The Year We Left Home (27 page)

“Move it,” their mother said, going into the kitchen again.

Half an hour later the three of them were in the car. Marcie sat up front and Matt had the backseat to himself. He slouched down and watched roofs and treetops slide past the windows. Church was boring. God was boring. God was like everybody’s parent. He figured he was probably going to hell, not because he’d done anything too bad, but because of his private, ugly thoughts.

“Mom?”

“What?”

“How come all the Norwegians are Lutherans?”

She sighed, as she did whenever he asked a question, as if all his questions were designed to test and aggravate her. “I don’t know, they just are. Like all the Irish are Catholic.”

“Not all of them. Some of them are Protestants, they fight about it.”

“You shouldn’t ask things you already know the answer to,” she said, her attention given to something in the roadway.

“I don’t. Dad’s not Norwegian. So we’re only half.”

“You’re Norwegian enough to go to church,” his mother pronounced, and Matt settled back into his slump. He wished he was all one thing or the other.

They parked and joined the stream of other people moving toward the front doors. Matt dawdled behind his mother and sister. At least his dad wasn’t here. Then they would have been the complete dork family. Church wouldn’t be half as bad if you didn’t have to dress up
for it. He hated the strangling tie he wore, and the shoes that required polishing, and his mother telling him to comb his hair, what was he
thinking
? His mother was all done up in a way that turned her into a separate creature who smelled powerfully of perfume, whose made-up face was all eyebrows, and who stalked along on high heels. Even Marcie looked weird. Her church clothes were from a store their mom liked that specialized in bright pinks and turquoises and purples, like cheap stuffed animals.

Scanning the parking lot, he caught sight of a friend. “Mom? Can I sit with Josh and his family?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I say so,” came back the unsatisfactory answer.

The organ was playing as they took their seats, too far up front for Matt’s liking. It was better when the church was crowded and they had to sit in the balcony, where you could at least look down on people and imagine yourself parachuting on top of them. Today there would be no way not to look at the minister right in front of them, and no way to fold the program into a fan or airplane without people noticing, nothing you could do to keep from being eaten up and digested by boredom.

The organ changed its note and everybody stood as the choir marched in, singing in their stagy, loud voices. He didn’t know why they weren’t all embarrassed. Everything about church was profoundly embarrassing to him, as if religion was something that only took place in the most unnatural circumstances.

The organ played its final chord and the congregation’s reedy singing trailed off. At a sign from the pastor, they sat down again. Matthew studied the program to see how many more times they got to stand up. During the long stretches of sitting he went through a complicated, furtive calesthenics designed to keep one leg or another from falling asleep.

He shut out the minister’s voice as best he could. The minister was a dramatic speaker, given to pauses, whispers, and thundering
crescendos of emotion that you knew he wrote out ahead of time and practiced, probably in the shower. It was all a big fake act. Nobody got as excited about anything as the preacher did, every week, on cue.

A hurricane at least was something real, and although he had not been there, he was able to imagine it as if he had, as if he were on a ship in the ocean with the storm building, and sheets of rain washing over the decks, as if he was one of the rescuers on the beach, making one last desperate effort to reach the injured and the stranded.

But the minister was talking about the hurricane also. That was weird; Matt looked around him, as if he’d been talking out loud and people were laughing at him. The minister asked the congregation to pray for those who had suffered losses in that terrible storm. The usual minister talk. Matt relaxed again.

The minister figured he’d latched onto a good thing and so they got a whole sermon full of hurricane. Life was full of powerful storms. They could blow us off course. Faith was our compass, Jesus was our anchor, heaven our safe harbor. The minister could make even a hurricane boring.

Because, see, our souls were a boat and life was the sea. This was our home port, right here, our church, our community, our family. He made it sound like a board game, the kind they brought out after dinner at one of Matt’s relatives’ houses, relatives who never let you watch anything good on television.

It didn’t sound like much of a life, going straight from here to heaven.

Finally the service was over and he stood up, waiting his turn to file out of the pew and inch along in the herd of dressed-up people until he got himself out of the sanctuary and the reach of the creepy organ music and out the front doors into the open air. Josh was at the bottom of the steps kicking at a loose brick in the walkway. They were laid out in a crisscross pattern that was supposed to be fancy, but over time the ground’s freezing and thawing had heaved them up. The church was trying to raise money to have them replaced.

“I’m getting a Game Boy,” Josh informed him.

“No way.”

“Way.”

Matt took a turn at trying to dislodge the loose brick. His mother and Marcie were still inside somewhere. His mother liked to gab with people after church. Josh said, “Uh-oh, here comes Tolliver. What a skank.”

“A skank ho,” Matt agreed.

They watched the blond girl with the ends of her hair crimped by a curling iron. She came down the steps with her parents and made a point of ignoring them.

Matt’s mother came out then, searching for him. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“It doesn’t look like nothing to me. What if somebody trips over that and hurts themselves, then how are you going to feel?”

Matt shrugged. You weren’t meant to answer. Josh sidled off to find his own parents.

Back home his mother fixed Sunday dinner, which was supposed to be some kind of a special treat but usually turned out to be one of her bad ideas, like today’s ham-and-potato casserole. It had some kind of white glop all over it that was so thick, your fork could practically stand up in it. Marcie said it was making her sick to her stomach. Their mother said to finish what was on her plate and drink her milk and Marcie said she had to go to the bathroom and could she be excused please? On her way out of the room she made a secret, triumphant face at her brother, who wished he’d thought of the bathroom idea himself.

His father was scraping the white sauce off a piece of ham. His mother watched this, then said maybe from now on she should just pick up something from Kentucky Fried Chicken after church and see if that would suit them. She made it sound like something they would want to talk her out of.

His mother said, “My classes start tomorrow, so you’re going to have to order a pizza for dinner.” She was taking community college
classes in English and history. It was weird to think of his mother doing homework.

His father said, “I don’t get it, why you want to go back to school, what’s the point? You going to get a job or something?” He winked at Matt.

“I might want to do just that,” his mother said. “Or I might want to get out of the house once in a while and have an intelligent conversation with other adults.”

“I don’t remember you being this big-time scholar. You didn’t ever crack a book if you could help it. You used to say those people were too smart for their own good.”

“I guess I used to think you were a lot smarter too.”

“Can I be excused?” Matt asked.

After dinner he took his basketball out to the driveway and practiced his layups. Dribble right-handed, plant left foot. Head up, eyes on the backboard. Drive through any defenders, shoot right-handed, elevate right knee. He scores and he’s fouled! A chance for the three-point play!

He was hoping that maybe Josh would come by on his bike, or somebody else he knew. Instead his dad came out of the house. “Hey tough guy, how about some one-on-one?”

Matt muttered that he was just messing around.

His dad took a stance between Matt and the basket. “Let’s see what you got.”

“Dad.”

“Whatsamatter, afraid to try? Huh?” His dad put his arms out and shifted his weight from side to side. He looked more like a wrestler than a ballplayer. Whenever Matt went up against his dad, his dad just reached out and clobbered him, smothered him with his weight. It wasn’t any kind of a game.

Matt backed up to midcourt to draw his dad out. His dad would be expecting him to fake left and go right. Instead he went straight for the basket, pulled up, took the shot, missed, followed it, grabbed his own rebound on the baseline and came back out again.

“Hah!” his dad said. He was winded and his face was sweaty. He
wasn’t used to much running. He’d probably had a couple of drinks after dinner too. “Sneaky guy. Let’s see you hit something.”

“I don’t feel like playing.”

“Bawk bawk bawk.” Chicken noises. His dad was always wanting to arm wrestle with him, or race him, or beat him at some stupid game. Sometimes it was fun and sometimes it was creepy.

“Half-court,” said his dad. “Play to twenty-one.”

It started off pretty even. His dad was a lot taller than he was, but Matt was quicker. He got off a couple of shots and made one, then his dad got the ball and sank one of his famous belly-floppers, where he just about ran to the basket and heaved the ball in. Matt called traveling but it never did any good.

“I don’t want to play if you’re not going to follow the rules.”

“Aw, whatasa matter wid da widdle baby? Did somebody steal his ball?”

That pissed Matt off and he started to play in earnest. He scored on a reverse layup, leaving his dad flat-footed at the head of the drive. Then they fought for a rebound and his dad got it but couldn’t hang on to it and Matt scrambled and came up with it and tipped it in.

“Up by two,” Matt called out, but now his dad was really red in the face and really mad, though he was trying not to show it. His dad got the ball and cleared out with his elbows. Matt planted himself right under the basket. His dad was so slow, everything he did took about five minutes. When his dad went up for his shot, Matt did too, but his dad leaned in and came down right on top of him and Matt caught an elbow under the chin and went down hard.

“You OK?” his dad asked.

His mouth was bleeding where his teeth had jammed into his upper lip. His tailbone hurt. His dad put a hand out to help him up. “Come on, let’s have a look.”

Matt rolled onto his knees and got up from there. “Leave me alone.”

His dad bounced the ball against the drive. “What, you quitting? You quitting because you got hurt?”

“Fuck you.”

“WHAT DID YOU SAY TO ME?”

Matt turned his back on him and headed into the garage. His father’s hand fell on his shoulder. “GET BACK OUT HERE, MISTER.”

He swatted the hand away. His heart was going so hard he felt light-headed. There was no way to unsay it. All he could do was to keep disobeying. He went around his mother’s car so as to keep it between him and his dad. His dad cursed too, but in a lower voice, something Matt couldn’t make out. Matt ran into the house, into the kitchen.

His mother was running water in the sink. “Matt? What happened?”

His dad shoved the back door open and it cracked against the wall behind it. “DON’T YOU WALK AWAY FROM ME WHEN I’M TALKING TO YOU. YOU WANT TO TELL YOUR MOTHER WHAT YOU SAID?”

“Will you stop shouting? What did you do to him?”

“Yeah, that’s right, run and hide behind your mommy,” his dad said, and now he was mad about not being allowed to be as mad as he wanted to be. His face was all twisted up and purple.

“He’s bleeding! Matt, let me see that.”

Matt put his hand to his mouth and shook his head. He didn’t want her near him either.

His mother wheeled around to face his dad. “Why can’t you just leave him alone?”

“Go ahead, treat him like a baby.” His dad looked for something to hit or kick. He upended two of the kitchen chairs and sent them skidding across the floor.

“Now who’s acting like a baby.”

“Get out of my way!”

“Matt,” his mother said, “go to the phone in the den and call the police.”

“Go ahead, call them. Tell ’em you lost a ball game.”

His mother said, “Matt, I want to apologize to you for not finding you a better father.”

His dad sat down in one of the chairs he hadn’t thrown and put his
head on the table with his arms around it. He made a horrible squealing sound that was crying.

Matt and his mother looked at each other. His mother said, “How about if the two of you apologize to each other for whatever it was?”

Matt didn’t want to. But he said, “I’m sorry, Dad. I was just upset.”

“All I ever wanted was a little respect.” His dad was still crying. It was awful.

“I do respect you, Dad.”

His mother said, “One of these days he’s going to be bigger and stronger than you are, and he’s going to be the one knocking you around. Matt, let me get you some ice for that.”

“I don’t need any.”

“Come on,” she said in her coaxing tone, and he shook his head because it was true, she wanted to make a baby out of him.

His dad raised his head. His eyes were red and weepy, but he’d recovered his voice. “Do what your mother says.”

His mother put some ice in a plastic bag and wrapped the bag in a dish towel and told him to keep it on the cut. She asked if he wanted anything else and he said a Coke, and she poured one out in a glass for him. He wasn’t the one who’d been crying, but his face was hot and his stomach hurt as if he had.

“Now,” his mother said. “Let’s all just calm down and try and be considerate of each other.”

His father took a paper napkin from the holder on the table and blew his nose. “I’m taking down that goddamn basketball hoop.”