around. “But who knows? Maybe they’ll grow.”
“Yes!” Momoko clapped her hands. Then, spotting the pitcher of water on the table, she picked it up and marched over to Lloyd.
“Poppy!” she said, peering down at his face. “Same like father. Get it? It is good joke. Ha, ha.” Then she poured the water onto the seed-speckled carpet at his feet. “Okay, poppy. Now you grow up!”
She walked behind the chair and elbowed the nurse out of the way. Gripping the handles, she wheeled the chair toward her daughter, stopping as the metal footrests bumped her shins.
“Say howdy,” she commanded her husband. Lloyd groaned.
“Say howdy to her.”
Lloyd was defeated. He looked up at the variegated confusion of light that was his daughter and blinked his eyes.
“Howdy,” he whispered.
“Howdy,” Yumi echoed.
Momoko nodded. “Okeydokey.”
idaho winter
Children’s children are the crown of old men. . . .
Ocean whispered, “Is that him? Is that Tutu Lloyd?”
. . . and the glory of children are their fathers.
“Yes, but call him Grandpa.”
Phoenix pulled at my arm. “Forget it, Yummy. I mean, Mommy. He’s asleep. Let’s go.”
“No, look. He’s waking up.”
“Who’s there?” He opened his eyes, swimmingly. “Who are these children?”
I wanted to announce it with pride. “These are your grandchildren, Dad!” But my voice betrayed me, and my declaration sounded more like an apology. “My children,” I added unnecessarily.
He blinked. His eyes were the color of an icicle, a cold prong clinging to an eaves trough. He scanned my children’s faces. The kids were not used to the Idaho cold, and already they looked faded. Dehydrated by the central heating, Ocean had developed flaking rashes. Poo’s snot turned rock hard in his sinuses, and his curls lay flat. Phoenix had the coloring and temperament of moldy bread. They missed the humid clouds, the teeming seas. But this was good for them, I told myself. They needed to know that Mommy was not all about aloha. That she had cold, high desert in her blood.
“This is Phoenix. And this is Ocean. This is Barnabas, but we call him Poo.”
He studied their hair, their complexions. Comparing.
“Say hi to your grandpa, kids.”
He said gruffly, “What kind of names are those?”
“What do you mean, Dad?” Knowing full well what he was getting at, of course.
“What kind of children have names like that?”
“Well, your grandchildren. Kids, say howdy to your grandpa.”
“Howdy?” muttered Phoenix, turning away. “Like, I don’t think so.”
But intrepid Ocean stepped up to the plate. “We’re good children,” she replied. “That’s what kind.” What a kid. No one deserves a kid like that.
He blinked at her and stared. She looked right back, met his ice with her sky blue—the color of cornflowers—until he recognized the sweet side of those Fuller eyes and melted a little for real.
“Come here,” he barked.
Ocean approached the wheelchair.
“What’s your name?”
“Ocean.”
“That’s not a proper name. An ocean is a thing, not a person.”
Ocean didn’t answer for a while. “I know what your name is,” she said finally. “It’s Tutu—I mean, it’s Grandpa Lloyd.”
“That’s right.”
“How come it doesn’t mean anything?”
Ocean asked. “Because it’s a proper name.”
“Actually, it does mean something,” I said. Lloyd and Ocean both turned to stare, and the resemblance was stunning. The stubborn blue eyes and the broad forehead. The set of the jaw. The same irritation at being interrupted.
“It means ‘gray-haired,’ ” I explained. “In Welsh. Or something.” I could see they were waiting for me to finish, but my nerves had turned me garrulous. “I looked it up in one of those baby-name books in the checkout line. At the supermarket. When I was pregnant with Phoenix and looking for a name. Of course, Phoenix wasn’t listed. . . .”
Phoenix groaned, and I stopped. Ocean turned back to contemplate her grandfather. “Lloyd is a good name for you,” she said.
“It is?” he asked. “Why?”
“Because you’re old.”
“Am I so old?”
“Yes,” Ocean explained. “That’s why you’re dying.”
That’s it, I thought. That’s the end of it.
But Lloyd was oddly patient. “Is that right?” he said.
“Yes. Mommy said we have to be nice to you because you’re dying, but I’m not going to.”
“You’re not?”
“No. I’m going to be nice to you because I like you instead.”
“Oh,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “That’s good.”
“You mean it’s good because you like me, too?” She was being coy now, a little too cocky.
“No,” he said, and if he registered the child’s disappointment, he ignored it. He looked over her head, straight at me. “Good, because despite your mother’s godlike authority over matters of life and death, I am most certainly not dying.”
“Of course he’s dying,” Cass said. “I don’t mean to be harsh, Yum, but that’s not even the question here. It’s just that it might take awhile, and what are you going to do for him until then?”
“Me?”
“Well, sure. Who else?”
It
