Where You Live

by Andrew Roe

  How many times could you be wrong about love?

  “Naw, let’s not,” Del said. “I thought I would. But now it doesn’t seem right. Let’s just watch it.”

  Then the Cops song came on (Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do?) and she waited to see herself, to see what her life would look like there on the screen.

  A MATTER OF TWENTY-FOUR HOURS

  Porter’s mother had been dying for years, a seemingly never-ending downward spiral, but now it was really happening. After this last relapse, the doctors said there wasn’t anything more they could do. They said to look into hospice. They said if she left the hospital it would be a matter of twenty-four hours, maybe forty-eight if they were lucky.

  This information was not firsthand; it was secondhand, from his brother, Emmett, who was at the hospital dealing with the paperwork to get their mother home and finding a hospice nurse who could be available as soon as possible. Porter was at the bar, his usual Thursday night shift, presiding over another evening of anonymous drinking and forgetting. There were only half a dozen or so customers. Every TV tuned to a different station. When he saw his brother’s number appear on his cell phone, he almost didn’t answer it.

  “So this is it, Porter. You understand that? This is it. She’s coming home to die. She wants to die at home. She wants to see her plants and flowers one more time. She’d like to see her youngest son, too, if it isn’t too much of an inconvenience for you.”

  Porter concentrated on a customer he’d had his eye on for a while, the lone woman. She swayed in front of the jukebox after having made a selection—the Stones, a fairly obscure track from Exile on Main Street, “Shine a Light,” something only a die-hard would pick, which made her all the more alluring. She swayed and danced like she had a different body, one that was younger and thinner, that fit into jeans better, that got her the things she wanted or thought she wanted, but she was okay with all that, the music filled her with whatever she lacked.

  “I’ll try,” he told his brother. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “She’ll be dead tomorrow, Port. I don’t know how I can make it any clearer than that.”

  And just then a man entered the bar and came up to the Stones woman and gave her a deep, drunken kiss. That was that. Once again, someone else had made the decision for him.

  One hand—he could count the girlfriends he’d ever had, including high school, on one hand. Some (index finger, ring finger) not really even girlfriends. Just girls he’d somehow known and also somehow, usually through circumstance, or alcohol, or both, managed to sleep with. Once. Or twice. Or once. One hand.

  “You don’t even know yourself, who you really are, who you are as, like, a person,” one girl told him without any prompting whatsoever.

  “What do you care about?” asked another one. “I mean really care. What are you passionate about?”

  He thought for a while, considering not answering but then did.

  “Drinking,” he said. “I care about drinking. I’m passionate about that.”

  He meant it to be funny, but as soon as the words left his mouth he knew it wasn’t.

  “That’s sad,” said the girl, whose name was Claudia and who wasn’t a girl at all but a thirty-eight-year-old woman with two shit kids, an auto-immune disorder, and teeth gone yellow from smoking too much.

  He couldn’t help himself, though. He felt like he had something to give, if only he could find the right person. The right person would make all the difference. The right person would save him. And much time and effort and energy had been wasted over the years because of this belief.

  As with the others, he and Claudia didn’t keep in touch after.

  The clock at the bar ran twenty minutes fast, time eternally accelerated so that people would vacate earlier than two a.m. It wasn’t closing time yet, but the place had emptied out, and Porter wanted to move things along. He had to decide: was he going to his mother’s or not? He had to decide and fairly soon. There was a bit of a deadline here. His brother had called two hours ago. The clock was ticking. His mother was dying, actually dying this time. All the previous false alarms. He never thought it would happen. He had to decide.

  Porter toweled down the bar one more time. He’d spent so much time at The Alibi as a customer, as a dedicated drinker, that the owner, Marco, finally asked him if he wanted a job. Besides bartending, Porter also did construction for a friend’s company, but the last job had been months ago and his friend kept saying there would be more work soon, soon, things were bound to pick up, just hang in there, the fucking economy, what can you do? Another friend used to get him drywall work but that had dried up, too.

  “Drink up, folks,” Porter called out. “Bar’s closing in ten. Closing in ten.”

  The only customers left did not stir, two older men in a booth, drinking Rolling Rock and staring vacantly and not really talking to each other, more like enduring the other’s presence. A group of dreadlocked hippie kids (he’d carded them, taken their crumpled dollar bills and greasy change) had left when Johnny Cash came on the jukebox. You never knew if these kids were students at Humboldt State or just hanging out, living the life, mistakenly thinking it was still the Summer of Love.

  Deadline. The word made sense now. That’s probably how the word originated. Someone was going to die. Something was at stake. There was a before and after, and after the after, after the line was or wasn’t crossed, there would be consequences—consequences that would be felt for a very long time. There was impact. You couldn’t ignore what came after the deadline had passed.

  He went to the bathroom to clean up. When he opened the stall door, he found a regular in there, Frank, passed out on the toilet, his pants and underwear bunched sadly around his ankles, head jabbed back, snoring up a shit storm. Frank could have been fifty-five, could have been eighty. It was hard to tell.

  “Frank, come on. Wake up.”

  Porter gave him a nudge in the shoulder. That did the trick.

  “What? Oh. Wait. Oh shit. What happened, Tex?”

  “You fell asleep on the crapper.”

  “Oh. Oh no. Wait. Shit. What was it? What was it I was just saying? I was just telling someone something, maybe it was you even, I was just telling them that my daughter, the other day she shows up and she’s bought me a computer. A computer. She says it’ll give me something to do, I need that in my life, it’ll give me something to do and I can get the Internet and I can look up all sorts of things, things I’ve always been curious about but never had the time and now I have the time. She opens the box and starts setting it up. Computers. They’re about as useless as tits on a bull. I ask her, I ask her for the gift receipt. I ask her when she gives me the computer. Oh, she doesn’t like that at all. My daughter. She gets pissed. She gets all pissy. Like she does. She could lose a few pounds and maybe things would be better for her. I don’t know. I worry about her. But that’s what a parent does. Was you the one I was telling all this to?”

  “Wasn’t me, Frank.”

  “Thought it was you. Must have been some other young guy.”

  “Young? Me? I don’t feel young.”

  “Shit. Don’t talk to me. You’re young. When you’re looking at what I’m looking at, then come back and talk to me. Then you’ll know what’s old.”

  “You drive tonight, Frank?”

  “I didn’t walk, that’s for sure.”

  “Come on. I’ll give you a ride. Closing soon. Pull up your goddamn pants.”

  “What? You my mommy now?”

  “Let’s go. You can get your car tomorrow.”

  “Hell. All right. Would suck to die in a car crash at this point.”

  “That would suck.”

  “You okay with a girl with a little meat on her bones, Tex? My daughter’s name is Pamela. She’s a good person. A better person than me. That’s something, at least. One generation better than the next. She ever give me a grandchild then we’ll really be talking. You interested?”

  “I’m
good, Frank. Thanks anyway.”

  “Change your mind you let me know. She’s been to France. She doesn’t wear no jewelry though.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind.”

  “You do that. You let me know. She’s a good woman. Hey. I think I’ve got a bit of a gravity situation here. I could sure use some help with these pants, Tex.”

  Before he left the bar, he got a text from his brother: Come. Now. Last chance. Hospice nurse here soon. Don’t be a dick all your life.

  Frank’s place was down in Eureka, so Porter drove that lonesome stretch of 101 between Arcata and Eureka, Humboldt Bay off to the right, the water black and looming, Frank dozing like the drunk that he was, drizzle coming down in one long steady sigh, reminding Porter that he had to replace his windshield wiper blades. The apartment just as sad as he’d imagined. That old man smell. That old man desperation and finality. Nominal furniture. Food-crusted dishes. Dim lights. Clothes everywhere, a vast spawn of ancient underwear and socks. Prescriptions, medicines, creams, ointments. Empty booze bottles. Newspapers probably dating back to Clinton. Stacks of unopened mail on a TV tray, the only thing resembling a table in the entire apartment. A fishbowl without fish, filled instead with paper receipts and change, mostly pennies, it seemed. Frank murmuring something about his disability checks not coming on time anymore. The goddamn government. The goddamn people at the bar who were out to get him. It sounded like the neighbors upstairs were having a party. Old people creeped Porter out, always had. Music pumping. Boom-boom. Boom-boom. Like a heartbeat. It didn’t stop.

  He deposited Frank onto his bed, which was only a mattress on the floor of a shoebox-sized bedroom, and the floor itself was covered with more of his old man sheddings: clothes, boxes, papers, the computer Frank had told him about earlier. Porter didn’t bother with taking off Frank’s clothes, just made sure he fell asleep on his stomach, then placed a glass of water next to the mattress, and left.

  The decision still hadn’t been made. For now, he was just driving. Aimless, teenage driving. He followed the gravitational suck of his headlights for a while. All through Eureka and then back on 101, the drizzle sometimes stopping but always returning. He pulled over at a gas station. That was at least a decision he could make. He needed gas. And he was hungry. Close to three a.m. now. The cold early morning air stunned him, like an electric shock, as he stepped out of his car.

  Porter rushed inside, grabbed a frozen burrito, microwaved it for too long, thing was burning hot, paid for it, and also put five dollars on pump six, scorching his tongue as he ate the burrito and pumped his gas. Back inside the car, he didn’t start the engine. He sat there and stared at the glowing mini mart. The lights inside. All the food and booze and motor oil. It was too late for many customers to be there, but he kept waiting for someone to walk in, for something to happen. The door: it would open. Someone would walk in and the world would start again. It was that simple. All someone had to do was open the door and walk through it, cross that threshold. He kept waiting. It was good to know that such a place existed, that if you needed any of the basics at any time during the day or night, you could get them, twenty-four hours a day, always available, as long as you could pay. All you had to do was walk through the door.

  His mother’s house was up in McKinleyville, which meant he’d have to drive farther north, pass the bay again, this time on his left, through Arcata and beyond the airport (where planes frequently hit deer on the runway), plus a main street, plus side streets, then a sleepy cul-de-sac, twenty minutes, tops, if he left right now.

  Fact: He’d always been the fuck-up brother, the one who deviated and exasperated and could not be tamed—that role had felt natural, he knew the lines, how to be. In high school, Emmett played football and saved money to buy a car, while Porter smoked dope and taught himself bass guitar. It was a study in contrasts, hard to believe they’d come from the same parents, although there wasn’t much evidence about their father, a mystery man who’d disappeared when they were very young and occasionally sent checks and age-inappropriate birthday gifts, Emmett more like his mother, a good citizen, a reliable soul, and so Porter assumed he got what he got from his father, whose last known address was Tampa, Florida.

  When his mother started getting sick, Emmett had been the one who took care of everything. The doctor appointments and the specialists and the health insurance. His brother had a wife, kids, an office job, a regular life with many responsibilities, and still he stepped in and found the time, made it work. Porter, on the other hand, flinched, receded farther from his family. He wasn’t there yet as a person. Not capable of that kind of sacrifice. He drank more, spoke less. Listened to the vast echo his life had become. Whenever Emmett cornered him on the subject of his unavailability, all Porter could manage to say was: “I can’t do it. I’m sorry. I can’t.”

  The first stroke happened on her birthday, at a restaurant, the Sweet River Grill and Bar in the Eureka Mall. Both Porter and Emmett were there, along with Emmett’s family, a fairly silent celebration of her sixty-fourth year. One moment she was ordering chicken fajitas and the next she was unable to speak. She kept opening her mouth, fish-like, but nothing came out. They drove her to the hospital and waited and Emmett’s wife took the kids home and they waited some more and then the emergency room doctor informed them that she’d had a stroke. He also told them that there was this drug called TPA, which is a real miracle drug, which can help prevent any after affects the stroke might cause. But it could also kill her. It was a fifty-fifty chance. So they had to make a decision right then and there: give her the drug (and potentially, maybe, help her after, but also maybe kill her) or not give her the drug (and she likely wouldn’t be able to speak normally after, would also possibly experience partial or full paralysis on the right side of her body). Porter and Emmett just standing there. The doctor waiting. The nurse, the assistants. Everyone waiting. It almost made Porter laugh. How could they make such a decision? His mother’s life literally in their hands.

  “Can we have a few minutes to talk?” Emmett asked.

  “Yes, but that’s about all you have,” said the doctor, who was wearing a leather jacket. “Every minute here counts. The longer we wait to give her the drug, the more likely the effects of the stroke will be more significant.”

  The doctor and his jacket and the others left.

  “Porter, what do you think?”

  He couldn’t say anything. He stared at his mother’s open mouth. He might have muttered, “I don’t know.” He might have not. Machines hummed and beeped. They were surrounded by a white curtain, no walls or doors, all sounds entering. In the bed next to them, a man moaned, said he couldn’t feel anything in his legs, they were dead, dead legs, he said, and a woman said they’re still here, see? TPA stood for something but it hadn’t sunk in. His mother didn’t move. His mother who had raised two sons, who hadn’t dated after their father left, who had given up on men, who had worked two jobs for many years, sometimes three jobs during the holidays, and often, growing up, it was just the two of them, the brothers, the house all to themselves, an empty, lonely, guilty place.

  The doctor came back. It seemed odd: an emergency room doctor wearing a leather jacket. Porter wanted to ask him about it but didn’t.

  “Have you decided?” the doctor said.

  Emmett looked at Porter one more time. Nothing.

  “Give her the drug,” Emmett said, and they did, and she lived.

  After that, he retreated further from his family, vanishing for long stretches—minimal contact, infrequent phone calls, even more infrequent visits. His mother pulled through the stroke, physical therapy for six weeks and then she was pretty much back to where she was before. He was living in Fortuna at that point, until a friend lured him up to Bandon, Oregon, where he picked cranberries and drank vodka gimlets and tried to love a waitress.

  He wasn’t sure how long he’d be gone. The friend also had a friend who picked morel mushrooms and was apparently making a small fortune. The
friend of a friend was part of a group that roamed Oregon’s forests in the spring, after the snow thawed, looking for these highly prized, highly priced fungi. The friend said he could get them into the group and they’d be set. Promises were made. The morel people were a tight-knit group, heavy into hash and Cat Stevens. To pick the mushrooms in Oregon, you had to have a permit, but the morel people did not have any permits. Porter and his friend met them—about ten in all—at a camp site in the Cascades for a weekend trip. A hippie woman named Heaven asked him if his energy was balanced. He said he didn’t think so. Another person told him how you had to respect the morels, acknowledge their feelings and history.

  The group, Porter learned, tracked forest fires because the mushrooms thrived in areas that had been burned out; fir and pine forests were the best. They had maps and timelines and botany books—for hippies, they were surprisingly well organized. There was, as expected, a fair amount of hash, plus several ponytail guys, one of whom strummed a guitar and sang “Peace Train” and “Moonshadow.” Later he discovered that the weekend was some kind of test, to see if they fit in or something. His friend had passed. He did not. It was never clear why.

  And no matter how many times he washed his hands he could never completely remove the stain from the cranberries, always a faint pinkish-red clinging to his fingertips. The ships in Bandon’s small harbor swayed in the ocean’s unknown currents; few of the neglected vessels ever went anywhere, it seemed. Eventually he returned to Humboldt, feeling like it might be getting out of hand now, the years of vague, inconsequential drift, time passing by and somehow accumulating.

  There was another stroke, additional diagnoses, recurrent treatments, and physical and mental decline. Just coordinating the pill and medication schedule alone was staggering, his brother complained whenever he had a chance, which wasn’t very often.

  The last time Porter spoke to his mother, she told him how she couldn’t pee straight anymore, her stream unpredictable and going every which way, the humiliation of this, yet another failure of the body.