by Sandra Kring
I park my bike three blocks from the Millard mansion, anyway, because the book said to walk down the main street with the effigy. I’m hoping three blocks is enough, because the late-October sky has clouded over, and all I’m wearing is my thin windbreaker. I flex my right hand, stiff from the cold and from holding the top of the paper bag folded over the handlebars so I wouldn’t drop it.
I take the lion’s jaw out of the bag, scooping up the feathers that fell to the bottom and poking them back into the dough. Then I hold it in the palms of my hands, away from my body—like I imagine an effigy should be carried—and for three blocks, I say prayers as Oma would: to the Creator, to my dead ancestors, to God, to Jesus, to Buddha, to my guardian angels, to Mohammed, and to a couple of Catholic saints and Hindu gods whose names I happen to know. And I beg and plead for them all to use their power to help Grandpa live, because he’s the closest thing to a father I’ll probably ever have.
When I get to the Millard mansion, I don’t know what to do with the effigy, so I say a final prayer and I set it down gently on the steps. I pause and I wait without knowing what I’m waiting for. Probably not for anything dramatic, like the gray clouds to part and some wise voice to call down to me, “You asked, now you shall receive” (because any god, I’m thinking, would probably use the word “shall”), but maybe something subtle, like a private inner feeling that makes me sigh with relief and cry happy tears. But I don’t hear anything special at all. Just the whistle of the wind and the hum of cars on the street. And I don’t feel anything but the cold wind nipping at my hands.
chapter
TWENTY-SIX
WHEN I get back home, there’s a white car with a Hertz license plate sitting in the driveway. A tall man is standing beside it with his hands in his pockets, looking out over the yard, the wind ruffling the top of his neatly groomed hair.
“Excuse me,” I say. “Are you my uncle Clay?” There’s little ticking noises sparking under his hood, telling me he just got here.
He turns. He looks like Grandpa Sam used to look, yet his mouth and chin are shaped like Oma’s. His nose and teeth are perfectly straight, which leads me to believe that he had them fixed after Grandpa Sam broke them. “If you’re Lucy, I am,” he says.
I don’t know what the proper greeting for an uncle you’ve never met is, but what I want to do is hug him. Instead, I tell him that Mom and Oma are inside. He nods, smiles with his lips shut, and with his hands still in his pockets, he follows me to the house, then removes one so he can hold the door open and I can slip in first. I’m not thrilled to go inside, since I know it’s likely I’m about to get a tongue-lashing for disappearing again.
I don’t, though. Not when Oma looks above my head and sees who’s standing behind me. “Clay!” she cries, her hand going to her chest. Oma doesn’t wait for him to offer her his arms. She goes to him, kisses both of his cheeks, then hugs him, rocking him from side to side. “Oh, Clay … Clay.” Marie and Mitzy watch them and get smiley and teary-eyed, then wrap one arm around each other, as if this makes them part of the hug.
“Your dad’s waiting for you,” Oma says. “He was faltering, but I told him you were on your way from the airport, and he rallied around.”
“How long ago?” I ask.
“Huh?”
“How long ago did he rally around again?”
“I don’t know. A half an hour ago? Forty-five minutes? I’m not sure.”
I grin to myself. The effigy! It had to be! The pamphlet never said a thing about a dying person having two bursts of energy!
“Welcome home, Clay,” Marie says, before she crushes him to her.
Clay asks where Mom is, and I glance at the clock. It’s nineteen minutes to three, so I tell him that she’ll be out in nine minutes. He looks confused, so I explain just the basics of what Mom and Milo are doing. “We all cope differently,” Oma says to him, since he still looks confused.
Mitzy hugs Clay a bit too, then she offers him coffee. “You hungry? The Olingers brought by a casserole and a chocolate cake a bit ago,” she says. “And there’s pumpkin bread.”
“I’m not hungry, thanks,” he says. “But I’ll take a coffee.” His hands are back in his pockets.
“I thought I heard you,” Aunt Jeana says as she hustles into the kitchen. Chico is barking like a lunatic, but she ignores him long enough to give Clay a one-armed hug.
“I’m glad you came, Clay,” she says, her eyes red-rimmed. “The place looks good, doesn’t it?”
Clay looks around the room and nods, even though I can tell that he’s thinking it’s a rat hole, just like Mom thinks it is.
“Do you want to see your father now?” Oma asks.
“I think I’ll have that coffee first.”
Mitzy pours him a cup, and Marie offers him her chair and says she’ll go sit with Grandpa Sam while they all visit. Uncle Clay’s eyebrows dip and one corner of his mouth cranks over toward his cheek when he looks at the table butted up against the cupboards.
“How’s work?” Mitzy asks, and Clay pulls his hands out of his pockets and starts talking about his job, his voice sounding happy and sure. I watch him as he talks, hands gesturing the whole time. He looks like a very nice uncle. He reminds me of Mom. But then, I remind myself, he is her twin.
“We’ll have to go make arrangements tomorrow,” Aunt Jeana interrupts. “Most churches won’t bury someone if they’re not a member, but I’m a registered Methodist back home so I’m sure the Methodist church here will bury him. We can have the church ladies provide the luncheon afterward.”
Her words make me angry. “Grandpa’s not even dead,” I blurt out. “And who knows. Maybe he’s not even going to die.”
Aunt Jeana’s head snaps toward me. “This is an adult discussion,” she says. Then she looks at Uncle Clay. “I hope you don’t allow your children to be disrespectful like this.”
“Oh, Jeana, don’t,” Oma says, hurrying to put her arm around me. “Lucy’s a sensate, like me. This is difficult for her.”
“A what?”
“Highly sensitive,” Oma says.
Uncle Clay glances at the door like he wants to run right through it.
The plastic grandfather clock in the living room sounds, and right on schedule, ten minutes to the hour, Milo rushes out of the room, Mom following. “I’m about to start position 11,111 plus,” he announces, as he races to the sink for water.
“Good heavens,” Aunt Jeana says. “Does no one in this family have any respect for the dying?”
“He’s not dying,” I say between gritted teeth.
Mom stops when she sees Clay. Her chin quivers. Uncle Clay gets up and gives her a hug. “Sissy,” he says.
To my surprise, Mom allows her tears to come as he hugs her, making me wonder if I will ever be separated from Milo by hundreds of miles and almost as many years someday, and, if so, if we’ll hug when we see each other. I look at Milo, who is waiting impatiently for Oma (who dumped his tap water down the drain) to pour him a glass of Brita water, and I have my doubts.
The minute Feynman moseys out of the library, looking all droopy and sleepy, he sniffs the air and picks up the scent of another dog. He wakes up then and runs to Aunt Jeana, his front legs hopping off the floor. Chico goes nuts, like maybe he’s afraid he’s going to become hamburger himself.
“Get that mutt out of here!” Aunt Jeana snaps above Chico’s whining. “What’s he doing inside, anyway? He’s not supposed to be in the house.”
Milo hurries to grab Feynman’s collar, and Aunt Jeana starts heading back to Grandpa Sam’s room, speaking into Chico’s papery triangle ear loud enough for us all to hear her say, “We’ll go sit by Sam, where you’ll be safe, since it seems that no one else in this family intends to go sit with him.”
I watch Aunt Jeana’s bony back as she leaves, and I feel bad again, because she’s right. No one in the family—except for Oma—wants to sit with Grandpa Sam, and at the moment even she wants to sit with Uncle Clay instead. “I’
ll come too,” I say.
Grandpa Sam is no longer propped up on pillows but lying flat on his back, a thin pillow tucked under his head. His feeding tube dangles from the metal pole, the end of the tubing capped and lying on the floor. Marie is standing at the side of his bed, holding up the covers and examining his naked skin. I don’t want to be looking at him, but I look anyway. His body looks like those starving people in Ethiopia that I saw on Oma’s TV. He has a washcloth sitting over his private parts, like it’s been hung there from his protruding hip bones. His legs are skinny sticks like Milo’s, and there’s a bunched scar on his thigh. “He hasn’t started mottling yet, anyway,” she says as she drops his covers.
“My dad didn’t start that until minutes before he died,” Aunt Jeana says.
Marie sees me and leans down. “Sam? Jeana and Lucy are here now, so I’m going to step out for a bit and get some coffee.” She talks loud so he can hear her above his noisy breaths. “How about a drink first, though?” She picks up one of the short plastic sticks with a small blue sponge at the top that the county nurse left us, dips it into the plastic cup of water on his nightstand, and places it against lips that are dry on the outside of his mouth but glossy closer to the inside. He opens up and roots for it like a baby roots for his milk bottle, and sucks on the sponge. “Be sure to offer him water now and then,” she tells us.
“Of course,” Aunt Jeana says. “I’d never deny him water. Or food, for that matter. I can’t speak for the rest of them, though.”
Marie doesn’t completely shut the door when she goes out, but she closes it within an inch. I think that’s so Grandpa Sam can have a little peace and quiet, because it’s mighty noisy in the kitchen, with Clay’s loud voice, Mitzy’s wind-chime giggles, and Milo protesting, “But you said you’d be my judge!”
“You use the stopwatch, Milo, and I’ll keep checking up on you,” I hear Mom call after him. The back door opens and shuts, and I can hear Feynman barking from his chain.
“No one in this family ever had any respect for you, Sam,” Aunt Jeana says to Grandpa. He slowly opens his eyes but he doesn’t look at her. His face is slack, but when he sees me standing at the foot of his bed, I notice that his eyes still have a brightness about them.
I scoot between his bed and the wall and sit down beside him. “Oh, don’t sit on his bed,” Aunt Jeana says. “Get another folding chair.” I pretend I don’t hear her, and she loses interest when Chico starts fidgeting, his skinny front legs clawing her sweater.
“I need to take him out to do his business. Is that mutt tied?” she asks.
“I think so,” I say without looking at her, because I don’t like the way she calls Feynman a mutt or the way his dishes were empty when we got here, and I’m afraid I’ll get snippy with her.
The minute she slips out of the room, I lean down and say to Grandpa Sam, “I made an effigy for you, and I carried it to town. So that you would live. Everyone thinks you’re dying, but I don’t think that. You’re more tired now, but you’re always sleepy in the afternoons, and you’ve had a lot of company. Aunt Jeana alone is enough to wear anybody out.”
I swear he smiles a bit after I make that comment about Aunt Jeana.
Grandpa Sam lifts his left hand, and it trembles as it reaches out to me. I take it and rest it on the bed and lay my hand over his. He doesn’t leave his hand there, though. He slips it out from underneath and places it over the top of mine. He gives it two soft pats. “It’s okay, Lucy,” he says in a dry-sounding whisper.
I want to ask him what he means … but I don’t have to. I’m intuitive. Maybe even a little psychic, and I’m people-smart, besides. And I know what he’s trying to tell me. Even though I don’t want to know it. Tears fill up my eyes and trickle down my cheeks. “You’re going to die anyway, aren’t you?”
“Lucy,” he whispers, in between breaths so jagged that the metal bars on the bed rattle.
“Yes?”
He closes his eyes, and he doesn’t say any more, but he doesn’t have to. My spirit already heard him, and what it heard him say was yes. That he’s going to die.
“Honey?”
I look up as Oma enters the room, Uncle Clay and Mom behind her.
“He’s going to die,” I say to Oma, my eyes blinking rapidly. “I made him an effigy from the instructions in your Book of the Dead, but it didn’t work. He told me he’s going to die.”
Mom hurries to me and she puts her arms around me. “Lucy, go be a judge for your brother, okay?”
I shake my head, determination that feels older than me suddenly sprouting. “No. I’m going to stay with Grandpa.” His hand gives mine another squeeze. “Did you see that? He squeezed my hand. He wants me to stay by him.”
“It’s okay, Tess,” Oma says. “She needs this time with him.”
“Ma, she’s just a kid. For crissakes, this is too much for her.”
“No.” I look at Mom, and at Uncle Clay, who is standing close to the doorway—where Mom would be standing too, if she hadn’t felt compelled to come to me—and I say, “It’s too much for you, and for Uncle Clay, and for Milo. But it’s not too much for me.”
Uncle Clay fidgets, brushing something from his jacket, and Mom’s lips quiver. I turn back to Grandpa Sam. “I’m going to stay with you, Grandpa Sam. I’m going to stay right here.”
Oma leans down then and says loudly—even though Barbara told us at least three times that hearing is the last function to go in a dying person—“Sam? Look who’s here. It’s your son, Clay.”
Oma steps back and gently nudges Uncle Clay to the edge of Grandpa’s bed. Uncle Clay looks down at Grandpa Sam like he’s a stranger—which I guess in a sense he is. Uncle Clay hasn’t seen Grandpa Sam in sixteen years, and he probably looks a lot different than when Clay was seventeen. He even looks a lot different than he did earlier today. Like fifty years have gone by in just an hour and twenty minutes.
Uncle Clay leans over stiffly and says, “Hi, Dad.”
Grandpa Sam opens his eyes and peers up. He makes his mouth move, but nothing comes out.
“How ya doing, Dad?” Uncle Clay says, which I think is a pretty idiotic thing to say to someone who’s dying. Especially from someone smart enough to become a surgeon.
“Here, you sit by his bed, Clay,” Oma says, shoving the folding chair up against the back of his legs, but he moves away from it. “You want time alone with him, honey?” Oma asks.
Clay shakes his head quickly. “No. No, that’s okay.” He moves back to the doorway.
Mom goes to put her hand on Uncle Clay’s, but he bolts out of the room. Mom follows.
Oma watches them leave, then says to Grandpa, “He must be going to the bathroom. He just got here.”
I take a deep breath. “That’s not true,” I tell Grandpa Sam. “He just can’t be in here because he’s scared and feeling emotional right now and he doesn’t want to cry—or get angry—in front of everyone.”
“Lucy!” Oma whispers sharply.
“He likes to be told the truth,” I tell her. “Like we all do. Don’t you, Grandpa Sam?”
Oma picks at her fingernail, looks at the door, then leaves the room. Grandpa Sam and I aren’t alone for long, though, because Marie slips inside as soon as Oma leaves. I think Oma asked her to, while she talks to Uncle Clay.
“Mind if I sit with you two for a while?” she asks, reaching over and brushing her hand over Grandpa’s forehead.
“No.” And I don’t mind; having Marie near feels comforting.
Marie hums softly as she tugs the folded blanket from the foot of his bed and lays it over the sheet that’s covering him. He opens his eyes and looks right past me, up at the corner of the room above my head, as though he can see something I can’t. Then he closes his eyes, and his hand goes limp on mine.
Grandpa Sam’s eyeballs bob under their lids. His mouth is almost closed, but his cheeks billow, and his tongue butts against his teeth as though he’s speaking.
“Is he trying to talk?
” I ask her.
“Not to us,” she says. “He’s talking to the spirits.”
“What spirits?” I ask, glancing around the room.
“Oh, we can’t see them. But he can. They’re the spirits of his ancestors.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Really. Can you feel how the room has an energy about it? How it suddenly got colder? The spirits always bring a cool wind with them.” She goes back to smoothing his blankets and humming peacefully.
I do feel the coolness, but I was thinking it was only a draft coming from the window behind me.
Oma slips back into the room then. She takes one look at Grandpa Sam, who is still mumbling busily under his breath, his eyeballs bobbing, and she smiles. “Ohhh, they’ve come,” she says.
“Lucy?” Mom is standing in the doorway, her hand on the frame. I look up and she curls her finger at me.
I go to her.
“Come on,” she says. She guides me into the kitchen, where some of Connie Olinger’s nuked casserole is steaming on a plate and Mitzy and Uncle Clay are sitting. “Sit down and have something to eat,” she says.
Milo is at the table too, shoveling the hamburger-and-rice concoction into his mouth, grains of rice dropping back to his plate. He glances up at me with only his eyes. He looks tired and like he needs a shower.
“How’s it going, Wheezer?” I ask.
“You keep calling me that, and I’m going to punch you,” he says.
“They sound like we did,” Uncle Clay says.
“They sound like us now,” Mom says, and they both give short chuckles.
Uncle Clay makes a jittery, jagged-sounding sigh, then sips his coffee.
“You should have tea, instead,” I say. “Chamomile.”
Uncle Clay drains his cup and gets up to grab still more coffee, maneuvering his body between the table and the counter. “Crissakes,” he says, “why in the hell is the table over here?”
“I think it’s a feng shui thing,” I say.
Uncle Clay shakes his head. “Ma should come live out on the West Coast. She’d fit right in with the other New Age nut balls there.”
