“Howdy,” he whispered.
“Howdy,” Yumi echoed.
Momoko nodded. “Okeydokey.”
idaho winter
Children’s children are the crown of old men. . . .
Ocean whispered, “Is that him? Is that Tutu Lloyd?”
. . . and the glory of children are their fathers.
“Yes, but call him Grandpa.”
Phoenix pulled at my arm. “Forget it, Yummy. I mean, Mommy. He’s asleep. Let’s go.”
“No, look. He’s waking up.”
“Who’s there?” He opened his eyes, swimmingly. “Who are these children?”
I wanted to announce it with pride. “These are your grandchildren, Dad!” But my voice betrayed me, and my declaration sounded more like an apology. “My children,” I added unnecessarily.
He blinked. His eyes were the color of an icicle, a cold prong clinging to an eaves trough. He scanned my children’s faces. The kids were not used to the Idaho cold, and already they looked faded. Dehydrated by the central heating, Ocean had developed flaking rashes. Poo’s snot turned rock hard in his sinuses, and his curls lay flat. Phoenix had the coloring and temperament of moldy bread. They missed the humid clouds, the teeming seas. But this was good for them, I told myself. They needed to know that Mommy was not all about aloha. That she had cold, high desert in her blood.
“This is Phoenix. And this is Ocean. This is Barnabas, but we call him Poo.”
He studied their hair, their complexions. Comparing.
“Say hi to your grandpa, kids.”
He said gruffly, “What kind of names are those?”
“What do you mean, Dad?” Knowing full well what he was getting at, of course.
“What kind of children have names like that?”
“Well, your grandchildren. Kids, say howdy to your grandpa.”
“Howdy?” muttered Phoenix, turning away. “Like, I don’t think so.”
But intrepid Ocean stepped up to the plate. “We’re good children,” she replied. “That’s what kind.” What a kid. No one deserves a kid like that.
He blinked at her and stared. She looked right back, met his ice with her sky blue—the color of cornflowers—until he recognized the sweet side of those Fuller eyes and melted a little for real.
“Come here,” he barked.
Ocean approached the wheelchair.
“What’s your name?”
“Ocean.”
“That’s not a proper name. An ocean is a thing, not a person.”
Ocean didn’t answer for a while. “I know what your name is,” she said finally. “It’s Tutu—I mean, it’s Grandpa Lloyd.”
“That’s right.”
“How come it doesn’t mean anything?”
Ocean asked. “Because it’s a proper name.”
“Actually, it does mean something,” I said. Lloyd and Ocean both turned to stare, and the resemblance was stunning. The stubborn blue eyes and the broad forehead. The set of the jaw. The same irritation at being interrupted.
“It means ‘gray-haired,’ ” I explained. “In Welsh. Or something.” I could see they were waiting for me to finish, but my nerves had turned me garrulous. “I looked it up in one of those baby-name books in the checkout line. At the supermarket. When I was pregnant with Phoenix and looking for a name. Of course, Phoenix wasn’t listed. . . .”
Phoenix groaned, and I stopped. Ocean turned back to contemplate her grandfather. “Lloyd is a good name for you,” she said.
“It is?” he asked. “Why?”
“Because you’re old.”
“Am I so old?”
“Yes,” Ocean explained. “That’s why you’re dying.”
That’s it, I thought. That’s the end of it.
But Lloyd was oddly patient. “Is that right?” he said.
“Yes. Mommy said we have to be nice to you because you’re dying, but I’m not going to.”
“You’re not?”
“No. I’m going to be nice to you because I like you instead.”
“Oh,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “That’s good.”
“You mean it’s good because you like me, too?” She was being coy now, a little too cocky.
“No,” he said, and if he registered the child’s disappointment, he ignored it. He looked over her head, straight at me. “Good, because despite your mother’s godlike authority over matters of life and death, I am most certainly not dying.”
“Of course he’s dying,” Cass said. “I don’t mean to be harsh, Yum, but that’s not even the question here. It’s just that it might take awhile, and what are you going to do for him until then?”
“Me?”
“Well, sure. Who else?”
It was a reasonable enough question, but it had never occurred to me. I’d made this odyssey for the children. I thought I owed it to them, to let them meet their grandparents. But Cass was clearly thinking along very different lines, and it filled me with panic.
“There must be health services or—”
“Yummy, I’ve been taking care of your parents for almost a year now, cooking and cleaning up after them—”
“I know, and they appreciate it. They really do. Mom was telling me how much Lloyd enjoys your pot roast.”
“I change his colostomy bag, Yum.”
“Oh. He wears one of those?”
“He needs to be changed twice a day.”
“Wow.” I watched her. She had taken over feeding Poo, and the older kids were eating in the living room. I really wanted a drink. I’d remembered to stop at the liquor store on the way back from the nursing home, but I had been too strung out for the supermarket. I knew there were some cans of soup in the cupboard and a bag of french fries in the freezer, and I figured I could feed the kids that, but when we pulled up to the house, the smell of cooking wafted across the yard from the kitchen. Phoenix and Ocean, sensing a hot meal, perked right up, and they tore across the snow, leaving me lugging the baby. As I approached the house, I had a sudden strong sense of how it used to feel to come home on a wintry night, in from the cold, and smell dinner in the oven.
Cass had a casserole heating. She took one look at my face and held out her arms for Poo, planted him in his high chair, then instructed the kids to take their dinners and eat in front of the TV. They hesitated, but when I didn’t object, they scampered off, delighted. I could hear them quarreling about the remote control, but finally they found some show about cops and settled down. Cass spooned macaroni into Poo’s mouth while I told her about the tender meeting between Lloyd and his grandchildren,