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What follows is a work of fiction. Nothing here is either true or
relevant. Read at your own risk. Expect nothing, and that's
exactly what you'll get. Oh: This could go on for a while.
April 1958
I don't know if Cindy changed much the night after I saved her life, but a couple of Sundays afterward she insisted that my parents take her to church. "You don't have to stay with me," she said. "Drop me off and I'll call you when it's over."
"Why?" my father said, and then he seemed to think about something. "Which church?"
Cindy answered quickly. "It doesn't matter. I just want to go to church." She looked at me as though she knew I wanted to add something to the conversation, but she bent her head in a way that I thought better of it.
"Church," my father said as though the word were foreign to him.
So for several months Cindy attended church each Sunday morning, never asking any of us to join her. She went to bible study on Wednesday evenings, and hosted sleepovers during which she and her new friends discussed all things religious. Before going to sleep they would take turns praying aloud, raising their hands toward the ceiling and asking for god's blessings on themselves and their families.
"There's bible study for boys, too," Cindy said to me one Wednesday afternoon before one of her friend's parents picked her up. "You could go with me, and I'll introduce you to everyone."
"He's a little young," my mother said as she brushed Cindy's hair.
Cindy pulled her head away from the brush. "How can anyone be too young for god, Mom?"
"God's a big concept," our mother said. "Give him a few years."
"We might not have a few years," Cindy said. "If the Russian's bomb us, we want to be ready."
"Who has been feeding you that? Let me finish your hair."
"We talked about it last week, Mom. First god created the Russians, then he gave them atomic bombs."
My mother set the brush down and put her hands on her hips. "I don't remember learning that in Sunday school."
"God's always changing, Mom."
I am, if nothing else, a slow writer these days. Sorry. Perhaps I've been too absorbed by the devolution of the American political process to pay much attention to other, more creative things. But that's a different story....
For Home, my own process is somewhat scattered, even haphazard. Hence, the number of typos one might find in any given section. For the most part, what is written stays at it is until I copy things to a Microsoft Word document and make some tweaks there. So far, I've written just over 10,000 words, and I'm shooting for about 50-60,000. Other books I've written are above 90,000, but I'm deliberately keeping Home somewhat short for a novel (which is what it will be). That said, at some point there has to be a significance to everything, something to make a potential reader care. Crappy writing is crappy writing, but a good plot makes things less crappy.
Right now, I think most of the major characters have been introduced, though if you've ever written a novel you know that characters appear--and disappear--without any planning or prompting. They're born when they are ready to be born, and they die when they're ready for that. Predetermination, I guess. And, yes, I realize that, thus far, there is no identifiable story line, no plot. This is, believe it or not, mostly predetermination on my own part, as it were, and when I am finished with the thing, I'll write about what I tried to do.
That's it.
What follows is a work of fiction. Nothing here is either true or
relevant. Read at your own risk. Expect nothing, and that's
exactly what you'll get. Oh: This could go on for a while.
April 1958
The first time my sister died, we were at home by ourselves. Our parents had gone to the neighbors' to "lighten things up a bit," and Cindy and I were left to the small black-and-white television and two cans of tomato soup my father had picked up at the A&P on his way home from work. The neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson to me and Cindy, had just returned from a vacation to Florida and had stories to share. Mrs. Johnson, like my mother, stayed home all day while her husband sold real estate. They had no children, and I often wondered what Mrs. Johnson did all day in such an empty house. Sometimes I would see her sitting on their back porch. She would sit and smoke, staring into the two maple trees my father had helped them plant years before. She would smile if she saw me. She would raise her cigarette in a type of salute before turning her face away.
"We won't be late," my mother said as she and my father walked out the front door. I noticed that she had put her pearl necklace on.
"Behave," my father said.
"I'll make the soup," Cindy said when they were gone. "And some toast. I'm going to eat in my room. You can watch TV."
"I'm not hungry," I said.
"Yes, you are. You just don't know it." She walked into the kitchen while I lay on the carpet beside Tiger and scratched his ears. I removed my leg and tossed it onto the frayed sofa.
"What do they do over there?" I said.
"Parcheesi, or something," Cindy said from the kitchen. "Sometimes they play cards. And they probably drink. I'm making you two pieces of toast. I'm having peanut butter on mine."
"I'm not going to eat," I said.
"Yes, you are."
I was still lying beside Tiger when Cindy carried a bowl of soup and the two pieces of toast into where I was in the living room. She set them on the end table beside the sofa. "I said that I'm not hungry."
"There's your food," she said. "Don't let Tiger get it." She went back to the kitchen and got her own bowl and toast. "I'm going to my room." The smell of peanut butter lingered when she was gone.
I crawled to the sofa, then sat on the cushion nearest the food. Tiger watched, his head tilted as he watched me eat. Cindy's room was down the hall, closest to the bathroom. As I chewed my toast I heard something fall and break. Waiting for something else, I heard nothing more. "Stay," I said to Tiger. I put on my leg and walked toward Cindy's room. I put my ear to her door but could hear nothing. "What was that," I said. "Cindy?"
She was lying half on, half off her canopy bed as though she were in mid-prayer. The soup bowl had shattered when it hit the floor, and tomato soup was soaking into the rug. The window was open, and I could hear cars as they passed in front of our house. "Hey," I said, but she didn't move. I got closer and looked down at her, at her blue face. I pulled her shoulder, and she slid off the bed so that she was lying on her back with her face toward me. My first thought was to call the Johnsons' house and to talk to my parents. Instead, I reached beneath Cindy's armpits and pulled her upright. I patted her back--softly at first, then hard. Her mouth sagged open, and I stuck my finger deep inside. Whatever was there was thick and soggy. I curled my index finger around it and pulled, removing a large, sticky piece of toast coated with peanut butter. I slapped her back again, and she seemed to belch and cough at the same time. Her eyelids fluttered. When I set her down and leaned her against the bed, she stared up at me as though trying to figure out who I was.
I looked down at her. "I was happy," she said flatly.
I left her room but did not shut the door. I returned to the sofa and found that Tiger had eaten my dinner. I wondered if I should call my parents anyway, let them know what had happened. But I just sat there and listened to Cindy as she rustled about. When she walked into the kitchen and dropped the pieces of soup bowl into the garbage can, she seemed to be fine. On her way back to her bedroom, she stopped a few paces away from me and seemed to take in her surroundings. Finally, she looked at me. "You finish your dinner?"
"Yes," I said.
"Okay." She considered her hands, then lifted her eyes to me again. "There's so much to see," she said, and then she went into her bedroom and shut the door.
What follows is a work of fiction. Nothing here is either true or
relevant. Read at your own risk. Expect nothing, and that's
exactly what you'll get. Oh: This could go on for a while.
February 1958
The piano in our basement had been shoved into a corner as an afterthought. In many of our neighbors' homes, the basements had been finished; they served as game rooms or dens or extra bedrooms. The wall studs and concrete foundation in our basement were visible, more warehouse than living space.
I have no memory of the piano's actual appearance--it was simply always there. Only my mother played, and then infrequently. My bedroom was above the piano's corner, and I would lie on my bed and listen to my mother play, listen to the soft curses as she repeated passages over and over. I often wondered if she practiced when she was alone, when my sister and I were at school.
"I like that one," I said once as I sat on the concrete floor and watched her play.
"Beethoven," she said. "'Fur Elise.' Everyone has to play it at some point. Most of it is easy." When she played, she tilted her head to the right just so, and she would sometimes shut her eyes. Her back was straight. She seemed happy sitting there, working her hands across the keyboard, her feet on the pedals.
"When did you learn to play?" I asked.
"My grandmother had a piano," she said. "You never knew her. She taught me the notes when I was a little girl. She was patient with me. I couldn't use two hands for a long time. 'Don't think about your hands,' she would say. 'Think about the music. Your hands will follow the music.'" She looked at her hands. "I was never very good, but my grandmother also told me that I didn't have to be. She'd say, 'Just play. When your grandfather is angry with me, or when I am lonely, I always have the piano and the music. They are never angry.'"
"It looks hard," I said.
"It is, sometimes. And then it gets easier. See, watch." She started with her right hand, slowly. "'Fur Elise'--everyone knows it." She played the opening notes over and over as though she were learning it again. "Then, the left hand."
The concrete floor was cold and hard, but I sat there and watched how she played, and I wondered if she was lonely, too.
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