Hepatitis C causes cirrhosis of the liver, which is the same thing Grandma Frieda has now. It eats the liver bit by bit until there is nothing left but a wad of scar tissue. Dad quit drinking immediately because the liver can no longer process alcohol and alcohol only makes it worse. But Grandma didn’t quit. Mom says she just sits in her chair with her mountain of pills, the highball glass of scotch sweating beads of water on the tray next to her. Mom is worried because Grandpa’s back cancer is much worse now and it seems like he can’t take care of her much longer.
Dad is trying his best to take care of himself. Doing his exercise every morning, eating healthy food, wrapping himself in a blanket as he sits in the empty stands at my track meets to root for me when I run the mile.
“Not bad,” he says, closing the college brochures, putting down his reading glasses as he lowers the volume on the game. “I mean, shit, if you became a lawyer, you could make your whole living just defending the family.”
I know he’s worried about Tony. We all are. He’s drinking again. He and Tiffany split up and three months later he was told that she was back out on the street using drugs. When the baby wasn’t with Tony, she would leave him with people for weeks at a time. Sometimes it would be a friendly couple with children but sometimes it was strangers she hardly knew. One of them fed him nothing but corn syrup from a bottle which ruined his little teeth, making them brown and yellow with rot.
One of the people called Child Protective Services and the baby became a ward of the state. Mom intervened so that he wouldn’t end up in foster care. But that didn’t last long and eventually the baby ended up back with Tony, in a tiny apartment at the edge of town. Jake and Tony have become friends and Jake says that when he visits him, there are beer cans everywhere and a small child in diapers walking around while his father drinks on the couch.
Tiffany has disappeared. Nobody knows where she is. Jake said he heard a rumor that she has a new man and all they do is “party.” It’s a strange word to describe something that causes so much sadness.
When I talk to Tony, he seems distant, broken. He says, “I’m proud of you, little bro. You go make a mark on the world. Tell ’em where you came from.” I can hear the sadness in his voice, like he’s given up or just doesn’t know what to do. It seems like too much for one person, to have a child and an addiction and the memory of all that time alone. “I tell everyone about you. My little brother’s gonna be a brain surgeon or an astronaut or some shit. I believe in you, Mick. Seriously, it’s like the only thing I do believe in.”
* * *
ON THE DAY I receive my acceptance letter to Stanford University, Dad is the only one home. He’s waiting for me in the garage with the radio on, working on his truck. “A packet came for you,” he says with a smile. “You might want to check it out.” There is a big white envelope sitting on the shop table next to the jigsaw. I tear it open, letting the paper fall to the floor where Dad has his tools laid out—a socket set, some pliers, Allen wrenches, glass jars filled with bolts and nuts. The letter on top says, “Congratulations! It is with great pleasure that I offer you admission into Stanford University.” Before I can read another word, before I review the glossy brochures with pictures of students sitting in those Romanesque archways, before I review the financial aid scholarship I am offered that covers my tuition and housing and books, before any of it, I throw my arms around Dad’s neck and we both start to cry.
I’m not sure if it’s joy or sadness. It feels like something achieved but also something survived. Something found, maybe, a strength together that we did not have apart. I smell the Old Spice on his neck, feel his thick gold necklace against my head. I know he quit his job for me after the motorcycle accident. For this. I know Bonnie has worked to support us, for this. So it feels like it’s ours. I let out a scream and Dad pumps his fist and we’re jumping up and down with our arms around each other’s shoulders. “You did this,” he says. I run into the house to call Mom but she’s gone so I leave a message that I have big news and go out to the front lawn to yell for the whole neighborhood to hear.
When I return to the garage, Dad is sitting on the floor with his elbows on his knees, an arm on the front fender of the Chevy, his head down, a hand over his eyes. I ask him what’s wrong. He shakes his head and waves me away, a painful smile on his face. It’s just the two of us there among the oil-stained rags and balled-up shop towels, the neat drawers of his red Craftsman toolbox. I know what he’s thinking because I’m thinking it too.
We’re still alive, you and me. Them sonsabitches ain’t buried us yet.
* * *
TWO HOURS LATER Mom calls to tell me Grandma Frieda is dead. I can hear the tears through the phone as she explains that her mother’s liver finally gave out, that despite the advanced cirrhosis she never stopped drinking until four days ago, when she quit cold turkey and the shock killed her.
I tell her I’m sorry and I love her and it’s going to be okay. I listen quietly while she sobs. “I couldn’t be close to her,” she says. “She was so hard on me. But it’s still difficult to lose my mom.”
I think about the Dutch family that moved to America, the father who fought in a war for two countries, the mother who sat and drank every day, the three children, the oldest of whom was raised by nannies and grew up playing alone in the bombed-out craters of a war.
“So what’s your big news?”
“Oh, well. I don’t know if now’s the time.”
“No, tell me. I could use some good news.”
“Well, I got into Stanford, Mom. A scholarship and everything. I can’t believe it.”
The line goes quiet and I wonder briefly if we lost the connection. “You there? Did you hear what I said?”
“So you’re not going to go to the University of Oregon? To Eugene, like we talked about?”
“Mom, I got a scholarship to Stanford.”
“But you promised me. This is going to be a very hard year for me. I was really excited you were going to be close.”
I tell her I’m sorry. I tell her we’ll talk. I tell her I feel bad for Grandpa and sad about Grandma. I tell her I love her and I have to go.
We hang up and I go for a run along the bike path. The whitecaps dot the water beyond the break of Dockweiler State Beach with its raised sand dunes fifteen feet high. I can hear my footsteps on the smooth concrete, see my shadow on the dunes. The excitement I felt has died down and in its place is a new thought, a lonely one.
I am the lucky one. I always was. I know they’re all proud of me but there’s something else, a feeling like a prisoner who has escaped, who has left others behind.
I try to remember a time before all this crisis. But when was that? What was there before? Did we ever sit quietly, eyes closed in a warm field untroubled by all these ghosts?
I already know the answer. And yet.
You can pretend the ghosts don’t haunt you. But they do.
So it’s bittersweet, the feeling as I run alone on the path. Grandma is dead, Grandpa is dying, Paul is dead (or in a gutter somewhere), Mom is devastated, Dad is sick, Tiffany is on the street again, Tony is working construction in the rain in Salem to support a child he is too young and too drunk to care for …