The Year We Left Home

by Jean Thompson

  Iowa

  APRIL 1993

  Anita sat at the kitchen table, writing out her day’s list of things to do. She had pretty handwriting, a small, rounded cursive. People often gave her compliments on it. Sometimes she thought she was mostly a collection of minor talents.

  The phone rang. The cordless receiver sat next to her on the table so she didn’t have to get up. “Hello?”

  “Girl, how are you?”

  It was Rhonda. “Fine, I guess,” Anita said. With her free hand, she took her pen and crossed Rhonda off her list.

  “How’s Jeff?”

  “I found a bottle in the garage last night. In a storage bin.”

  “They like garages.”

  “He said it had been there a long time, he forgot it was there.”

  “Good one,” Rhonda said. Rhonda was her Al-Anon friend. Rhonda had already divorced her own drunk husband. “You check the garbage? See if there’s any empties?”

  “You think I should?”

  “Oh honey, I’m not saying try to beat him at his own game. You have no idea how talented these jokers can be. They are pure cunning. Bill P. used to bury his Wild Turkey out in the potato patch.” Bill P. was Rhonda’s ex-husband, so called to distinguish him from Bill H., her new boyfriend. It was an AA joke. Bill H. was an alcoholic also, but he was in recovery and went to meetings. “Always out there digging his potatoes. Took me a long age to figure it out. I would of laughed, if I wasn’t so scalded mad.”

  Rhonda did laugh then, her big hawing laugh. One of the interesting things about Al-Anon was that you met people with whom you would not otherwise have anything in common.

  Anita said, “I know you aren’t supposed to be the alcohol police. I know they can always get more. But I poured his damned bottle down the sink. It felt good.”

  “How are the kids?”

  “They won’t talk to me. You’d think I was the one who drove the car through the garage wall and peed on the kitchen floor.”

  “Give them time. They aren’t sure he’s going to stay sober.”

  “Neither am I,” Anita said. A month ago Jeff had got his second DUI and was sent to court-ordered alcohol counseling. The counselor said Anita should go to Al-Anon, so she did. Sometimes she thought it was helping, and sometimes she thought it was only one more way that everything had to be about Jeff.

  “Just work your steps. Let go and let God.”

  Anita said she would. She told Rhonda she would see her at the meeting and hung up. She was still learning all the AA lingo. It was kind of funny that she’d lived with a drunk all this time and was just now figuring out how to talk about it.

  That night at the meeting, there was a guest speaker, a man with one arm. He told them he had lost the arm driving drunk on a motorcycle. But he’d never really made the connection between drinking and losing his arm. It was just one of those things. He shook his head, marveling. Then, a few years later, he left work, stopped at a bar, got back in his car, and T-boned somebody at an intersection. Killed a man. A man who never made it home to his family that night. He’d woken up in the hospital without remembering any of it. Total blackout. He’d gone to jail. Finally, he’d made the connection. Every day he thought about that man. Every day, that was what kept him from taking another drink.

  The man with one arm was thin, with bushy sideburns. Having one arm didn’t keep him from lighting and smoking cigarettes, one after another. He was ordinary looking, in jeans and a cotton shirt. He looked like somebody who worked in a gas station or a factory or whatever job you could do with one arm. You didn’t like to catch yourself thinking this way, but Anita had to wonder if there were other, different AA meetings for drunk bankers, drunk doctors or drunk lawyers, drunk . . . well, people more like her.

  But Jeff could have killed somebody too, driving around drunk. Could have gone to jail, lost his job. Killed his stupid self while he was at it. It could still happen. She and the kids could be left on their own. Every time she thought of it she felt scared and furious. Alcoholics were sick, it was a disease. But he wouldn’t be sick in the first place if he wasn’t an asshole.

  The meeting was over. They stood and said the Lord’s Prayer. Anita only did a halfhearted job of it. The God who was in charge of alcholics didn’t seem the same as the church God. After the prayer they all held hands in a circle and said, “Keep coming back, it works if you work it.” You had to do all sorts of embarrassing things at meetings. She felt bad about her attitude, she wished she was more openhearted, more sincere. But there were also plenty of times when she resented all the things required of her when she wasn’t the one who got DUIs and phoned in sick to work with hangovers and made everybody miserable.

  Anita stood next to Rhonda at the back of the room while Rhonda said good-night to people. Rhonda knew everybody. She’d been coming to meetings for a long time. Rhonda was the first one she’d met at her first meeting. Rhonda had opened the door for her. Anita couldn’t even imagine what her own face had looked like. “You’re in the right place,” Rhonda had said, drawing her in. You had to love her for that.

  Anita worried that she’d dressed up too much. She was always doing that, even though she knew better by now; meetings weren’t a real showy place. She had worn a blue blazer and a red silk blouse, black crepe pants and her red pumps. She didn’t believe in leaving the house without making an effort.

  Rhonda wore jeans and a sweatshirt. She was thin and wore her hair long, like a country-western star, and she smoked a lot of cigarettes. Most people in AA smoked, though Anita hadn’t yet figured out what that meant. Rhonda worked as a cashier in a restaurant. She’d had a lot of different jobs and not one of them, she said, ever paid you enough for the misery of it all. Anita and Rhonda were what was called codependents, meaning people who put up with the goddamn drunks. Bill P. had broken Rhonda’s nose. He’d taken the Breyer horse figures she’d collected all her life and melted them down in the burn barrel.

  When Rhonda had finished saying the rest of her good-nights, she and Anita walked out to the parking lot. “It could storm if it wanted to,” Rhonda said. It was already dark, but to the west they could make out the darker shapes of bulging clouds. The day had been warm. It smelled of rain and a breeze was kicking up. The meetings were held at the Grange building on the west edge of town. There was a truck stop a little distance down the highway, and a few farm lights. It was the same lonesome emptiness all the way to the Missouri and the Nebraska border, and beyond that, to the Rockies. Bad weather always came through on the west-to-east track, nothing between here and the mountains to slow it down, like a big black mouth opening right on top of you.

  “I should get on home,” Anita said, although now she was reluctant to leave. The lights were still on in the building behind them. They had a welcoming look. “Rhonda? I’m mad all the time. I don’t know how to not be mad. Don’t tell me ‘fake it till you make it.’ I’m tired of slogans.”

  A flare of lightning lit up an edge of cloud. The lightning was reflected, still some great distance away and too far for the thunder to reach them. Rhonda pulled her jean jacket tighter. “Oh that sky has a wicked look, don’t it? You can tell Jeff you’re mad. Just don’t be mad the very minute you say it.”

  “I feel like I’ve been married for a hundred years.”

  “Yeah, the first hundred years are the hardest.” Rhonda leaned over and kissed Anita on the cheek. “Call me, OK?”

  Anita said she would. She got into her minivan and Rhonda into her old Pontiac with the loud exhaust. They drove back along the access road, Rhonda in front and Anita following. Rhonda’s back window displayed two baseball caps, one for the Hawkeyes and one for the St. Louis Cardinals. Bill H. was a big Cardinals fan. Bill P. had been a Cubs fan, so the caps had to change. When they got to the stoplight, Rhonda honked and turned off to the right.

  Anita reached her own driveway, pressed the garage-door opener, and eased the minivan into its space next to Jeff’s sporty Mazda. Of course he c
ouldn’t drive now. Anita dropped him off at work in the morning and picked him up in the afternoon. For now Jeff told everybody that the Mazda wasn’t running right, they were having repairs done. Anita didn’t think they were fooling anybody. People always found out. It meant that Matt couldn’t drive the Mazda even if Jeff would have let him. One more lousy secret. They talked about that in Al-Anon, how unhealthy it was to protect the alcoholic from the consequences of his behavior.

  But what if Jeff lost his job? Not that those guys at the bank didn’t all poison themselves with booze. They just thought it was a sign of weakness to screw up and get caught.

  She came in through the kitchen and put her purse and keys on the counter. The TV was on in the den. Her son was stretched out on the couch, a glass of Coke and ice on the floor within his reach. “Hi honey.”

  He made one of his noises in greeting. He wore a gray T-shirt and basketball shorts. These were the clothes he slept in and sometimes spent whole days in. Some things she had given up trying to make him do. “Did you get any dinner?”

  “Grilled cheese.”

  “What are you watching?” It was a documentary, something with old brown-and-white pictures and a serious narrator.

  “The orphan train.”

  “What?”

  “It’s for school,” Matt said, as if that explained anything.

  “Where’s your dad and Marcie?”

  “Upstairs.”

  His silences and his telegraphic speech had different tones and qualities and she knew them all. Most often he was just being a teenager who communicated with his parents as if he was a soldier captured behind enemy lines: name, rank, and serial number, nothing else. But more and more he seemed furious at having to live under the same roof with her.

  The first long, low roll of thunder broke.

  Anita stood, pretending to watch the television while she watched her son. He looked more like Jeff than like her side of the family, but he didn’t have his father’s matter-of-factness or incurious nature. He kept a zone of secrecy around him that she was not allowed to enter. The only way she ever knew if he had a girlfriend was when his sister told everyone else about it. He’d taught himself to play the acoustic guitar and spent a lot of time in his room practicing old Bob Dylan songs. He went in for solitary sports, like swimming and distance running. She worried that he might turn out like one of her family’s oddballs, the ones with peculiar talents and discontents. Her crazy cousin Chip, or her too-smart-for-his-own-good brother, or Torrie and her freakish pictures. None of that kind ever settled for being happy in any normal way.

  She wondered if she should go away, as Matt so obviously wanted her to, or inflict herself on him further. She sat down in the armchair across from him. Damned if she was going to raise one more man who felt free to ignore women.

  The program must have just started. A man in a book-lined office, some professor-type expert, Anita guessed, was talking. There were more old-time sepia photographs, crowded city streets, horse-drawn carriages, men in derby hats. Pictures of grimy children, dressed in clothing so peculiar, it was difficult to identify any of it as particular items, shirts, say, or pants. But it was always the faces that stayed with you: young, shy, dead.

  After a couple of minutes, she understood enough of the story. Poor, orphaned, and distressed children were rounded up from the miserable New York City streets, packed onto trains, and shipped west to the farm states, where new families could be found for them. There was a general belief in the virtues of rural life and useful labor. Sometimes there were happy endings, families who had lost their own beloved children and welcomed these new ones into their hearts and homes. Other times less good: people looking for field hands or household drudges, children standing on train platforms while their teeth and muscles were appraised. If children weren’t chosen, they got back on the train and went on to the next stop, carrying with them only their cardboard suitcases and a change of clothes.

  Anita said, “Do you think any of those trains came through Iowa? I bet they did. I bet some of those orphans wound up right around here. There’s this noncredit course in local history this summer. I was thinking about signing up for it. That would be a way to find out.”

  Matt didn’t answer. She couldn’t stop talking. “That is just the saddest thing. Can you imagine, being packed up and shipped off like that and not having any idea where you’d end up?”

  Matt reached for his glass of Coke. “Some of them were probably just as happy they got to leave.”

  She stared at him but he didn’t say anything else. She said, “What do you have to do for school? Shouldn’t you be taking notes?”

  “I just have to watch it.”

  “Don’t knock that glass over,” Anita told him, falling back into Mom-speak, good old nagging. It was all she was really allowed to say to him.

  She made the rounds of the house downstairs, checking doors and windows. It had become her habit to do so. Those nights when she went to bed before Jeff did, she got up later to make sure he hadn’t left the front door wide open, or the stove burners on. He was capable of doing those things. Rain was beginning to spatter. Lightning flashed its SOS.

  Upstairs, television sounds came from the bedroom where Jeff was watching—baseball? Something with an announcer. Her daughter’s door was closed and she knocked on it. “Marcie?”

  “I’m on the phone.”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  She waited while Marcie wrapped up her end of the conversation. Giggles. Whispers. Probably a boy. “OK,” Marcie called, and Anita entered. Marcie had made her room into something resembling a giant bowl of peach sherbet. Peach curtains and bedspread and lampshades and throw pillows. Peach sherbet garnished with strewn clothing, magazines, papers, plastic bags disgorging recent drugstore purchases.

  Anita lifted a peach-colored towel draped on the back of a desk chair. “This is still damp. Hang it up in the bathroom.”

  Marcie rolled off the bed, took the towel and pitched it toward the adjoining bathroom. When it landed on the floor, she sighed and got up to retrieve it. Sometimes Anita thought they’d all be just as happy if she let them live like pigs in a sty, wolves in a den. Nobody else cared about how the house looked. Maybe she didn’t really care either.

  Anita said, “I have class tomorrow night so Matt’s going to drop me off and pick me up and in between he can take you to Susan’s, and Susan’s father can give you a ride back, OK?”

  “I don’t understand why you have to keep taking those dumb classes.”

  “Because I wasn’t smart enough to take advantage of all my opportunities when I was younger. I was too busy goofing around and having fun. Like somebody I know.”

  Marcie rolled her eyes. She was the prettiest girl in her class and always had been. Queen bee of the hive. There was no mystery whom she took after.

  “Mom?”

  “What.”

  “Are you and Dad getting a divorce?”

  Her daughter dropped back down to sit on the edge of her bed. She wouldn’t look up at Anita. It was as if she’d embarrassed herself. Anita reached behind her and pushed the door shut. “Why would you say that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s not the idea. The idea is we all try really hard and work things out. It just takes a while.”

  “It’s OK if you do. But would you tell me about it ahead of time? Because I’d want to know.”

  Everything in the room was sad. The ribbon board with its photographs of laughing girls, documented friendships. The troll figure dressed up in school colors, the beaded bracelets and fashion magazines, scattered CDs and the rest of the music paraphernalia, inside-out sweaters that should have been folded and put away. Her daughter’s accumulated life, both careless and careful. All of it at the mercy of her loutish and squabbling parents.

  “Honey, nobody’s planning on any divorce.” Nobody can afford one. “We just have to hang in there while things get better. They will. You just need a
little patience.”

  She watched her daughter not believe a word of it. Well, why should she?

  “Mom? Could I stay at Susan’s tomorrow night?”

  Anita said she’d think about it. She might as well load both her children onto the next orphan train.

  All she’d ever wanted was a family of her own. It hadn’t seemed like a greedy or an outrageous thing to want.

  She crossed the hallway to her own bedroom. Jeff was propped up in bed, watching his ball game. One pillow lay across his stomach, his arms resting on it. He looked up at her, his usual furtive expression. Ever since the DUI, he alternated between guilt and belligerence. “Is it raining yet?”

  “Just started.” Another boom of thunder. The lights flickered.

  “Crap. It’s only the fifth inning.”

  Anita went into the bathroom to change clothes. Back when they were first married, she’d tried to be interested in who was playing whom, or why it was important. She didn’t care. She’d never cared.

  The window frame ticked as the house made its minute adjustments to the rising wind. It was a well-insulated house and could stand up to any weather short of a tornado. Anita took off her jewelry, placed it in the china saucer she kept by the sink, washed her face, brushed her teeth, and changed into the sweatpants and T-shirt she kept hanging on the back of the door. It had been a long time since she’d worn anything to bed that might suggest sex. Jeff only wanted it when he was drinking, which was exactly when she wanted nothing to do with him. She didn’t expect any of that to change just because he’d managed to go a couple of weeks without getting liquored up.

  She came out with her armload of clothes and went to her closet to sort them out and hang them up. The closet had a mirrored door and she saw Jeff looking at her. He could look all he wanted, as long as he didn’t get any big ideas.

  Anita got into her side of bed, switched on her light, and picked up one of the magazines she kept on her nightstand. She’d got tired of the women’s magazines, their worrying tone, like there was always something you were supposed to be doing: starting an exercise routine or a craft project or trying Mexican seasoning in your next meat loaf or learning about some new dread disease. She’d come to like Better Homes and Gardens and Architectural Digest because you knew you’d never live anywhere like that and could just relax about it.