by Ryan Gebhart
“Two rifles and a box of ammunition. I went to get Jenga and found them in your duffel bag.”
Oh, right.
He says, “How did you get into your grandfather’s safe?”
I can’t rat Gramps out . . . but I also can’t come up with a lie on the spot.
“Tyson.”
“Yes, sir?”
“One of the rifles in your duffel bag had the safety off.”
“But they weren’t loaded.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. He’s so disappointed in me, I can feel it. “What were you thinking?”
“I don’t know. I was thinking since we’re going to be here this weekend, Gramps and I could go to the Tetons. I brought our elk tags.”
“No hunting.”
“He paid eight hundred bucks apiece for those tags. They can’t just go to waste.”
Dad takes a deep breath and lowers his voice a little. “I understand how much this upsets you — I truly do — but the answer is no.”
“Are you going to take me?”
He takes a second to come up with “You know I have to work.”
“Dad, you told me we could go.”
He shakes his head. “It’s simply too dangerous.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Your grandfather isn’t well.”
“What’s wrong with him? You can tell me if he has cancer. Is it cancer?”
He opens the door, ready to end this conversation. “You’re too young to understand this stuff.”
“God, give me some credit!”
So we go back into Gramps’s cell and act like everything is okay. We play Jenga on the little table by the window — Mom and Ashley take the two chairs and the rest of us stand, waiting for our turns to come around. Ashley is constantly checking her phone. Mom acts like every piece she pulls from the Jenga tower is as important as defusing a bomb. Dad doesn’t say a word, and he always picks a middle piece.
For a moment I forget we’re in a nursing home instead of at a hunting ranch. For a moment, the situation is tolerable.
The tower gets tall and wobbly and there aren’t a lot of safe moves left. I search through the remaining pieces. None of them budge. Maybe I could go for that last middle piece.
“The red wire or the green wire,” Gramps says. “Pick a piece and lose, already.”
He’s not angry. He’s just being his usual cocky self. I crack a smile when I wiggle the piece free.
He takes my spot and pokes and prods for the one loose piece that’s just not there. The tower wobbles, and then it comes crashing down. But it wasn’t his fault.
“Ashley!” I say. I totally caught her kicking the table. “What the heck?”
“Sorry.” Her cheeks flush and she slouches back. “It was an accident.”
“Why can’t you pay attention?”
“I said I’m sorry.”
“Tyson,” Mom says, “it’s just a game.”
“Yeah, I know. But I wanted to win.”
“Then let’s say you won. Will that make you happy?”
“No, it won’t. Ashley’s just sitting there and she doesn’t want to be here at all, and she probably kicked the table just to end it. I know what she’s been thinking ever since we got here — when are we going home? When are we going home?”
Ashley slouches back even farther, and tears start welling in her eyes. But she had it coming — she’s such a yamhole.
“That’s not what I was thinking,” she says.
“Tyson. Settle down,” Gramps says. He collects the pieces on the floor. I never expected him to side with anyone but me.
“May I please be excused?” Ashley asks, her hand covering her eyes.
“Yes, you may, sweetheart,” Mom replies.
“I’ll be waiting outside.” She races out of the room and slams the door.
While helping Gramps gather all the pieces, Mom says, “Maybe it’s best if we called it a night.”
And Dad adds, “And maybe it’s best if you go outside and apologize to your sister.”
“She needs to apologize.”
Gramps stands up and puts his hands on his hips. “Go outside and tell your sister that you’re sorry. Now.”
The heck? Is the entire world against me?
I pass the framed collages hanging outside the residents’ doors. A man named Clyde Matthews lives in room 238. In one picture he’s a baseball player with a tan and a huge smile. In a much more recent photo all that’s left is a sad man sitting in a wheelchair with a birthday hat on his head. In room 236 is Dr. Isabel Brown. In an old Polaroid, she’s in her twenties, wearing doctor’s clothes and handing a baby over to a brand-new mom. Now, hanging from her door is a sign that says:
DANGER
OXYGEN IN USE
NO SMOKING OR OPEN FLAME
Why should I apologize to Ashley? For putting her in her place? For her not caring that Gramps is stuck here? Should I apologize for thinking of other people before myself?
Ashley’s sitting on a bench outside, and I walk right past her. I sit with my back against the front tire of Dad’s SUV and start picking the weeds growing out of the cracks in the asphalt. I can see her from over here, her head buried in her hands, crying about what her “mean” older brother said. But what does she really have to cry about? She’s coming back to the hotel with us, and she’ll have all the time in the world to play with her phone and update her profile status with a sad face.
How could she not care? She was more concerned about McNuggets than Gramps last week.
The doors to the SUV unlock.
I hop to my feet. Dad has his arm around Ashley.
In the car, she refuses to look at me. She’s as close to her door as possible, like I’ve got raging pinkeye.
The radio is playing a dance song from the eighties, about a girl who works hard for the money, so I’d better treat her right.
We’re hauling our luggage toward our room, and every bit of my brain is telling me not to cave in. She doesn’t deserve to be treated right, not after the way she’s been acting.
“Ashley.”
Her cheeks are red, and there’s snot under her nose. All she gives me is silence and her sad eyes.
Ashley and I used to hang out all the time. We’d go to Gramps’s house after school on the days Mom and Dad both worked, and play Mario Kart. Even though she could never beat me, she’d always be down for a rematch. If I wanted to sled or watch The Dark Knight for the fiftieth time, she would, too, even though she hates the Batman movies. Now she just checks her phone, pretending like she’s got friends. But I’ve seen her messages. She texts herself.
Maybe Ashley’s not all that bad. Maybe she’s just an awkward kid who accidentally kicked the Jenga table.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
I don’t even know if I mean it, but her doofy smile makes me feel better. It produces my doofy smile.
But she’s still a yamhole.
The next day on the way to Sunrise Village, Dad announces that we’re heading back home this morning, claiming that Gramps needs to rest. When we arrive at Sunrise, a woman is pushing a little old lady in a wheelchair. I press the handicap button for them.
“Thank you very much,” the old lady says. Her smile is brilliant white, like she uses the denture polish of the gods.
“You’re welcome, m’lady.”
“Oh, I bet you’re a Prince Charming with the girls.” Her voice rattles, as if she’s on a vibrating massage chair.
“Yeah, I get my share.”
In the lobby, Dad says, “Your mother and I need to talk to your grandfather, so you two wait out here.”
I take a seat in the window room, and Ashley sits three tables away.
“Is this seat taken?” It’s the old lady in the wheelchair. She looks like an antique photo come to life. She has on this soft pink dress with white trim that looks like pipe cleaners, and her skinny hands and decrepit arms are covered with battle scars, probably from a life
of baking.
I push a chair aside so she can scooch in. “No, go right ahead. What’s your name?”
“Marjorie Henry. I’m ninety years young, and you ain’t never had a slice of pumpkin pie like my pumpkin pie.”
She’s cute.
I say, “What room are you in?”
“Room two thirty-nine.”
“No fooling? My gramps is in two forty-one.”
Her eyes widen and her lips purse. “Is his name Gene?”
“He’s my gramps.”
“I can see where you get your looks. He’s got such nice brawny muscles, too. And that full head of silver hair! He looks just like Sean Connery. I always liked men who are good at fixing things.”
Ashley peeks over and I can tell she’s jealous of me.
I say to Marjorie, “He worked for a feed and tractor supply place for over thirty years. He can fix anything, from a tractor to a toilet.”
“Goodness gracious, he is a stud!”
“You should stop in and visit him.”
She grabs a pen and a pad of paper from the flower-print purse on her lap. “Here’s my number.”
Down the hallway the elevator dings, and Mom, Dad, and Gramps get out.
“I guess we should get going,” I say to Marjorie.
“I never got your name, young man.”
“My name’s Tyson.”
“Will I see that beautiful smile of yours again, Tyler?”
“It’s Tyson. And you bet your lucky bingo cards you will.”
Gramps says to me, “Who was that?”
“Her name’s Marjorie. I got you her phone number.”
“Why’d you do that?”
“Maybe you two could hang out.”
He grumbles. “Sometimes I don’t know about you.”
“What? I’m just saying I think you two would get along. And, you know, you’d have a friend in this place.”
Gramps looks at Mom and Dad. “All right if I speak with the boy outside?”
Dad nods.
“Let’s go out the back way,” Gramps says to me.
I press the blue handicap button. He walks slowly, so I have to press it a second time. He’s got something sad on his mind, something I don’t want to hear.
They have a pond that backs up to a wire fence, and the highway traffic races by on the other side. A semi farts exhaust, and a puff of black smoke lingers. But the ducks and the old folks don’t seem to care.
We take a seat on a bench. Gramps reaches into the breast pocket of his flannel shirt and tosses a chunk of toast toward the shore.
A couple of ducks quack and waddle over.
“We — your parents and I — haven’t been entirely honest.”
A duck quacks.
Another semi farts.
“No kidding. You told me you didn’t like feeding ducks.”
A smile crosses his lips, and for a second I imagine what Gramps looked like when he was my age. Dad always says how much we look alike.
He says, “Tyson, my kidneys are shot.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’ve had high blood pressure over half my life, and I suppose it’s done a number on them. Rock Springs is the closest place to home that has a dialysis treatment center.”
“What’s dialysis?”
“Kidneys filter out all the crap from your blood, then you pee it out. They also balance out your electrolytes. Mine don’t do that. A dialysis machine pumps the blood from my body, cleans it up, and puts it back in. I have to do it three times a week.”
“That sounds horrible.”
He rolls up his cuff to reveal stitches and purple bruises on his forearm. “The dialysis needles are too large for my veins, so the doctors had to graft an artery from a cow’s neck into my arm.”
All of a sudden I’m imagining what my insides look like and all the blood pumping through my veins . . . and then through a cow artery.
“You’re kidding.”
“That’s pure bovine right there. I have to be on a strict diet or else I get sick. That’s why your father was so upset when we pruned. Prune juice has too much potassium.”
“So?”
“Potassium is an electrolyte.”
“What do you have to do to get a new kidney?”
“Someone has to die suddenly, like in a car accident. The doctors harvest the organs and give them to people on a waiting list. Plus, you have to be a match.”
“You’re on the list, right?”
He shakes his head. “They don’t hand out kidneys to old-timers.”
“But y — you know, you fought in Korea and you have a Purple Heart and saved lives.”
He nods, and it’s like a gut punch. Gramps has been thrown away. That’s why he’s here.
I’m fighting back tears of pure rage. He doesn’t deserve to be treated like this, not after all he’s done. He’s my friend. He’s family. How can he go out like this, just because of a couple of stupid kidneys?
Then it occurs to me.
“Wait,” I say. “You can take a kidney from someone in your family. Take one of mine! I’m not using both of them.” I recall my human anatomy from biology class. “Kidneys are like livers, right? We all have two.”
“You only have one liver.”
“Really?”
“It’s a nice thought, but I can’t take one of your kidneys.”
“Come on, let’s go into surgery today.”
“My body physically can’t accept your kidney.”
“I might not have muscular man kidneys yet. But mine work really well.”
“How many Pixie Stix have you had this morning?”
“Come on, Gramps. We’ll be kidney brothers.”
Gramps groans his way out of his seat, returning the way we came — toward the sidewalk that winds to the glass doors, the nursing home, and a life that doesn’t include me.
“Tyson,” he says, his back to me, “I’m not your real grandfather.”
My brain is frozen like my five-year-old laptop and I can’t get it to reboot. Not my real grandfather? What does that even mean?
I finally execute my internal Control+Alt+Delete command, sending a message to my legs to move. But Gramps has already gone inside, and it’s just Mom, Dad, and Ashley together on the hallway bench.
“Where’d he go?”
Dad says, “He’s getting ready for his dialysis.”
“Is something wrong, honey?” Mom says. “You look upset.”
“Oh, yeah, you know. Gramps just told me he’s not my real grandfather.”
“Yes, he is,” Dad says defensively. He’s lying to my face, and I can’t even look at him.
Mom brushes my cheek with the back of her hand, and I smack it away. Her eyes well with tears. But why? Because she thinks I’m a little boy who needs his mommy?
I’m so angry at her. I’m so angry at everyone.
She says, “I know this must be a lot for you.”
My skull is just burning with anger. She knows it must be a lot for me? She thinks she knows what’s going on in my head?
I say, “Okay. Listen, Mother. You don’t talk this way to Dad; you don’t even talk this way to Ashley. Why do you have to treat me like this? Do you guys think I’m stupid?”
“No, honey, we don’t —”
“Stop calling me ‘honey’ or ‘sweetie’ or ‘baby.’ I’m thirteen.”
“Then what do you want?” she asks.
This feels like a prank. Why couldn’t they have just told me? I’m fully capable of knowing that Gramps isn’t my real grandfather without it destroying me. They lied to me for thirteen years!
I say, “Let’s just go home.”
It hurts. I mean really hurts. Everyone thinks I’m an idiot. It’s hard to breathe, as if bee stings are swelling my throat shut.
We’re driving through this pointless city that’s got nothing but a Red Robin, a nursing home, and a dialysis center, and then we get back on the highway. My book is in my lap. I c
an’t stop staring out the window. My jaw hurts from clenching my teeth.
I say, “What’s his real name?”
Mom looks up from her novel, pretending she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. “I’m sorry?”
“Gene,” I say. “What’s his last name?”
“It’s Driggs,” Dad says flatly. “I adopted his last name when he and your grandmother got married.”
“So what happened to my real grandfather?”
Dad pauses. It seems like he’s going to say something but changes his mind.
Mom leans over the seat. “Your father doesn’t like talking about him.”
“Connie, please,” he gripes, and motions her to turn around.
It gets quiet again, except for the boops and beeps from Ashley’s headphones. I take out one of her earbuds and say, “Did you know about this?”
“About Gramps?”
“Yeah.”
She nods.
Oh, my God, they told Ashley? They think Ashley is more mature than me? She’s the most childish girl ever! My face is getting hot and teary, and I’ve got to get out of this car. Everyone thinks I’m a baby, like I need special treatment. Even Gramps. Or Gene. Whatever.
I want to scream, but I bite it down. If I scream, that’ll just prove their point. I won’t say anything for the rest of the trip. I’m just gonna sit here.
When we cross over the border back into Colorado, Dad says, “Tyson, I got a phone call from your American Civilization teacher yesterday. She said you need to get your grade up. I understand you have a makeup test on Monday.”
Don’t say anything.
“She says you need to get a B to pass her class. We’ll come back here next weekend, but only if you get a B. Tyson, did you hear me?”
Say something. If I don’t answer, he’ll think I’m being immature.
I say, “I heard you went hunting when you were my age.”
“Who told you that?”
“Gene.” Whoa, it feels weird calling him by his first name. But everyone needs to know that I can handle whatever. Give me any bad news, and I’ll take it like a champ.
“You’re calling him Gene?” Dad says.
“What should I call him?”
“I don’t even call him Gene. It sounds weird coming out of your mouth.”
“He’s not my grandfather and, you know, I’m fine with that. But I’m not going to call him something he isn’t.” Then I say, “So Gene told me you didn’t field-dress your elk.”
