God is in the Pancakes (2 page)

“Colonel Sandsers, I like that,” he replies. “And yes, march!”

“I will.” I turn for the door, assuming we're both playing a game of chicken now.

“Good, and then hurry back, Gracie, I'm a decrepit old man and I have no time to waste.” As I walk out of his room, I hear Mr. Sands yell, “Give me the Tomahawk Chop or give me death!”

I stroll down the constant care ward back toward the main reception area and return the wave of Patty Ray, the official greeter of Hanover House and keeper of all H.H. gossip. Patty has these Swedish-fish-shaped eyes and a friendly smile that encourages you to tell her everything, which she later makes public for anyone interested. She's always grilling me about what's new in my social life, and I always answer the same way: “Nothing, Patty.” I'm a sophomore girl who's never been kissed (or even asked on a date), so it's more accurate to call what I have an “unsocial life.” Still, Patty just waves her hand at me dismissively and tells me my time will come. Suuuure.

No one's around when I walk into the volunteers' office to get my book bag, which is good because I'd rather not have to explain “Mission Mohawk” to anyone. Hanover House isn't one of those high-security nursing homes where people watch your every move. They make an effort to let residents feel like they're still independent, even though a lot of them feel like they've been stuck here against their wills. “Like a prisoner at Gitmo,” as Mr. Sands has said. “Like a sophomore in high school,” I added. Still, you can tell that the brochure for this place, prominently featuring the stately front of the building, was created to ease the minds of the people who dump their aging parents here. Seems to me old people are basically like teenagers: Nobody really wants to see or deal with either of us, and when we're trotted out at family functions, the adults just have to pray that we don't say anything too embarrassing or offensive.

“Okay,” I say as I reenter Mr. Sands's room, “I have some good news for you. And then I have some
really
good news for you.”

“Good news first,” replies Mr. Sands.

“Turns out I have absolutely nothing that will effectively cut or shave your hair in my book bag.”

“Thank God,” he laughs.

“
But
,” I continue, raising my index finger, “here's the really good news: hair gel. Hair gel I've got.” I unzip the front pocket of my bag and present the goop I keep in there for bang emergencies.

“Holy hell, honeybunch, you're going to make me smell like a rose garden, aren't you?”

“Yep, a very masculine rose garden. Now one final question before we begin.”

“Shoot.”

“Aren't you even the tiniest bit worried that if we do this, people will think you've lost your marbles?” I figure I should give Mr. Sands one last chance to think this through.

“Grace, they've been saying my marbles are gone for years, so what the hell do I care?”

I squeeze a big blob of gel in the center of my left hand. “But doesn't it bother you? People saying things like that?”

“Can't let it.” He purses his lips. “You can't let what other people say about you affect the way you go about your business. You know why?”

I shake my head, then rub my hands together to spread the gel evenly between them. I don't exactly know how to make a Mohawk since I've only ever done one on myself in the shower, mid-shampoo. But it seems unlikely that Mr. Sands would have a “preferred” technique for spiking his hair, so I just go for it.

“The reason,” Mr. Sands continues, “is because people get things wrong. All the time. They get things wrong over and over and over again, and once you've gotten that figured out, their judgments or what they say about you seems a lot less important.”

“So . . . what? You're just supposed to let it all go? Write everyone off as a moron?” I come to the front of Mr. Sands's wheelchair to see how the hairdo looks head-on. A little off center, and more like a faux-hawk than full-on Mohawk, but fairly respectable considering what I had to work with.

“Not
everyone's
a moron,” he adds, “and it's always a good idea to keep a few smart folks around to get a second opinion every now and again. That's what my wife and I always tried to teach our daughters. But for the most part, it's about following your instincts and doing what
you
think is right—your life, your control.”

“
Ah-ha
,” I say, “but then how do you know you're not one of the morons yourself?” I pull up the brakes on Mr. Sands's wheels and roll his chair over to the full-length mirror on the back of the door so he can check it out.

When Mr. Sands sees his reflection he starts to laugh. “Am I really supposed to answer that question looking like this?”

“You like?”

“The ladies in this joint are going to go wild when they see me!”

I can't help but laugh. “You're always working it, aren't you?”

“I've always tried,” he replies with a smile. “Now my dear, I have a different sort of request to ask of you.”

“Anything,” I say. “Name it.”

Mr. Sands pauses and waits until our eyes connect in the mirror. I smile at him and he smiles back. Then he says eight words that will change both of our lives forever:

“Grace, I need you to help me die.”

“
H
oly shit.” That's the opening line of my prayer.

“Holy, holy, holy shit.” That's line two.

I'm a little rusty at the prayer thing.

At home, kneeling at the foot of my bed, I stare up at the ceiling, but my eyes keep darting back to the corner of my bedroom where I flung my book bag. The bag that contains the pills Mr. Sands gave me to “help him die.” I stashed the pills in the only envelope I had in my bag—the one containing the report card I keep forgetting to get Mom to sign. Since he no longer had the strength to do it himself, Mr. Sands asked that I chop the pills up, then put the contents into batter, so he could, in his words, “go out eating cake.” He tried to make it sound light and easy, like a joke. But no joke could sugar-coat a request like that.

He said it would all seem natural, no one would ever suspect my involvement. Why would they? He said in anyone else's eyes he'd just be a dying old man who'd gone and died, and I'd just be a kid with an after-school job in a nursing home. But to us, it would be one friend helping another with a favor he couldn't accomplish on his own. So I left Hanover House this afternoon with twenty pills and a promise to Mr. Sands that I'd
consider
helping him with this “favor.”

What was I thinking?

Because if I know
anything
for sure, it's that I don't want to help Mr. Sands with this. I don't even want to
consider
helping him. But when Mr. Sands explained how the disease he has, ALS, was going to kill him—was going to take him out slowly, shutting down muscle after muscle, paralyzing each one until all that's left is a fully functioning brain locked in a body that can't move, communicate, eat, or breathe on its own—I couldn't exactly tell him that
I
was having trouble dealing with this.

He said he's worried about losing his dignity and becoming a useless burden. I couldn't even respond to that because all I could think was “But I don't want you to die.” Then again, I definitely don't want him to suffer and
then die
. Which is why, for the first time since my dad left us ten months ago, I'm back here at the foot of my bed. Doing this. Which I'm not sure will do anything but turn my kneecaps into round red circles.

Dad was the one in charge of my sister's and my religious upbringing since Mom's never been down with the whole God business. She says she considers herself an “agnostic,” which means instead of accepting that God does or doesn't exist, she just kind of throws her hands up and says, “Whatever.” But my dad, he's a big God guy, so he'd take my older sister, Lolly, and me to church on Sunday mornings. After the service Dad would drive us directly to brunch at the International House of Pancakes. We'd sing a little, pray a little, then eat a lot and come home happy, full, and hopped up on Rooty Tooty Fresh 'N Fruity delights. It was our own little ritual.

When we'd get home Lolly and I would run around the house and Mom would inevitably complain about our sugar consumption. Then she'd say, “You are selling God through pancakes, Daniel.” Dad, feeling pretty playful at this point himself, would always respond with something like, “Well, Sheryl, God created those pancakes, didn't He?”

But when Dad left us, I left the church. For me, the whole purpose of going got blurry. It seemed like people were preaching and parroting one set of morals in church and then practicing another in their own homes . . . and hotel rooms. It was hypocritical and it was phony, and it broke my faith in all of it.

And yet here I am.

On my knees.

“Look,”
I say softly,
“I know you haven't heard from me in a while. And you're probably mad.
If
you're even there at all, that is . . . But if you are . . . and if you're listening, I really need a favor right now: I need you to cure Mr. Sands. Please just make him well again. And then just send me a little sign to let me know that this is all going to be okay. . . . Okay?”

“Grace!” yells a voice from downstairs.

Definitely not the sign I was hoping for . . .

“Grace!” the voice barks again.

“Grace, I need you to get down here now!” My mother was getting shrill.

“I'll be there in a minute,” I yell back.

“Not in a minute. Right. Now!”

“Gah,” I roar, looking up at the ceiling again before standing up. “I'm coming.”

When I get down to the kitchen, Mom is standing there, tapping her foot, waving an orange ticket in the air. “Wanna tell me why I got a citation from the Department of Sanitation, Grace?”

My head is still spinning and she's yelling at me about something as stupid as a trash ticket?
An involuntary snort comes from the back of my throat.

“I do not find this a laughing matter, Grace,” Mom says, shaking her head. “Apparently the person whose job it is to recycle in this house has been throwing everything into the same bin outside, even though they're clearly marked and color coded to avoid confusion.”

“Huh,” I say.

“
Huh,
that's all you have to say?”

“Sorry?”

“So it's a question if you're sorry? Well, I think you should pay the twenty-five-dollar fine. What do you have to say about that?”

“Fine, whatever.” I shrug. At a different time I probably would have reminded her that sorting the stupid garbage isn't really my job in the first place. Recycling is one of Dad's jobs.
Was
one of Dad's jobs. He even used to say he liked sorting trash because it made him feel like he was doing his part for the environment. But when he left us—apparently not giving much thought to
our
environment—the job fell to me. More accurately the job was assigned to me, and I let it fall to the ground. In the ten months Dad's been gone, I haven't bothered sorting once. I just chuck everything into one bin because as far as I'm concerned, it's his mess to clean up. It's nothing short of a miracle that we didn't get that ticket before now. I consider telling this to Mom, but for some reason I don't think it'll help my cause. I reach for the cookie jar instead, and hold out a Chips Ahoy! to her as a peace offering. I know she isn't entirely responsible for this mess either. When she shakes her head, I give her the “suit yourself ” shrug and bite into the cookie.

“Do you really need that?” she asks.

“Actually,” I reply mid-chew as I hit the kitchen's swinging door open with palm of my right hand, “I do.”

“I'll leave the ticket on the table for you, Grace,” Mom calls after me.

Lolly's room is the first door on the right when you get upstairs, and when I walk past, I can see my sister lying on the floor with her feet up against the wall, cradling the phone between her head and neck. I stand in the doorway for a moment hoping to catch her attention. “What?” she mouths when she finally sees me.

“You going to be on for a while?”

Lolly shakes her head and holds up the “one sec” index finger. I nod. She's probably talking to Jake, the boyfriend. Lolly and Jake Davis have been dating for about three months now, which by our school standards makes it pretty serious. Lolly's annoyingly quick to drop Jake's stats whenever anyone mentions his name: senior, amber eyes, good hair, cute butt, good dresser, rich family. I know all of these things make Jake sound like he comes straight off the pages of the Perfect Boyfriend catalog, but what Lolly leaves out is that Jake's the guy who walks around with a perma-smirk and a sense that his farts smell like flowers. But I think dating Jake makes my sister feel important, so she stays focused on the pros.

“So, what's up?” Lolly asks after hanging up the phone. She pulls her legs off the wall and now lies flat on the ground, her long brown hair splayed around her as she looks up at me. From this upside-down perspective her chin looks like her forehead and her dark eyebrows make it look like she's working a partial goatee.

I walk around to the other side so the view's a little less freaky. “Jake?” I ask, instead of responding to her question.

“Yeah,” she replies. “Can you believe he doesn't want to go to the spring formal?”