The Less People Know About Us

ALTHOUGH TODAY I QUESTION the legitimacy of my own claim, for many years I believed that Grandpa Elliott was the first resident of Jay County to own a satellite dish. I remember the colossal shadow it cast across the backyard, where it stood planted behind the limestone exterior of his single-story, ranch-style house. In the summers, heat would hover above its concave face, bending the fields behind it into a green vapor. On many afternoons when I was outside, helping Dad feed the animals, I would hear the growl of its motor, shifting the dish from one side of the Indiana sky to the other. Nesting deep in his brown La-Z-Boy, Grandpa had changed the channel.

I would follow its arc with my eyes as it inched from a White Sox game to the evening news. The cold automation of hard, beige metal moving against the blooming countryside: it almost didn't seem real.

My grandfather bought the satellite dish so that he could watch his games: the Pacers, the Hoosiers, the White Sox. It was a happy accident (for me) that it also delivered cartoons to the rural farmhouse. This new development provided a serious upgrade to the hours my grandfather and I spent together after school, before Mom came home from work. Ostensibly, he was supposed to be watching me, but I was the one who did most of the caretaking. Grandpa suffered from severe arthritis—among lots of other ailments—so I became a shuttle for the things he needed around the house: his pills, his drink, the remote. His fingers and wrists were so tangled in pain that I was his designated beer-opener. The whisssska of the Old Milwaukee can and the tiny escaping bubbles that tickled my palm filled me with pride every time I popped one open.

I didn't mind doing those things for him. It made me feel important. That a towering man like my grandfather would let me take part in the sacred rituals of his life meant more to me than any 4-H ribbon ever would.

He had been in poor health for decades when he had the heart attack. More than the stomach ulcers or the poor circulation or the arthritis, though, Grandpa seemed to suffer most from an unrelenting awareness of his own mortality. He rarely left the house and when he did it was so that Sassy, his wool-white toy poodle, could enjoy a ride in the passenger seat. The decor strewn along the mantel had been gathering dust for decades. When he was diagnosed with depression, he washed his antidepressants down with a lunchtime shot of Canadian Club whiskey.

This grim outlook was how he convinced my parents to stay on the farm in the first place. They had moved a mobile home onto the land before I was born, relocating from Muncie back to Portland, and intending only to stay while my grandmother, Lelah, battled breast cancer. Like my parents, Grandpa wasn't actually expecting Lelah to die, and when she did, the impact was sharp. For months after, Grandpa remained morose and surly, moaning incessantly about what would become of him, what would become of the farm. His despondency wore on my mother's conscience. She agreed to stay nearby for a while, but reiterated that eventually she and my dad would need to move on to a place with the kind of social opportunities she craved, a place where she could make some real money. Dad felt confident about a job transfer to Bloomington, and Mom often looked forward aloud to their new life in Brown County, a picturesque slice of the state that lured visitors with its rolling hills and startling foliage.

But, somehow, there they were, all those years later, in the small town they had both grown up in. My dad had essentially become a full-fledged hobby farmer and the only home I had ever known was this farm, where just a driveway separated us from Grandpa. Fifteen years after she witnessed her mother succumb to cancer, Mom prepared to watch her father slip away.

It was a Saturday in March when the blood suddenly stopped flowing to my grandfather's heart, triggering massive kidney failure. He was rushed to the hospital, where doctors stabilized him but informed my parents the end was near. My grandfather seemed to will himself better then, or at least better enough to be released so that he could die at home. Against my father's wishes (ever practical, my father thought it an appropriate time for hospice), but with my mother's blessing, Grandpa returned to the limestone farmhouse. He was perched in the living room one day when I came in from school. Mute with pain, he leaned back against the rented medical recliner and stared at the ceiling like he was trying to think of a word he had forgotten. My eleven-year-old body recoiled in fear of his unrecognizable form.

For the next few days, my parents assigned me to rounds of supervision when they couldn't be in the house. Midweek, I was instructed to sit with Grandpa while Mom worked and Dad tended the farm. By now, Grandpa was stationed in the back bedroom, the one that would become mine, in a rented hospital bed. Mom had dressed him in a red sweat suit; the activewear wilted on his dying body. I read a book aloud to fill the silence.

"I'm hot," he suddenly said, interrupting my dutiful recitation, tugging at his sweatshirt. I put my book down slowly and glanced through the door in the direction of the living room. There was no backup in sight.

"Grandpa, I know. But just leave that on, okay?" I knew that just as soon as he would take it off he'd be too cold, clutching for the balled-up comforter at his feet.

"I'm too damn hot!" he said louder, this time yanking the bottom edge of his sweatshirt up to his chin, his pale, skinny belly exposed.

"Grandpa, please don't. Mom and Dad said—" I stood up and put my hands near his chest, but I didn't know quite where to place them. It seemed wrong to work against the last gusts of his energy. I watched as his ragged face emerged from the inside-out ribs of the crewneck.

"Axton! Why did you let him take off his shirt?" Dad was suddenly behind me.

"I tried to stop him! He said he was hot!" I said, hands up in defense.

"George, I know you're hot." My dad's voice was void of patience. He pushed past me gently, picked up the damp sweatshirt, and began to fold it. "You hungry? The doctor said you can have anything you want. What'll it be?"

"Sherbet and Old Milwaukee" was my grandfather's immediate answer.

Without a word, I walked to the kitchen to grab a beer.

Grandpa slipped into a coma two days later. On Saturday, Mom was home from work, marching in and out of the back bedroom like a palace guard, every fifteen minutes on the dot. I had been outside with Dad feeding the animals, but came in to get a Coke from Grandpa's harvest-gold side-by-side refrigerator. Suddenly my mom screamed from the back bedroom.

"Axton! Get your dad! Grandpa's not breathing!"

My feet were already moving when I processed what Mom was saying. I shoved shoulder-first through the brown storm door and into the fading afternoon toward the barn. Dad wasn't far; one loud bellow was all it took.

Back inside, I arranged myself on the orange, flower-print La-Z-Boy like a doll on a shelf, my back straight and my hands on my knees. The moment felt enormous. I didn't have to strain to hear Dad consoling Mom, who was making noises I'd never heard her make.

They emerged from the back bedroom together, my father's arms around Mom's shoulders as he led her slowly into the living room. Her face was shiny with tears and her chest was jerking in sharp and sudden heaves.

"He's gone," my dad said to me, placing Mom onto the couch.

"Go say goodbye, Axton," Mom said between sobs.

As I stood up, my parents didn't move; I realized they wanted me to go in there alone. I walked down the short hall, my breath evading me. I didn't want to cry in front of my grandfather—he was always so analytical, so convinced that everything could be handled with reason—but I couldn't help it. There was only one overhead light shining in his bedroom, and below it, Grandpa looked fast asleep.

I stood next to his bed for a while. I studied the trophy he kept on his dresser: a miniature golden boy frozen in mid-layup above the words Portland High School, Sectional Champions, 1926. Grandpa had been a sophomore on the team. He went on to play in college, before the Depression cost him his basketball scholarship.

"I'm gonna do so much with my life, Grandpa," I said, suddenly full-on sobbing. "I'm gonna try out for the sixth-grade basketball team, I promise."

I don't remember what else I said or tried to say, only that I wished he would wake up and ask me to pass the remote. Soon, the funeral home would arrive and wheel my grandfather past us in a thick, black body bag, just like in the movies.

My mother was inconsolable.

"Wear the dress, Axton!"

"Mom! It's so ugly! I'm not wearing it."

"Axton, you will wear the dress!"

This dispute had been going on for nearly an hour. Dad had long since excused himself to find something to do out in the barn.

"Greg and Kathy spent good money on that dress, and you're going to wear it."

"Grandpa would have wanted me to be comfortable," I howled, absolutely convinced that it was true. Grandpa was a terrible dresser, regularly mixing plaids and stripes. He didn't care. He knew what really mattered.

I had worn the dress, a light blue floral number with a white collar to match the white faux-leather shoes it came with, to my baptism just a week prior. Greg and Kathy, my mom and dad's friends who were now my godparents, gifted it to me for the event. I liked Greg and Kathy—they owned the skating rink in Winchester where I spent most of my free time—but in my mind, my baptism was to be the first and the last time I donned that awful thing. The pattern looked like an old couch and the shoes squeaked like dog toys when I walked.

"Everyone is going to be there this afternoon," she retorted. "They expect you to look good." In the days since Grandpa died, Mom's few soft edges had sharpened. She seemed only to be either crying or yelling. With her father gone, she was a child without supervision. It was like her rope to harbor had snapped, and now she was adrift and flailing.

In the end, I wore a white dress shirt and black plaid slacks to Grandpa's funeral. I'm not sure I looked pretty like Mom wanted but I felt more like myself. When we arrived at the funeral home, I fought my way through a jungle of pantyhose and polyester suit legs to find my friend from the skating rink, Carrie. Together we explored the alcoves of the funeral home, eventually roosting in the powder room. We sat on the pink padded stools, under the bright glow of the vanity lights, looking at each other in the mirror. We talked about school and the skating rink. I appreciated that Carrie didn't ask me anything about Grandpa, about his body or how he died in what was going to be my new bedroom.

Suddenly, the echoes of my mother's laughter enveloped us. Her cackling seemed to bounce from wall to wall, rising well above the steady din of the crowd. I looked with wide eyes at Carrie, who was already looking at me. We wordlessly slid off our stools and crept down the hallway to see what was so hysterical.

I zeroed in on her, standing in the front of the room with an old friend. Like a street performer, she moved her arms in exaggerated gestures and maintained an unnaturally large smile. Every few beats she threw her head back and unleashed another terrible guffaw.

Directly behind her, my grandfather lay in his casket, his face rose-touched and rubbery.

"What do you think is wrong with my mom?" I asked Carrie.

Carrie offered a sincere shrug.

Whatever was wrong with my mom continued throughout the day, after the service and back at the house, where we hosted everyone for dinner. She didn't return to her normal self until the last guest had left, late in the evening. Then she slid out of her heels and onto the couch, where she would stay for the next six months.

Out in the yard, the satellite dish turned and searched the empty night sky for the Home Shopping Network.