A Homecoming
I
Derek rolled through the toll plaza, the electronic letter board lighting up with acknowledgment of his presence: E-Z PASS PAID. He grabbed the empty Gatorade bottle next to him, accelerated around the curve that led him home, pushed into the floor with his free foot, and elevated his hips to free his bloated bladder into the Gatorade bottle. He hated rest stop bathrooms. But he wondered about tolls: a seemingly arcane tribute to a massive road system built for war. But was he paying for the right to travel old war roads? Or was he paying for the right to pass through a small designated area called the toll plaza, and thus, was he being compelled to support an enormous system of government that seemed to have tendrils in all the wrong places? But what was it that made him despise rest stop bathrooms? Maybe that rest stops just felt like big toll plazas: lots of movement, seemingly random, but organized in a manner beyond an individual’s scope — a mundane conspiracy. Where did the water come from, where did the shit go, who made the paper towels that got restocked by a poor old man and who wiped up the floors when they were dirtied by somebody whose toll money was already taxed as income and would surely be taxed again somehow and somewhere? Or maybe it was just the fact that old men couldn’t piss into the urinals without splashing everywhere (and then paid their toll in cash with urine soaked hands), or that kids couldn’t keep their pants around their asses? Or was it the sight of sharps bins next to filth filled sinks, or the meaningless attempts to sterilize a facility that would never be made clean? Was it the bathroom or the toll booth we were talking about?
He clicked on the blinker and rolled into his neighborhood. Flecks of reds and oranges were piling up on front yards and against garage doors — little colonies ready to decay or be blown away. He pulled the plug of tobacco out of his mouth and threw the brown-black drug leaf to the grey asphalt.
Bag in hand, he received no give at the doorknob, now glassy smoothed by the grasping of years. It was a tendency of his mother’s in recent years to lock the door. Robbers, or roaming kids (who probably couldn’t even piss in urinals without their pants at their ankles), or some other disturbing faction, she said. She thought they lived in a hellhole. But it was a regular middle-class neighborhood: grassy yards, dogs, hellos, dinner parties. He rung the bell. Beside him, an old blood stain clung to the cement. He scuffed tenderly at it with his shoe.
“Is that my Derek?”
The bolt clicked and he stepped inside the foyer. His lipless smile curled into a false grin. He swallowed the remaining thickness of dip spit along with a fleck of leaf that was stuck in his teeth. The old carpet was like a dead dog, split open and taxidermied on the floorboards. The pendulum of the grandfather clock leaned against the interior wall, exposing its worthlessness through fingerprinted glass. Everything was covered in dust. Even his mother, immaculate black hair frozen into place, was blanketed by powdered minerals. The house gave him the same feeling as the toll plaza, or the rest stop bathroom: something sterilized without being made clean, something arcanely conspiratorial.
His mother pulled him in for a hug, making a noise like a giant chipmunk. “Jane!” she yelled directly into his ear, “your brother is here. Come down!” Jane’s broad smile came through her bedroom doorway and she descended the stairs by twos. She pulled her brother’s bag from his hand and turned on her naked foot to deliver it upstairs. But at the first step, she halted and spirited herself back to Derek. A delicate kiss, like a master painter’s first stroke at the canvas, fell on Derek’s cheek. She ascended the stairs, graceful against the dark-stained and ill looking carpet.
He was in the kitchen. He could hear the audible rustle of Jane’s footsteps coming back down the stairs. Each vibration sent off life in effervescing waves, pushing back the dreariness and the dust. Jane looked different now: longer hair and no braces, taller too. Her freckles still played brightly on her face, but her childishness was more pure now, it rose to the form of femininity.
Pencil darkened eyebrows and a pale hand swiped at his wrist. “Tell me everything! How come that girlfriend of yours didn’t make it? I wanted to meet her.” His mother grabbed a tumbler from the cabinet. She grasped the neck of the vodka bottle and froze. “Oh, I should have asked! Do you want a beer?” Her eyes grew wide. “I know how you college boys are! I remember! I don’t have any now, but I can run to the store.”
“No Ma. No. I don’t need a beer. I just kind of want to take a shower. From the drive — the toll plazas and bathrooms — I feel kind of dirty.”
His mother’s spirits hit the bottom of the tumbler. Derek could feel Janey standing behind him, waiting.
“Well don’t mind if I pour myself a little something then.”
Derek rose and walked past Janey to the stairs. Janey went to the kitchen table as her mother flicked on the television. She sat down and found refuge: in her crossed arms, the sounds of monotonous chattering heads on TV, and the dark grained stain of the table.
Waiting. Eventually, it all just looks and feels the same.
II
The house was quiet. It was as if only one sound could inhabit the space at a time. One sound took all sounds willingly within it: absorbing the others, domesticating them, and amplifying them. And when it was done, a new sound absorbed, domesticated, and amplified. A progression of homely homilies: a mother humming to herself, the tinkling of liquid into glassware, the hiss of hard water leaving the showerhead, the delicate opening of a well-worn diary.
In May, the sounds conspired to make the whispers for the dead known. They came from some friends and family, but mostly from colleagues of his father: “I’m sorry for your loss… a good working man… he worked his ass off… he gave it his all…” Then they would bow their heads slightly, nothing significant to say, as though they had already forgotten who he was, or had never known him at all.
But Derek could still feel him now: like the warmth of a cattail set aflame a mile away.
III
“I forgot to ask you what you wanted tonight. I just got some pasta and veggies. I hope that’s alright.” His mother moved turbidly around the kitchen, lost somewhere amongst the appliances and the jabbering women on the television. “Do you want something special tomorrow night?”
“Nah Ma. Whatever you got is fine.” He rubbed the dampness from his hair as he stood in front of an old picture that hung on the wall. At the front was Janey: four years old, broad smile, pastel blue dress. He stood behind her: starched white shirt and suspenders, no smile. Then his parents: his mother in a puffed and lacy white shirt, hair elevated in gaudy curls. His father: a well knotted tie and a tweed jacket that was too large for his large frame, a large proud smile.
“Dinner will be ready in a half hour or so. Go on and do what you like. If you had brought that girl of yours, you could have gone for a walk.” Her face twinged, a nerve responding to some thought, pulling her eyelid and the corner of her mouth upward in a spasm of ugliness. “But maybe Janey could go with you.”
Derek broke his gaze with the old picture and turned toward his mother. Her hair was now many shades darker, and it moved in soft, flowing waves to her shoulders. Her face had gained many more wrinkles, cutting deeply into the soft spaces around her eyes which were now wide open. She stared down at the cutting board upon which carrots were minced apart by frail, boney hands that never ceased to move despite the fact that the controller of them simultaneously drank from her vodka filled tumbler. A chunk of carrot hopped to the floor and the spirits dropped down her throat. The taxidermied dogcarpet rose and chomped on the carrot, orange dribble falling from its unclean mouth.
“Yea, that’s a good idea. Want to go for a walk Jane?”
IV
The sun, whole-sphered and small looking, sat above the greying tree line. High above them, the white moon, half-hooded in failing light and pale sky — the ghost of a planet — shared the swooping arc of space. They turned down the driveway and rounded the corner of the old neighborhood.
“How’ve you been? How’s freshman year going?” Derek asked.
“Good. You know how it is. It’s ok.” Her hand reached up, plucked a small red berry off a tree in passing, severing it from its place in nature. Derek glanced sidelong at her as the branch swung back into place. He waited for an answer to the question he didn’t ask. Janey twisted the stem from the berry, twisted her mouth in hesitation.
“I wish you were still home. I think about him a lot. Everything is so much different now. Sometimes I’ll wake in the middle of the night, and I’ll feel like he’s still there. Just right down the hall. Sleeping in bed, next to Mom.” Her hands moved toward her face. “Then I realize he’s not. I just realize he’s gone again.” They walked past a house, a dog barked in the backyard. “And we haven’t seen the Hutchinsons in like two months — they’re never around anymore. But I guess Mrs Hutchinson and Mom didn’t really like each other. It was really just Dad and Mr Hutchinson who liked each other. But I just miss Dad.”
“I know.” Derek looked out toward the tree line at the back of the neighborhood. “How’s Ma been with everything? She been alright?” Janey didn’t answer. She threw the berry to the ground, twisted the stem between her fingers, and let it fall.
“She’s fine, whatever.” The hooded moon gained light: a ghost come alive in the darkening sky.
They circled the neighborhood and came up against the wooded field, the rusted bridge visible through the leaf-dropping trees. “You never really played down there as a kid, did you? You missed out, I had some crazy times there.” The canopy of the woods was burnt orange, a collaboration of failing sun and turning leaf.
“I was never down there much. I didn’t go down there after that one kid killed himself.”
“Yea, down near the pond. You remember that? I didn’t think you’d remember. Or you knew about it. Mom and Dad tried to keep it from you. He did it on a stormy night, pulled the trigger as a bolt of lightning struck. To cover the sound.” As they passed by the woods, he dropped down to the street and kicked at the leaves that built up alongside the curb. “I don’t even remember that kid’s name anymore.”
“John something? Didn’t his family move away right after that? It was John something.”
“Don’t know. I can picture him, just don’t know his name.”
They approached the house, turning off the sidewalk and up the grassy front lawn. Derek grabbed hold of the handle. Janey scuffed at the red-brown stain on the porch.
“Thanks for coming with me,” she said.
VI
The dogcarpet lifted its head, orange foam stringing to the floor. The starchy warmth of pasta pushed back the autumn air. The table was set for four, utensils haphazardly thrown amongst the dishes, drinking glasses missing.
Their mother pulled a piece of rigatoni from the water. She placed it upon the shelf of her lower teeth, breathed the heat out of it, and chewed delicately. “That’s hot,” she giggled to herself. She drained the pot of pasta into the colander, wreaths of steam crowning her perfectly darkened hair.
“What is this Ma? I never saw you make this before.”
“You know how it is. I need something to do with myself. I’ve been watching a lot of cooking shows, trying out some new things. Try it, you’ll like it.”
Jane whispered as they sat down: “It’s just a bag of frozen veggies over some pasta. Then she throws in one fresh veggie to make it look like she did something — carrots normally. She makes it like three times a week. It sucks.”
Derek pulled in his chair. His eyes found the extra place setting. Janey’s did too, she just stared at it. Derek grabbed the knife, fork, and plate, and rose to put them away. He grabbed three glasses and filled them with water. He watched his mother: her arms worked too quickly, too loosely.
“Derek, do you mind taking this over?” she nodded to the bowl of pasta. “I just need to pour myself another glass.” The aroma of distilled vapors hit his nose. She reached clumsily for the bottle, poured, and returned it squarely to the counter.
Derek held three glasses of water in one hand, the bowl in the other. They all sat down, joined hands, and bowed their heads. Their mother said something mechanical, barely audible, then picked up a fork from the table.
“Derek, tell me about your classes. How are they?” A forkful of overcooked pasta and cold vegetables went into his mouth as he told her. Janey sat silently as his mother and brother constructed something out of words: a mockery of a family. “And your friends?” Another forkful and he said so. “And that girl?” Again, he answered. Then her mother’s eyes fell on the missing place setting in front of the fourth chair. Derek continued to speak. Their mother’s lips formed words but only a blurry, toxic silence came out. It coalesced over the table, the empty chair, and the tasteless food.
“Can you pass the salt Ma?” Their mother’s eyes didn’t move. Her hand found the salt shaker and planted it before him.
“What’s the matter? I salted the water.”
“I know. It’s good. I just wanted some salt.”
She rose sharply, stiffening in a spasm of action. In four quick steps, she was at the counter. She drained the remainder of the bottle into her glass. She turned, a smile plastered on her face, like a machine born in the morgue: the mortician painting and manipulating the face into a mock display of human dignity. “I’m glad you like it.”
Jane did, or said something. Derek wasn’t sure what it was: a choke, a cough. A curse or a whimper. He didn’t look at her. His hand stretched toward the salt shaker. He felt a growing thickness in the middle of his brain.
“May I be excused please?” Jane rose, placed her dish in the sink, and went upstairs.
“Derek,” his mother said. “I’m so glad you’re home.” Her eyes were glassy. “And I’m so excited you love this meal. It’s Janey’s favorite.”
The house whispered to Derek of fire and water, cattails and fathers. He died six months ago: a massive heart attack on the front porch. It was so bad that he crumbled to the floor, hitting his head on the stoop on the way down. They said he was probably dead before he hit the ground. That he didn’t feel the pain from the gash in his head — like that mattered at all.
VII
Through Janey’s doors, Derek whispered: “Janey?… You alright?”
“I’m fine.” Her voice came from far away. He paused and listened for something more. “I’m fine Derek. I am.” He heard a sniffle and the turning of a page.
“You want to go for a walk or something?”
“No Derek. Seriously, I’m ok. Thanks though. But I’m ok.” His hand fell on the doorknob. He wanted to open the door, give her a hug, tell her it would be alright and mean it, make her laugh. “I’ll probably just go to sleep soon, that’s all.” Another turn of the page. She looked up from her diary, imagining her brother on the other side of the door. He heard her move, and then very close she whispered: “It’s ok Derek. I’m fine. You go.”
He closed his eyes and stepped back. He grabbed his coat. “Ma, I’m going for a walk.” He didn’t wait to hear what she said.
VIII
The sun had dipped low as night came on. A bubble of pinkish orange burned above the blackness of the trees. He turned left, following the same path he had walked only an hour ago. Around the corner, he cut across the street and headed for the woods.
The day’s reds and oranges decayed to browns and blacks with the loss of light. Little eyes burned and dashed in the underbrush. He stumbled numbly along the rocky path. His steps rung out with the hollow stillness of a wooden bell as he crossed the bridge. Old graffiti marred the rails: obscenities and illegible words created by obscene and illegitimate kids. The creek barely flowed beneath him. It struggled to pass through the litter and rubbish that lined the muddy shore. A polluted looking red tar clung to the fringes of the water. Rusted cans and plastics hung in the trees, swam down the stream, and made the water viscous and turbid. At the far end of the bridge stood the memory of a honey suckle bush that grew there in summer, now torn out, now non-existent.
He marched into the open field on the far side of the bridge, the tall grasses whipping against his jeans in hollow thuds, sparking memories of the past. More memories took shape in the field and the surrounding treeline. On the small mound with the decayed tree growing scraggly slanted from the dirt, he had fallen into a thicket of burrs. There, in the high grass, he and his father had been chased by a mother goose protecting her young. Further on, near the pond, he had pulled cattails with his father, soaked them in lighter fluid, and lit them like torches. The shapeless memories walked with him, a contingent of invisible wraiths with no direction. His feet carried him forward, up toward the cattail place, the pond that lie in the midst of the field, the place where that poor kid shot himself in the head — that kid whose name he couldn’t remember. There was something mythical about the pond’s presence there in the middle of the field, like the entrance to another world. The fringes of the pond: the overgrowth and the brambles, the thorns and the mud. The still surface of the water: an expanse without breakage that held the unknown beneath a single sheet of water molecules bound one to another by the nature of things known. The glowing surface, holding the light of the moon, was a threshold to something holy. Beneath was a finality that was eternal: a negation of existence, a perfect void of possibility.
Derek pulled back the hanging branches that edged the pond. The day his father died was a nice day, although it rained that evening. The rain washed away some of the blood on the front stoop. It’s been six months since then. In six months, his family had stopped functioning: his mother, depressed and drunk, his sister, alone and sad. And he?… He took a step into the pond, breaking the threshold, sending himself into part of the unknown. The murky water swirled around his sneakers. He took another step forward, the water saturated his jeans as it rose to his knee. He could feel nothing beneath the plane. He went in up to his thighs, then his waist. He held his hands at the waterline, skimming the rippling surface, fingering the shimmering reflection of the moon, playing with the possibilities that lie beneath the water’s surface. He went in up to his chest, exhaling cold, broken vapors. What a mess, he thought. What a damn mess it is up here. He inhaled the living air and slid forward, mind absorbed without question beneath the rippling plane of black-moon water. The soft waves flowed outward from his body, lapping against the black mud shore, licking against the brambles and thorns, throwing water over silty sands. The moon shone on his back, slid beneath the pond, and cut dancing shards of light through the darkness below. His mouth gaped open. He released the living air into the mystery beneath. He screamed until he heard nothing. He screamed until the ghosts died on the shore. But inside of him, a cattail burned with a heat that he could not unknow.
IX
He climbed out of the pond, his heavy clothes drenched with the reek of pond mud, his lungs spitting up earthy water. He dropped his head and tucked his chin to keep the cattail warmth from vaporizing into the autumn air, swirling like holy wreaths crowning his head. He reached the bridge. He heard two wooden steps fall in front of him, and looking up, a moon licked image of Janey stood in the middle of the bridge. Janey’s lower lip jutted out, and she stood as if bearing weight across her back.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come with you…” she said. “I’m so sorry I didn’t come with you.” Her hands were clasped in front of her, her feet together.
“It’s ok Janey.”
He walked toward her and pulled her close. The cattail warmth spun up through the collar of his coat.
“Did you go in the pond?” the girl asked. She let out a faint chuckle that held no laughter.
“Yeah, I did. But everything will be ok. Sometimes everything is just a damn mess.”
“I know.” She said. “But we’ll be ok. Everything will be alright.”
They turned and began to walk home. Janey stopped and looked back across the field to the pond.
“You know what I just remembered?” she asked. “I did hang out here sometimes with Dad. We used to light cattails like torches down near the pond. That was fun.”
“Yeah, I remember that too. I remember doing that too.”
The house wasn’t quite silent, but it was as if only one sound could inhabit the space at a time. One sound took all sounds willingly within it: absorbing the others, domesticating them, and amplifying them. And when it was done, a new sound became known: a mother’s drink slowed gasp, the drop-puddling of pond water from coldwet clothes, the rustle of detergent hardened towels bundled about him. Even from a distance, you can feel the heat of a cattail flame. Even the sounds of brokenness are only love disguised, conspiring for the chance to be known.
