Oliver went to church with Twyla now that Grandpa couldn’t take him. It wasn’t the same sort of church she’d gone to in Virginia, she told Oliver, but going to St Michael’s was just dandy with her. If God made the rounds every Sunday, she could go somewhere else for a change and be secure in His being there in one of the pews, not minding the slightest who had on their Sunday best and who didn’t. Oliver thought now, God sure hasn’t been sitting next to me. Then he felt disloyal to Twyla, like he didn’t believe her. And he did; at least he thought he did.
His spirits sank even lower as he stripped the sheets and pillow cases from his bed so Twyla wouldn’t have to do it. He wondered if she would make blueberry pancakes or waffles for breakfast because they were among his very best favorites. He was sure he wouldn’t feel like eating anything, but he would have to try, to please her and Grandpa. Sometimes Grandpa wasn’t able to get out of bed and onto the StairMaster to join them at the kitchen table for breakfast, even with Twyla’s help. But as often as he could he managed to be there in his wheelchair. Grandpa had claimed to be very excited when the StairMaster was installed, saying it was going to be so much fun whizzing up and down on it and that he was going to charge Oliver a quarter a ride. Actually it went very slowly, but Twyla made a joke about wishing there was room for one on the other side so they could have races.
Oliver knew Grandpa would get down for breakfast that morning if he possibly could. It hurt to hear him trying to say the blessing clearly and to see how badly his hands shook as he tried to get the food into his mouth and sip a drink through a straw without Twyla helping him. Grandpa’s trembles were really called Parkinson’s. Twyla said Parkinson’s wasn’t something children got and one day there would be a cure, but Oliver didn’t care about what might happen one day.
All those prayers every night before falling asleep that Grandpa would get well; instead he’d only got worse. Hah! Twyla said the pastor at the church she’d gone to in Virginia had talked very loud to God. Not in an impolite way, but because praising the Lord made him jump up and down and shout out for joy fit to take off the roof. Or did he do it, Oliver wondered as he tied his sneakers, to make sure God would hear him over all the thousands, millions of people around the world trying to get his attention all at the same time? And then there were those bands of angels up in heaven adding to the noise. Oliver always pictured rock bands, with guitars and drums in addition to the harps and big, big singing voices. But maybe not rappers. Somehow Oliver just couldn’t imagine God sitting on clouds listening to rap. It had to be OK for Twyla’s pastor to get excited when praying, but Oliver knew the rules for children were often different from the ones for adults. He prayed quietly so there was no chance of his sounding rude. But maybe he had still gone wrong somehow and that was why God hadn’t answered. Surely getting rid of Grandpa’s Parkinson’s should be a snap compared to making the entire world in less than a week.
Grandpa must have known for a long time now that he would have to go into a nursing home. It was obvious he needed more than Twyla could single-handedly provide. There had been that frightening time when he had gotten out of bed while she was on the phone and his legs had locked in the hallway as he tried to get to the bathroom. He’d fallen before she could get to him. ‘Impatient old fool!’ Grandpa had said quite clearly from the floor. Twyla had phoned for assistance, and two nice medics had arrived to get Grandpa back to bed. One of them gave Oliver a sucker. Grandpa had said with a wink: ‘I’m the sucker.’ Oliver had tried to smile back to show he thought it a good joke, but it had hit him like a punch in the face that one day in the future – perhaps very soon – the vehicle that pulled into the driveway would be an ambulance and Grandpa would be taken out to it on a stretcher never to return.
‘It’s a cruel thing being forced to depend for your every, most personal need, on others,’ Twyla had said to Oliver with her arm around him after the medics left. ‘But your grandpa, he’s a man of faith. He knows the good Lord will watch over you both like he’s always done. I sure understand you not putting much store by that right this minute,’ Twyla always seemed to know what he was thinking, ‘but you will some day. For now just take a hold of every living moment that you and that good man are together in this house.’
From that day onward the words ‘nursing home’ had hovered, mostly silently, even over the happiest times. At the end of school yesterday Oliver’s teacher had asked if he would be in class on Monday, and he’d told her that someone, he couldn’t bring himself to say his aunt or uncle, would drive him in.
He wondered as he looked toward the full-length mirror if they would take one look at him and decide he was fat. The bullies he told Twyla about had called him ‘Fatty,’ among other names. Afterwards he’d tried to be honest, but had never been sure of the answer. The blue-green eyes looking back at him would display optimism one moment and pessimism the next. His cheeks were definitely round. Pudgy. There was no escaping that truth. Twyla said his face was fine, better than fine, and that there was nothing wrong with the rest of him either. He was big boned – that’s all there was to it. What was so great about being a stick anyhow? ‘You go right on doing like your grandpa tells you. Eating three good meals a day and when it comes to snacks make them healthy. I’ve yet to see you filling up on junk or not getting enough exercise. So you come right here, Mr Handsome, and give me a hug.’ Oliver had never known Twyla to tell a lie, but then she loved him, and people who love you always see the best. Gerard and Elizabeth didn’t love him.
The mirror had belonged to his mother, Clare. And after today she was going to seem very far away, not close by the way Grandpa always talked. Gerard and Elizabeth couldn’t have loved Mom if they’d never bothered about him until now, when they’d got stuck and couldn’t wiggle out. Gerard had phoned last night to say they were at the Cully Mansion. Brian was right; the name did sound spooky. They would come to collect Oliver at nine in the morning. Grandpa said it didn’t have to be that early, but the time wasn’t changed. Probably, thought Oliver nastily, picking him up for Those Two would be like going to the dentist: best to get it over quickly so they didn’t have to keep thinking about it.
Brian had offered the information that his Aunt Nellie, who at ninety had to know pretty much everything, thought Gerard and Elizabeth were a disgrace to the Cully name. If it were up to her the old lady that used to live there would come back to haunt them. This, Brian had added solemnly, explained the shadow he’d seen at the window that he was sure was a ghost. Oliver had thought it would be super great if Gerard and Elizabeth were driven screaming all the way back to New York, but was scared the old lady spook would be so much on Oliver’s side that she wouldn’t leave him alone, even in the bathroom. And, as Twyla had agreed with him, a boy of nine liked his privacy. There was no doubt about it: God had let him down real bad.
The conversation with Brian had taken place in the playground during recess and, after a quick look around, Oliver had lowered his voice. ‘If it weren’t for letting Grandpa and Twyla down, I’d become an atheist.’
‘Seriously, Ol? How do you spell it?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Then that’s out. You can’t be something that you can’t spell.’
Secretly relieved, Oliver said that in that case maybe he’d become a Mason. He didn’t know what a Mason was, except that its members had a secret handshake, which sounded satisfactorily sinister.
‘Good.’ Brian had brightened. ‘My Dad’s one of those!’
Oliver now noticed that the two suitcases Twyla had helped him pack weren’t on the bench under the window. She must have taken them down after he fell asleep, not wanting him to see them first thing when he woke up. This was really happening. He looked at the empty space on the top of the chest of drawers where the photos had been. That’s how he felt – empty. He shut his eyes tight. If only Mom and Dad could show up right now. He wouldn’t be scared of their ghosts – or if he could just hear their voices telling him what to do. And sudd
enly he did, not out loud, but in his heart.
‘We love you so much, Oliver. And you’re not fat.’
He answered in a whisper even though he was alone, because this was such a private conversation, ‘I love you guys, too. Say hi to Grandma Olive and my other grandparents.’ He always thought it polite to mention Dad’s parents even though they’d never seen him because they hadn’t wanted to. It wasn’t Grandpa who’d told him that. Again, it was something Oliver seemed to have always known.
Tears filled his eyes but he brushed them away and went out to the hallway, then down into the living room. Empty. He couldn’t hear Twyla moving about in her bedroom or Grandpa’s either. He’d told them last night he might go for a bike ride if he got up real early. A blue Chevy was coming down the road as he went out the front door. It stopped at the bottom of the drive and Mr Hodgkins who lived down the road stuck his head out the car window. He worked nights at the airport and was just coming home, Oliver knew.
‘How you doing, young man?’
‘OK, Mr Hodgkins.’
‘I guess this is the day then?’
‘Right.’
‘We’ll miss you and your grandpa. ‘I’ll be down to see him at Pleasant Meadows, and don’t you be a stranger. You let us know when you’re coming in, and Mary’ – Mary was Mr Hodgkins’ wife – ‘will bake those brownies you and Brian like so much.’
‘Thanks.’ When the car drove off Oliver got his bike out of the shed and pedaled around the corner. He slowed for a goodbye look at the Armitage’s house. As he was about to ride on, the front door opened and Brian came out, his dark hair sticking up from not being brushed. He was wearing a Boston Red Sox sweatshirt that he must have dragged on in a hurry, because it looked like it had been bought when he was six. His glasses were higher on one side than the other.
‘I’ve been watching for you,’ he said as he came down the step.
‘Hey, dude.’ Oliver leaned on his handlebars.
‘Dad said last night he’d bet his next meal you’d go for a ride round this morning. He said that’s what he’d do in your place. We’ve got Aunt Nellie staying over. She couldn’t believe you’re going to your aunt and uncle.’
‘Let’s not talk about them.’
‘Right.’ Brian collected his bike from the side of the house and pedaled alongside Oliver around the next corner onto the stretch of road that went past the grade school. ‘Aunt Nellie said she was just talking to a new neighbor about you yesterday, like how you and me are friends and all that.’
‘Why would her neighbor care?’ Oliver hunched a shoulder.
‘Probably didn’t. Aunt Nellie thinks you and your grandpa and Twyla are great and she doesn’t like . . . those two people. Sorry – forgot.’
Oliver rode faster. He wasn’t mad with Brian. He wanted to go so fast that the thought of Gerard and Elizabeth couldn’t catch up with him. He wasn’t just sad, he was scared – scared worse than he would have been going alone into a big dark cave. Before Grandpa got sick the future had always been friendly. Even afterward, up until the last week, it had seemed sort of fuzzy. They passed Bigg’s Furniture Store and Kayak Rentals and then drew to a standstill at the cemetery entrance. At the front were the older gravestones, some of them dating back a hundred and fifty years. Mom and Dad were farther back, close to the path. Grandpa had chosen that place because it was shaded in summer by a giant oak tree.
‘Want to go in?’
‘Came with Twyla yesterday. We brought yellow roses that she got at The Flower Box. Mom carried those on their wedding day.’
‘It’s not like you’re really going today. You’ll be in school on Monday. Maybe Twyla will take you to see your grandpa at Pleasant Meadows when we get out of class.’ In contrast to yesterday’s crying bout, Brian seemed determined to look on the bright side.
Oliver gripped his handlebars tighter. ‘If they don’t make me go straight back with them.’
Having listened to Aunt Nellie and his parents talking last night Brian had decided they sounded as bad as the aunt and uncle in Harry Potter, but again he made a big effort to sound hopeful. ‘Guess what?’
‘What?’
‘Mom and Dad said they’ll take me over to Aunt Nellie’s as often as I like when school’s out, and we can hang out there, and p’raps they’ll let me come out to the Cully Mansion. I think it’d be cool if we saw old Emily’s ghost, but maybe,’ his voice perked up, ‘they won’t think having her there so great. And they’ll decide to clear out and go back to New York.’
‘I thought of that, but it’s stupid. They’d take me with them and then I’d never see Grandpa or Twyla.’
‘Not if they’ve decided they don’t like you. Remember we talked about you making sure they don’t.’ The words hung in the air.
‘Right.’ Oliver was staring off into the distance at the big oak.
‘Worth a try, don’t you think? You could do it by pretending to be nice, or at least reasonable.’
‘How?’
‘Tell them you’re really into sports. They’ll get sick of you real quick if they have to spend half their time running you to baseball or swimming. And if that doesn’t do it you can say you want to take piano lessons.’
‘Actually, I would like to learn. Thanks, bro.’
‘And if that doesn’t work something else’ll happen. Aunt Nellie says it always does if you trust your spirit guides. She goes to that church at Dobbs Mill. Dad says it’s no nuttier than any other church.’
Oliver was no longer listening. His ears had choked up along with the rest of him. It was time to turn back. After parting from Brian, he rode slowly up his own drive, returned the bike to the shed and went back into the house, through the still-empty living room up the stairs. Back in his bedroom, he lay down on the bed to think. He didn’t get far. Within a moment his eyes closed and he dozed, waking with a start half an hour later. Jumping up he hurried down the hallway.
From the top of the stairs he could now see Grandpa in the wheelchair wearing his plaid bathrobe, with his gray hair combed flat to his head. If he couldn’t get dressed in real clothes, it was all the more important that his hair didn’t stick up the way it always wanted to do. Twyla was sitting across from him on the sofa. Her dark hair was speckled with silver and buzz cut so it sculpted to her head. Brian’s mother, Mandy Armitage, had said she didn’t know any other woman who could wear her hair that short and look great. It required a perfectly shaped head. If she tried it, she’d joked, she’d have looked like a light bulb. Twyla was tall and rangy. She didn’t look cozy, but she was. From above Oliver saw her get up and cross to the wheelchair to lean down and kiss Grandpa’s cheek. He’d been a big man once, filling out his plaid flannel shirts, but he’d shrunk.
‘It’s going to all work out just fine, Frank.’ Twyla had a voice like warm molasses. ‘It’s a good place, Pleasant Meadows, and I’ll be over to see you most days.’
‘You’re . . . one in a . . . million; my Olive would have . . . thought same.’ The words came out as if squeezed exhaustingly through a straw. ‘But isn’t . . . me . . . worried about.’
‘I know. I know. It’s that dear boy. Nothing would make me more joyful than taking guardianship of him.’
‘That’s what we’d want, Oliver and me both, but Gerard is his next of kin,’ Grandpa kept going, ‘and gave me to understand he’d go to court to get him if I’d other plans. Don’t understand what’s brought this on.’
‘Has me pondering too, Frank. Trouble is he’s in the bird seat. Not only am I no relation to Oliver, I’m sixty-six, and while I’m fit as a flea right this minute a judge could hold my age against me. Maybe rightly so. Should something happen to me, Oliver could be at the mercy of the State. Least with them there’s two. And whatever’s done and gone, they’re family, and people can change if they want to good and hard enough.’
‘Could . . . be they’ve . . . held back for . . . fear,’ Grandpa had to wait to get out the rest, ‘. . . that I’ve talked ag
ainst . . . them.’
‘Maybe. They don’t know you.’
Oliver had been brought up not to listen in on other people’s conversation. But he couldn’t move. He leaned against the top banister, gripping the knob in his hands. He could see his suitcases by the front door. Grandpa had told him that Granny Olive hadn’t been into decorating schemes. They’d bought what they could afford and not given it much more thought. But Oliver loved everything about that room from the tweedy brown sofa and armchairs with their orange and green Afghans to the fall landscape picture above the pot-bellied stove. Most of all he loved the photos on the bookcase. Especially the ones of his parents, different from those that had been on his chest of drawers, but with the same smiling faces. Mom, so pretty with her curly red hair and the same blue-green eyes as his own. Dad, dark and handsome. Best of all, they looked kind. Oliver squeezed his eyes shut. He had to remember that room exactly as it had always been.
‘Let’s pray the aunt and uncle will do right by your boy,’ said Twyla in a soft, crooning voice as she continued to stand by the wheelchair with her hand on Grandpa’s shoulder. ‘Can’t help but grow to love him. Born with a heart of gold was Oliver. So they told you way back that they weren’t geared to children, but life changes people. Could be that with the Lord’s grace they’ll come to see him as a gift.’
‘He’s been my blessing. Couldn’t have gotten over losing Clare and . . . and Max . . . came to love him like a son . . . then Olive . . . without him. Had Clare later in life than most couples back then. Grandpa’s voice had strengthened, evened out. It happened that way sometimes, making him sound almost like his old self. ‘We wanted children right off the bat . . . didn’t happen and then we got to adopt her. Best thing . . . best daughter. Oliver cut from same cloth. Never believe that business about blood being thicker than water, Twyla.’
Sea Glass Summer Page 6