Call Me Home (11 page)

It was a Saturday afternoon, and she had been driving the rain-slick road through town when she'd spotted Randy. He was wearing a man's black trench coat, and his hair was matted to his forehead so he looked like an ancient friar, a penitent shuffling through the ditch. She pulled the car over. “Randy!” she called, and he turned slowly and squinted, then shuffled slowly toward her.

“Hey, Mrs. Holland,” he said.

“Cut the shit,” she said. “You want a ride?”

Randy grinned and got in the car, shaking like a dog.

“Where are you going?” she asked. “Home?”

Randy nodded. He held up a paper bag. “I got a new game.” He grinned. Adolescence was dealing Randy and Jackson strikingly different hands. Jackson was more beautiful than he'd ever been before or since. There was an angel cast to him, otherworldly, his skin like pearls over a scaffolding of fine bone, saucer eyes.
He'd stretched out, but not filled out; he had no acne, and his hair was downy and brown, ruffled in a way that she had coveted back in Fannin, and she knew full well the girls at Marysville-Pilchuck ached for now. But while Jackson had stretched delicately, Randy had lumped up like dough. There was rosacea on his cheeks and dirty-looking stubble on his chin. Looking at him in the passenger seat, she felt warm toward him, for all these things, and in spite of them.

“Is Jackson around this weekend?” he asked.

“He is,” she said. “He's been locked up in his room all day. I'll see if I can get him out of there.”

Randy laughed. “It's cool,” he said.

They settled into silence for a moment, and then she felt the question coming. She wanted to stop it but she didn't.

“Randy –” She caught his arm, looked at him. “He's gay, isn't he?”

Randy didn't look surprised. He blinked. “Jackson,” he said slowly, “doesn't really talk about it. But –” He smiled at her. It was a sweet, kind smile.

She felt such a deep relief – she had asked, and Randy knew. They both knew, and Randy had answered without answering. She had not been crazy, and nothing was terrible about it.

“He'll be fine,” Randy said. “He'll be better than the rest of us.”

It didn't mean anything, she thought. But she believed him.

She wanted to say something that Randy would take back to Jackson, something he could carry back like a present – your mother loves you, she wants you to know that, she loves you exactly as you are. But she knew that was useless. “Thanks, Randy,” she said, and smiled back at him.

When she dropped him off and the car was empty again, the road stretching slick and wet toward home, she felt warm and light. She did not let herself consider what might be hard for Jackson, what dangers there might be. Instead she thought to herself, again and again, He is my son, and I know him.

“
WELL, WHEN YOU
do want to talk about it,” the caseworker was saying, “my door is open. Meanwhile, you need to work on being kind to yourself. You need to work on you.”

Ha, she thought. She understood that there were patterns, that she had everything in common with the other women at the shelter. It was comforting and eerie to hear the other women sit in group and say things she would have never spoken aloud: “He knew where to hit me, so it wouldn't leave a mark. He wanted to move out of town, and then I was stranded there.” But when the caseworkers spoke to her she couldn't help feeling like it had nothing to do with her life.
Family violence
, the
cycle
, the
patterns
– no matter how many times they explained it and how much she understood, she still saw only Gary's face, his lopsided ear, the strange smile that nestled into the corner of his mouth when he was baiting her for a fight. Who could imagine what that was like? It was not possible for anyone to see the small, deep-set eyes that had tracked her,
hunted
her, she thought, that man who stayed a step ahead and would be a shadow that dogged her for the rest of her life. Stop, she wanted to tell the woman.
We're safe, just stop.

Instead, she said, “I think I need to go find Lydia,” and the woman gave her an empathic, tight-lipped smile. Amy felt a rush of anger and sweetness, a sudden need to cry. She left the room as soon as she could, and once she was in the hall she remembered a stack of paperwork she'd meant to take, but she only walked faster. She didn't want to look at the woman's face.

She walked quickly toward the back door to collect Lydia from the yard but stopped when she heard her daughter's voice. There were four bedrooms on this back hall, and the door to the first was ajar. The little boy, the one from the backyard, was unpacking a red leather suitcase, taking out his clothes and laying them in empty middle drawer of a cheap-looking dresser. Lydia was sitting cross-legged on the bed, picking at the rough wool blanket and watching him.

Amy stood outside the door, listening. “He takes us to the
lake,” the boy was saying. “Sometimes,” he says, “he can be really nice.”

“My dad is the devil,” Lydia said, and Amy felt an electric, snaking fear.

“Not,” said the boy.

“He is.”

“The devil has horns and a tail.”

“So? So does my dad.”

She thought about walking in but she stood there instead, a dark feeling in her.

“You lie.”

“He'd kill you. He'd kill anybody. Don't believe me if you don't want to, I don't care.”

Amy stepped out of the hall and into the room. Both of them looked up at her. The boy couldn't have been more than seven. His hair was damp on his forehead. His cheeks were flushed and he looked feverish. Lydia was scaring him. Lydia was scaring Amy. She'd hoped, all these long years, that she was shielding Lydia from the worst of Gary. He hadn't ever laid a hand on his daughter, Amy was sure of that, but she had been more and more terrified to leave Lydia alone with him. It's coming, she thought; how long until Lydia was no longer safe? And what did it do to a child, to see the things that Lydia had seen?

Amy cleared her throat and stepped into the doorway. Lydia and the little boy looked up. “Hi,” Amy said. She stepped between them and knelt in front of the boy, putting one hand on his arm. “What's your name?” she asked.

“Sam.”

“I love the name Sam,” she said. There was an ache in her chest. “Sam, Lydia is just joking with you. Do you know any good jokes?”

“Like a knock-knock joke?”

“Yes,” Amy said. “Like a knock-knock joke. Do you know any good ones?”

“No,” the boy said shyly. “I don't know any jokes.”

“Okay,” Amy said. “Here's one: Knock, knock.”

“Who's there?” the boy asked.

“Dwayne,” said Amy.

“Dwayne who?”

“Dwayne the bath! I'm dwowning!”

The boy laughed and Amy touched his head. “Sam,” she said, “do you want to go get a snack with us?” The boy nodded, and she led them all to the kitchen. She watched as Lydia took Sam's hand. She was so used to seeing Lydia as the young one, as a baby. Now, watching, she saw her daughter as suddenly older, as she would become. As she was – thirteen, a young thirteen, but still. Any minute now, she thought, Lydia will be grown up, and she will think of all of this. She will tell the story of this time, and of her father, and it will be her story. And what will she think of me? What, in her heart, will she think of the life I have given her?

When she thought of the years before Lydia, she remembered the steady rain, the vaulted ceiling of the forest behind the house. Jackson's hand in hers, pale and pink as the shells they slipped into their pockets, standing on the cold gray beach of the Sound. The house cold and damp or suffocatingly hot from the woodstove. The letters she'd written her mother for the first few years, sitting at the rickety kitchen table. They were ebullient, lavish with detail. A camping trip to central Oregon, to Bend, where they'd rented a motorbike, flying up over dirt hills with Jackson between them, and later she and Gary had made love on the edge of the river, her feet in the water, while Jackson slept in the tent.

They'd talked off and on about another baby. They'd stopped using any protection when Jackson was three, and it wasn't until two years later that she started to worry. It was only a small fear at first, a longing for a baby she hadn't known she wanted but who seemed more and more absent with each passing month. She pushed it away. Things were fine, she thought.

And then a night in February 1997. It was desolate, starless after a pewter-colored day, and they left Jackson with a babysitter to go out. “Come on,” Gary said. “When was the last time we just
went out and got drunk together? Before Jackie?” She felt guilty even so, imagining paying the babysitter who was just thirteen years old and already had a haughty little face, with boozy breath. “Ames,” Gary said. “We need to have a little fun.”

And he was right. She ordered stingers because supposedly they had been her father's favorite, and the drinks were strong and cheap, sloppy in big plastic cups. They ordered a pizza. They were less than eight miles from the house, down on Lake Goodwin, and it seemed novel that there was any place to go in the dark woods, as though someone had set the whole thing up for them and would tear it down when they left.

Sitting at a plastic table, chewing on the straw of her syrupy drink, she felt acutely aware of being happy in the moment. She was smoking her once-a-year cigarette and Gary was laughing, reaching across the table to touch her face and hands. It's not that she wasn't happy, usually – she had just been so tired, lately. Jackie was five now, almost six, and about to start school. He wanted to talk about everything, gravely, and she sometimes felt how close she was to the end of her knowledge, to being found out as someone who wasn't particularly smart, who had none of the answers he so baldly expected from her. And Gary had been tense. He was tired all the time from working, and days would go by when he didn't speak to her. She would watch him for signs of his moods and steer Jackson away from him. They needed this, she thought. A night for just the two of them, to remember what it felt like to have fun.

“You're beautiful, baby,” Gary said, pushing another drink at her. “Why don't you dance with me?”

The Lake Goodwin Bar & Grill was not a place that saw much dancing. There was a jukebox in one corner, though, and a decent amount of space between the tables and the bar. There were five or six other people, drinking and eating fried mushrooms and hamburgers out of plastic baskets. The waitress, big-assed in her tight jeans – for a minute Amy felt a little jealous of her, being so big like that and still sexy, and brave enough to dress that way – sat
and drank with two older men at the bar. “I can see your thoughts!” the waitress kept saying. “Look at that face. I can see just what you're thinking!” She pushed her chest up at him and laughed. Amy thought she was beautiful. Objectively, Amy was more attractive, but she had none of that casual sexiness to her. She drew her shoulders in like she was folding up wings, and her crooked tooth snagged her lip. Sometimes she imagined herself like a big fawning monster.

“Okay,” Amy said. “Let's dance.”

Someone had fed the jukebox with a long, loud line of music so different from what they had listened to in Texas – Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, these bands she was beginning to like because of the way they seemed to have grown right out of cold rock, rain, and pine. Gary swayed her between the tables; she shut her eyes and the jukebox kept picking up the discs and shuffling them to the next song. No matter what, it was worth it, she thought, to have gone, to be somewhere else, and to be dancing in a bar and to feel exactly where you were.

They were both drunk when they left the bar, but Gary handed her the keys. She felt certain she could drive. In the parking lot she could hear the music trailing out of the bar. She wanted to stay longer, but they were drunk and they'd promised the babysitter. She started the engine and pulled the car onto the dark road, watching the needle carefully, keeping her speed exactly where it should be.

Gary was quiet, and she thought that he must be resting. “Don't pass out on me,” she said. “You said you'd take Tina home.” Tina lived a mile down the dirt road, and Amy was fairly certain her parents had been driving her drunk since she was in utero. Still, she chided herself. Next time, she thought, not so many drinks.

Gary said nothing, and she reached over and squeezed his knee. “Gary?” she asked.

He cleared his throat. “I hope that never happens again, what happened at the Legion that night,” he said finally.

“Wait, what happened?” she asked. She thought he must
be talking about something he'd seen in the news. A local tragedy, some small-town shame.

“God, you hurt me that night,” he said. “I just started thinking about it. It still hurts.”

“What?” she asked. “Gary – what?”

But she knew what he was talking about. It had been a couple of nights before they left Texas for Washington, just before Christmas, and they'd gone to drink quarter beers at the American Legion. She was feeling a nagging loneliness, the anticipation of it, anyway, even in that cavernous building with its tacky murals of historic battles, flag-raising moments. All those soft-gutted, pock-faced boys she'd gone to school with. She'd kissed most of them at one point or another. Gary wasn't a Fannin boy and that was part of why she loved him, but for a minute she wished she'd gone to the Legion alone.