Thank You for All Things

by Sandra Kring

  We get the bird feeder and seed, then go to the health-food store, where a pasty-looking, thin-as-a-bookmark woman with blotchy skin helps Mom find the herbal remedies on Oma’s list, all except for the xuan fu ha, which she says they don’t have but could order, to which Mom says, “Forget it.”

  “Oh, Mom,” I say as the clerk starts ringing up our purchases. “Oma wants us to pick up some lemongrass tea too. She forgot to put it on her list. And we’re supposed to ask for a tea that will help Grandpa’s mind function better. Help his memory.”

  “Oh!” the pasty woman says with more vigor than you’d think possible for someone so pallid. “There are several herbs that help fight memory loss. Gingko biloba, DHEA, gotu—”

  “Just what’s on the list,” Mom says. “And the lemon-whatever.”

  The woman plucks another box off the shelf behind her and sets it down by the organic bananas and a few other boxes. “Lemongrass tea increases your psychic powers,” she says as she’s ringing up our purchases. Mom looks stressed already, so I don’t mention that Oma wants it for exactly that purpose: When she gets back to Chicago, she is going to interview for a job with a psychic hotline. The plan is to boost her abilities with herbal remedies and practice ’til then.

  We put our purchases in the car, then walk down the street toward the Rexall. We aren’t even past the Dollar Tree when a voice calls out Mom’s name.

  A woman jaywalking across the street is waving her arms at us as she runs on her tiptoes, her dark, chin-length curls bobbing. She is young, petite, and cheerleader-cute.

  “Oh, my God! It is you!” the woman shouts, and Mom cries out, “Mitzy!”

  They hug, Mitzy bouncing in Mom’s arms.

  “What are you doing back in Timber Falls?”

  Mom cringes. “Just drove Ma here. She’s determined to take care of Dad until he croaks.”

  Mitzy takes Mom’s hands and pulls back, and they swing their arms like they are dance partners. “Oh, you look terrific! Trim as ever.”

  “You look the same too,” Mom says, to which Mitzy says, “Cut the crap. I’m fifteen pounds heavier, and all of it in my hips. But what the hell, that’s life, huh?” Mitzy laughs with her whole body, like a baby.

  “Oh, my God, is this your daughter?” Mitzy says. She is only about two inches taller than I am, so she doesn’t need to look down as she examines me.

  “Yes. This is Lucy.”

  Mitzy rescues my hair from the breeze and pats it to my shoulder. She taps my cheek. “Aw,” she says, “you’re beautiful.” In reality, I’m just slightly above average in appearance, but because Mitzy doesn’t strike me as the type to give false praise, I decide that she thinks all children are beautiful.

  “Milo, my son, is back at the house.”

  “We’re twins,” I add.

  “You are? Oh, wow.” I’m relieved that Mitzy doesn’t ask if we are identical twins, as many people do, even though any village idiot should be able to see the absurdity in such a question.

  “Oh, Tess, I’ve thought of you so many times. How on earth did we let ourselves lose touch for this long? What’s it been, twelve years, thirteen years?”

  Mom and Mitzy are talking over each other as we shuffle from side to side to make room for people passing by on the narrow sidewalk, until Mitzy asks if we have time for coffee so they can catch up.

  We go to a little place called Coffee Beans, Incorporated, which I quickly learn used to be Sparks, a restaurant where Mitzy and Mom would stop for Diet Pepsi and cheese pizza. The place is cramped with heavy, pale wooden chairs and tables, and one wall is lined with booths sporting thick teal-blue cushions. The walls are decorated with prints and country-style crafts tagged with price stickers. Fake ivy and clear Christmas lights are strung from the ceiling, and tables with more craft items are tucked here and there. “Wow, this place sure looks different,” Mom says.

  Mitzy leads the way to the counter, and we examine a menu written in pink on a chalkboard. We decide we’re ready for lunch, so we order three tuna croissants and a nonfat decaf for Mitzy, a vanilla latte with whipped cream for Mom, and a hot chocolate for me, then we slip into a booth.

  “God, I can’t believe you’re here!” Mitzy says. “I missed you so much. We have so much to cover. How’s your mom? Where are you living now? Oh, tell me everything!”

  “Well, Ma’s gone New Age nuts,” Mom says, nodding her head slowly. “Reiki, tai chi, feng shui, Pilates, you name it, she does it.”

  “Your mom?” Mitzy’s laughter is like the tinkling of wind chimes.

  “Yes. She even has an ‘intuitive,’ for crissakes.”

  “An intuitive?”

  “Yeah. You know, a psychic.”

  They both roar with laughter—causing me to glare at Mom—and when they finish, Mitzy says, “Well, I suppose she needed something, and whatever works for her, the more power to her. And your dad? How’s he? I heard about his strokes.”

  “He’s deteriorating,” Mom says. “Fast, I guess.”

  Mitzy bites the inside of her cheek as she studies Mom. “Is it hard, seeing him again?”

  “Yeah,” Mom admits. She glances over at me and squirms against the cushion. “Lucy, go wash your hands, please.”

  I hold my hands out and flip them over. “They’re clean!” I know why she wants me to get lost, of course, but I just like funning her now and then.

  “Go,” she says.

  WHEN I come out, Mom suggests I look around at all the “pretty” things. I roll my eyes, but I do what I’m told. I examine reprints on the wall and the chunky wooden angels and animals on the tables. I wait for Mom and Mitzy to lean across the table, their mouths both going, until I figure that they’ve forgotten about me, then I wander close enough to hear them. I kneel down behind Mitzy’s side of the booth, as if I’m examining figurines on the bottom shelves of a display case.

  “… this robust, stomping, strong-bodied man who was larger than life,” Mom is saying. “And I look at him now: skin sagging from his bones, jowls limp, deadpan eyes. In diapers, after today, and it’s … I don’t know. Confusing, I guess.”

  Mitzy groans. “I always felt so bad about the way he treated you guys. God, you remember graduation day? What a nightmare that turned out to be. Clay taking off for who-knew-where, not bothering to stay in town for the ceremony for your sake, at least. I knew how much you wanted the two of you to march together. And then your dad had to go and make the day even worse.

  “I remember we were all standing together in the hall, right after the ceremony: you and me, your mom and dad, my folks, and Walker came up to you—a dick, always, that guy, but playing the proper principal at the moment—and Mr. Louis came, and couple of other teachers joined us too, though I can’t remember who …”

  “Reynolds, and Lukes,” Mom fills in.

  “Yeah. Anyway, I remember how Mr. Louis congratulated you on your scholarship. He was polite enough not to mention that Clay didn’t show up to receive his. He shook your hand, then he turned to your folks and said, ‘You must be very proud of this young lady. Salutatorian, president of the National Honor Society, four-year gold medalist at the state forensics competition …’ He went on and on, listing all of your accomplishments. Your mom was looking at the medallions hanging around your neck as he praised you, and she looked so proud. She put her arm around your shoulder and tipped her head down to press it against yours. It was so sweet! And then your dad destroyed the whole moment with one line: ‘Second place. Shit. You might as well come in last if that’s the best you can do. My boy knew that. That’s why he didn’t bother coming today. He didn’t want to humiliate himself.’

  “I could have slapped him, Tess, and I think Mr. Louis wanted to, too.”

  “Yeah, well …”

  “Louis adored you, of course. He jumped to your defense, saying that you were the brightest, most talented student he’d seen in his thirty years of teaching. That you could write description and sympathetic characters far better than m
ost published authors twice your age, and he said that you’d make your mark on the publishing world one day.”

  I can feel Mom’s unease right through the wood between us, and I know that she’s thinking of her Christian romance novel and hoping Mr. Louis never learns that she’s Jennifer Dollman.

  “It should have been such a wonderful day for you, but he ruined the whole thing with that damn comment. He even ruined things for your ma. She had been shoving aside any bit of extra money she could squeeze out of your dad for how many months to buy you that word processor. She was so excited to give it to you after the ceremony, but considering how he turned the day into crap, even that excitement was spoiled for her—or maybe not. You know your mom.”

  “Word processors. Unreal how archaic they seem already, isn’t it?” Mom says. Then, “Enough about me. We haven’t even talked about you yet. How’s Brian? Any children? I feel so guilty not knowing any of these things, so tell me anything, and everything, please.”

  “Brian and I aren’t together anymore, Tess. We divorced almost five years ago.”

  “Oh, Mitzy!” Mom says, and she sounds genuinely surprised and sorry. I stand up and move to stand next to a shelf filled with porcelain rabbits where I can not only hear them but also see them.

  “And I was pregnant twice, but I don’t have any children. I had my first miscarriage when I was two and a half months along, and then a year later I gave birth to Dylan, fourteen weeks early. The hospital didn’t even have a breathing tube small enough to get down his throat. He cried when he was born, his cry as tiny as the mew of a newborn kitten. They called for the medicopter to take him to the preemie unit in Marshfield but canceled the call because he was failing so fast. They knew he couldn’t hold his own until the helicopter got there.”

  I don’t have to try to be still when I overhear this. My whole body stops, even my breath.

  “Ohhhh, Mitzy.” Mom’s voice sounds muffled, as if she’s speaking while underwater. I glance up and see that she has her fingers pressed over her mouth. I’ve noticed that this is a gesture people make when they hear something tragic. A gesture, I figure, that is probably innate and goes back to the caveman days, when the instinct to hush oneself when danger was lurking was necessary in order to avoid being preyed upon. Back when I came up with it, I told Milo my theory and he verbally discounted it, but I could tell he was impressed.

  “It’s hard to lose a premature baby,” Mitzy says. “To everyone—even my mom—it was a pregnancy I lost. A dream of what might have been, like my early miscarriage. But I lost a baby that time. One I could see, and hear, and hold. One who died in my arms. I didn’t just lose a dream of a baby, I lost a child. I’m not even sure that Brian realized the difference, since, of course, I cried plenty the first time too.

  “He was off playing a softball game when I went into labor, and I had no way to reach him. He stayed out drinking with the guys, and by the time he got home and saw Mom’s note, Dylan had been dead for five hours. They asked him if he wanted to see him, but he said no. I held that baby for two hours after he died—until they gave me an injection and pried him from my arms—but he didn’t even want to glance at our son? God, I hated him for that.”

  Mitzy twirls her mug to the right and then to the left, back and forth, back and forth. “It’s no wonder our marriage fell apart after that. I was so grief-stricken that I even cried in my sleep the first two weeks.”

  “Of course you did. Of course,” Mom says softly.

  “I know now that men handle grief differently—and Brian was really still a boy then. But at the time, I looked at him, running off to play ball, or to fish, or to sit and shoot the bull with his buddies down at Hap’s Tap while I was at home breaking into a million pieces, and I saw it as him not caring.”

  “Of course,” Mom says.

  “We knew it was going to be a boy, so I’d painted the nursery blue and put up a border of little footballs, basketballs, baseballs. When I got home from the hospital, the room was stripped. Brian’s mother had done it. Packed all of the shower gifts away, took the border down. I know she thought she was doing me a favor—getting rid of anything that might remind me of my baby, as if that would help me forget—but it was the wrong thing to do. I held such a grudge that I told Brian I didn’t want her in my house anymore. He reminded me that she’d lost her first grandchild too, and he wasn’t going to even ask her where Dylan’s things were.

  “The wooden rocking chair was still in the room, cluttered by the old spare bedroom set Brian’s mother had moved back up from the basement, and I’d sit in that chair rocking for hours, holding myself and crying. Brian couldn’t take it. One night when he came home drunk and found me rocking, he lost it, telling me to get over it already.”

  Mom puts her hand over her mouth again, then removes it and takes Mitzy’s hand. “Oh, how that must have hurt,” Mom says, sounding more like Oma than Mom. “I can’t believe Brian would say such a thing. Well, I’m not doubting you, I’m just saying that Brian … he was always so …” She reaches out with her other hand and takes both of Mitzy’s.

  “He was drunk. Really drunk. As he was most of the time by then.”

  “But still, that’s no excuse. God, that pisses me off. That baby was his son too. Oh, Mitzy. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you. I didn’t know. Had I, I would have come, no matter where I was or what was going on with me.”

  Mitzy dabs at her eyes. “I thought of calling you. You were my best friend, Tess, but how could I have called when I wasn’t there for you when you needed me the most?” They mumble apologies, then Mitzy says with a sad, slow laugh, “Remember when the only thing we feared about pregnancy was getting fat and getting stretch marks?”

  “Yeah,” Mom says. “Ironic, isn’t it?”

  Mom looks up, scanning the room to find me, and I quickly grab a wooden ornament off the shelf and pretend I’m admiring it. I start humming to show her just how wrapped up in my own little world I am.

  “About two weeks after that incident, Brian had three of his buddies over, helping him build a deck. He’d wanted a deck for some time, and his folks bought us a kit for our anniversary. I couldn’t have cared less. Anyway, I was in the kitchen making subs for their lunch when Brian came in and headed for the nursery. When he came back through the kitchen, I could see he had something tucked under his arm. It wasn’t hard to guess what it was.

  “Brian had won a football—signed by Brett Favre—in a raffle right after we learned that I was carrying a boy. He decided to put it away and give it to Dylan on his tenth birthday. When I went outside to see what he was up to, there he was, tossing that football into the air as he dove off the unfinished deck, reenacting some play or other, I guess. His dumb friends were laughing. He got to his feet and was about to toss it to one of them, and I just went nuts.

  “I charged him. Clawing and kicking at him. And when I got the ball from him, I dropped to my knees and bawled until spit was stringing out of my mouth. The guys left in a hurry, of course, and Brian just stood there staring at me, his fists clenched.

  “I knew I was acting crazy, but I couldn’t stop myself. I wanted him to stop me. To hold me and tell me that he understood. That I’d feel better in time. That he loved me. Anything. Instead, he told me, ‘I’m outta here,’ and he left.”

  Mom lets go of Mitzy’s hands so Mitzy can rummage in her purse for a Kleenex. After she blows her nose, she looks up at Mom and continues.

  “I never heard from him after the divorce, but every year on Dylan’s birthday there’s a basket of fresh flowers on his grave that I like to believe come from him.”

  The waitress comes then, carrying our sandwich plates on a round tray. She talks all chirpy, oblivious to the tears in Mom’s and Mitzy’s eyes. She’s wearing a nose ring in each nostril and dreadlocks filled with beads in assorted colors. The bottom of each drab brown lock has been dipped in white wax and dotted with pink at the very tips. “Those look good, don’t they? I’m starving myself.
Is there anything else I can get you girls?”

  Mom shakes her head.

  “Any refills on your drinks? Extra onions for your sandwiches?” Ms. Dreadlocks takes the pencil that’s stuck in her ratty mess, and she scrapes at her scalp as she talks. “I like lots of onions on my tuna. It doesn’t do much for the breath, but, hey, it tastes good. And I like to crumble a few of those kettle corn chips inside the bread too. The extra crunch is good. I was just telling—”

  Mom scoots my plate closer to hers, as she looks up at the woman in disbelief. “Crissakes. What’s the matter with you? Can’t you see you’ve interrupted a private, emotional conversation here? And if you’ve got to scratch your head, for crying out loud, don’t do it over our plates! What could possibly make you think we’d want you interrupting our conversation, much less powdering our croissants with your dead skin cells?”

  Mitzy’s dark eyes get even larger than they already are, and a cloudburst of laughter breaks out of her.

  “Well, really …” Mom says, as the waitress leaves in a huff, and Mitzy laughs all the harder.

  Still laughing, Mitzy waves for me to join them.

  Mom scoots over so I can slip into the booth. Their coffees are half gone, and the ice in my soda is melted. “I’d ask for a pitcher of water, but she’d probably spit in it now,” Mom says.

  Mitzy laughs, as though she does not have tears clinging to her lashes. Mom doesn’t laugh, though. She is looking down at her plate, her shoulders as limp as the Bibb lettuce peeking out from her sandwich, then she reaches over and rests her hand on my leg (a gesture driven, I’m sure, by thoughts of how sad it would have been had she lost me when I was born). Mitzy looks at Mom, tilts her head, and smiles sadly. “I’ve made you sad, but you don’t have to be. I’m okay now, hon.

  “I’m living in delicious sin with Ray Dayton. He’s ten years older than us, so you probably don’t remember him, but he is the sweetest, most considerate man in the world. The first time he made me laugh, I started crying. I didn’t say why. I didn’t need to. He took me in his arms and said, ‘Dylan would want his mommy to be happy again.’ That was it for me. I fell head over heels in love with him that second.”