Everything Else in the Universe

by Tracy Holczer

  Suddenly, she was furious with Uncle G, and terrified of this new possibility. What in the world was Uncle G thinking by sending her here?

  “How can you make someone stay with their family?” Lucy said.

  Mac turned his palms toward the sky. “I wish I knew, Lucy. Wouldn’t that be something?”

  Doreen leaned against Milo, her head in his lap as they all sat in silence.

  “I have a German shepherd, too,” Milo said. “Her name’s Lola.”

  Lucy reached out and scratched Doreen behind an ear. Doreen was smelly and had bad breath, but she was a comfort. Lucy had never had a pet. “I’m sorry. You must miss her an awful lot.”

  “You come visit Doreen whenever you want, son,” Cheese said to Milo. He flopped the burgers on the grill, where they began to sizzle. “She’s a good dog. Always knows the ones who need her most.”

  Lucy felt like a sack of broken crackers on the inside, all loose and crumbly. And when she felt like a sack of broken crackers, her mind turned to the small things around her. Those things Dad had asked her to pay attention to while he’d been gone in order to calm her nerves. So she counted her stones and closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of grilling hamburgers, a smell that felt like summer. She opened her eyes and watched as a man stood up from the picnic table, stretched his arms over his head, and then helped another man steer his wheelchair over the lumpy roots of the oak tree. She listened to the trickle of Penitencia Creek in the distance, the hush of leaves in the trees all around them, the laughter of two men playing cards.

  After helping clean up the lunch mess, Mac and Cheese walked Lucy and Milo to the back fence.

  “About that Purple Heart you found. We keep some records of the men who come through if they want to leave a forwarding address. Sometimes they identify their unit and batallion, like the Dirty Thirty. You’re welcome to them,” Cheese said. “You can also check with the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion to see if they are familiar with the Dirty Thirty. Not sure how helpful they’ll be, as some can be a little prickly about Vietnam veterans. But it’s worth a try. It sure would be nice to get that medal and those pictures home.”

  Lucy looked at Milo. She thought about her dad, wondering suddenly if he had a Purple Heart and where it might be. And if he hadn’t made it home, would she have wanted it? Would it have made her sad? Or grateful?

  “Those kids?” Milo said, as if reading her thoughts. “They’ll be wanting their dad’s Purple Heart.”

  “How do you know? What if it’s an awful reminder of something they don’t want to think about? What if there was a good reason all that stuff got buried?” Lucy said.

  Lucy had watched the Vietnam Veterans Against the War march in Washington on television just a couple of months ago. She had watched those men toss their combat ribbons, uniforms and helmets onto the Capitol steps in anger and frustration. She would never forget the way some of them cried. How some of them named friends they had lost into a microphone before throwing those medals and ribbons over the fence President Nixon had built right there on the Capitol steps to keep them out.

  Milo shrugged. “All I know is I’d want it.”

  It was too much. The stones around Lucy’s heart locked in place. She didn’t want to think about another family and what they might have lost.

  “You tell your dad he’s welcome,” Mac said to Lucy. “And we have family meetings, too, on Saturdays, if you two ever want to come for that.”

  Mac and Cheese seemed nice enough, but Lucy didn’t want her dad anywhere near this place.

  Eventually, Lucy and Milo left with a promise to come back and look through their records. They were quiet as they walked back to Milo’s house. Lucy kicked pinecones along the path, and Milo picked up a new stick and decapitated weeds. When they got to Mrs. Bartolo’s garden gate, Milo invited her in to watch As the World Turns.

  “You watch soap operas?” Lucy said, mystified. Her mother would never let her watch a soap opera. They were pointless and had no educational value.

  “No matter how bad things get, those people always have it worse. Plus, Grams makes popcorn with butter.”

  “No, thanks,” Lucy said.

  “Suit yourself.”

  Milo let himself through the gate and into the backyard. Then he turned around. “I’m going to find that family one way or another. Do you want to help me?”

  Lucy’s feelings were all over the place, so she wrangled them as best she could and concentrated on being reasonable. She heard her dad’s reasonable voice in her head, guiding her. We should always seek to be an instrument in this life.

  “I’ll think about it,” Lucy said. And meant it.

  10

  possibility

  Lucy, Mom and Dad used to watch the Fourth of July fireworks from the top of their Chicago apartment building along with everyone else who lived there. The fireworks shot off from Soldier Field, and even though they weren’t especially close, they had a perfect view between two other buildings. Dad was in charge of grilling hot dogs, and Mom would make Aunt Rosie’s famous macaroni salad. Ernie from the third floor brought homemade root beer, and later on, when the dessert was eaten and the fireworks watched, all the kids would run around the rooftop painting fiery shapes against the dark of night with the tips of their sparklers.

  It was one of Lucy’s favorite days of the year.

  This year, with the family party coming up next weekend, there were no plans for grilled hot dogs or homemade root beer. No one bought sparklers. Mom spent the day afraid of how Dad might react to the sound of distant fireworks, so Lucy worried, too.

  At sundown, after pacing around the house most of the day, maybe afraid of his own reaction as well, Dad left out the sliding glass door to go for a walk. He didn’t come back for hours.

  Long after bedtime, when Lucy heard the door open and close again, she crept out to the family room. Mom and Dad sat on the sofa in a patch of moonlight, Mom’s head on his shoulder. Lucy settled back into the shadows to watch.

  “It isn’t the explosions I was worried about,” Dad said.

  Mom reached for his hand and squeezed it.

  Dad sighed. “After a long day, sometimes we’d go outside and lie on the roof of the barracks. We’d watch the live fire rounds go off into the sky, like fireworks. It was beautiful. People were dying, but the sky was beautiful.”

  Lucy watched her parents’ secret moment and longed to be right between them, to feel them on either side, holding her together.

  A bang went off in the distance. Bang. Bang. Both Mom and Dad startled, and the moment was broken.

  * * *

  —

  Monday morning, Lucy got herself ready by spraying her Aqua Velva and counting her stones into her pockets, which were starting to fray at the seams. Her other two pairs of shorts were also showing some wear, and she packed them into a small bag so she could mend them with Aunt Rosie’s sewing kit.

  As she walked into the kitchen to grab a glass of orange juice on her way next door, she was surprised to find Dad sitting at the breakfast table, shaved, showered and wearing a blue suit and red tie. His hair was a bit wonky, but Lucy supposed it took some getting used to, combing your hair with one hand. Dad’s empty sleeve was carefully folded and pinned under itself. Mom sat beside him sipping coffee.

  “Where are you going?” Lucy pulled out her own chair.

  “Stanford Hospital.” Dad said. “I have a meeting with Dr. Wilson about their cardiology program. Or, more specifically, if I need to train in residency or if I can use the training I already have.”

  “So you won’t have to go back to school?” Lucy said.

  Mom took Dad’s hand like she had last night. “Your dad was one of the top three surgeons in his program. It’s why Stanford hired him before he left for the war. They’d be lucky to have him back, with or without the adde
d training. He can learn as he goes.”

  “Of course they’d be lucky,” Lucy said. She looked at the folded sleeve and wondered if it might be better to wear the prosthetic. Sort of like wearing your best suit, you should probably go to a job interview with all your limbs.

  But Lucy did not point this out to her father. Not after their last conversation about his arm. Instead, Lucy looked back and forth between Mom and Dad while they chatted about the logistics of the day—how Dad would drive Mom to her first day of work and pick her up.

  “It’s okay. Richard can give me a ride home,” Mom said. Richard was Mom’s new boss. “They may want to take you out for cocktails, or dinner.”

  “I’ll pick you up,” Dad said.

  “Really, it’s no problem. Richard has offered to drive me home whenever you need the car.”

  “I’ll pick you up!” Dad said again, with entirely too much gusto.

  Mom went back to sipping coffee, her hand curled into a fist around the handle of the cup. After a couple of minutes, where the silence seemed to build itself up into what felt to Lucy like static electricity, Dad turned his attention to her.

  “Giovanni said you’ve uncovered a mystery,” he said.

  Happy to change the subject, Lucy talked about the helmet, the pictures and the Purple Heart she’d found with Milo.

  “Did you get one?” Lucy asked. “A Purple Heart?”

  “I did. Our field commander came to the hospital and handed them out of a box.” Dad looked her straight in the eye. “It’s a worthy goal, Lucia. Returning something like that to the family.”

  “What if they don’t want it?” Lucy said. “What if it just reminds them of something they’ve lost?”

  She couldn’t help but think of those men on the Capitol steps, the medals they’d earned getting thrown over the fence.

  “What if they do want it? What if they’ve been looking for it? You can’t know the answer until you take the steps to get there. To me, it’s a medal of merit, a reminder of resilience and bravery,” Dad finished.

  Lucy thought of the men who came through Mac and Cheese’s, some who’d left their families, homeless men she’d seen on the television news.

  “Not everyone is resilient and brave,” Lucy said.

  “That is true,” Dad said. “Sadly, that is very true.”

  Lucy studied the raised scar on Dad’s chin from so long ago. “Can I see it? Your Purple Heart?”

  “Of course.”

  Dad scooted back from the table and went around the corner into their bedroom. Lucy heard a dresser door open and close. He walked back out with a purple box and set it down in front of Lucy.

  She opened the box and touched the heart-shaped medal, the profile of George Washington and his crest, the purple ribbon with the white edges. The pin in back of the ribbon meant for it to be fastened to a jacket or a shirt and worn with honor. She expected to feel proud of her father, of what he’d sacrificed, what they’d all sacrificed, so he could save lives. More lives, he’d told her in one of his letters, than he’d probably ever save once he got back home.

  But instead of feeling proud or relieved or hopeful or elated, looking at that Purple Heart made her feel like she’d stepped off a curb somewhere and just missed getting hit by a bus. Because he could have died. And sometimes, when Lucy had gone too long without seeing him during the day, she’d start to worry she had the facts wrong. That maybe he had died. That his coming home without an arm was just a dream she’d wake from at any moment.

  Mom took the box from her, ran her own thumb along the ridges of George Washington’s face and then snapped it shut. She smiled at Lucy. “You also said this was important to Milo, right? Maybe this is a way you can be useful to your friend.”

  “I wouldn’t say we’re friends. We just met.”

  “Well, possibility, then. Do it for what might be possible, and what you might discover along the way,” Dad said, reminding Lucy of Uncle G’s definition of serendipity.

  Dad stared at the purple box sitting next to a plate of buttered toast. “We are blessed, Lucia. Blessed that I am still here. This medal reminds me that I have a choice to make. Every day. We all do. To keep moving forward. A strong person knows this.”

  Lucy wondered if he was talking more to himself than to her. “I am a strong person,” she said.

  “Yes you are. You are my brave, strong girl. And if anyone can help Milo find the owner of that Purple Heart, it’s you.”

  For the first time since he’d been home, it felt like a normal conversation, one that could have taken place before he left, and Lucy was hopeful that little by little, conversation by conversation, they’d get themselves back to where they used to be.

  It was settled, then. Lucy would show Dad that she was, in fact, his brave, strong girl. That she could handle this journey of the Purple Heart, wherever it may lead her.

  11

  a flight of dragonflies

  After phoning Milo, Lucy sat at the table with Uncle G, head in her hands, waiting for him to show up so they could get this whole thing started. Cannoli kept butting her head against her ankle until she picked her up into her lap.

  “Whatcha thinking about?” Uncle G said. A novel was propped on the table beside his plate of toast, Catch-22, and he sipped black coffee out of a chipped mug that said DAD-O.

  There had been times over the last year when Lucy was certain her worries would grow big enough to kill her. During those times, her mouth would pucker into a tight frown without her consent. When she caught herself, she tried to relax her jaw, her cheeks, her lips, but as soon as she stopped thinking about it, bang! The sixty-two frown muscles in her face had a mind of their own.

  But instead of telling her that her face would freeze, as the aunts often did, or calling her lemon-face, as the Joes always did, Uncle G would just let her sit there beside him on the sofa, quiet, frowning for all she was worth, and wouldn’t say a thing. She knew her fears and worries and facial expressions were safe with Uncle G.

  “I’m worried about Dad. He won’t put on his arm.”

  “He won’t put on his arm, huh? Well, that’s not something you hear every day.”

  Uncle G smiled, trying to lighten her load, maybe. Lucy was used to it. Most adults thought she was too serious, too reasonable, too quiet. The aunts would even spit at her sometimes if they thought the evil eye was upon her, as though reasonableness were evil. Sometimes she’d find dried herbs stuffed into her drawers after the aunts had come for a visit.

  “He roams around at night. I don’t think he’s sleeping. He loses his patience over tuna fish sandwiches.”

  Uncle G set the toast on his plate. “It’s going to take some time, Lucy. He’s only been home for three weeks.”

  “He’s not himself.” Lucy scratched behind Cannoli’s ears, and she lightly bit her thumb with affection.

  “Of course he’s not. He may never be that self again. But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. We’re always changing, all of us.”

  Just then, Aunt Rosie rounded the corner wearing elbow-length sunshine-yellow rubber gloves. She turned up the volume on the small television in the adjacent family room and then threw open the oven door, prepared to clean.

  Before she got to work, she hollered, “Gia, come here this instant and pick up your shoes. They’re next to the TV!”

  “I’m writing a letter to President Nixon!” Gia yelled from her room.

  “Why are you cleaning the oven?” Uncle G said. “It cleans itself.”

  “I don’t trust anything to clean itself. Including you,” Aunt Rosie said. Then she yelled, “I don’t care if you’re writing a letter to President Nixon, get out here and clean up your mess!”

  “Stop yelling!” Uncle G yelled. He slammed his hand flat on the table. Which he was forever doing. An Uncle G exclamation point.

  “Get
off your culo and go tell her yourself, then,” Aunt Rosie said from inside the oven. “I’m tired of always being the mostro.”

  Uncle G pushed back from the table and stomped around the corner and down the hallway toward Gia’s room, yelling in Italian. Or maybe he was saying fi, fie, fo, fum, for all Lucy knew. Without her permission at all, she giggled.

  Then Aunt Rosie giggled. Then Gia came out to fetch her shoes, saw them giggling, and giggled herself. It almost felt like old times. When they’d been like sisters.

  Then the newscaster started talking about the Vietnam draft.

  Gia sat down on the sofa, the plastic cover crunching beneath her weight, as the newscaster talked about the Vietnam draft lottery that would be airing next month. She balled her fists and punched the plastic seat, making a popping sound. “Jerks!”

  “You’re just making yourself more upset,” Aunt Rosie said from beside the oven. Gia flipped off the television, stomped back to her room and slammed the door.

  “Are we ever to have a peaceful meal in this house?” Uncle G roared as he sat back down at the breakfast table.

  Aunt Rosie laid her yellow-gloved hand on his shoulder. “Josh is eighteen, Giovanni. His birth date will be in the lottery next month.”

  Uncle Giovanni swore quietly.

  The news hit Lucy hard, like a shove to the chest, and she could hardly catch her breath. She wondered if there would ever be a time that bad news didn’t feel that way, if she was forever doomed to live her life as a clenched fist of worry.

  * * *

  —

  Milo knocked on Uncle G’s door at ten o’clock sharp. He had a shovel slung over one shoulder and his overstuffed rucksack slung over the other. With his uniform—cutoff jean shorts, giant red T-shirt and black Converse—in place, Lucy wondered if he’d brought any other clothes with him from North Carolina.