Home: Part 36

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 1976

 
A month to the day after our first lunch together, Shannon and I moved into a small house her father had inherited a decade before and that had stood empty for nearly as long. Her father, Howard, was the epitome of a gruff former Marine. He'd fought in both Korea and Vietnam, but now he was a plumber, just as his father had been. His mother had willed him the house, and the first thing he'd done was remove every bit of pipe, every faucet, toilet, sink, and bathtub. "He didn't really need to," Shannon said to me once. "He just likes keeping busy."

We didn't tell Howard or Marilynn, Shannon's mother, that we were living together for several months. "Daddy might have a problem with it," Shannon said one afternoon as we were arranging books in the room we'd designated as a den. Shannon was working on her teaching certificate at the time, and she had a desk set up with papers, pencils, and a beige IBM Selectric typewriter.

"Dads usually do," I said.

"Moms, too. Sometimes. What do your parents think?"

I shrugged. "I told my mother. She said she'd tell Dad."

Shannon was arranging her hardcopy collection of Dickens. "What did your mother say?" 

"That she doesn't think we should ruin the surprise."

"Surprise?"

"I think she's counting on our getting married. That's the surprise, I guess. Finding out about each other while we're blissfully married."

She slid Bleak House onto the shelf. "What do you think?"

"About my mother?"

"About us. About moving in here together."

We were sitting on the floor. I didn't have my leg on, but I scooted over to her as gracefully as I could. "I don't like surprises," I said, and I brushed my forefinger along the base of her throat. She shut her eyes and tilted her chin up. "But your dad will find out soon enough. He isn't stupid."

"No, he certainly isn't. I'm hoping he won't go all Marine on you." She laughed.

"I'm a cripple," I said. "He wouldn't hurt me, would he?"

Home: Part 34

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.

January 1976

Shannon and I were introduced to each other by Cindy. "You'll like her," my sister said. The two of them had met in church, something I said was not a strong selling point. 

"So, she's a religious fanatic, too?" I asked.

"Stop," Cindy said. We were at a restaurant where Shannon worked as a waitress, sitting across from each other in a small booth. "She's sweet. Shy, like you, too."

"I'm not shy," I said.

"Yes, you are. You can't even talk to yourself without stuttering. And if you don't start dating someone, mom and dad will keep thinking you're some kind of queer."

"That helps."

"There she is." She pointed to a woman walking toward us. Cindy waved and smiled. "Try to be nice."

Shannon smiled at us both. "Hi."

"This is my brother," Cindy said. "The one I told you about. He's missing half a leg, but he's still not bad."

We shook hands. "Nice to finally meet you," Shannon said.

Home: Part 32

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.

March 1982

After a winter of steady, persistent rain, spring arrived as sunshine and dry weather. Kathy and I were sitting on the small balcony outside our apartment’s living room. Trees in the woods behind our apartment complex had been budding slowly for several weeks, but on that first day of spring they seemed green and alive.

“I like this so much,” Kathy said. She leaned back in her chair and turned her face to the sun, the first time we’d even seen the sun in three weeks. She undid two buttons on her tan blouse and bared her skin to the sun.

“It’s a nice change, isn’t it?” I asked. I could see that the creek running through the woods was still running high.

“Speaking of change,” Kathy said. “When I was shopping with Holly a couple weeks ago, she said she might be pregnant.”

“I thought you said she couldn’t have kids.”

“That’s what changed, I guess. Something must’ve clicked the right way.” Kathy’s older sister, Holly had been married for nearly a decade. Andrew, her husband, owned a Ford dealership and had done quite well. The two of them lived alone in a large house Andrew surrounded by walnut and almond orchards his parents had planted when they were first married. An arborist and all around environmentalist, Holly managed the orchards for her in-laws.

“I assume she’s happy about it,” I said.

“She’s starting to be, I think. She’s just now far enough along to tell people.”

“That’s good news, then,” I said.

Kathy didn’t say anything, just undid another button so that the tops of her breasts could absorb the sunlight.

Home: Part 30

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.

January 1958

My father, most likely at my mother's suggestion, sometimes took me to work with him on Saturdays. He would wake me up early, hours before the store opened. "We have work to do before the work begins," he was fond of saying. But a couple of Saturdays after he broke my mother's tooth, he drove silently.  I sat in the front seat of our old Chevrolet as he navigated through snowy streets to the Sears store several miles away. Though he worked in the appliance department, he had been in the store long enough to have worked, as he said, "everywhere but where they keep the women's unmentionables."

I watched the snow fall. I watched a rabbit run race along beside the car before it darted left and into a snowbank. I usually looked forward to going to work with him, but this time there was so much tension between us that I wasn't looking forward to doing anything. My parents, my sister and I had barely spoken to each other since that night at the dinner table. My father seemed to be spending more time at work, staying later than he normally did and often returning home after dinner time.

"We should go on a vacation this summer," my father said so abruptly that I flinched. "I was thinking we could drive to Michigan. I spent a few weeks there when I was a kid. I don't remember where. But I remember we swam a lot, so there must've been a lake."

He might have wanted a response, but I wasn't sure. So, I stayed silent for the rest of the ride. At the store, my father unlocked the door, and I followed him into the dark store. We made our way to the small warehouse at the rear of the building. "There isn't much stuff," I said. On other visits, the shelves and floor had been stacked with boxes.

"Still stocking up after Christmas." He turned on the lights and gestured to the shelves. "They'll be filled again in a week or so. I don't have much for you to do today, so you can wander around the store, if you want. Nobody else will be here for a couple of hours, so you should be fine." He sat down in a large chair and started reading notes scattered across a metal desk.

I never tired of walking through the quiet store. I would lie on the beds and test each for comfort, then look through the tool department for a collection of wrenches that I thought I'd buy my father for Christmas when I had the money. I was in the toy department when my father called me. "I'm over here," I yelled.

"I need your help for a few minutes. Appliances." He had used a hand truck to haul new washing machines from the warehouse to the showroom. "Help me with these."

We positioned the units side by side. "Mom would like one of these," I said. "A new one."

He stared at me for just long enough to make me anxious, and then he ran his hand across the top of one of the machines. "Yeah. She would."

Home: Part 27

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 

During one or another of her bible study classes, Cindy met Terry Pipes, the boy who many years later would become her first husband. He was thin, wore one cheekbone higher than the other, and had a slight twitch in his eyebrows. He was older than Cindy by a couple of years, and his parents worked one of the farms outside of town. Half of their fields were soybeans, the other half corn, and they had acreage enough to pasture a good number of milk cows. Many of my classmates lived on working farms, and I knew how hard they worked before and after school. Terry didn't seem strong enough to be of much use on a farm, but I wasn't one to question him. His brothers, whom I'd met just once, seemed stronger; perhaps Terry took care of the fields and cows, I thought.

"Terry has thought about being a minister," Cindy said one night as she and I cleaned the kitchen after dinner. My parents were in the living room watching Wagon Train on black-and-white Silverstone television set that my father had brought home from Sears one day. "He is quite enthusiastic about spreading god's word."

"What about his farm?" I asked. 

"It's not his farm," Cindy said. "Terry says that he wants to have a small church somewhere."

I thought about the farm, what would become of it and the cows if Terry left. "He could put his church on the farm," I said. "He could be a farmer and a minister."

Cindy looked at me. "You really have no idea what you're talking about, do you? Dry the plates and put them away. I'm going to go read."

A week or so later, a Saturday, Terry and Cindy sat at our kitchen table. They were typing up the church program, something that my sister had volunteered for and seemed to enjoy doing. "You want to help?" Cindy asked.

"There's not much he can do," Terry said.

"Maybe if we give him a task, he'll come to church with us tomorrow."

Terry looked at me. "Him? In church?"

Cindy looked at me, too, as if re-thinking what she'd said. "Sunday school, then. He could go to Sunday school."

Terry's eyebrows twitched. "No."

Home: Part 25

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.

Home: 15

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 awhile.

March 1982

 
"You're up late." Kathy had come out of the bedroom and was now standing behind me as I sat on the couch. I liked the pressure of her hands on my shoulders.
"Not up late--couldn't sleep."
She sat next to me. "Everything okay?"
I nodded. We'd been married for just two months, and she had yet to become used to my chronic insomnia.
"You hungry?"
"Not any more. I had two bowls of ice cream. Now I just feel crappy."
She pointed at the book on my lap. "What are you reading?"
"Kafka."
"That'll cheer you up."
I laughed. "Who wants to be happy when they can't sleep? It's a time to revel in misery."
We sat there, and she leaned into me. "I'm sorry you had to get out of bed," I said. "You didn't have to. You know I can't go far if I try to escape." I raised my half-leg.
"Oh, I've seen you hop," Kathy said. "You're pretty good at pogo-sticking around."
That made me feel good, relaxed. Kathy was relaxed, too, and I could tell by her breathing that she was dozing off. "Kathy."
"What?" she whispered.
"Let's go back to bed."
"Can you sleep now?"
"I think so."
"Okay. I'll race you."
In bed, Kathy was asleep again almost immediately. I lay on my side, facing her, watching as her breasts rose and fell with her breathing.

Home: Part 14

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 awhile.

June 1958

 
"Like this," my father said. He pinched the worm in half with his thumb and forefinger, then slid one half onto the hook end first. "Run it up to the top of the hook, and cover the barb." He handed me the other half.
"Does it hurt them?" I asked.
"Nope."
I pushed the hook into the worm.
"Now, all the way up. You want to cover the entire hook. Good," he said. "Rinse your fingers off."
I reached my hand into the water and washed the blood off my skin.
The pond was small, not far from our house. It was full of sunfish and bluegill. We were using bamboo poles with filament tied to the tip. My father adjusted the bobber on my line. "Toss it in."
The round bobber floated not far from shore. 
"How's your leg?"
"It's fine," I said. 
"Let me know when you get hungry. I packed sandwiches for lunch, and your mom threw in some cookies." He reached into the waxed canvas satchel he'd packed everything in. He filled two cups with coffee and handed me one. "Here," he said.
I took the cup and looked into it. "I've never had coffee."
"No? Well, let's hope it doesn't kill you. Don't tell your mother, okay? She'll be worried that it'll stunt your growth."
I considered that. "Will it?"
"What--kill you?" He smiled.
"No. Stunt my growth."
"You'll be fine," he said. "As tall as anyone else, I'd say."
It was rare for my father not to work on Saturdays. It was the one day he got paid overtime, what he called "my beer and fun money." School had been out for just a couple of weeks, and I was still getting into summer's rhythm. The sun was low behind us, and the water was calm. The coffee was dark and bitter, but I sipped in anyway. My father sat in the grass and drank from his own cup, smacking his lips in a way that I knew my mother would disapprove of. He had yet to put his line in the water, so I watched my bobber and waited.

Home: Part 13

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

 
The rain began the day after our wedding, and it continued for two weeks. Our small apartment often seemed more like a cave than a home: dark, musty. It was only during this type of weather that my leg sometimes bothered me, though neither I nor anyone else could explain why. My parents and assorted doctors attributed it to "growing pains" when I was young. "There's nothing there to grow," I once said to my father after one visit to a doctor.

"Maybe you're dancing too much when I'm not home," Kathy said one night as we ate dinner at a small Formica table beside the window in the kitchen. 

"Yes, dancing," I said. "Mrs. Miller would love that, wouldn't she?" Mrs. Miller, who lived in the apartment beneath us, seemed especially sensitive to even the slightest of sounds or vibrations above her. After she complained numerous times to our patient landlord, Mr. Baxter, Kathy and I had learned to be as soft-footed as we possibly could. "She's been here a long time," Mr. Baxter told us.

"It's my fault, you know," my father told me after I'd gotten fitted for a new prosthetic. We were driving home from the clinic. It must have been early spring, because I remember that the snow on the ground seemed tired of being there: dirty, crusty on top, melting at the bottom.

"What is?" I asked.

"The leg."

"Your fault?"

"My genetics. Or my bad ones. Bad genes. My dad's brother, your great uncle Rick, had a left hand that was little more than a claw. From birth."

I had never considered actually blaming anyone for my leg, though I was getting to an age when I felt like I wanted to blame someone. Maybe my dad foresaw that and felt like he had to say something. Years later I would feel my own guilt as I thought of how he must have carried that burden.

"It's just half a leg," I said. "I've been okay without it."

So, during those two weeks of rain, I limped more than usual. Kathy would massage my thigh hoping to help. "You're strong to put up with this," she said as we lay in bed.

"No," I said. "I am not strong. I'm just used to it."

"I think you are strong. You've put up with this for a long time. I'm sure it wasn't always easy."

"My parents didn't coddle me," I said. "They mocked me when I complained. They threw things at me when I fell down. My sister would hide my crutches when I was bouncing around on one."

Kathy laughed. Even in the dark apartment I thought I could see her eyes as we listened to the rain's tattoo. "You have such a cruel family!"

"Assholes, each and every one of them," I said. "But I forgive them now. I'm a better man."

"You're a fucking saint!" she said.

And we lay there in the darkness, and the rain continued.

Home: Part 12

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

 
On our wedding night, which we spent in a Radisson Hotel, Kathy and celebrated with room service and small bottles of liquor taken from the room's courtesy bar. "This is for getting married," Kathy said as she handed me the bottle of Smirnoff. "And the Jim Beam is for my birthday. I'll drink this." It was a simple celebration. I liked that about her: a tendency toward understatement. We lay in bed and kept the television on all night, though at some point all we could watch was visual static or test patterns. 

In the morning: a Continental breakfast that Kathy had ordered while I was still asleep. I awoke to her sitting on the side of the bed. She was staring down at me, smiling.

"You're pretty when you sleep," she said.

"Pretty?"

"Yeah. Pretty." She kissed me.

I liked looking at her and thought I could do it forever. Her eyes, what had first attracted me to her, were almost gray and perfectly symmetrical. "I'm not sure I want to be 'pretty.'"

"Oh, men can be pretty. Sit up." She handed me a cup of coffee after I'd arranged the pillows as a backrest. "Don't spill. It's hot."

"I like being spoiled," I said. The cup was close enough to my bare chest that I could feel the coffee's warmth.

She lifted her own cup and touched it against mine. "To us," she said.
"To us."

Home: Part 11

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 

My father hit my mother only once, as far as I know. He didn't drink, but he was prone to brooding silences that occasionally ended just at the edge of violence. With me, over the course of my youth he crossed that edge more often than I ever revealed. 

Superman ended just before dinner time, just after my father returned home from the Sears Roebuck where he was currently in charge of major appliances. He enjoyed his job, I always believed, and he seemed to enjoy taking me to work with him on weekends when he went in early to "get things in order." At the table that night, though, he was happy about nothing: not the casserole, not the biscuits, not the canned green beans. Cindy and I sat on one side of the table, our parents on the other. Tiger was under the table, and my father kicked at the dog with enough force that Tiger cried out and scrambled out of the room. 

"That's nice," my mother said without emotion.

My father didn't say a word. I saw his arm flash out, the fork slipping from his fingers and clanging against the wall. Then, the sound of flesh hitting flesh, and something connecting with something less hard. My mother's head jerked back, and she made a sound not unlike Tiger's when my father had kicked him. I didn't know what to do. Beneath the table, Cindy's hand squeezed my knee. My mother's upper lip had started to drip blood, and she blinked her eyes as if to make sense of it all. My father's hand was now a fist, and he looked down at it where it lay on the table. My mother reached into her mouth and pulled out half of a tooth. She set it on my father's plate, wiped her mouth with a napkin, then rose from her chair and left the room.

I suppose it was a time when men thought they could--or maybe actually should--do such things without fear. They could kick dogs, they could hit women, and who even in such a small town would care? The neighbors and friends would know, but nobody who really mattered.

"Finish eating," my father said. "Your mother works hard feeding you two."

For years afterward, whenever my parents argued, I sensed that my father had become afraid--not of my mother, but of what he might do. If voices became loud, my mother would raise her upper lip to display what he had done, perhaps mocking him or daring him to strike again. He was always the first to back away from the argument, throwing up his hands and announcing, "I guess that's just the way it is, then."

Sleepless in bed that night I listened to Tiger whimper and snore, and I wondered what world he was in. My bed was just beneath the window, and toward dawn I finally rested my chin on the sill. I could smell snow. Tiger bit at his paw, then lay beside me and put his head beside mine. He must have smelled more than snow. I heard footsteps in the hallway: my father getting ready to leave for work. A few minutes later I watched as he dusted light snow off the car, then backed slowly into the street and turned toward the highway. The car's tires crunched against deeper snow. When he was out of view, I closed the window and settled into my bed. My palm hurt where half of my mother's tooth pressed into my skin.

Home: Part 10

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

 
I awoke. For a moment I did not remember that I was inside the airplane. My forehead was wet with perspiration, and I caught vestiges of a dream in which I was lost in Subic City, trying to find my way back to the hotel before curfew as the traffic closed in around me. I settled in my seat. Through the window I could see little more than darkness and the lights on the wing. 

I thought about Narcie. I had told her that I would return soon, and that I would find her somehow. I suddenly was not convinced that I'd been lying to her. She had heard lies from many men before, so she probably knew better than I did about what about me was true. 

Unbuckling my seat-belt, I slid out of my row of seats and stood. Nearly everyone on the plane seemed to be sleeping. Inside the lavatory I wiped my forehead and face with a damp paper towel and stood with my eyes closed for a moment as my legs adjusted to the plane's motion. When I got back to my seat, I closed my eyes and tried unsuccessfully to relax into sleep. When I had changed planes in Honolulu, I had sat at the bar for nearly two hours after getting through Customs. From the table I had found a seat near a window, I could see planes landing and lifting off, and for a brief moment considered not boarding my flight to San Francisco but instead staying in Hawaii for a while. I have always been somewhat prone to loneliness, even among friends and family, and the fatigue of travel often exacerbated the feeling. There were, really, few reasons to head home, and the sequence of martinis I was enjoying at the bar made things that much worse.

Now, somewhere over the Pacific between Hawaii and California, I leaned my head against the plane's bulkhead and stared out the window. Someone a few rows ahead of me snored softly. A stewardess stopped in the aisle. "Do you need anything, Sir?" she asked. 

I liked her well-trained smile. "Perhaps some water, please," I said.

"I'll be right back." She headed toward the rear of the plane. When she returned, she handed me a cup of cool water.

"Thank-you," I said.

"My pleasure." Then she was gone, walking away from me.

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.

Home: Part 4

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 

I was born with a flipper attached to my left knee. More precisely, I had no shin or ankle below my knee on that leg, just, as my father said, "a floppy little thing that wasn't good for much." So, just a couple of days after my birth, surgeons removed the flipper and I was then free to evolve in my own way.

Tiger tended to pull on the leash as we walked, and I had to be careful in the snow and on the slick concrete. I was stable, for the most part, but I was also cautious. "Slow down, Tiger." I pulled back on the leash several times before he finally got the point. We did a loop around the block, and half an hour later we sat in the basement and watched reruns of Superman.

Home: Part 3

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 

My mother's voice: "Steven."

Even from under the blankets I could tell it was cold outside, and dark. My parents were frugal, and even in winter they often kept the heat low at night. They believed that an extra comforter was just as effective as running the heater. One night, though, when my mother was gone, I found my father in a chair in the kitchen, the oven door open and the heating element glowing hot. He looked at me. "Go back to bed. Don't tell your mother." He smiled, and I was grateful for the secret.

"Steven."

"I'm awake, Mom."

"Your father and I are leaving now. Remember to take Tiger for a walk. We'll be home for dinner."

"Okay."

 She shut my bedroom door, and I listened as they left the house, as my father started the car and backed out of the driveway. I lay there and let myself fall back asleep until the gap between dawn and morning narrowed to a point that kept me awake. Breathing into my hands, I warmed my fingers enough so that when I got ready to stand up, I could strap my left leg on without missing a buckle. I stood slowly, a lifetime habit, to be sure I wouldn't topple over if one of the buckles was too loose. Dressed, I left my bedroom and walked down the hallway toward the kitchen. "Tiger," I yelled. "Let's go walk in the snow."

Home: Part 2

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
(continued)

The room had a small window, and through it I could look out onto Subic City's early morning. Everything outside appeared quiet. When I lay on the bed again, I watched the ceiling fan rotate slowly above me. The room smelled stale, lived in, soaked in decades of sweat. I wasn't sure if Narcie would return, but I didn't want to wait all day. It was Friday, and I planned on getting out of town before a good portion of the Seventh Fleet was on liberty for the weekend. I had a flight scheduled from Manila to San Francisco via Honolulu on Sunday; being stuck in Subic City until then had no appeal.

Narcie did return. I must have dozed off while watching the fan blades turn above me. "I told you I'd come back." She was lying beside me and caressing my bare shoulder with her fingers.

"How was church?" I asked.

"I had to take my son," she said. "It is his birthday. He has friends there."

"You don't have to explain. How old is  your son?"

"He is five."

"His father?"

She shrugged the question away.

"I have to leave in a little while," I said. "Manila."

"We can eat first?"

"I think that is a fine idea," I said. "But not just yet." I smiled at her.

"You're like a sailor," she said. "Always ready to do something."

I laughed. "I'll take that as a compliment."

She stood up and slipped out of her clothes. Naked, she looked down at me. "What do I call you?" she asked.

"Call me?"

"Your name. I want to know your name."

I thought about it. "Call me Ishmael," I said.