Thank You for All Things (45 page)

Inside, I say,
Ha!
just like Maude Tuttle does.

“I know enough to know that you were a drunk, and that this”—she wags her finger toward Mom—“this
thing
here, came home with a big belly, then brought her trash following right behind her and almost got my brother killed!” Aunt Jeana turns to face Mom. “Shame on you, missy. Shame on you!”

Mom’s hands go up to her temples. “Lucy, go outside, damn it!”

Uncle Clay is pacing in tight circles, his hands shoved so far into the pockets of his Dockers that they’re buried past his wrists. “Yeah, the big man. Took a bullet for his daughter out of pure love,” he says.

“You weren’t even here, Clay, so what do you know?” Aunt Jeana snaps. “You’d already run off to California to make your millions, so don’t tell me what happened that night.”

“And you were here?”

“I wasn’t. But I heard what happened. That lunatic pulled a gun and told Tess that he wasn’t leaving without her. Sam went to knock it out of the way—so his little girl and her babies wouldn’t be killed—and he fired, catching Sam in the thigh. You going to deny
that?
Sam’s got a scar on his thigh that says it happened. Go look, then tell me I don’t know what happened here!”

“That’s bullshit! He did not!” Mom screams. “He didn’t put himself between me and Howard. He didn’t!”

Everyone stops and stares at Mom. Including me. Oma hurries to Mom and tries wrapping her arms around her, but Mom shrugs her away and continues.

“Howard pointed the gun at me, yes. And he told me to get in the fucking car or he’d take us both out. And Dad, he turned to me …” Tears bubble up in Mom’s eyes, and she licks her quivering lips as if they’ve turned to dust. “…  and … and … and … he told me to get my trashy ass out of his house and to take my ‘bastards’ and my ‘scum’ with me.”

Oma looks like someone slapped her. “No, Tess,” she says, shaking her head, her fingers loose over her mouth. “Your father never said that.”

Uncle Clay glares at Oma. “You sure about that, Ma? You were drunk as a skunk that night, weren’t you? Hard telling what you missed.”

“I would have remembered it if he’d said something like that, Clay.”

“She would have remembered, drunk or not,” Aunt Jeana says, backing up to stand alongside Oma as if they are suddenly serving in the same army.

Mom moves to the spot on the floor where the table can’t sit, and where no one ever stands, and she looks down. “Right here! Howard was standing right here!” She suddenly starts shaking so hard that it scares me. It must scare Peter too, because he hurries to put his arm around her waist to steady her.

“Howard had the gun on me the whole time, and Dad didn’t make a move. Not one goddamn move!”

“No, Tess,” Oma says. “He stepped in the minute Howard pointed the gun at you.” There is desperation in her voice, but I’m not sure if her desperation to get at the truth is for Mom’s sake or for hers.

“He was right here!” Mom screams, as if she has forgotten that I’m listening. “Howard was standing right here, and Dad told him to take me and get out. Howard turned to face Dad when he spoke, the gun turning with him. That’s when Dad charged him. Not when he had the gun on me. When Howard turned it on
him.
He knocked his arm and the gun went off, and the bullet grazed Dad’s leg. Dad had the gun then, and he knocked Howard to the floor.” Mom has her fingers splayed, and her arms chop to show us all the place at her feet. “It happened right here!”

Mitzy wraps her arm around Mom, above Peter’s, and tears are streaming down her face. “Oh, Tessy,” she cries.

Mom continues, her face old and young and haunted.

“And he could have stopped there. Dad could have stopped right there. He had Howard on the floor. Dad was twice the size of him, for God’s sakes. And
he
had the gun.” Mom looks down at her feet, her whole body shaking. “He had Howard down on his back. Right here! After he’d knocked him down with so many punches that I thought he’d kill him. I screamed at him to stop the whole time, just like I’d screamed at him to stop when he was beating Clay so badly. I begged him, told him Howard was sick and just needed help. And he stopped … I thought he’d stopped.”

Mom is crying so hard that her stomach is convulsing, but still she gulps and pushes the words out as Peter holds her up.

“I screamed at Ma to call the police, so they could take Howard to the hospital so my babies would be safe. So he’d be safe too. But she didn’t make a move to call, so I did. And while I was dialing, I looked back, and Dad was on his knees, bent over Howard. Dad’s whole body was shaking. And then … and then …” Mom stops and gulps for breaths, then she says, “Then he put the pistol right between Howard’s tormented eyes and he pulled the trigger! He pulled the fucking trigger!”

“Jesus Christ,” Uncle Clay says.

Mom folds at her middle, and Peter catches her. He turns her to him and holds her close, his hand cupped over the back of her head as she sobs, his other hand on her waist, as if to still her insides.

Aunt Jeana looks dumbfounded, but only for a moment. Then she pulls herself up a little taller and she says, “It was self-defense. That’s what the law decided,” and she brushes past me, walking in a jagged line, as if she’s as drunk as she says Oma was, and goes into Grandpa Sam’s room.

“I didn’t know …” Uncle Clay says after Aunt Jeana leaves the room, filling the silence that stands on the outskirts of Mom’s sobs.

Mom pulls her face from Peter’s jacket—as if she can feel Uncle Clay staring at her, even if she’s not a sensate—and she glares at him.

“You didn’t know because you didn’t
want
to know. I needed to talk to you after it happened, Clay, but I didn’t even know where you were. And after the twins were born two months early and I was so scared that they’d die, I tried to find you again, because I needed you then too. I was in such grief Ma had to take care of the kids until I could get my shit together after they were released from the hospital. Luckily, she didn’t touch another drop of booze after that night, but, damn, we were struggling. We could have used your support then, but I still didn’t know how to find you. You didn’t want to know anything about what was going on here after you left, any more than Aunt Jeana wanted to know. And when I did find you, you wouldn’t even take my calls, so I had to leave you messages. You sent me a basket of flowers and that was it. A fucking basket of flowers.”

Uncle Clay’s face crumbles.

“You blamed Ma for the years she was drunk and oblivious, but you chose to stay oblivious too once you left. You just didn’t use booze to do it. And ever since you walked out, you’ve treated Ma, me, and even the kids as though we were as bad as Dad. And maybe in some ways we were, but Ma got sober, and she’s been my strength and my help since then. And I’ve done the best I could with what I had to work with, just like her.”

“Oh, honey,” Oma says, and she goes to Mom, taking over for Peter and holding her up. After a moment, Uncle
Clay goes to them and he embraces them both. He doesn’t say he’s sorry, but his hug and his tears do.

Peter moves to put his arm around me. “You okay, Lucy?” he whispers, and I nod, even though I’m not sure I am. He draws me close, and I can hear his heartbeat through his sweater.

The room is quiet but for the soft sounds of sniffling and the scraping noise as Peter pulls out chairs so Mom and Oma and Uncle Clay can sit down.

Someone knocks at the back door, and Marie hurries to answer it. I glance up to see two men stepping inside with a gurney. While Mom and Oma and Uncle Clay sit with their heads tipped down, their hands still clasped, I turn and look into the living room and watch the men carry Grandpa Sam out the front door, a white sheet over his face. Peter helps with the doors and talks quietly with the men until they are gone.

Mitzy and Marie sit down on the couch without speaking, sharing tearful looks between them.

I turn and look back into the kitchen, and I say, “He wanted me to tell you all that he was sorry.” Mom and Uncle Clay and Oma look up. “And Mom … Uncle Clay … he wanted you both to know that he understood why you couldn’t be in the room as he was dying.”

I don’t bother saying
how
he told me, because only Oma, and probably Marie, would understand. Instead, I just tell them the important part. “He wanted you all to know that he loved you.”

We just stay where we are then. Frozen, like we’re in a play and the final scene is over, but there’s no stagehand to drop the curtain. That’s when Milo comes into the room, rushing so fast that I can feel the breeze he stirs, Feynman
thumping behind him. He grabs a cup from the dish rack and jerks the refrigerator door open. “I’m on position—” he starts to say, then he stops, his pointy head turning until he’s scanned the room. “What’s the matter?” he says. “Did Grandpa die?”

I
T IS
my first funeral, and I’m wearing a scratchy new dress, which Mitzy ran to town to buy for me when she bought the simple navy dress Mom is wearing and the black slacks and dress shirt Milo has on.

We sit in the first pew of the church Aunt Jeana found—Me and Oma, Milo, Mom, Clay, Aunt Jeana, Peter, Marie and Al (who is walking good now after his hernia surgery), and Mitzy and Ray, because we are all family.

Mom said this church isn’t a real church, because it doesn’t belong to any denomination and because they sell vitamins and make their money on a pyramid scheme, then hide their profits behind the exemptions that should be
saved for
real
churches—or for none at all. It doesn’t look like a real church either, in spite of the big wooden cross that hangs on the wall before us. It’s made out of the same planks that hold up the clotheslines out back of Grandpa Sam’s house.

The minister is wearing a white robe with a sash slung around his shoulder. It has patches on it, just like the Girl Scout sash the little girl who gave me the leaf wore outside to play in on Tuesdays, after her meetings. He is wearing round metal glasses and has a scraggly salt-and-pepper beard. The frayed cuffs of his jeans and the tips of his dirty sneakers show when he takes a step to the left or to the right. He talks about Jesus dying and about how women prepared his body for death. Then he veers off to talk about how we must honor God by tending to our bodies too. Oma’s head leans in a little farther when he starts in about the empty food we eat and how it’s God’s wish that we replace what our food doesn’t give us so that we can show our gratitude for the gift of our flesh. I glance at Aunt Jeana to see if she notices that Grandpa Sam’s ceremony is starting to sound like an infomercial, but she doesn’t seem to.

I can hear Connie Olinger sniffling, and a few other ladies too, but no one in our row is crying.

W
HEN WE
first got here, we all stood together so that the guests could give us their condolences. All of us, that is, except Mom, who went outside to sit with Peter in his SUV. Uncle Clay was talking to the guy from First National about the vineyards in Napa Valley, and Oma was trying to comfort Connie Olinger, who sobbed as though it was Barry in that casket. Barry waited beside them, nervously glancing at the door. He was wearing a short-sleeve Hawaiian print
shirt and had the sleeves rolled once, to show his new “tat”—a trout leaping from a stream.

Aunt Jeana was standing in a pool of old ladies who were ogling Chico as they talked about what a “good showing” it was, with every folding chair taken and folks standing in the back of the room and in the opened doorway. “Everybody loved Sam,” they agreed.

I went to stand by Milo for a bit, but we didn’t talk. He was off in his own little world, probably still reciting the digits of pi in his head. That’s when she walked in the door: Maude Tuttle, in her big red wig, dressed to the hilt, as Oma would say. Nordine Bickett was on her arm, her hair and makeup as pretty as her lavender flowered dress.

The old women that Aunt Jeana stood with stopped and stared, as did a few of the old men standing in circles—though unlike the ladies, they wore sly grins on their faces instead of contempt. There was silence for a moment, then the soft buzz of gossip.

I went up to Maude and Nordine and said, “Thank you for coming,” as I’d heard Oma say to many while we stood in some sort of receiving line.

“Hi, kid,” Maude said.

“Maude, Nordine … how nice of you to come.” I turned and Oma was beside me. She reached her hand out and squeezed both of theirs, and the buzzing in the room intensified.

“I thought she should come,” Maude said, jerking her head toward Nordine. “I hope you don’t mind, Lillian. Course, she could be at the Taj Mahal, for all she knows, but I still thought she should come.”

Oma nodded. “Would you like to see Sam? The service will be starting soon.”

“Crissakes,” Maude said when she saw Grandpa Sam,
his face caked in thick orangey makeup, his thin hair shellacked into crusty waves. His hands were folded on his chest, the right hand on top. “Who in the hell did his makeup?” Maude said. “He looks like a goddamn pumpkin.”

Maude shook her head, then she looked down at Nordine. “Do you know who that is, Nordine?”

Nordine stared down at Grandpa Sam, while we stared at her. Finally she said, “I don’t know. But I know I loved him very much.”

Others came up to see Grandpa Sam and talk to Oma, so I wandered off with Maude and Nordine. “Miss Tuttle,” I said when we found a spot to stand that wasn’t crowded—which wasn’t difficult, considering that folks scattered like stirred houseflies wherever Maude Tuttle stepped. “At Nordine’s house, when you said that my grandpa stopped my dad from hurting my mom, ‘one way or another,’ what exactly did you mean?”

“Still pickin’?” she asked.

“I know about the gun now. But my mom and my grandma remember it differently. Mom claims that Grandpa didn’t step in to protect her but only attacked my dad when he pointed the gun at him. Oma says that’s not true, that he stepped in the second Howard pointed the pistol at her.”

“I don’t know about that part. Your grandpa didn’t say.”