This Is What I Want by Craig Lancaster Page B

about that? she often wondered. The answer: Nothing. Nothing at all.
    Sam, her son, came back into the living room with the ice water Blanche had asked him to fetch. She took it in both hands and held it like a scepter, feeling the coolness from the sweaty glass on her hands.
    “You sure you don’t want to come tonight, Mama?” Sam asked.
    Blanche put the glass to her lips, which were cracked like a dry lake bed. She drank gingerly, careful not to spill but also treasuring the ripple that rode to the back of her mouth, down her gullet to her insides, spreading out and cooling her down as it traveled. When she was done, she found only shallow breath, and Sam reached for the cup so she could lie back and let the oxygen do its job.
    “No,” she said, closing her eyes. “Not tonight.” Not tomorrow, either, for that matter, but Blanche knew that one wasn’t up for a vote. Tomorrow, she’d have to be there. Ten years for Sam running Jamboree, ten years since Samuel graduated and left, and she was this year’s Queen of the Grandview Parade. A banner day for the Kelvig family. She would have to wear a dress—a light one in this heat. Blanche remembered that Patricia said she’d come over and help with the makeup and the tiara. A tiara, perfectly silly.
    “We can have Norby bring you a plate, if you want.”
    Blanche opened her eyes. “Norby? Who’s Norby?”
    “That’s me, Grandma.”
    Sam broke in. “It’s what he wants to be called now.”
    Blanche waited for a couple of toots from her oxygenator. “But you have a perfectly good name. Samuel Einar Kelvig Junior. Do you know how you got that name?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, apparently you don’t. Samuel was my father, a great man. He worked his whole life and didn’t have much, but he put up the money for your Grandpa Herschel and me to buy this farm, because that’s the kind of man he was. Einar was your great-grandpa’s favorite uncle back in Norway. These are fine names.”
    “Yes, Grandma, I know. But Norby’s a family name, too. That’s why I picked it. Shouldn’t I get to call myself what I want?”
    This is a confused boy, Blanche decided. She figured it fell to her to set him straight on his mother’s father, a man of such prickliness that even his own kinfolk would cross the street to avoid him.
    “Dennis Norby was the biggest no-account, lowdown dirty scoundrel this county’s seen in many a year,” she said. She had more harsh words on deck but couldn’t find the air for it. Wheezing set in.
    “Take it easy, Mama,” Sam said.
    Blanche’s eyes grew wider the more belabored her breathing became, until at last the oxygenator caught up with her and filled her lungs again. She curled a finger at her grandson and beckoned him to move closer. Norby leaned over the arm of the couch, almost to where he was half in her lap.
    “Honor your name,” she whispered. “You come from good people.” She reached out and gripped his hand. “Do you understand?”
    “Yes, Grandma.”
    “A name tells you something about yourself, where you come from. It’s something you can rely on when you don’t have anything else.” Her eyes drew wide again, and she waited for replenishment. Norby hung his head and waited.
    “Mama, it’s OK,” Sam said. He moved in on her and brushed her hair back with his thumb. Norby held on, and a fresh shot of oxygen got her going again.
    “Remember who you are,” she said.
    “I will,” Norby told her.

NORBY
    They rode back to town in Sam’s pickup. The sun, with hours to go before it slipped below the western horizon, had begun spackling the sky in pinks and oranges. Norby leaned toward his father, looking for the temperature reading outside. Eighty-seven degrees. The night ahead would call for short sleeves and plenty of mosquito spray. During Jamboree, it was ever thus.
    “Tell me about Grandpa Norby,” he said to his father.
    Sam wiggled his fingers on the steering wheel and took a quick glance at Norby in the