Young Writers Society

My mother and I are staring at each other across the grimy pizza parlor table. I have taken a vow not to speak first. Between us, a mostly-eaten pizza. Above us, florescent lighting that flickers every fifth second. My dad is there too. He’s mopping up marina sauce with a piece of bread and spinning a straw between his fingers. We’re wasting time. We know bad news is coming. My mother glances at her hands.

“I got a call from Grandma today, it’s not so good.”

I reach for my glass of water, and begin chewing on an ice cube.

“Grandpa is going to the hospital.”

“Oh?”

“He has a heart aneurysm, it’s pretty serious this time.”

“It sounds bad,” says Dad, “but I don’t know how bad, I mean, when you say someone has cancer, everyone knows it’s bad. But I thought aneurysms were usually in the brain”

Grandpa is my mother’s step-father. Her biological father—the smoker, the drinker, the thwarted heir to a middle-Minnesota fortune in granite—died when he was forty seven.

“It sounds bad.”

“This isn’t just a bad back.”

“Yeah, it certainly doesn’t sound good this time.”

“How’d he find out about it?”

“Oh you know, one day he woke up in a lot of pain and eventually he couldn’t walk, so he had to go in.”

“That sounds pretty typical.”

“—And of course he drove himself in.”

“Are you serious?”

“Honey, you know how it is with Grandpa and driving.”

“Well sure, but if he couldn’t walk, how did he expect himself to be able to drive?”

“He made it okay, we should be thankful for that.”

Everyone looks down at the table. “Does anybody want the last slice?” Dad asks after the flickering light picks up its tempo.

“It’s yours.”

“So he’s in the hospital?”

“No, didn’t I say this, they gave him some pain medicine and asked that he come in tomorrow.”

“What?”

“That’s what my mom told me.”

“So how does he plan to get in?”

“Well,” says my mother, biting her lip, “I’m going to pick him up and go with him.”

“Good call.”

The woman and her husband in the booth next to ours have been listening in on our conversation.

“Sorry to be intruding in,” the wife says, a sauce stain swaying majestically on her breast, “But I’m really sorry for all of you, that sounds like a real difficulty.”

My mother turns and gives a grim little smile. “Thanks,” she says, in a voice that suddenly seems unlike her own.

“I’m a nurse, and I see poor families like yours every day who have to deal with this kind of awful stuff, I sympathize for you, I really do. You all just have to stick together and pray to god.”

“We appreciate it.” My father says.

“My family went through the same kind of thing a few years ago, it was hard for me to be on the other side, ya know, but everything worked out in the end. You just have to have faith that it’ll all turn out good. Where is he going?”

“He’s going to Regions tomorrow.” my mother says.

The woman nods her head. “Oh they’re good people over there at Regions, it’ll all be fine.”

“Oh, that’s good to hear, I sure hope so.”

My mother looks back at us, eyes filling up like lakes.

“People are so nice.” She says.

I start constructing a fort out of my grease-painted paper plate and spare silverware. My mother reaches across the table to put her hand on mine. “Will you make sure to call Grandma and see if you can come visit her?”

“Yeah,” I say, balancing a fork, “No problem.”

Grampa goes to Regions hospital on a Thursday. My mother takes a day off of work to support her step-father and figure out what can be done. It’s operation or bust.

“They started immediately.” She tells us when she comes home.

My grandfather wakes up again that weekend. The doctors can’t do anything else for him at the moment. He is depressed and weak. There is nothing my grandfather can do to help out the doctors. A month before his own surgery, a friend of his died during the same operation. They tell us that in my grandfather’s chest they had found five times more aneurysms than they had expected.

I talk with my grandmother on the phone. “He’s very lucky.” I say.

“Yes he is,” she says, “Oh he was so worried about what would happen.”

“I guess you’ve just gotta trust that it’ll all be alright.”

“You do,” she says, “You do—You know, just the other month, a friend of his went in for the exact same operation, and he passed away. I think your grandfather was thinking of his friend.”

I pick at the wallpaper. “I remember you telling me about that.”

“Do you know where he told me he would like to be buried?”

“He made it through, grammie, he’s not there yet.”

A pause stretches out and I count the seconds. When she speaks, my grandmother’s voice is soft like the palm of a hand. “Before he went in I told him that he shouldn’t worry, because he had nothing to fear. If he didn’t make it through like his friend then he would be in heaven. I told him when I went in for surgery a couple years ago that I

wasn’t worried, and he shouldn’t be either. He shouldn’t worry about going to heaven because he was a good man."

My grandmother is religious in a way that she was never able to pass on to her children. Her faith came from a different time. When she was sixteen, her parents moved to Idaho and abandoned her to an ice dancing show in Minneapolis. She was married early and widowed early. Her children drank, smoked and got into trouble with the law. Her older brother died young and penniless in Canada. Loss has run through her life like a river.

“I think that’s a good thing to have told him grammie.” I said.

My grandmother met her second husband at a singles club on Angle and Minnehaha. Her children were grown up by then—for better or for worse—and she was living in St. Paul and commuting to Minneapolis because the rent was cheaper. She went back to ice skating, and practiced every day of the week but Tuesday. Once a month on her off-day, she would take the trolley cars to go shopping, either at Dayton’s in downtown St. Paul, or Sears on Lake Street. When she came back, she would take the trolley up the boulevard to Mounds Park and eat a small dinner at the crest of one of the mounds.

My grandfather was working in the same neighborhood. Unlike my grandmother, he was native to St. Paul. Freshly returned from the war, he had been recruited into the University of Minnesota’s fledgling dentistry program. The barbarity of the dental practice of the period has been deeply etched into popular culture ever since, but my grandfather was a conscientious practitioner. Initially, however my grandmother’s small town sensibilities and my grandfather’s city assertiveness did not mesh. “It was like pulling teeth!” my grandfather would joke every time he told the story.

The story, like all good stories, changed drastically every time it was told. But by all accounts, my grandparents were a good match. Both maintained their faith and a traditional marriage. They stockpiled guns, played tennis, and nurtured a resentment of the darker-skinned immigrants who flooded into the Twin Cities soon after they settled down.

Their first date has changed locations too many times to count—they were all like first dates, my grandfather would say—but I have always liked the version where they stop at the Dairy Queen on Matoaka that still exists, and then go walking. They walk for a while, not saying much but not paying attention to where they’re going either. They are both in their late forties at this point, both fervently hoping for something special. When they reach the park, both don’t realize it immediately. The airport beacon is blinking steadily into the night, and they both remember when it went up. My grandfather makes a remark about technology that he made earlier to a patient at his office, and my grandmother returns with a comment about how she had always wanted her daughter to be a pilot. They both lie down on one of the mounds to better watch the sky overhead, the rustling of the trees, and the beat beat beat of the tower beacon against the night.

I visit him with my mother a week later. He is sleeping when we arrive, and sleeping when we leave. We get a few words with him in between, like a ship making a hasty port call.

We trade anxious questions for feeble answers.

—How are you doing? Oh you know.

—Are you eating? Sometimes.

—Are you comfortable? I just had surgery.

—Would you like us to bring you anything? Oh you know.

—What’s it like? Oh, there’s a view you can see here.

The walls of the recovery room are covered in peeling flowers and fruits. From his window, my grandfather can see East across St. Paul, over Payne and Swede Hollow and to the hills opposite. When we leave, his head is tilted towards the window, morning sunlight streaming onto his covers.

A painstaking two months after the surgery, my grandfather is no longer in Regions Hospital. After the surgery was completed he had needed dialysis, and so he had been shipped off to a care center in Cottage Grove where they had the right equipment. On a frostbitten late October day, I bus through snowbanks to meet my grandmother, and we drive to check up on him.

“How is he, grammie?” I ask on the highway.

“Oh, he’s pretty tired.” She says. My grandmother is getting used to having to drive herself around all the time. For years, she has made only token visits to the mall, now she is speeding.

“Oh look, do you see that car right in front of us?” my Grandmother says.

“I would hope so.”

“See the license plate? Does it start with a ‘W’?

“I think so.”

“Huh.”

I let two billboards pass before I follow up. “What’s special about license plates that start with ‘W’s?”

“Don’t you know?”

I don’t.

“That’s a whisky plate,” she said, “They give them to people who have been arrested for drunk driving.”

“Oh. Huh.”

The dialysis center is on a hill in the midst of a soulless suburban development. It overlooks a pond that passes for a lake, at the end of barren stretch of pitch that had been christened ‘Cherry Hill Drive’. At the front desk, we sign in beneath pastel illustrations of flower bouquets. I watch the television in the lobby. There is a dog show on.

My grandfather is asleep in his bed when we walk in. Beside him is a styrofoam bowl filled with uneaten pasta. On the television in his room, the Vikings are losing. I sit down on one side of the bed, and my grandmother sits down on the other. We both turn to look at the game.

“Should we wake him up?” I ask after the Vikings failed to get a first down.

“He’ll wake up in a little bit.”

“Alright.”

Two commercial breaks later, he stirs briefly, and my grandmother and I turn and watched him. His hand moves first, over the sheets to rest across his chest. Then his eyes open and stare at the television.

“Well hello there.” my grandmother says.

Comprehension is several seconds in coming. “Oh, hello. Didn’t see ya there.” He turns his head slightly.

“Hey Grampa.” I says.

“Oh,” he says, turning his head towards me, “Didn’t see you there either.”

“How are you feeling, then?”

“Oh, you know.” He shrugs.

“Doesn’t sound so good.”

“He’s much better than he was yesterday.” Grandma says, nodding.

“Oh, I dunno about that. I feel about the same.”

“I think you sound much better.”

My grandfather looks at me and mustered a wan smile. “How are the Vikings doing?”

“They’re losing,” I says, “How’s physical therapy going?”

He stares at the tv.

“How’s physical therapy going?” I asked.

“They want me to sit in that chair every morning.” He motions to the chair that I am sitting in.

“And how is that going?” My grandmother asks.

He nods. “It’s going.”

“Have they come in to do the PT today?”

“No.”

“Well, should we wait until they do?”

“Oh, you don’t have to.”

“Well, we don’t have anywhere to go, so we can stay.”

My grandfather rolls his head to look at the trees shivering outside.

“Out the window,” my Grandmother tells me, “Deer sometimes come onto the lawn and you can see them right out there.”

“I saw one out there this morning.” says Grandpa, “He looked cold.”

“Well, it’s pretty cold out there.”

“Oh is it? It’s pretty cold in here too.”

My grandmother reaches over and tucks Grandpa further into the covers. On the television, the Vikings try to run the ball and lose yards.

When I recover from a cold in November, it takes me the same week that my grandfather learns to sit up in his bed by himself. His recuperation drags on like the melting of the glaciers. We hear reports sporadically; he is starting to get used to the hospital jello; he hasn’t needed dialysis in two weeks; he is adamant that the Vikings should get a new coach; he can go to the bathroom without assistance; the new nurse is much prettier than the last one.

I am busy with school and friends, and the days weave together on the calendar until they become a blanket under which I have always lived. Grandpa has always been in the hospital, he will never leave. My grandmother has always driven herself around. My mother and my conservative uncle from the suburbs talk frequently. This is the permanence of shorter days and longer nights, of frost in the mornings, and weekly reports about sitting in chairs.

It is when I am on a band trip in Wisconsin that my mother calls. I am lying in the hotel bed watching hockey when the phone rings on the nightstand. My roommate mutes the game and my thoughts trample the paddock fence to range far and wide. It is too late for a courtesy call, surely, something has happened. The last news I heard was that he was eating solid foods again. But that’s improvement, right? Before that I heard that he had seen a family of deer outside the window, surely that only indicates that he can turn his head?

My roommate waves the remote at me. “Are you going to answer that?”

On the other end, my mother sounds exhausted. “Hello, honey,” she says, “How’s the trip going?”

“It’s going great,” I say, “What’s up? What’s happened?”

“That’s good to hear, listen, I want to hear all about this trip when you get home, but first there’s some news about Grandpa. They’ve set a date for him to come home.”

“Oh really?” The volume comes back on, a little lower than before. “That’s great, sounds excellent.”

“It is. But he’s not coming back right away, there’s a lot that needs to happen first. He’s still got to continue getting better, first of all.”

“Makes sense.”

“But he’s supposed to come back in a few months, it’s all planned out. Really excellent, honestly, I wasn’t sure if he was going to make it back home at all.”

The volume goes back to full.

“Well,” I say, “it’s good to hear this.”

After I hang up, I stare at the television for some time after my roommate goes to sleep. I wonder if my Grandfather is watching the same game, or else anticipating his return home where the television channels aren’t so extensive.

Thanksgiving comes upon everyone as quickly as the ice moving in, and before I know it, my grandmother is packed into the car with my parents, and we’re traveling to the Masonic Lodge in Highwood. The move there was phase one of the plan to bring my grandfather back home. There’s a nice waiting area with a fake fire and newspapers. The bedroom is decorated in shades of dark green, and a pot of large-leaved plants growing on the windowsill.

“Come in,” my grandfather whispers when we arrive, “Look out there.”

He’s on the second floor, with a good view of the spine of woods that separates the lodge from the river. Outside, threading his way carefully through the branches, is a fox.

We’ve come to bring a portion of Thanksgiving dinner. A cut of white turkey breast, liberally coated in gravy, with a dollop of mashed potatoes, and a rise of shredded cranberries. He digs in ferociously at first, then slows halfway through and says he’s had enough.

“We’ll leave it here, then.” says my grandmother.

“How are you feeling?” my mother asks.

“Oh, the same. Tired. Full now after this feast.” my grandfather says after a brief smile.

“But you’re getting better.”

“I guess.”

“Are you doing your PT every day?”

“They come in every day and I walk to the toilet, and then sit in that chair.”

“Good,” my father says, settling at the head of the bed, “That’s really important.”

“Well, we’re very thankful that you’ve made it all this way, and that you’re getting better.” my grandmother rearranges the covers and pats grandfather on the head. “The pilgrims would be proud of you.”

“The Indians too,” I say.

“That’s right,” says my grandmother, nodding, “It’s family moments like this that Thanksgiving was made for!”

“I must be the pilgrims.” My grandfather says, raising himself out of bed slightly, “You all must be all of the ‘injuns teaching me how to survive.”

He smiles, my parents look very proud, and my grandmother massages his forehead for a while. The Vikings are just starting a game they’re expected to lose, but nobody is paying any attention. Outside the fox slinks away into the brush, preparing for a long cold stretch of lonely rest.

Amidst the headlong rush of fall tumbling into winter, I bike up to the old Indian burial mounds in search of the inspiration that others had stored away there long ago. It is a late afternoon on a Sunday; bleak and brisk, and the season’s last stubborn leaves are coming unmoored from their holds to carpet the sidewalks. A sharp wind blows past me in bursts, and as I ride, I bury my chin in my coat and hunched down low over the handlebars. There are others out to catch the last gasps of sun, but only a few. I see an older couple headed home along the path, hands clasped, looking across at the downtown with only silence passing between. I meet a few small kids, mother unseen, who dodge my bike as I bank in for a landing.

The season outlives my grandfather. He and the doctors practice the move-back-home twice, taking my grandfather to the house, preparing the staircases with handlebars, and briefing him on the facts of one floor living in a two floor house. The third time is for real. It’s a weekday, and my grandmother drives to the lodge to pick him up. This time, the nurses clean the room completely, change all the equipment, and install a new patient; a fifty year old truck driver who may or may not have beaten cancer. On the drive home, along Mounds Boulevard, a white van tries to change into the right lane as my grandmother attempts to pass on that side. Their car is thrown against the side railing, where it runs for half a mile before stopping. The white van and driver keep going and get as far as Maple Plain. He’s drunk in the afternoon. No whisky plates.

My grandfather is killed on impact, and my grandmother survives with a few broken bones. After Regions Hospital, she recovers quickly and is moved to the Masonic Lodge, a few doors away from where my grandfather stayed. At my grandfather’s funeral, old men hold back tears and fill the void with jokes about dentists. My grandmother is in a wheelchair for the day, but too weak to speak. In her stead, I read the story of how my grandparents both met. She’s dictated the Mounds Park story, the one I like.

The park is slumbering at this time of year. The water fountains have been shut off, the restrooms padlocked. The grassy mounds shiver as the gusts billow up from the valley, and the trees wave them on. As I thread my bike between the graves, a plane bound for the downtown airport comes tearing over my head, and there is no one else to look up in surprise with me. At the overlook, I stare across at the bluffs, brown and patched like a jacket, and can make out only the distant roar of the highway that threads its way at the base of the cliff. A train inches to a stop in the rail yards. Running along it all, the major artery, the Mississippi; a trickle in the titanic gorge left behind by the ancient River Warren. Here it turns endlessly to the South, a single barge along for the trip.

“Where are you going?” My mother asked me in the morning as I grabbed my helmet from atop the radiator.

“Out,” I said, “It’s a nice day for a change.”

I have come to the park for something hard to identify, a use somewhere between the exercise of just getting there and the peace of having nowhere else to go. Mounds Park is St. Paul; a place with a sense of place, a place who’s identity is deeply entwined with its history, a place that somehow feels abandoned even when it’s not. Mounds Park holds its sense of remoteness dear. At Mounds Park you could feel alone even if a parade marched through. There’s more to it than that, though. A mere afternoon flight across town does not a catharsis make.

What I want most is that elusive feeling of being able to think to yourself and for it to not be awkward if words come out. The burial mounds at Mounds Park are all fenced in now—a recent Minnesota state law protects Indian gravesites. The fences come up to my shoulders. They’re painted black like the black and yellow air traffic tower in the middle of the park. It has been restored recently. The light on the top blinks steadily, counting the seconds. The metal frame of the tower filters the sunlight; climbing slowly up the mounds until only the tops remain lit. I remember that I have another half an hour to ride home.

Written on low wall are the words ‘Lord Jesus Saves’. I wonder what exactly he saves. Nuts like the squirrels? Sun like the sky? Or stories, like I do.