My memories of Papa Kwirk are scattered, like the last stray leaves on a tree in winter.
Or a dead person’s ashes off a cliff.
They are happy memories, mostly. Snowball fights and dirty jokes. Playing gin rummy at the kitchen table with both of us cheating. Riding in the car with him and Dad, listening to the radio because it filled the quiet space between them. I could probably count the memories on my fingers and toes, but at least I had some, even a few that felt like normal grandfather sorts of things. Like feeling his scratchy beard on my bare neck when he bear-hugged me. Licorice breath and Old Spice cologne. I would always have those to hang on to.
I never even had a chance to know my grandmother, though. Dad says she always wore a hat when she went out. He says she was sort of quiet, like me, but with a laugh that surprised you, like the sound of a bleating goat. Her hands were always in motion; if she wasn’t busy with anything else, she would pick up her knitting needles, just so her hands would have something to do. And she made the best homemade biscuits, apparently, which he used to slather in butter and honey both.
I would have liked to meet her. I would have liked to try one of those biscuits.
Dad says almost all of his early childhood memories are of Grandma Shelley, but he keeps most of them locked up.
He was only eleven when she passed away, a week before her very own birthday. One minute she was in the kitchen spreading strawberry jam on toast for Dad’s lunch, the next she was lying on the floor—at least that’s the story I got.
He was in the backyard hunting butterflies when it happened. Grandma Shelley kept a flower garden there, in the corner by the fence, protected by the shade of an old sycamore tree, with lavender and marigolds and a blueberry bush, all designed to entice the butterflies. Sometimes you could net one if you were quick enough, Dad said, though he never tried to keep them. Always catch and release.
He couldn’t remember if he caught one that day or not. He only remembers walking through the patio door and seeing his mother on the kitchen floor, silent and still. He called 911, but the paramedics didn’t get there in time; there was nothing they could do.
That’s all I know about that day, because it’s all either Dad or Grandpa ever said about it. I know a little bit of what happened afterward, though. I know Aunt Gertie flew in from New York and spent a month with them, but the demands of her job soon called her back to the coast, leaving the two boys to fend for themselves. Dad says he wished she would have stayed. That once she left, the house felt too empty, too quiet. But Aunt Gertie didn’t move back to Greenburg until after Dad went off to college, and Papa Kwirk never tried to find someone else to fill the half of the bed where Grandma Shelley used to sleep.
Dad, for his part, found Mom. And then they had us. And our house was never quiet.
He says he likes it that way.
I couldn’t sleep. Part of it was being in a strange bed with flannel sheets that smelled like Aunt Gertie had used eight gallons of flowery fabric softener. Part of it was the pesky barn owl that hooted every thirty seconds. Mostly, though, it was my revved-up brain recounting the crazy day. I could still hear the Salty Shakers crooning in my head. The saints marching in. Tasha Meeks spelling my name. I kept picturing the look on Dad’s face when he opened the casket, Aunt Gertie whispering, “Here we go.” Mom reaching for Dad’s hand and missing.
And the gap-toothed cartoon grin of Papa Kwirk, mocking us all.
What was he thinking?
After an hour of kicking at my comforter, I gave up and crept downstairs for something to drink. The light in the kitchen was on, which meant somebody else was up. I peeked around the corner, careful to take soft, noiseless steps.
Dad sat at the table, hands clenched into fists, staring into space. His glasses were folded beside him, and the skin under his eyes looked bruised. He was still in the clothes he wore to Grandpa’s service, though he had at least taken off the boring tie, which was poking out of his pocket like a snake peeking out of a hole. A chocolate-crumb-covered plate sat in front of him, along with a half glass of milk. The clock on the microwave said it was three thirty.
My first instinct was to turn around, head back up the stairs, and get a drink of water from the bathroom sink. The dad sitting at Aunt Gertie’s kitchen table wasn’t the put-together one I was used to. This dad looked disheveled, haggard, confused. If I went down there, he would want to talk—he always wanted to talk—and I just wasn’t sure what I would say to him. What I could say to him. I’d never had to comfort my own father before.
I started to retreat, but I must not have been noiseless enough, because he glanced my way.
“Rion?”
Caught. No going back now.
I came down the last two stairs and into the kitchen.
“Hope I didn’t wake you,” he said, his voice scratchy. “Couldn’t sleep.”
“Me neither,” I said. I pointed to the stack of brownies sitting in the center of the table, wondering how many he’d already eaten. “Milk and cookies?”
“Something like that,” he said.
I went to the fridge and poured a glass for myself. I’d heard once that there was some chemical in milk that could make you tired, but Dad had informed me that you’d have to drink fifty-plus glasses to feel a difference, and then you would probably throw up or have to pee all night. The brownies probably wouldn’t do much to make me sleepy either, but that wasn’t going to stop me. I was here now. Might as well make the best of it.
I sat next to Dad at the kitchen table, listening to the frog song and cricket accompaniment (and that stupid barn owl solo) coming from Aunt Gertie’s backyard. I took a bite of brownie, noted that there were walnuts in it, and promptly put it back on my plate. I’m not fond of nuts.
I waited for Dad to ask me how I was doing. That was how our conversations always started. How are you feeling? Are you okay? Do you want to talk? I suppose I could have asked him any of these, but that’s not how it worked.
Then again, this day hadn’t really followed standard protocol.
Dad was tight-lipped, staring at the far wall, where Aunt Gertie had hung a wooden plaque that said Lord Bless This Mess, so it took me a little by surprise when he finally spoke. “I didn’t even know he could sing,” he said.
He was talking about Papa Kwirk and the Salty Shakers. I didn’t know he could sing either, of course. It’s not as if we went out caroling when he came to visit. I’d been spared that embarrassment, at least.
“You think that would be something you would know about your own father,” Dad continued, “that he dresses up in striped vests and sings Elvis a cappella professionally.”
I thought professionally was stretching it a little—they were the Salty Shakers, not the Barden Bellas—but I didn’t say so. Dad must have sensed my disbelief, though, because he pulled out his phone to show me something. “See? They have a Facebook page and everything. Three hundred and forty-two likes. They’re practically famous.”
Famous was really stretching it. But sure enough, there was a picture of Papa Kwirk standing with the other three Shakers from the service. They were posing outside a nursing home. I’m not sure if they were performing there or if that was where one of them lived—could be both. “They were really good,” I said, trying to sound convincing. “I bet Papa Kwirk was really good too.”
Dad sighed, and I wondered if I’d said something wrong. “I guess we’ll never know.”
Something about the way he said it made my chest feel tight. He didn’t sound angry or bitter—that uncharacteristic edge he’d had in his voice all through the funeral. He just sounded defeated. I’d never seen my father like that.
I glanced over at his plate, spotted with crumbs. Without a word I switched it with my own.
Dad looked at my nibbled brownie as if I’d just performed some fancy sleight of hand, making a partially eaten dessert appear from out of nowhere. Then he looked back at me and smiled.
“Thank you,” he said.
“It has nuts,” I said, as if I needed an excuse. Dad took a bite from the same end as I had, then let out another huge sigh.
“I don’t know, maybe it was my fault,” he said with his mouth full, chewing slowly. “I mean, I spent more than half of my life ignoring him, avoiding this town, doing my own thing. But the crazy thing is, if he’d just told me, if he’d ever once asked me to come and hear him sing, I would have.”
Dad looked at me expectantly and I nodded, though in my head I was counting all the other invitations we’d turned down. Offers to come spend the weekend. To attend the wedding of someone my dad went to high school with. Easter dinners. The Fourth of July. Granted, most of those invites had come from Aunt Gertie, but Dad had still said no, each and every time. Would a Salty Shakers concert have been so different?
Or do you just see things differently when you realize you can’t go back and change them?
“I don’t know, Rion. I just can’t make any sense of it,” he said. “I just don’t know what he wants from me.”
Dad opened the fist not clutching a half-eaten brownie, and I saw, for the first time, the slip of paper he’d been holding. The note from Papa Kwirk’s borrowed casket. He’d crumpled it up as if to trash it, but there it was, still in his hand. “I must have looked at it fifty times,” he continued. “And every time I think, No. It’s crazy. It’s stupid. If he’s already in the ground somewhere, then guess what? That’s where he belongs! And I crumple it back up. Then three minutes later, I have to look at it again. It’s like getting a song stuck in your head. And I’m afraid if we just up and leave, the song will be stuck there forever.”
I think it would drive me crazy. That’s what Manny said. I’d been thinking the same thing too. There had to be some reason Papa Kwirk wanted us to find him. And not just us, but Dad in particular. The note had been addressed to him, after all. Our favorite spot.
Which was probably why he was sitting down here at three thirty in the morning. The ghost of Papa Kwirk wouldn’t leave him alone.
Which meant maybe Dad wasn’t quite ready to leave yet, either.
“Can I see it?”
Dad handed me the ball of paper, and I spread it across the table, trying to smooth out the wrinkles. “It says our favorite spot, right? So it must be somewhere you visited together. Maybe a bunch of times, just the two of you. Something you two shared.”
Dad grunted dismissively. “I’m not sure if you picked up on this, but your grandfather and I didn’t share a whole lot. Growing up, we didn’t even eat together half the time. I’d come home to an empty house and make my own dinner. That was all after your grandmother, of course.”
I tried to imagine what that would be like, coming home to nobody. Some days I prayed for an empty house just so I could watch whatever I wanted on the big TV in the family room, but that wasn’t the same. Some things that are nice every once in a while are not so great when they’re all the time.
Still, there had to be something. I thought about all the things Dad and I did together, some with my sisters tagging along, but some just the two of us. The trips to Cincinnati to watch the Reds. Visits to the candy factory to test new products. Games of chess on the back porch. Would any of those qualify as our favorite? It would be hard to choose.
I looked at the clue again, getting stuck on the word our. “He was your father. You had to do some stuff together.”
“Honestly, Ri, we didn’t have much in common. Pretty much the only thing we ever did, just the two of us, was . . .”
Dad paused, a sudden light in his eyes, the same spark I dreaded during those back-porch games of chess when I knew I’d made a huge mistake. He snatched up the clue that I’d spread on the table and held it in front of him, shaking his head. “I’m such an idiot. I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before.”
“You know where it is?” I asked.
Dad nodded, the gleam still in his eye.
“Where Papa Kwirk is buried?” I pressed.
He nodded again. “I think so, at least.”
“Is it close?”
“It’s close,” he said, suddenly breathless. “We could drive there. We could go now. It would only take fifteen minutes.”
I looked at the clock. It wasn’t even four yet. It was still pitch black outside. Everyone else in the house was asleep. “We could?” I asked, suddenly doubtful.
“We could,” Dad echoed, his voice also full of what-ifs and even-thoughs. He raised his eyebrows at me, and it was almost like our roles were reversed, like I was the adult and he was asking my permission.
“We could,” I repeated.
“Then we should,” he said, slapping his hands on the table. It was like a switch had flipped inside him. Dad smiled as he put his glasses back on and pointed to the stairs. “Go wake up the girls and tell them to get dressed. But quietly. I don’t want to disturb your mother.”
“Wait, what? Why not?” I said, halfway out of my chair.
Dad shook his head. “You know how anxious she gets. She’d try to talk me out of it or convince me to wait. And I’m afraid if I wait, I’ll change my mind.”
Dad’s eyes were huge and wild all of a sudden. I’d seen that look before too, but not on his face. It was the same look Papa Kwirk used to get whenever he started up Jack Nicholson, goosing her engine, ready to tear down our street in a cloud of exhaust.
I didn’t know my father could get that look.
“And where are we going, exactly?” I asked.
“Home.”
“Wait. But I thought . . . I mean you just said . . .”
“Not our home,” Dad said. “My home.”
Dad waited until we were all in the Tank before he told us the plan. I sat in the middle row with Lyra, still rubbing my chin from where Cass had “accidentally” slapped me, claiming I interrupted her in the middle of a bad dream. Lyra was much less violent, groaning and calling me a pest—that is, until I told her we were going searching for Grandpa’s remains in the middle of the night. Then her eyes lit up just like Dad’s.
Dad met us in the driveway holding a shovel he’d taken from Aunt Gertie’s shed. He was still wearing his suit, which somehow made him look even more disturbing, like he’d just graduated from grave-robbing school. I’d had trouble recognizing the man sitting slump shouldered at Aunt Gertie’s dining-room table binge-eating brownies half an hour ago, but this manic, wild-eyed version of Dad seemed almost as strange. He hurried us into the car, tossing the shovel into the trunk.
“Where are we going?” Cass asked as she buckled into the front seat. She was tallest and oldest, so shotgun was hers for the taking when Mom wasn’t around.
“My old backyard,” Dad replied.
Meaning the backyard of the house he grew up in. The same house that Papa Kwirk had lived in for over thirty years.
“So you figured out the clue?” Lyra asked. “What was it?”
“Fishing!” Dad said.
“Fishing?” Cass repeated. “But you hate fishing. We never go fishing.”
That wasn’t entirely true. I’d been fishing three times in my life, in fact—the three times I was sent to overnight summer camp. But Cass was right—the closest our family ever came to fishing together was going to the seafood buffet and seeing who could eat the most popcorn shrimp.
“That’s because it’s brain-numbingly boring and I’m terrible at it. But it’s still the one thing Frank and I did together.”
What does it mean that the one thing you remember doing with your father is something you can’t stand?
Dad pulled out of Aunt Gertie’s driveway slowly, keeping the headlights off. It felt like we were doing something criminal. I slunk down in my seat, though there wasn’t a soul outside to see us.
“We used to fish at the pond near the woods behind the old house a few times each summer. Mostly it was terrible, but there was one part of the experience I liked. Well, two parts, really. The first was the red cream soda. Frank had a cooler, which he said was supposed to be for the fish, but the only thing we ever kept in it was soda and beer.”
Dad seemed to lose his train of thought for the moment, pausing at the end of Aunt Gertie’s driveway.
“And the second part?” I asked.
Dad looked at me in the rearview mirror and smiled. “The worms.”
Worms. Something that fishing and dead bodies have in common, at least.
The Tank crept slowly along the dark dirt road. Once we were far enough from the house, Dad flipped on the lights so we could see where we were going. The trees outside my window looked ominous at four in the morning, shadowy and huge, with limbs like reaching claws. I was starting to doubt the decision not to wake up Mom.
“Frank said we had to get at least ten fat worms before we could go. And for some reason I loved hunting for them, sifting the soil through my fingers, putting them in the jar. And there was one spot that was better for digging than all the others. Underneath the rocks in your grandmother’s garden.”
“Your favorite,” Cass whispered. Dad nodded.
“Hold on,” I said. “You think Papa Kwirk had Aunt Gertie bury his ashes in your old backyard?”
“Makes sense, doesn’t it?” Dad prodded.
“Not really,” I said. None of this made any sense. Assuming he was right, why not just leave Papa Kwirk’s ashes there? The backyard of his former family home seemed as good a place as any. Why go dig them right back up again?
“Wait a minute, doesn’t somebody else live in that house now?” Cass asked.
Dad nodded again.
“Do you know them?”
“Nope,” he said.
“And you’re just going to take that shovel and start digging up their backyard? In the middle of the night? Wearing a suit?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Okay,” Cass said with a shrug. Dad reached over and gave her a pat on the knee.
“How in the world is this okay?” I asked.
“Don’t worry,” Dad said. “Nobody will be able to see us. We still have a couple of hours until sunrise. Though unfortunately, Aunt Gertie only had one shovel.”
“If you’ve only got one shovel, what do you need us for?” Lyra wanted to know.
Dad glanced at us in the rearview mirror.
“Lookouts,” he said.
That didn’t make me feel any better.
“This totally seems like something Papa Kwirk would have done,” Cass said.
That didn’t make me feel any better either.