Thank You for All Things (4 page)

Mom didn’t tell me his name until I was nine years old. And I’m sure she did it then only to rid me of the notion that figure skater Scotty Hamilton was my father. “He’s got to be our dad!” I told Milo, after seeing him skate on some PBS special at Oma’s (we don’t have a TV, but I can watch a little at Oma’s as long as it’s a PBS program). “He has the same fine blond hair that we do, and he’s short and slight of build like you. And doesn’t my nose look like his, the way it turns up at the tip? Milo, look!”

After I saw Scotty, I scoured the Internet for articles and photographs and printed them out. His bio convinced me even further that he was our father; an unidentified childhood illness had made him stop growing. This, I was convinced, presented a genetic explanation for Milo’s small stature, even though the doctors never said there was anything wrong with Milo, except for his asthma and poor muscle tone from lack of physical activity.

I glued the articles into the scrapbook Oma had given me for my eighth birthday and taped his pictures above my bed, giving each one a caption. I’d look at them while I turned down my covers. Once I was tucked in, I’d make up stories about how things would be once my father and I were reunited. Then, until I fell asleep, I’d see flash after flash of those moments. Our first tearful, joyful hug. Dad proudly introducing me as “My daughter, Lucy,” to Katarina Witt, Brian Boitano, and all of those old-timers he used to skate with. Dad holding my hands and pulling me across the ice, coaxing me along with tips on how to keep my ankles from folding over like the peak on a soft-serve ice cream cone on a summer day. And, finally, Dad and I sailing across the ice once I’d quickly mastered the sport, my short skirt bobbing, the breeze from our speed brushing my smiling cheeks as he tossed me into the air and gently caught me.

Mom wasn’t upset the night she came into my room to tuck me in and saw Scotty’s photos tacked on my wall, but she got upset later in the week—that quiet, stiff kind of upset—when she noticed the caption:
Dad, 1997, the year I was born. Taken right after he was diagnosed with a cancer that could have killed him, but, thankfully, didn’t.

She opened her mouth to say something, then stopped, bent down to kiss me good night, and walked out of the room. The following week, though, when she caught me “skating” across the kitchen linoleum on two sheets of waxed paper, yelling, “Daddy, Daddy, look at me!” as I tapped my feet across the floor with steps I was sure were every bit as intricate as his, she told me to stop it, “Now!” And a couple days after that, when she strolled over to check on how my assignment on French literature was coming along, and she saw me typing
Dear Daddy
, in the contact box of Scotty’s MySpace fan page, she lost it. “Scott
Hamilton is
not
your father! Stop this nonsense right now!” And when I yelled back that he was—that he
had
to be—she shouted, “That’s crazy! Your father’s name was Howard. You got that? Howard Smith. Not Scott Hamilton!”

I was daydreaming that my dad, Scotty, was at the peak of an extension on a triple lutz when Mom caught me writing to him and said this. And that heavy, gut-carving feeling I get in my middle when I think of not having a dad suddenly, painfully exploded, until I was certain it had cracked my breastbone. Just as the ice cracked under Scotty when he landed his jump and, to my horror, he slipped under the ice to be gone forevermore.

It took a few weeks to forgive my real dad for drowning my fantasy that Scotty was my father, but before I knew it, the name Howard Smith began ringing through my head like church bells. I became obsessed with saying his name and would mutter it under my breath while I worked, until Milo—who, like a lot of profoundly gifted kids, is a tad on the hypersensitive side when it comes to sounds, smells, and tastes—stopped working long enough to toss a pencil at me and to tell me to shut up.

I begged Mom to tell me more about Howard Smith. Things like what he looked like, if he figure skated, and what kind of hands he had (because I happen to think that hands reveal a lot about a person), but Mom’s darkening eyes warned me that the topic of my father was every bit as shameful and off-limits as the topic of her romance novels. I tried squeezing information out of Oma then but knew instantly that Mom had gotten to her first, and for whatever reason, this time Oma was going to honor Mom’s wishes and tell me nothing. “When you’re older,” was all Oma said, to which I reminded her that I was nine years old and
probably going to start my “moon time” in a couple of years and was therefore old enough to know the truth.

After that, I scoured Web sites that help you find missing people for tips, then searched the Web for e-mail addresses for any Howard Smiths I could find—even one in France! I told each one that he’d probably find it useful having Milo and me in his life. I listed all the talents we have, just to support my claim. Under Milo’s name, I put reasons such as:
He could balance your checkbook and do your income taxes for you, compute more accurate odds for the lottery or racetracks if you’re a gambler, and be your walking calendar so you could pay your bills on time.
For my talents, I listed things such as:
I could make you tea to help you adjust your moods and tell you if a potential business partner is honest or not, based on his eye movements and body language. I could tell you what page you left off on in your book, if you happen to be one of those readers who doesn’t use bookmarkers because you think you can remember but you never do.
Out of the couple hundred I spammed, only one Howard Smith wrote back, and he asked me for a photograph—one in a swim suit or, better still, in the nude, so he could look for any physical resemblances between me and his nieces.

“I’m letting your mother chew on this for a bit,” Oma says, then lifts her teacup to her glossy peach lips. “You know how she is. She’s not a rash person and always needs time to warm up to an idea.”

“In that case, I think you’ll be waiting about a century, because that’s how long it will probably take for her to warm up to this one.”

“Necessity will sway her, Lucy, which in this case is a blessing. She needs this. Financially and spiritually.”

“Oma?” I ask after a time. “Did my grandfather know how to ice skate?”

Oma tosses her head back and laughs. “The only ice that man ever skated on was the ice over his own heart.”

Oma gets quiet, thoughtful, then says, “I shouldn’t think and talk like that. It’ll bring bad karma. I take it back. And, anyway, I’m exaggerating. Sam cared a lot about a great many things. His children and his wife just didn’t happen to be among them.”

Oma is referring to Mom, of course, and Mom’s twin brother, my uncle Clay. Uncle Clay lives in Mill Valley, California, where he has—in Mom’s words—nipped and tucked his way to fortune as a highly sought-after cosmetic surgeon. I’ve never met him, which figures. Every year, though, his wife sends one of those photo Christmas cards. Uncle Clay has a girl, a year younger than me, and two younger sons. I don’t know much of anything about the girl, Britney, except that she does well in school and likes to sing and that she looks like a very nice person. Three Christmases ago I wrote her a letter that started,
Dear Cousin Brit
, and in it I told her about myself and asked about her. I never got around to mailing it, though, which is just as well since I told fibs in the letter anyway. Things like how I have six best friends and how once we all visited the underworld together. And also that I figure skate and was being groomed for the 2006 Winter Olympics in Italy, which of course she’d have found out was a lie by now.

“Oma?” I ask—but I don’t have time for my next question about Grandpa, because Mom comes into the kitchen. She pats her hand on the teakettle to see if it’s still hot, then, as she’s getting down a cup, she says flatly, “Okay, I’ll drive you there. Tomorrow morning. But I’m not staying
longer than to stretch my legs. And don’t even ask me to, because obviously I need to get back here to start packing and figure out where in the hell we’re going to set up our cardboard box.”

Oma stands, her face glowing with hope—either because of the guarana tea, Mom’s compliance, or both—and she gives Mom a hug. “I’m so happy that you’ve decided to go where the powers that be are leading you, Tess.”

“Nonsense. I’m only giving you a lift because I’ll never get a moment’s peace for the rest of my life if I don’t.”

Mom, whose arms are limp at her sides as Oma hugs her, is crushed up against Oma’s big breasts. And muffled or not, I hear her words when she says, “Just so you know, I could deal with you a hell of a lot better before you turned into this New Age freak.”

And Oma says, “I love you too, honey.”

T
HE NEXT
morning, Oma stays with us as Mom takes a bus to the parking garage to pick up the Mustang. Oma looks down at our single piece of luggage waiting on the floor. “This isn’t all of it, I hope.”

“Yes. Mom said we’re not staying, so a few books and one change of clothes and one pair of pajamas—in case we stay in a motel tonight—is all we need.”

Oma shakes her head and hurries off to our room, me tagging after her. She opens Milo’s drawer and begins digging through it, pulling out extra pairs of jeans, T-shirts, sweatshirts, socks, and underwear. “Get yourself more things too, Lucy,” she says.

“But Mom said—”

“Oh, you’ll be staying a good long while. Now, get your things.”

“How do you know we’ll be staying a good long while? Mom said—”

“I called Sky Dreamer last night. That’s how I know,” Oma says in a singsong voice. “Milo? You have an extra inhaler or two to bring along?” she calls into the living room. “And don’t forget your jacket, Lucy. A hooded sweatshirt, and something warmer too. It’ll be cooler up north.

“Milo, you have extra inhalers?” Oma asks again when we go back into the living room. Milo says yes, then fidgets. “What’s the wind speed today, and what direction is it coming from? Do you know, Oma?” Oma blinks at him, because she has no clue about today’s wind, much less why he’s asking.

“He wants to calculate how long it will take us to get to Timber Falls,” I say, falling into my old habit of speaking for Milo. It’s one I developed way back when I was two and Milo’s verbal skills were lagging behind mine—a “boy thing,” and a twin thing too. “He’s calculating the exact time we’ll pass through each town along the way—down to nanoseconds, no doubt—and he can’t be precise unless he knows the force of the wind.”

“Oh,” Oma says, as she sets down our newly packed bags and moves to our worktable. “I’m sorry, dear, but I don’t know. We’ll catch the weather on the radio while driving.” She picks up a piece of paper scribbled with equations, turning to me for explanation.

“He’s accounting for the amount of traffic he believes there will be at precisely eight-sixteen, which is what time he guesses it will be when Mom gets back and we get in the car. Of course, now he’ll have to readjust his calculations because we have three extra bags.”

“Be sure to calculate some extra time in there for our wayside stops, Milo. We girls need to stop often to pee.” She pats his head, which is now bent over the paper he plucked out of Oma’s hand so he could recalculate. That’s when Mom’s key rattles the lock.

We look like we’re moving a library as we head down the three flights of stairs. Milo and I grunt under the weight of our books, as we wait behind Mom and Oma, who are moving slowly with bags slung over their shoulders and arms, our luggage bumping down the stairs behind them. “Shit,” Mom says, when she bangs her laptop bag against the grimy wall. Her phone rings while we’re trudging down, but she can’t reach it in her purse with her arms so full, and she says “shit” again.

On the ground floor, we meet the superintendent. He’s got his arm propped on an industrial broom. He looks tired. “Tell them to fix the goddamn elevator while they’re at it,” Mom snipes.

“That be the least of our worries here, Miss McGowan,” he says.

As soon as we get outside, Oma calls hello to two old black women, and one young one with dyed, rust-colored hair, who are watching two little kids chase green leaves that they’ve plucked from the branches of one of the three potted trees on our block. The trees were planted by an environmental group after the emerald ash borers killed the old ones that reached clear to our floor and they had to be sawed down to stumps. One girl has both of her fists packed, and she tosses them in the air, her cheeks the color of apple butter and going chubby as she laughs. She looks so elated that I can’t even be angry at her for desecrating the poor tree.

I stomp my shoe on a rolling leaf and ask the little girl
to pick it up and hand it to me. She tucks it between the two fingers I lift slightly so I don’t drop my psychology books. She waits for me to throw it, but I’m not going to. I’m going to save it.

“Come on, Lucy!” Mom snaps from where she stands next to Oma at the opened trunk, checking voice mail on her cell phone.

Oma has her things loaded in the trunk already. Her toiletries and New Age paraphernalia are packed in two pretty tote bags that are wedged alongside three matching moss-green pieces of luggage. She lifts a Curves bag that has the toe of a tennis shoe peeking out from between lime-green fabric and holds it in the air so Milo can tuck his stack of books beside her things. As I watch her arrange our bags, I wonder if one needs to arrange things in a feng shui sort of way even in a trunk.

Milo gets motion sickness easily and can’t read in the car no matter how much Dramamine he takes, so he keeps out only one notebook and a library CD for inside the car: Richard P. Feynman’s
Lectures on Physics, Vol. 19.
I keep out my book on somatic disorders and use the soft leaf for a bookmark, even though I know exactly where I’ve left off: page 293, second paragraph down.

The car smells like leather. Mom slips behind the steering wheel, and Oma gets in on the passenger side. I sit behind Mom, and Milo behind Oma. “Poor Roger,” Oma coos softly, as she digs in her purse and pulls out a pewter clip that she fastens to the visor above Mom’s head. It has an angel on it and says,
Angels, protect me on my journey.
She taps it once she has it in place, then mutters a short prayer. I see Mom’s eyeballs scoot up toward her forehead, as if they are looking there for some explanation that would explain her mother’s “wackiness.”