I squeeze Grandpa’s hand hard as we step out of the woods and into our backyard. She Roll is parked in the driveway, and I can hear Harold banging on our front door and hollering, “Robbie? Charlie?”
We keep walking slowly, side to side, side to side, across the yard until we can see Harold and Paul on our front steps. Then Grandpa raises his hand above his head. “Here!” he calls. “We’re here!”
He squeezes my hand back and says, “I’m sorry.”
I’m squeezing as hard as my cold fingers can and even though I’m telling Grandpa that it’ll be OK, I don’t know that it will be.
Harold rushes toward us and takes Grandpa’s arm. “Where were you? Are you OK?”
“Fine, fine,” Grandpa mutters.
“Just out for a walk,” I say.
Harold looks at me with eyes full of worry, but he doesn’t ask any more questions.
“There you are,” Paul says, patting my shoulder. He has May in that backward-book-bag carrier thing, and she’s fast asleep on his chest. Together we help Grandpa up the front steps and inside.
Grandpa’s shoulders are still shaking a little, like a chill got into his bones and he’s trying to shoo it off.
Harold puts a kettle of water on to boil while I get Grandpa’s boots off and unwrap the bandage over his blister.
“Does it hurt?” I ask.
He looks up and I don’t know if he sees Eddie or me, but I can see him searching for his words.
“No,” he says. Then he pats my shoulder. “No, Robbie.”
And my eyes get all watery because I got my grandpa back.
Harold’s pouring a kettle of boiling water into a basin in front of the couch, so I walk Grandpa over, help him sit down, and lift his feet into the hot water.
Harold sits down in our chair near him and rocks May as she gurgles awake. “How’s that feel, Charlie? Temperature OK?”
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Grandpa grumbles. “I don’t need all this fussing over. I’m not a hundred years old, you know.” He shrugs off the blanket I put around his shoulders.
He’s sounding more like the real Grandpa already.
Then I hear a car pull into the driveway and I know who it is and I’m not going to the door to welcome her in even though that’s how Grandpa raised me. To be polite.
I take the kettle from Harold and go to the kitchen to fill it up and boil some more.
Harold greets Grace at the door and she says hi to my grandpa and Paul and goo-goo-gah-gahs over May. I can hear her unzip her jacket, and I’m thinking, Keep it on because you’re not staying long.
Then before I know it she’s in the kitchen standing next to me. “Your grandpa told me you are one remarkable girl,” she says. “Now I really see what he’s talking about.” I turn on the faucet full blast because I want to drown her out.
Yeah, pretty remarkable, I’m thinking. I woke him up in the middle of the night when I know his memory is most tired, I got him all confused and turned around, and I almost froze him to death out in the woods.
The water starts overflowing from the kettle, so I turn off the faucet and put the kettle on the stove. The gas clicks as I start the burner and the flame jumps up. “He means a lot to you,” Grace says. “And I know you’d do anything for him. In fact, it seems like you have been doing quite a lot for him for a while.”
I think about all the times I’ve put his flannel by the door so he wouldn’t have to find it in the cupboard and get mad at himself, or how I sometimes turn the blinker on in the truck before the turns come up so he knows which way to go. I think about finding the ends of his sentences.
“You mean a lot to him too, you know,” Grace says. “He loves you so much.”
I stay facing the stove so I don’t have to look at her. And I’m starting to think about Grandpa trying to get my mom to the hospital and how he held that bundle, me, so close to his heart in his jacket. And I’m thinking about all the lines on my stupid family tree that don’t mean anything. Except Grandpa.
And before I know it I’m saying, “He’s my only family,” except I say it more to the kettle than to Grace.
“I know,” she says, and puts her hand on my shoulder. The steam from the kettle is starting to whistle through the spout and it feels good on my face. “Why don’t you bring that hot water to your grandpa,” she says. “I bet he wants you to sit by him.”
That’s the truth. I’ll sit right at his right hand.
I take the kettle into the living room and pour it into the basin at Grandpa’s feet. Then I sit down on the couch next to him and let him put his arm around me and I lean into that rough sandpaper on his chin.
Grace is opening a bag of piping hot fresh doughnuts. I take one and break it in half—one part for me, one for Grandpa.
Harold’s sitting across from us with May in his lap, feeding her a bottle, and Paul is next to him and both their eyes look a little watery.
“Can you help me with a problem, Rob?” Harold asks. And it feels like we’re back in the garage and he needs me to check under the hood of a sedan to make sure he’s done everything right and didn’t miss anything.
“Second opinion?” I ask.
He nods his head. Then he starts telling me that Grace and a nurse spent some time yesterday morning with Grandpa and there’s something in his brain called Alzheimer’s and that’s what’s making his memory so tired.
“It will get better if I act better,” I tell them.
Grace says no, that’s not how it works. That this has nothing to do with me. “It happens to some people when they get older. It’s nobody’s fault.”
Just hearing that makes me feel like I dropped a heavy pack off my shoulders, and I take a big bite of the doughnut and it’s as good as it smells.
“How can we fix it?” I ask Harold.
Grandpa sighs heavy, and I can feel his breath on my face. It smells like donuts and coffee.
“It’s not going to get better,” Harold says. “That’s the hard part.”
He reaches over and pats my knee, but I’m shaking my head and sitting up and looking right at Grandpa. “That’s not true,” I say. But Grandpa’s eyes are getting watery like Harold’s and I know that Grace is getting ready to take me away to a place for kids who have no family at all.
“We can’t fix it, Robbie. No one can fix it,” Harold says. “But we have a plan, and we need your second opinion.” He puts down May’s bottle and rocks her in his arms.
The whole room looks like it’s underwater.
“You and your grandpa are doing great here together right now,” he says. “But there are some times when he needs a little more help, like at night, when he’s more forgetful. We were thinking of having a really nice nurse come to help you guys in the evenings with dinner and getting ready for bed.”
I want to say no way, that I can make dinner and help Grandpa just fine. But I remember Ms. Gloria and think about Harold’s plan for a full count to ten. And each count I feel more OK.
“And you’ll keep an eye on him at the garage?” I ask. “Just in case?”
“Of course.”
My eyes are burning, but I’m still listening.
“Then when Charlie’s memory gets too bad and it’s too hard for him to be here at home, he told us he wants to go live somewhere that will help him full-time,” Harold says.
“What? Grandpa, where?”
Grandpa squeezes my shoulder and says. “Just a place for old guys like me up the road,” he says. “It’s nice there and you can visible . . .” He shakes his head. “Visible me.”
And I know he means I can visit him. “Every day?” I ask.
Grandpa nods his head yes.
“What’s it called?” I ask.
Grandpa opens his mouth but shakes his head and looks up to the ceiling like he’s searching for the name up there.
“Mountain View,” Grace says. “It’s only a ten-minute drive from here.”
“But what about me? When he goes to . . . where will I . . . ? I can’t go with him?”
“Robbie.” Something catches in Harold’s voice and he wipes his eyes with his shirtsleeve over sleeping May’s little face, and Paul reaches out and grabs his hand. They hold hands tight, fingers all interlaced like the braids Grandpa makes.
“Robbie,” Harold says, and he waits until I’m looking right at him before he starts talking again, but his eyes look all watery and I’m shaking even though I’m not cold. “Paul and I were hoping you’d come live with us when your grandpa decides to go to Mountain View.”
“We love you so much,” Paul says. “And we already think of you as family.”
I’m shivering hard and the tears trapped in my eyes are running now. I can feel them dropping off my chin.
“And we’ll be visiting your grandpa every day anyway,” Harold says. “And May would be lucky to have you as a big sister.”
My voice is shaking, but before I know it I’m saying yes. Yes to visiting Grandpa every day and yes to living with Harold and Paul and being May’s big sister and yes to continuing working on cars in the garage and teaching Harold how to boil sap so we can bring some syrup to Grandpa in case they only have the fake stuff at Mountain View.
“Whenever you two are ready,” Harold says to Grandpa and me. “We’re here.”
Grace is nodding, and even her eyes are a little watery and I’m starting to think she isn’t half as bad as I thought before.
Harold holds out his fist to me and I bump it with mine. “Deal,” I say.
Grandpa’s kissing my face and telling me that we’ll never really be apart and that there’s no chance he’ll ever forget me, even if it seems like it sometimes.
“You live here in me,” he says and taps his thumb at his heart. “Not here,” he says, pointing at his head. Then he brings his hand back down and rests it on his chest. “And I’ll never lose this.”
I lean back into his sandpaper chin and Harold comes across and sits next to us and Paul does too and May’s reaching out for my finger and I let her, and before I know it I’m smushed between them and it feels pretty OK. Really OK.