“She’ll get something else,” Uncle Walt says. “She always does.”
But Uncle Walt wasn’t here the last time this happened—he doesn’t know how bad it gets. How can I tell Mom about Grandma now? But I have to, don’t I? What if Gary’s right and something terrible happens to her?
The den door slams, and I can hear Mom’s bedroom slippers slogging toward us. She slides by without looking at us and goes into the kitchen.
When I get up to follow her, Uncle Walt says, “If I were you, I’d stay out of her way for a while.”
“I don’t think I can,” I say. “I have something important to tell her.”
“She’s had enough important news for one day, Hitch.”
I think that over. Should I wait until tomorrow? She’ll still be laid off. I can’t very well wait until she finds another job.
“It’s about Grandma,” I tell Uncle Walt.
He stares at me, his usual grin sagging at the corners and then collapsing altogether. A groan escapes him as he pushes back from the table and gets to his feet. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
Mom has ripped open a bag of potato chips and is sitting at the kitchen table, digging into it. Before I lose my nerve, I just start talking. “Something’s wrong with Grandma,” I say. “Today she thought her cat Batman was outside trying to get in.” Mom stops chewing and stares at me. Her hand opens, and the chips she’s holding fall back into the bag. Uncle Walt leans against the wall and puts a hand over his eyes.
I tell them about the other stuff—the teakettle and the mixed-up names. Mom’s face gets pale, and she pushes the chip bag away from her like that’s what’s making her sick.
“I’ve seen a few things too,” she says. “I guess I just didn’t want to believe it. The other day I took her to the supermarket, and we got separated. I found her standing in the cereal aisle, crying because she couldn’t find the Quaker Oats. This is the woman who didn’t cry when her husband was diagnosed with lung cancer, and now she’s in tears over a box of oatmeal. God, I didn’t think this day could get any worse.”
“I’m sorry, Mom. Uncle Walt told me you got laid off.”
She puts her elbows on the table and lets her head fall into her hands. “Well, I guess the layoff came at the right time, huh? Now I can spend my days taking care of my mother as she gets more and more senile. She won’t be able to live by herself. I’ll have to move her in here with us. I’ll be her caretaker for the rest of her life.” She gives a terrible laugh. “Oh well, I’ve got no life of my own anyway.”
Uncle Walt starts pacing around the table. “We’ll figure something out, Cin. Maybe we can find a good nursing home someplace.”
Mom’s head jerks back. “We’ll figure something out? Since when are you involved in taking care of your mother?”
“I always…You call me…”
And then Mom blows up. “Do you have any idea how much nursing-home care costs for somebody with dementia or Alzheimer’s or whatever this is?”
Dementia. Alzheimer’s. I never thought those words would refer to somebody in my own family. I wonder if that’s what Jimmy Stewart had in Harvey, the movie where his best friend was a giant, invisible rabbit. What’s the difference between wacky and demented?
Mom is still ranting at Uncle Walt. “Carol Turner’s father was in a nursing home for four years and it nearly bankrupted them, and they had more to begin with than we do. Mom’s got nothing saved, and I just lost my job! Were you planning to contribute some of your tips from the Cheesecake Factory?”
I feel bad for Uncle Walt. When Mom gets crazy mad like this, she definitely seems like she wants to slit your throat. Uncle Walt glares back at her.
“That’s not fair, Cindy. I’ve done what I could over the years. You’re the one who lives here, so naturally the burden—”
“Not fair?” Mom jumps out of her chair, and for a minute I think she’s going to attack her brother. He must think so too, because he turns to protect his bad side.
“You ran away to California to get rich and famous, to become Wade Wolf because even our name wasn’t cool enough for you. And I was left behind to take care of our parents! I already nursed one of them through cancer, and now I have to deal with this! Don’t tell me what’s fair!”
“I came back when Dad was sick,” Uncle Walt says, but I notice he’s looking at the linoleum floor rather than into Mom’s eyes. I remember Mom had to skip a lot of work when Grandpa was sick, which, now that I think about it, was right before she got laid off the first time.
“You came back for one week,” Mom hisses at him. “Just in time to help me pick out the gravestone. Did you think this was how I wanted to spend my life, Walter? Stuck in this mud puddle of a town, dealing with all my mother’s problems while she heaps praise on you, her beloved, runaway son? You knew I wanted a career in music. You just chose to forget about it.”
Really? Mom wanted a music career? I never heard that before.
Now Uncle Walt is angry too, and he steps closer to her, sticking his finger in her face. “I did not run away. You’re the one who dropped out of college to get married, Cindy! Don’t blame me. I didn’t tell you to stay in New Aztec and have a kid and lead such a boring life!”
And just like that, I’m in the fight too. Because I’m the kid who kept Mom stuck in New Aztec in “such a boring life.” I feel like Uncle Walt has slapped me. He’d never do anything as foolish as having a kid like me and ruining his career. It’s as if he threw a grenade and it hit me right in the chest.
Uncle Walt looks at me and holds out his hand. “I didn’t mean—Maisie, you know I didn’t mean…”
But I’m not listening anymore. I run out the back door so I can get far away from both of them before the explosion knocks me over.
I don’t even think about where I’m headed, but I guess it makes sense that I end up in front of the Lincoln Theater, since it’s my favorite place in town. Other people might go to a church when they’re upset, but I believe in movies.
Tuesday matinees are usually musicals, and I see by the sign out front that today’s is The Sound of Music. The show is just letting out, and a bunch of old people are getting into a van marked “St. Anthony’s Elder Care” on the side.
It’s mostly women, moving slowly, some of them with canes. In a race, Grandma would beat them easily. They don’t look unhappy, but they also don’t look like they’re planning to climb every mountain until they find their dreams. They look like their dreams have been over for a long time. Which ought to make me feel sad, I guess, but instead it makes me angry. I don’t want my grandma’s dreams to be over, or my mom’s either, for that matter. Heck, I didn’t even know my mom had dreams. How could I not have known that?
I pull the heavy door open and go into the lobby, where it’s cool and smells like popcorn and bubble gum. Mr. Schmitz is running the vacuum cleaner over the lobby rug and doesn’t hear me come in, so I sit on the stairs that go up to the balcony. He turns off the machine and wraps the cord around the handle, then looks over and sees me sitting there.
“Good Lord, when did you sneak in?” He puts his hand over his heart like I scared him, which I didn’t mean to do. “The show’s over already,” he says. “You missed it.”
“I know,” I say. “Is it okay if I just sit here a minute?”
He gives me the side-eye. “Well, I’m closing the place up,” he says. “But…you’re the one, aren’t you? You’re Evie’s grandkid.”
I nod.
“How’s she doing?”
I’m not sure how to answer that question. “Okay, I guess. But she’s…starting to forget things.”
Mr. Schmitz closes his eyes and screws up his face like he’s in pain. He turns away from me and says, “That’s too bad.”
“She still remembers stuff that happened a long time ago, though. She remembers you.”
“I certainly remember her too,” he says. He shakes his head and changes the subject. “You come here all the time, don’t you?
With that little boyfriend of yours.”
“He’s not my boyfriend. He’s just my friend.” Why do I have to keep explaining that to everybody?
“Yeah, okay.” Mr. Schmitz scoots the vacuum cleaner across the rug and stashes it in a closet I never noticed before. “You two are real movie lovers.”
“My uncle is an actor,” I tell him. “He lives in Hollywood.”
“What’s his name?”
“Walter Hoffmeister. Well, his movie name is Wade Wolf.”
He grunts. “Never heard of him.”
“He hasn’t gotten his big break yet.”
Mr. Schmitz nods. “Say, you want some popcorn? It’s not hot anymore, but I’m just gonna throw out what’s left.”
“Sure.” I stand up and follow Mr. Schmitz to the counter. He goes behind it and gets a red-and-white box—one of the big ones—and loads it up to overflowing with popcorn, then drizzles butter all over it.
“You like butter, right?”
“Who doesn’t?”
“Nobody I know,” he says.
When I take the box from him, some of the top pieces fall onto the rug he’s just vacuumed. He looks down at the escaped kernels but, surprisingly, doesn’t mention it.
“So, you’re a movie fan because your uncle’s an actor, is that it?”
“Well, he got me started,” I tell him. “But I think it was my destiny anyway. I’m going to be a director someday. Or at least a DP.”
He looks surprised. “A DP?”
“Director of photography,” I explain.
He gets this aggravated look on his face. If Mr. Schmitz was younger, he’d look like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. “Yeah, I know what it is,” he says. “I’m just surprised you know.”
“I know a lot about film. I read books.”
“Only so much you can learn from books,” he says. “You wanna learn how to make a movie, make a movie. Get your hands dirty.”
A few more kernels land on the rug, but Mr. Schmitz doesn’t seem to notice. He’s leaning on his elbows on the counter and looking into space.
“Oh, I intend to,” I tell him. “I’m writing a script now. Did you ever make a movie?”
“I gave it a try,” he says. “Not in Hollywood. Not my style. But I was in New York for a while. When I was young.”
“And you made movies?”
“Nothing big, but, yeah, I learned plenty.”
“How come you didn’t stay in New York? If I lived in New York and made movies, I wouldn’t move back to New Aztec.”
He straightens up and looks down at the counter, then grabs a rag and starts wiping the glass. “You’re still a kid. You don’t know what you’d do,” he says. “Sometimes life turns you sideways. You make choices you didn’t think you would.”
I wonder if the way life turned him sideways had to do with Grandma or with that boy he tried to save from drowning, or if there were other sadnesses too.
He looks down and notices the popcorn scattered around my feet and turns back into crabby Bill Murray. “Did you not see me vacuum this rug ten minutes ago? Good Lord.”
“I’ll pick it up,” I say, bending over. Unfortunately, when I bend over, I spill more out of the box.
Mr. Schmitz makes a shooing motion with his hands. “Just get out of the way! What are you hanging around here for, anyway? Take the popcorn outside, or I’ll be sorry I gave it to you.”
He heads for the hidden closet, and I go for the door. Oh, well. I’ve never talked to Mr. Schmitz for such a long time before. It was a pretty good conversation while it lasted. I’m pushing open the door when he calls after me.
“Say, does your grandmother have a telephone?”
“Yeah.” Who doesn’t have a telephone?
Mr. Schmitz clears his throat loud and long, as if he’s about to say something important, but all he says is, “Do you happen to know the number?”
Everybody is in a terrible mood at dinnertime. We pick at our pasta and don’t say much. Finally Dad stands up noisily from the table. He gives Uncle Walt a scornful look and says, “I’ll get a second job, if I have to. You do what you have to do to take care of your family.”
“Dennis, come on,” Uncle Walt says. “I told you, I’m going to help out too.”
“When have you ever helped us out, Walter? You come back here when you need something, not when we do. You’ll go back to sunny California and forget all about what’s happening back here.” Dad stomps off into the kitchen. Mom flinches when his plate crashes into the sink.
“I mean it, Cindy,” Uncle Walt says. “I’ll help you. I don’t know how yet, but I will. If I land this pilot and if the show sells, maybe I’ll be able to—”
“If, if, maybe,” Mom says, but she gives her brother a half-baked smile. “I know you mean well, Walt, and I’m sorry I got so mad at you this afternoon. You’re right. I made my own decisions. I shouldn’t whine about it now.”
“Listen,” Uncle Walt says, “I called Francine and told her she has to get me that Skype audition. She thinks she might be able to.”
Mom shakes her head. “This can’t wait until you land some great part. Mom can’t be alone anymore. I need to find somebody to stay with her at her place when I can’t be there. Then, when you go back to LA, I’ll move her in here with us.”
“In my room?” I ask quietly.
Mom nods. “I think so, Maisie. I’m sorry. It’s got the air-conditioning, and it’s close to the bathroom. You can fix up the den, though, so it feels like a bedroom. I’ll move the piano out.”
“Where?” I ask. Our house is small, and the rooms are pretty full already. I’m trying not to think about the wallpaper in my bedroom, which I chose myself when I was seven. It has green ferns that twist up the walls and make me feel like I’m sleeping in a garden. And I try not to think about the big window that looks out onto the backyard, where I watch the chipmunks stealing Mom’s cherry tomatoes and sometimes baby rabbits coming out of their nest underneath the hosta plants. The den has dark wood paneling, and you can only see the driveway from the one small window. But I know better than to complain about it, because everybody else is giving up things too. It’s for Grandma, I tell myself. You can give up your wallpaper for her.
Mom sighs. “I should probably sell the piano. We could use the money, and I’m not going to have time to play it now anyway.”
“No!” Uncle Walt yells, spraying iced tea across the table. “You can’t sell your piano. I won’t let you!”
Mom gives a sharp laugh. “You won’t let me? You don’t even like the music I play.”
“Sometimes I do,” he says. “Just not when you sound like Eeyore with his finger caught in a car door.”
Mom’s eyes open wide. “His what caught in a car door?”
“Okay, okay,” Uncle Walt says. “Donkeys don’t have fingers, but if they did!” Which makes us all, finally, laugh.
Later on, Uncle Walt knocks on the den door and sticks his head in.
“Doing my homework,” I say, although I finished an hour ago. Mostly I’m sitting here thinking about the future and how much things are going to change, whether I want them to or not.
“Okay,” Uncle Walt says. “I just wanted to tell you again how sorry I am about what I said this afternoon. You know that, right? I didn’t mean your mom shouldn’t have gotten married or had you or anything. You know I think you’re the coolest kid since…” He stops to think. “Since Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird.”
Uncle Walt is no dummy. He knows I love that movie, and especially Scout, who doesn’t let anybody push her around. I almost smile, but I manage to stop myself. “Uh-huh,” I say, not looking up.
He tries again. “You were always awesome, even as a little kid. You were willing to fight for what you wanted. I always said, ‘Nobody puts Maisie in a corner!’ ”
I don’t say anything, even though I catch the reference to Dirty Dancing, which Mom thinks I’m too young to see. Cyrus and I watched it at his house last year.
Uncle Walt sighs and comes farther into the room. “You’re right. I don’t deserve your immediate forgiveness. It’s selfish of me to expect it.” He gives a short laugh. “That’s your mother’s favorite word for me. Selfish. I guess I am.”
I keep looking at the computer, and Uncle Walt wanders over to Mom’s piano. He plinks around on it until he manages to play a stanza of “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”
“I took lessons on this piano too,” he says. “But I gave it up. It was too hard and I didn’t like to sit still. Your mom, though, she was never happier than when she was sitting on this piano bench. She should have stayed in college or gone to a music conservatory or…”
Suddenly he bangs his fist on the piano keys, and the loud, jarring noise makes me jump. “This is why I don’t like to argue with people,” he says. “You say things you don’t mean. Or, you kind of mean them, but the way you say it sounds arrogant and hurtful. And I never want to hurt your mom or you, Hitch. Especially not you.”
That breaks me. I look up and smile. “I know.”
He leans down to give me a sideways, injured-collarbone hug. “All I meant was we all make choices in life,” he says. “I don’t think your mom made bad choices. It’s just…if you make a left turn, you can’t make a right turn at the same time. You know what I mean?”
I nod, but I’m still confused. What if one person’s choice ruins another person’s chance to do what they dreamed of? If Uncle Walt hadn’t left New Aztec for LA, would Mom have had a different life? If she hadn’t stuck around here to take care of her parents, would she be a professional pianist now instead of an unemployed parking enforcement officer? If she hadn’t married Dad, would I even have been born?
“Don’t worry about it,” I say. “I’m not mad at you anymore.”