“Warm,” she says. “Like when somebody says, ‘I think I love you.’”
A girl’s never told me that. Nana frequently says, “I love you,” and it feels good unless she adds the “cutie patootie” part and somebody’s listening.
“You should go swimming,” I say.
“The water’s too cold for me. You have no idea what it’s like to freeze.”
“It’s bad.”
“How bad?”
“You can become dehydrated, numb, and get frostbite, and the entire body is affected,” I say. “When I was eight, I sneaked outside to play in the snow. I tried to make a snowman, but he turned out to be creepy. My grandmother caught me before I could give him arms or legs or a smiling face. She wrapped a blanket around me.” I shrug.
“I was dressed in pajamas and wasn’t wearing shoes. Back then, I didn’t understand that I could’ve gotten frostbite and end up losing fingers or toes. I’d like to know the feel of snow on my skin or in my mouth, but she scared me when she said I could lose a limb, so I never did that again.”
“Cold is like somebody you care about telling you they don’t care any longer,” Luna says.
I nod. I like how she simplifies things. Sometimes I wish I could switch the inside and outside of me, but then I’d have guts hanging all over the place.
There are things I can try to fix, but I can’t fix me. Not feeling pain or temperature are my weaknesses. It’s the way I am. It’s like kryptonite and Superman.
I swim for about fifteen minutes, and then I go underwater to practice holding my breath. It will make my lungs stronger, and it’s fun to do something that most people can’t do.
The next thing I know, Luna’s in the water grabbing me under the arms. She pulls me to the shallow part and holds on to me.
I don’t see the point in letting her go. I look into her green eyes. I smile at her. At the same time she’s panting and shivering and asking me if I’m okay. “You were under for four minutes,” she says.
It didn’t seem like four minutes. For the moment it’s just the two of us looking at each other, and I’m not about to make her mad or embarrass her by saying I wasn’t drowning. “I’m okay now. Thank you,” I say. I think I’m feeling warm. “You better change clothes before you freeze to death.”
We climb out of the pool. She takes a couple of steps toward me. “I work for you,” she says and pushes me into the pool.
Luna leaves early, and I think it’s because she’s mad at me. I don’t understand her, and she doesn’t understand me. I wish she did. I wish I hadn’t crossed an invisible line.
I’m in my room when I hear Nana arguing with the sitter.
“I’m going, and nobody’s going to stop me,” Nana says.
That sounds like something she’d normally say.
“Calm down,” the sitter says.
I go to Nana’s door. It’s open. She has her shoes on, heading toward me, pushing the walker. The sitter’s holding on to her arm.
“She only wants to walk around,” I say. And that’s good. That will help her get stronger.
“Call Spencer,” Nana says.
“Why?”
“It’s your grandfather’s birthday. We’re going to the cemetery, and you’re getting your driver’s license.”
“It’s okay,” I tell the sitter. “She always goes to the cemetery this time of year.”
I’m a little worried about the driver’s license part.
“This is an emergency,” Nana says to the sitter. “David wants a driver’s license, and I’m going to be the one to take him. It’s a life event.”
That makes sense to me. I probably have forty hours of practice by my way of counting.
But I should ask Spencer in person so that he doesn’t feel like he has to do us a favor. We haven’t talked to each other in a while, and he seems to be avoiding me. He’s been busy with Cassandra and getting ready to graduate. He doesn’t have time to hang out.
“I’ll be right back,” I say.
I cross the road in front of my house and then head down a path to his house. His house is kinda small, so we’ve never hung out there. I can hear kids yelling as they play in his backyard. Last year, Spencer’s dad lost his job, and now his parents run a day care.
On his porch is a box. I pick it up and knock. His mom answers, smiles, and invites me inside. She takes the box and says she’s glad the graduation invitations have finally arrived. She wants me to come to Spencer’s graduation, but it’s going to be on the football field, and it’ll be hot. The ceremony will take a couple of hours. “Maybe you can come for part of it?”
“I’ll try,” I say. I could’ve been graduating with Spencer. If I could go back in time, I’d go to school and not have tutors.
Spencer comes into the room.
“Nana would like for you to drive us to the cemetery and to get my license,” I say. “If you’re not too busy.”
“No problem,” Spencer says. “I have to find my wallet.”
We go to his room, and he searches through the clothes on his floor. I take a look at a college brochure on his desk. I imagine myself going to college, but only for a couple of seconds. I need a driver’s license to get anywhere.
On the way out, Spencer’s mom tells me that if I need help during the day, I’m welcome at their day care. It’s awkward. It’s embarrassing. Why does everybody think I’m helpless?
The sitter’s car isn’t in the driveway, and Nana’s not in her room.
We hurry through the house, calling her. We find her alone in the study.
“Where’s the sitter?” I ask.
“She scratched me, and I fired her.”
Nana has a small scratch on her forearm, probably from when the sitter was trying to keep her in her room. She tells me to open the fireproof safe. She can’t remember the combination.
Spencer’s shaking his head in an I-can’t-believe-this kind of way.
I’ve come this far. I’m getting my license today.
I thumb through the important papers: my passport and social security card, a copy of her will, an advance directive with my name on it, stocks, and my birth certificate. I take it and start trembling. It feels like the beginning of the end. I feel like a monster for being more afraid of what’s going to happen to me.
“I love this car,” Spencer says about the BMW. Actually, it belonged to Grandpa.
“Then it’s yours,” Nana says.
I glance back at Nana. She’s holding a sheet of paper with about ten things on it. She likes to make lists of things to do or else she forgets. I drum my fingers on the console. I wonder if she ever had a bucket list.
“I can’t take it,” Spencer says.
“I have already arranged for you to have it,” she says.
“Thank you.” Spencer smiles and looks over at me. “Relax. The test is easy.”
“You don’t have to act like we’re friends just because Nana gave you a car we don’t want,” I say.
Spencer stares straight ahead. “We are friends, and I’m allowed to be annoyed with you. I get annoyed with my brothers and sisters all the time.”
When we pass the elementary school, I turn my head and glance at it. It’s changed over the years. There’s a new playground now and about twice as many buildings. Nana let me restart school for a while so I’d be around other kids. I only made it to second grade. I always had trouble paying attention. One day my class went to the auditorium to hear an author speak. I sat next to the teacher’s aide who was assigned to supervise me. She was wearing a fuzzy sweater. My arm brushed up against it. Fascinated, I touched the sweater with my hand, rubbing it over and over. My brain was thinking, This is what a cute lamb feels like, and I was seeing one in my head.
Finally, the aide went over to the teacher and whispered to her. She took me to the principal’s offic
e, and Nana was called. Nana later said I shouldn’t do stuff like that. It’s inappropriate. I didn’t mean anything by it. I only liked the feel of a lamb against my skin. School was awful after that. The kids—and my friends—somehow found out what happened and called me “freak” and “pervert.” I got into a lot of fights. I bled a lot.
Nana and Grandpa fought for me. They tried to explain why touch was so important for me. But the thing is, what’s best for me didn’t fit the school policies. The school wanted me in special ed. Grandpa decided to hire tutors. He said it was cheaper paying for the best teachers than risking my future.
At the DMV, I flunk my road exam. I bet I’m the only person in the world who failed the test. I was nervous. I only shake my head when I walk out of the DMV.
“Sorry,” Spencer says.
I smile at him, and he places his arm across my shoulder. I don’t look his way again as we head slowly to the car with Nana pushing her walker next to me. What if I fail at everything else on my bucket list? Walking between the two of them, I’m feeling like I’m smothering in a box and can’t get out. I shove Spencer’s arm off my shoulders and walk ahead of them.
“It’s not the end of the world,” Spencer calls to me.
He’s right. I’ll be seeing the world from the balcony at Twin Falls.
On the way to the cemetery, I’m thinking nothing can turn me into a normal person: not a license or a car, or even a mom or a dad or a girlfriend or a million dollars.
Spencer turns into the gravel parking lot between the two-hundred-year-old church—no longer used except for a few community events—and the small cemetery, the final resting place for Grandpa’s family, which includes a few soldiers, farmers, a teacher, a doctor, and four children. Before Grandpa died, we’d come here for picnics.
Oak trees shade the cemetery. There aren’t any other cars or people around. It’s so quiet I can hear the grass growing.
Spencer stays in the car texting Cass. They text each other all the time. I don’t know how Spencer gets anything done.
“Need help?” I ask Nana as she gets out of the car. She shakes her head and says she doesn’t need help to go to the bathroom. I watch her as she pushes her walker to the church door.
“I’ll keep an eye on her,” Spencer says.
I walk over to Grandpa’s grave and say hello to him. His headstone reads Return to sender. That was his idea.
“What’s new? How are things on the farm?” I ask.
I give him time to send me some sort of sign. I don’t see anything different except a squirrel in the oak tree.
“I flunked my driving test today,” I say. “I couldn’t parallel park. I kept backing over the orange cone, and the examiner laughed at me. If you get bored, feel free to haunt him. Nana is okay, and she’s planning to head to the farm soon. I’m going to be fine.” I see her coming my way. Spencer’s helping her walk with the walker.
Next I walk over to Noel Peeples’ grave. She never has flowers or visitors.
Then I go see Seth and say hello. Somebody’s left him a teddy bear.
Leaning against a tree trunk, I watch Nana bend over Grandpa’s grave, her long, white hair falling in front of her face. She talks for longer than usual. I watch a squirrel watching me. I’m glad it isn’t a zombie. You can imagine anything in a cemetery, especially when you want to forget failing.
Nana’s grave site is next to Grandpa’s. My grave site is next to hers. I don’t like to look at mine.
Grandpa had a heart problem, and whenever he had chest pain, he’d take a nitroglycerin pill under his tongue. Afterward he’d get a headache from the medicine. I was amazed that one tiny white pill could cause so much pain.
One afternoon I was sitting on his bed. I tried one of the pills to make myself get a headache. It didn’t work, so I tried another one. It didn’t do anything.
I stood to put the pills away, and that’s all I remember. The next thing I knew, paramedics were putting me onto a stretcher and elevating my legs. I was practically standing on my head.
That ambulance ride was great.
I didn’t have to stay in the hospital. My blood pressure had dropped dangerously low from the nitroglycerin, and I fainted. No big deal, but Grandpa started keeping his bottle of nitroglycerin inside his shirt pocket where he could get to it quickly, and it was safe from me.
One day Grandpa said, “You’re changing. You’re becoming a man.”
To me that meant I was closer to dying, and I was only ten years old. The next morning when I got up, I said hello to myself in the mirror and listened to my voice. I didn’t sound like a man, and I smiled at myself.
Not long after, Grandpa went to the hospital and never came back except in my thoughts and sometimes in my dreams. He has his arms folded across his chest and he’s saying to me, “Where’s my nitroglycerin?”
It’s evening, and I get my laptop. I go into Nana’s room and sit in the recliner.
Nana reaches for her bottle of pain pills.
“You took a pill after dinner,” I say. I pick up the bottle and read the label. “You are supposed to take one every four hours.”
“I’m hurting,” she says. She looks so small when she leans forward in her bed and slumps her shoulders. “I’m worn out.”
I don’t know what to do. “I think a pain pill takes a while to work.” I don’t know. I have never taken a pain pill in my whole life. I take off the cap and then twist it back on so it’s child-proof. “I’ll tell you when it’s time.” I set the bottle on the table.
“I’m losing my mind,” she says. “If something happens to me…don’t let the paramedics…doctors do anything,” she says, out of breath. “Understand?”
I look away. “I know.” I can’t take this. I email Joe.
Need a new sitter immediately. Maybe a nurse.
Joe calls and I tell him what happened with the sitter. Then I tell him we went to the DMV and cemetery.
“You’ve been sending me the same email every evening,” he says.
“It has the important parts,” I say. “Me flunking a driver’s test isn’t important to anybody but me.”
“You’re wrong, David,” he says.
Chapter 12
It’s Sunday afternoon, and I didn’t go swimming because it’s raining. I’m in the kitchen with Luna. She’s wearing casual pants and a shirt because she went to church.
Nana and I don’t go to church. You never know what Nana might say or do.
Last time we went, Nana said loudly that the sermon was making her sleepy, and her butt was numb. The people in front of us turned, looked at her, and shushed her. Some kids laughed. I felt sad and remembered how I was laughed at when I was a little boy dressed in goggles and a helmet.
I hear a crash. Luna and I jump up from the table and rush upstairs to Nana’s room. She’s pulling out a dresser drawer. It hits the floor with a bang. Three other dresser drawers are turned upside down, and the contents are piled up like garbage. The sitter’s in the chair by the bed. A family album is lying open on the floor to the pictures of my dad’s high-school graduation. He gave a speech that night, and Nana probably cried with happiness.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“I’m cleaning out the drawers.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I say.
“She wants to do it by herself,” the sitter says. “She doesn’t want help.”
I wouldn’t want anybody going through my stuff either.
Now Nana’s crawling around on the floor. This could get embarrassing.
“What are you doing?” I ask Nana.
“I lost my glasses.”
I look around, see them on the floor, and give them to her. Luna and I help her up and back to her bed.
She puts on the glasses. “These are not my glasses.”
I ta
ke the glasses, walk around the room, and then give them back to her. Nana’s having one of her bad days. She has a lot of them. They’re going to get worse.
Nana blinks. “I told you these are not my glasses,” she says in a mean voice.
I want to scream. I say, “Yes, they are,” and she says, “No, they aren’t,” and then I say, “I’ll look for them.” Things have been getting lost after being put somewhere and then forgotten. Car keys, house keys, a car title, a sticker for a new car tag, Nana’s wallet, her mind.
Nana points at Luna. “That woman is a thief and a whore. All she wants is your money.”
Luna heads out of the room.
There’s no point in arguing with Nana. She’ll only get sweaty and short of breath, and she doesn’t know what she’s saying. I pick up a garbage bag of stuff and get out of there. I’m pretty sure her glasses are in the bag.
In the kitchen, I open the bag of garbage and dump everything onto the floor. Luna and I sort through it. It’s weird. It’s like Luna knew exactly what I intended to do with the bag.
“Nana didn’t mean what she said,” I say.
“I know. I was agitating her. That’s why I left.”
The bag contains mostly underwear and pajamas.
Then I pull out a graduation cap and a gown. Both are dark blue. “Look,” I say to Luna. “I think this was my dad’s.” I’m not throwing away his cap and gown. It’s bad luck.
“Uh-huh,” she says and holds up the glasses.
I take the rest of the throwaway clothes to the garage. I’m thinking that when people start getting rid of stuff, they’re getting ready to die.
I walk back into the kitchen. “You need to get out of here for a while,” Luna says. “You’re losing it. Want to go for ice cream?”
I know I’m losing my mind.
“It gets to me too,” Luna says.
“She’s better when her medicine kicks in,” I say. “But it doesn’t last.”
Luna’s driving her old Toyota, even though the Lexis has been repaired. The rain’s stopped, and I’m keeping time to a song on the radio.
She drives around the square in Waterly.
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