Some Assembly Required (19 page)

Jax peeped and made farting noises, and everyone who held him returned him at the first sign of fuss to the space station of his mom in the easy chair.

People were sort of organically ready to go when everyone had finished speaking. I was reminded of the Four Immutable Laws of the Spirit: Whoever is present are the right people. Whenever it begins is the right time. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened. And when it’s over, it’s over. It was over.

My wing of the family stayed clustered around the easy chair where Jax orbited in Amy’s lap, first nursing, then sitting up to see us all from the orbit of Amy: planet and moon.

I loved Millard’s memorial so much, but have been in mental disarray ever since, especially in the four days since
Amy and Jax left. They will be gone ten more days. We haven’t heard from her yet. I know she is busy today, as it is her friend Amanda’s twenty-first birthday, and knowing this makes it easier for me to focus on keeping the patient comfortable: I made myself soup, put clean sheets on the bed, and took a nap. Then I called Doug, who lives only a few miles from where Amy and Jax were staying, and asked if he could drive by and take some photos of Jax with his cell phone and send them to me.

“Poor Nana,” Doug said.

“We haven’t heard a word from her since she left. Sam hasn’t gotten to talk to Jax in four days!”

“And this would be your business because… ?”

I was silent.

“Lower the bar of expectations,” he enthused. “Secret of life.”

I called Stevo to see if he and Clara could come by for a house call. He asked what he could bring.

“Just Clara,” I said. “Oh, and some sweet-and-sour pork. Perhaps a small side of chow mein.”

“Anything else?”

“The merest hint of Ben and Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk.”

As soon as Stevo walked in with a bag of Chinese takeout and the ice cream, and Clara plopped her gangly seven-year-old self into my lap at the table, I knew I was going to be okay.

Clara is smart, and lovely in the way only young girls can be, bright colors inside and out. She’s a big kid now, a tall, stylish girl, but her skin is just as vibrational as when she was Jax’s age. It does not bear one scar or sag of life, and it fits perfectly. It hasn’t started to lump up like an old whale’s, as happens to the skin of certain people I could mention, i.e., me. Clara wore pedal pushers. I was dressed for Mongolia, and Stevo, not quite fifty, was in between.

They stayed and drew with me for a couple of hours. I finished off the sweet-and-sour for my afternoon snack, had some New York Super Fudge Chunk for dinner, and later, in bed, ate the last of the chow mein, from the box, with chopsticks, the way happy people in the movies always do.

It is the most important date in the Christian calendar: the Academy Awards. Neshama and I are going to watch them with Bill and Emmy Smith in San Rafael, as I have for twenty-plus years. There will be grilled chicken breast sandwiches tonight, with avocado and balsamic onion and Em’s famous homemade aïoli, and chocolates, and one-bite perfect fruit tarts in tiny paper undies that I picked up at the bakery after church.

Church was lifesaving, as usual, from the minute the choir filed in with a sense of calm and centeredness. They come
to open their souls and their hearts, and they opened their mouths to sing the processional. I am always hungry for the choir’s music, and to be held by community and spirit, and I loved every minute—it was like going to the gas station to be filled up for the week. But let’s be honest: I was just killing time. Nothing can compare to the spiritual majesty of the Oscars.

It has all been downhill since last Sunday. I called Amy a few more times while she was in Chicago, to check in, but she didn’t pick up or call me back. I practiced releasing her. It went poorly. I don’t know why she won’t call or text. Sam and I have been working and distracting ourselves, Sam at school, and me doing interviews for a book tour I start in a few weeks.

As the days pass, we are both in better moods, because Amy and Jax will be home in two days.

I called Neshama to talk about how frustrated I am with Amy, for leaving for so long and for not returning my calls, and she did not try to fix me, or get me to see the light, which is that Amy’s grandmother, whom she loves deeply, won’t be around much longer, and that Amy’s parents get to see the baby only every few months. And because she did not shove this down my throat, this dawned on me. Neshama volunteered to come over if I needed company. I asked whether
she would go to the Fijian church with me, in the next town over; I’ve wanted to visit ever since I heard the harmonies waft out one afternoon while I was walking by. Neshama was at my house an hour later, game for anything, and we drove to the strange church in the next town.

These were big people! Maybe there has to be a big container for all that enormous sound. And also maybe it is their island make-up, all those starchy roots and poi. On such exposed land, perhaps it helps to be tethered, so the wind doesn’t blow you away to neighboring islands. The extra weight provides lots of buoyancy for swimming, and there’s more of you left in case nature shuts down and all the fish die. At any rate, many of the people here were really large, brown and gorgeous.

Some of the men were wearing skirts. (I was a little curious about the underwear, because the Scots in their kilts are rumored not to wear any. But as I was here to worship God, I tried not to think about this.)

There were forty people or so, and we were welcomed like the prodigals we were. The Scripture readings were in Fijian and then English; the people sang in Fijian, and their harmonies reminded me of Soweto. This kind of beauty softens you and expands you, which is good, but of course it makes you vulnerable to all sorts of horrible things, like, oh, feelings. And being in your body. The harmonies are soul tenderizers. They get right in there, into the fibers of your being, into the usually armored muscles and chambers, and
open you up with awe, just as happens at St. Andrew or the Taj Mahal.

When they sang “Holy, Holy, Holy,” it sounded like “Gormu Gormu Gormu,” but what got into me was that we are together in the universal love of God, on the same page, in creation, in hardship, in silence and out loud.

What got into me here, and what gets into me at St. Andrew, was the combination of supplication and deep, intimate conversation with something that listens.

The woman behind us had a huge stretched mouth trimmed in bright red lipstick. She looked about my age; she was beautiful, loudly crying out a stirring, impassioned prayer of pain and trust wedded together.

The Fijian language is clickety and crickety. The service was much like St. Andrew, otherworldly and yet down-to-earth. The harmonies were round, and had solidity, without interpretation, so spirit came out big and solid. There was no piano, so people tuned in to one another’s voices, and their sound was strong and assured, but also had a great brightness and glitter. The channel was from deep down inside the earth; it came up through the crust, to the ground, and up through our feet and up through our chests and hearts and up our throats and out of our mouths, and it surrounded everyone like a blanket, and it somehow also rose through the air, to the sky, to the stars, this sound that had come up through our rough feet.

I was still high from the Fijian church on Tuesday, when Sam called to say that Amy was not coming home as scheduled, for a number of mysterious reasons. He was angry that she would not level with him, but philosophical: he had massive midterm assignments, and thought maybe it would turn out for the best.

“You don’t know why she is staying? And when is she coming back, then?” I asked sweetly, while idly wondering how much of my retirement savings we could spend pursuing a legal assault on her.

He didn’t know the answer to either question. She’d said she would be back soon.

I didn’t want to call Bonnie, because she would say that something beautiful was being revealed, and that things were unfolding in a perfect way, and wasn’t it touching that everywhere Jax went, he was blessed by the love of family, in this case Amy’s Chicago relatives?

I so do not want to hear this. Or that Sam and Amy had to work this out, and that Sam is not me. That there is their life, and there is mine, where I am learning to be a grandmother. That Jax has other grandparents, who love him like I do, and who’ve had to bear living far away, and have done so with equanimity.

I was certainly in no mood to hear that sort of shit, at all.

So instead of calling Bonnie, I went for a walk with the dogs, and I ran into a lawyer I know. He asked how I was. I told him that Amy kept postponing her return, and how afraid I was that she might take off with Jax someday, and not come back.

We had a nice invigorating discussion about how Sam and Amy needed a mediator to help them work out custody issues, and the lawyer said I was right to be bothered by Amy’s seemingly arbitrary decision to stay longer. I felt better when we said good-bye. It was great to be right. Really, it’s the most important thing—to be right, and to know whom to blame.

Amy called Sam an hour ago to say she is not coming home today, either.

I was finally forced to call horrible Bonnie. I told her that if she said that this was between Sam and Amy, I was hanging up. Bonnie thought this was very funny and charming. She and Tom both enjoy the heck out of me.

She did say that this was their life—their grand adventure. That this was about their family, and their home, their choices; for instance, if I went over and saw dirty dishes in the sink, I must leave them. She added, “Honey, I promise, if Amy and Jax stay in Chicago, or move there after coming back here briefly, your love for Jax and his for you do not
require proximity. Jax’s and your love for each other is indelible, and eternal.”

Oh, stop. My happiness depends on my having Jax nearby, and on Sam’s getting to see him every day, and on both of us getting to hear him laugh all the time, and watch him sleep, and smell that heavenly hair. Duh.

“Oh, dearest,” she said. I know that when she calls me “dearest” I am doomed. “You have been on a bit of a run, huh? Trying to be everyone’s rock and savior, needing to be invaluable, so Amy won’t leave with Jax. But Amy leaves anyway, and takes Jax with her, because she misses her family and friends and they miss her, and they need to be together as much as possible.”

“But what should I do?” I wailed. “She doesn’t return our calls or texts. We’re her family, too.”

“You’re not going to like this. But you need to deal with the fact that she is young, and has free will, and roots that are thousands of miles away. Don’t be a big baby. She is not your problem. Go look in the mirror, my honey. You are in withdrawal. You’re in victim mode. And that has nothing to do with Amy. That’s lifelong. You need radical self-care and acceptance.”

“I feel exposed and needy and repulsive.”

“Fabulous! Now we’re starting to get somewhere. We can address this, and why your good ideas cannot help.
Or
you can stay in blame-and-rescue.”

This was a rather stunning and rude view of my suffering.

I thought it over. “Listen,” I said. “Can I get back to you on this?”

Trudy called Sam from North Carolina to say that Amy was sick with a fever, which the doctors had at first not been able to diagnose; she was better now, on a high dose of antibiotics and pain meds. Of course, Trudy was prepared to fly to Chicago if Amy got worse, but it seemed that she was on the mend.

When Sam told me this, my first thought was that I should get on a plane and fly to her side and be Florence Nightingale. Then I remembered that I had facetiously considered contacting a lawyer. Then I thought about how great a high level of pain meds would be about now. Finally I called it a day, and got in bed with a book, and stroked my own shoulder and said, “There, there.”

When I woke up, there was a group e-mail waiting for me from a friend. I almost deleted it, as I do all group mailings. But instead, when I opened it, I saw a picture of Jesus looking right at me, and the caption “I can’t help you with your problem as long as you’ve got it in a half nelson.”

Sam phoned to say that Amy was better, her fever was gone, and she would be home in the next couple of days.

“Oh, well, that’s nice,” I said, sweet as pie. “What
ev
.”

Sam laughed. “I love you,” he said. “You’re so great. You’re very comical and entertaining.”

I have to start dealing with Sam and Amy as a pair, and stop cushioning them. As a child I was always the ball bearings for my whole family; I thought I was indispensable to their survival, preventing hard metal from grinding against hard metal, so the family didn’t come to a broken, screeching, metallic halt. This is a role I am very comfortable in, and in which I excel.

It was one of my jobs as a child—along with marriage counseling, and raising my younger brother. Come to think of it, it didn’t work all that well then. I don’t suppose it will now, either. The job of a good parent is to be dispensable. No one remembered to tell my parents that, but I know it is true.

It’s not morally right to make yourself indispensable.

I called Tom and asked his advice. “My advice would be for you to leave them the fuck alone.” I wrote this down on an index card.

My beloved Doug flew in from Chicago, out of the blue, and stayed overnight with me: something had come up that he had to take care of. Sam said that to him, this constitutes a brown-bag miracle. Doug knows better than anyone the details of our family drama. He knows me the way only a few people can know you your whole life.

We hung out on the couch with the dogs, overate, and talked into the night.

“Oh, baby,” he said. “Tom was right. You have to leave them alone.”

“But I could help them sort out some stuff. I have great ideas.”