No Place

by Todd Strasser

  Felt like a long time ago.

  “Know where they keep the tea?” I took a mug from the shelf.

  Mom pulled open a cabinet and handed me a packet of green tea.

  “Kettle?” I asked.

  With her finger she tapped the hot water dispenser beside the sink. I filled the mug and sat down at the kitchen counter, feeling the steam on my face while I waited for the tea to steep. Mom sieved the cooked apples, separating out the skin, seeds, and stems. “How’s school?”

  “Okay.”

  “Talia?”

  “Fine.”

  “Your friends?”

  “Okay.”

  “Life on Jupiter?”

  “Huh?”

  “Just checking. Something’s not okay.” Mom mushed cooked apples through the sieve.

  We both knew why she’d said that. It had been about a thousand years since I’d sat in the kitchen and watched her cook. But I didn’t want to tell her I was angry about having to live at Uncle Ron’s. She would definitely think I was blaming her. Instead, I asked, “How’d you know you were going to like growing vegetables and cooking stuff?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Then how . . . ?”

  “I just tried it. I had to do something or I would have gone crazy. I mean, looking for jobs that didn’t exist.” She paused, then added, “And I was lucky. Not only did I find something I loved, but it gives me a sense of . . . well-being that I didn’t have before.”

  If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I might not have believed it was possible to find happiness going from a high-paying corporate job to something menial like gardening that hardly paid at all.

  “Is that why . . . it kind of seems like . . . what’s happened to us doesn’t bother you that much?” I asked.

  Mom wiped her forehead with her sleeve. She had a way of looking at me, almost like she was looking through me, and into the place where she could see what I was really thinking. “It’s really bothering you, isn’t it?”

  I almost denied it, but she’d know I was lying. So I just shrugged and nodded. “Yeah, it’s like . . . it’s always on my mind, you know? And every time I think about it, it’s a total buzzkill.”

  A crooked, worried expression etched itself onto her face. “It’s been a shock for you. Your dad and I had time to prepare for this. Maybe we tried too hard to make it like nothing in your life would change.”

  “But it did anyway,” I said. “We stopped going on vacations and out to dinner. We got rid of cable. We had to cut back on everything.”

  “But your day-to-day life stayed the same.” Mom picked bits of skin and seeds out of the sieve. “You still went to school and played baseball and spent time with your friends. So this . . . is a much bigger disruption to you than to us. I’m sorry, sweetheart. I wish it wasn’t this way.”

  I felt some of the anger and resentment evaporate. Mom put down the sieve. She stared into the sink and then slowly brought her gaze up until her eyes met mine. “You know what I’m going to say?”

  I did. About two years after she lost her job, a friend of hers convinced her to try yoga and something called mindful meditation. Mom had gone into it reluctantly, but it wasn’t long before she became a full-fledged convert.

  Now it was my turn to gaze down at the counter.

  She slid her hand over mine. “I’m not saying it’s a magic cure-all, but it helps. I don’t think I could have survived the last three years without it.”

  Steve Carlton, one of the greatest pitchers in the history of baseball, had meditated regularly, and so had a bunch of other players. But I still couldn’t see Dan Halprin doing it. “Sorry, Mom.”

  No surprise there, but what Mom did next was. She went to the kitchen door, peeked out, then returned. Speaking in a hushed voice, she said, “There’s something else. Just between us, this isn’t a good place. There’s way too much negative energy.”

  It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know who she was talking about.

  “But we don’t have a choice,” I said.

  Mom picked up an apple and began to mash it into the sieve. “There’s always a choice.”

  7

  Call it negative energy, stress, or tension. Whatever word or phrase you chose, Uncle Ron was dealing with a lot of it. He’d leave for work at dawn, come home after dark, and still be on the phone for hours. One night at dinner, when Dad came into the kitchen singing some song about freedom being just another word for nothing left to lose, Uncle Ron’s knuckles turned white around the handle of the knife in his hand, and I braced myself.

  The house may have been large, but it wasn’t soundproof. On another evening we waited at the kitchen table for Ron, who was on the phone in the den. Dinner was getting cold and the twins and Alicia were whining. Finally Aunt Julie went into the den to see if she could get her husband to join us. Agitated grumbling followed. We didn’t hear what Aunt Julie said, and Ron surely didn’t want us to hear his reply, but his harsh whisper made it back to the kitchen anyway: “No, it can’t wait. Not unless you want to see us lose everything and wind up like my sister and that loser husband of hers.”

  I winced. Alicia’s mouth fell open and the twins went silent. Dad hung his head. Mom blinked hard like she was fighting back tears. When Aunt Julie returned to the kitchen, her face was red. She said we should start dinner.

  * * *

  The next morning I couldn’t wait to get out of that house. Was Ron right? Was Dad a loser? All my life I’d told myself that other things besides making lots of money were important, like being a good father and helping people. But now I was starting to have doubts and feel resentful. Noah’s dad, Dr. Williams, was a good father, helped people, and made a good living. Why couldn’t my father do that too?

  It was sunny and warm, and when I went outside I heard yelling from the elementary school bus stop. A circle had formed around Mike and a bigger kid. They both had their fists up. At first it was hard to tell whether they were fooling around or serious, but when Ike kneeled behind the kid and Mike pushed him, the picture became clearer. The kid tumbled backward and my cousins pounced on him with fists flying.

  Not every brawl is the same. In some, one kid just wants to prove that he’s stronger and a better fighter, and once he’s done that, it’s over. In other fights kids really wail on each other with a fury that doesn’t seem proportionate with whatever the dispute is about. You get the feeling a kid is really upset about something else altogether and just needs to find a convenient human punching bag. That definitely seemed to be the case with Mike and Ike. The irony of it struck me. Why should I be the only one in that house who felt angry and resentful and wanted to hit and break things?

  Even though the kid was down, Mike kept hitting him, and Ike added a kick. You could see by the way the kid curled up into a fetal position with his arms protecting his head that he was no fighter. I knew I had to break it up. Taking my cousins firmly by the arms, I pulled them away and told them to stay put while I checked on the kid they’d been hitting. His eyes were watery, his face red and smudged with tears. I felt bad for kids like him, the gentle-giant types who other kids pick on because it makes them feel better.

  “You okay?” I helped him up and brushed him off.

  He nodded and wiped his nose on his arm. I guess the good thing about most ten-year-olds is they can’t inflict much harm.

  Meanwhile, Mike and Ike waited with arms crossed and chins jutting defiantly as if they knew what they’d done was wrong, but were still determined to claim that they were right.

  “Have a seat, guys.” I sat on the grass with them.

  “He started it,” Mike insisted.

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said.

  Mike and Ike glanced at each other uncertainly.

  “You guys must be pretty angry, huh? I mean, to pound on another kid like that?”

  Their foreheads bunched.

  “So what are you so angry about?” I asked.

  Neither answered. Mike pulle
d a few blades of grass out of the ground, and Ike followed his example. Maybe asking ten-year-olds to get in touch with their feelings was a bit too much. I decided to try a hunch: “How about this? Suddenly there’s this other family in your house, and your father’s stomping around pissed off all the time, and your mother spends half her life crying. Must be kind of upsetting, huh?”

  Ike nodded without waiting to see what his brother did.

  “Believe me, I know how you feel,” I told them. “There are times when I want to hit someone too.”

  Their eyes widened with surprise and curiosity. Down the block, the elementary bus turned the corner.

  “Do me a favor?” I said, getting up. “Don’t beat up anybody else today. If your dad finds out it’ll just make him madder. And maybe later we’ll find something really cool to smash into a jillion pieces.”

  They nodded eagerly and got on the bus. I walked back to Uncle Ron’s to wait for Noah. The truth was, I was looking forward to breaking stuff as much as they were.

  * * *

  That afternoon Noah and I were in the weight room at school doing oblique medicine ball tosses, down on one knee, catching, twisting, and heaving the ball back. In no time we’d worked up a sweat and were breathing hard.

  “Think your parents have any patients who might know about part-time jobs on weekends?” I asked. “Even five, ten hours would help.”

  “I’ll ask them.” Noah caught the heavy ball and tossed it back. “Glad you feel that way.”

  I wasn’t sure what he meant. “What way?”

  “Like you want to work.”

  We switched positions. Now I was twisting to my left and he was twisting to his right.

  “Hell, yeah,” I said.

  “Not like these people living in parks,” Noah went on. “Half of them have college degrees. They could be working.”

  “Not if they can’t find jobs.” I wiped sweat off my forehead and thought of my parents.

  “Come on,” Noah scoffed. “There’s all kinds of work in the energy fields up north and out west. Sometimes you just have to move. I mean, look at my grandfather. He had to move all the way from the Jim Crow South to Chicago just to be a train porter. And what about all the immigrants who come here from other countries? They’re not sitting around complaining.”

  Noah was a solid catcher and hitter, but not a standout who could get a scholarship with a Division One school, or really think seriously about a baseball career. He loved the game and would probably play at Amherst, a Division III team, but basically he planned to follow his parents’ path into medicine.

  “Suppose you get out of med school and can’t find a job?” I heaved the medicine ball to him.

  “No way. There’s always work for doctors,” he said. “Maybe not in some well-to-do suburb, but in towns in the middle of nowhere . . . Indian reservations . . . inner-city clinics. This idea that everyone’s got to get everything handed to them on a silver platter is totally whack.”

  He heaved the ball back and I caught it. “Yeah, but aren’t you the one who expects to go to med school? I mean, talk about silver platters.”

  “Are you serious? I worked my butt off to get into Amherst,” Noah said, sweat dripping down his face. “And I’ll have to do the same to get into med school. You know my father was the first one in his family to go to college? And his father was the first to eat in a desegregated restaurant? No one’s handing me anything.” He gestured at the ball. “Now throw it, white boy.”

  8

  Back at Uncle Ron’s the twins and I went into the garage and smashed some old toy cars and boats with hammers. It might not have been as soothing as meditation, but it was pretty satisfying until Alicia told Aunt Julie what we were doing and she made us stop.

  From that day on I made a point now and then to throw a football with Mike and Ike, or play two-on-one hoops and air hockey. I’d forgotten how good it felt to horse around and play a dumb, meaningless game for half an hour, especially when the rest of the evening would be spent tiptoeing around Uncle Ron’s volcanic moods.

  That Friday Noah and I went back to Derek’s studio to hear a new band record, and over the weekend I found some work helping one of Uncle Ron’s neighbors clear brush from the back of his lot and chop some dead trees into firewood. On Sunday afternoon Talia and I went with her family to a dressage event where she placed third, and afterward we all went out to dinner to celebrate. It was fun . . . until they dropped me off back at Uncle Ron’s and I rejoined my parents as the somewhat less-than-welcome poor relations.

  * * *

  One day the following week I was leaving the cafeteria with Noah and some friends from the team, talking and laughing when the ratty-haired kid at the table in the hall called out, “Hey, Dan, ready to sign up?”

  I felt myself tense. All my friends, plus a couple of kids at the sign-up table, were watching and listening. “Why do you ask?”

  “Seems like a good time,” he said.

  Had he heard that we’d lost our home? Did he think that would make me more sympathetic to his cause? “Why’s that?” I gave him a hard look.

  Some kids will back down when you give them that look, but this kid kept his eyes steadily on mine. “Just figured for once I had your undivided attention.”

  It took a second to realize that for the past few weeks I’d been with Talia every time I’d passed him, and he probably remembered that time she’d pulled me away before he had a chance to lay out his spiel. But Talia wasn’t feeling well and had stayed home that day. Still, it had to take guts to stand up in front of senior athletes and call one out. I looked at the posters on the wall behind him.

  400 AMERICANS HAVE MORE

  THAN HALF THE WEALTH IN THIS COUNTRY.

  WHY IS IT EASIER TO BELIEVE THAT

  150,000,000 AMERICANS ARE BEING LAZY

  RATHER THAN THAT 400 AMERICANS ARE BEING GREEDY?

  STOP THE WAR ON THE POOR!

  BAIL OUT SCHOOLS,

  NOT BANKS!

  “People are suffering,” the kid said. “They can’t find work, or get a decent education. You think it’s fair that someone dies because he can’t pay for adequate medical care while someone else with the same disease lives because he can?”

  My friends started to drift away. Meanwhile, I thought of Meg’s family living in Dignityville because her mom and brother had to spend practically everything they earned on medicine for Mr. Fine. I used to think that life was like sports: Things were rarely fair. The other team cheated. Your best player got hurt. You threw a perfect strike and the ump called it a ball.

  But that’s a game, not life.

  In sports people don’t die because they can’t afford medicine. They don’t become homeless because a company goes out of business or moves jobs overseas.

  I gestured at the posters. “You really think marching’s gonna make a difference?”

  The ratty-haired kid looked surprised. “You don’t think protests changed the war in Vietnam or segregation in the South?”

  I couldn’t say. We may have studied those events in school, but those old protest movements were about as real to me as trigonometry. You learned what you needed to ace the test. And not for an instant did it feel like it had any actual meaning in your life.

  “If we don’t do something, it’s only going to get worse,” the kid said. “And it’s not the kind of thing one person can do. Marches show strength. They tell politicians that we have the numbers and the votes to change elections.”

  I was more than three years away from being able to drink legally, but only months from being able to vote. Sure, voting may have been way more important, but given the choice, I would have switched those two age requirements in a heartbeat.

  The kid was still waiting for me to respond.

  “Can I ask you something personal?” I said. “Why do you care? You homeless or something?”

  The kid gave me a long, curious look, then said, “No, I care . . . because I’m not homeless.”
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  * * *

  It was one of those days when no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get away from things I didn’t want to think about. I’d signed up for government and politics because Noah said the teacher, Ms. Mitchell, graded you mostly on class participation and multiple-choice quizzes. She didn’t like reading student papers, which was perfect because I didn’t like writing them.

  Wearing a red tent dress and big hoop earrings, Ms. Mitchell waddled in and dropped into her chair. “All right, my little gremlins, today we start our unit on local government and politics,” she announced in her booming voice. “Pay attention because at the end of the unit each of you will give an oral report on a topic of local interest. So what’s going on around here? Do any of you ever look at the Median Buzz, or read that miserable excuse for a neighborhood newspaper? What are the issues?”

  Ben Phillips raised his hand. “Dignityville?”

  “All right, we’ll start there.” Ms. Mitchell gazed around. “I assume you’re all familiar with it?”

  Meg sat across the room and I glanced at her just in time to catch her peeking at me out of the corner of her eye. Then she seemed to go rigid and stare straight ahead. We hadn’t spoken since that day a few weeks before when we’d nearly gotten thrown out of the library, and I felt a little bad about that. Of course, she didn’t know about the grief Talia had given me for laughing with another girl.

  “Okay, for those of you who’ve been hiding under rocks, Mayor George and the town council decided a while back to create a tent city in Osborne Park to house the homeless,” Ms. Mitchell explained. “If you’ve been in town you can’t miss it. Does anyone know why they decided to do that?”

  Susan Barrow raised her hand. “To save money.”

  “How would a tent city save money?” Ms. Mitchell asked.

  “Because they’d all be in one place?” Susan guessed.

  “Right,” said Ms. Mitchell. “Just because people are homeless doesn’t mean they don’t deserve the same services as the rest of us, whether that’s sanitation, or medical care, or public transportation. And given the financial problems towns and cities are facing these days, I don’t think anyone can blame the mayor for trying this. Here’s my next question: What do you think of Dignityville? Is it right to round up all the homeless and put them in one place?”