Home: Part 9

What follows is a work of fiction. Nothing here is either true or relevant. Read at your own risk. Do not expect anything, and that's exactly what you'll get. Oh: This could go on for awhile.

November 1976

Thanksgiving. Cindy and her husband Ron traditionally opened their home to whoever wanted to eat and drink well. They lived in what amounted to a large cabin in central Oregon, five acres of hills and pine trees. Cindy was a high school principal in a district where most of the students were rich and white. She said she dealt with the same problems any principal did in any district, but that the drugs the kids used were of better quality. “These parents,” she said, “they think because their kids are star athletes and scholars, they don’t do drugs. Pot is legal in the state, but these kids want something better and stronger. And these kids? They think I’m just as ignorant because I’m old. I want to tell them that I’ve got some experience in these matters.”
 
Cindy had more than academic experience in the area. As a teenager, she’d run with any wrong crowd she could find, and several times I’d heard my father leave the house in the middle of the night muttering that would be the last time he would help her get home. The day she left for college, my parents hugged her at the airport, and on the drive home my mother was crying not because Cindy was leaving, but because none of us was sure that we would see her again. When she came home for the summer, though, my sister told us that she had found God and had left her previous self behind. My parents were joyful, but I was skeptical. My parents had learned to see what they wanted to see, but I was still too young for that.
 
Ron was a chiropractor, and he had done well. I’ve always thought that, like a preacher, a chiropractor is little more than a shaman that does nothing but plant mythological seeds of healing and hope. But, I could not argue with his obvious income and success, and he and I got along quite well. Ron was also a deacon in his church. “You still resisting coming into the fold?” he asked as he and I wandered around the acreage surrounding his house.
“I think I’m beyond saving, Ron,” I said.
“Nobody’s beyond saving,” he said.
“Maybe I’ve been saved in my own way, then.”
He laughed. “Cindy tell you to talk like that?"
Cindy hadn’t, of course, but I knew she’d drifted from the fold herself. “It just gets…tedious,” she’d told me a few years earlier when we’d met in San Francisco while Ron was there for a convention. “I mean, I’ve gotten the message. I don’t need to hear it every week. If God and Jesus don’t love me by now, they never will.”
We were sitting at the table. Ron was praying. I’d bowed my head slightly, but my eyes were still open. I watched as Cindy yawned. Tom and Michelle, a married couple that taught at Cindy’s school, sat across from me. My parents sat on each side of me, and the way my father was breathing, I thought he might have fallen asleep. Brian, Cindy and Ron’s son, sat next to his mother. Their daughter Wendy was with the Peace Corp in Guatemala; everyone had taken turns talking long-distance with her earlier and she seemed slightly homesick. “No turkey here,” she’d said.
After dinner, Brian was off to visit his girlfriend. Tom and Michelle stayed long enough to clean up, and then they had to drive to Portland to catch a flight to Amsterdam. “You travel?” Tom asked me as they said their goodbyes.
“Sometimes,” I said.
Cindy spoke up. “Don’t believe that, Tom. He’s never home. Half of the time I don’t even know where he is.”
Later, I sat alone with my parents while Cindy and Ron finished putting the food away. Neither one of them was especially energetic, full of food and old age. They lived in a retirement home not far away. Generally content, they seldom complained. “You should visit more,” my mother finally said. My father had finally dozed off. “We like to see you.”
“I will,” I said. “I like seeing everyone.”
“Your nephew and niece barely know you,” she said.
“They know enough,” I said.
“They needed a cousin. They’ve got nearly no family beyond what you see here.”
“Mom,” I said. “Not today.”
She looked at me, her lips pressed tightly together. She nodded, and we sat there, breathing.

Home: Part 8

What follows is a work of fiction. Nothing here is either true or relevant. Read at your own risk. Do not expect anything, and that's exactly what you'll get. Oh: This could go on for awhile.

January 1982

 
Kathy and I were married on her birthday. She was svelte and muscular at the same time, and the top of her head reached to my chin. Embracing, we fit well together. We told nobody about the civic ceremony, thinking that the secret—“a little, dirty thing,” Kathy called it at the time—was something we’d always share for the rest of our lives. A year later, after they thought they’d gotten to know me and after Kathy had said I’d asked her to marry me, her parents suggested that a formal church wedding was appropriate. We never told anyone the truth.

Our first house was small, just two bedrooms and single bathroom. The kitchen and dining room were one room, really, and what functioned as a living room was barely large enough for a sofa, a chair, and a television set. We learned to live with few possessions, and if Kathy was every unhappy with our life at that point, she had learned how to keep that a secret, too.

Home: Part 7

What follows is a work of fiction. Nothing here is either true or relevant. Read at your own risk. Do not expect anything, and that's exactly what you'll get. Oh: This could go on for awhile.

January 1958 

Our house was small, usually dark. My mother often suffered from headaches, and she said the light hurt her eyes so much that she could barely see. In the summer, she often wore sunglasses even while inside. During winter’s short days, the house could be dismal. When my mother was gone, my father would dash around the house and open the drapes as though he thought the light he let in would be stored in the house. He kept only the drapes on the front window open so that my mother would think the house was as she’d left it. Cindy, my sister, was usually our lookout, sitting on the sofa at the front window and yelling “she’s home!” when our mother returned. Then, we would close the drapes.  If Mom was home, we’d either go outside or stay in our rooms where the drapes could always be open.

“She has to know,” Cindy once said when both of our parents were gone one day. We seldom bothered with my father’s ritual if he was not home. “She isn’t stupid.”

“Dad told me they don’t have secrets,” I said. Cindy was older by four years, and perhaps she had better insight into my parents’ relationship.

“Everyone has secrets,” Cindy said. “Even Mom and Dad.”

As I got older I would learn that she was correct, but right then I felt only disillusionment when I saw that my parents and their relationship were not perfect. I don’t know why I suddenly believed Cindy and not my father at that point, but I did.

Home: Part 6

What follows is a work of fiction. Nothing here is either true or relevant. Read at your own risk. Do not expect anything, and that's exactly what you'll get. Oh: This could go on for awhile.

July 1974

 
The airport was hot, crowded. I wanted to sleep. I'd left the hotel room early and felt like I'd been awake for two days. Sometimes the heat and humidity do that to me. Narcie hadn't wanted me to go so early, and I almost hadn't. When she'd first seen my leg, she didn't bat an eye. She'd wanted to know if I'd lost it in a war, or something, and she just smiled when I told her the truth. That's one thing about prostitutes: they accept everyone. There's an honesty about them. Some people--maybe a lot of people--believe that they are loving and accepting of others, but they love and accept only those who are like themselves. My father told me once that we're all hypocrites at some level; he might've been right. But no matter how accepting Narcie was, I still found it easy to leave her behind. I was sad about that, but sadness had never stopped me from leaving someone.

The flight wasn't crowded, and the seats around me were empty. Manila stretched out below as the plane bumped a bit during takeoff. Soon enough we were over the ocean, and when I could I reclined my seat and shut my eyes. I was glad to be heading home.

Home: Part 5

What follows is a work of fiction. Nothing here is either true or relevant. Read at your own risk. Do not expect anything, and that's exactly what you'll get. Oh: This could go on for awhile.

July 1974

There was rain. Outside the hotel, I watched Narcie hurry through the afternoon crowd, her shoulders hunched toward her ears. My luggage, a single leather Samsonite suitcase, rested against my leg as I stood beneath the hotel's awning and waited for my driver. I did what I could to stay dry, but the rain was warm and would stop soon enough.

"You will be back?" Narcie had asked as we left the room and started down the hotel's narrow staircase.

I did not want to lie to her, but I did. "In a month," I said. The lie, really, was not about my return, but about seeking her out if I did. I gave her most of the Pesos I had left. She hugged me before we stepped outside, and then she was gone.

A car stopped at the curb in front of me. "The airport?" the driver called through the open window. He helped me with the Samsonite, and then we were an anonymous part of the traffic. I was glad to be going home. In her previous letter, my mother had written that my father had been ill--nothing specific other than "not feeling especially well these days." I did not know if the affliction was mental or physical, for my father had spent much of his life depressed, and that depression often seemed to manifest itself in physical ailments. I was also somewhat weary of traveling. Though I'd been in the Philippines for nearly a month, I had been away from home for the better part of a year.

"Checkpoint," the driver said, and he pointed ahead where several Filipino soldiers stood beside a truck. "You legal?"

"I am," I said. I had my passport ready in case the soldiers asked to see it. But I also knew that the driver was making sure I had no drugs on me. The driver stopped the car.

While two soldiers leaned against the truck, their weapons resting against their hips, a third looked through the driver's window, looked me up and down, then grunted and waved us through. I knew that if my hair had been longer, I might have been questioned about where I was going, and why. I couldn't change my skin color to a shade of brown, but I could keep my hair short enough to appear like one of the sailors simply headed out of town.

"Easy one, today," the driver said as we continued on.

"Very easy."

"The rest of the ride, no problem."

I was glad. I wanted simply to get home.