by Jo Barney
Jim hopes his mother remembers he will be having dinner at Janey’s tonight. Mom seemed to be thinking about something else when he told her this morning, but she probably remembers. She always does. Janey and he get off the bus, and she tells him where they are going. He remembers that her house is in the opposite way from his usual path home, and he hopes he’ll remember how to get home after they have dinner.
“You will be helping tonight; everyone does. I’ll tell you what to do.”
“I can do scrambled eggs,” he says, wondering whether he can do anything else. Set the table, he decides. They don’t talk until they come to a gray house that looks a lot like the one he lives in. Someone mows, he thinks. I can mow.
“I’ll introduce you to everyone, and then we’ll do dinner. Tonight I’m in charge. We’re having hamburgers. I hope you like hamburgers.”
He does. He can even help cook the meat. He does that at home sometimes.
When they walk in, three people are sitting around the TV, watching the news. Janey tells them to mute it while she introduces him. Ellie, a fat girl, looks at him but doesn’t say anything. Jerry gets up and shakes his hand and smiles. “Nice to meet you,” he says. Mollie says hi, but doesn’t smile, even though his counselor said that is what you do when you meet someone. “And I’m me, in charge of the meal tonight. I’ll tell everyone what to do.”
“She sure will,” Jerry says, but in a nice way, Jim thinks. Jim offers to help fry the burgers; Ellie volunteers to make the salad, and everyone will help clean up. And they do.
“Tonight is Janey’s choice for television, since she has a guest,” Jerry announces after the kitchen is cleaned up. And Janey looks at the TV Guide and decides on Charlie’s Angels. The four of them only talk during the commercials, except for Ellie, whom everyone tells to be quiet. When the show is over, Jim knows it’s time to go home.
“Do you want me to walk you?” Janey asks.
“No, just start me in the right direction and I’ll be fine.” It may take him a while, but he knows the street names in his neighborhood; plus he’s good at maps. And he does make it home after a few detours.
His father is sleeping, so he and his mother go to Jim’s bedroom and whisper.
“So how was it, the dinner?” she asks.
“Okay. The salad had some bitter stuff in it, but I ate it anyway.”
“Radicchio, I bet. You have to get used to it. And the roommates? Did you like them?”
“Yeah, they were okay. Everyone seemed to like me. I think. I helped cook the hamburgers.”
“Well, then of course they liked you. Everyone likes hamburgers and their cooks. Did someone bring you home?”
“No. I got home okay. I know maps and the streets around here. “
“Yes, you do. I keep forgetting. You know a lot.”
* * *
The next morning, Janey grins even bigger than usual when he gets to the bus stop. “Everyone likes you, Jim. They were glad I brought you to visit.”
“And I liked them,” he answers, surprised that what he has just said feels true.
“Why were you surprised?” William asks during their noon tutoring hour.
“Because no one has ever said that about me, except Janey. And my mother, of course. And I’ve never said it to anyone else.”
“Get used to it; you are getting liked more and more as you meet more folks. You are a pleasant, likeable person. Believe me, Jim, you have come a long way since you first came to the workshop. You are ready to be your own person. Know what I mean?”
“No, not really.” But Jim grins. He’s going to ask his counselor about being his own person. Sounds good. Sounds like Janey.
31
“Ray called this morning.” Patsy frowns as she breaks a cookie in two, dips it into her coffee.
I wonder why she seems worried. “He’s doing okay?”
“He was tired, I think. He said that the week had been hell, but he got through it. He hinted he might not stay in the program if he didn’t feel better in a few days. I told him to hang in there, that being clean and sober is worth the pain.”
“What did he say?”
“He asked me how I would know. Then he hung up.”
“Painful for you, too. Maybe you should let his counselor know.”
Patsy looks into her cup and shakes her head. “This is Ray’s battle. He has to fight it alone. He can talk to his counselor and his group, but he’ll have to do the hard stuff on his own.”
Her words ring true. I remember a while back when I felt Patsy was moving in on my family’s problems. I was angry. I didn’t want to listen to a stranger tell me about my husband, my son. even if she was a social worker. Now I realize she just wanted to support me, not solve my problems for me.
“We’re not strangers anymore, are we?” I ask.
“No. We are friends, intimate friends at times.”
“And intimate friends don’t judge or even give advice?”
“Not if you don’t want them to. They can just listen and understand.”
“I haven’t had a friend like that since I was eleven. Her name was Linda. She made me ask my mother a question about babies—where did they come from? My mother, over the dishes one night, stopped scrubbing the roaster when I repeated it. She tried to explain, and when I told Linda what my mother said, Linda gasped, ‘The man pees in the woman?’
“The next night, again over the dishes, I asked my mother if the man pees in the woman. My mother said I was thinking too much about it and I should stop. So Linda and I spent the next year or so, when we slept over at each other’s houses, trying to make sense of Mom’s story, our bodies, what it would be like when we were women. When Linda found a condom in her father’s suit pocket, she showed it to me, and we began to get the picture.
“Then, when we were in the tenth grade, she moved away. I’ve never had a friend like that since, someone I could tell everything to, like what Irvin and I did behind a bush in the park at our eighth-grade graduation picnic.”
“A best friend. You were lucky.”
“I think I’m lucky again. I need to talk to you about something. But only if you want me to.”
“Eleanor, I will be your best friend, if you wish.” She is not smiling until she adds, “Maybe we could be blood sisters. Like Laverne and Shirley?”
“Maybe. Can you still skip down the street?”
“Not only that, I know the words to ‘Making Our Dreams Come True.’”
Patsy hums a few bars as she pours each of us another cup of coffee. “Talk.”
I’m not skipping or breathing as I begin. “I am being blackmailed by the man who is Jim’s birth father. I need to do something to protect Jim and Hank.” That wasn’t so hard.
“Keep talking.” Patsy’s face does not reveal what she is probably feeling: revulsion, shock, regret that she must listen to me. Only concerned interest.
“Twenty years ago, when Hank was in Korea, I had an affair, not a love affair, only a lonely affair, with a man who made me feel beautiful and whole. I was young. I hadn’t felt like that before. When Hank came back from Seoul, the affair ended, amicably I thought, except that I was one month pregnant. Hank believes the child, Jim, is his son.”
“You want to tell him?”
“No, but I have to tell him. That man, Lloyd Jensen, has returned, a drugged mess of a person, a ruined marriage, such as it was, and he is threatening to either steal his son away or to tell Hank. Unless…”
“Unless…blackmail?”
“Yes. It started this month. Five hundred dollars. Left in his PO box. Now he wants more. He claims he is getting clean and sober, needs to get an apartment, wants to begin life over. I can’t find the money he is demanding—in our budget or in our bank account. I don’t know what to do.”
“How about coming clean, with both Jim and Hank?”
“Jim wouldn’t understand, especially if a stranger came to the door and demanded that he come live with him, which Lloyd has t
hreatened to do. And Hank…he has no job; he is having more nightmares, more flashbacks; and he is angry all the time. He may kill me or Lloyd or both of us when he hears the truth.
“He has never gotten along with Jim, blames him for screwing up our lives. He blames me for overprotecting Jim. The only good thing about his knowing the truth is that he won’t have to feel guilty anymore for hating his son, because that son isn’t truly his.”
I can’t go on even though I feel better now that the story has been let loose. Like a trapped animal, it has been digging at its fence trying to escape for years. Now that it’s out, the digging will stop, but the fear of what’s next is clogging my throat. I blow my nose in a napkin, sniff, am able to say, “Any ideas?”
Now it is Patsy’s hand that reaches for mine. “You are in a crock of shit, friend.” She softens her words with a light laugh, but I like that she doesn’t try to minimize my problems. “Let’s figure out how to climb out of it. Seems like you believe that it’s all up to you to make things right. What are the three other characters in this story doing? Standing still, waiting for you to make their lives happy? Won’t work. They each have a role in this. Hank won’t ever be whole until he deals with his PTSD. Lloyd is addicted to something, is probably living on the street. He has one weapon, your son.
“And you, my friend, have fallen into a swamp of victimhood—both Hank and Lloyd are trying to drown you in it. Jim is, too, in a different way. He has been clinging to you for years, struggling to stay afloat with you. He removed a plastic bag from your head, but you, I’m afraid, aren’t allowing yourself to take a breath.”
She knows about the bag. I am shocked that she still wanted to be my friend in the first place, despite witnessing that scene. I am shocked that she has suggested I am a willing victim. Maybe she thinks I should be angry. But I’m not. Her words fall into place, like pieces of a puzzle. I’m beginning to see the whole picture, as dismal as it seems. “How should I begin to not think like a victim?” I am not crying. That’s my first step. Action, not tears.
“Think about Jim. What if you allow him to be more on his own?”
“Jim? Allow? You think I need to let him go, move out of his home?”
“It’s a thought. What would you have to do to allow it to happen?”
“Make sure the place he chooses is safe, appropriate. Not like Wilcox House. Continue to support his therapy and education. And, along that line, have a man, doctor, counselor, talk to him about responsible sex. And dinner at our house once a week.”
“Wow. You’ve been thinking about this, haven’t you?”
“Jim forced me to. He has a special friend—a girl—who lives in a group home with three others. He came back from visiting it, liking the idea of having friends, being in charge of his life. He hasn’t asked me if he can make a change, though.”
“Jim may understand that moving will upset you.”
“Okay. I see where you’re going with this. I’ll think about it.” As I say this, I feel a sharp pain, deep down in my heart. My whole adult life has been spent making sure Jim is safe. I will be losing the one reason for waking up in the morning if he is waking up somewhere else. Can I do it?
“Good. We can talk more tomorrow at my house. I’ll make cinnamon rolls, my mother’s specialty.”
32
When Ray’s morning group session breaks for lunch, he has some thinking to do. Today’s discussion was about the triggers that may send a person into addiction. One woman said that whenever a student in her classroom misbehaved, she thought she was responsible for that behavior. She believed she wasn’t a good teacher. Thinking that, she would make herself feel better with alcohol, at home and with a bottle in her desk under her grade books.
“I can smell it,” a kid laughed at her one day, mimicking drinking with his thumb and fingers. “Are we too much for you?” He sauntered away, and she realized that the kid was right. The classroom was too much for her. She needed help. She took a leave of absence for the rest of the year and began treatment. “I am working on self-esteem with my counselor, and I’m re-evaluating my choice of career. I may decide to do something else, if I need to.”
Ray doesn’t think lack of self-esteem is a problem for him. It’s something he can’t put words to, something he hasn’t ever allowed himself to think about. But Kevin, his counselor, says he won’t recover until he faces what is behind his alcoholism, his trigger. He wanders out into the empty courtyard, sits in the afternoon sun, knows that Vietnam is where he’ll find it. For the first time in years, he forces himself to remember those two years.
Sensations roll by: the hot, moist air as he walked down the steps of the plane, the noisy barracks and the smell of sixty men in one room, the male voices laughing at lunch, telling raunchy jokes even when they could hear the guns booming in the mountains. As long as he was with his squad, he was never afraid, just cautious. Hacking through the jungles, one man behind the other, the troops felt like they were on an adventure rather than at war. Even when they skirmished with almost invisible enemies, the men returned to the base energized. They were defending each other, their country, the world, maybe.
Then one day, fourteen members of his squad were killed in a blast that shook the forest and sent dirt thirty feet into the air. Body parts, also. Ray helped pick up pieces of the men with whom he had played cards and drank beer twelve hours before. That’s when the adventure ended and the fear began. Each day seemed more dangerous than the last. The sweat soaking his khaki undershirt was caused by more than the jungle heat.
The old-timers remaining in the squad marked the days until each would be released on their hand-drawn calendars, and some of those pages, unmarked after a while by missing soldiers, still hung as reminders to the others. Everyone drank. Everyone smoked pot. And everyone used whatever substance was available to keep the fear manageable. Ray tried it all. Sometimes the chemicals worked; other times he found it difficult to even tie his boots with his shaking hands.
One day his CO asked whether he needed a break, a few days at the beach on the coast. Ray refused. He would not desert his buddies. He pulled himself together.
Ray still cannot allow himself to think about what happened next.
In the cafeteria, he grabs a sandwich. The room is mostly empty, the next activity beginning in a few minutes: a personal writing class. Ray isn’t into writing, but he always believed he had some stories to tell. He carries his half-eaten sandwich and cup of coffee into the classroom.
The youthful instructor introduces himself as a writer of a couple of books and says, “Time to get out your pencils or pens. The booklet in front of you will be your journal. No one will read your journal unless you wish to share it. The task is to write about yourself, an autobiography of sorts, but don’t start with, ‘I was born in…’
“Start with the first scene that comes to your mind when you pick up your pencil, and tell yourself, ‘I’m writing about my life.’ It might be yesterday. It might be you traveling down a birth canal. It might be anything in between. No one will read what you are remembering unless you want them to. I have sixteen journals at home that I have asked a good friend to burn when I die. They are mine. And what you write is yours. Go.”
Once my father came home with three geese he had shot. They were meant for Thanksgiving dinner, and he braided their necks and hung them at the back door, a celebration of his marksmanship, I suppose. Twenty years later, I walked into a quiet village in northern Vietnam and saw a line of posts along the path. I didn’t realize until I had passed a couple of them that the object at the top of each of the posts was a human head. Some had long hair that moved in the breeze; others didn’t. Trophies, like my father’s. I vomited. A few of my buddies cried. We were sure the Viet Cong were responsible, but no one was left in the village to confirm this. The rumor was that the village was sympathetic to the VC. Why were the people killed if they indeed were on the Communist side?
Turns out, we later discovered that the troops
we considered our allies had punished the village. We couldn’t believe that story at first. Then My Lai happened, and we understood that war makes monsters of us all.
Ray rereads what he has written, and he realizes he’s never put that day into words. Thinking about what the next writing class will bring makes him uneasy, yet that night, he tucks his journal under his pillow and sleeps deeply.
33
Janey wheels out next to Jim and they go to where the bus usually is. It’s not here. He is glad because they can talk a little more about what she said at lunch. “Really?” he asks for the third time.
“Really, Jim. We voted. Everyone said yes.”
Jim’s proud that the people in the house like him and that they want him to live with them. But he also feels other things, not so good. Scared. Worried. Sad. Dr. Kauffman and he have been working on naming feelings, and those are what Jim’s come up with. Maybe other feelings he doesn’t know the name of, too. “Tell the others I thank them. I have to decide.”
Then Jim sees that his mother is standing where the bus should be. She is smiling, so everything must be okay. “Come meet my mother,” he tells Janey, and she smiles too. He remembers to say, “Mrs. Ellison, Janey,” like Dr. Kauffman and he had practiced.
“I’ve heard good things about you, Janey. And Jim likes your friends at your house. You all sound happy there.” His mother isn’t smiling anymore. She looks at Janey and then at him. “I would like to ask a favor of you, Janey. I don’t know much about group homes. Could I visit yours—maybe even now? I can give you a ride since the bus hasn’t come yet, and I’ll bring Jim with me when I leave.”
“I think that’ll be okay. Ellie and Mollie won’t be home, but you can meet Jerry and see our house.”
He helps Janey into the car and folds up her chair, and they follow the same roads the bus does. His mom and Janey don’t say anything, and neither does Jim. He doesn’t understand why his mother is interested in where Janey lives.