First Chapter: Wonderland
Riley
I stood at the hospital’s front doors, hesitating for the first time since I got the call that my grandfather was there and I was the only member of the family who was welcome.
That Grandpa Gene chose me came as a surprise, considering I hadn’t seen him in going-on-eight years. But in a family like ours, being the one who’s disliked the least isn’t exactly an accomplishment. There’s not much to like about any of us.
I’d stood outside this hospital eight years ago, on my last day in Vermont. I remembered the tower of concrete and windows like it had been stamped in my mind. Now, here I stood again.
This time, though, I would actually go inside.
Blowing out a breath, I rolled my shoulders, cracked my neck, and stepped into a sour-smelling vestibule. Beyond that, hallways branched in three directions. I squinted at the signs, which were full of medical words I couldn’t have pronounced aloud and didn’t know the meanings of.
A woman in scrubs came up to me with a polite smile. “Need a little help?”
“Um,” was all I managed for a second. Talking to people is either really easy for me, or really hard. When I’m somewhere I don’t know how to be, it’s fucking hard. I swallowed. “I’m here to see my grandpa.”
“Okay. Is he a patient here?”
“Well, he’s definitely not the chief of surgery,” I muttered before I could think better of it. Her smile turned tense, and I winced. “Sorry. Um, yeah, he’s a patient. His name’s Gene Meadows.”
“Super. I can walk you to the nurses’ station and—”
Before she could say more, a familiar voice resonated from down one of the hallways. “Don’t you talk to me like that, young lady! I’ve been wiping my own ass for seventy years!”
“Never mind,” I told the woman helping me. “I know where I’m going.”
I followed the sound of Grandpa’s outrage all the way to an open door. He was sitting upright in a metal-framed bed, one skinny leg protruding from the hem of his hospital gown. A woman in scrubs stood next to him, and another faced him from a few steps away with her hands on her hips and a disapproving frown. She wasn’t dressed like a hospital worker, and she had a notebook under her arm.
“Gene,” said the lady with the notebook, “the better you get along with the nurses, the quicker they’ll have you ready to get out of here. Do you know when your sister will arrive?”
“Not my sister.” As Grandpa Gene’s gaze swept across the doorway, he noticed me. He went still, then finished in a completely different, blank tone, “My grandson.”
The woman turned to me, some of the tension leaving her expression to be replaced with a cautious smile. “Oh, thank goodness. You’re Riley?”
I wasn’t sure where to look. It wasn’t easy to look at Grandpa, thin and frail and wearing a fucking hospital gown instead of a flannel shirt and overalls. But now that our eyes had met, it was hard to look away.
Still, the lady was talking to me, so I made myself turn to her and cleared my throat. “Yeah, I’m Riley.”
She had a kind smile, and she looked exhausted, which I could understand if Grandpa had been yelling at her for a while. “I’m Dolores Manuel. I’m a social worker for the county.” She pulled a piece of paper from between the yellow pages of her notebook. “I understand you’re able and available to give Gene a hand at home?”
I glanced at Grandpa, but I couldn’t glean from his expression how I was supposed to answer. I looked back at Dolores and nodded cautiously.
“Great,” she said. “I need you to sign this, and then we’ll be all set.”
I probably didn’t have enough information to take the pen she offered and sign where she pointed, but I couldn’t bring myself to try and read the paper. The print was small and close together. It would have been hard to read even if I wasn’t distracted by Grandpa’s eyes boring holes in me.
“Did you drive here?” she asked when I handed back the paper and her pen.
“No.” I’d taken two buses, then walked about a mile instead of waiting for the third one.
“Then I’m happy to give you two a ride home. Is that okay with you, Gene?”
We both looked at Grandpa.
“Sure, fine,” he said after a second, like it had taken him a beat to realize she’d asked him a question.
“I’ll make a quick call, and we’ll get going,” Dolores said, and she stepped out. The nurse followed her.
Which left me and Grandpa alone.
Our eyes met, and slowly, Grandpa’s blank expression turned into a faint smile. “Aw, kid.” He dropped his head back against the squashed little pillow tucked behind him. “Where’ve you been?”
“You know.” I shrugged. “Back in the city.” We both knew he wasn’t asking where I’d literally been. He was asking why I’d run off to New York and why I’d stayed away. But he didn’t call me on my bullshit, and now that I’d said a few words, it was easier to say a few more instead of falling into awful silence. “And now I guess I’m gonna be here awhile.”
He grunted. “I just need someone to sign the papers and get me out of this place. You don’t have to stick around. I’m fine. This was all an overreaction.”
I wasn’t sure about that. He looked like shit. But I didn’t want to argue with him. Not that we hadn’t had plenty of knock-down, drag-out fights without doing each other’s feelings any lasting damage, but that had been then. This was now, after years without contact.
“I don’t have anywhere else to be,” I told Grandpa honestly, making myself meet his eyes and hold them. “If you don’t mind me sticking around, that is.”
After a second that felt like an hour, he sighed. “Fine. If you’re offering, I could use a hand.”
My worry spiked. If he was admitting to needing help, he had to feel even worse than he looked.
“Your room’s still there,” he added.
Those simple words filled my head with memories of Grandpa’s place. I thought of the creaky stairs leading up to the bedroom tucked under the dormer window, facing east. The wide swing on the front porch overlooking the woods.
And Peter. A dozen versions of him all packed into a moment’s thought: from the bold slip of a little kid I’d first met, to the sweet, nervous preteen of a few years later, to the eighteen-year-old of that last summer, who’d turned hauntingly beautiful during our months apart. That August was the last time I’d seen him, when everything ended with my own declaration that still rang in my ears: “Have your fancy fucking life, then! I don’t need you either.”
Then…Peter’s arms windmilling as he slipped and fell. The sickening crunch when he’d caught his fall on an outstretched hand, the dull thud a half-second later when his head struck the ground—
“Kid? If you stay with me, you gotta help out,” Grandpa grumbled. “Deal?”
I swam up from the past and blinked at him, keeping my tone light as I said, “Great. It’s a deal.”
* * *
I waited in the beige hallway while Grandpa got dressed. Staring at my shoes, I tried to push back the tide of thoughts about Peter fucking Landry, knowing it would carry me somewhere I didn’t want to go.
I breathed in the antiseptic hospital air, not the woodsy scent of green leaves and rotting logs. I studied the glossy tile floor between the toes of my shoes, not the way Peter wrinkled his nose when he smiled.
When Dolores returned with another hospital worker, pushing a wheelchair, I had gotten myself under control.
I knocked on the door to Grandpa’s room. “Are you decent?”
“As I’ll get,” he called back.
I opened the door, relieved to find he looked healthier already just for having traded the hospital gown for a faded-green flannel shirt. Instead of the overalls I expected, though, he wore jeans and suspenders. The generous belly he’d always had was gone, and maybe with it, he’d lost his aversion to waistbands.
Grandpa noticed the wheelchair, and his eyes narrowed.
Before he could get his hackles up, I put a hand on his shoulder. “Let’s just get along so we can get to the lady’s car, and you’ll be home that much faster.”
I thought he might argue, but though he muttered a few inaudible words I was sure were curses, he nodded stiffly. The nurse hovered over him while he lowered himself into the chair, but he didn’t need any help.
Dolores drove a dark-green sedan with a trace of rust on the inside edge of its rear wheel well. I wondered what she did for the county. She must have been the one who’d called my mom about coming to help Grandpa. Then, Mom had called me. I hadn’t asked for many details as I threw a few things in the bag now slung over my shoulder and bought a bus ticket.
Now I wished I had asked questions. I couldn’t tell what was wrong with him, or what kind of help he was going to need.
“Okay, Gene, let’s get you in the front, here,” Dolores said with the take-charge manner of someone who dealt with grumpy people all day. She reminded me of Vicki, a social worker my brother had after juvie and before he turned eighteen. Vicki had been middle-aged, unflappable, tired around the eyes, and wore cable-knit sweaters. Dolores’s sweater was a cardigan with big plastic buttons, but everything else matched up.
When Grandpa was settled and Dolores had closed the car door, I took a step toward her.
“So, what’s going on with him?”
“Just old age and stubbornness, honey,” she said, giving my shoulder a squeeze. “The rest of it is for him to tell you, not me.”
She had a point, and maybe if she’d spilled all of Grandpa’s personal details to someone she’d just met, I would have judged her for it, at least a little. But I knew that if I asked Grandpa, he’d be pissed.
I got into the car, watching the back of Grandpa’s head and his stiff shoulders as Dolores drove us out of town and to the two-lane blacktop that led to Grandpa’s place.
As a kid, I’d been amazed by how Vermont towns just ended, suddenly becoming the country. Growing up where green space was the exception, not the rule, had made the quick transition out the car window seem like a magic trick. It still took me by surprise. As the years had passed since my last visit, I’d continued to think about this part of the world all the time. But I’d begun to wonder if it was as green, open, and fresh as I’d remembered, or if my memory had been playing tricks on me. It hadn’t been, though not everything was the same.
There were now a few big houses where I remembered small ones or empty pastures. Some were pretty fancy, including the massive, three-story colonial no more than an eighth of a mile from Grandpa’s, with marble greyhounds posted on either side of its driveway entrance.
The contrast between that gaudy place and Grandpa’s was almost funny.
When I was thirteen, I’d arrived here for the summer, and was greeted by a pile of rusty junk lying just past the mailbox, in plain view of the road. That kind of thing was par for the course at Grandpa’s place. He’d drag home some treasure with grand plans of fixing it up or using it for something, and instead it sat where he’d dumped it and he never touched it again.
From what I could tell, that same pile was still stationed by the mailbox, a mailbox that leaned at the same angle I remembered from years before.
When I realized the barbed-wire gate wasn’t stretched across the end of the driveway anymore, I leaned between the front seats. “What happened to the zebras?”
“Zebras?” Dolores gave us a disbelieving look as she slowly guided her car over the potholes in the gravel driveway. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I had a few,” Grandpa told her, then said to me, “They died. They were as old as you, and that’s old for zebras.”
The zebras had been mean as hell if Peter and I bothered them, but they’d mostly kept their distance, roaming the property at will within the bounds of the sagging barbed-wire perimeter fence. The sight of their stark stripes through the trees or in the meadows had reinforced the park’s magic for me.
“What about…” I started to ask, then hesitated, unsure I wanted to know.
Grandpa looked at me out of the corner of his eye and answered anyway. “He’s just fine. He’s still young for a tortoise.”
Relieved, I leaned back in the seat, watching the house come into view. It was kind of absurd-looking—the original, square, story-and-a-half had a metal shed tacked on one side, and a more typical, but still awkwardly boxy addition stuck to the other. Rusted cars were rowed up on the other side of the clothesline in the backyard, and the tall grass in the front yard made it clear Grandpa still hadn’t taken up mowing.
Through anyone else’s eyes, the place probably seemed like a dump. But my chest filled with warmth at the sight. For years I’d assumed I’d never set foot here again, but no other place had ever felt like home.
Dolores was glaring at Grandpa. “A tortoise?” she demanded. “Are you two messing with me?”
Grandpa’s eyes met mine in the rearview mirror, and we both chuckled.
Dolores sighed, long-suffering, and put the car in park. “I’m going to come check on you in a week,” she informed Grandpa. Then she twisted around to look at me. “You too, honey. It’s really generous what you’re doing, by the way. Maybe he won’t say it, but I know your grandfather is very grateful.”
“He’s getting free room and board.” Grandpa jerked on the car-door latch, but it must have still been locked.
Dolores ignored him, looking steadily at me. “And as you’re his caretaker, I’m trusting that he will share what you need to know about his health and treatment.”
“I have been taking care of myself since that kid was in diapers,” Grandpa muttered, pinching the manual lock with his thumb and forefinger but failing to get a good enough grasp to pull it up and escape.
“Part of my job as Gene’s caseworker is to ensure that he not only has a support system, but that he’s willing to use it,” Dolores continued, raising her voice pointedly. With that, she faced forward and popped the locks.
Grandpa threw open the door and practically jumped out, like a horse leaving a starting gate.
But I hesitated there with Dolores, remembering Vicki, and how she’d seemed genuinely sorry during her last visit, when she told Quint she wouldn’t be back now that he was no longer a minor. Dolores seemed to mean well, which was more than could be said for most fucking people.
“Thanks, ma’am.” I scooted across the seat to get out.
“You’re welcome, honey. And good luck. You’re going to need it.”
By the time Dolores pulled away, Grandpa was almost to the porch steps. I watched him walk. He shuffled his steps like his right leg wasn’t bending the way it should, and when he reached the first stair, he leaned heavily on the wooden railing.
“Well?” he barked at me without turning. “You coming?”
I jogged the few strides it took to catch up to him, staying close as he went up, just in case he should fall. He didn’t, but he took each step slowly and deliberately.
Under our combined weight, the stairs sagged noticeably. “These steps could use some work,” I told him.
“Well, you can make that your first order of business. I told you there was work to do around here.”
If the front door locked, I’d never seen the key. Unlocked front doors—another enigma to a city boy like me. Grandpa went inside, leaving the door open for me to follow. I stepped through—and froze.
So much had been the same outside that I wasn’t prepared for the change inside.
Grandpa had never been much of a housekeeper. I didn’t think he’d ever run the old vacuum in the hall closet, and he’d probably never touched a dust rag. But he’d picked up after himself and didn’t leave dirty dishes in the sink overnight or laundry on the floor.
Now, though, stuff was everywhere. Boxed, stacked, piled… as though eight years ago Grandpa had packed up half the stuff to move, then changed his mind and stayed put. And then the filled boxes, piles of mail, and heaps of odds and ends had somehow grown and multiplied of their own volition. The result was strange teetering towers on every tabletop, and heaps of clothing and random junk in every corner. The house had always had too many hallways and corners, but now it felt more like an animal’s den than a house.
Grandpa must have known that seeing the house would surprise me because he looked anywhere but at me as he tossed his jacket onto a pile of clothes on the bench inside the door. Shoes were stacked under the bench, three-deep. I recognized one pair of rubber boots as something he’d bought for me when I was sixteen. Had they been sitting here since?
“Grandpa,” I said slowly, knowing I shouldn’t say anything but unable to stop myself. “What the fuck is going on?”
“Huh?” He glanced at me. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the house!” That wasn’t exactly true. I added a few things up in my head. Grandpa had needed to find someone to look after him once he was released from the hospital. But even though he looked a little stiff on his feet, he seemed to be getting around fine. Now that I’d seen the house, I had to wonder if maybe the thing that was wrong with him had less to do with his body and more to do with his head.
But fuck if I knew how to ask about any of that. So, yeah, we could start with the house.
He gazed around as though trying to see the place through my eyes. “I got a bit… behind on things, I suppose.”
“There’s got to be more to it than that.”
He looked at me sharply and huffed a breath—almost a laugh but humorless. “Ain’t that the truth.”
And while I stared, wondering what the fuck he was talking about, he trudged down the hall to the downstairs bedroom and closed the door firmly behind him.