What the Family Needed

by Steven Amsterdam

  She paused and pressed her fingers high against her temples. It was starting to hurt.

  Alek interfered. He took the heels of his hands and banged them once into the sides of her head. She might have collapsed right there and his would have been the last touch she would have known. The cotton ball fell from her hand into the sink as her hands went back to her temples. The surprise subsided and turned to worry. She inspected her face in the mirror, pulling at her mouth, staring at her pupils. Massaging her neck didn’t make the concern go away. This was the effect Alek had wanted. The pain was a mere pearl at that moment, but she went downstairs and reported the jolt. His father insisted they go directly to the hospital.

  “If we get it checked out and it’s nothing, that will be a happy enough evening,” his father told her as they reversed out of the driveway. She rested her hand on top of his. Both sides of her were still good. She said she loved him for giving up his birthday dinner to spend it being ignored in an emergency room.

  Alek stood on the steps as they drove off. What had he done to their history? Sasha’s letter was to report she had died, not to ask for help. The consequences shot in all directions like a Roman candle. If the trip to the emergency room went well, Sasha would get his mother, Ruth would get her sister, and Giordana, her aunt. His father’s suffering would be erased. All that his father had gained from Alek’s gift would be deleted too. Plus, there was the knock-on effect that altered everyone around them. Who else was on their way to the hospital that day? Who would lose out because of this woman and her stroke?

  That half hour, watching his mother walk from room to room until they drove off—that was the midpoint of his journey. That’s when he began to return.

  A maroon sedan pulled up in front of the boy and girl on the next bench. An arm ushered the kids into the backseat as they dragged their bags across the curb. Alek could no longer tell where they had been or where they might be going.

  His parents were standing and waiting for him. Had he paused too long? He didn’t want questions of his mental fitness puncturing the day. In five steps he was next to them. His mother crushed herself against him.

  “It’s been such a long time.” Her errant, erratic son.

  “I know.” His once deceased mother.

  “Wonderful, wonderful,” said his father, wrapping himself around the two of them.

  Alek was home. That meant the sleepy confidence of his father’s flannel shirt and his mother’s damp, urgent embrace. It meant their happiness to hold him and the doubt that the calm would last.

  Alek looked down and noticed a tear on the pocket of his mother’s shirt. Home also meant the place where he saw what needed to be done. He remembered standing on a chair in the kitchen one morning before school while she sewed up the pocket of his shirt. To keep him still, she told him a story about an elephant’s trunk that had become a thread and wanted to grab his nose. By hooking it through his shirt, she was trapping it there and saving his nose. She had probably stitched miles of patches.

  What could be the harm in a little mending? He knew the answer. If he wasn’t careful with even a small fix like that, there could be a flood of other facts that would alter the landscape. Everyone else would happily inhabit the new world. Only Alek would be stuck in the one that came before. Too often he would slip up and refer to another scene that they knew had never happened. Who wouldn’t want to medicate that?

  They eased their hold on him as he forced himself to forget the unfairness of the tear on her pocket.

  His father tested the weight of Alek’s pack. “Is this all you brought?”

  “It’s all I own.”

  “Ah,” his mother said. “Yes. ‘Travel lightly.’”

  She glanced at a picnic table on a square of lawn. A couple was setting up for lunch. On the grass next to them, an infant slept in a bundle of blankets.

  Alek’s mother sighed and said, “We’re very glad you’re here.”

  His father said, “Wonderful,” again, as if no one had heard the first time.

  The car radio was permanently set to public radio. An upbeat version of “Danny Boy” came on, with some woman singing slowly, full of bravery for whoever it was going off to fight, like war was a good thing. Alek asked his father to turn it up.

  “Can you still sing?” his mother asked him.

  “Don’t be silly. Naturally he can still sing,” his father said.

  “I still sing.”

  “Will you do us the honor?” she asked.

  Alek obliged, slowing down to the tempo the song deserved.

  But come ye back, when summer’s in the meadow

  Or when the valley’s hushed and white with snow

  ’Tis I’ll be there, in sunshine or in shadow—

  His mother sobbed once, loudly.

  Alek listened.

  She thought it was too late for him, coming back now. Some stupid accident in his brain, the damage that Peter and she had done, the drugs he had taken, the drugs they had forced on him, and the equally poisonous culture that they lived in. All of them were stuck in this violent mess that wasn’t worth its pretensions of civilization.

  He stopped listening.

  “Go on, go on,” she said to Alek, not even pretending to control herself and grabbing her bag for a tissue. “We haven’t heard your voice in too many years.”

  Alek did, but it wasn’t the same. “And when ye come and all the flowers—” and gave up, fading out to the sound of her gulping air. He reached forward to put a hand on her shoulder. She shook her head for him to take it away.

  His father turned off the radio. This was the right sound track for the drive. They drove on like that, passing the university and the park where he and Vicenta used to make out. His mother wiped her face and slowed herself down with a few big breaths.

  “It’s nothing. I needed to do that. I’m all right now.”

  They pulled up the driveway. A crow hopped across the lawn toward them.

  “Does the house look the same?” his father asked.

  It looked neglected.

  Alek said, “The same as it was, older than it was. Like each of us, I guess. Don’t you ever walk into a room and get the feeling that you’re old and young at the exact same time?”

  “Hmm.”

  In the rearview mirror, he saw his father’s disappointment. Their boy was still odd.

  “Dad, really? Not even when you get on a bicycle? You throw your leg over the bar, and even if you’ve done it a thousand times, every now and then you wonder if your leg will reach, if you’re tall enough yet to ride.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you mean.” His father leaned forward, tightening and releasing his grip on the steering wheel. “Alek, I know you’re probably in a hurry to see everyone. They all wanted to come to the bus station. Two cars’ worth of family, but I said no. It’s too much.”

  “Why? This is what I came back for. The whole pig pile.”

  “We don’t want to wear you out on your first day here,” his father said.

  “You shouldn’t call it a pig pile,” his mother piped up, recovered enough to reprimand. “It’s love. It’s concern.”

  “Enough concern,” Alek said.

  “You’re used to more solitude, is what she means,” Peter added. “Your nomadic ways must have agreed with you or you wouldn’t have stayed away so long. We don’t want to jeopardize what you’ve accomplished.”

  “I haven’t been living in a monastery. I’m not sick. I’m not recovering. I’m visiting—that’s all.” He tried to keep his voice level. The crow flew off, which felt like a judgment.

  “Right, good,” his father said. “The others are at Ruth’s. We can call them immediately or call them later. Whatever you wish.”

  “Whatever I wish,” he repeated. It was like they had never stopped fighting. He hadn’t made any mistakes, but all they knew was that he was still not all right.

  His mother pulled her left hand onto her lap and dropped her head b
ack against the seat.

  His father said, “Why don’t we go inside and not let feelings run away with us?”

  The house needed work, the kind of tasks his father was too old to start and too cheap to pay anyone to do. During the weeks after his mother’s death, all of them had been put right. In exchange for these few more years together, though, the house had lapsed back.

  The droop in the roof, the screen on the veranda, and the broken gutter—Alek couldn’t help himself—he fixed them. These were small favors, he rationalized. He was specific. Each change was discrete, unconnected to any person or action. There were to be no potential consequences of them living in a spruced-up home. The upgrade wouldn’t alter anybody.

  “The house looks good, Dad,” he said.

  “We do what we can.” His father kept his eyes on the path in front of his feet. The front garden was in a similar state of lovelessness. Again, keeping his parameters clear, Alek weeded, mowed, and put in dahlias.

  His parents took their time with the five steps up to the front door. This was a project in itself.

  “Are you all right?” he asked his mother as she used her right arm and right leg to balance her climb.

  “You didn’t see me just after. The physical therapist says my range of movement is superb. I need to reschedule her. Don’t let me forget.” Out of breath, she leaned heavily against the handrail to conquer the last step. “You missed it. We slept in the living room for the first year. But I persevered. I can go upstairs on my own again now. A regular Olympian.”

  Alek’s first memory was of the kitchen. Aunt Ruth was washing him in the sink. There was a baby-blue counter, tiling all around and bright orange measuring cups floating next to him. Ruth scooped the water up with one of the cups and sprinkled it on his shoulders. He had never known a more ecstatic pleasure. With infant logic, he wanted her to feel what he was feeling. Reaching for the cup’s handle so he could pour water onto her, he fell forward. All babies slip, no big deal. His face didn’t even dunk. But the house spoke to him: You are not ready.

  He came up in tears, red and choking, the sort of screams that terrify an adult. Ruth grabbed him away from a monster she couldn’t see. She had him out of the water and close against her shoulder in an instant.

  This was the current that ran through the walls from then on: You are not ready. You are learning to walk—not ready. You are going to school—not ready. You have important skills to master—not ready.

  For the first few years, Alek listened and held himself back. He did as he was told, he played quietly, and he didn’t speak until spoken to. Although he heard his parents discuss ways to improve his confidence, they agreed that fate had delivered them a very well behaved little boy.

  Until one specific Saturday. Alek and Sasha were watching cartoons. There was a house on TV that kept turning lights and appliances on and off, whenever it felt like it, driving the family nuts.

  Alek asked his brother, “Does our house ever say things to you? Does it ever bother you?”

  Without taking his eyes from the screen, Sasha said, “No, the house doesn’t pick on me at all. But the garage told me it hates your guts.”

  At dinner that night, Sasha ratted him out to their parents because he thought the question was funny. Their parents didn’t laugh. Alek ran upstairs and they followed. Under the blanket on his bottom bunk was as far as he could get from them in those days. His father hovered over him, pulling the sheet away from his face to ask if what Sasha had reported was true.

  “Yes.”

  His father straightened up tall and assured him, “Well, the house doesn’t talk. To you or anyone. That’s that. Understood?”

  Alek nodded.

  “He’s a big boy. He’ll right himself,” Alek’s father said as he left.

  “Can I stay a bit longer?” Alek’s mother asked him.

  Lingering usually meant that she wanted to soften whatever his father had done, so he let her close the door and come sit next to him on his bed.

  “Do you hear the house?” he asked, hoping for a yes.

  She put on her teacher voice. “For an imaginative boy like yourself it can be hard to tell the difference between real and make-believe—”

  “Go away.”

  “—when we hear stories—especially ones that make us happy or make us scared, or make us feel any of our feelings—it’s easy to get caught up. Sometimes they’re about remarkable events and they make the everyday world make more sense. They can even tempt us to spend more time away from our own—”

  “Please. Leave! I’m asking!”

  “I’m going.” She stood up and left.

  The bedroom door slammed after her, like in the cartoon house on TV. The house must have heard him tell the others of its existence. It wanted him to know how mighty it could be. Alek cried into his bed, like he had into his aunt’s arms, but sucking back tears to stay as quiet as he could. He didn’t want the house to think it had beaten him. All evening he curled up in a corner of the bed, trying to still his breath, mastering it so well that the covers didn’t even move.

  Downstairs, Sasha fell asleep over a jigsaw puzzle and their father carried him up to bed. Alek pretended to be sleeping but he opened his eyes in time to see Sasha’s legs floating up to the top bunk.

  Their father gave Sasha a kiss and said, “Good night, little man upstairs.” For a thousand bedtimes before, whether they were asleep or not, this was followed with a kiss to Alek’s forehead and “Good night, little man downstairs.” That night he skipped Alek. He wasn’t willing to take the risk of waking this peculiar little boy. That was the first bubble of special treatment. Later, its diameter would expand exponentially, insulating him from them and them from him, but that night it was already the size of the solar system.

  His father left the door ajar, as usual, to let light in from the hall.

  Alek looked angrily at his father’s shadow in the hall. I don’t need your stupid bathroom light.

  The door closed.

  Alek shook. I want the light back, he thought, and the door swung to its previous angle.

  He was the one doing this.

  From then on, the house and its inhabitants weren’t so scary. He started with the doors and windows and went on from there. The walls that had been his enemies became his friends.

  Alek wanted to know more about this thing that had scared him. He tailed his father, demanded the meaning of every word and every thing he could think of. He competed with Sasha whenever he could, at first fixing every game so he would win, then only fixing every other game so Sasha would continue to play. Alek practiced and perfected. He learned moderation about his skills and caution against unimagined consequences. Invisible, he hung around in the kitchen while his mother talked on the phone to Ruth, discussing the secrets of their family and the many ways that Alek was blossoming.

  He heard himself called enchanted, imaginative, sensitive, extravagant, wild, willful, distracted, distant, absent, troubled, delusional, psychotic. The way Alek saw it, he was coming into his own.

  It was Vicenta, his first love, who helped him to understand how he got this way. The two of them were on her mother’s bed smoking her mother’s dope. A week of autumn rain had led them to discover the stash.

  “Where do you go off to when you ditch school?” she asked.

  He had learned to travel by then. He went everywhere, but he was always home by dinnertime. “I don’t know.”

  She bonked him with a pillow.

  “Fine. It’s your personal life. At least tell me why you gave up swimming? You used to love it.”

  He was in the mood to confess. He usually kept this kind of thought to himself, but they were lying side by side, high, and she was playing with his earlobe. “The water fights me,” he said.

  Vicenta had to sit up so she could laugh properly. She braced herself on his hip, rocking the bed with closed-eyes hysterics.

  “You fight the water,” she said when she stopped cracking up. “T
he water doesn’t fight you. That’s how you learn to swim: you stop fighting. And, to be crystal clear, that’s a metaphor. Do you know what a metaphor is? I don’t want to see you throwing any punches in the shower.”

  “But I don’t have gills, I don’t belong there. The water doesn’t want me there.”

  “You, my friend, must be a brand-new soul,” she said, tapping a finger on his forehead. “In your cosmos, every little flower has a goddamn feeling.”

  “Not every flower.”

  “Okay, but if you have trouble with something, it’s because that something’s against you. Am I right?”

  “I’m not paranoid.”

  “Nobody said you were. But you give inanimate objects emotions. Can we admit to that?”

  “Water isn’t inanimate,” he said.

  “It’s water. It doesn’t care about you, it doesn’t care about itself. It spends its days trying to find its own level, that’s it.”

  “Then shouldn’t I stay out of its way?”

  “When I said ‘trying,’ I didn’t mean that the water wants anything.” She covered her eyes with a hand, laughing more. “Talking to you sometimes, mister. It’s like you just got here.”

  Finally, something made sense: he was new.

  The idea comforted him and he drummed the mattress with pleasure. His enthusiasm amused Vicenta and she scratched his head. He licked her hand and she gave up, scratching his stomach like he was a dog. He burrowed around her hips in a squirmy celebration. She had explained his universe with one little thought.

  He wanted to reward her. It had worked with Giordana and he was sure he could do it again. With a few breaths, he spread himself into an X across the quilt, nearly pushing her off the bed. He concentrated. She should have a constant flow of clear thinking. A scientific mind that would allow her to discover whatever she wanted. With her wisdom nearby, she would always tell him what was really up.

  When he opened his eyes she looked exactly the same as always, face open and doubting, watching him for signs of presence.