The Year We Left Home (36 page)

Blake’s dad said, “I’m wondering what the holdup is. You think we should just head downtown?”

If you had to ask the question in the first place, the answer was no. His dad seemed to realize this and sat down on the open tailgate. He said, “I saw on television where a rocket was going to take some dead people up in outer space. Their ashes. Shoot ’em out the window.”

“Yeah?” Blake hadn’t heard about that.

Matt stirred. “One of them’s Gene Roddenberry. The guy who created
Star Trek.
”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, really, he wanted to be buried in outer space. You know. The Final Frontier. He wanted to be part of it. It’s not so weird. Outer space is where people always thought heaven was. Or maybe they still do. You know another guy they’re taking up in the rocket? Timothy Leary. He invented LSD.”

“You’re kidding,” Blake said again.

“LSD,” his dad said. “I thought that was illegal.”

Matt, who had just said more than Blake had heard from him in about the last three years, seemed to be done talking. He sat down in one of the old dining-room chairs Torrie was taking with her and zipped his jacket closer around his neck.

Blake’s dad said, “You can’t count on anything to stay the same anymore, can you? Every time I read the paper or watch the news, I have to learn some brand-new thing.”

Blake didn’t know if that was all bad, but he kept this opinion to himself. His dad was in one of his moods and you pretty much had to give him the floor, so to speak.

“Even the wars nowadays. I don’t know where half those places are. They don’t even sound like real countries.”

“You got a point there, Dad.”

“Not that I recognize much about this country anymore. It’s been picked clean by thieves. Everybody out for their own selves. Look at what they did to the farmers. Let them try to eat money when they get hungry.”

“That was a while back, Dad.” Blake wished he’d stop with this line of talk. It probably wasn’t anything Matt needed to hear. There was no reason to stir all that up again. Sometimes he thought his dad forgot about things like that.

“Well we’re still dealing with the ruin of it. Look at downtown. Look at everybody’s downtown.”

“Give it a little time.”

“Then what’s left of America rots from the inside because people only think about their low-down pleasures. Hard work, sacrifice, discipline, who cares about any of that.”

“You make it sound like we’re all having way too much fun,” Blake said, trying to joke him out of it.

His dad shook his head. “You think a country can’t die off just like a flesh-and-blood creature? Talk to anybody from the Roman Empire lately?”

Blake had to say he was glad when Anita came out of the house just then. “Mom wants to know if you want lunch now or later.”

“Later,” Blake said, fast enough that nobody else had time to speak. If they sat down for lunch, it would add another hour.

Anita surveyed them with her hands on her hips. She was thin these days. She took yoga classes whenever she wasn’t busy telling everybody not to drink. “Mom wants somebody to talk to Torrie and tell her she can’t move until her phone gets put in.”

“Little late for that,” Blake remarked.

His mom came out then. “Oh, Matt! Why haven’t you come in to see me yet?”

“Hi Grandma.” Matt stood up and let her hug him. “I didn’t want to get in your way.” He was the oldest grandchild and he’d had more practice at it than anybody else.

“It’s not safe over there with no phone. If something happens, she couldn’t call.” His mom wasn’t about to let herself get distracted from the main event.

Blake said, “If something happens, she can stick her head out the window and holler at the police. They’re right down the block.”

“She can’t call us!”

“Why don’t you go out to the mall and get her a cell phone? If that would make you feel any better.”

His mom shook her head. “You know the kind of bills people run up on those things?”

“Audrey,” Blake’s dad said, “it’ll take her about ten minutes to walk back here. What are you so worried about anyway?”

His mom sat down in the same chair Matt had used. She was wearing her big brown winter coat even though the day had warmed up. “I don’t know why I bother. She won’t call us even when she has a phone.”

Nobody said anything to that. It was probably true.

Blake’s dad stood up from his seat on the tailgate. “What’s Torrie doing now?”

Anita said, “She locked herself in the bathroom and she won’t
answer when we try to talk to her. And that’s exactly the kind of behavior we ought to be worrying about.”

Blake was still standing in the bed of the truck. Something at the side of the house caught his eye. A window nudging open. Then a leg wearing blue jeans poked its way out, followed by his sister’s complete hindquarters. She balanced for a moment on her stomach, toes straining for the ground, then the rest of her slid out and landed with a wobble. She steadied herself, then crouched low and made a beeline for the back of the garage.

He hoped she’d unlocked the bathroom door before she left.

He said, “How about Matt and I run this load downtown, get some of the heavy stuff taken care of. Now come on, Mom, we’re not taking it all back into the house.”

“Come in and have some barbecue beef first,” his mom said. She didn’t give up easily. Her worrying was one of the great unharnessed forces in the universe.

“We’ll get something downtown.” Blake reached for his keys. Matt went around to the passenger side and got in. He was probably just as happy to get out as Torrie.

His mom and Anita were still yakking at them even once he started the engine and couldn’t hear them. Whatever it was, he waved and nodded, then pulled out of the drive and away.

They caught up with Torrie on the next block. She was stumping along with her usual energy. She wore a white sweatshirt she’d silk-screened with one of her photos. The photo was of a brick wall with what looked like bite marks taken out of it. She’d done it on a computer. While Blake hadn’t been paying attention, computers had taken over photography too.

Blake pulled up next to her and leaned out the window. “Hey, need a ride?”

Torrie grinned and shook her head. “Feels good to walk.” Her speech was so much better now

“You sure? OK, we’ll meet you there.” He waved and drove off. To
Matt he said, “You hungry? We could go to Sonic. Didn’t mean to drag you away from lunch.”

“Maybe later. I thought Aunt Torrie was back at the house.”

“Jailbreak.”

Matt looked like he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to laugh at that or not. Poor kid. Blake had always liked the guy, felt sorry for him. Growing up with Anita and Jeff for parents probably killed off your sense of humor. His own boy didn’t know how good he had it.

Matt reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a flat plastic case. “You want to listen to my band?”

“Your what? Band?”

“Yeah, we just made a CD.”

“You see anything that looks like a CD player in this truck?”

“Yeah, sorry. Forgot who I was talking to.”

“Smart guy.” Blake made the turn onto Main Street. The post office was closed on Saturday now but a few cars were parked down by the doughnut shop. The rain had washed them clean and their window glass sparkled. “A band, huh?” He guessed Anita and Jeff might not be crazy about the idea. “I didn’t know you were still playing music. I bet Torrie has a CD player. We can have us some tunes. This band have some weird-ass name?”

“Canned Rats.”

“Yup, that’s weird.” Blake found his cigarettes. Time for one more before they got started.

“It’s supposed to be something you remember.”

“How about, something you wish you could forget. Kidding.” Blake thought his nephew had the right kind of serious, miserable good looks for a musician. He bet a band was a great way to get girls.

“We got a spot on a tour. With some other bands.”

Blake pulled up in front of the bank building but kept the engine running. He wanted to finish his cigarette. If his nephew had more to say, here was his big chance. When Matt didn’t speak, Blake said, “So when is this tour?”

“It starts in August. We have some festival dates in Texas and Arizona. We think we can get one in LA too. I’m not going back to school after this year. I already decided. My folks don’t know yet.”

“Well, they won’t hear it from me.” He couldn’t imagine Anita and Jeff were going to be very happy about the news. They were the kind of people who talked about college as an investment. Matt was going to be money down the drain.

“There’s other things I want to do besides school.”

“Yeah, and don’t let anybody talk you out of them.”

Blake threw his cigarette butt out the window. Then he thought twice about it and decided he should pick it up. No reason to have trash out in front of the place. “What’s Arizona like?”

“Not bad. Hot, like you’d expect. But I kind of like that.”

“You’re lucky you can get out and see some of the world,” Blake said. It surprised him to realize he meant it. He’d never been much of anywhere. Minneapolis and back a few times. Trish had family there. One summer he and a couple of buddies had worked a firefighting crew in Montana. He’d do it again in a heartbeat if he ever thought he could get away from work. Time was money and he never had enough of either one. Plus he’d have to close his ears to all the female screaming that would greet his announcement of any such plan.

But wasn’t it also true (carrying the thought with him as he got out of the truck, bent to pick up his cigarette butt) that he’d settled into the life he’d wanted. He guessed he was just one of those old dogs who was happiest at home.

Sometimes, though, he wished he was a different breed of dog.

“Come on,” he said to Matt. “I’ll show you around the place.”

He unlocked the street door at one corner of the building. It led into an entry hall where a flight of stairs took you to Torrie’s place and another door gave access to the ground floor. Blake unlocked this also and they walked through the echoing space. Everything had been drywalled and a wood-laminate floor laid down. HVAC up and running, 220 service, a roughed-out space for restrooms with the piping already in place behind the walls. You could even put food-service equipment
in the very back if you wanted to. “Your Uncle Ryan’s thinking somebody might want to open a restaurant, coffee shop, something like that.” You could subdivide the space too, fit two or three smaller shops into it. The realtor had a big For Rent–Commercial sign in the window. Now everybody was waiting for the ball to get rolling.

“This turned out great.” Matt stood in the center of a pool of sunlight, taking it in. “It must have been a ton of work.”

“You got no idea.”

They climbed the stairs to Torrie’s apartment. Two big rooms. The one in front had the original windows, arched on top, practically floor to ceiling. Matt said, “I don’t expect our old curtains are going to end up in here.”

“Yeah, the light’s the best part, isn’t it.”

There was a bathroom in the hallway, and a galley kitchen in one corner of the front room. The back room was Torrie’s work space and studio, and she’d already organized it, put up worktables with her computer, her enlarger and silk-screen press, file drawers holding different kinds of paper, portfolios for her finished prints. A closet was fitted out as a darkroom. She really was a photographer. She always had been. She’d just needed a place where people could see it for themselves.

Some of her framed prints were already on the walls. He and Matt walked from one to the other, taking them in. Here was a fish, a trout, with all its beautiful dappled colors. Torrie must have found some way to take pictures underwater. The trout was swimming on a dinner plate. Bizarre.

“What do you make of this one?” he asked Matt.

“A fish out of water.”

“Huh.” He guessed that made sense.

There were faces that looked as if they’d been painted on glass, then the glass broken into shards and reassembled. Trees whose roots were visible underground. Landscapes Blake thought he recognized—farmhouses, woods—but with the curve of the earth so exaggerated, they seemed to be about to slide off. Black-and-white, most of them, but shot through with the colors Torrie had given them: orange, twilight blue, green, violet.

Matt said, “Hey, here’s one of you.”

Blake came and stood next to him. “Yeah, I’ve seen it. Not sure if it captures my natural beauty.”

Torrie had taken his picture while he worked on this very building. He had a board laid out on the sawhorses and was bending over it with the circle saw. Somehow she’d drawn in the grain of the wood, not just on the board, but extending onto his hands and bare arms, up his throat and covering his face with its lines and whorls.

Matt said, “This is pretty cool. It’s saying something about working. About your work becoming you.”

“If you say so, Professor. How about we start unloading the truck?” Blake wasn’t one of those people who looked at a thing and made something else entirely out of it.

The staircase had a turn that was tricky to negotiate, but once they got the bed frame and matresses up, that was the worst of it. Torrie arrived and carried some of the chairs and lamps herself and told them where she wanted the furniture. She unpacked the sheets and made up the bed and covered it with a sky blue quilt. There was a love seat upholstered in rose velvet that she must have rescued from somebody’s attic. It looked like something Blake could almost recollect from another room, another house. There was an oilcloth for the kitchen table with an old-fashioned pattern of flowers in baskets.

Blake wasn’t used to thinking of his sister as somebody who cared about the way she lived, somebody who decided things, even something as small as the color of a bedcovering. But here was the evidence all around him. The things she’d wanted, planned out, brought into being.

“So what do you think, Tor? You like the way it’s shaping up?”

“It’s great!” She grinned. They’d done a good job on her face, everybody said so, which meant you could get used to it. The way it separated above the one eye, and the eye itself, turned ever so slightly up and out, seeing its different pictures.