and that all thoughts give way to emotions, and all emotions cause an instantaneous body reaction.

  “She’s going to town to get some things,” Oma says. She floats to the stove and pulls two soft-boiled eggs from a small pan and brings them to the old scuffed blender on the counter. She cracks them, scoops out the runny insides, then dumps them, along with a small carton of plain yogurt, over the top of a peeled, spotted banana. “There’s nothing much here but frozen food, probably old and loaded with chemicals and sodium. That’s not food.”

  “It looks like food to me,” Mom says.

  “Well, I won’t eat it,” Oma says. “And I certainly can’t in good conscience feed it to these children.” Mom mumbles under her breath that she won’t need to worry about feeding Milo and me because we’ll be heading out, but Oma ignores her. “Which reminds me,” Oma says. “Don’t bring back any genetically altered, hormone-laced food either, you hear?”

  Milo comes from the study, Feynman at his heels, and Oma pauses long enough to tell him good morning and to ruffle his already ruffled hair. Then she starts in again, saying she won’t spend money on any “Frankenfood.”

  “What in the hell is Frankenfood?” Mom asks.

  Milo yawns. “Food that’s been genetically altered by inserting genes into it. You know, like Frankenstein. Genes to make crops disease-resistant, add nutrients, delay ripening of fruit … that sort of thing.” He rubs the crust out of the corners of his eyes. “Eventually they’ll splice in vaccines and antibodies.” Feynman prances at Milo’s feet, looking up with admiration.

  “Well, I won’t eat it,” Oma says. “Not if I can help it.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” Mom says as she grabs a small brush from her purse and runs it through her hair. “You eat it all the time, whether you realize it or not. Why do you think a head of lettuce lasts a month instead of two days before turning brown? And they say there’s not a kernel of corn left that hasn’t been genetically altered.”

  “Who are they?” I ask, being a smart-ass and nothing more, only because Mom is so big on us citing our sources in our papers. She ignores me.

  “In developing countries, a million children die each year, and millions more go blind from vitamin A deficiencies,” Milo says. Aside from the fact that he’s in pajamas with little space rockets and moons spattered over the flannel, Milo looks and sounds like he’s giving an oral report: chin up, shoulders back, but with his hands flat at his sides because he still hasn’t caught on to the necessity of using hand gestures to make a point.

  “By inserting genes from a daffodil and a bacterium, which the body converts to vitamin A, researchers can combat this deficiency. And by adding another gene derived from the French bean, the iron content of rice can be doubled.”

  I make my face serious. “So, do they have a gene they can inject into profoundly smart boys to make them more human?” Mom barks my name, adding the “Marie” for good measure.

  I utter an apology I only partially feel, then blink in surprise as Mom herself gets nasty when Oma tells us that Greenpeace calls this altered food “biological pollution,” and says she agrees. Mom retorts with a sarcastic, “Don’t gripe, Ma. Who knows, maybe they’ll start injecting antitoxins and other preventive substances into your tobacco to keep you from dying of lung cancer.”

  “Mom!” I say, and Mom’s apology sounds even less sincere than mine.

  “Say what you want, Tess, but it will be a disaster. Mark my words. We humans are far too egocentric. What makes scientists believe they possibly know enough about the balance of the natural world—God’s design—to tamper with it? And when they realize their mistake, when there’s not even one pure grain of rice left in the world, what then? Not that it matters, since at this rate we’ll obliterate ourselves, anyway.” Oma turns to me. “Do you know what I heard on the news? They injected brain cells from a pig into the brain of a stroke victim! Can you believe it? And not only is she having seizures now, but she’s—”

  “Oinking?” Milo interjects, and I start giggling.

  “Wow, Milo made a funny!”

  “Milo,” Oma says. “Was that nice? And, Lucy, it’s no laughing matter. Now that woman is susceptible to the horrendous diseases swine get. With the DNA of humans and pigs mixed, this means that these diseases could spread like wildfire through the human population. It’s insane.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” Mom says. “Can we just end this discussion?”

  Mom takes her jacket down from the hook beside the back door. “Where’s the list?” Oma scoots around her, squeezing up against the door frame. With her eyes closed, she lifts her arms as she takes a full breath, bringing her hands together. Then she turns her palms facing out and, as she exhales, swooshes her hands to her thighs in one sweeping movement.

  “What in the hell are you doing now?” Mom asks, one arm shoved into her jacket sleeve.

  Oma doesn’t answer until she does it two more times, and when she ope
ns her eyes, her smile has returned, her calm intact. “Cleaning my space of negativity,” she says.

  “You should do it. A lot.”

  Mom rolls her eyes.

  “My list is over by the toaster,” Oma says. “And you’ll need to drop off the cable payment. I see it’s past due. I just forged Sam’s name on the check.”

  Oma goes back to the blender, and Mom’s words are chopped away by the loud whirring grind it makes. When Oma shuts it off, Mom is screaming, “—in the hell am I going to find that? And what is it, anyway?”

  “What’s what, dear?”

  “Xuan fu ha … or however it’s pronounced.”

  “It’s a Chinese remedy. I thought it would be good for your father. He sounds congested.” Oma pours the black speckled mixture that looks like snot from the blender into a bowl, and I cringe, because my stomach’s every bit as weak as my ankles.

  “And I can find that in Timber Falls where? At the Rexall drugstore, maybe? Right between the Depends and the One A Days?”

  Oma giggles. “There’s a health-food store over on Seventh Street. I found it in the yellow pages this morning. Nature’s Garden. It’s right next to Larson’s Building and Home Supplies,” she says. “And pick up some organic bananas while you’re there, okay?” Mom rolls her eyes again. “Oh, and that reminds me—stop in at Larson’s too, will you? In their flier, they’re advertising a sale on bird feeders. Get one, and some sunflower seeds. It will give your father something to look at when he sits in his chair. There’s plenty of cash stuffed in my checkbook. Take what you think you’ll need.”

  Mom’s face flushes when she pulls Oma’s wallet from her purse.

  I think of Mom going to town, and suddenly I want to go too.

  “Hey, can I go with you, Mom?”

  “May I,” she says. Then, “No.”

  “Why not? I want to see the town!”

  “You’ve got work to do, Lucy. It’s a school day, remember? Have you even given one thought to your oral report? It’s to be fifteen minutes long. That’s a lot of research and a lot of work.”

  The oral report is something Mom makes Milo and me do every year. Last year, she had us present them to the residents of Golden Lawns Retirement Home—they’ll take anything for entertainment, I guess. I did mine on aging and based most of it on James Hillman’s book The Force of Character: And the Lasting Life. I talked about the mental and spiritual transformation of old people as they near death. I thought the topic was fitting and would give them some comfort, but it didn’t. Most of them were slumped in wheelchairs, and frankly, I don’t think they even knew they were in a nursing home, much less close to death. And the ones who still had their wits intact grimaced like I was spitting lemon juice into their eyes. Milo gave his report on string theory. I don’t think that even the ones who were with it understood a single thing he said, but they loved his speech anyway—even though he doesn’t use hand gestures.

  They smiled and fussed over him like he just stepped out of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and a mean boy had stolen his crutch.

  “Our oral reports aren’t due until late November. And you haven’t even found a place for us to give them yet. I’m not going back to that nursing home.”

  “Nonetheless,” Mom says as she closes Oma’s purse.

  I cross my arms across my chest. A sign of defensiveness, I know, and although I think looking vulnerable would serve me better, I can’t help myself. “I don’t see why I can’t go! You and I never get to do anything by ourselves.”

  “Ohhhh,” Oma says, obviously reacting to my pouty words rather than my clamped arms. “It would do her good to get out, Tess. Lucy is very extroverted. She needs the stimulation of people. Besides, it would be a nice mother-daughter outing for the two of you.”

  Mom sighs. “Okay, hurry and get dressed then. You’ve got two minutes.”

  As I’m heading up the stairs to dig in my bags, I hear Oma say to Mom, quietly, but not quietly enough, “Don’t worry, honey. People have moved on to new gossip after this many years.”

  WE STOP at the cable office first, to pay Grandpa’s bill. “Oh, you must be Sam McGowan’s daughter. I’d know those eyes anywhere,” the woman behind the counter says after she looks at the check and invoice Mom set on the counter. “I heard you and your children and mother were back in Timber Falls—you can’t keep anything a secret in this town.” She laughs, a wad of pink gum bobbing on her tongue as she taps the back of Mom’s hand playfully. “Anyway,” she continues, “I think it’s so wonderful that you and your mother came home to care for Sam. But of course you would. He’s a wonderful man.”

  I’m watching the woman carefully, intrigued by how her tongue comes out beyond her teeth when she says th words yet, strangely enough, doesn’t cause her to lisp. She holds out her hand to Mom. “I’m Connie Olinger,” she says.

  Mom takes her hand and shakes it quickly. “I’m in a bit of a hurry, so if I could have my receipt …”

  “Oh, yes, of course,” Mrs. Olinger says. She fumbles for the glasses that dangle against her chest from a white cord, then props them on her powdered nose. She punches a few keys on the keyboard before her, then sighs. “This darn computer is froze up again. I’ll write you a paper receipt.” She plucks her glasses off her nose and lets them fall like a bungee jumper, then roots around behind the counter.

  “When my son, Barry, finished high school, he got a job at the paper mill where your dad worked. And right off the bat he had a problem with one of the young men there, Tad Wilmington. That roughneck picked on my Barry something fierce, did anything to make him out to be a lazy fool. He’d find ways to make it look like Barry was slowing down the production line, and he’d say such horrible, mean things. Making fun of Barry’s size, because my Barry’s husky, so that the other guys would laugh.” Connie Olinger cups her hand around one side of her mouth—the backside facing me, as though I won’t be able to hear what she’s about to say—“Calling him ‘gay’ even.”

  She plunks a thick book on the counter and begins paging through it to find the next empty receipt. “Poor Barry could hardly stand to get up for work after a few weeks of that. He gained twenty-two pounds, just from the stress.

  “I told him to see the foreman, but a lady who worked on Barry’s line told him not to waste time with him but to take the problem right to Sam. Barry did, and your father said he’d take care of it the next day. He did too. He stopped by on his way home from work and told me himself, ‘Today will be the last day of that, I can assure you.’ Like your dad said, nobody should have to be bullied and humiliated at work like that.”

  “Hmmm,” Mom says. “And did he happen to mention if he thought it was okay for people to be bullied and humiliated outside of the workplace?”

  Mrs. Olinger tilts her head and her smile quivers with confusion, but only for a second. She rescues her glasses and returns them to her nose as she licks her first two fingers, then leafs through the filmy pages of the receipt book again. “Barry didn’t stay working there long, though. Even though things got better, he just had too many bad memories. Plus, he wanted to make something of himself. He had some schooling, and now he breeds cows.”

  “You must be very proud,” Mom says, and there’s no mistaking her sarcasm, though I think Mrs. Olinger just did.

  “Barry still talks about what your dad did for him, though.” Mrs. Olinger fans a few more pages of the receipt book, then tosses her pudgy hands in the air. “Why, this book must be all used up. I’m sure I’ve got a fresh one here, though.”

  “That’s all right. The canceled check will suffice,” Mom says.

  “Oh, dear, I wouldn’t want you leaving without proof of payment. I’m supposed to give everyone a receipt. I’ll just write you one on our stationery. How will that be?”

  Mom looks agitated enough to spit. She shifts from foot to foot while Mrs. Olinger tears a piece of white paper from a tablet and looks for the pen that’s sitting five inches from her hand. “Dear, yo
u just be sure and tell your father that Connie Olinger from the cable office says hi. You know, we’re just all so glad that his stroke was not so bad that it ruined his speech and left him half paralyzed. Mel—he’s the loan officer over at First National—he ran into your dad after his first stroke, and he said that he was still the same good ol’ Sam. Your dad’s so fortunate it wasn’t so bad.”

  “He’s not so fortunate, Mrs. Olinger,” Mom says flatly. “His second stroke left him brain-dead for the most part, and today I’m picking him up diapers.”

  Mrs. Olinger’s pink lips pull away from her teeth as she grimaces.

  “Lucy, you bring out the receipt. I’ll be in the car.” Mom scurries out the door without saying thank you or good-bye.

  “Oh, dear, your mother is upset. But of course she’d be, coming home to find her poor father in that condition.” She writes out the receipt, and as she hands it to me, she says, “What’s your name, honey?”

  “Lucy.”

  “So nice to meet you, Lucy. Please tell your grandpa that Connie and Barry Olinger say hi.”

  “I will,” I say with a smile, taking our receipt.

  I slip into the car, where Mom is checking over Oma’s list. I study her with quick glances. Mom has never been the type to yammer with strangers. Not like Oma, anyway. But she’s typically not rude to them either.

  “Okay, let’s see,” she says, her tone efficient. “We’ll stop at Larson’s for the bird feeder first. The health-food store is next door. Then we’ll walk over to Fuller Street to the Rexall. The IGA isn’t far from there.”

  As we drive slowly down the streets, Mom gets more and more irritated, until she’s looking like she could benefit from another hit of Paxil. “Can’t these people use the crosswalks? Look at that, he didn’t even look to see if anything was coming! And what’s up with the mullets? Gee, maybe Milo found the secret to time travel and zapped us back to the 1980s. Backward hick town.”