“My boy Arthur,” my father said, and Glenn and I shook hands. His hair was short and neat, as if he’d just come out of the Army, and he had a cross on, a big silver one with Jesus in relief, just starting to tarnish. He seemed embarrassed, sorry we were all part of this. He stayed with the truck while my father and I went back inside.
My mother had her coat on now, and was beginning her final sweep, picking up speed as she located her purse, her cigarettes, her keys. Usually my father and I watched her from the table with guarded amusement, but today we waited for her by the door as if she were the one leaving.
“I’ll call you tonight when I get settled,” my father said.
“That’s fine,” my mother said, then turned to me and added, “I may be a little late getting you.”
“Okay,” I said. I grabbed my bookbag and my trombone case from the hall closet, giving my parents the time and privacy to say goodbye.
They did not kiss, as I had envisioned. They just stood there looking at each other.
“I guess this is it,” my father said.
“That’s your choice,” my mother said, and looked at the keys in her hand.
“Lou.”
“I can’t be late.”
“All right,” my father said.
He did not shake my hand. We followed my mother out and locked the door behind us. My father got into Glenn’s truck; as they zoomed off, he waved, and not knowing what to do, I waved back. My mother got into our car and, looking over her shoulder, backed out onto the road. Pulling away, she looked through her window at me, as if unsure she should leave, like someone who has slowed to pick you up hitchhiking and then at the last second thinks better of it but still feels guilty.
I watched our car dwindle, headed off past the Van Dorns’. It was warm for so late in October; you could smell the ground. The unharvested second-growth corn across the road was high and rustled in the wind, inscrutable. Behind me loomed our house, quiet and empty now. I had a key and thought of going back inside and watching game shows all day like I was sick, but my mother was going to pick me up after practice. I put my trombone case down, hung the strap of my bookbag over our mailbox and stood at the end of our drive and, like every day, waited.
A week before Halloween the realtor came up with someone who would rent our house while it was on the market. It was money, my father said; my mother agreed. That Saturday she started boxing everything except the dishes and the TV. We did not have to be out of the house until mid-November, but she’d found a place we could move into the first, a townhouse apartment in a complex a few miles from us. She was excited when she told me, as if we’d gotten lucky. She wanted me to ride over with her and see it. I knew I would not like the place because I knew from my bus route exactly where and what it was, but to please her I hopped in the car and while we were there I smiled and acted enthusiastic.
It was not a house and not really an apartment either. Since we only needed two rooms, my mother had rented the top half of a duplex in what had once been the dormitories of a failed seminary school. Fox-wood, it was called. The building site had been designed for privacy and meditation; a gravel drive too steep for the bus to navigate in winter disappeared into the woods only to resurface a mile down the road. The developers had kept the name and leveled the chapel. The rubble lay where it had fallen, marked off with stakes painted hunter orange. My mother said the diocese didn’t have enough money to keep it running, but the rumors around school involved—predictably—dungeons, orgies and human sacrifice. It was cheap, just a step up from a trailer court. Cars sat up on blocks; muddy toys lay scattered in the grass. Only two girls in my grade came from there—the Raybern sisters, twins—and though they were impeccably neat, they wore homemade calf-length skirts, pleated button-down blouses and belted cardigans as if they were already spinsters. If they had been smart we would have understood them, but they were C students, and therefore weird for no real reason. They sat together near the front of the bus, bony and silent. In the morning when we were nearing the gate, someone in back would call, “Next stop: Fuckwood,” and when the Raybern sisters got on we would all be laughing.
When I told Warren, he said “That blows” to make me feel better.
“Don’t let her throw any of my shit away,” Astrid threatened me from Tennstaedt.
I said I’d try, but it was a hollow promise. Our mother had started with Astrid’s room. By the time we talked, she’d already taken a full wagonload of garbage bags down to the Goodwill box in the Foodland parking lot and come back flushed and triumphant. All she had saved were two photo albums, a shoebox of letters and some sweaters she’d tried on to see if they still fit anyone. What I salvaged had been accidental, things I’d stolen over the years and now considered mine—the cooler of her books (Tolkien, Vonnegut, Hunter S. Thompson), her stash with its sweet meerschaum and strawberry-flavored papers and resin-coated bowls. Now I’d have to give them back.
Room by room the house emptied out. Every day my mother came home from work and put a pot of coffee on, changed into jeans and a sweatshirt and picked up where she’d left off boxing the night before. The strapping tape came off the roll with a ripping sound; her footsteps echoed. I did not like being in the house with her, and when I did not have band practice I made sure I could put in a few hours at my job, doing food prep and policing the kitchen at the Burger Hut II near school. As the light outside dimmed and the dinner crowd seeped in, I dredged the dark lake of the Fry-o-lator, imagining myself waiting for the bus with the Raybern sisters.
At home my mother didn’t have time to cook and we ate frozen food, rinsing the silver, partitioned trays so her kids at work could paint with them. Without my father at the table, I noticed she talked about the children at her work a lot. “We had one die today,” she’d say, or, “Do you remember Monte? He’s finally going home.” They seemed to me another family she belonged to which I would never share, and I wondered who she talked to this way about me. We had not started going to Dr. Brady yet; we were still trying to talk to each other.
My father called and dropped by some nights to pack up the garage with all his tools. He was living in a townhouse apartment in a different complex called Lake Vue near the state park. He laughed and joked while we cleaned his wrenches in turpentine and tracked down his missing drill bits, but he was subdued around my mother and would not argue with her. He was agreeable to everything she said, and helped with the move even more than he would have normally. He rented the truck when the U-Haul place wanted a credit card and my mother didn’t have one, and when we took a load of furniture over to his place (the rec room couch spotted with my mother’s burn holes, the wicker peacock throne, the fake deco end tables), he let her drive, following behind in the Country Squire.
Halloween, Warren and I had planned on going to a dance in town. It was just an excuse to get a ride in from his mother so we could egg windows and soap cars. Upholding tradition, my mother had filled a big salad bowl with Clark bars. She knew no one would come and had already begun eating them, washing them down with scotch. She was sitting tailorseat on the living room floor with my transistor tuned to the scratchy classical station from Pittsburgh. We’d finished packing the truck that afternoon. Beside her lay our sleeping bags and a pillow each, our clothes for tomorrow folded neatly in piles. I told her I didn’t absolutely have to go.
“Please,” she said. “I don’t want you moping around here all night. Just don’t get into any trouble.”
“I won’t,” I said.
“Don’t,” she said.
“I won’t.”
We looked at each other, standing by our answers.
“Do you know why we’re doing this?” she asked me, and pointed around to the bare walls.
“Because we don’t have enough money without Dad,” I said, trying my best.
“Because your father won’t forgive me for something I did.”
I did not, at that moment, want to know what that something was. I wanted Warre
n’s mother to pull into the driveway and honk her horn for me.
“I don’t expect you to understand any of this,” my mother said, “but I think you should know this isn’t my doing or your father’s doing but both of our doing. I know what we’re doing to you and your sister isn’t right, but this is what we’ve both decided to do.” She took a sip of scotch and gritted her teeth, lit a cigarette and blew a quick jet of smoke. “I was in love with a man. Your father can’t forgive me that—not that he’s perfect on that score. He’s seeing someone and has been for some time. Don’t think I’m the only villain in this.”
“You’re not a villain,” I said, but dazed, the way a fighter being clubbed against the ropes paws blindly, hoping to tie up his opponent.
My mother put up both her hands for me to be quiet.
“I was in love with a man who didn’t even like me. Isn’t that sad? At least some of the women your father loved loved him back. I was in love by myself. It was stupid. There was nothing I could do one way or the other.” She took a bite of her Clark bar. Standing above her, I could see the waxy white line of her part and the gray mixed into her dark roots. She sniffled and cleared her throat. Much too late, the Hardestys’ Bonneville turned into our drive, the headlights floating ghostly across the ceiling. “Have you heard enough?”
“I guess,” I said.
“You guess.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Don’t ever become a woman,” my mother said. She stood up shakily and embraced me. She wasn’t crying, she just smelled drunk. “Promise me.”
“I won’t,” I said.
“Good,” she said. “Now go get stoned with your little friend what’s-his-name and don’t break any windows.”
Mrs. Hardesty let us off in front of Emily Britain—the school that had sponsored the dance—and we walked through the masked, clutching couples and out the fire door into the pleasing anonymity of the dark.
“Let’s break shit,” I said.
“Fuckin A,” Warren said.
The next morning my father came over driving my Aunt Ida’s clunky old Nova. It was a salt-rotted ’65 that sat on its rear axle like a crippled dog. In our garage my father had once refurbished a Triumph TR3 which he later sold to help pay for Astrid’s braces, and to see him in my aunt’s rattletrap was a shock, as if he too were falling apart.
“It’s mine now,” he admitted.
“You can’t be serious,” my mother said.
“I needed something and she wanted to get rid of it.”
“Don’t blame this on me,” she said.
“I’m not,” he said. “It’ll fix up. It’ll be a perfect car for winter. I’ll get something in spring. It’s not like I’m going anywhere.”
“That’s true,” my mother said.
We did a final reconnaissance of the house, discovering a thermometer stuck by a suction cup to the kitchen window and a plunger for the downstairs toilet that my mother said we could leave. It was a sunny day and the light cut the bare rooms into pieces.
“It looks good,” my father said at the door, but my mother didn’t let him linger. She closed and locked it and let the screen spank shut.
“Arthur,” she said, “can you direct your father?”
It did not take long. We had everything we could fit into the apartment in by noon. The few pieces that didn’t make it—the kitchen ensemble, two overstuffed chairs from the rec room, Astrid’s bed and desk—we dropped off at a U-Store, my mother draping them with old sheets as if the tiny tin cube were a disused room of a mansion. We made sure we had the key, then rolled down the corrugated door.
Beyond a few children staring at us as my father took off, our neighbors were not interested in us. The super, an older woman in a hunting jacket with a quilted shoulder, came by around five to see if everything was all right. For dinner my mother ordered pizza, which she said we really couldn’t afford to do anymore.
“Here we are,” she toasted with her free Coke.
“To Foxwood,” I said.
We drank, but afterward my mother stared into the greasy box too long. She saw that I’d caught her and smiled.
“It doesn’t seem real yet,” she said. “It feels like a motel, like we’re on vacation. I keep thinking we’re going to go home.”
“So do I,” I said.
“But we’re not,” she said, trying to be cheery for me. “We’re here. This is it.”
“I don’t mind it.”
“Of course you do,” my mother said. “Don’t be an idiot.”
Monday I waited with the Raybern sisters, kicking at the gravel. They introduced themselves by saying, “You’re new.” We had been in the same grade for a full year yet they didn’t seem to recognize me, let alone know my name.
“Where are you from?” one of them said—Lila, I think. She had cat’s-eye glasses and a narrow jaw; her teeth were surprisingly perfect.
“I’m from here,” I said. “I’ve lived here my entire life.”
“Not here here,” said the other one, Lily. She had the same glasses and big eyes and teeth, but her slump was worse, making her look shorter.
“Butler here,” I said. “I’m in Mrs. Reese’s homeroom.”
We stood there as the wind pushed the birches, making them creak and tilt like masts. Though it was only a mile from our house, the land seemed wild and foreign, a place I might get lost in.
“Oh, Mrs. Reese,” Lila said, suddenly brightening. “I know Mrs. Reese.”
“Is she the one with the leg?” Lily asked, thinking of Mr. Donnelly, who had a prosthetic foot.
“No,” Lila said, “she’s the one with the face,” which, while accurate, was cruel. Mrs. Reese had had a stroke and the right side of her face was paralyzed.
“What time,” I asked, “does the bus usually get here?”
“Late,” they both said.
When I got on, the whole bus was laughing.
I don’t remember much of the day. Warren and I probably got stoned and cut study hall; Monday morning was a good time to hang around by Marsden’s Pond because only the diehards were out. I ate lunch in the cafeteria—a grilled cheese, corn, a block of Jell-O and two chocolate milks for sixty-five cents. In the afternoon I had music, which I never missed, and then it was time to go home again.
I sat in back by the emergency door with Warren and the rest of my friends. The Raybern sisters were up front on the right side, Lila on the aisle. Warren was recounting the plot of last night’s “Banacek,” a football player disappearing from under a pileup. We were all trying to figure out how they’d pulled off the stunt when the driver, Mr. Millhauser, stopped in front of what was now my old house. He reached out and yanked the handle and the door squeaked open.
Instinctively I reached for my case and my bookbag, then remembered. I suppose no one had told him. Our name was still on the mailbox; there was even a Pennysaver lying in the drive.
“Arthur?” Mr. Millhauser said, looking up at his mirror.
My friends—all except Warren—looked to me to see what was up. The other kids in the bus were either whispering or completely quiet. Some were from Lake Vue. I wondered how many knew, and how many right now were guessing. I thought maybe I should just get out and pretend I was going in and then, when the bus was gone, hitch a ride or walk cross-country to Fox-wood.
“Arthur Parkinson?” Mr. Millhauser called.
I looked at the dried swipes of mud under the seat in front of me, the bolts holding it to the floor.
“He doesn’t live there anymore,” Warren said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “He’s got a new place.”
“Arthur?” Mr. Millhauser asked, as if this might be a joke.
I looked up, ready to tell him the truth, but when I tried to speak my voice caught in my throat. I could only nod. In front, Lila Raybern leaned across the aisle and, hiding her mouth behind a hand, said something to Mr. Millhauser. He closed the door and drove.
FOUR
AT THE LAST MINUTE Anni
e chooses the new Burger Hut up by the high school. It’s cheap, none of her friends work there, and it saves her the trip into town. When she calls—from her mother’s, since this is for her benefit—Glenn offers to drive them. He can get his father’s car if she doesn’t like the truck.
Why don’t they meet there, she says, it’ll be easier. She doesn’t expect any trouble, but if something goes wrong she wants to be able to leave.
“Is that what you’re wearing?” her mother asks, meaning her jeans, her black leather jacket hanging in the hall.
“It’s the Burger Hut, Ma.”
“I’m sure Glenn will have on something nice.”
“It’s not a date,” Annie says. “It’s just lunch.”
“He’s trying. Doesn’t that mean anything to you? I’d think you’d be happy for him.”
“So he has a job. I have a job and I take care of Tara.”
“I’ve heard all of this before,” her mother says. She takes a loaf of white from the tin on the counter and starts making a salami sandwich for Tara.
“I don’t want to get your hopes up,” Annie says. Or mine.
“Just be nice this once.”
“I’m always nice,” Annie says. “That’s my problem.”
Her mother calls Tara in to eat, lays the plate on the table and sits down. Tara lifts the top slice to see what’s inside—just mayo, her mother knows how she likes it.
“He is trying.”
“Will you stop?” Annie says.
Watching Tara is making her hungry. She takes her purse upstairs and checks her face in the bathroom mirror. She looks tired from working last night, puffy. She finds a jar of Noxzema and runs some water, towels off and goes through her makeup case. In the mirror she draws her eyes on, grits her teeth to see how white. It’ll do. She tries on two pairs of earrings, decides against them and brushes her hair. She pulls it back with both hands, a rubber band at the ready between her teeth, then lets it fall and spread. Glenn likes it long. Selfishly, she thinks she needs to get it cut.
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