Thank You for All Things (21 page)

“I can’t believe this!” Marie says as she twirls Oma around so she can look at her from every angle. “Look at her, Tess. Just look at her. Can you believe it? My God, I can’t even tell it’s the same woman who left here. You look terrific, Lillian.”

Oma giggles. “Oh, I don’t look so great right now,” she says. She lifts her arm and wobbles the skin that hangs from her upper arms. “I’ve not been to Curves or Nia for almost three weeks now, and it’s showing. Look at my stomach. I’m starting to look like I’m pregnant.”

Marie pats her own pooch of a belly. “Hey,” she says. “If
someone looks at us and thinks we’re still young enough to get pregnant, we should take that as a compliment!”

“Come here, you,” Marie says. She wraps Oma in her arms and they hug with such gusto that their faces change color.

“Oh, I’ve missed you, dear friend,” Oma says as they hug.

Of course Oma tells Marie that she looks good too, and Marie says, “It’s my new bra, I’m telling you. Look at this thing. Can you believe it?” She lifts up her blouse and shows us her tight-fitting bra, which is icy peach, filmy, and looks like the wrap they put over Easter baskets. Her boobs crest above her bra cups like muffin tops. “So don’t worry about TV trays if you don’t have enough room at the table for all of us, Lillian. I’ll just slide my chin off my shelf, and we can set a few plates here.”

Oma laughs ’til she’s teary-eyed, then she throws her arms around Marie once more for a quick squeeze. “Still the same Marie,” she says.

“Say hello to Sam, Marie,” Oma says as she swabs her drippy eyes, and Marie turns and sees Grandpa Sam sitting in his chair. Her dark-chocolate eyes grow wide and her clay cheeks rosy.

Grandpa Sam is looking right at her, same as he was when she lifted her blouse, his face impassive. “Well,” Marie says, “either his strokes have done that much damage to him, or the years have done that much damage to
me
!” The women roar again.

Then Marie opens her arms to Mom. “Oh, sweetie,” she says. She hugs Mom long and hard too. When she’s done, she cups Mom’s face in her hands, smiles at her with glittery eyes, then kisses both of her cheeks. “I love you like a daughter, you know.” Mom grins.

“Where’s Al?” Oma asks.

“Probably still trying to get out of the car. Stubborn old mule, he wouldn’t let me help him.” Marie spots me and her eyes get teary all over again. She glances at Mom with pride, like she did something wonderful by creating me, then she opens her arms and invites me to step into them. She pins me in a big hug that feels good—well, except to my ear, which must be folded over, because it hurts. “Last time I saw you, you were still wearing your umbilical cord,” she says. “Oh, Tess, she’s just precious. Just precious.”

The back door scrapes against the floor as it opens, and even with my ear crushed against Marie’s boobs, which are bobbing against me like buoys, I can hear the taps of Feynman’s toenails, which are getting so long that
he
could perch.

“Milo, come meet your auntie Marie,” Oma says when Milo comes in, pink-cheeked and sweaty from his bike ride. “This is our Milo, Lucy’s twin,” she says proudly. Luckily for Milo, he’s still wearing the pterodactyl helmet Mom insists he wear when riding on the road, so his head is protected from Marie’s crushing hug, while I’m still rubbing my ear to get rid of the stinging.

“I didn’t know you were my aunt,” Milo says, and I’m amazed that he can breathe enough to say it, with his asthma and having his face smothered as it is.

“I’m your auntie of the heart,” Marie says.

“Hot apple cider?” Mom asks when Marie finally lets go of Milo. Marie says yes and Mom hurries off to the kitchen to get her some, leaving Oma and Marie to hug and giggle some more. I follow Mom into the kitchen, but dumb Milo, he just stands there, too polite to ask if he can be excused even though he’s fidgeting because he wants to be.

In seconds, I hear Mitzy’s voice as she comes in the door.
She fusses over Milo, then Feynman, and I hurry into the living room to get my share of fussing. Mitzy’s hug is different from Marie’s—it feels more like a burst of sunshine, while Marie’s felt like the splashing waves of an ocean.

“Where’s Ray?” Mom asks.

“Outside talking to Al,” Mitzy says. “The poor guys are probably afraid to come inside.”

Oma invites them into the kitchen, even though they’ll be cramped, she says, but she’s got to watch the pots on the stove. While Mom is waiting for Marie to squeeze her way around the kitchen table, Milo goes to her and pleads to be excused. She nods—probably because she fears Milo will end up armless, considering that his puny arm is stretched like a rubber band as he tries to keep Feynman from jumping up on our guests—and he tugs the dog back to their cave.

I like being in the kitchen with Mom and Oma and Marie and Mitzy. They are all talking at once as they uncover pans to stir and sniff and sample, and their laughter is as fragrant as the steam that rises up from beneath the lids. They talk in hurried bits, commenting on the simmering food and past events. Light, simple, happy times, but the occasional glances between Oma and Marie say that there are deeper memories they want to share too.

There’s a sharp rap of knuckles against the front door before it opens, and then Al and Ray step inside. Al is the same height as Marie, white, round in his belly and cheeks, and has bulgy blue eyes. His ears are triangle-shaped, and the tips point out at a ten o’clock and a two o’clock angle—which, I decide, is probably from being crushed against Marie’s boobs for thirty-nine years. I only know a little about Al. He trucks logs from the woods to the paper mills, and he (probably) has a hernia.

Oma hugs Al as she laughs, and he pats her back as she hugs him. He does the same with Mom. While they hug, Ray just watches with a nervous smile. Mitzy goes to him and slips under his arm—maybe so he doesn’t feel left out in the hug department.

Mitzy doesn’t need to worry about Ray not getting his share of welcome hugs, though, because Oma sees to it that he gets his, even though she doesn’t know him from Adam, as she herself would say.

Ray has hair the color of Peter’s, but it’s buzzed to a fraction of an inch. He’s rather nice-looking—though not nearly as handsome as Peter—even though he’s as skinny as a tapeworm.

Mitzy puts her arm around Ray again as she tells Oma who Ray’s relatives are, dropping names in the hopes of finding someone in his family that Oma knows. I study Ray as his head swivels from side to side, trying to keep up with Mitzy, Oma, and Al, as they volley names. When they finally find a relative of Ray’s that Oma and Al know, there’s relief, although who knows why. Maybe it’s just important to identify the tribe of a stranger. I tuck this thought into my head to chew on later.

“Here, here, have a seat,” Oma says, when she notices Al’s posture drooping. “Those hernias are painful, aren’t they?” she says, as though she’s had a few herself. “After dinner I’ll give you a Reiki treatment.” She says this as though Al has no choice in the matter, which he probably doesn’t.

“You do Reiki?” Marie asks as she follows Oma back to the kitchen. “Oh, I’m curious about that. A friend of mine went to an alternative healing center over in Marrington and had Reiki. She saw a medicine man on the reservation too, and who knows which did the trick, but …”

Mom offers Mitzy and the men chairs and apple cider, then they talk about all those things grown-ups who don’t know one another well talk about. When the frost will set in. The high price of gasoline. Boring things like that.

I watch them as they make their small talk. Ray is soft-spoken and friendly, but the way he keeps brushing the legs of his pants and shifting his feet says to me that he’s a loner and would rather not be in a group of strangers. Al’s face is tense, and he sits tilted to one side. He’s making comments back to Ray, but I think he’s really thinking about the pain in his groin and wondering what could happen if he lets his hernia—or whatever it is—go. And then there is Grandpa Sam, who is too out of it to worry about his health or, for that matter, about behaving in a socially acceptable manner, judging by the way he’s picking at his nose.

Oma comes to take Grandpa Sam into the kitchen for his dinner before we eat. She’s got him almost through the kitchen doorway when she stops and turns to me. “Lucy, would you mind feeding your grandpa, so I can orchestrate the finishing touches on our dinner?” She sees me cringe, and her face mixes with sympathy and pleading. “Please?”

Despite my stomach growling from hunger, nausea kicks in with the first spoonful of orangy-green mush Grandpa Sam rolls back out of his mouth. I scrape it off his chin like Oma does and quickly scoop it back in.

The light above the kitchen sink is working on Grandpa Sam’s eyes like a beam from an optometrist’s light, showing me just how lifeless they are. Before him, the women are buzzing like bees making honey for the hive, and his eyes don’t even budge when one of them brushes past to move between the refrigerator, the sink, and the stove. In the living room, Al is talking about the Packers and the outrageous
amount of money athletes make, and I feel sorry for Grandpa Sam, having to be propped at the table to be spoon-fed like a baby, when he should be in the living room with the other guys.

I take the edge of the dishcloth and wipe his chin and cheek, and I don’t cringe. Instead, I wrap my free arm around him and give him a pat.

When he’s finished, his bowl is still half full. I tell Oma I can get him to his room and she lets me, but Marie comes to help me lay him down. She adjusts his pillow as I cover him to his chin, which is a bit glossy because I didn’t use water to wipe him clean. I’ll remember to do that next time. When we have him tucked in, Marie puts her arm around my shoulder and says, “It’s all a part of the cycle of life, honey.”

I
LOVE THE
sounds as we sit crowded at the table and eat our luxurious meal: the chiming of the silver against the plates, the moans of pleasure with the first couple of bites of each new dish, the clips of conversation that I listen to carefully for any clue that will shed light on the missing parts of my family—namely, the men.

The longer and more we eat, the slower the gestures and sentences get, until at last everyone is leaned back in their chairs, sipping coffee, smiling contentedly, and muttering softly. “You outdid yourself, Lillian,” Marie says, and everyone agrees.

“May I be excused?” Milo asks. Mitzy looks disappointed by his request. She had insisted that Milo sit next to her and had fussed over him through the whole meal, asking him if he wanted more of this or that, sliding his milk
glass over so he wouldn’t tip it, and various other motherly gestures that would be more appropriate if Milo were an infant. But Milo is fidgety. Probably because he can hear Feynman whining from the study, where he had to be put so he wouldn’t beg for table scraps.

“Oh, sit with Auntie Mitzy a little longer,” she begs. “Don’t you want some more dessert?”

“No, thank you, I’m full. And Feynman needs to go outside to do his duty.” This makes Mitzy laugh, and Milo look confused.

“I’ll join you,” Mitzy says. Mom gets up to follow them out, as does Oma, her pack of cigarettes in hand. Marie starts clearing the table, so I help her. We leave Al and Ray’s coffee cups, though, because they’re still sipping.

Al looks at Ray. He stifles a belch that puffs his already plump cheeks, then says, “Only thing missing from this good meal is the nap that should follow it.” Ray laughs and agrees.

“Why don’t you boys take your coffee into the living room so we can get this table cleaned off?” Marie says. Oma is just coming through the door, the stink of smoke still clinging to her, when Al rises and stops abruptly midway to groan. “You okay, Al?” Marie asks as he winces.

“I’m okay. I’m okay,” Al says.

Oma tosses her cigarettes and lighter on the counter and hurries to Al. “Come on. I’m going to give you a treatment. I’ve got a brand-new table.”

“I was just going to go out for a smoke,” Al protests. But he doesn’t win, of course.

Al shakes his head. “You women and your hocus pocus,” he grumbles as Oma leads him into the living room by the hand. Oma starts unfolding her Reiki table. “I’m so glad I
had this sent with speedy delivery. I knew I’d be needing it. This will help you. You can count on it.”

“The only thing I can count on is that when the Creator decides it’s my time, He’ll cue someone to turn down the sod.”

Marie shakes her head, then she starts scrubbing the last pot. I figure maybe this is my opportunity to fish for information from her, but I know I must be clever in how I ask, because Marie’s sharp.

“Are you Native American?”

“I am,” she says.

“Oh,” I say. “Then how come you don’t live on a reservation?” Marie leans over and scrapes at some crust at the bottom of a pan with her fingernail.

“I did,” she says. “But when I married Al, I moved off it. It’s still my reservation, though, and they are still my people. I go back home to see the family and for ceremonies.”

“Oh!” I say, suddenly remembering that Marie has an Indian name too. “I learned … Oma told me … that you have an Indian name.”

“I do,” she says, her fingernail still working.
“An Wantin Nibi Quae.
It means
Calming Waters Woman.”

“That’s a pretty name,” I tell her. “Mom should have used that for my middle name, when she named me after you. Well, not that Marie isn’t nice too,” I add, just so she won’t feel bad, even though I’ve never cared for my middle name.

Marie laughs. She hands me the pan she’s finally gotten clean and rinsed, and I balance it on top of the mountain of pots and platters in the dish drainer. “On the reservation, does everyone speak in a different language?”

Marie squeezes the dishcloth until it’s hardly dripping, then starts wiping off the counter. “Sadly, no. There are young people on that reservation who can’t speak even one word in our native tongue.”

“Do you speak it often?”

“Mostly with the older people when I go home, though the traditional songs help me stay connected to it too. I like speaking in my own tongue. Like going home, it helps me remember who I am.”