There Will Be Bears (7 page)

“I said I’m sorry.”

“Tyson,” Mom says, “it’s just a game.”

“Yeah, I know. But I wanted to win.”

“Then let’s say you won. Will that make you happy?”

“No, it won’t. Ashley’s just sitting there and she doesn’t want to be here at all, and she probably kicked the table just to end it. I know what she’s been thinking ever since we got here — when are we going home? When are we going home?”

Ashley slouches back even farther, and tears start welling in her eyes. But she had it coming — she’s such a yamhole.

“That’s not what I was thinking,” she says.

“Tyson. Settle down,” Gramps says. He collects the pieces on the floor. I never expected him to side with anyone but me.

“May I please be excused?” Ashley asks, her hand covering her eyes.

“Yes, you may, sweetheart,” Mom replies.

“I’ll be waiting outside.” She races out of the room and slams the door.

While helping Gramps gather all the pieces, Mom says, “Maybe it’s best if we called it a night.”

And Dad adds, “And maybe it’s best if you go outside and apologize to your sister.”

“
She
needs to apologize.”

Gramps stands up and puts his hands on his hips. “Go outside and tell your sister that you’re sorry. Now.”

The heck? Is the entire world against me?

I pass the framed collages hanging outside the residents’ doors. A man named Clyde Matthews lives in room 238. In one picture he’s a baseball player with a tan and a huge smile. In a much more recent photo all that’s left is a sad man sitting in a wheelchair with a birthday hat on his head. In room 236 is Dr. Isabel Brown. In an old Polaroid, she’s in her twenties, wearing doctor’s clothes and handing a baby over to a brand-new mom. Now, hanging from her door is a sign that says:

DANGER

OXYGEN IN USE

NO SMOKING OR OPEN FLAME

Why should I apologize to Ashley? For putting her in her place? For her not caring that Gramps is stuck here? Should I apologize for thinking of other people before myself?

Ashley’s sitting on a bench outside, and I walk right past her. I sit with my back against the front tire of Dad’s SUV and start picking the weeds growing out of the cracks in the asphalt. I can see her from over here, her head buried in her hands, crying about what her “mean” older brother said. But what does she really have to cry about? She’s coming back to the hotel with us, and she’ll have all the time in the world to play with her phone and update her profile status with a sad face.

How could she not care? She was more concerned about McNuggets than Gramps last week.

The doors to the SUV unlock.

I hop to my feet. Dad has his arm around Ashley.

In the car, she refuses to look at me. She’s as close to her door as possible, like I’ve got raging pinkeye.

The radio is playing a dance song from the eighties, about a girl who works hard for the money, so I’d better treat her right.

We’re hauling our luggage toward our room, and every bit of my brain is telling me not to cave in. She doesn’t deserve to be treated right, not after the way she’s been acting.

“Ashley.”

Her cheeks are red, and there’s snot under her nose. All she gives me is silence and her sad eyes.

Ashley and I used to hang out all the time. We’d go to Gramps’s house after school on the days Mom and Dad both worked, and play Mario Kart. Even though she could never beat me, she’d always be down for a rematch. If I wanted to sled or watch
The Dark Knight
for the fiftieth time, she would, too, even though she hates the Batman movies. Now she just checks her phone, pretending like she’s got friends. But I’ve seen her messages. She texts herself.

Maybe Ashley’s not all that bad. Maybe she’s just an awkward kid who accidentally kicked the Jenga table.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

I don’t even know if I mean it, but her doofy smile makes me feel better. It produces
my
doofy smile.

But she’s still a yamhole.

The next day on the way to Sunrise Village, Dad announces that we’re heading back home this morning, claiming that Gramps needs to rest. When we arrive at Sunrise, a woman is pushing a little old lady in a wheelchair. I press the handicap button for them.

“Thank you very much,” the old lady says. Her smile is brilliant white, like she uses the denture polish of the gods.

“You’re welcome, m’lady.”

“Oh, I bet you’re a Prince Charming with the girls.” Her voice rattles, as if she’s on a vibrating massage chair.

“Yeah, I get my share.”

In the lobby, Dad says, “Your mother and I need to talk to your grandfather, so you two wait out here.”

I take a seat in the window room, and Ashley sits three tables away.

“Is this seat taken?” It’s the old lady in the wheelchair. She looks like an antique photo come to life. She has on this soft pink dress with white trim that looks like pipe cleaners, and her skinny hands and decrepit arms are covered with battle scars, probably from a life of baking.

I push a chair aside so she can scooch in. “No, go right ahead. What’s your name?”

“Marjorie Henry. I’m ninety years young, and you ain’t never had a slice of pumpkin pie like
my
pumpkin pie.”

She’s cute.

I say, “What room are you in?”

“Room two thirty-nine.”

“No fooling? My gramps is in two forty-one.”

Her eyes widen and her lips purse. “Is his name Gene?”

“He’s my gramps.”

“I can see where you get your looks. He’s got such nice brawny muscles, too. And that full head of silver hair! He looks just like Sean Connery. I always liked men who are good at fixing things.”

Ashley peeks over and I can tell she’s jealous of me.

I say to Marjorie, “He worked for a feed and tractor supply place for over thirty years. He can fix anything, from a tractor to a toilet.”

“Goodness gracious, he
is
a stud!”

“You should stop in and visit him.”

She grabs a pen and a pad of paper from the flower-print purse on her lap. “Here’s my number.”

Down the hallway the elevator dings, and Mom, Dad, and Gramps get out.

“I guess we should get going,” I say to Marjorie.

“I never got your name, young man.”

“My name’s Tyson.”

“Will I see that beautiful smile of yours again, Tyler?”

“It’s Tyson. And you bet your lucky bingo cards you will.”

Gramps says to me, “Who was that?”

“Her name’s Marjorie. I got you her phone number.”

“Why’d you do that?”

“Maybe you two could hang out.”

He grumbles. “Sometimes I don’t know about you.”

“What? I’m just saying I think you two would get along. And, you know, you’d have a friend in this place.”

Gramps looks at Mom and Dad. “All right if I speak with the boy outside?”

Dad nods.

“Let’s go out the back way,” Gramps says to me.

I press the blue handicap button. He walks slowly, so I have to press it a second time. He’s got something sad on his mind, something I don’t want to hear.

They have a pond that backs up to a wire fence, and the highway traffic races by on the other side. A semi farts exhaust, and a puff of black smoke lingers. But the ducks and the old folks don’t seem to care.

We take a seat on a bench. Gramps reaches into the breast pocket of his flannel shirt and tosses a chunk of toast toward the shore.

A couple of ducks quack and waddle over.

“We — your parents and I — haven’t been entirely honest.”

A duck quacks.

Another semi farts.

“No kidding. You told me you didn’t like feeding ducks.”

A smile crosses his lips, and for a second I imagine what Gramps looked like when he was my age. Dad always says how much we look alike.

He says, “Tyson, my kidneys are shot.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’ve had high blood pressure over half my life, and I suppose it’s done a number on them. Rock Springs is the closest place to home that has a dialysis treatment center.”

“What’s dialysis?”

“Kidneys filter out all the crap from your blood, then you pee it out. They also balance out your electrolytes. Mine don’t do that. A dialysis machine pumps the blood from my body, cleans it up, and puts it back in. I have to do it three times a week.”

“That sounds horrible.”

He rolls up his cuff to reveal stitches and purple bruises on his forearm. “The dialysis needles are too large for my veins, so the doctors had to graft an artery from a cow’s neck into my arm.”

All of a sudden I’m imagining what my insides look like and all the blood pumping through my veins . . . and then through a cow artery.

“You’re kidding.”

“That’s pure bovine right there. I have to be on a strict diet or else I get sick. That’s why your father was so upset when we pruned. Prune juice has too much potassium.”

“So?”

“Potassium is an electrolyte.”

“What do you have to do to get a new kidney?”

“Someone has to die suddenly, like in a car accident. The doctors harvest the organs and give them to people on a waiting list. Plus, you have to be a match.”

“You’re on the list, right?”

He shakes his head. “They don’t hand out kidneys to old-timers.”

“But y — you know, you fought in Korea and you have a Purple Heart and saved lives.”

He nods, and it’s like a gut punch. Gramps has been thrown away. That’s why he’s here.

I’m fighting back tears of pure rage. He doesn’t deserve to be treated like this, not after all he’s done. He’s my friend. He’s family. How can he go out like this, just because of a couple of stupid kidneys?

Then it occurs to me.

“Wait,” I say. “You can take a kidney from someone in your family. Take one of mine! I’m not using both of them.” I recall my human anatomy from biology class. “Kidneys are like livers, right? We all have two.”

“You only have one liver.”

“Really?”

“It’s a nice thought, but I can’t take one of your kidneys.”

“Come on, let’s go into surgery today.”

“My body physically can’t accept your kidney.”

“I might not have muscular man kidneys yet. But mine work really well.”

“How many Pixie Stix have you had this morning?”

“Come on, Gramps. We’ll be kidney brothers.”

Gramps groans his way out of his seat, returning the way we came — toward the sidewalk that winds to the glass doors, the nursing home, and a life that doesn’t include me.

“Tyson,” he says, his back to me, “I’m not your real grandfather.”

My brain is frozen like my five-year-old laptop and I can’t get it to reboot. Not my real grandfather? What does that even
mean
?

I finally execute my internal Control+Alt+Delete command, sending a message to my legs to move. But Gramps has already gone inside, and it’s just Mom, Dad, and Ashley together on the hallway bench.

“Where’d he go?”

Dad says, “He’s getting ready for his dialysis.”

“Is something wrong, honey?” Mom says. “You look upset.”

“Oh, yeah, you know. Gramps just told me he’s not my real grandfather.”

“Yes, he is,” Dad says defensively. He’s lying to my face, and I can’t even look at him.

Mom brushes my cheek with the back of her hand, and I smack it away. Her eyes well with tears. But why? Because she thinks I’m a little boy who needs his mommy?

I’m so angry at her. I’m so angry at everyone.

She says, “I know this must be a lot for you.”

My skull is just burning with anger. She
knows
it must be a lot for me? She thinks she knows what’s going on in my head?

I say, “Okay. Listen, Mother. You don’t talk this way to Dad; you don’t even talk this way to Ashley. Why do you have to treat me like this? Do you guys think I’m stupid?”

“No, honey, we don’t —”

“Stop calling me ‘honey’ or ‘sweetie’ or ‘baby.’ I’m
thirteen
.”

“Then what do you want?” she asks.

This feels like a prank. Why couldn’t they have just told me? I’m fully capable of knowing that Gramps isn’t my real grandfather without it destroying me. They lied to me for thirteen years!

I say, “Let’s just go home.”