A Place to Call Home

by Deborah Smith

“But you oughta have—”

  “Let’s discuss this later,” Mama said with alarm. She hurried over and held down a hand to Amanda. “Come on, hon, let’s go get your face washed. You come inside with me. Come on.”

  Josh kissed her cheek. “Okay,” she said, and went with her grandmother.

  Once she was safely inside the front door, Josh stood. I said without much sympathy, jerking my head toward the house, “You’ve got a lot of work to do with her. You only primed the pump.”

  He scowled. “I know that. Roan, why the hell did you tell Amanda she could stay with you?”

  “It didn’t happen quite the way she described it.”

  “I don’t care how it happened. That’s low, Roan. Are you trying to alienate my little girl the same way you came between Claire and the family? You stole one of my children for twenty years and now you’re trying to steal another one?”

  Roan punched him. It happened quickly, a recoil and release that slammed into Josh’s mouth and knocked him on his back. Roan loomed over him, feet braced apart, his fist drawn back again. “Claire’s all I ever wanted from this goddamned family,” Roan said.

  “Easy, boy, easy,” I urged softly, darting glances at Matthew, who leaped forward, slack-jawed with horror as he stood halfway between Roan and Josh. “He deserved that, Matthew,” I added.

  Daddy said, “All right, all right, that’s done.” He pushed Roan back carefully. “That needed to be done. Roan, you hear me? He had it coming. But it’s done. Back off.”

  Josh groggily raised a hand to his bloody lower lip. He nodded. “Fair enough,” he said.

  Roan remained on guard until he noticed Matthew’s humiliated stare. When Matthew dropped to one knee beside Josh and offered to help him up, Roan’s fist unfurled in defeat.

  Roan and I went to Dunshinnog that night, gathered a small pile of limbs on the mountain’s stony brow, and sat beside it, watching the fire burn to embers.

  “Read this one,” Roan said, handing me an old letter he pulled from his pants pocket. “He was maybe ten years old when I wrote it.”

  You ever hit anybody? he asked me today. He’s in trouble for popping a kid in the mouth at school. The kid knows Matthew’s adopted. Teases him about it. Matthew had enough. So he knocked one of the kid’s front teeth out.

  He thought I’d be mad. I had to pretend I was. Did I ever hit anybody? Not since I grew up, I told him. Hell, I was in some ugly fights when I worked at the chop shop, but he doesn’t know about that. I lied—wanted to set a good example.

  I told him there’s only two good reasons to hit somebody. To protect another person from getting hit, or if you’ve got no other way to protect yourself. I said I have no respect for people who hit for any other reason. Any fool can hit. The people who don’t hit—they’re the people with real power. They’re the smart people. Be one of them, I told him.

  I paid the other kid’s dentist bill. I told Matthew he’d have to pay me back out of his allowance because I want him to understand that you always have to pay, somehow, when you hurt other people. Even if they had it coming.

  And I promised him if he’d never hit anybody without good reason I’d never hit anybody again either. We shook on it.

  I learned a lot from you, Claire. I learned what I’d missed, and I learned what I wanted. In a way, your folks taught me how to raise myself and how to raise Matthew. Funny. I learned the most from the people who hurt me the worst. The people I loved.

  I put the letter down. “You didn’t break a sacred vow today,” I said gently. “You didn’t even break any teeth.”

  “I’ve worked all my life to be different from my old man. Matthew was ashamed of me today. I saw the look on his face.”

  “You’ve got to talk to him, Roan. Tell him. Tell him everything,”

  In the dark, the tip of a cigar glowed between Roan’s fingers. Ashes scattered across his shirt and fell. “Next thing he’ll do,” Roan said slowly, “is change his last name. He’ll stop calling himself Sullivan.” He threw the cigar in the fire. I put a hand on his chest.

  “Warm,” I whispered. “A good, solid rhythm. So many people care about this heart.”

  “You can’t imagine how it feels, can you? To not have family. I can. I don’t know another Sullivan in the world who’s related to me.”

  “We’ll research your family tree then. Believe me, you’re related to thousands of Sullivans.”

  “You know that’s not what I mean. Real family. Not names on a chart.”

  I took his right hand and smoothed the swollen, broken skin along his knuckles. “I do understand. You need to look into the faces of Sullivan grandparents, uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, cousins, and see yourself.”

  “I want to be part of a family. That’s the hell of it. I want to see someone like me looking back at me.”

  I sat for a minute, lost in thought. “I want to have children with you,” I said finally, softly.

  He quickly turned to me and took my face between his hands. “We’ll have good children. I know it. I think about it.”

  “But you want somebody to give twenty years back to you. Erase everything that happened to me and to you. That’s not possible.”

  “This situation isn’t going to work out. For Matthew, for me, for the rest of the family.”

  I drew back, watching him, the dread rising in my throat. I shook my head. “I know what you’re trying to avoid. But if you don’t tell him the truth about Big Roan, he’ll hear it from other people. You have to trust him.”

  “I’ll tell him soon. He’ll never look at me the same way again. I know that. If I stay here, I’ll ruin everything for him. We’re going to have to make some hard decisions. You and me. Maybe we could travel for a while, let things settle down …”

  We’ll never come back, I thought desperately. I’ll never get you back here.

  We had to find a way back to achieve a way forward; Roan was not far enough from that boy who’d lived in the Hollow, hiding his fear and pain behind pride, and I was still the shadow of the little girl who’d tried to change his life; we had to get past those memories. “When we were kids,” I said slowly, “there were times when I was ashamed for you, but there was never a time when I was ashamed of you. You always fought for me, and I fought for you. Matthew will feel that way once he knows everything.”

  “If he doesn’t—” Roan continued.

  I pressed my fingertips to his mouth. “Have some faith,” I said.

  I went over to the farm to see Mama and Grandma Dottie. “Get Tweet for me,” I told them. “Just get her away from Josh and Matthew for an afternoon. We’re going to talk.” Mama was fired with grim agreement; Grandma Dottie chain-smoked and nodded.

  When I met Tweet the next day, we hugged sadly. I drove her up to the top of Dunshinnog. We sat on the rock ledge overlooking the valley. Muggy June heat cloaked the afternoon; I could feel my surgeon’s prediction of arthritis in my healing leg.

  “Matthew’s not too happy about me visiting with you today,” she admitted. “He thinks Roan’s sent you to ask him to apologize. I’m sorry, Claire, but Matthew doesn’t have anything to apologize for.”

  “Roan’s not waiting for an apology. But he doesn’t owe Matthew one either.”

  Tweet shoved her hands into her straw-mop hair as if she wanted to sweep her mind clean. “You don’t protect adopted people by hiding their identity from them! It’s not fair! It causes more problems than it solves.”

  I stared out over the valley and quietly told her how Roan grew up. About the Hollow. How Big Roan really died and why. And what the family did to Roan afterward. When I finished, Tweet was pale and dry-eyed. That was the past’s powerful effect. It dried Tweet up. She was speechless for a while.

  I told her Matthew knew us—the family—well enough now. He could see that we were neither all good nor all bad, that there was kindness and generosity in us. All he had to do was study the proud, ruthless, unsmiling portraits of tough Sean and Bridget Maloney
to understand the clannishness that had helped us prosper. But he needed to see the Hollow, too, where Roan had survived to become the imperfect, self-made, endlessly devoted man Matthew wanted to dismiss. He needed to understand the place Roan had won and lost in our family because of the family’s pride.

  “What do you want me to do?” Tweet asked urgently. “Poor Roan. This explains so much about him. How can I help?”

  “You can’t. And neither can I. It’s up to him. Let’s leave it alone a while,” I told her. “That’s all I can think to do.”

  “Oh, Claire,” she began to murmur. “He’s got to tell Matthew.” She looked at me with sorrow and sympathy. “Now I understand Roan, but I understand you, too.”

  I craned my head warily. “My dear Tweetie Bird, there’s nothing mysterious to understand about me.”

  “Until you get this resolved, you won’t trust yourself again.”

  “What? Now hold on—”

  “You won’t really be home again yourself unless Roan stays. And if he insists he doesn’t belong here, you’ll go away with him, because you’ll always be trying to make it right for him. I bet you were thinking about Roan when you got involved with the problems that woman—”

  “Terri Caulfield,” I said tightly. “Look, don’t use that to analyze me—”

  “You think you failed Roan again, and you’ll always feel you failed him if this isn’t settled. If you can’t keep him here, you’ll go wherever he wants, even if it breaks his heart and yours, too.”

  I felt the blood draining from my face; Tweet was looking at me the way she’d look at a blind owl caged at a wildlife sanctuary, as if I were hopelessly trapped. “He’s not going anywhere,” I said loudly.

  “Oh, Claire,” she soothed. She patted my hand.

  • • •

  Josh took Matthew and Tweet on a tour of the local farms. They happened to be at Uncle Winston’s when one of his Black Angus cows was struggling with a breech birth and they delivered her twin calves. When Dr. Radcliff—Dunderry’s aging veterinarian and a cousin of Mama’s—arrived a few minutes later, he was very impressed.

  “He’s a whopper. She’s little but she’s strong,” Dr. Radcliff raved to Winston and Josh. He was talking about Matthew and Tweet I decided, or perhaps them and the calves as well. At any rate, the event started a series of discussions about the two of them interning at Dr. Radcliff’s veterinary practice with an understanding that they’d buy the practice when he retired in a couple of years.

  I heard this news and had to be the one to break it to Roan. I talked him into driving to the city park at the Delaney covered bridge. We sat on a blanket in the bridge’s shade, our feet inches from the river beneath it. Roan contemplated an unlit cigar in his hand, tossed it aside, and said, “You’re tugging your ears and giving me the blue-eye. Just tell me. Whatever it is, just tell me.”

  I stalled. “Everybody who grew up in this town came here at least once when they were teenagers. It’s the oldest make-out spot in the county. But you and I never got a chance. Goddammit, we deserve it.” I thrust out one hand. “Come on.”

  He frowned but took my hand and helped me up. I leaned on my cane and made my way up the grassy shoulder to the road. We stepped inside the shadowy tunnel of fragrant wood and faced each other. He laid the cane aside and latched his arms low behind my back. “It’s not much of a notorious place in broad daylight,” I began, losing the words when he kissed me.

  “How’s that for notorious?” he asked several minutes later. We sagged against each other, breathless. “Tell me,” he repeated.

  I did, and when I finished, with the river bubbling below us, the lazy song of insects droning in our ears, and the hot, ripe sunshine seeping through the fine cracks in the wooden roof over our heads, Roan said quietly, “It’s done then. Matthew’s staying. There’s not a damn thing I can do about it. Except get out of his way.”

  We woke the next morning at Ten Jumps with thunder rumbling in the distance and the air hot and oppressive, charged in the heavy way of summer storms. We dressed hurriedly in old jeans and T-shirts. Roan frowned at the low, bruised clouds above the bedroom’s skylight as he knelt by the bed and wordlessly pulled my bare feet onto his thighs. He slid my tennis shoes on my feet while I pushed a dark wisp of hair from his forehead. “We have to talk about the future,” he said.

  “Let’s just deal with the present. Check the weather.”

  We went to the porch. I leaned on my cane and surveyed the scene, with a knot of concern in my stomach. The birds and insects were silent. There was no breeze. Lightning flickered in short pulses, and the sky to the east was turning an ominous purple-black. “I don’t like this,” I said.

  Roan unhooked the hanging baskets of ferns and set them on the ground along the porch’s stone foundation, then put each rocking chair on its forward tips with the headrests against the porch rail. He tapped the flat, deep chestnut logs of the cabin’s front wall. “This cabin is built like a concrete bunker. It won’t even shiver in a high wind.”

  How he knew that, from childhood, brought images of him huddled alone inside the dank and cobwebbed haven. “I’m going back in,” I said. “I’ve got goosebumps and my bad knee aches. I’m turning into a human barometer.”

  The phone rang as I hobbled through the front room. Daddy was calling, with Mama on an extension, quoting the weather reports and urging us to come over to the farm. “What about Matthew and Tweet?” Roan called with strained inquiry.

  “They’re with Josh. He took them and Amanda to brunch at the club.”

  Roan’s expression hardened; he looked away. “We’re fine here,” I told my parents, and quickly said good-bye in the middle of their protests. I followed Roan outside again. “Afraid?” he asked with a grim smile.

  “No worse than usual.”

  Roan took my hand and pulled me into his arms; we braced ourselves in the growing darkness. I didn’t know how much time passed; the morning light faded into a peculiar dusk, tinted with a yellowish undertone that made a single rose on one of the yard’s newly planted shrubs stand out in sharp crimson relief.

  The eastern sky churned. Suddenly, a deep wind sprang up and leaves tore from the water oaks along the lake’s rim, swirling across the yard. Tiny whitecaps broke across the lake’s surface. “Roan,” I said uneasily. “This is no ordinary thunderstorm. This feels like tornado weather.”

  He straightened, his face tightening as he listened to the wind. “Go inside,” he said. “I’ll watch.”

  I shivered as a gust of cold air skimmed us. “Watch what? Do what? Fight the wind with your bare hands?”

  He released me and stepped into the yard. The wind pushed at him. He staggered. I clung to a porch post. “Go inside,” he called again. A limb snapped off an oak and whipped toward him, struck him across the chest, and knocked him flat on his back. I fell down the porch steps and crawled to him. He rolled over on his hands and knees.

  Roan snagged me by one arm, and we staggered inside the cabin. He lifted me around the waist and carried me to the doorway between the bedroom and the kitchen, between the old and the new, where we sat down. I curled an arm over his head protectively; he did the same for me.

  The wind began to howl; I’d never heard anything like it in my life. Then a limb slapped the bedroom window and the panes shattered. The curtains suddenly streamed like furious white flags; there were thumps and thuds, but submerging every other sound was the wild bellow of the wind. I met Roan’s gleaming eyes and began to count out loud, as if the numbered seconds were a chant to ward off danger.

  “What are you doing?” he yelled.

  “I believe in numerology,” I yelled back.

  Rain whipped in through the broken window, but the wind began to subside. The light grew brighter. I fumbled for the door frame, trying to pull myself up. “Got to make some calls, call home, make sure—”

  Roan vaulted up and ran to the front room. Shaking, I dragged myself up along the door frame and looked at
the shards of window glass flung across the bedroom floor and the bed. I went after him. He already had the phone in his hand.

  We stayed on the phone for almost an hour, as Mama gathered and relayed information. Arnetta had lost the roof off her garage, an acre or so of Uncle Winston’s Christmas tree fields had been flattened, Hop’s bass boat and boat shed had been mangled—nothing really serious, only property. Nothing had happened around the country club; Josh had left the brunch to meet with Daddy and other county officials. Matthew, Tweet, and Amanda were fine.

  Finally, exhausted, we walked outside. The rain had turned into a fine drizzle and a warm mist rose from the ground and the lake. On the far side of the yard, a swath had been cut through the forest, as if a giant lawn mower had run across the trees, snapping them off halfway up. I felt Roan’s hand on mine, gripping hard. The strange, malevolent path disappeared down the ridge, in the direction of the Hollow.

  Roan slowed the car as we rounded the curve, driving over small tree limbs scattered across the pavement.

  My stomach lurched when I saw the twisted alley of destruction. Twenty years’ growth of pines and kudzu had been ripped and strewn, the splayed root balls of some trees pulled out of the earth, pulled out of the buried garbage and the deeply submerged ruins of Big Roan’s trailer and pickup truck.

  Like a macabre insult, the desecration of a graveyard, throwing bones and open caskets into plain sight, the jumble of downed trees and tangled vines was littered with unspeakable evidence—rotted shreds of cans, the rusted-out hulk of a steel barrel, indefinable bits and pieces of corroded, muddy artifacts. A doughnut-shaped object hung obscenely from the tattered trunk of a split pine, dripping streams of dirty water.

  “That’s a half-rotted tire hanging in that tree,” Roan said.

  I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak. I looked at Roan, and his horrified expression broke my heart. His childhood, his shame, had been pulled from the ground and nakedly exposed. I put my hand on his arm, my fingers digging. “I’m sorry,” I begged. “This is too much. Don’t stop here.”