The Year We Left Home: A Novel

by Jean Thompson

  “Now careful,” she said, propelling Matthew closer. “I don’t want him to kick you.”

  “He won’t hurt me. And what would it matter if he did? Sit right here.” Martha patted the edge of the bed.

  Anita sat, keeping Matthew on her lap. Anita figured they had thirty seconds or less before he started in fussing. Martha stroked his face and fine white hair. “What’s that you got there?”

  “Bunny.”

  “That’s right, it’s a bunny. He’s so big now.”

  “Yes, he’s a handful,” Anita’s mother said. “How are you, Martha? You’re looking well.”

  Martha didn’t answer, either because she hadn’t heard, or because it was a silly remark. Pat said, “Audrey and Anita brought us a week’s worth of food. Are you hungry? You can have your choice of vittles. And apple pie for dessert.”

  “Maybe a little later.” Martha held out one hand. The skin over the knuckles was loose and rubbed-looking. “Can I see the bunny?”

  He considered this, then let it drop into Martha’s hand. Martha said, “Here, you can have it back. Mommy can take it with you when you go.”

  “Oh, he doesn’t need—”

  “I’d like him to have it.”

  None of them spoke, then Pat said, “I have to get you some more of that warming cream, for your feet. Her feet get real cold.”

  Anita’s mother said, “I should have asked you if there was anything you needed from the Rexall.”

  “No matter. Jane brings us whatever we need when she comes.”

  “We’re a regular drugstore,” Martha said. There was an odd-shaped plastic table by the far side of the bed, designed to swing into place over Martha if that was wanted. It must have come from a medical-supply place. The table held Kleenex and Chap Stick and baby wipes and a water glass with a plastic straw and a hairbrush and comb and a man’s folded plaid handkerchief (Norm’s?) and a jar of Vaseline petroleum jelly and an emery board and any number of other things, and though it all had doubtless been recently tidied, it gave an impression of disorder, of items assembled for unhappy purposes. The room had a medicine smell. Nothing worse. Pat must work hard to keep it that way.

  Matthew wanted to explore the bedspread, pick at the chenille tufts (the kind that left soft indentations on your face when you fell asleep on them), and Anita’s mother said she’d take him. He didn’t like her holding him and tried to turn himself upside down, as if falling on his head was the shortest route to the floor. He was probably due for a bathroom trip. Anita said, “OK, Matthew, we’ll get you fixed up.”

  Pat said, “Would he like to see the cows? I can take him out to the feed yard.”

  Anita’s mother said to Martha, “We should let you get your rest.”

  “That’s all I ever do is sleep.”

  “Best thing for you.”

  Martha shook her head. Her eyes closed. Probably because her face was so thin, her teeth looked overprominent, jutting out even behind her closed lips.

  Pat made a sign. Anita started to rise from the bed, but Martha’s hand touched hers. “Stay a minute. Your mother can handle Matthew.”

  “You’re sure—”

  “Stay a minute.”

  The others made their way downstairs. Anita wondered if Martha had fallen asleep. The skin of her eyelids was thin and discolored, like moth wings. Outside the window, the gray sky raced past. The room was smaller than you would have imagined for people of Martha’s and Norm’s size. The bed and dresser were bulky dark carved wood and took up even more of the space. The dresser was given over to Martha’s medicines, and a cardboard dispenser of latex gloves. Over the bed hung a picture frame enclosing a cross and two linked wedding rings. Anita stared at it. It embarrassed her although she couldn’t have said why.

  Martha opened her eyes. “Here I am,” she said, as if she’d been away somewhere. And maybe she had. She turned her head toward the table, searching something out. Guessing, Anita reached for the water glass with the flexible straw and held it for Martha to drink.

  “Do you want me to get you anything? Should I go get Pat?”

  Martha shook her head. “It comes and goes.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Such a nuisance.” Martha’s voice was fainter but more like her own. “You break down like an old car.”

  “Are you scared?” Anita was shy about asking. Maybe it was morbid, or rude.

  “Was for a while. Then I got tired of it. You get tired of most things.”

  Anita felt the tears starting up behind her eyes. “I was afraid to come see you.”

  “Well who wouldn’t be?”

  That made Anita laugh, or try to, and then she put her whole heart into her crying and sobbed out loud.

  Martha touched her hair. “So pretty.”

  “No I’m not. Not anymore. I’m an old sow.”

  “You are no such thing.”

  Anita took one of the Kleenex from the box and blew her nose. “Look at me carrying on. You’re the one who’s sick.”

  “He’s a fine little boy.”

  “How did you ever raise six children? I can’t imagine.”

  “We didn’t know any better.”

  Martha eased herself lower on the cushion. She was wearing a blue nightgown trimmed with a lace placket and embroidery. Anita suspected it was for company visits. Do you believe in heaven? In angels with wings? Do you think you’ll see Norm again, and the two of you will spend your time in some eternal version of Sunday church services? There were other questions Anita wanted to ask, but it was too late, and besides it might lead to a discussion of what she herself believed, which she preferred to keep vague. Anita would have said she believed in God, of course. Beyond that, she wasn’t sure. God was rather like the president, except that he was God and in charge of more things.

  Anita said, “Mom cooked all this food and all I brought was some pumpkin bread.”

  “I like pumpkin bread.”

  “I wish I was like you.”

  “Oh ho ho,” said Martha, as if this was a joke, although Anita hadn’t meant it as one. Was she fading out again? Anita hurried to get everything said.

  “I wish I knew what I was supposed to do. What I want to do. I mean, except for Matthew, taking care of Matthew. I don’t know. You always knew, didn’t you? Or maybe you didn’t have that much choice. Sometimes I feel like I ought to be more . . . happy,” she finished, but she didn’t mean happy, she meant something like “important,” which wasn’t quite right either.

  “Well land’s sakes.” Martha said things like that, Land’s sakes and I swan. They were a kind of substitute for swearing. She shook her head with some of her old energy. “You have to do something about that. You don’t want to wait until you’re some old lady laid out in bed and everything past deciding.”

  • • •

  When Martha fell asleep again, Anita went downstairs. The others must still have been outside, amusing Matthew with the cows. She walked through the kitchen to the mudroom, where Norm’s old boots and coveralls still resided, and looked out the back door. The path to the cow barn and the old chicken coop was edged with bricks turned with their long sides against each other to make a sawtooth pattern. She didn’t see her mother or Pat and she was too tired and wrung out to walk out to the barn after them.

  In the kitchen she found the tin of her mother’s chocolate chip cookies and ate four of them standing up, one right after the other.

  They were going to have to start back soon. She found her coat and carried the empty boxes and baskets out to the car. Although it was the middle of the afternoon, it had got colder, the clouds breaking up to let a bit of no-color, glaring sunlight through. A front pushing in from the northwest, a sign of an early winter. She got into the car and started the engine to warm it up. Air whistled through the vents and a steady current of heat blew across her knees. The station wagon took forever to get warm. Jeff needed a nice car for business, by which was meant, a banker couldn’t be seen driving just
any old heap. He’d probably explained ten different times today why he had the station wagon.

  Say this really was her car, and she could go anywhere she wanted. She didn’t get very far with the thought, because she would have to go without Matthew, and that would never happen, and say she didn’t take Jeff. Where would that leave her? It was a stupid thing to think about in the first place.

  Pat and her mother and Matthew came into view at the far end of the lane. They must have walked all the way to the pasture and then around. Anita started to honk the horn, but then she thought of Martha sleeping, and instead put the car in gear to go meet them. Matthew wanted to run toward her; Pat held him back, both women telling him careful, careful, the car is coming, he didn’t want to get hit by the car, did he?

  The driveway was bordered with a number of large, whitewashed rocks, another of Norm and Martha’s peculiar notions of ornament. She got a little speed up. Here comes Mommy Mommy Mommy! She gave the wheel the slightest touch, and the car leaped forward to smash into one of the rocks, a crunch sound that stopped everything dead, an impact that she felt in her shoulders and teeth.

  They all ran toward her. She shut the engine off and got out to see. “Oh my Lord, are you all right?” her mother cried.

  “Of course I am, silly. I was wearing my seat belt.” She walked around to the front of the car. There was a rock-shaped indentation in the wheel well, and the headlight drooped loose, connected only by its wires. “Boy,” she said. “Jeff is really going to have a fit, isn’t he.”

  Iowa

  NOVEMBER 1979

  Mr. Milano was a guidance counselor, not a real counselor. But he liked having these little chats. He thought something was wrong with everybody, and he was the only one smart enough to trip them up and show them just how screwed they were. “Victoria,” he said, “how’s it going?”

  “I’m great, Mr. Milano. How are you?”

  “Fine, thanks. Busy time of year, college applications and all.” Mr. Milano’s nickname was Super Pants, owing to a time when he had showed up at a football game wearing a pair of white trousers with the outline of his underpants clearly visible beneath.

  “I’m working on mine,” Torrie said. “I’m almost done with the essay part.”

  “And you plan on applying to . . .” He shuffled through her file for his notes.

  “Sarah Lawrence, Bryn Mawr, Vassar, University of Michigan, Northwestern, UCLA, and Berkeley.”

  “That’s a pretty ambitious list.”

  She nodded. “Aim high.”

  Mr. Milano smiled, sort of. You could feel sorry for him because he was kind of a dork and this was his first job and he’d come all the way from St. Louis and here he was stuck in Grenada. Talk about aiming high. All the pencils in his pencil holder had chew marks. You could feel sorry for him until he started in on you. “Not that you don’t have excellent grades. And all your athletics, and activities. But these are very selective schools. How about a backup, in case your first choices don’t work out?”

  “Like State? I don’t think so.”

  “What do your parents say?”

  Torrie shrugged. Her parents had no clue. “They just want me to be happy.”

  “Have you figured out the finances? Out of state tuition, private tuition, that’s a big item.”

  “Scholarships. Loans. Work-study. If I have to, I’ll stay home and get a job for a year and save money.” She had no such intention. She’d go to New York or Los Angeles and wait tables.

  Mr. Milano pondered this, looking for the hole in her arguments. Torrie occupied herself with examining his hair, which was another source of wonder and delight to everybody in the school. His hair was black and a little greasy, and even though he was probably only about twenty-three or -four, he wore a comb-over to hide his receding hairline. This in spite of the hair that crawled out of his shirt collar and along the backs of his hands and no doubt other, even less appetizing places. Total dork.

  Sometimes, without willing it, she imagined people naked, and the more she told herself not to do so, the more she couldn’t help it.

  He said, “I’m a little worried that you’re making it too hard on yourself. Expecting too much.”

  “You mean, girls aren’t supposed to be high achievers.”

  “That’s not what I said. And it’s certainly nothing I believe.” He looked annoyed. It was something you could always say to guys like this, who thought they were so enlightened and down with the struggle and understood and sympathized with all the oppressed peoples of the earth. “What I meant was, you need to be flexible enough and mature enough to know that not everything works out as you plan.”

  Once they started talking about maturity, it was your cue to get your butt out of there. “I am. I will. I promise I’ll think about some of the less selective schools. Could I be excused now? My great-aunt died and the wake’s tonight and I have to get home.”

  He looked startled and a little guilty, as she had meant him to be. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “It’s OK. She was really old, and really sick. And now she’s with Jesus.”

  He might have suspected her of putting him on, of mockery, but Torrie kept her face and voice absolutely serious, and even the new teachers knew better than to make fun of anything to do with Jesus around here. He told her she could go, and she gathered her books and turned toward the door.

  “You sure you’re not working too hard, studying too hard? You look like you’re dropping some weight.”

  “Basketball season. Coach always runs us ragged. Have a great weekend, Mr. Milano.”

  Dorkydorkydorkydorky.

  Michelle was waiting for her at her locker. “Where you been?”

  “I had to go talk to Super Pants.” Torrie banged her locker open, reshuffled her books, and reached for her jacket. “Do you think he dates?”

  “Oh yeah. Big dating action for the Pants.”

  “Maybe we could fix him up.”

  “With a nice hairy orangutan.”

  “Boy or girl orangutan?”

  They laughed and the sound of it echoed through the long empty corridor, dark at the end of a rainy afternoon.

  Outside they sprinted through the drilling rain to Torrie’s car and flung themselves inside. Torrie found a towel in the backseat and they used it to mop their faces and their streaming hair.

  “Sucky weather.”

  “Perfect for funerals.”

  “Oh hey, Tor? Is it OK if I just come to the wake? Joey’s only going to be in town the one night.”

  “God, yes. The service is all the way up in Hardy. I don’t think anybody’s gonna come.” Torrie meant, anyone from school. There would be about three busloads of family.

  She dropped Michelle off at her house and went on home. Anita’s car was in the drive. This day was just getting better and better.

  “Hi Mom. Hi Nita. Hi Marmaduke.”

  “No-o!” Her nephew rushed at her, pounding at her knees.

  “Percival? Barnaby? Chuck?”

  He kept insisting that his name was Matthew, Matthew, and Torrie swept him up and said Well what do you know, it was Matthew, she just hadn’t recognized him. Anita and her mother looked at her, unsmiling. “What?”

  “We were talking about Martha,” her mother said. She made it sound like everything was Torrie’s fault.

  “Oh. Sure.”

  Anita looked her over. “You’re changing clothes, right?”

  “Matthew! Can I wear your shirt?”

  “No!”

  “How about your pants?”

  Howls of protest and giggles. “Guess I’ll just have to wear my old jeans, then.”

  “Torrie,” her mother said wearily.

  Lighten up. Torrie looked in the refrigerator and selected a Diet Sprite. “When’s Ryan coming?”

  “Whenever he gets here. Are you hungry, sweetie? I’m making chili and everybody can serve themselves.”

  “I had an egg-salad sandwich a little w
hile back, so I’m OK.” Anita was really getting porky. Her slacks were so tight across her thighs that the zipper pulled and gapped. She’d skinned her hair back in a French-twisty arrangement that made her look about forty years old. Her boobs were huge. They bounced and flopped around in a totally gross fashion. Sometimes just thinking about bodies, other people’s bodies, was enough to make her sick to her stomach.

  Anita saw her staring. “What?”

  “Just admiring your hair.”

  “Thank you.” Still suspicious. Anita told Matthew that no, he couldn’t play with Aunt Torrie, he had to get changed into his good clothes. Poor kid. He was always having to do something Anita thought was important.

  In her room, Torrie unpacked her books and put each one in its spot on the desk on its own different-colored folder. She took off her wet clothes and put on sweats. Blood on the Tracks was already on the turntable and she switched it on, volume low so nobody in the kitchen would give her a hard time for being disrespectful. Not that Torrie saw it that way. She hoped they’d play Bob songs at her funeral.

  She sang along just under her breath. Bob was so much better than the lame shit passing for music these days. The Bee Gees. Please. She’d missed out on so much, been too young for all the beautiful craziness and being a part of things that really mattered and anyway in Iowa it was as if none of it had ever happened.

  She knew it was stupid, but she had a little fantasy about meeting Bob. Back in the old days, before he got all weird and Christian.

  She walked up to me so gracefully and took my crown of thorns / “Come in,” she said, “I’ll give you shelter from the storm.” Sometimes she pretended the songs were about her. It would be raining hard, just as now, and she’d have her own house, not here but somewhere else, the rooms full of velvet pillows and candles. She’d hear a knock at the door and there would be Bob. From here you couldn’t force the fantasy to go any further, because it was never clear just what the girls in the songs did that made them so desirable. You weren’t supposed to talk much, that seemed clear. You were just this soulful, totally cool being, instantly recognizable to other soulful and cool beings.