The Christmas Sweater (7 page)

W
hen I was ten years old my grandparents took me to the annual Puyallup Fair. It was
no Disneyland, but after years of roller-skating on a level driveway for thrills,
it was a welcome change. Grandma refused to go on any rides—she only liked the shows
and the FFA exhibits—and Grandpa wouldn’t go on anything that went in a circle because
it made him sick. That didn’t leave very many options; after the petting zoo, bobbing
for apples, and a slow scenic train ride (that was still too fast for Grandma), I
was ready for something bigger. I was ready for the roller coaster.

“The Coaster Thrill Ride,” as it was officially known, must’ve been named by the engineer
who’d built it. After all, what other explanation could there be for the best ride
in the park having such a boring, generic name?

Originally built in 1935 out of Douglas fir, the Coaster Thrill Ride wasn’t the biggest
or fastest coaster in the country, but it still looked plenty scary to me. It had
been destroyed by fire in the 1950s before being rebuilt, again out of wood, and it
now towered over the fair as a beacon for thrill seekers everywhere.

As Grandpa and I stood in line, we wondered out loud which train car we’d get: Or’nry
Orange, Blaz’n Blue, or Ol’ Yeller. Grandpa talked a big game the whole time we waited.
“Are you sure about this, Eddie?” he asked me. “It’s a fifty-foot drop and hits over
50 miles an hour. I can handle it. Can you?”

“Sure,” I told him, though truthfully I was anything but sure.

After finally making it to the station, we stepped into our car and lowered the safety
bar across our laps. I glanced
up at Grandpa one last time and swore I caught a glimpse of fear in his eyes.

The unmistakable clicking of the old wooden coaster’s pull chain engaged, and soon
we were heading up the first big hill. Neither Grandpa nor I said a word.

The view from the top was amazing. The car briefly paused, as if caught in gravity’s
web, and I swore I saw Grandma’s church in the distance, its steeple clock reflecting
the sun. I didn’t have a chance to look for long. We crested the hill, picked up speed,
and hurtled back toward the ground, the wooden track shaking violently beneath us.
Grandpa squeezed my hand and told me not to be afraid.

I didn’t realize until years later that he was actually holding my hand tighter than
I was holding his.

Now, as Grandpa and I stood together at my mother’s wake, he was once again squeezing
my hand tight. I didn’t know who was comforting whom, but it was the only thing that
kept me from running out the door.

I found out later that Mom had fallen asleep at the wheel. We’d drifted off the road
and flipped in a ditch. I didn’t have a scratch on me, but Mom had broken her neck.
Doctors and friends kept telling me that she had died instantly, that she hadn’t felt
any pain—like that somehow made it all okay, but it didn’t. I wanted my mother back.
She wasn’t supposed to die. Not then, not now, and certainly not “instantly.” I never
said good-bye, but, more important, I never told her that I was sorry. Now she would
never know.

“Oh, Eddie.” Aunt Cathryn hugged me tight, her eyes swollen and red and her voice
uncharacteristically soft. “I’m so sorry.” She tried to keep talking, but her words
didn’t make any sense.

Mrs. Benson and the others from the nursing home were there as well. But there wasn’t
any cheek-pinching or caroling now, just tears and tender hugs. I wondered if I would
ever see any of them again.

Grandma said it would upset me if I touched Mom’s
hand, but I didn’t care, I couldn’t possibly be any more upset than I already was.
I went up to her casket. She didn’t seem real. She didn’t look like my mother at all—she
looked more like one of the mannequins she used to dress at Sears. So still. So peaceful.
Her soft hand, which used to push the hair out of my eyes, now lay lifeless across
her chest, clutching a rosary. She was wearing a dress I had never seen before and
makeup I was sure she had never bought.

I reached out to touch her and noticed that I was wearing my Christmas sweater. I
didn’t even remember putting it on.

I wanted to cry. Actually, I felt like I
should
have cried, but as I stood there holding my mother’s hand, I was surprised to find
that all I felt was anger. I was angry at a lot of people, but no one more than God.
He’d now taken both my father and my mother. Why? What had they ever done to deserve
that? God could’ve saved them from disease and car wrecks, but he’d chosen not to.
God could’ve answered my prayers, but instead he’d ignored them. God hadn’t been there
when my father had prayed for a second chance. He
hadn’t been there when my mother had prayed for a blessed Christmas. And he obviously
wasn’t there now.

Grandpa must’ve sensed the transformation in my emotions. Just as I was about to collapse
under the weight of all that I had been through and all that I still had to go through,
he put his strong arms around me, pulled me close, and whispered three words that
I didn’t understand at the time but that have stayed with me ever since:
“All is well.”

But with everything I loved once again lying in a casket, he couldn’t have been more
wrong. Nothing was well. Nothing ever would be well again.

The months after my mother’s death and funeral compressed themselves into a single
point. I knew I was there, but my memories were like stories told by someone else.
The fogginess lasted a long time. I didn’t live the time after the accident so much
as I watched it unfold.

I moved to my grandparents’ farm. My room at their house looked a lot like my old
one, except the water spot
on the ceiling was gone and I could always hear the chickens in the morning and the
cows in the afternoon through my bedroom window. Their house smelled like bacon and
fresh bread twenty-four hours a day, scents that always reminded me where I was and
why I was there.

I quickly became consumed with myself and what had happened to me. It was pretty easy
to do. God obviously had it out for me, and now I had nothing but time to wonder why.

My old friends called in the beginning to see how I was doing, but being outside of
bike-ride range made it tough to get together. Of course, I didn’t have a bike, so
that didn’t really matter anyway.

Aunt Cathryn tried to call a few times as well, but it was awkward, because neither
of us really knew how to talk to each other without Mom. Since long-distance calling
was a luxury, it didn’t take long for us to lose touch.

Grandpa and I still made trips into town to buy feed or wire or whatever was written
on the scrap of paper tucked into his shirt pocket. He hadn’t changed, but I had.
My mood was dark. I was angry. After a few trips I quit
going voluntarily, and Grandpa stopped trying to make it fun. They became quick, silent,
and all about getting what we were sent for and getting home as quickly as possible.
After a few more trips like that, Grandpa quit dragging me along.

One trip that didn’t stop was our weekly visit to Grandma’s church. We never missed
a service. But there were no more games to pass the time; Grandpa didn’t want to be
distracted. “Be respectful,” he would gently whisper during the sermon, “I’m trying
to listen. You should too.”

After mass ended, Grandma and Grandpa would usually sit in the front pew by themselves,
put their heads down, and pray. I would stand in the back and wait for them. Sometimes
I’d try to rearrange the prayer candles to create a pattern; other times I’d play
with the holy water—but mostly I was just bored. I didn’t even feel close to Dad there
anymore—it was like he and God had decided to abandon me at the same time.

After a few weekends of watching my grandparents fool themselves into thinking God
would help, I made a decision: They could make me go to church, but they
couldn’t make me listen. Grandpa might have thought he could find answers at church,
but I already had mine:
God was dead.
It wasn’t that he didn’t exist; he just didn’t exist for
me.
He heard my prayers and decided to ignore them, so now I would ignore Him right back.

I would make Him suffer as much as He was making me.

With no trips into town, Grandpa quickly manufactured other opportunities to guide
his wayward grandson. Good weather brought a change in chores, and he decided it was
worth forcing me to help him.

Grandpa believed that hardware stores and lumberyards were only good for nails. After
all, why pay for wood and windows when you could get them free from old barns or outbuildings?
Grandpa had turned getting free supplies into a sport. Once he spotted a target, he
would stop and ask the owner if he could relieve him of his broken-down eyesore. Usually
the owner was so glad to have somebody haul the dilapidated building away that he’d
jump at Grandpa’s offer.

Once in a while someone would offer to sell him the
wood, but Grandpa would politely decline. He never, ever paid for something that he
could get for free. In some cases, if the person trying to get him to pay had just
moved from Seattle, or, worse, some big city in California, Grandpa would talk them
into paying him to remove the free supplies. He said that it was good for them to
learn how things worked “out here in the sticks with us yokels.”

Grandpa kept all the spare wood and windows he collected behind his barn. It had all
been stacked hastily over the years and was in serious disarray. One day he led me
back there, showed me the pile, and told me that he and I were going to build a new
chicken house. I wasn’t exactly excited, but when he told me that all of the supplies
first needed to be moved, stacked, and organized, I was downright angry. I couldn’t
believe it. It would take me forever.

Grandpa walked away for a few minutes and soon came back with two glasses of lemonade.
He saw that I was struggling to move a large railroad tie, so he quickly put the glasses
down and rushed over to my side to grab an end.

“Don’t bother,” I told him. “I’ve got it.” I was so angry
that he was dumping all this work on my shoulders that I didn’t even want him around
me. Grandpa had never seen me like this before. Quite frankly, neither had I.

Grandpa backed off immediately, picked up his glass, took a sip, and stood there watching
me for a few minutes. I didn’t say a word. I didn’t even look at him. I wanted him
to know that while I was going to finish his stupid chore, I wasn’t going to make
him feel good about it. Finally, as he turned to leave he said simply, “Let me know
when you’re done, Eddie.”

Every couple of hours or so Grandpa would peek around the back of the barn to see
how I was doing or to bring me another lemonade from the house. Each time he would
ask me the same question: “Eddie, are you done yet?”

As the days passed, Grandpa’s visits didn’t get any less frequent. He’d watch as I
would struggle to lift and drag heavy beams from one part of the farm to another.
He never even offered the obvious advice that it would have been wise to remove the
old nails before moving the wood.

A few times I saw him sitting on the back porch, laughing as he told tall tales to
our neighbor David. Another time I came around the corner to get a drink of water
out of the hose and saw him sleeping in the hammock. The sound of the spigot being
turned woke him up, and our eyes met. “Are you done yet?” he asked me. I was seething.

What a joke,
I thought to myself.
Now I know why Grandpa is handling Mom’s death so well. He’s happy to have me at the
farm because he finally has someone to do all the hard work, all of his work, for
free.

With an increasingly sore body, and hands covered in cuts and slivers, my rage grew
every time Grandpa asked me if I was done yet. How could someone be so coldhearted
as to watch their own grandson struggle and never once even offer to help?

About four days into my task, Grandpa came out with more lemonade, looked me right
in the eyes, and recited the same question he’d been asking all along: “Are you done
yet?” I just about went crazy. “Are you kidding me?” I shouted back at him. “Look
at this pile. It will be days be
fore I can move all of this. If you’re in such a hurry, maybe you could stop entertaining
guests, taking naps, or trying to ease your conscience by bringing me stupid lemonade
and offer to help me instead.”

Grandpa looked at me sadly. “Eddie, I have offered to help you. I offered the first
day, and I’ve offered every couple of hours since.”

“When?” I shouted, bending down to continue my work. “All you’ve ever asked is when
I’m gonna be done.”

“No, Eddie, that may be what you’ve heard, but that’s not what I’ve been asking.”
His voice was steady and calm. “I’ve been asking if
you
were done yet.”

“Oh, sorry, Mr. English Professor.” I had never been this disrespectful to my grandfather.
I felt myself changing, and while that scared me, I wasn’t sure how to stop it—and
a growing part of me didn’t even want to.

Grandpa grabbed me and, for the first and only time in my life, slapped me across
the face. Tears welled up in his eyes.

He was quiet for a few moments as he collected himself. When he spoke again, his voice
was soft. “When I
showed you all of this work the other day, I said ‘we’ were going to build a new chicken
coop. I didn’t say ‘I,’ and I certainly didn’t say ‘you.’ I never intended for you
to do all this work yourself. You just assumed it. When I offered to help, you told
me ‘not to bother.’ If you remember correctly, that is the first time I asked you
to let me know when you were done. I didn’t mean done with the chore, I meant to let
me know when you were done moping around. When are you going to be done feeling sorry
for yourself? Done thinking that the world is against you?

“The world
isn’t
against you, Eddie,” he continued. “
You
are against you. You have to realize that no one is meant to carry the load alone.
We’re all in this together. Once you realize that you can ask for help, your whole
world will change.”