A home at the end of the world (35 page)

“Clare, what’s up? What’s got into you?”

I held the baby. I said, “Nothing. Never mind. I’m just a good old crazy thing.”

I carried Rebecca out the door, and Bobby followed me to the car. As I strapped Rebecca into her car seat she began fussing and whimpering. Eventually the motion of the car would lull her but for a while she’d be inconsolable. I braced myself for her wails.

“Bye, boys,” I said.

“No,” Rebecca said from her car seat. “No, no, no, no, no.”

They both kissed me, told me to drive carefully. They kissed Rebecca. Their attentions were all it took to push her over the edge. She opened her mouth, nearly gagging on a howl she’d been building up to since breakfast.

“Bye, Miss Rebecca,” Jonathan said through the window. “Oh, we love you even if you are sporadically monstrous. Have fun with your horrible grandmother.”

“Take care of yourselves,” I said. I backed the car out of the drive. I waved, and the boys waved back. They stood close together, in front of the dilapidated house. As I pulled away, Jonathan suddenly came running toward the car. I thought for a moment he had something to tell me, but then I realized he was only going to run alongside for a few yards, foolish and faithful as a dog. I drove on. He caught up and briefly kept pace, blowing kisses. I waved again, one last time. Before I reached the turn I looked in the rearview mirror and saw both of them. Jonathan and Bobby, standing in the middle of the road. They looked like a pair of beatniks, sloppily dressed in a remote, unimportant place. In their sunglasses and T-shirts and unruly hair they looked like they were standing at the brink of the old cycle: the 1960s about to explode around them, a long storm of love and rage and thwarted expectations. Bobby put his arm over Jonathan’s shoulder. They both waved.

The road was silver in the morning sun. It was a perfect day for traveling. Rebecca kept up her wails in the back seat. Miles ticked away under the wheels. I knew our lives wouldn’t be easy. I pictured us together in San Francisco or Seattle, moving into an apartment where strangers argued on the other side of the wall. I’d push her stroller down unfamiliar streets, looking for the grocery store. She wouldn’t think of our lives as odd—not until she got older, and began to realize that other girls lived differently. Then she’d start hating me for being alone, for being old and eccentric, for having failed to raise her with a back yard and a rec room and a father. For a moment, I thought of turning back. The impulse passed through me, and if I’d been able to make a U-turn I might have done it. But we were on a straight stretch of highway. I followed the double yellow line until the impulse was absorbed by gathering distance. I kept my hands on the wheel, and didn’t think of anything but the next mile and the next. I glanced back at Rebecca. She was finally calming with the motion of the car. Before she went under, she looked at me balefully, her nose running and her cotton hat askew, and said one word. She said, “Mommy.” She pronounced it with a distinct edge of despair.

“Someday you’ll thank me, sweetie,” I said. “Or maybe you won’t.”

Now I’m alone with this. This love. The love that cuts like an X-ray, that has no true element of kindness or mercy.

Forgive me, boys. I seem to have gotten what I wanted, after all. A baby of my own, a direction to drive in. The house and restaurant may not be much to offer in trade but that’s what I’ve got to give you.

I turned off the highway and headed west.

BOBBY

T
HE MOON
is following us, a white crescent in a powdery blue sky. We are driving home from the grocery store: Erich, Jonathan, and me. Erich these days is a slippery presence. He comes and goes. If I wasn’t driving I might hold him to keep him from floating out of the car. Instead, I say to Jonathan, “How’s he doing back there?”

Jonathan looks into the back seat. “You okay, Erich?” he asks.

Erich doesn’t answer. He is suffering a fit of absence. Who knows what he hears? “I think he’s okay,” Jonathan tells me. I nod and drive on. Farms pass on either side of the road. Cows go about their ordinary business, steady as history itself.

At the house we help Erich out of the car, guide him up the porch stairs. He smiles with the confused beatitude of the ancient. He could be pleased that we’re home again. He could be remembering a toy given him when he was four. We put the groceries away in the kitchen.

“How about a bath?” I say.

“Do you think he needs one?” Jonathan asks.

“I think he’d like one,” I answer.

We guide him upstairs, start the bathwater. Steam puts a sparkle on the chipped white tile. While we wait for the tub to fill we help Erich off with his clothes. He neither resists nor participates. His face takes on its boggled look, something different from expressionless. When he loses track of himself he drifts into this look of mute incomprehension, as if he can’t quite believe the emptiness he sees. It is astonishment divorced from dread and wonder. It is nothing like a newborn’s face.

When he’s naked we sit him down on the toilet lid. The tub fills slowly. Erich sits with quiet obedience, hands hung limp between the stalks of his thighs. Jonathan reaches over and touches his hair.

“I’m going to put some music on,” I say.

“Okay.” Jonathan stays beside Erich, supporting his shoulder bones with one hand. With the other he keeps administering ginger, comforting little swipes at Erich’s hair.

I turn on the radio in the bedroom. It is tuned to an oldies station, the music of our childhood. Right now, Van Morrison sings “Madame George.” I turn the volume up so it will carry into the bathroom.

When I get back Jonathan says, “This is a great song. This has always been one of my favorites.”

“Care to dance?” I ask him.

He looks at me uncertainly, wondering if I’m making a joke.

“Come on,” I say, and I hold my arms out. “Erich won’t fall. Will you, Erich?”

Erich stares in the direction of his own bare feet. Cautiously, Jonathan pulls his hands away. Erich does not tip over. After a moment Jonathan walks into my arms and we do a waltz. Our shoes clop on the bare tiles. I can feel the agitation of Jonathan’s continuing life. It quivers along his skin like a network of plucked wires. I run my hand up and down the buttons of his spine. Van sings, “Say goodbye to Madame George. Dry your eyes for Madame George.”

“Bobby?” Jonathan says.

“Uh-huh?”

“Oh, never mind. I was going to say something stupid like ‘I’m scared,’ but of course I am. We all are.”

“Well, yes. I mean, I guess we are.”

We dance to the end of the song. I would like to say that Erich smiles, or nods his head in rhythm. It would be good to think he joins us in that small way. But he is lost in his own mystery, staring into a hole that keeps opening and opening. When we’re through dancing we help him up, and lower him into the bath. Together, we scrub his head and his skinny neck. We wash the hollow of his chest, and the deep sockets under his arms. Briefly, he smiles. At the sensation of bathing, or at something more private than that.

After his bath, we put him to bed. It’s late afternoon. Jonathan says, “I’ll buzz down to the restaurant and do the reordering, all right?” I tell him I’ll replace the missing shingles.

We go about our errands. It’s a normal afternoon, steaming along toward evening. Jonathan drives to town, I prop the ladder against the house and climb up with an armload of new cedar shingles. They will look raw and yellow against the old coffee-colored ones. The old shingles, strewn with pine needles, are crisp and splintery under my hands and feet.

From the roof I can see a distance. I can see our small holdings, and the fields and mountains beyond. I can see a red convertible gliding past. In the grass near the porch lies a toy of Rebecca’s, a doll named Baby Lou. It lies grinning with stony rapture at the sky. I can’t believe Clare forgot to pack it.

I pass through a moment of panic. I know Clare and Rebecca aren’t coming back. I’d have said something before they left but I couldn’t risk it—what if Jonathan had decided to go along? I can’t let the house break up. It’s taken too long to build. Jonathan and I belong here, together. Clare has taken Rebecca to the world of the living—its noise and surprises, its risk of disappointment. She’s probably right to have done that. It’s where Rebecca should be. We here are in the other world, a quieter place, more prone to forgiveness. I followed my brother into this world and I’ve never left it, not really.

I have work to do. I have a roof to fix.

The panic passes.

Rebecca will be back someday, and the house will be waiting for her. It’s hers. It isn’t much—a termite-gnawed frame building remade in small pieces, with the work of inexperienced hands. It isn’t much but it stands now and will still stand when she’s twenty. Now, right now, I can see her. It’s as clear as a window opened onto the future. What I see is a woman with light brown hair, no beauty by the world’s standards but the owner of a sly grace and a steadfast, unapologetic way of filling her skin. I can see her come to stand on the porch of a house she’s inherited. A house she never asked for, a house she can’t quite think what to do with. I can see her there, standing in a winter coat, breathing bright steam into the brilliant air. That’s all I see. It’s not a significant vision. But I see her with surprising clarity. I see her boots on the floorboards, and the winter crackle of her hair. I see the way her jaw cleaves the frigid light as she stands before this unwanted gift. I touch my own jaw. I kneel there, on the roof, feeling the plain creaturely jut of my lower skull. Time is passing, and I get to work. The hammer makes a metallic, steady kind of music that shivers up and down the framework of this house. I hammer one shingle into place. I hammer another.

Late that night, Jonathan wakes me by touching my hair. I open my eyes and see his face, bright in the bedroom darkness, so close his breathing tickles my cheek. He puts a finger to his lips, and beckons. I follow him out into the hall. The dots on his boxer shorts swim in the darkness. He is wearing only the shorts; I am in Jockeys and an undershirt. He beckons again and I follow him downstairs. Shadows cling to the complications of his back.

In the living room he says, “Sorry to wake you up like this. But there’s a job I need your help with.”

I ask what kind of job needs doing at midnight. By way of answering, he picks an object up off the table beside the sofa. I take a moment to focus—it’s the box with Ned’s ashes in it. Holding the box in both hands, he goes to the front door.

“Come on,” he says.

We walk out onto the porch and stop at the rail, looking into the deep black like two passengers on an ocean liner. On moonless nights this house could be afloat; it could be sailing through space. All that offers itself from the surrounding night is a starfield and the restlessness of trees.

Jonathan says, “I’ve changed my mind about waiting to scatter these. It’s suddenly occurred to me that this is as good a place as any.”

“You mean you want to drop Ned’s ashes now? Right here?”

“Mm-hm. I want us both to do it.”

“Um, don’t you think Alice would want to be here, too? I mean, shouldn’t we have some kind of ceremony?”

“Nope. Mom will be glad to hear I’ve taken care of it. She’s not much for ceremonies these days.”

“Well,” I say.

“Let’s go.” He steps down off the porch, and I go with him. Walking onto the grass is like stepping off into space proper. I move with a light-headed, space-walk feeling.

“Jon,” I say. “Jonny, maybe we should wait to do this. I mean, don’t you think you’ll be sorry you didn’t plan something?”

“If you don’t want to, I’ll do it myself,” he says. He walks several paces toward the road, which is a dull silver stain on the darkness. Tree frogs put out their clicks and groans. The Seven Sisters pulse overhead in a small clustered storm of stars. I follow him. As we cross the road I am reminded of myself in childhood, following my brother into the cemetery to celebrate our heroic future together. Jonathan moves with a determination that is both ritualistic and slightly crazed. He is wearing only those polka-dot boxers as galaxies explode overhead.

An empty alfalfa field stretches beyond the road. Alfalfa brushes and sighs against our bare legs. Although I know from daylight that this field ends in brush and an abandoned shed, all I can see at this moment is an ocean of alfalfa. As we walk Jonathan says, “I just realized how ludicrous it is to hold on to my father’s ashes until I find some sort of perfect home for them. I’ve decided this is a perfect place. This field right here. I don’t even know who owns it, do you?”

“No.”

“Oh, Bobby. I wanted to be part of something that wasn’t dying.”

“You are.”

“No I’m not. I thought I was, but really, I’m not.”

“Jon,” I say. “Jonny.”

He waits, but I can’t tell him. I can’t tell him what I know—we both have devotions outside the world of the living. It’s what separates us from Clare, and from other people. It’s what’s held us together as the ordinary run of circumstance has said we should grow up and part.

After a while he says, “So I think it’s time to get rid of these. Right now. Here. This seems like a good enough spot.”

We are so far into the field that the darkness has closed behind us, blotting out the road and house. All we can see is alfalfa. Crickets make their racket and mosquitoes swarm around our heads, unable to believe their luck. We stand there in a starry, buzzing darkness complete as the end of the world.

“The lid’s a little tricky,” he says. “Just a minute. There.”

He sets the box on the ground. “This is hard to believe,” he says. “My father used to carry me on his shoulders. He once tickled me until I peed in my pants. I still remember how bad he felt. And embarrassed. And a little indignant.”

“Do you want to, like, say a few words?” I ask.

“Oh, I guess I’ve already said them. Listen, will you reach in at the same time I do?”

“Okay. If you want me to.”

We both bend over. “I’m going to count to three,” he says. “One, two, three.”

We reach in. There’s a plastic bag inside the box, and we work our hands through the plastic. Ned’s ashes have a velvet, suety feel. They are studded with chips of bone. When we touch them, Jonathan draws in a breath.

“Oh,” he says. “Okay. I think that was the worst part. Have you got some?”

“Uh-huh.”

We stand with handfuls of ash and bone. “She was right,” he says. “It really isn’t much more of him than a pair of his old shoes. Okay. Here goes.”

In silence, we sift the ashes into the field. We walk small circles, distributing. It’s too dark to see them fall. They disappear from our hands. If they make any sound it’s drowned out by the insects and the rustle of alfalfa.

We go back to the box again and again. We don’t speak until the ashes are gone.

“All right,” Jonathan says. “Dad, I got this far. This was the best I could do.”

He picks up the box and we head into the area of darkness where we think the house must lie. We’ve lost our bearings scattering the ashes, and we miss the house by some distance. We must walk along the road for nearly a quarter mile. We give a passing Volvo something to wonder about—two men walking a country road in their underwear, holding an empty box.

“Bobby?” Jonathan says.

“Yeah?”

“You know why I decided to do this all of a sudden?”

“No.”

“After Clare and Rebecca left I started thinking about how I didn’t want them to come back to Erich doing so badly upstairs and my father’s ashes sitting on a shelf in the living room. It suddenly seemed like too much death in the house. That’s when I decided to put the ashes out to pasture. I mean, what was I saving them for?”

“Well, nothing, I guess.”

“I want to paint Rebecca’s room,” he says. “It’s too dingy in there. What if we picked up some paint tomorrow, after work? Something gaudy that she’ll be nuts about, like bright pink. Nobody told me a baby would have such bad taste.”

I can hear his breathing. What there is of starlight shines gray and faltering on his bare skin. We walk for several minutes in silence.

“Listen,” he says.

“Uh-huh.”

“If something happens to me, this will be an all right place to put my ashes, too. If and when the time comes, I want you to tell my mother that. Tell her I had a last request, and this was it. God, if my father and I both end up strewn around here, where will my mother go when she dies?”

“She could come here, too.”

“Well, she’s always getting dragged someplace she doesn’t want to go. Why should things be any different after she’s dead, right?”

“Right. I mean, I guess so. This is where we all belong now.”

“What if that were true?” he says. “Wouldn’t it be something?”

We don’t talk anymore. There is too much to say. We travel the last short distance, invisibly watched by night animals. It is like a dream, one of those childhood dreams of public embarrassment, to be walking on a public road in my frayed underwear. But, in this particular dream, I feel no embarrassment. I’m just here, undressed on a country road, with a dark wind blowing around me. Ned’s ashes are mingling with the ground in a miniature world of ants and armored, lumbering beetles. Erich sleeps his skimming sleep, intricately lit by dreams. There is a beauty in the world, though it’s harsher than we ever expect it to be. It’s as unlike the autumn farm on my family’s dining-room wall as a bone is unlike a man or a woman. Somewhere on this continent Clare and Rebecca are sleeping, in a motel or a friend’s living room. As the blue silhouette of the house appears ahead of us I remember that home is also a place to escape. This is ours; we have it to run from and we have it to return to.