MOM IS OUTSIDE IN THE GARDEN, digging in her compost heap, when I finally find her and tell her. “Why won’t he let this stupid idea go? It’s okay if I’m not a great bike rider. Martin said so.”
She shakes her head and blows some of her hair out of her face. “I don’t know, Benny. I honestly don’t. It’s something his brain has latched on to, I guess.”
“Why would he want to go back to the place where all the bad stuff started?”
“Maybe that’s the point. Maybe that’s why he can’t let go of it.”
“I don’t ever want to go back there. I’m sorry, but I don’t. It’s like he can’t stop thinking about it and it makes me feel terrible.”
“Oh, Benny, I don’t get it either. I’m sorry.”
“Even if I tell him there’s no way I’m going bike riding at the track—even if I’m really mean about it—he’ll probably forget I said it and ask me again tomorrow.”
This is the part none of us has wanted to talk about: how bad Dad’s memory is. How much he repeats himself. How frustrating and sad it is.
I start to cry and Mom hugs me. She cries a little bit, too.
“It’s hard, baby. It really is. I know.”
“What if it doesn’t change? What’ll we do?”
We sit down side by side at the picnic table that’s covered in little pinecones and leaves. “I don’t know,” she says. “Live with it, I guess.”
As long as we’re having this conversation—as long as I’ve said this much—I might as well say it all. “What if it’s like having two Georges for the rest of our lives?” I don’t say the other part I’m thinking: What if it’s worse? At least with George we don’t remember a different person that makes this one seem sad. “It’s not fair,” I say. I’m crying more now. “You’ve already had it so hard with George.”
“No, Benny, I don’t think it’s like that. George used to be hard. The first five years were hard, figuring everything out. But now he’s not hard. He’s just George.”
“But he doesn’t change! He’s not going to get better.”
“Sure he will. A little bit. Maybe he doesn’t change a lot, but there’s something interesting I’ve noticed about George. He changes other people. Dad and I were very different before he came along. We worked too hard. We were always worried about getting more clients and growing our business. We were kind of competitive about it, which we thought was fun, but now I look back and I don’t think it was. If I had kept working that way, I don’t think I would have been very happy.”
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard her say this. Now I have to wonder, with all our new money issues, if she really means it. Pretty soon she’ll have to be working twice as hard if Dad can’t work at all. But she doesn’t seem to be thinking about this. “Having George around has changed all of us. It’s made you the nicest, most thoughtful fourth grader I know. It’s given Martin a certain amount of depth he might not have had otherwise.”
I smile. I like when Mom makes fun of Martin.
“I think about this funny habit I developed years ago, trying to teach George about small talk. Whenever he’s with me in the grocery store, I force myself to stop and talk to anyone we know, so maybe he’ll start to learn, this is how you extend your conversations. So his might go a little longer than his patented ten-second exchanges.” She laughs. We both do. “I don’t think he’s ever gotten better, has he?”
“Not really.”
“So I’ve been having all these conversations over the years and here we are with all these friends around town. Dropping off meals and doing all these nice things.”
She’s right about this. Some people have actually set up a schedule now where friends sign up for a day to drop food off. Some of the baskets are great—with little wrapped desserts for each of us and a bone for Lucky. “Did you notice the yard?” Mom says. “The soccer team came over and raked the leaves a few days ago.”
How did I not notice this? I think about some of the kids on the soccer team, the ones who are really good at soccer. The ones who like my dad but never talk to me.
“These things widen our world, Benny. They make us see that we’re part of a bigger community. People want to be nice. They want to help. Most of the time we’re all just too busy to show it. But look around. . . .” She points to the lawn that’s been covered in leaves for weeks and now is completely clean. It must have taken hours to do this or else a whole bunch of kids. I can’t believe I didn’t notice.
“Did Dad see them? Does he know?”
“I don’t think so. He was asleep at the time. I’ve tried to tell him, but I don’t think he remembers that the leaves were here. He’s still so confused about time and what season it is. He’ll get it eventually.”
“Is that why he keeps wanting to go back to the track? Because he thinks it’s summer?”
“Maybe. I honestly don’t know. I know he was happy that morning because you agreed to go. I know he was really proud of you, riding your bike around that track.”
“Was he that worried about it?” I’m sort of asking a bigger question: Are you still worried?
“Not worried, no. He just didn’t want you to be scared of things. He didn’t want you to back away from something just because it was hard. He did that a lot when he was a kid and he doesn’t want his own boys to do the same thing.”
“He did?” I say. “Like with what?”
“Oh, you’ve heard the stories. Dad wasn’t a particularly great athlete and he got a lot of Cs when he was in high school.”
No one’s ever told me this before. Cs equal threes, which means maybe I’m more like my dad than I realize. “How did he become an architect?”
“I don’t know. He went to college and figured out what he wanted and worked a lot harder.”
“Do you know what grades he got in elementary school?”
She laughs, surprised. “No! I have no idea. Isn’t that funny? I think he really liked elementary school, but I have no idea how he did academically. I guess—maybe—” She slaps her hands on her knees and makes a funny face. “Because it doesn’t matter all that much in the end.” Then she puts her arm around me and pulls me into a sideways shoulder hug. “What matters is working hard and finding things you love.”
“I have that!” I say.
I finally got up the courage to show my Lego movie to a few more people. Mom watched it last week and said it was the best one I’d ever made. “I think it might be my favorite Lego movie ever.” This isn’t saying all that much since Mom has never seen The Lego Movie, but still. It was nice of her to say.
Now, she puts her arm around my shoulder again. “It’s true, you do,” she says.