Anita was supposed to come by soon and give him the mortgage documents so he could look them over before the closing. And because he’d rather have his business with Blake finished up before she arrived, Ryan said, “How about you just give me your best guesstimate on the kitchen. Some kind of laminate for the floor. Medium-grade appliances. We can fine-tune it later. I’ll worry about the bathrooms when that’s done.”
“All right. But I’d jump on that rewiring first thing. I can tell you who to call. And I’ll shave down that door so you can get in and out.”
“You’re sure you’ve got the time? Because if you have other jobs you need to get to—”
“If you’ve got the money, I’ve got the time.”
“OK then,” Ryan said. But his brother was still working on his cigarette in a way that suggested some kind of powerful bad mood, and of course you weren’t allowed to ask him what was the matter. So they stood on the porch for long enough to watch a truck hauling an anhydrous tank on a trailer pass on the road. “I guess they’d have to spray pretty close to the house. I hadn’t thought about that.”
Blake threw his cigarette butt into the yard. “Jimmy wants to enlist.”
“Holy crap.” Too late, he wondered if he was meant to offer congratulations. Double crap.
“He says he wants to do his part. Help the country.”
“What do you think about that?”
“He’s eighteen, we can’t stop him.”
“That’s not what I asked you.” He was trying to imagine his nephew got up as a soldier, plunked down in the middle of the heat and dust and loony violence. It wasn’t hard. He was just what the army wanted. One more small-town kid for the war to smack around and chew up.
Blake said, “I’m proud of him for stepping up. Somebody has to.”
“Sure. What does Trish think?”
“You’re going to keep on asking until you get me to say it’s a bad idea, aren’t you? She’s not happy. But she’s his mother You wouldn’t expect her to be.”
“It’s the wrong war to get all patriotic about.”
“I don’t need to hear that, you know?”
Ryan had forgotten the part about keeping his mouth shut. They let some silence settle in between them. Locusts started up, a rising and falling zeee sound. Blake said, “This looks like Anita.”
Their sister’s silver SUV was visible in the distance as a burnished reflection, a moving point of glare. It slowed to get into the driveway and parked behind Blake’s truck. Anita got out holding a manila envelope. She was wearing a summer suit, white jacket and pants, and red sandals. She stopped at the bottom of the porch steps and said, “This yard needs mowing.”
“I’ll get right on it,” Ryan promised.
“No, I meant Carolyn, the realtor. It’s not the way you want your properties to look.”
“Well, it’s my problem now.”
Anita came clipping up the steps and stood between them. Still a girly girl, with her perfume and her little gold earrings and her painted toenails. You just had to smile, looking at her. He and Blake were just two big lugs. She offered up her cheek and Ryan kissed it. “You smell good.”
“Thanks. When did you get in?”
“Couple hours ago. That for me?”
Anita handed him the envelope. “Ten a.m. tomorrow. Be there.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Then dinner tomorrow night at our house.” Anita was hosting the family get-together. To everyone’s relief, she was having it catered. She turned to Blake. “You guys are coming, aren’t you?”
“Sure.”
“Jimmy be there?” Ryan asked, and his brother said yes, and that was how they left it.
The locusts shrilled. It was the first real heat of summer. Anita made a swatting motion with her hand. “You’d think there’d be a breeze out here,” she said in an accusing tone. “So, you think you can find tenants, all the way out here?”
He’d put off telling anybody until now. “Actually, Chip’s going to stay out here.”
“No way.”
“Well, yeah.” They didn’t like the sound of it, he could tell.
“Oh no. I didn’t invite him to the dinner.”
“That’s OK. He probably wouldn’t come anyway.”
Blake said, “This his idea? Or yours?”
“It all just kind of came together.” No one was convinced. “He can help keep the place up.”
Anita said, “Well, he doesn’t keep himself up particularly well, does he?”
“He’s just an old soldier who needs a home,” Ryan said.
That stopped them, or at least gave them something else to think about. Chip’s comic book emporium had run its course, and a metaphysical-book store had taken its place. Hippie businesses seemed to be the only thing that would grow downtown, like weeds in sidewalk cracks.
After a moment Anita asked just what was wrong with Chip, exactly.
“Hard to tell. Maybe Agent Orange, though the VA doesn’t like admitting it. Maybe whatever else.” Whatever else covered a lot of ground. He knew that people were inclined to blame Chip himself, just because they always had. “Anyway, we’ll see how the house works out for him.”
Blake looked at his watch. “I have to go. You need a ride back to town?”
Ryan told him no. He and Anita watched him drive off, the sound of the truck’s engine dropping away. Anita said, “What’s the matter with him? He’s even more surly than usual.”
“Was he?” He figured he’d let Blake, or Jimmy, tell their own news, so it wouldn’t end up on one of Anita’s billboards.
His sister gave him a familiar look of disapproval. “God forbid either of you should talk about anything important. Don’t you get tired of that?”
“Yes.”
She raised her eyebrows, but she wasn’t used to instant capitulation and didn’t answer back. Instead she turned and regarded the house. “Sad to see it so beat-up, isn’t it.”
“Come on. Help me decide what to do with the kitchen.”
They went inside and Anita said the kitchen ought to be towed out to sea and burned. She had opinions about the cabinet finishes and the type of sink and the light fixtures, and he let her run on because after all he’d asked her, and she probably had a better sense than he did of why all these things were important. Maybe it was the old house itself that made him feel more fond of her than usual, Anita being Anita, all her exclamations and professions of disgust or enthusiasm, as if time had already passed them by and he was standing outside himself and watching a memory.
“By the way.” She interrupted herself midsentence. “Dad wants to take you out to dinner tonight.”
“Oh yeah? I was going to take him out.”
“We think he has a girlfriend.”
“Huh.” Ryan couldn’t quite fathom it. “Girlfriend.”
“Try and get him to tell you. He’s been acting real pleased with himself lately. I want to see the upstairs.”
“A girlfriend,” Ryan said again. “That could take some getting used to.” Their mother had died of a heart attack almost three years ago. He guessed he should be happy for his father, who must have been lonely. Or not happy. He guessed it depended on the girlfriend.
They stood in the upstairs hallway. The western windows were full of sun blaze. “This wallpaper has to go,” Ryan said. It was dark green, darker where it had been worn slick, with a pattern of mustard-colored bouquets.
Anita was crying, or trying not to. Her eyes and nose were red. Her face a crumpled photograph, suddenly old. “Hey,” he said.
“I miss Martha.”
“Well sure.” He was uncertain how to comfort her and settled for a too hearty pat on the back.
“Right in there, that’s where she died.”
If there were ghosts here, they were uncomplaining ones, sifting through the sunbeams like the dust, like time itself. After a moment Anita said, “I miss Mom too. And Torrie.”
“Torrie isn’t dead, come on.�
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“Well she sure isn’t here anymore.”
Torrie had moved out to Seattle with Elton, and the two of them seemed perfectly happy living together and taking their photographs and not caring what anybody else thought.
Ryan said, “I think that once Chip’s moved in, they’ll come back and spend some time with him.”
“Really?”
“We’ve talked about it.”
“You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?” Anita opened her handbag and took out her compact and began to dab different things on her face.
Ryan shrugged. “Didn’t want to get ahead of things.”
“Mom wouldn’t have been happy about her being out there.”
“Why? Because they aren’t married? Because Elton’s an Indian?”
“That’s what she would have said.” Anita gave her face another glaze of powder and snapped her compact shut. She looked like her Realtor of the Year self again. “But really, the two of them never got along. One of them was always disappointing the other. I think Mom had to be gone for Torrie to have her own life. Listen to me. You’d think I knew what I was talking about.”
They went back downstairs and outside, and when Anita started down the porch stairs to her car, Ryan said, “Chip’s supposed to come out here a little later. I’m going to wait for him.”
“Oh, good idea. What if he doesn’t show up?”
“I’ll be OK.”
Anita shaded her eyes with her hand. “I don’t think cell phones work out here.”
“Well, if I’m not at the closing, you’ll know where to come after me.”
“There are no adults in this family,” Anita said, getting into her car and closing the door after her. When she turned onto the road she honked the horn and waved.
Ryan sat down on the top porch step. The locust song shrilled and droned as the sun dropped lower. A breeze kicked up and the leaves of the corn stirred.
It was possible that he’d bought the farmhouse just so he could sit here this one time and let the thought drain out of him.
Chip’s old Chevy came down the road, leaning to one side as if it had two flat tires or a sprung frame. Chip got out and pushed against the door to try and get it shut.
“Nice car,” Ryan called out to him.
“Yeah, want to buy it off me?”
Ryan came down the steps to meet him. They shook hands. “Just look at you all dressed up,” Ryan said, because Chip was wearing a shirt of some once-white fabric, a red plaid tie, and a newish pair of jeans. “You getting married or something?”
“Just a little sense of occasion.” Chip had lost some more weight he hadn’t needed to lose. “On account of you’re a farmer now.” He laughed, his old cackle, now a cough.
“Not exactly.”
“What is this shit, field corn? Whose fields are these anyway? We should go introduce ourselves. Be neighborly.”
“Sure, let’s go do that.”
“Seriously. I want to talk to him. I might want to borrow a tractor. So I can start a garden. It’s not too late to plant sweet corn, is it? And tomatoes and cucumbers and melons. I want to start eating real healthy.”
“You can dig in the dirt tomorrow, if you want.” It probably was a good idea to get ahold of whoever farmed here, pay them to shovel the drive in winter. Haul Chip’s car out of the ditch when needed. “I don’t know when Blake can begin on the kitchen. It’s going to be kind of a mess.”
Chip waved that away. “No problem. This is gonna be perfect. You should move in too. It’d be famous times.”
“I think I’d need better Internet access.”
Chip went back to his car and took a cardboard box out of the trunk. “I brought a few things over. You want a beer?”
“I have to get back and have dinner with my dad. All right. Break my arm.”
They sat down on either side of the porch steps. A car passed and Chip waved at it.
“Who’s that?”
“Damned if I know.” Chip grinned. His teeth hadn’t held up well. He pointed. “What kind of tree is that?”
“Some kind of maple.” It was shady and beautifully shaped, each leaf like a green star. He’d been staring into it before Chip arrived without really seeing it. The beer was loosening him up but making him more alert, or would at least until he started yawning. He was still tired from his long drive.
Chip said, “You didn’t have to buy this place, but I’m sure glad you did. Thanks, man.”
“Sure. Thanks for the beer. We’re even.” He filled his mouth with it, swallowed. “Jimmy wants to enlist. Blake’s boy.”
“Ah shit.”
“Pretty much what I said.”
“You know you’ve been handed a fucked-up life when you’ve seen two useless obscene wars.”
“Patriotism,” Ryan said, “is running high these days.” He understood why kids signed up. He still remembered when a war seemed like an adventure he was being cheated out of.
“I spilled beer on my tie,” Chip announced.
“It’s the kind of tie that looks better with a little beer on it.”
“Maybe it’s not such a terrible thing for Jimmy to go into the army. Seriously. The only jobs around here are putting tires on for Farm and Fleet. And meth is a really evil drug.”
Ryan’s full attention returned. “What are you saying?”
“So much of it around,” Chip said vaguely, which was either more of his spooky knowledge about the bottom layer of life or else total bullshit, and Ryan decided not to ask any more for fear of learning more. His nephew was a good enough kid but he was just a kid, he didn’t understand all the different ways the world was out to kill you.
He said, “I hardly ever see Anna and Sam.”
Chip got up from the porch and took two more beer cans from the carton and handed one to Ryan.
“I thought I could make it work with them. You know, plan the great weekends, help them with their homework online. Give them the benefit of all my terrific advice. I’m just the ATM. The guy who writes the checks.” He cracked open the new beer. He didn’t know how it had happened, that the only person in the world he could really talk to was his derelict cousin. “A few years, they’ll be gone, living their own lives. Don’t get me wrong, it was a good move to get the hell out of that marriage, it’s such a relief that not everything’s my fault on a day-to-day basis. But I didn’t think I was divorcing my kids too.”
“Bring ’em out here. End of the summer, once we get the place cleaned up. Once Tor and Elton are in town.”
“They won’t want to come.”
“I thought you said you wrote the checks.”
He could make them do it. He’d have to pay, not just with money, but with sullenness and whining and lots of eye-rolling. What did he have to lose? They already thought he existed mostly to annoy them. “Learn a little bit of their own history,” he said.
“Now you’re talking.”
“Even if they hate every minute of it.” They no doubt would. He felt his confidence ebb, the decision waver.
“Sort of like camp. The kind where they send juvenile offenders.”
“I feel old, Chipper.”
His cousin scrutinized him. “You don’t look half-bad, man. You still have that Nordic-prince thing going on.”
“Don’t make me laugh. I’ll get beer up my nose.”
“Me, I’m not that old. But my lungs and my liver are.” Chip brought the cardboard box up to the porch and rummaged around in it. “Help me with this.”
“With what,” Ryan said. He’d meant, old as in he didn’t know what came next. What you were allowed to look forward to. “What the hell, Chip.” His cousin was unfolding an American flag the size of the front door.
“Just hold this end up.” Chip produced a hammer, and he positioned the flag so it hung down from the front edge of the porch, the blue field on top. He reached up and tapped a nail into a corner, then took Ryan’s end and did the same. Then he went down the stairs i
nto the yard to admire his work. Ryan followed him.
“I don’t think that’s, you know, Boy Scout–authorized display.”
“You see any Boy Scouts around here?”
The sunset breeze caught the loose fabric and made it bell out. Ryan waited. Chip said, “Why not, man. It’s my goddamned country too.”
“Sure it is.”
“It’s like family. No matter how fucked up it is, it’s the only one you got. Let’s go look at the barn.”
And here was the barn, with its good smell of ancient must, its dirt floor baked into something as dense and layered as peat, its shallow central pit where generations of cows had trampled. The old milking stalls, the feed bucket still hanging from its nail, the hayloft, the corners filled with rusted and spiderwebbed junk. Chip kicked at a bale of gray stuff that might have once been hay, came up with a horseshoe, worn thin at its top lip, the nail holes still visible. Hey look, he said. Good luck!
He said the barn would be a great place for whatever you felt like doing, practice space for some band, maybe. Make all the noise you wanted, nobody’d care. Tor and Elton could store equipment here; it looked dry enough. Do their photography stuff. You’d have to put in a floor. You could do that. These beams are solid, man. They built this sucker to last, those old-timers.
Built to last, Ryan agreed. It filled him with holy dread to stand in this place that testified to their grinding, incessant labor. How hard they had worked, and how stubbornly, every day of their lives, for their little bit of ease, little bit of pride. They had done so much. They had meant to do so much more. Imagine them slipping off to death regretting the task unfinished, the field unplowed, the child unloved. It could break your heart. He felt an urgency in him, a clamoring. Compared to them, he wasn’t old at all. Chip stooped and picked another horseshoe out of the soft dirt and handed it to Ryan and Look, he said. You’re lucky too.
Reading Group Guide
THE YEAR WE LEFT HOME
Jean Thompson
Introduction
Beginning in a small town in Iowa in 1973, The Year We Left Home follows one extended family through marriages, divorces, tragedy, and everyday life over a span of thirty years. Told from the perspectives of different characters across multiple generations, it provides a stirring, insightful look at how one family redefines happiness and relationships over the course of their lives.
The Year We Left Home Page 34