No Names, page 26
A week after getting back, I found a job. It’s two bus transfers then a long walk, so I had to get a car. Found a cheap beater, a ’78 Fury, in Spinnaker White (Daniel would dig the color’s maritime name). Think cop car. Think rust. I’ll give it a new paint job. It’ll be nice to paint again. If I’m recalling Plymouth’s colors from back then correctly, the Sunfire Yellow or Burgundy Poly would look good.
I searched for jobs you wouldn’t need a resume for. High school diploma, gas station attendant, punk rocker, shepherd, don’t exactly add up to career. I got one busing tables at the Yacht and Country Club, of all places. I went in to apply for the waiter job in the paper but with no prior experience I didn’t get it. They had a dishwasher position too, but I could tell by the way the lady doing the hiring half-flirted with me that she thought I’d look good out in the dining room, so she made me busboy, even though they hadn’t been advertising for one. It’s a wonder what a shave and a haircut (I cut my own) and a clean shirt can do. She suggested I could maybe make the leap to waiter in a few months. In any case, I get a split of the tips. Very first shift, made double wage.
It’s my first day off. Finally, a chance to drive out to the Flats. Taking the old river road instead of the freeway. Whereas the ocean kept me in a state of low-grade ecstasy alternating with melancholy, the river only soothes me. There’s my nostalgia. The refinery looks bigger than I remember, the houses smaller. A couple of the ramblers along Petroleum Avenue have been boarded up. I turn onto Magnolia. A lot of mailboxes have different names on them now. I drive to the end, to the house I once called our house or my house. It was never kept up very well but now it’s at a whole other level of chaos, like it should probably be condemned. A thicket of junk trees has taken over the yard. Strips of siding and patches of roofing are missing.
I slide out of the Fury, head up the broken concrete walk, and almost walk right in, for a second forgetting I’m a stranger here. Even after all these years the doorbell’s still not working. I knock. Both girls come to the door, like they’re expecting someone. After fifteen years they actually don’t look much different, Anne-Marie maybe a little thinner, Terri maybe a little heavier.
“Jesus Christ,” Terri whispers from behind the rusty screen.
“Hey,” is all I manage for what should be a big emotional moment.
“We thought you were dead.”
Anne-Marie echoes, “We thought you were dead.”
I shake my head, as if a response is necessary.
They don’t open the door; I don’t ask to come in. My heart’s a wasteland. In the doorframe are what appear to be bullet holes. I examine closer. They are bullet holes. I look past the girls. It doesn’t seem like the rooms have been painted since I left, the white walls now the color of smog. I fake cough. Can’t help it. “Mom here?”
Terri laughs. Like snakes falling from her mouth.
Anne-Marie starts to clarify, “Haven’t seen her since …”
And Terri finishes the sentence, “… since Dad’s funeral.”
My knees lock. I stop breathing. I struggle like mad to get words to form but can’t stutter even one into the space between us. After forever, I’m able to suck in barely enough air to ask, “When?” I suck in a bit more, “When did Dad die?” Doesn’t either of them want to step out and give their little brother a hug, regardless of how cold-blooded and not like a human being he’s been since birth? It feels like I’m crying but my eyes are a desert. I once read somewhere that animals don’t have tears.
“A good six, seven years ago,” Terri answers, lobotomy-calm.
I study their faces, so like mine—pallid, sharply angled, without emotion. “How?” I ask, trying to give it a little feeling. “How’d it happen?”
“Heart attack,” they tell me in unison.
“Hadn’t seen him since he was sent up,” Anne-Marie offers. “He wouldn’t see any of us. Not ever. Prison Service called to tell us. There was a funeral.”
Terri adds, “What they call the Prison Service Order. Basics only. Surprised Mom came. All dolled up too. You wouldn’t have recognized her. Made her money in real estate out there in Vegas. Came and left, just like that.” She snaps her fingers.
“Later,” Anne-Marie explains, “we got the birthday card we sent her returned, stamped No forwarding address, and her phone number was no longer in service. Couldn’t find a new listing. That was that. She was wearing a big rock, an engagement ring we supposed. Figured she must’ve got married, changed her name, moved.”
All this seriously depresses me. “Any pictures?” I rub my temples. “Of Mom, I mean.” Crazy to ask, but I need something—any kind of proof—to anchor this.
“There is one, from the funeral,” Anne-Marie answers, disappearing deep into the house.
She returns with a color snapshot in a white-painted metal frame. She props the screen door open with her hip, holding on to the frame while I look at the picture, as if she’s afraid I might snatch it from her. Hard to tell it’s Mom, though. Little glares bounce off her from what look to be diamonds. A necklace, a bracelet, earrings, the ring. She’s wearing a white lady-suit. “It’s leather,” Terri announces, as she notices me noticing it. The leather looks thin, soft, fits tight. Her hair’s platinum, done up in sort of a beehive. Her natural color’s dark, like all of ours. She never used to dye it. Mom a blond, in white leather and diamonds. Now that’s something. Like a movie star.
“The diamonds are real,” Terri informs me, as if I’m wondering. “All of them. Bought them herself, she wanted us to be sure to know. When Aunt Blondie asked her if they were real, she looked at her, all insulted, and told her, ‘Damn straight!’ just as proud as proud could be.”
Mom’s also wearing silver sandals in the picture. Fingernails, toenails, eyelids, all painted silvery white. Everything on her—and done to her—shines so bright against her skin that turned the color of caramel from the sun out there. The picture doesn’t look like Mom but it’s how I’ll remember her because I’m guessing that’s how she wants to be remembered.
I know I shouldn’t ask if I can keep the picture, so I don’t, but then, like she’s once again read my mind, Anne-Marie nods, removes it from the frame, and hands it to me. “Here, take it. She’d want you to have it.”
“You sure?”
Both girls nod. Then Terri adds, like it’s a matter of fact, “You were always her favorite anyways.”
“Favorite?” I shake my head. “Doubt it.”
“Seriously,” Anne-Marie insists, “she always thought you would get the hell out of this place, like she wanted to, and you did. Even though you became a ghost, she was proud. Probably still is.”
I can’t help but laugh. “That’s why she never had a good word to say about me?”
“She treated you rough,” Terri says, as if she’s the designated explainer, “because she didn’t want you to settle for normal stuff. Even through all that was happening with Dad, she thought you were going to be a rock star.”
No need to mention how well that worked out.
“You gave her the gumption to finally get the hell out of here.” Terri looks at me with an intensity I didn’t know she still had, like when she was a girl. “You know, about the only things she took from the house after the funeral were that double-frame picture of Nana and Papa and that record you made.”
From the pocket of her smock, Anne-Marie brings out a tissue-thin, light-blue envelope, hands it to me. “Yours,” she says, but I already know that. I recognized it instantly.
The screen door closes, them behind it.
I look down at my scuffed work shoes, waiting for I don’t know what. Not sure what kind of homecoming I’d expected but maybe more than this. Though really, it’s not much different from when I lived here. It’s the news of Dad’s death—the weight of it—that’s making me wish for something else, something more. It makes me sick to the core that I never wrote to him. Like Mrs. Lac said I should. Thought it would be too painful. I’m a selfish bastard. He was the one in pain, way worse pain than mine, and I thought writing to him would be too painful for me. No one says a word. Not a question as to where I’ve been or what I’ve been up to. I turn to go, then can’t, at least not without turning back to ask, “You two okay?”
They look out at me through the screen. Makes me think of those flying squirrels Frankie Champagne from down the street caught when they were kits. He raised them, kept them in a wire-mesh cage that took up half the bedroom he shared with his two brothers. Those squirrel eyes appeared anxious and resigned at the same time—what with no forest and not enough space to fly around in. My sisters again answer in unison, “Sure, we’re fine.”
“Need anything?”
“We’re set,” Anne-Marie says. “I’m up to the Family Bargain Center, stocking shelves.” She sort of smiles. “It’s a job.” She wants to assure me that they really are okay, at least moneywise, which is nice of her, it is.
Terri adds, “I’m at a daycare across town. I like working with kids.”
These scraps of news come as somewhat of a relief, though I can’t stop thinking about the two of them when they were girls. Both of them a whole lot smarter than me. Anne-Marie especially. Great at math. And Terri, she was something else at softball. So damn ebullient. She wanted to be an astronaut.
My eye catches the bullet holes again. “What’s with those?” I rub my index finger over the splinters.
They both shrug. Then Terri offers, “Whole neighborhood’s gone to hell.”
I shrug back involuntarily. A family trait, I suppose. “You two take care of yourselves.” I walk away, slow, my feet heavy with grief, my whole body drained by a misplaced or long-delayed guilt about family, about home.
“Say,” Terri calls out when I’m halfway to the curb, “some kid came by looking for you a few months ago.”
I look back again, nod.
Once back in my Spinnaker White boat, I sail away fast, though as soon as I can’t see the smokestacks of the refinery anymore, I pull over, get out, walk down, and sit by the sluggish river. I take the letter out, unfold it. For some reason, I’ve got to read it aloud, to the sky:
October 1970
Hey Little Brother,
Believe me, there are lots of places I’d rather be right now than here in the middle of this godforsaken jungle. For instance, with you and Dad and Kev out to Bethel Grove. We had a blast, didn’t we? Getting all those walnuts? And that was some battle we had! Though I now have to admit you and Kev really did win. When I get out of here, you’ll be about old enough to handle my bike all by yourself, so you won’t have to hold on to me for dear life anymore. It was fun anyways, wasn’t it? Riding out in the country. Popping wheelies down the river road.
Kind of tough here. One of the guys from our platoon had his butt blown off this past week. Poor fella was in terrible pain, worse than you could imagine. They coptered him out. We hear he’s doing okay in the field hospital. Lots of cute nurses there! We’re keeping our spirits up playing cards, some touch football (don’t want us playing tackle for fear we’ll injure ourselves—never mind the grenades!), getting mail and writing letters, etc. And that book Mrs. Homer gave me when I was called up, Leaves of Grass, there’s some great stuff in it, though a lot of it’s kind of weird too. I’ll send it to you when I’m finished.
Lying in my cot the other night, trying to get to sleep, what with all the monkeys chattering away in the trees and machine-gun fire in the distance, I was thinking that hopefully, if someday I’m lucky enough to have a family, I’ll have a kid just like you.
You look after Mom and the girls, okay? Dad can’t do it alone. Oh, and send me one of your new school pictures (wallet-size, please).
Your Ever-Lovin’ Brother,
John
God, I wish he was here. To help me deal with Dad, with Mom.
I also wish Daniel was here. As mad as I am at him, still, I wish he was here. We have this bond around grief. He just so happened to be on the Island when he got the news of his parents’ death. It was, I believe, in my fourth year. Their plane had crashed over the South China Sea. Abraham rowed over from his place on Sand Island with the news, because he has phone service there and relatives from Copenhagen had called. I of course couldn’t understand the Færoese, but Daniel’s face turned gray as clay. The two of them stood on the boat landing for the longest time, not saying a word. Eventually, they embraced in a weirdly calm kind of way. Abraham came up to the house and waited while Daniel packed. It was then Daniel told me what had happened. His voice had no emotion. He returned a few weeks later and stayed a whole month, instead of his usual two weeks. It was during that time we grew closer. He wasn’t at all dramatic in his grief, but I could tell that he—the most together person I’ve ever met—was a wreck. I listened to him when he wanted to talk. I stayed by his side. I held him close in bed. I think that being with him through his grief I learned to be a better person, at least a little. I’ll never see him again, but he always knew the right words, the right silences. With him, I would have someone to share at least some of my grief with.
Once again, my life is made absurd, and once again it’s made that way by me and me alone. I start parking outside Isaac’s house—a severe modern place in the Heights—in my cop car. A stakeout. I don’t want to go to the door on the chance his mother answers. The image of her underneath Pete has been haunting me of late. He shot his wad in the sand. I’ll bet. To make myself less conspicuous, I show up at a different time each day, waiting exactly thirty minutes before leaving. In this neighborhood of luxury imports, the beat-up Fury sticks out like a donkey at the Kentucky Derby. Today’s my ninth time. If nothing else, I’m patient. It’s a little before ten. The last of the morning mist begins to burn off, giving a strange clarity—a gauzy clarity?—to everything. I’ve got only four minutes left when one of the three garage doors slowly lifts and out rolls a Kawasaki! I can’t believe my eyes. An H1 Mach III, 500cc, a ’69 or ’70. Virtually identical to John’s bike, except for the color. This one’s their Peacock Gray; his was Midnight White. Could it possibly be his bike with a new paint job? Isaac’s in the saddle. Or I believe it’s Isaac. Hard to tell with the helmet on, dark visor down and in full leathers. Maybe he has a brother? Or maybe a ghost’s riding this ghost machine? I’m being ridiculous. Of course it’s him. And I know it’s only a motorcycle yet can’t help thinking of it as our dream machine. John’s, Pete’s, mine. Obviously Isaac’s as well. John took a lot of shit for getting a Japanese bike. There weren’t many around back then, but he knew engineering and he knew they were better than Hogs or Brit bikes.
I hop out of the Fury as this Maybe-Isaac on this mythic Kawasaki coasts down the driveway and onto the street. At first, I’m not sure he notices me. Then he stops. He doesn’t get out of the saddle, simply directs his shiny black insect face toward me. He cocks his head, which I take as a gesture to get on. I do. It’s like the kind of dream where you’re doing things you wouldn’t normally do and know you probably should be afraid but for some reason aren’t. He should want to kill me after what I did to him on the Island. Before I’m completely on, he tears off. I grab hold around his waist, like I always did with John. And in fact, the last time I was on a bike was with John. The Kawasaki soars like a hawk in great loops all the way down from the Heights and onto the boulevard. Once we’re through town, he turns to head up the lake. On the narrow two-lane we buzz past yellow truck after yellow truck loaded with dusty apples. The wind feels good, the speed feels good. We zip past the Yacht and Country Club. He eventually turns off to the salt mines, dodging around the gate, through thick weeds and out onto the salt flats. He opens up and we fly, the speedometer hitting one-ten. He attacks the ridge at such insane speed I swear we’re going to soar on off into the lake, and to tell the truth I wouldn’t mind that ending at all. But he stops just short of oblivion, looks back at me, and I think I detect a grin behind the visor. I don’t know why he’d be grinning at me, the guy who attacked him. He pulls the helmet off, red hair falling down. And yes, he is grinning, and yes, there’s that overlapping canine. We don’t greet each other with words, hug, or even handshake. We simply dismount in unison. Even though he’s the one who brought us here, I take the lead around the ridge and along the ledge above the water.
I duck into what was Pete’s and my favorite cave, Isaac close behind. Here, with him, at the hideaway, the retreat, the hermitage, the sanctuary, where his father and I came to think and be away from everything and to be ourselves. Where we wrote songs, drank, smoked, made out with girls. Where he talked philosophy and history and myths and dreams, while I mostly listened, and where, when I came back to this country, I found refuge. Isaac’s over six feet, so his head almost grazes the ceiling. We face each other. He’s still grinning. I don’t get it. I lift my right hand to touch his left cheek—a gesture of healing I must have copycatted from somewhere—then don’t. No touch from me, no matter how gentle, could make amends for what I did. Still, after all these weeks to think about it, I have yet to untangle the words in my head that I need to say.
He’s the one to finally break the silence: “You left the Island?”
I know what he means by this statement of fact posed as a question, so I nod.
“Weird,” he says, suddenly distracted, looking around the white space, “but I wasn’t ever here at the salt mines before Daniel asked me to bring him here.”
Not so weird. Kids from the Heights have their luxe cottages and their Yacht and Country Club. They own most of the damn lake. In any case, it’s almost impossible to imagine Daniel here. Would be my two worlds crashing together. I take a long, shallow breath. The jumble of words inside me keeps me from taking a deeper one. The words that do manage to come seep out half voiced: “I left so I could make things right. With you.”
