Home: Part 18

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.

August 1974

 
I didn't know where we were--someplace north of Pensacola, Florida, on a two-lane rode that was as dark as any road I'd seen. There was nothing on the sides of the road but what I assumed were pine trees. The truck's windows were wide open, and the humidity and wind beat against my face in a way that wasn't comfortable but was better than keeping the window closed and feeling just the humidity.  

"Where are we?" I asked at one point.

"Traveling north," Mitchell said. It was his truck: an old Chevrolet with a bench seat that sagged in the middle.

I just my eyes and listened to the radio. Mostly the radio fed us static, but now and then it would feed us gospel music. 

"We're here," Mitchell said. I'd dozed off, apparently, and I needed a moment to come to terms with who I was with and what we were doing.

"We're where," I said.

"Flomation. Flomation, Alabama."

"Flomation?"

"Yep. Sounds like a toilet part, doesn't it?"

"Why are we here."

"In Flomation?"

"Anywhere. Why are we in Alabama?" The humidity in Alabama's night wasn't any less than it had been in Florida.

"There's a bar."

"We drove this far to go to a bar?"

He nodded. "I might know some people."

"What kind of people?"

"Nice people, mostly. They're mostly polite."

He parked the truck in a gravel lot in front of a small, single-story building. The neon sign over the door read "Marianne's." I pointed at the sign. "Who's Marianne--friend of yours?"

"Everyone's a friend of mine," he said. "Come on. Let's get a drink."

The smell of stale cigarette smoke inside the bar seemed flow out of the paneled walls. A couple of pool tables in the back of the room had suffered great abuse. A couple of women were standing around the jukebox, and who I took to be there boyfriends were sitting in a booth nearby. The bartender looked up from his newspaper when we entered.

Mitch gestured toward the bar. "Our lucky night--a choice of seats." The bartender looked at us. "Budweisers," Mitch said.

"I hate Budweiser," I said.

"I know you do. Just have one, and keep the bottle handy."

"What?"

"Long-necked bottles: useful if you get into a fight."

"Mitch," the bartender said when he set the bottles in front of us.

"Gary. Things look kind of slow tonight."

"I like to think of it as peaceful," Gary said. 

"Yeah, peaceful," Mitch said. "I found this guy on the side of the road and thought he might like a place to sit for a while." He gestured at me.

Gary shook my hand. "You a friend of Mitch's?"

"So far," I said. "A lot rides on how the night goes."

"Yeah. I understand that." He returned to his newspaper at the far end of the bar.

"How was Subic City?" Mitch asked.

"Felt just like this," I said. "Hot and humid."

"Get yourself laid?"

"Don't get personal."

"Get the clap?"

"That's personal, too."

He nodded. "The last time I was there, I started dripping before I left and didn't stop for a month. When I finally saw a doctor, he asked how many times I'd had the clap. I told him six, and he didn't believe me."

"That's a lot of clap," I said. "It's an actual ovation."

"Clever."

"You ever thought about using a rubber?"

"I did, once."

"About five times less than you should've." The women at the jukebox must have been unsuccessful, because there was no music playing. They had returned to their boyfriends, and the group of them seemed happy in the booth. The Budweiser had cooled my throat. 

"The doctor said that some of that stuff over there has started to eat penicillin. He said I've got enough scar tissue inside my pecker to nearly close me up."

"And you're proud of that?"

Mitch shrugged. "The price of doing business, I guess." 

"So you've been here before, I take it."

"Yeah. Now and again. Used to run with a woman who worked here two, three years ago."

"And now?"

"And now, I'm just depressed and thought I'd come up here to remember her."

"Christ. You're getting all sentimental." 

"We almost got married." He gestured for Gary to bring us more beer.

"Almost?"

"Almost. Then she met a drummer, and the next thing I knew she popped out a kid that didn't look anything like me. You could say that our relationship pretty much ended then."

"If I didn't know better, Mitch, I'd say that you're about to cry."

"I might."

"Don't pull me into your misery, okay? I didn't get dragged all the way to Flomation to have a bad night."

He looked at me, and I knew that he was on the cusp between disappointment and anger. "Maybe we should play pool," I said.

Home: Part 17

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 

My mother kept a small garden on the side of the house. In the spring an assortment of tulips emerged from bulbs she had planted over the years. Each year she planted more to replace those that had grown too tired to bloom. "They give me hope," she once said. "I know that no matter how hard the winter is, each spring there'll be life and color there." Then, later, my sister Cindy and I were assigned the task of planting vegetables when the flowers had faded.

"Not so close together, Cindy," my mother said from her lawn chair as Cindy and I dug holes in the dirt. "Especially the tomatoes. They'll need a lot of room later in the summer." 

"It's never right, is it?" Cindy muttered as she filled one hole and dug another in another spot. I didn't say anything. I was quite happy with my hands in the dirt. I liked the way it felt, its odor. Cindy was at a point in life where she was aggravated by everything my parents said, and I knew she wanted to be anywhere else but on her knees in the garden, our mother giving us instructions from her chair.

"But they're good when they're finally ripe," I said.

"They're tomatoes," Cindy said. "We can buy them in the store and they taste just as good. This is just a way for Mom to keep us busy now that school's out. She's used to having the house to herself most of the time, and we kind of cramp her style."

Cindy might have been right, but I was content nonetheless. "We're almost done," I said. I set a small tomato plant into the new hole Cindy had dug.

When we finally stood to admire our work, I was happy with the symmetry of things, the even spacing of plants. "It looks very nice," my mother said as she joined us. "You two work well together." 

"I'll clean up," I said and began gathering the garden tools. 

Cindy walked away without saying another word, and my mother watched her go. "Thank you," my mother said, and she patted me on the shoulder before heading into the house.

In the garage, I hung the tools on holders above my father's workbench. The garage was dark and musty, and I enjoyed the smells there as much as I enjoyed the smell of dirt. Outside again, I dragged the hose to the garden and watered each plant. Trying to picture how they'd be full-grown at the end of the summer, I wondered if the plants gave my mother the same sense of hope as the tulips did, or if they were somehow different.

Home: Part 16

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.

January 1958 

The morning after my father broke my mother's tooth, everyone was gone when I got out of bed and walked into the kitchen. It was a Saturday, and though I had seen my father leave for work, I expected my mother and sister to be lingering about somewhere. Perhaps, like me, they were not sure of how to act--or react--to the previous night's event and had opted to avoid everyone and everything.

Outside, the sky was gray; snow had fallen through the night. On the driveway, the snow had been etched by tire tracks that seemed now to be half-filled by new snow. Tiger was now curled up on the sofa and staring at me. I sat beside him and considered the palm of my hand where the fragment of my mother's tooth had left a small cut as I'd squeezed it during the night.

Not far from our home was a large field where corn grew throughout the summer. Tiger and I had left the quiet house behind and were walking through the furrows. Away from the houses in our neighborhood, the field was one place where I could remove the dog's leash and let him run. He would sniff through the snow as he put space between us, going only so far before looking back to find me.

Once, during a heavy snowstorm, Tiger and I were in the same field and he stopped running, turned, and stared into a distance I could not see. Moments later a human form appeared, and as it got closer I recognized my father: warm, heavy coat; old-fashioned black galoshes; knitted scarf.

"Tiger!" my father yelled. "Come here, boy!"

Tiger lurched, stopped, then ran toward my father. My father ran in the opposite direction, and Tiger stopped as if confused by what had vanished into the falling snow. I heard my father's voice call again, and Tiger circled a bit before racing away. I stood there and listened as Tiger barked when my father called to him. Then, for a while, I could hear neither of them. I stood where I was and shut my eyes as the snow fell around me, until I heard them both getting closer.

"That dog can run!" my father said when the two of them reached my side. "This is a nice field, isn't it?" He tilted his bare face upward and let the snow fall onto it, and he seemed to stay that way for a long time. He finally wiped his eyes and looked around. "I just wanted to get out of the house and get some air. Took me a while to find where you two had gone--but you picked the perfect place. I've got to go to work later, so I might not see you until right before bedtime. Stay warm, okay?"

"See you, Dad," I said as he patted Tiger's head and disappeared into the falling snow.

The house was still empty when Tiger and I got home. I dried the dog's fur. Eating Cheerios at the kitchen table, I again looked at the small cut on my palm. I was not sure of why I had taken the broken tooth from my father's dinner plate, or why I had clutched it so tightly throughout the night.  Later that morning, though, I would search for but not find that fragment anywhere on or under my bed, and I would wonder which of my parents had crept into my room as I slept and retrieved it.

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.

Intermission #2

What follows is additional commentary on the work of fiction (Home). This is mainly filler because there isn't much else going on, fiction-wise.



Fiction-wise, there are parts in my head--a mental exercise in laying the foundation for whatever will follow. But some things away from the story--a couple of them not pleasant--have transpired over the last couple of months, and they have proven to be lingering distractions.

Heeding my own advice, I've begun keeping notes about who the characters are and when certain events take place. I've also begun adding the separate Intenet parts to a Microsoft Word document that I can print, append, and annotate. I should also retrieve one of my many blank notebooks so I can capture random thoughts about everyone and everything.

I'm up to, what, 14 segments now? I actually started a 15th but decided part-way through that it wasn't working. 

What's missing from the creative process is silence. Not the after-the-tv-is-turned-off-before-bedtime quiet but extended silence. Unfortunately, extended silence is and will be hard to come by. 

More fiction to come, I promise.

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.

Intermission

What follows is commentary on the work of fiction (Home). This is mainly filler because there isn't much else going on, fiction-wise.



So far, in nine segments, Home is proving to be a challenge and is perhaps a bit too ambitious for someone of my abilities. As usual--and to the detriment of the work itself, I believe--I have worked without either a plan or a net. Spread out over the decades, the story is still trying to figure out where it is going and how it will end. The characters, too, are trying to find how they fit in and who they are. In the latest segment, which takes place on Thanksgiving Day, a few characters introduce themselves, and the relevance of the ending (dialogue, really) started to become clear to me a few days after those sentences were written, while I was riding my bike somewhere I didn't have to worry about navigating through traffic. They were actually written when I was alone in the silence of a cabin in Northern California, where silence is both good and welcome.

The way the work's timeline is developing, though, makes me realize that I'm going to have to start keeping notes not only about what's been written, but what will be written. Rather than developing literary flashbacks, I'm trying to keep each storyline simply play out across time until they finally come together at the end. 

More intermissions to follow, I'm sure.

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.