It’s a BMW. She can barely see over the steering wheel.

  “I bought two pounds of those sausages you like for breakfast.

  “Your father said I should keep an eye on you after school. Says you’re determined to fail tenth grade. Honey, you can’t fail tenth grade. I hope you know that. We won’t let you.

  “Did you hear about James? The boy you went to preschool with?”

  I always liked James. I haven’t heard anything about him. I almost speak, but I know Marla’s going to tell me anyway.

  “Malcolm, I’m so sorry to be the one to tell you but James is dead. He took his own life, poor thing.”

  Didn’t see that coming.

  I thought she might say that James landed a spot on one of those TV shows where people sing and win money. Or maybe that he won an award for going around to nursing homes and singing shows for them. He’s been doing that since he was eleven. I thought James was fine.

  “We’re donating to the animal shelter in his name because his parents asked people not to donate to the gays. Did you know James was gay?”

  This is a leading question because Marla can’t figure out why I don’t have a girlfriend. But yeah. Everyone knew James was gay. Just nobody seemed to know he was depressed.

  This is the second preschool classmate I’ve known who’s died. I can’t figure out why death is following me like this and I decide I don’t care. I’m ready to throw down if death shows up. I’m ready to kick death’s ass.

  “Young people taking their own lives,” Marla says. “They just never see the bright side. Things are different now, I guess.”

  I don’t think I can survive four more days with my grandparents. I’ve tried so many times to get Marla to see things from a twenty-first-century point of view, but she doesn’t want to see anything. She just keeps the perks—her smartphone, her remote-start BMW, cable TV, and those plastic bags that steam vegetables in the microwave—that’s all this century is to her. She will never wake up. She will never admit that Dad is dying of cancer, either. She says he’s going to be fine.

  Marla says, “You haven’t said a word this whole time. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re quiet.”

  “Just a little tired.”

  “I made lamb chops for dinner,” Marla says and I don’t know if she’s been counting, but I have been, and I’ve told her I don’t eat lamb twenty-four times. She says I should try it different ways until I find a way to like it. Fact: I will never like lamb. I just won’t. It doesn’t agree with me. And Marla makes everything too rich; so after a weekend of food poisoning, there is no way in hell I’m going to eat a lamb chop.

  “I’m not that hungry,” I say.

  “You’ll eat.”

  “My stomach’s not right,” I say.

  “Probably have a T-worm from that awful food down there,” she says. “You’re too skinny. You should have some meat on those bones.”

  Emetophobes don’t use the real words for anything vomity. Or wormy, I guess.

  “I’m not eating lamb,” I say. “You know that.”

  “I don’t know why you’re so picky.”

  “It’s part of the package,” I say. Because I refuse to explain one more time to Marla about how I won’t eat lamb.

  “What girl will be able to cook for you?” she asks.

  “Marla, you’re sixty-eight, not a hundred and eight. Please. I’ll cook for myself.”

  “Don’t call me Marla.”

  “Don’t make me eat lamb.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do after we open our home to you and give you all you need!” She’s whining now—trying to get the tear machine going.

  “I have all I need at Dad’s house. I don’t need your lamb chops or your BMW.”

  “You make us sound like elitists. We donate to the animals all the time. We know there are horrible things happening in the world. We’re a lot older than you, you know.”

  “You donate to the animals and you eat lamb chops,” I say.

  “I’m being nice! Why can’t you be nice?”

  “I’m nice. I just don’t eat lamb. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “You make me out to be some sort of rich bitch or something!”

  My brain reels. I have to bite on the inside of my lips so all my words don’t come out. I keep biting my lips as Marla takes her final crazy turn into her cul-de-sac and we head for her driveway. There’s a car parked at the end of the driveway that I don’t recognize.

  “Who’s here?” I ask.

  “A nice young man who would be happy to eat lamb chops, I can tell you that!” She clicks on the remote control for the garage door and speeds toward it a little too soon and almost takes the roof off her new BMW.

  I have no idea how Marla managed to raise five kids with her temper the way it is. She really needs to take it easy.

  Malcolm: White People

  I don’t know if it was hanging out in Negril or with Eleanor or being raised by my dad, but I’ve never understood white people who can’t admit they’re white. I mean, white isn’t just a color. And maybe that’s the problem for them. White is a passport. It’s a ticket. The world is a white amusement park and your white skin buys you into it. A woman in economy argued with me about this once. She said, “I’ve heard this idea and it makes me uncomfortable.”

  “It probably should,” I said.

  Dad and I have been broke since he got cancer and sometimes he can’t put the heat over sixty-two or put food in the fridge, but we were always white and he always made sure I knew that. Which sounds stupid because how can a person not know they’re white, right?

  You don’t have to be racist to not know you’re white.

  But sometimes you do. And Marla has no idea she’s white or that the whole world was made for people like her.

  * * *

  As I climb out of the BMW, the door to the laundry room opens and a kid walks out, two paintbrushes in hand. Gottfried is right behind him.

  “Hey! You’re here!” Gottfried says.

  I half smile. “I’m here.”

  “How was island life?”

  “Good,” I say.

  Neither of them introduces me to the kid who’s now washing brushes in the garage sink, and he doesn’t look up from what he’s doing, so I can’t give him a nod.

  When we get inside and the paint smell hits me and turns my weak stomach, I ask, “Who’s the painter?”

  Gottfried looks at me blankly. “I’ve been paying him in cash.”

  I throw side-eye. “Did you forget his name?”

  Gottfried nods.

  “You can always just ask him again.”

  “Tried everything. I can’t get it out of him.”

  “But you didn’t ask.”

  “No.”

  “Forgetting the names of the hired help is very white, Pop.”

  “Stop it. You know I’m not like that.”

  I shrug at him. My pop can remember where the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed on any given day. He remembers the names of movie star women with nice legs. I go inside, and Marla passes me on the way to the garage. I bet you any money she doesn’t know the kid’s name either.

  Marla & Gottfried’s Grandson Is Not Acceptable

  Marla pokes her head into the garage.

  “He’s already told me he’s not going to eat the lamb chops,” she says to Gottfried, who isn’t listening because he’s busy talking to the painter boy. “He has no respect for anyone. Harry is lucky I still say yes to this,” she says.

  Gottfried excuses himself from the conversation with the kid long enough to say, “Give the man a break. He’s dying.”

  This hits Marla hard. Marla wants everyone to know how caring she is and how she places every Easter egg carefully for the grandkids and how she thinks all year about what might make the best Christmas gift for them. She goes back into the house.

  She stands quietly at the kitchen counter and weighs her options. She could be nice about Harry dying or she could just keep pretending it isn’t happening. She checks her lamb chops, which are marinating in the fridge.

  She decides to let Gottfried deal with the painter kid, who’s presently washing out brushes an hour earlier than he’s supposed to. She resists the urge to mention this. As long as the place gets painted by Easter, I don’t care. She goes to her bedroom and closes the door. She doesn’t know where to sit.

  If I sit on the bed, the quilt will wrinkle. If I sit on the chair, I’ll have to move the pillows. If I sit on the hope chest, my back will hurt. I don’t even have a place to sit in my own house. I can’t sit. I can’t sit. I have to get myself together and be a grandmother to a kid who hates me because I care so much about him that I make lamb chops and he won’t even eat them. This generation are a bunch of spoiled brats. Harry failed with this kid. Harry is a failure.

  He’s even failing at staying alive, that’s how much of a failure he is. He can’t even stay alive to raise this boy. And there’s nowhere for me to sit. Five kids and not one of them offers me a chair for dinner.

  * * *

  Marla looks at the footprints in her plush carpet. Her footprints. From the doorway to the space she’s standing now. She takes a step forward and then peeks down to see if her footprints show up. She tiptoes. She does this all the way to her medicine cabinet and stares at herself in the mirror for a minute. Shakes her head as if she’s disappointed in what she sees, and opens the latch. If I took every one of these pills, I’d be dead in an hour or two, she thinks.

  But then she remembers the lamb chops. And the painter boy. And how Gottfried wouldn’t remember to get his eyes checked if she didn’t remind him. And she tiptoes out of the en suite and over the plush carpet and back into the hallway.

  Gottfried has said goodbye to the painter and takes off his sneakers and puts them in the closet. Malcolm is sitting on the couch in the living room, doing something on his smartphone.

  “Good kid,” Gottfried says, after he closes the closet door. “A good work ethic.”

  “Go turn on the grill,” Marla says. “The lamb needs to go on now or else we’ll miss the news.”

  Malcolm says, “You can’t miss news anymore, Marla. It’s on all the time.”

  Marla either doesn’t hear him or ignores him. Gottfried grabs his coat and slides the door to the deck and goes outside. He checks the gas line into the grill and lights it, then stares out into the woods and smiles. Talks to himself. Nods in agreement. Smiles again. Then he turns back toward the house and walks in, leaving his coat on the chair next to the door.

  “Pop,” Malcolm says.

  Gottfried looks over and Malcolm gives him the silent motion for “come here.”

  “What’s up?”

  “I can’t eat lamb.” He points to his stomach. “I’ve been sick. I just need something plain,” Malcolm says.

  “Don’t tell her that,” Gottfried whispers.

  “I know.”

  “I’ll make you some toast.”

  Gottfried walks into the kitchen where Marla is now talking on her phone. Marla yells when she talks on it—as if she still hasn’t figured out that a phone without a cord is not a lesser phone. Gottfried knows who she’s talking to because she uses a certain tone when she talks to their daughter Missy. Missy hasn’t been well in the head. That’s how Gottfried puts it. Not well in the head at all.

  “You should see the doctor for the itch, dear,” Marla says into the phone. “No itch should last longer than a month.”

  Gottfried thinks about itches that have lasted longer than a month. He’s had a few.

  Marla is mixing a simple vinaigrette for the side salad. “Maybe it’s bedbugs. How big are the bites?”

  Gottfried scratches his arm.

  “Have you checked Loretta? . . . You should . . . If you have them, she probably does, too.”

  Gottfried thinks about his favorite granddaughter, Loretta. Kid has spunk. Something different from the others. Smart as hell, mouthy, and a laugh like nothing else. He thinks about the last time he saw them all—years now—and how they looked indigent. Missing teeth, the ones left nearly brown. Natty hair. Old clothes. He thinks about how his daughter married a brute and how the little girl is probably in danger. He pictures the dying robins on the road again. Nothing he can do about it.

  He sneaks two pieces of bread into the toaster and quietly presses them into toasting mode. Marla fiddles with the potato croquettes and puts them back into the oven. She keeps saying uh-huh to Missy, who is most likely rambling on the other end of the phone. She tends to ramble. Not well at all, that girl.

  One time about ten years ago Missy called Gottfried and asked for money. She said she’d leave her husband and get to a place where he couldn’t find her or Loretta, who was only in kindergarten at the time. She said he’d been beating them both for years and god knows what else. She said she’d try to pay it back, but Gottfried didn’t want her to pay it back. He wanted her to be safe. He told Missy she could stay with them for a while. He said they could help her find an apartment. He said he’d help pay for anything she needed. Gottfried didn’t have much in life, but he had money. He could have stopped it all had he just cut a check Marla would have never known about, but he told her his plan anyway. Marla was against it on pure principle. She said, “There is no way in hell we’re giving her a penny. Girl has no skills and can’t manage to marry right. What makes you think she’ll know what to do with our money?”

  Gottfried remembers looking at Marla that night and wondering how he married such a cold, razor-edged woman. One time he accidentally left the ice cream out on the kitchen counter. Marla left it there rather than putting it back in the freezer so he’d learn. He was sixty-eight when that happened. Only two years ago. He thought she’d grow kinder as she got older. But she only got here.

  Gottfried always said that he’d live without regrets, but Marla changed all that back in 1980 when she sent him back to the farm. Before then, even. She tells Missy that she has to go because she’s making dinner and hangs up. She doesn’t acknowledge Gottfried standing in the kitchen, ready to help if she needs him.

  “How is she?” he asks.

  “Still doesn’t have a job,” Marla says. “Still won’t go to the doctor for the bites. Says she doesn’t have health insurance.” She shakes her head. “I mean . . . who doesn’t have health insurance in this day and age?”

  PART 1.3: INTRODUCING CANIHELPYOU? AND LORETTA

  CAST IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE:

  CanIHelpYou?

  Nancy the Guidance Gounselor

  Pitiful Drive-Thru Customers

  Len the Owner/Manager

  Many Unnamed Clients

  Ian the Best Friend

  The Shoveler

  Loretta Lynn & Her Flea Circus

  Gerald, Cynthia & Dolly

  You-know-who

  CanIHelpYou?

  I’m in a tunnel. It’s like a submarine—a large, oval gunmetal-gray pipe just tall enough for me to stand up but confining enough so I have to hunch down to walk in it. There are beams I have to watch out for so I don’t hit my head.

  Sometimes the tunnel gets smaller. Sometimes I have to get on my hands and knees to get through the narrow spots.

  Sometimes someone chases me and I have to run through the tunnel, crawl fast through the narrowness to escape. It’s a stranger, but I know to run.

  I’ve explained all this to my guidance counselor at school. She calls me in sometimes to talk because she thinks I’m a mystery. The day I told her about the tunnel I asked what she thought about it. She picked at her index fingernail and said, “Never get a manicure in Wichita.” That’s it. Never get a manicure in Wichita.

  * * *

  “Welcome to Arby’s Drive-Thru,” I say. “Can I help you?”

  I work today. I work every day I can because it gets me out of my house and today is Saturday, so I’m working.

  I’m the one you talk to through the little speaker at the Drive-Thru. You’re in my head, cushioned by foam around my earphones. You say things like, “Gimme a cheeseburger and fries with a Coke.” You say it like you’re talking to the speaker and not a human being on the other side. You bark it sometimes. Windy night, busy inside with the din of eat-in customers, and I get your order wrong. You say, “No! I said LARGE, not SMALL!” You ask me if I’m deaf sometimes. You lament the future of our country with people like me in charge.

  In charge? Since when does running the Drive-Thru qualify me for being in charge? I want to say things to you—to all of you—but I don’t. I like being nice to your face once you turn the corner and meet me at the window.

  You never have your money ready. You check your change. You inspect your receipt. You feel ripped off when the order comes to anything over twenty dollars as if you didn’t know that fast food is a racket when you pulled up to the little speaker. As if you didn’t add up the prices on the enormous menu board. Not my fault you can’t do math.

  When I smile at you, I’m being sincere because I pity you.

  I pity anyone who says gimme.

  The world is going to be a giant disappointment for you.

  All you’ll ever get is the kindness of the Drive-Thru girl after growling your entitled order into my head. Gimme-gimme-gimme: the battle cry of millions of people every day. People who want.

  You’re a case study, an interesting specimen.

  You don’t scare me. Not even when you threaten to talk to my boss because your fries weren’t the temperature you expected them to be.