All Over Creation (12 page)

A white index card, meticulously printed in thick black marker, was taped to the refrigerator. It said REFRIGERATOR. Another that said STOVE was taped to the stove. Over the SINK the sign was warped by splashed water. I could stand there all night identifying appliances, and the kids would get up in the morning and find me, still naming.

They had loved it, of course. Ocean in particular. Like it was a neat game made up just for her, and she ran from sign to sign, collecting words like eggs in an Easter basket. “Toaster!” she cried. “Honey! Microwave!”

“Your grandpa made them,” Cass explained. “For your grandma. Sometimes she forgets the names for things.”

She'd helped me round up bedding before she left, and I'd gotten the kids settled. Phoenix had claimed the attic, with its sloping room and chipped iron bed, but Ocean and Poo lay tangled in blankets in a corral of sofa cushions on the floor of my old bedroom, sleeping under my ceiling of faded stars. Now, downstairs, the CLOCK said it was almost midnight. I wanted a whiskey, but I knew there wouldn't be any, so I heated water for tea instead. A sticky film of amber grease speckled the sides of the kettle. The plywood under the Formica counter by the faucet had swollen, and the laminate was lifting and peeling away. The faucet coughed, spit air, then began to flow, and the plumbing shuddered. As the kettle filled, I looked down and noticed two small patches on the floor where the linoleum had worn through. They were the imprints of Momoko's feet, unlabeled, of course, the by-product of hours and years she must have spent standing there washing dishes. I aligned my large feet with the marks made by my mother's small ones, covering them up. My demented mother, who forgot the names of things.

As the kettle boiled, I opened a drawer or two, then shut each one quickly as the contents, duly labeled, threatened to spring out and overwhelm me. More by-product. Certain objects tickled recognition: the plastic corncob holders, the meat thermometer, the metal skewers used for stitching bread crumbs into a turkey. I rubbed my eyes to rub away the images before they unfurled into memories. I poured boiling water over a dusty tea bag from the drawer and walked into the living room.

I remembered exactly where the switches were located. In an unconscious sequence of automatic gestures, my hand reached toward the wall just as my foot crossed the threshold, resulting in a flood of illumination that startled me—the spatial relationships were familiar, but the details of the room confused me with their sudden clarity. For a moment I wondered where I was.

But not for long. For one thing, there was a sign that read LIVING ROOM, stuck to the opposite wall. Then, gradually, like a photograph developing, the room found its resolution and I began to recognize objects: love seat, Lloyd's desk, couch, Lloyd's recliner, coffee table, TV. I sat on the couch for a while, then moved to the desk. I shuffled through a stack of papers, old bills mostly, some farm reports, some invoices, and a few old catalogs from Fullers' Seeds.

Cass had gone through the correspondence and kept up with the bills, but inquiries and orders for seeds were starting to come in, and she had put these all to one side for me to deal with. A pad of ruled paper sat next to the pile, something Lloyd was working on before his heart attack. The spidery handwriting wobbled across the page—slow loops, trembling with the effort of toeing the lines. Was he really so decrepit? So feeble? I took a recent Fullers' Seeds catalog over to Lloyd's chair and started to read:

The seed listings that followed were arranged alphabetically into major vegetable families and genera: the
Allium,
the
Brassica,
the
Chenopodium.
I flipped through them quickly, barely seeing, overwhelmed by the orderly force of my father's opinions. Suddenly the room was full of him, and I remembered the way he would come in from the fields, and Momoko and I would be waiting, and the house would shrink and conform around his approbation. It made me queasy to think about. I stood up quickly and replaced the catalog on the pile of unanswered correspondence. I returned to the KITCHEN, rinsed my cup in the SINK, and climbed the stairs to my bedroom.

I used to close myself into this room, so I could think my thoughts alone. Now I lay down on my little bed and stared up at my starry ceiling, listening to my children breathe. Lloyd had raised these heavens for me—they were luminous decals that came in a kit. The Friendly Stars That Glow. The day he applied them, he stood in the middle of the mattress, my tall, rickety father, as I jumped up and down. He was trying to consult his map of the nighttime sky, something he could not do well with all my bouncing. He told me to hold still, so I lay down on my back to watch. He stood on his tiptoes and stretched across the heavens with Polaris balanced on his fingertip. I could feel the mattress tremble beneath his feet. With the North Star correctly affixed, he smiled, then moved south toward the next horizon.

I was excited at first but soon grew tired of the project. Order in the heavens didn't matter much to me—I must have been about six or seven, Ocean's age—and besides, it was still daytime. The stars were pale green and disappeared against the white ceiling, and I couldn't even see them.
Be still,
Lloyd said.
Be patient.
But patience wasn't in my nature. I fidgeted, and when he reprimanded me, I lay there, arms rigid against my sides like a plank, making a big show of being perfectly still, exactly like Ocean would do now. And just like Ocean, I soon got bored with this game, so I bounced my bottom just a little to see if he'd fall down.
Yumi, I said that's enough!
But I already knew that, and I gave one last tremendous bounce off the mattress and ran out the door, leaving him stranded, tall and precarious, wobbling to keep his balance.

But that night, after Momoko had tucked me in and turned off the light, I opened my eyes and looked up to see the night sky come to life.
Daddy!
I cried, and Lloyd must have been waiting outside my door like a kid on Christmas because he was by my side in a heartbeat.

He chuckled with pleasure at my excitement. He sat down next to me, and I followed his finger as he pointed to the Dippers. I remember a deep, celestial bliss, a sense of galactic stability, which pretty well lasted until my nebula spun out of his control and a dark star crossed my firmament, eclipsing him entirely.

Lloyd spotted his wife immediately, sitting by herself at a table in the corner of the day room. She looked so small, curled over and concentrating, like a child at a task. On the floor by her feet was a brown paper bag, and she was taking things from it. As the nurse wheeled him closer, he could see they were seedpods, the size of plums with crowns at the top. She was doing Hens and Chicks, the pride of her ornamental poppies. She could no longer remember the names of these seeds, so she would need Lloyd to write the labels, but that would happen later on. For the time being she was intent on her work, poking the woody casing with the point of a pencil, making a hole, then shaking the minuscule seeds from the ovary onto a turquoise cafeteria tray that she was using as a work surface.

“Oidé yo, tané-chan!”
she whispered. “Come here, little seeds. . . .”

When the nurse wheeled him over and parked him next to her, she looked up, surprised.

“Well, well!” the nurse said. “You've been busy, sitting here all by your lonesome!” She kicked the brakes into place and peered at Momoko. “What do you have there?”

Momoko smiled politely, then bent her head and rattled a pod. The seeds bounced across the turquoise surface like fleas. She tipped the tray, and hundreds, maybe thousands, of seeds massed and rolled together like something spreading and alive.

“Well,” the nurse continued, adjusting Lloyd's collar. “You'll be glad to hear that our boy did real good in physio today. He buttoned up his own pajama tops and walked to the potty all by himself.”

Lloyd groaned. “Nurse, please.”

“Even had a nice long bath, didn't we?”

“Sheila! Please!”

The nurse made a big, pouty face. “Oooh, you're hurting my feelings. Sheila was yesterday. I'm Shirley.”

“I'm sorry,” Lloyd said.

“That's okay, I forgive you.” She turned to Momoko. “Aren't you even going to say howdy to your honey?”

“Howdy,” Momoko said. Lloyd reached out and patted her hand.

“That's more like it,” said Shirley. “Now, let's get those meds down.”

Momoko stared at Lloyd's hand, with their blunt, bluish-colored nails, then looked up at his face. “You so old man!” she said. “How you get so old?”

Shirley returned with a pitcher of water. “What a thing to say!”

“Shirley, please,” said Lloyd. “It's okay. An old joke.”

“Oh, well, I guess it's none of
my
business then.” She handed Lloyd his pills and a cup. “Drink up,” she said, tapping her foot and looking past him toward the TV in the corner of the room. Several patients and their visitors sat around it, watching a rerun of
Rescue 911.
Sirens screamed as the paramedics used the Jaws of Life to pry a family out from the wreckage of a sport-utility vehicle.

A choking sound from Lloyd made her look back down. “Lloyd? Are you all right?”

He didn't answer. He was staring at the doorway of the dayroom where a tall woman stood, anxiously scanning the patients' faces. He shook his head to clear his vision. He was taking digitalis for his heart, which sometimes caused an oily film to form over the world and rainbows to leak from bright objects. The woman looked unbearably bright to him. The cup crumpled in his grip, and water dribbled down his wrist. He closed his eyes, then opened them again, to blink away the rainbows. He gulped for air. He started to gasp.

“Lloyd!” The nurse sounded urgent but far away. “Talk to me! Is it your heart?”