Comforts of Abandon

From where I am sitting at the kitchen table, I can see a small rabbit turning into the garden where Uncle Joe’s prized tomato plants are beginning to bud.

“You know, baby, I used to keep a big garden, it took up a third of the lawn. But I don’t need that big anymore, those plants will give us as many tomatoes as five rows made when Joe was little.” He tells me that story at least twice every summer, but I don’t mind. I love the way his wrinkly face lights up and his eyes sparkle when he talks about those tomatoes. He planted, watered, and fertilized for decades hoping he would be a tomato master, and it gives me hope that I’ll tell a story like that when I’m seventy-six.

Joe is his only son, he lives six hours north with his wife and three kids, my favorite cousins. It always hurts to know they’re my second cousins and not my first because it dilutes the value of our relationship. My grandma always said “blood is thicker than water” and, though I’d do anything for them, I doubt the feeling is mutual. We only share our dead great grandparents and they have each other.

My first cousins on my mom's side are much older and live far away. On my dad’s side, well, I don’t even know how many I have or who they are except one or two I still remember. It’s okay, Uncle Joe may be old, but he loves me like a granddaughter and so does Aunt Pink. I know them better than any other family. They come over every Sunday, and often throughout the week. When grandma was alive she’d complain about their frequent visits, but she never turned them away.

“Bruce, I didn’t ask if you could take her, I asked what we should do. She’s your sister. This is your niece. What are they going to do? I’m old. They need help.” His voice is worked up as much as a sweet old man’s voice could be, stern but powerless.

“This isn't right, Bruce. Your mother would be disappointed in you.” He pulls his encased cell phone from his ear, squints at the screen, and presses the button hard with his index finger. When he lifts his eyes to meet mine, he shakes his head and gives a sigh.

“What did he say?” I ask.

“He’s a bum. Your grandmother spoiled that boy. He’s not going to do anything.” He shakes his head, and we both exhale, exhausted.

We’ve both lived a decade in the last twenty-four hours, and several more if you add up the days and weeks of uncertainty me and my mom have faced since November. My memory of it is like a kaleidoscope of snapshots that reel with no coherent narrative. There’s the elevator at the hospital, the final goodbye (grandma’s face visibility confused by the morphine), the coffin, the empty bottles of beer before Christmas, the footprints in the snow, the charred garage door, and now my mom’s face in the back of a cop car.

Last night at intake, while I wrote what seemed to be a five paragraph essay about the perils of her recent behavior, I overheard one of the nurses tell my neighbor, Dan (who drove me to hospital while my mom road ahead of us in handcuffs), that the prognosis for untreated bi-polar disorder isn’t good. Homelessness and suicide have echoed in my head ever since, leaving me to wonder if I’ll have to quit school or if there are any good people who adopt sixteen-year-old girls.

The uncles are of no use. Biweekly calls to their aging mother and annual weekend visits were not enough to feel any sort of obligation to their sister and niece. My father isn’t even worth mentioning.

His place in my story was soured a decade ago when he was written out of it, save for a few whispers about drugs and laziness over the years. In reality grandma’s “blood is thicker than water” doesn’t seem true. It only seemed to carry weight with the three of us. Everyone else is on the periphery, giving me rides home from school or waving hello from across the yard. They don’t have any obligation to care for a lonesome charity case like me and I’m not sure I could ever let them

“What did Brucey say?” Aunt Pink breaks the silence as she enters the room, her dyed blond hair peeking out from under her babushka, her bright blue eyes staring at her husband with want. Those are my mom and my grandma’s eyes but not mine, mine are hazel.

“Ah, forget him.” Uncle Joe waves his arm across his body as he stands up, thick veins flexing through his tattered olive skin.

“Oh, I see.” She lowers her head and walks over to where I’m sitting, leans over, and hugs me around the shoulders as hard as she can. She’s strong for a little old lady. “That’s okay, Lex. We’ll be okay.” I take a stoic breath, inhaling the thick wall of flowery perfume she douses herself in every morning. With a single hug her scent will stick to my skin for a week, but I don’t mind. It’s pungent and familiar.

“Let’s go get some ice cream.” She brushes the macabre off our shoulders and dances off toward the door as if nothing is wrong. We haven’t had dinner yet, but it’s no matter with a houseful of sweet tooth’s.

Nippy, my ten-year old mini-Schnauzer, sits on my lap in the backseat of their Mercury town car. I feel out of place in the backseat. I’m not a kid anymore, but not an adult either. My responsibilities are to school, sports, and my very part-time job, and I worry I won’t be able to grow up as fast as I might need to.

Up front nothing is amiss, Aunt Pink glances around at cars and people, while Uncle Joe hums to Frank Sinatra. I gave him Frank’s greatest hits album for Christmas. This is the first car he’s ever bought new and he was so excited to finally have a CD player.

Mr. Johnson and Nicole are picking me up for pizza in half an hour so we don’t have time to drive across the bridge to Curley Cream. Instead we go to Dairy Queen and pass my mom’s new home for the next thirty days, Second Hospital. I’ve driven by a million times not knowing what it was. From the street it's just an unassuming, lightly colored building shaded by trees that line the street. With a lump in my throat, and goosebumps covering my arms, I turn my head to look. Blinds cover the windows of the ward on the third floor, it’s absent of any vacant or distorted faces. I wonder if she’s in there feeling left out like we’re moving without her or if she knows that my life stopped when hers did. Either way I know she’s in pain and I pray it doesn’t break her.

Aunt Pink speaks up from the front. “I think I’m going to get chocolate, maybe a Dilly Bar. I love Dilly Bars. They remind me of the German chocolate cake the corner lady made when I was a girl. She put peanuts on it.” Her voice trails off from its usual exuberance, “We were poor, you know. On my birthday every year I’d go to my Pa and say 'Pa, can I have a penny for some cake?’ He always said no, we’re too poor. But every so often that neighbor lady gave me a piece.”

She tells me that story all the time, but I don’t mind. It’s nice to know that people took care of each other during the Depression.

I’ll have my license in a few weeks. Uncle Joe puts his hand over hers and we pull into the Dairy Queen. I order a sundae.