Thank You for All Things Read Free Page B

very house, and in our relationship with Sam. She said that this trip will help us reclaim those parts and cleanse our family.”
    “The twins were newborns when they left Timber Falls. What could they have possibly left behind but spit-up? Besides, the only things that sound like they need cleansing to me are your lungs. Did this Sky Walker tell you to quit smoking too?”
    “Sky Dreamer. Her name is Sky Dreamer.”
    “A rose by any other name is still a charlatan,” Mom says.
    Oma looks down at the chair opposite Mom’s desk, and I hurry to remove the stack of books, folders, and notebooks from its seat. Oma pats my back as she sits down and propsher other hand on the baggy white purse now resting on her legs. “Tess, you’ve always had an aversion to the concept of ‘going home.’ When you were three years old, you’d plug your ears every time you heard Bing Crosby’s ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas’ play on the radio. And do you remember what you did to that Home Sweet Home pillow Marie made me for my birthday?”
    Mom picks up the Bible and her pencil and runs the tip of it down one of the parchment pages. “I don’t think we need to go into this, Mother,” she says. Mom calls Oma “Mother” only when she’s upset. The rest of the time it’s simply, “Ma.”
    Oma turns to me. “My best friend in Timber Falls, Marie Birch, made me a needlepoint pillow for my birthday one year. It was beautiful. Burgundy and peacock blue, some gold. Your mother hated that thing from the moment she saw it. She swiped the seam ripper out of my sewing box and hid it under the sofa cushion. Then, whenever I left the house in the evening, she’d take it out of hiding and pluck at those tightly woven threads, letter by letter, word by word, until the whole adage was gone.
    “I couldn’t for the life of me understand how the threads could have come loose, period, much less over the words only. That is, until I found the seam ripper under the cushion.”
    “That’s enough, Mother!” Mom snaps. “Crissakes, like I don’t have enough on my mind now, and you have to bring up old crap that doesn’t have a damn thing to do with the problem I’m dealing with today.”
    Oma turns her attention back to Mom. “Oh, but it has everything to do with your problems today. Don’t you see that?”
    Oma sets her purse on the floor, then parks her armson Mom’s desk and leans in. “Scoff if you want, Tess, but I believe that you’ve always had these aversions because, deep down, you’ve always known that one day you’d have to go back home and deal with the pain you never dealt with. Did you think you could rid yourself of it simply by leaving Timber Falls? Honey, it just doesn’t work that way. Think of the toxic waste they dumped in the ocean back in the sixties. Was it gone because we couldn’t see it? No. It washed up on other banks, just as toxic as ever. Tess, you know what I’m talking about. On a soul level, you know.”
    I look at Mom. I don’t know what Oma is talking about, but Mom certainly does, because her navy-blue eyes pool with water. My throat tightens then, because when I see her pain, the emotion swelling under my breastbone makes me want to cry. I glance over at Milo to see if he’s empathizing with Mom too, but he’s not even looking at her. I know Mom would have to start wailing before he’d notice that she was in distress. And considering that Mom’s lids are already blinking like windshield wipers, I know Milo isn’t going to notice.
    Oma leans over and presses her hand—the one sporting a sapphire half-moon ring surrounded by diamond chips—over Mom’s hand that’s holding the Bible. “Honey,” she says, her voice soft and pleading, “I need you to drive me to Timber Falls. Would you do that for me?”
    Mom leans back in her chair and slams the Bible down. “Take the bus. I’m not doing it.”
    Oma sits erect and gasps, “Oh, Tess. I can’t do that! You’ve seen the people who take