Chapter I
Grandma Evers died on a Tuesday. I remember it was a Tuesday because Tuesdays were day-trip days and day-trip days meant less staff and less staff meant fewer pacifiers of screaming, bleeding campers. Tuesdays were also chicken barbecue days at Camp Elmwood, and I had just gotten through ushering my sixteen eleven-year-old campers through the chaotic lunch line when Dennis Fairchild, the camp’s director, pulled me aside.
“Do you have a second?”
I looked down the long table at my row of pre-pubescent terrors. Only a few scraps of biscuit and chicken were being thrown at the moment, so I put down my napkin and stood up.
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“I just got a call from your father,” Dennis said, his eyes averted in obvious discomfort. “You need to leave immediately.”
A wave of icy panic swept over me. Camp councilors weren’t supposed to leave camp except for family emergencies, especially not on Tuesdays when all the high school campers and staff were day-tripping to the mall and movie theater. Something very bad must have happened.
“What? What is it?”
Dennis finally looked me in the eye. “It’s your grandmother. She’s died.”
My mouth went bone-dry.
Grandma Evers? This can’t be happening…
“I’m sorry, Dennis. I have to leave—now,” I said, glancing at my row of campers but not really seeing them. The dining hall seemed to tilt and spin, and a metallic ringing filled my ears.
“Yes, you do,” Dennis said. He put a hand on my shoulder and nodded solemnly. “If there’s anything I can do, let me know. The camp’ll still be here when you get back.”
I absently nodded and quickly made my way out of the dining hall.
***
Death and casserole seem to go hand-in-hand. By the time I drove the three hours south to northwest Ohio from Michigan, the island in our kitchen was sprayed with Saran-wrapped noodle and meat combinations and various steam-blurred dishes of vegetable concoctions. The kitchen smelled like an apartment complex at suppertime, all the smells mingling together into one wet, nauseating odor
On my way into the living room I passed Mrs. Fox, a deeply Lutheran elderly neighbor who had just handed off a covered dish to my father. She shook her head sadly and told me I was in her prayers as she shuffled to the door.
My father stood in the doorway of the kitchen with Mrs. Fox’s dish in his hands as though in a daze. His normally lively blue-green eyes looked saggy and tired, his strong shoulders slouched and defeated. Seeing him that way broke my heart. Here was a man who dug wells and poured concrete; sweat-strong and sunburned-rough with precise measurements and apt tools to answer even the toughest of projects. Now, he looked lost and vulnerable, almost childish in the way his eyes seemed to search for something—someone—who was not there.
“Hi, Dad,” I said softly. He had not seen me come in and my voice seemed to startle him out of his trance. He set the casserole down on the island and shoved his big hands into his pockets.
“Hi, Ethan. You all unloaded?” He pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and sat down. I did the same. For the first time I really noticed the silver streaks in his brown hair. He was forty-seven but looked at least five years older.
“My stuff’s still in the trunk. I’ll get it later.”
He nodded and sighed. He paused a long moment before he started talking. “She fell in the bathroom this morning. For some reason she was up before I was and she—I never heard her call for help.” His finger traced the grain of the wood on the tabletop and he seemed to study it intently. I didn’t need to see his eyes to know they were misted over.
“I found her on the floor in between the sink and the toilet. She was—gone when I found her.”
I didn’t know what to say so I didn’t say anything. My father cleared his throat and swiped at his nose.
“Your brother’s at your at Aunt Sue’s house. He’s taking it pretty bad.”
I nodded. Robert was nine and he loved Grandma Evers from the moment she had come to live with us.
“Have you told any of your family yet?” I asked, knowing that he had. Even though speaking to them had to have been like ripping off an old scab, my father was a good and decent man. Bygones could be bygones, at least for a few days.
He nodded and looked at the ceiling. “Your Aunt Martha will be flying into Chicago in a few hours. Raymond is driving up from Florida.”
“I take it the visitation will be tomorrow or the next day?”
My father swiped at his nose again. “Visitation at Stallworth’s tomorrow. Funeral the following day.”
We sat silently for what seemed like an eternity, the low hum of the refrigerator the only sound cutting the void. As I sat watching my father stare vacantly at the wall behind my head, I wondered when the sadness would overtake me, when I would feel the enormity of the loss sweep over my heart and eyes. I wondered why I couldn’t cry, why I couldn’t so much as muster an ounce of sorrow. Was there something wrong with me? Some deficiency? Had I been emptied of such emotions the first time around? My father had just lost his mother, after all.
I, of all people, should know how that feels.
Chapter II
Seventeen is a weird age. It’s the age where you wake up one morning and realize that adulthood and all the decisions that go with it is right around the corner. It’s the age where you’re expected to start preparing for an independent life apart from the comfort of parents and dependency. And, on one hand, you’re more than ready to be an adult. You’ve been schooled at home and in the classroom for such a transition and you desperately want to become a part of that which you’ve been prepared for. Your wings are still wet, but not as wet as yesterday. You’ve bought the ticket but the plane hasn’t come in yet. You are in a state of waiting.
But there is also a part of you that still craves dependency. It clenches in your stomach, snuggles around you as you drift off to sleep. There is that part that needs to need, the part of you that doesn’t want to pry your fingers away from the safety of familiarity.
And that’s where I was stuck that summer, somewhere in the middle of wanting to let go and wanting to desperately cling to my father’s pant leg. That was the summer I was supposed to spend as a councilor at Camp Elmwood, away from my father’s house, steeling myself for my senior year of high school and all the changes that were to come after it. But when Grandma Evers died, a wrench was thrown into my spokes. I was forced to come home and face what was waiting for me whether I liked it or not. Sometimes you have to confront the past in order to create a better future. But I never could have guessed what the ramifications of such a confrontation would be.
***
I hadn’t seen my Aunt Martha since I was five, and even then my recollections of her were fuzzy to say the least. What I remembered was that her perfume smelled like pink jellybeans and the back of her arms wobbled back and forth when she walked like Baggies full of wet bread dough. Other than that, I really didn’t know much about her other than she was my father’s sister and lived in Denver and sent me a card with a dollar bill in it every year for my birthday.
Aunt Martha came bustling through the front door without knocking as dusk was settling over the front lawns of Lewis Street. I watched my father watch his sister—plastic grocery bags of food dangling from both her thick wrists—and saw his hackles momentarily rise. Apparently there was still some bitterness left in my father’s tank.
I wish I knew what it was all about.
Martha paused, surveying the sea of casseroles on the kitchen island, and then looked to my father with an almost disgruntled sigh.
“A little help here, Jason?” She raised her right arm and I saw the freckled dough-bag of its back wave hello to the kitchen.
My father quickly went to her and stripped her of the grocery bags. Failing to find a place to set them on the counter, he placed them on the floor beside the refrigerator. Our beagle, Rufus, immediately padded over to investigate.
For an awkward moment, Martha and my father just stood by the front door looking at each other, each one waiting for the other to make the first move. My father had his big hands deep in his jeans pocket, and Martha dangled her car keys from a pointy-nailed index finger.
“Aren’t you going to hug me?” Martha finally asked. She arched one of her skinny eyebrows and opened her arms to my father. My father grinned ashamedly and advanced toward his estranged sister, hugging her quickly and returning to his hand-in-pockets stance as though the hug had never happened. Martha saw me for the first time.
“And, oh my stars—this must be Ethan! I haven’t seen you since—well—since you were a little boy!” She opened her arms, her keys jingling. “Come and give your Aunt Martha a hug!”
I made my way to the doorway where the thick lady with spangly gold earrings and too much purple eye shadow waited with her arms open to receive me. As I got closer I smelled her pink jellybean perfume already thick in the air.
“You’re a handsome devil, aren’t you?” She said as I hugged her cushiony body. “You look just like your father when he was your age.”
I pulled away and looked at her face for the first time. She had my father’s eyes, rather he had hers as she was at least six years his senior. Her hair was a wad of brown, frizzy curls, the canister of hair spray she had used to tame it mixing in with the sickly sweet smell of her perfume. Her nose was hawkish, her lips thick and lathered in deep red lipstick. She wore a dark brown blouse over dark brown slacks, the browns accentuated with an ungodly amount of gold necklaces and bracelets. As I made my way back to the refrigerator, I noticed that she also wore a gold bracelet around one of her thick, veiny ankles.
When the introductions were over, Martha put her hands on her meaty hips and sighed.
“Well, Ethan. If you could help me with my luggage I’m sure this sorry-excuse-for-a father of yours could make me a cup of coffee.”
I looked at my father and saw his jaw flex one, twice. Martha had said it in good humor, but something in my father didn’t find it funny.
“I’ll go get your bags,” I said, jumping in before my father said something he would regret. “Is the trunk unlocked?”
Martha nodded. “Yes, dear. And please bring in the dog. He’s in his kennel in the backseat.”
“Dog?” My father paused from prepping the Mr. Coffee. “Martha, you didn’t say anything about bringing a dog.”
Martha’s eyes narrowed. “And what was I supposed to do on such short notice? Of course I had to bring the dog. He can’t just stay by himself.”
My father took out a coffee filter and looked at Rufus, who was sprawled out lethargically by the air conditioning vent.
“But Rufus doesn’t handle other dogs very--”
Martha waved him off. “Jason, you’re such a worrywart. Everything will be fine.” She turned to me. “Honey, will you please go get my things?”
I looked to my father who had gone back to silently preparing the coffee pot, and to Rufus who had cocked his head in my father’s direction when he had heard his name.
“Your dog won’t bite me when I take him out of the car, will he?”
***
Rufus hated Chaz from the first butt-sniff. It wasn’t that Rufus was a territorial dog or anything, it was that Chaz was a nippy, self-righteous Chihuahua with a sense of entitlement. The first thing Chaz did when Martha let him out of the kennel was prance over to Rufus and lift his leg in my poor beagle’s face. Rufus retaliated by swiping a paw at the haughty pooch who immediately whimpered to the safety of Martha’s ample ankles. I could see in my father’s face as he broodingly sipped at his coffee that Chaz’s presence only intensified his distaste for his sister.
“Are we supposed to say anything at the funeral?” Martha asked as she spooned tuna noodle casserole onto my father’s plate. She spooned some on mine and set the casserole among the others on the kitchen island. Chaz never left her feet.
“It’s taken care of,” my father said evenly.
Martha sat down and narrowed her eyebrows. “What’s that supposed to mean, Jason?”
I tried to eat a forkful of casserole, but the tension at the table made it taste lukewarm and bland.
“It means I took care of it,” my father stared across the table at his sister. I could almost see the invisible daggers being thrown from his eyes.
Martha threw down her fork. “Why don’t you just say it, Jason! Why don’t you just get it off your chest?”
My father calmly picked up his coffee cup. “Martha, stop making a scene--”
But my Aunt Martha had worked herself into a tizzy already. “I wouldn’t be making a scene if you wouldn’t have made an insinuation!”
“And what’s that, Martha?” My father’s cup was now back on the table, his voice dangerously elevated.
“That you think I abandoned her! That you think I ran away when she needed me the most!”
“I didn’t say it,” my father said. “You just did.”
Martha threw back her chair. Chaz yelped. “You know we needed some space from each other! We all did! You know that, Jason!”
My father held out his hands. “Martha, stop. Please sit back down--”
“But you were always the favorite! You were always the perfect one! You stayed around after the whole mess because you’re the hero!” Martha’s face was bright red and the corners of her eyes glistened with tears.
“I have to lie down,” Martha said as she scooped up Chaz. “Ethan, will you take me to my room?”
My father stood up and made for his sister. “Martha, sit back down. Your food is getting cold. Don’t be childish.”
Martha backed away, her big body heaving. “Yes, always the big boy, Jason. You’re always the level-headed hero.” She looked at me and tried a pathetic smile and buttery voice. “Ethan? Aunt Martha’s tired.”
I looked at my father who nodded once and looked at the ceiling. I stood up and started out of the kitchen toward the guest bedroom. Chaz nipped at me as I walked by.
