What I Came to Tell You (10 page)

Grover started to take the toolbox from him but his father said, “I’ve got it.”

Then his father put his arm around Grover’s shoulder and started to lead him back home. At the edge of the Bamboo Forest, Grover nearly tripped over a red-ribboned stake in the ground. So that’s what he had fallen over last night.

“They’re back,” his father said. Somehow Grover had missed the flagged stakes that had sprouted overnight like new bamboo shoots.

So much time had passed since he and Sudie had pulled them up that he’d believed they wouldn’t reappear. Grover frantically grabbed hold of the stake he’d nearly tripped over and worked it back and forth, but it was in deep.

“Stop!” his father said. “If Lunsford finds out my son has pulled these up, he’ll have my job for sure.”

Grover let go of the stake. He hadn’t thought of that.

His father sighed and set down the toolbox. “Oh, what the heck!” He looked around. “Come on. Grab hold.” His father bent over and took hold of the stake. “Maybe between the both of us …”

“Are you sure?” Grover asked. He bent down, taking hold of the stake with his father. They both pulled, but it still didn’t budge.

“They put these in extra deep,” their father said, grunting as he kept pulling. Grover pulled with all his strength and just as he’d decided once and for all that the world was a bleak and hopeless place, the stake moved and slid ever so slowly out of the ground.

L
ater that afternoon, with their father gone to the Wolfe house and Sudie sitting by the woodstove reading a Ramona book, Grover decided he’d take care of something that had been bothering him since he’d woken up. He went out back, got their wheelbarrow and a rake from the shed and headed to Riverside. The day had turned colder, and it made the wheels of the wheelbarrow squeak. He was rolling the wheelbarrow up the street when he noticed Clay kicking the soccer ball against the side of his house. In the cold air, it made a ringing sound.

Grover tried to hurry past, but when he sped up, the wheels squealed louder.

“You working in the Bamboo Forest?” Clay asked, running over.

“I’m going over to the cemetery,” Grover said, not stopping.

“Need some help?” Clay asked. “Mama says yard work is my long suit.”

“That’s okay,” Grover said. He was embarrassed that he’d kicked the tapestries at the grave all around last night and didn’t want Clay to see what a mess he’d made.

“Back home I took care of the family plot,” Clay said. “I used to mow and weed-eat the whole thing. I was careful not to nick any of the old gravestones.” He sighed. “I sort of miss taking care of it. Of course I miss that Mama paid me good too.”

“See you,” Grover said and started back up Edgemont, the wheelbarrow still screeching. He glanced back and saw Clay walking slowly back toward his house, his shoulders slumped. Clay halfheartedly kicked a walnut that bounced up the street.

“Now that I think about it,” Grover called to him, “I probably could use some help.”

Clay walked along with him, talking the whole way up the street, past the Bamboo Forest and through the big iron gates of Riverside. When they reached his mother’s grave, Grover was surprised to find that someone had already straightened up. Jessie must’ve come by. The tapestries all seemed to be in one piece.

“I don’t understand,” Grover said, picking up a couple of the smallest weavings. “I kicked these all over the place last night. I thought they’d be smashed to pieces.”

Clay picked one up and tugged on it. “These weavings of yours don’t tear up.” Clay handed it to Grover.

Grover pulled on it, gently at first, then harder.

“Remember that first time I met you?” Clay said. “Kicked the soccer ball right into one you were working on. That ball didn’t hurt your weaving hardly at all. You know why?”

“Why?”

“Bamboo’s strong,” he said. “We did a section in my science class on it back at Bakersville Elementary. They use bamboo in Asian countries to frame houses. They even make big buildings with it. It stands up to earthquakes better, because it’s flexible and strong too. You’ve been framing your weavings with the toughest thing there is. Plus you tie some mean knots to hold ’em together.” Clay talked more about bamboo, as they straightened up a little more around the plot. “Technically bamboo’s a grass. A big old grass, still it’s a grass.”

As Clay helped him pick up and rake around his mother’s plot, Grover remembered the funeral. It had been a clear warm Saturday in early April. The warmest day they’d had so far. Jonquils and bright pink and red azaleas had been in bloom throughout the cemetery. Riverside was so crowded with mourners that people had to park all along Edgemont Road and walk several blocks to the grave. Many were teachers, others were families and students who had gotten to know Grover’s mother during the fifteen years she’d been at Claxton. Some students were now grown men and women and had families of their own. In all the years they’d lived next to the cemetery, never had Grover seen such a crowd. At the center of what must’ve been hundreds of people, Grover and Sudie sat with their father under a tent with other close friends and family.

The urn with their mother’s ashes sat on a small pedestal above a neat square hole Jessie had dug. Sudie sat next to Grover, her face about to crumble as it had crumbled so many times that
week. She clutched the tiny silver cylinder attached to a necklace that hung around her neck. Grover had stuffed his in his pocket. Nancy, the Buddhist priest, a friendly woman with warm green eyes and very short gray hair, had given them the cylinders before the funeral, telling them they contained a sprinkling of their mother’s ashes.

During the ceremony Grover worked the Rubik’s cube Jessie had given him, and Sudie leaned against their father and petted Biscuit, who, in the middle of the ceremony, had somehow threaded his way through the crowd and appeared beside Sudie’s chair. Nancy spoke for a while, talking about what a kind, generous and patient person Caroline Johnston had been. Grover guessed that was true. But Nancy didn’t say anything about how unreasonably strict their mother could be, never letting them watch TV on a week night, not letting them leave the table till they’d eaten all their vegetables or not letting them go anywhere till their rooms were picked up. She didn’t mention anything about how every now and then their mother would lose it and scream at them, like whenever Sudie and he argued about whose turn it was to do the dishes or when they left dirty clothes or dirty dishes in the middle of their rooms. Mostly she’d been a good mother. Mostly she’d been a good wife. Mostly she’d been a good counselor. But listening to Nancy praise his mother, Grover felt he was hearing about someone he only vaguely recognized.

“Bamboo sends out these things they call rhizomes underneath the ground,” Clay said as they finished raking up the grave. “Which is how come it spreads so easy.”

“Rhizomes?” Grover asked. Every now and then the Bamboo Forest sent out shoots underneath the fence that miraculously sprouted up several yards into the cemetery. Jessie often had to cut them back. Sometimes Grover would notice a new green shoot sprouting right out of a grave itself.

As they were heading out of the cemetery, the boys passed Jessie, who had a wheelbarrow too. His was piled with broken tree branches that had fallen in last night’s storm.

“Thanks for straightening up Mama’s grave,” Grover said.

Jessie stopped. “I haven’t been over there today, and Matthew’d said he was planning to take today off, so I don’t know who it could’ve been.”

Grover thought about the weaving and the toolbox his father had found this morning. He looked back in the direction of his mother’s grave and felt a tingle travel up his spine.

T
homas Wolfe eyed Grover from across the kitchen, the writer’s pale moon of a face floating in the middle of his father’s apron. His father poured batter into a waffle iron and closed it, the batter hissing. The apron had been a fund-raising attempt. On the apron, Wolfe frowned, his hair uncombed, his eyes dark and tired like he’d been up all night writing. Not a very appetizing picture. Grover hadn’t been surprised their father had been stuck with a closet full of them.

It was Monday morning, over a week since the terrible night their father had lost it, and he’d started making breakfast for them again. He had been leaving Grover and Sudie to eat Cheerios, Wheat Chex or instant oatmeal. Now he was back in the kitchen. Grover had never appreciated their father’s breakfasts as much as he did now. Big stacks of pancakes and link sausages; French toast sprinkled with powdered sugar; homemade whole wheat biscuits with scrambled eggs, bacon and grits.

“Order up.” Their father placed before them plates of Belgian waffles, swimming in syrup and butter. He filled their glasses with milk, poured himself a cup of coffee, then sat down with his own plate of waffles.

There’d been a general sigh of relief in the house. On most afternoons now their father let Grover and Sudie walk home after school instead of having them come to his office. This gave Grover more time in the Bamboo Forest. Their father stayed pretty late at the office. And after supper, he still made business calls, trying to get support for the Wolfe house, but he didn’t sound as desperate or angry.

Another new thing. Every night, after about an hour of making calls, their father would get Sudie and Grover to sit with him and watch a little TV, something their mother never would’ve allowed on a school night. They’d watch
Nature
or
Nova
or
History Detectives
.

Last night they’d been watching
Antiques Roadshow
. The program was set in Savannah, Georgia. A man had brought in a face jug—a big pottery jug with a face on it—bug eyes, wide grinning mouth and big ears that were handles. Grover had never seen anything like it, and started thinking how he might make one out of creek clay. Grover and Sudie and their father started guessing how much it was worth.

The expert, a pretty woman with long black hair that sort of reminded Grover of Emma Lee, pointed out features on the jug with a little wooden pointer. The more she described it, the more Grover could tell it was something special.

“A thousand dollars,” their father said.

“Two thousand!” Sudie blurted.

“Ten thousand!” Grover shouted, just before the expert said, “And I would insure this for fifteen thousand!”

“All right!” Grover said, raising his fist. Then he suddenly stopped.

“Grover,” their father said, “are you okay?”

He nodded but didn’t say anything, and he sat watching the rest of the show in silence.

That night he couldn’t sleep. He’d forgotten his mother, and while watching
Antiques Roadshow
of all things! What kind of ungrateful son would forget about his mother who’d only died months ago? How many other times during the day did he not think about her? Although he hadn’t wanted to admit it to himself, for some time he’d noticed he hadn’t been thinking about her as much. Which made him wonder if she still thought about him, wherever she was. Was that what death was—everybody forgetting everybody?

He lay there with his iPod, listening to
All Things Must Pass
. He’d listened to the album all the way through. Not knowing what else to do he turned on his reading lamp and reached for the copy of
Look Homeward, Angel
he kept on the bottom of his nightstand. He blew the dust off the cover and opened to the first page. He’d only read a few pages when there was a knock at his door and his father came in.

“You’re reading?” His father tilted the cover so he could read the title. “You gotta be kidding me!”

“Puts me right to sleep,” Grover said.

“
Look Homeward, Angel
as sedative,” his father said. “That’s a marketing idea I hadn’t thought of. Why can’t you sleep?”

“Don’t know,” Grover said, setting the book facedown on his lap.

“Bad for the binding.” His father gently took the book, folded a Kleenex to mark Grover’s place, then closed it and set it back on Grover’s lap. “Is something bothering you?”

Grover shrugged. He wasn’t used to his father asking about anything other than his grades. Their mother had been the one to ask questions. A little too many questions. She’d ask him how his day had been or what he’d done in class or what he was working on in the Bamboo Forest. Pretty normal-seeming questions. He knew she asked not so much for the answers as to measure how he was feeling. Her questions were like the probes they sent to Mars to analyze what the planet was made of.

“Miss Snyder called,” his father said.

Grover sat up. “What’d
she
want?” he asked, his heart beating faster.

“To encourage you to come see her,” he said. “She thought it might help you feel better.”

There was that word,
feel
.

Grover crossed his arms and looked straight ahead.

“Nobody’s going to make you,” his father said.

Grover looked at him out of the corner of his eye.

“We thought it might be a good idea to talk to someone,” his father said.

We thought!
His father and Miss Snyder had talked enough to become a
we
?

“I don’t want to see her.”

His father walked to the window. Just enough light from Grover’s lamp spilled out into the side yard to highlight the green ribs of the Bamboo Forest. His father rubbed his forehead. “If your mother was here …”

Outside, the wind rustled the bamboo.

“I don’t think about her as much,” Grover said.

His father turned back to him.

“Sometimes I don’t even feel all that sad,” Grover said.

His father sat on the bed beside him. “It’s okay to feel better.”

“It’s not okay to forget her,” Grover said, sounding angry, but he wasn’t sure who he was angry with.