The Year We Left Home

by Jean Thompson

  Jesus. Whine much, guy?

  He still had time to kill, so he walked outside again, pushing up the hood of his coat against the snow. In the building next door he found a snack bar, and a lounge where students were absorbed in tapping at computers. Or they were plugged into headphones, eyes closed. Everybody communing with their private machine. Chip bought a cup of coffee and a hot dog and some nachos and ate slowly, thinking about nothing in particular.

  When he got back to the gallery, waiters in white shirts and black pants were setting up tables of wineglasses. He picked a spot in the lobby to wait. Trying not to look like a guy who was there just for the free drinks.

  People began to gather in ones and twos and threes. Enough to call it a crowd. Even though he’d been watching, he didn’t see Elton come in. But there he was, it couldn’t have been anybody else, having a conversation with a man and a woman, two of the grown-ups.

  Chip got up and joined the group in the gallery. He walked past Elton and his fans and pretended to examine a photograph nearby. Elton was still on the chunky side, but he’d grown tall enough to balance it out. Still that round, baby face, now spreading out around the chin. He wore his hair pulled back in a ponytail. Jeans, a black, open-neck shirt, and he’d picked up a pretty nice leather jacket somewhere along the way. Chip guessed the jacket was the artist part.

  He dawdled over the picture, trying to catch what the three of them were saying behind him. The woman must have been a teacher, she was talking about a class. The class had so enjoyed blah blah. “I’m really glad I got to meet some of them,” Elton said, and damned if he didn’t sound exactly the same, like this was back in Seattle, in his mom’s old kitchen. The woman said they were looking forward to hearing more from him about blah blah. “Of course, that would be great,” Elton said, and even though Chip had his back to him and hadn’t talked to Elton since 1976, he was just about positive that the guy wasn’t looking forward to it one bit.

  Chip moved on to the next picture. He hadn’t yet figured out what he was going to say to Elton, but it would be pretty chickenshit not to say it.

  He kept Elton in the corner of his eye. As the guest of honor, he was in demand. Everybody kept wanting him to talk about the fine points of this or that picture, including a couple of the juicier girls. Elton, my man! The girls couldn’t have been more than twenty-two. And Elton had to be, what, over forty now. Only seven or eight years younger than Chip was. That was part of what had made Seattle such a funky little time.

  Elton and his satellites were moving in one direction around the room, Chip in the other. When they intersected, Chip managed to get close enough to come into Elton’s field of vision. Chip nodded. “Good to see you again,” he said, and kept moving.

  He was aware of Elton staring after him. Some fuzzy expression on his face. It was another five minutes before Elton detached himself from his groupies and walked over to him. “You’re shittin me,” he said. “Ray?”

  “The one and only.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Yup. Same old me, just smarter and better looking.” He had to say, he was tickled at being recognized. It meant he didn’t look as bad as he thought.

  “Take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut,” Elton told him, and then they managed a little bit of back pounding and handshaking. “Goddamn, what are you doing here?”

  “I live here. Around here. I read about you in the paper and I thought, ‘These people have no idea what a lame-ass character you are, I better go straighten them out.’”

  “Total mind fuck,” said Elton, shaking his head. Close up, Chip could see that his eyes were pouchy, older than the rest of him. “Shouldn’t you be dead or something by now?”

  “Were you always such a smartass? I’m trying to remember.”

  “So catch me up, you been living here all this time?”

  “Nah, not that long. You know what they say. Home’s the place where, when you show up, they have to take you in.” That was pretty much the size of it. “So when did you turn into a big shot?”

  Elton ducked his head, a movement that recalled Elton the Kid. “Oh yeah, that’s me. Here in the land of the big shots.”

  “No, really, those are pretty righteous pictures. You still in Seattle?”

  Elton said thanks, and yeah, he was, mostly, but he worked here and there. Different gigs. Chip thought this was probably already more conversation than they’d ever had way back when. How long had he lived out west, anyway? A couple of years? He should have made a habit of writing things down, so he could remember exactly. And then, since they had to get past this part, he asked, “How’s your mom?”

  “She’s good. She got married. He’s a pretty nice guy. They bought a house out in Port Angeles.”

  “Yeah? That’s great.” Chip tried to feel one way or the other about Deb’s being married, but he couldn’t, aside from a mild curiosity about whether her husband was a white guy or another Indian. Deb. She must be most of the way to old by now. It gave him another of those floating, cut-loose feelings.

  “I was married for a while,” Elton volunteered. “Actually, twice. But the first one didn’t count.”

  “There are those kind.”

  “The second one lasted longer. But she was mean as a snake. I give her credit for launching my career. I was always wanting to get out of the house, so I started driving around taking pictures.”

  Chip was getting a kick out of this new Elton, the talky one. Who would have guessed, way back when, that the guy had any such thing as a sense of humor?

  “I have two kids. Boy and girl. Teenagers. They’re good kids. Smarter than I ever was. They live with their mom, but I see them as often as I can. Counteract some of the snake venom.”

  “You, a dad,” Chip said. “Now there’s a mind fuck.” He guessed it was his turn to talk, but he didn’t have anything in the way of wives or kids to offer up. From across the room, a little delegation was headed toward them. The lady art teacher and a couple of dressed-up older guys. “Here comes your fan club,” Chip said.

  Elton saw them too. “Look, I have to go do the art thing.”

  “Understood.”

  Elton hesitated, then went for it. “There’s a party later. At some students’ place. Very, very casual. I think I can promise that. Why don’t you come with?”

  Chip was all ready to say no. Trying to imagine himself at any kind of a party, especially one with a bunch of college kids being all cool and talking art and then throwing up in the sink. “Sure,” he said. “Thanks.”

  “Great. I’ll come get you, give you the high sign.”

  Elton went off to glad-hand the fan club and Chip strolled over to get himself a glass of wine and some of the mingy cheese and crackers. He shouldn’t have said he’d go to the party. But he’d be fifty on his next birthday and he didn’t have much to show for it except a bunch of stories he couldn’t always remember because they slid back and forth too fast and maybe Elton could at least make one of them hold still for a little while. Besides, Elton actually seemed happy to see him.

  By his third glass of wine, whatever was happening at the gallery was winding down, people heading for the doors. Elton came up to him, accompanied by one of the juicy girls. “Hey Ray, you still good to go?”

  “Absolutely.” The girl was tall, every bit as tall as Elton, with short dark hair streaked a fluorescent red. She didn’t look like the smiley type. She wore shiny black knee-high boots, a flippy little skirt, and a jacket made of some patchwork stuff. It was as if everything she had on meant something, but he couldn’t have said what.

  “This is Alisa, she can give us a ride. Or if you want, we could go in your car . . .”

  “I’ll take a ride.” The inside of the Chevy wasn’t exactly housebroken.

  The three of them went out into the snow, a few inches deep by now. Nothing more was coming down but the wind had picked up and turned frigid, which was pretty much the miserable cycle of weather here. The girl, Alisa, le
d the way to her car, a new-looking Japanese model. She and Elton were having a little conversation, while Chip trudged on behind. He wondered if being an artist meant you got next to a lot of girls, if Elton was such a great photographer that they fell over backward for him. Because if you were going to be honest about it, he wasn’t the world’s best-looking man.

  The Japanese car at least had four doors, so when Chip said he’d sit in the back, he didn’t have to fold himself entirely in half. Elton sat up front, his arm all casually across the seat, just resting on the back of Alisa’s neck. Chip said, “So, you do this kind of thing a lot? Show up places where they have your pictures?”

  Elton turned around. “It’s called visiting artist, yeah, I do them from time to time. Come out to a school, visit classes, maybe do a gallery talk. Then they buy me drinks.”

  Alisa said, “We had Gabrielle Wyse earlier this fall. She was incredible.”

  “That’s great,” Chip said. “I mean, I guess they pay you and all. Great.” He should probably stop talking now. The car’s tires made a soft noise in the unplowed snow. He sat back and watched the streets and houses slide past, little square houses with frosted roofs that could have been anywhere, Des Moines.

  Elton said, “I’m liking the hair. Very intense. Like red feathers, like you’re a tropical bird. So Ray, man, tell me what you’re doing these days. Tell me what you’ve been doing the last twenty-five years.”

  “Ah, all kinds a shit.” He rummaged around for a story. “I went to diamond-cutting school. Carson City, Nevada.”

  “Yeah? You turn into some international diamond smuggler or something?”

  “Oh yeah, ha ha ha. It’s great work, if you can get it.” OK, next story. “I lived in Mexico for a while. Florida. Austin, Texas. Man, times I woke up and had to look at a matchbook to remember where I was. Now I’m back in the old hometown.”

  Alisa said, “Gabrielle Wyse was a revelation. The way she approached pigment. It made you reexamine every formalist assumption you had.”

  “I’m going to have to take a look at her work. You’re going to have to tell me more about her. So what are you doing with yourself, back in the old hometown?”

  “I run a little business. Comic books, video games. You could even call it a pop-culture art gallery.” This in the way of a joke, but the laughs weren’t coming. “Just something to keep me out of trouble.”

  “We’re here,” Alisa said, pulling the car over to the curb. Other cars were already lining the street, and people were walking toward a house with the porch lights blazing. The three of them got out. Chip caught up with Elton and held him back for a moment of private conversation.

  “Hey I don’t know if this is such a great idea, you know, it’s supposed to be your party.”

  “What are you saying, you want your own party?”

  “No, fool.” Alisa was already stalking away toward the house. Elton’s gaze tracked her. “Nice girl,” Chip said. “Very high style.”

  “She makes videos. Sensitive art videos.” Elton took hold of Chip’s arm and steered him along. “Now don’t get all stupid on me. You take off now, I’ll wake up in the morning and think you were just a bad dream.”

  “I’ll stay for a little while.” Chip thought he could walk back to his car if he had to. Or find a quiet corner, fall asleep under somebody’s bed.

  The first thing that hit him walking in was the smoke, sweet sweet cigarette smoke. He let it ignite in his head. Whammo. There was probably some pot mixed in there too. The rooms were decked out in Christmas lights, big slashed-looking paintings, 1950s kitchen chairs, a sofa upholstered in orange vinyl and one in turquoise vinyl. Lamps made from industrial-looking metal cans. Horseshit music on the stereo. He bummed a cigarette from a kid in a little squashed-looking hat. In the kitchen he helped himself to beer from a cooler. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad party after all.

  The place was crowded with kids leaning up against walls or draped over the vinyl sofas. Chip made a circuit of the rooms, wound up back in the kitchen by the cooler. The kids all had the same look of calculated goofiness, the art crowd. It didn’t look so hard to achieve. He could imagine Ferd, with a few years and a little wardrobe updating, fitting right in.

  Elton came into the kitchen. “You having fun yet?” he asked. On each side of his face, a piece of hair had come loose from the ponytail. He’d taken off the leather jacket. Sweat stains were drooping beneath the armpits of his black shirt, like bats hanging upside down in a cave.

  “Yeah, I’m great.” Chip watched Elton open the refrigerator, rummage around and come up with a can of Coke. “Coke?” he ventured.

  “Oh yeah, man. Otherwise I turn into a drunk Indian. Not a good thing.”

  “Where’s your girl?”

  “Alisa? She operates on a higher intellectual plane than most people.”

  “I’ll be right here if you need me for anything,” Chip said. If he started walking around, he might step on something he shouldn’t, like Godzilla squashing skyscrapers. The drinks and the smoke were making him balloon-headed.

  After Elton left, he edged in on a group smoking by the back door and asked one of them for another cigarette. A blond girl wearing pink-framed glasses shook one out of her pack and he bummed a light too. They had the back door open and cold air was coming in like a fist, but that felt OK in the overheated room. Chip stood with the rest of them, smoke and frosty breath mingling.

  He wasn’t paying attention to their talk at first. His hearing had a blotted quality, but the cigarettes were making his brain percolate. They were talking about the president. Nobody had won the election yet. They were still counting ballots and suing people. “We’re going to get fucking Bush,” one of the boys was saying, “and everything’s gonna go off the edge of the cliff.”

  “They sent goon squads down to Florida to intimidate the county clerks.”

  “Unreal.”

  “Gore should grow a pair.”

  “Yeah, don’t hold your breath.”

  Chip felt his lungs beginning to squeeze and grind, and a cough rising to the surface, no way to stop it. An ugly wet hacking erupted from him. It lasted a long time, and though he bent over in an attempt to make it more manageable, or at least keep it out of people’s faces, when he stopped and straightened up, they were all staring at him.

  “Sorry,” he said, and then, because they were still staring, he said, “Which one’s Bush?”

  A space of silence, then a boy said, “You’re kidding, right?”

  When they were pretty sure he wasn’t, the girl with the pink glasses said, “He’s the Republican. Did you vote for him?”

  “Vote . . . no, pretty sure I didn’t.” He was actually very sure. He’d never voted in his life.

  “You know,” the same boy said, “if you don’t get involved in the political process, you don’t have any right to complain.” He had red hair and blotchy brown freckles. The kind of kid who makes a cute six-year-old, and it’s all downhill after that.

  “I’m not complaining,” Chip said. He drew in more of the cigarette smoke to keep the cough where it belonged. “So, are all of you artists?”

  “Yeah,” said Red. “Who are you?”

  “Friend of Elton’s. Big Chief Thunderthud.” He turned to the girl in the glasses and tried out a smile. “What kind of an artist are you?”

  “A photographer.”

  “Great.” She wasn’t very pretty, and he’d hoped that would make her friendlier, but he guessed not. “What kinda pictures you take?”

  “I’m cold,” she announced, and stomped off into the house.

  “Yeah, I guess she is.”

  At least that got a smirk out of Red and the other two sock monkeys and he would have liked another cigarette but crap he should have quit while he was ahead and anyway he didn’t want to be a total cigarette whore. He tilted the beer bottle to get at the last of it. “I like artists. Art.”

  “Why’s that?”

  He could hear the sn
ot in the kid’s voice, not that he gave a shit what any of them thought. He’d only been running his mouth. Art art art. Woof woof woof. Still, he was glad when Elton wandered into the kitchen. “Elton, hey. Come tell us the story of your life. The artistic part.”

  Elton shook his head. He looked glum, like maybe he’d just found out Alisa only liked girls. “Not much of a story. Fat kid starts taking pictures. I wanted this one little space I could control, this little square of the world. It gave me power when I didn’t have any. Made me feel less disenfranchised.”

  “Disenwhat?”

  “Not able to vote,” Red said, smirking again.

  “You’re a clever guy,” Chip told him. “I can tell that just by looking at you.”

  Elton said, “What’s the deal, Ray? Chill. You wanted to hear a story, right? I kept taking pictures. I spent more and more time and money on it. I started to think I might be good at it. That was this huge thought for me. I never thought I was very good at anything. Ask Ray here. He knew me when.” Elton gave him a solid nudge in the ribs.

  “You were a pretty sorry fuck, yeah.” Chip nudged him back, had to grab a wall to keep his balance. Smooth.

  Red and the sock monkeys finished their cigarettes and flicked the butts into the snow. “Fuckin freezing out there,” one of them said. They wandered away, following the noise of the party.

  Chip pulled the door shut. “I don’t think I like them.”

  “Yeah, the bigheaded boys. I see a lot of that kind.”

  “What’s their problem?” Chip rubbed his arms, trying to warm them. He thought maybe he should eat something.

  “Ah, I never went to college, so they either think I’m stupid, or maybe they’re stupid for wasting their time going to school when they could be living an actual life. Or both.”

  “You make an excellent point.” There was a cupboard behind Chip; he opened it, extracted a box of Cheerios, and began eating them by the fistful.