The Year We Left Home (6 page)

“He gets himself all worked up,” his mother said. “I’m afraid it’s going to take him a while to get used to your news. You could still switch back to business if you wanted, couldn’t you?”

“I don’t want to, Mom.”

“You weren’t getting bad grades, were you?”

“No, Mom.”

“Of course you weren’t. Ryan was always our little star student,” his mother said to Janine. “Well, Torrie too, she gets awfully good grades. But Ryan was, what, an eighth of a point away from being valedictorian.”

“Let’s just drop it, Mom.” He hated when she bragged about him, as if anything he’d done belonged to her.

“The government’s kind of a sore subject around here,” his mother went on, oblivious. “’Randy, that’s Mr. Erickson, is still upset about President Nixon. He thinks everybody who didn’t like Nixon in the first place ganged up on him.”

“There’s a sense in which that’s probably true,” Janine said.

Stop,
Ryan ordered her telepathically, but of course she wasn’t going to. She said, “I think everyone was just so hung up on getting even, that a lot of very ugly, unfortunate things happened.”

“That’s exactly what Randy says.”

“She doesn’t believe that,” Ryan told his mother.

“Now how do you know what I believe or not?” Janine was hitting her stride now, charming and mean. “You have to tell me more about Ryan when he was a little kid. Did he get into trouble a lot?”

“Oh no, Ry was my sweetheart. My little young man.” His mother
leaned over to pat him on the arm. He felt himself becoming large and immobile, like a piece of furniture. “I mean, there were all the usual boy things. I’m not saying he was an angel. Now don’t make that face. I’m your mother, I get to tell stories on you.”

“I never did anything.”

“I wouldn’t say that, mister.” His mother’s heavy jokiness. She was the one person he knew who was never actually funny, either on purpose or by accident.

“I meant, I never did anything that interesting.”

“Now why would you say that? All of you are interesting. And absolutely precious and special.”

He pushed his chair back from the table. “I’m going to show Janine around, OK?”

“I’m driving you away.” Her feelings were hurt, which she disguised by pretending to be hurt.

“No, Mom. I want to show her the house.”

His mother rallied and produced a laugh. “Just don’t be too critical. I always say, my interior decorators were four kids and three dogs.”

Ryan led Janine through the dining room, with its sideboard and ceremonial fancy plates, into the unused territory of the living room, where vacuum tracks still showed in the rug. “Sorry,” he said, once they were out of earshot.

“For what?”

“We should have driven straight through to Colorado.”

Janine was looking through the layers of gauzy curtains at the street outside. He didn’t know what else he was supposed to apologize for. She said, “Your mom’s a little speedy, isn’t she?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know. Uptight.”

He hadn’t thought about it. “I guess.”

“You should be nicer to her.”

He would have answered her, he wasn’t sure how, but just then Torrie walked out of the back hallway. “She’s gonna sleep in Anita’s old room,” she informed Ryan.

“Tor, it’s rude to say
she
when somebody’s standing right in front of you.”

“Sor-ry.” Torrie rolled her eyes. She seemed to have come into the room for the sole purpose of staring at them. “You screwed up about school.”

“Yeah, thanks for your support.”

“No prob. Why don’t you take me along with you? On your trip.”

“Let’s see. How many reasons can I think of not to.”

Janine said, “It’d be great if you came. We could make Ryan pitch the tents and chop all the firewood and cook for us.”

“Drive into town and get us munchies.”

“Catch fish and clean them.”

“Shoot bears and skin them.”

“You guys are tripping,” Ryan announced.

“Ooh, druggie talk.” Torrie tossed her hair and flounced off.

“She likes you,” Ryan said.

“Why don’t you show me the room, stud.”

He was glad she seemed to be in a better mood. If abusing him helped, he didn’t mind.

Anita’s queen bed had been pushed up against one wall to make room for a sewing machine and a stack of plastic storage tubs. Luggage filled the closet. Anita’s purple satin coverlet still presided over the bed, but without any of her other possessions—frothy curtains, posters, aggressively tended bulletin board—it looked frumpish and faded. Janine surveyed the room, found nothing to remark on, and asked, “So where are you?”

He led her down the hallway to what was still called the new part of the house, almost fifteen years after its construction, the L-wing with the den and the room where he and his brother had been segregated. “I don’t suppose my mom made Blake clean it up,” he said, without real hope.

The bed that was his had been cleared of its usual piles of books and papers, but the room still had its funky, inside-of-a-tennis-shoe smell, its wreckage of wadded clothes and
MAD
magazines and damp towels
and empty Coke cans and tennis rackets and museum-like boyhood relics: sports trophies and a cabin made of Lincoln Logs and books thought suitable for boys because of their active, adventurous themes and lack of female characters.

“Looks sort of like your room at school.”

“It does not.”

“Missing only a hash pipe.” She seemed to think this was funny.

The arching lines of her underpants were visible through the fabric of her dress when she leaned over to look at something. It was another hallucination-quality moment, having a real, fuckable girl here in this, the scene of so much beating off. He put a hand out, cupped one side of her ass.

“Don’t.” She stepped away, frowning.

“What?” he asked, genuinely surprised. She wasn’t a girl who said “don’t.”

“This isn’t the time or place.”

Nothing he could say to that. He just hoped that whatever she was pissed off about, she’d get over the notion that it was his fault.

She asked for the bathroom and he waited outside until the toilet flushed and she ran water in the sink and came out. “Now what?” she asked.

“Take a drive?”

Janine shook her head. “I’m tired of the car. Let’s sit outside or something.”

“And do what?” He was still mad at her big touch-me-not act. What was that all about?

She punched him in the arm. She was allowed to do whatever she wanted. “It’s just a beautiful day, dummy.”

The picnic table was under a tree that threw a little shade. They sat on opposite sides of it. “What are those pink flowers?” Janine asked.

“I don’t know, you’d have to ask my mom.”

“Not a guy thing, huh?” He muttered and shook his head. “What? Didn’t catch that. You know, your family’s exactly like I imagined them. Exactly like you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re like the blackbirds. The blondbirds.”

“Very funny.”

“They’re very nice. You always talk like they’re Norwegian hillbillies or something.”

“I do not.” She didn’t know anything about it.

“OK, you don’t. Sure.”

In the silence they heard a car rolling smoothly down the street beyond them, and, through an open window, a phone ringing. Janine was always the one who spoke first. She couldn’t ever let anything go. “What’s the matter with you anyway? You’re being kind of a jerk.”

“Me? You’re the one with the bug up your ass.”

“You’ve been acting like I’m some hitchhiker you just picked up.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He knew what she meant.

“Like you’re embarrassed I’m here.”

“Yeah, well you’ve been acting like you’re at the zoo or something. Like everybody walks the earth just so you can write one of your big-deal poems about them.”

He didn’t mean it, or he did, but he didn’t mean to say it,
poems,
who cared, and here was her face shoved too close to his, an angry mask, her eyes dark and staring, and if only they could lie down together, strip down to their naked selves without all the bullshit and even now he imagined himself putting his hands on her, drawing her in, making it
all right,
but that wasn’t going to happen because whatever she was about to say she stopped. “Here comes your dad,” she said, her voice flat.

Ryan looked over his shoulder and saw his father approaching from the garage, and whatever he’d been doing all this time he’d worked up a sweat that turned his face and forehead pink. “Need you to lend me a hand for a minute.”

Ryan got up from the picnic table and Janine said, for his father’s benefit, “Oh that’s all right, I’ll just wait for you,” and he followed his father back to the garage.

His father had been trying to get to a stack of extra aluminum
siding, but it was wedged in behind an old water heater, saved for unknown reasons, and now the two of them positioned themselves to grab hold of it. “Rock it forward,” his father instructed, and Ryan struggled to get some purchase on it. It felt like an iron lung. He lost his grip and the thing dropped to the cement floor with a grating screech.

“This is no good, Dad.”

“Little more and we got it.”

“No, look, let’s get a dolly and move it out to the curb and find somebody to haul it off.”

“Count of three.”

Ryan did his cursing silently. On “three” he put his back into it, budged the water heater maybe another foot, and straightened up, panting. “That better be enough.”

His father took a minute to get his wind back. “Hoo boy. She’s a pistol.”

“Why you want to keep this? You can’t even fit Mom’s car in the garage anymore.” His father’s Buick presided over the space reserved for cars, its high-luster finish the brown of a beetle’s shell. The car was eight years old and his father said it wasn’t even broken in yet.

“It’s a perfectly good water heater that somebody’s going to be glad to have someday.” His father bent to reach a length of siding and Ryan lifted the far end. “Like here I’ve got this extra siding and I can use it around the west side where the old stuff’s starting to peel.”

Never mind.
“You want me to help you get started?”

“How about we just move it out to where I need it. Too late to get going anyway. With supper and all.” By this he meant the occasion of company, and while he might not actually resent such company, it was understood that they got in the way of important home-repair projects.

Janine was gone when they came out with the siding, and Ryan was just as glad. She’d find something else to do with herself and have a chance to cool down. He’d say he was sorry, kiss her ass a little. By this time tomorrow they’d be in the mountains.

It took them a few trips with the siding, and then the infernal water heater had to get wedged back into its corner. His father reached for the overhead garage door, paused, and said, “Political what?”

It took Ryan a moment to shift gears. “Political science. It’s the study of how people are governed and how they govern themselves.” That sounded pretty limp-dick, so he said, “For instance, what do we mean when we say
freedom,
or
democracy,
or
justice
? Or, what makes the American system different than other systems?”

“What did they decide, on that last one?”

“We try to ensure that people who aren’t privileged still have equal citizenship.”

His father considered this. He seemed to be trying to decide if it was a good idea. “History. Like, the Declaration of Independence.”

“No, Dad. It’s how people live now too. Their place in the political system. Their, ah, equal participation.”

“Their
rights,
” his father said with satisfaction, bringing the garage door down, a rolling rolling thud.

Ryan followed his father inside, wondering when
rights
had become a swear word. He guessed that to his father, it conjured up guilty-as-sin criminals hiding behind the skirts of the law, and sniveling, do-nothing intellectuals mouthing slogans.

Janine and his mother sat at the kitchen table. Janine had a bowl of strawberries and whipped cream in front of her and was busy working on it. “I got hungry,” she said to Ryan, pausing with the spoon halfway to her mouth. “These are the best strawberries in the world, you should have some.”

“No thanks. Spoil my dinner.”

“Suit yourself.” She picked up the Reddi-wip can and squirted another puffy layer over the fruit. The trailing ends of her hair got into the whipped cream; she used her fingers to wipe it away.

His mother got up to rinse lettuce at the sink. “How did you two get so filthy? Don’t touch anything before you wash up.” She looked happy, the way she always did when she was feeding people.

Ryan and his father obediently headed off. At the bathroom door
his father said, “Well, if finicky eaters make poor lovers, I don’t know what you got here.”

He closed the door behind him. Ryan stood there a moment, then went out through the front door and used the garden hose to rinse himself off.

His sister Anita brought a casserole of chicken divan, the top covered with crimped aluminum foil. “This has to go in a 325-degree oven for twenty minutes,” she announced, setting it down on the countertop,
thunk,
using the heels of her hands so as not to break her fingernails. “Hi, Ry.” Then she pretended to be surprised to see Janine, even though she’d been told to expect her. It was a classic Anita move.

“Anita, this is Janine. Janine, my sister Anita.”

“Nice to meet you,” Anita said, and smiled. Ryan had seen that same smile on her before, that stretched and brilliant grimace. Keep Off The Grass, her smile said.

“Janine’s from Chicago,” their mother announced.

“Oh, really?” Anita was rummaging around in her purse. “Chicago,” she repeated, as if it was a place whose existence she doubted.