Thank You for All Things

by Sandra Kring

  “I’m sorry, Peter. I didn’t think of it,” she says. She pauses while Peter talks and I strain to make out his tinny words.

  “Frankly, no,” Mom says. “I actually didn’t think you’d be worried.” Once Milo was watching a special on PBS about Stephen Hawking—one of his favorites—at Oma’s. Hawking has a muscular disease and uses one of those devices that pick up the vibrations of the vocal cords so he can speak. Even though the device made him sound oddly mechanical when he spoke, his voice still had more life in it than Mom’s voice has at this moment. I think of how alarmed Peter must have been and wish that Mom would use the same tone she used with Mitzy yesterday, to make him feel better.

  “No, I couldn’t. My cell phone was dead. My charger quit,” Mom says, as though her cell was dead this whole time and she had no land line to use. “I ordered a new one and just set it up five minutes ago.”

  All of a sudden, I hear a loud thump in Grandpa Sam’s room. I whiz past Mom and rush to his door. “Mom … Oma … Grandpa Sam fell!”

  “I have to go. We have a situation here,” Mom says, and she hangs up. Oma comes running from the bathroom, her hands red and wet from the scrubbing she was giving them.

  “Oh, my!” Oma says when she sees Grandpa sprawled out on the floor, his head butted up against the box spring.

  Oma gets down on her knees and asks Grandpa if he’s all right. He’s panting and looks stunned, and he doesn’t answer. “Give me a hand, Tess.”

  Mom helps Oma lift Grandpa, and they get him up onto his bed. For a split second there is pity in Mom’s eyes. That is, until Grandpa Sam gets tetchy. “I want to watch TV,” he says. “I want to get up.” His mouth doesn’t close all the way when he talks lying down, so his enunciation is poor, but we all understand him.

  Oma takes his quilt and covers him. “In just a minute, Sam. Let’s make sure you’re okay first.”

  “Where’s my keys? Where’d you put my goddamn keys?” he asks, as if he’s already forgotten that he was getting out of bed to watch TV. His face is purpled from the effort of raising his voice, but still he manages to muster up enough energy to grab Oma’s wrist. He clutches it so hard that the skin whitens around his fingers.

  The disdain in his normally complacent face first appears to scare Mom, then it infuriates her. She slaps at his hand until he lets go of Oma. “You don’t have a job anymore!” she shouts. “Which is a good thing, considering you’re in diapers! Diapers this woman is good enough to change, I might add, even though she doesn’t owe you one goddamn thing and never did. So don’t you go disrespecting her by raising your voice to her or laying a hand on her. You hear me? Or I’ll see to it that your pissy ass gets flung into a nursing home.”

  Shock blasts Oma’s eyes and mouth open. “Tess!” she says. “He’s not well. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

  Mom is breathing so hard that I instinctively count the probable steps to Milo’s inhaler, just in case she needs it. “Oh, yeah? Did he not know what he was doing back then either?” Mom bolts from the room and out the door.

  I help Oma get Grandpa Sam up and walk in front of him while Oma follows us into the living room. She hurries to get him his pills, saying, “I hope your mom’s all right,” as she goes.

  I watch Mom from the bay window. She heads to the clump of trees I’ve seen her at before, and she stands for a moment, bent forward, her hands braced against her thighs like a long-distance runner who just made it across the finish line.

  chapter

  TEN

  I’M SITTING on the ground, my arms wrapped around my knees. Oma told me that in the old days, in the Sioux tribe, after a baby was born, the mother would place the baby on the ground and tell her that she was lying on the lap of her mother. I think of this every time I come out here and sit down, only I tell myself that I’m sitting on the lap of my father.

  I’m looking at the trees, and wondering when they’ll shed in mounds, and hoping we’re still here when that happens so I can rake them into a heap and cover myself with them like a blanket. And I’m thinking of how I wish that I had been here in the summertime, so I could have spread a sleeping bag on my daddy’s lap and slept under the stars.

  “I’m fine!” I hear Mom shout, then the slamming of the front door and the sound of an engine starting. I move to my hands and knees and creep far enough forward so I can see around the side of the house. Mom is backing out of the drive. She reaches the end and jerks the car to a stop, then backs out so sharply that the rear tires of Roger’s Mustang almost hit the culvert. I look up at the sky and wish an eagle would come. Then I’d run inside and beg Oma for some tobacco.

  I take a deep breath, like Oma takes, and I lie down on my back, the ground pleasantly cool under me, and watch the clouds tumble by. I love the sky here, clear and sharp and filled with bright stars after dark. Last night I watched them out the window, instead of diving into Mom’s notebooks as I had planned, and each one sparkled like glitter, every single speck brilliant.

  The screen door opens and Feynman leaps off the porch, Milo behind him. Feynman races to me and slobbers on my face, then runs off to water a tree. Milo comes to me, and, surprisingly, sits down at my side.

  “Oma says Peter called.” I feel sorry for Milo when I realize that he didn’t get to talk to him, because Milo likes Peter as much as I do.

  “You would have gotten to talk to him, Milo, if Grandpa Sam hadn’t fallen. I only got to because I’m the one who answered the phone. I would have handed it to you next.”

  Feynman brings Milo a stick, and Milo takes it but doesn’t throw it. Instead, he picks at the bark.

  “Do you like it here?” I ask him. He shrugs.

  “I do.” We sit quietly for a moment, and with no book before him and a bit of sadness in his eyes, it’s easy to think of us sharing the same womb.

  “Milo, can you keep a secret?” I say in a rush. “I mean really keep a secret? Like, if the CIA had you in a torture chamber and was trying to beat the secret out of you, you still wouldn’t tell?”

  “That’s an irrelevant question,” he says. “Why would the CIA have an interest in anything you have to tell me?”

  I punch him in the arm and he flinches. “Stop being so literal! I’m serious, Milo. I have something I’ve got to tell somebody, and, unfortunately, you’re my only option.”

  I take a deep breath before spitting it out in a rush. “I’m reading Mom’s old journals that are upstairs in her closet. They’re full of things that happened back when she was a kid.”

  Milo’s face screws up. “Did Mom say you could read them?”

  I roll my eyes and groan. “Of course not, you idiot. If she did, I’d be discussing this with her, not you. Anyway, one Christmas, Grandpa Sam made them a toboggan, but—”

  “Well, you shouldn’t read them, then.”

  “Milo! Aren’t you even a little curious about their lives back then? About learning why Mom hates Grandpa Sam so much and why Oma divorced him?”

  “Not especially,” he says, and I gasp in exasperation. “Milo, think of it like the big bang … It’s the beginning of us. Our origin. That from which all of our family life force comes.”

  I can tell that Milo isn’t getting it. “You’re so frustrating,” I say. “I might as well be telling Feynman.” I’m forced to rethink that comment, however, because Feynman is watching me with acute interest, his eyes bright, his tongue lapping out of the side of his mouth.

  Just then Oma leans out of the doorway and is about to say something but turns her head away. She glances back, lifts one finger to signal “wait,” then disappears. I use the opportunity to grab Milo by the sleeve. “Listen. You tattle on me, and you’re going to be sorry.”

  “Who am I going to tattle to? The FBI? The CIA? The Timber Falls sheriff’s department?”

  Even though I’m angry, I am rather impressed that Milo has made two funnies in such a short amount of time. I don’t tell him that, though. Instead, I tell him, “If you even think
of tattling, I’ll tattle on you.”

  “For what?” he says, getting up and tossing the stick at last.

  I stand up so I can have the advantage of towering over Milo, because I know that just as the alpha wolf will roost at a higher elevation than the rest of the pack to reinforce his position, I’ll have an advantage over Milo by standing taller. “I know you were behind the health department coming to test our building. I saw the sites you were visiting online and the articles you were reading. And I saw you snooping at the pipes under the sink too and chipping at the paint on the windowsills when you thought no one was watching. You e-mailed them as though you were a concerned adult tenant, didn’t you?”

  Milo, who never gets rattled (except when he’s having an asthma attack or can’t study), suddenly grows pale. “I … I didn’t mean for anything bad to happen. I couldn’t breathe there.”

  I’m suddenly sorry I said it. “You didn’t start the fire. I’m just saying … Well, just don’t tattle, or I will.”

  Suddenly Oma bursts out the door, a box of old junk in her arms. “I was just about to bring this stuff to the shed when I thought of something. Oh, this will be such fun for you kids,” she says. She zips across the lawn, half hopping, half jogging. “Come! Come!”

  She leads us to the shed and shoves against the door with her shoulder. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before now.”

  The door is jammed, so we help her ram against it. It opens with a creak and a scrape.

  A haze of moldy dust forms in the sunlight let in when we finally get the door open, and Oma tells Milo to wait outside so his asthma doesn’t start acting up.

  The workbench that runs against one wall is coated with dust, as are the tools hanging from Peg-Board above it and all along a second wall. The shed is cramped with things I imagine got stacked there over the years since Grandpa Sam last used it for making his wood projects. Things like a roll of chicken wire, a lawn mower, a rain barrel, a few crocks, and everyday items much too dull to have Oma so excited.

  “Move, Feynman,” Oma says as she shimmies behind an old dresser. “Oh, they’re still here! Give me a hand moving this stuff, Lucy,” she says.

  “Bikes!” I shout when Oma backs one up far enough for me to see its skinny back tire and red wheel cover.

  Oma and I work swiftly to make a path through the junk to steer the bikes out. Milo looks confused about all our enthusiasm. “We don’t even know how to ride bikes,” he says, and Oma says it’s easy and that we’ll learn. Milo doesn’t look so sure.

  We push the bikes to the backyard, then Oma hurries back to the shed to get some spray, because the chains are corroded with rust. The bikes are old-fashioned 10-speeds, with handlebars that are curved down like rams’ horns. One bike, the red one, is a girls’ bike, and the blue one is a boys’. The difference between them is something that’s always perplexed me: why they would design a boys’ bike with a bar for them to get wracked on and girls’ bikes with none, even though girls don’t really have anything to wrack. I ponder this as Milo and I stand across the yard so we won’t breathe the fumes from the WD-40 Oma is spraying on the chains, her cheeks bulging as she holds her breath. I’m guessing that the barless bike for girls was created by some dad in the old days when girls always wore dresses, so that when his little princess swung her leg over the back tire to get on, the neighborhood boys wouldn’t see her bloomers, which is what Oma said they called those big underpants girls used to wear. I like the boys’ bike best but know that to grab that one and make Milo ride the girls’ bike could get him beat up if there are any boys within a five-mile radius of here—even if they aren’t gangsters.

  “Now what?” I ask, holding the handlebars of the red bike propped against me, once Oma gets the chains rotating smoothly.

  “Why, you get on them,” Oma says. “Here, I’ll show you.”

  Oma takes the bike, swinging her Tina Turner leg through the no-bar space and hoisting her butt onto the triangle seat. She props her slipper on the pedal and pushes down, setting the bike in motion. She rides in slow circles. “Oh, my,” she giggles as she wobbles over the grass, “I haven’t ridden a bike in years. What fun!”

  As she rides, Oma explains that she’s wobbling because she’s on the grass and riding in circles, so can’t get up enough speed to glide smoothly. “That’s the trick of learning to ride a bike,” she says. “You have to get up enough speed to stop wobbling.” As she rides, making bigger circles until she’s encompassing the whole yard, Feynman runs alongside her, his ears flapping happily as he goes.

  Back home, there was a man who rode his bike every day during the warmer seasons. I’d watch him whiz by under the window in his tight-fitting cycling shorts, his helmet one of those high-tech kinds with an aerodynamic point at the back that always reminded me of a pterodactyl’s head. Every time I saw him, I’d think of how fun it would be to ride a bike. Actually, however, riding a bike for the first time is not so fun.

  I can’t find my balance, which shouldn’t surprise me, since I have no balance to speak of in the first place. I can’t pedal more than two rotations before I’m yelling, “Whoa!” and tipping over again. Oma hurries to me then, helping me up and holding the bike ’til I get back on. She keeps her grip on the back of the bike seat and one handlebar and jogs alongside me. “That’s it, that’s it,” she says … until she lets go and I crash again.

  Milo, on the other hand, is a natural. His face is screwed up in concentration as he pedals, going slowly and wobbling but going all the same. “That’s it, Milo!” Oma shouts now and then.

  I’m rubbing my leg where the pedal scraped my skin when I fell, and Oma has my bike half lifted when she stops and says, “Did you hear that?”

  I listen. “Hear what?”

  “I thought I heard a car in the driveway. I guess not. It must have been the wind.”

  That’s not the only trick the wind is up to either, I decide after my hundredth fall. I look over at Milo, who is no longer wobbling as his bike scoots around the entire yard, and I am convinced that it has to be the wind that’s foiling my attempts to learn to ride a bike. And, of course, it’s not like the wind would be a factor with Milo, since he’s so thin that there would be little wind resistance even if the winds were at the speed of an F5 tornado.

  I try riding until my frustration level is maxed, then Oma says maybe we should take a break and go inside. “Sam is probably ready to go lie down for his afternoon nap,” she says, though I’m thinking that her ending our afternoon bike-riding lesson has more to do with the way Milo’s puny chest is heaving. “Come on, Milo,” Oma calls.

  Milo looks elated as he slides off the blue bike and fiddles to pull the kickstand down with his hand. “They don’t call it a kickstand for nothing there, genius.” My jibe goes right over his pointy head, so Oma goes over to show him how to lower the metal rod by kicking it with the back of your heel.

  “Can we go on the road later?” he asks. “I could go much faster on asphalt.” I can tell by the gleam in his eye that Milo has finally found one activity besides studying that makes him happy, and I easily imagine him as a grown man: pterodactyl head and hairy, skinny legs pumping beneath black Nike tights.

  “Maybe after you get more skilled. But you’ll have to talk to your mother about that,” Oma says.

  Oma holds the door open for us and calls to Feynman, who is sniffing something at the fence. Milo claps and calls, but the dog doesn’t come. Milo says that he needs a drink of water, so Oma tells him to go inside and she’ll wait for Feynman. I’m crossing the yard to join her when she casually turns her head toward the driveway and her peaceful, balanced mood crashes. “Lucy! Go see if your grandfather’s in his chair. Hurry! His truck is gone!

  “Oh, don’t tell me …” she says, and we split up, checking each room, calling his name. “I was sure I had every set of keys he owned hidden.”

  My quadriceps tingle uncomfortably, and my ears buzz with fright at the thought of Grandpa Sam behin
d the wheel. “Call 911!” I shout.

  chapter

  ELEVEN

  OMA INCORRECTLY dials twice, so Milo takes the phone from her and punches in the three numbers. Oma is a stammering mess as she explains our precarious situation to the voice at the other end of the line. “How would I know where he might be headed? He’s not in his right mind!” she says.

  “To work!” I say. “His lunch box is gone. It was sitting right here on the counter with all the other things you were going to bring to the shed.”

  “Oh, oh,” Oma says. “Excuse me, sir. I think I know where he might have gone.” Oma gives him the name and address of the paper mill where Grandpa Sam used to work, then she repeats the model and make of his black truck and ends with, “Yes, please hurry. That man is going to hurt himself or someone else. He can hardly walk or think anymore.”

  After Oma hangs up, she hands me the phone. “Call your mother’s cell, Lucy. I imagine she’s with Mitzy.”

  I call Mom as Oma paces and wrings her hands. Mom answers, and I hear Mitzy’s musical laugh in the background. “Hi, Ma. What is it?”

  “It’s me, Mom. Oma told me to call you and tell you that Grandpa Sam is gone.”

  I hear an intake of breath.

  “What’s wrong?” Mitzy asks Mom.

  “He’s dead,” I hear Mom say. “I don’t understand … He looked okay this morning. He fell, but he seemed okay.” Mom is obviously crying now, but her voice is muffled, like she has the phone pressed against her shoulder, receiver side down.

  “Mom! Mom!” I shout into the phone.

  The muffled sound disappears, and Mitzy’s voice asks, “Lillian?”

  “No, it’s me, Lucy.”

  “You tell your grandmother that we’ll be right there.”

  “No, wait! Grandpa Sam’s not that kind of gone. He’s gone, as in missing-in-action. He took his truck and drove off. Oma called the police, and then she told me to call Mom.”

  “Ohhh!” The sound muffles again, but I can hear enough to know that Mitzy is explaining the situation to Mom. Her voice sounds like squirrel chatter. She comes back on the line again and says, “We’ll be right there.”