The Homecoming

by Stacie Ramey

  “You think I’d fall for that shit?”

  “I hoped you would.”

  I rub my hand over my razor stubble. “Don’t you think I’m too old for that bullshit?”

  He looks at his hands. “Maybe. But maybe the older we get, the more we need to believe in magic and dragons.”

  I smile. Steve. Always the same.

  He puts his hand out, and we shake, then do the man hug thing. It’s kind of comforting that Steve’s the same mostly. A few more pounds in the gut, a little older looking, but still so easy and calm and lots of laugh marks around his eyes.

  He gestures to his office. “Shall we go get our talk on?”

  “You betcha.”

  Steve’s laugh is easygoing, and when I get in the office, see the tank where the new Chinese water dragon is waiting, I say, “I thought you said…”

  “I’d never let you down, John. This office wasn’t the same without him anyway.”

  I lean against the glass that separates the lizard from the office. “Poor guy is trapped. Don’t you feel sorry for him?”

  “You never described the last one like that. Why the change?”

  “I’m a different asshole now?”

  “You’ve grown up. You had your freedom when you lived with your uncle. Now you’re trapped with your mother, where you never wanted to be.”

  That was way too easy for Steve. And also very true. But that doesn’t mean I want to get into it. I knew I had to see Steve, and the truth is, I didn’t really mind, but I also didn’t really think about what that would mean entirely.

  “This guy’s deeper green. You got any opinions on why I’d say that?” I flop onto the love seat, gray and soft, the pillows like a cloud cushioning my fall.

  Steve’s sitting in a brown leather chair directly across from me. He’s got a table next to him and a bottle of smartwater on it.

  “Smartwater? Really?”

  He shrugs. “What can I say? I’m getting older and require more upkeep.” He points to the mini fridge at the end of the room. “Need anything?”

  “Some Jack would be perfect.”

  “Coke, Sprite, or bottled water.”

  “You gotta work on your menu. Sad really.”

  Steve weaves his fingers together. “So when do you want to get started on the real stuff?”

  “Man, Steve, no foreplay? Wow.”

  Steve’s voice is deep and warm and easy and makes me relax, even though I’d never tell him that. “How’ve you been since you moved away?”

  I sit straight up, point to the massive file Steve has strewn across his lap. My file. “You mean sent away. Kicked out. Told to leave, or have you forgotten?”

  Steve nods and runs his fingers through his goatee, tries to look all wise. “Yes. I remember.”

  “And if you don’t, you could always look it up, right?” This is just how Steve and I are. We give each other shit. It’s why I like him.

  “Right. So you’re saying you still have feelings of abandonment since your mother asked you to leave? Is that how you’d like me to write it?” He cocks his head like a son of a bitch and holds the pen in the air as if waiting for my order.

  “And I have trust issues. Write that next.” I get up and get a Coke out of the fridge. “I still think I’d open up easier if you plied me with Jack Daniel’s.”

  “I’ll take what I can get with the ten tablespoons of sugar you’re downing.”

  “Man, you have gotten old. So what do you want to know?”

  “How are things?”

  “I’m back here, so how good could they be?”

  He nods some more. “You want to talk about why you’re here?”

  “Come on, you’ve got the whole court-ordered bullshit.”

  Steve flips through the pages of the report. “You were a little busy in Chicago, huh?”

  I want to rip those pages. The ones that mandated weekly sessions with Steve for anger management, probably random drug tests, a probations officer.

  “Stupid kid stuff.” I switch to a lower baritone, trying on my best grown-up voice. “But I’m pretty disappointed in myself anyway. Hey, why don’t we take away my video games and kick me out of paradise? That sound about equal to some arrogant asshole’s mailbox?”

  “The mayor’s mailbox, you mean?”

  I smirk. “Yeah. What if I told you he started it?”

  Steve leans back. Lets his leg drape over his other one, knocking his foot up and down, up and down. “What if I said you sabotaged yourself?”

  I laugh. “Now you’ve really flipped a lid or something. Why the hell would I do that?”

  “You tell me.”

  Anger races through me. He’s right—I killed my only chance of being with Uncle Dave. Dad’s brother. The only one in the family who is like me in the least bit. I feel my beast stir. It focuses on Steve’s bouncing foot. Watches it go up and down, up and down. Up and fucking down like Leah doing those bouncing little jumps. Over and over. Laughing. Her hair in its bun, but all I wanted to do was take it down and watch it fly.

  “John?”

  More bouncing. Until I can’t take it anymore. “Stop it!” I stand. My hands go to my head. I’m acting crazy. I can’t act crazy. Steve’s cool and all, but there are limits. Even for him. I sit. “I’m sorry. I just…” My head goes into my hands again, but through my fingers, I can see Steve’s adjusted his posture so that both feet are flat on the floor, which lets me breathe out. “I’m sorry. Yeah. I screwed up. It was stupid. I was stupid. I’m always stupid.”

  Why can’t you follow the fucking rules, John? Simple. Fucking. Rules.

  Steve waits for me to calm down, then asks, “How’s your mom?”

  “She should be in here. She’s ready to snap. For reals.” I take a slurp of Coke.

  “Tell me about that.”

  I sink back into the couch. The feeling of sitting here when I was ten, nine, eight years old comes back to me. All those times. Trying not to let Steve get too close to opening the vault. My dragon of protection guarding it like mad. Now it seems stupid. After Leah, there are worse things than admitting how I really feel. “She’s on edge all the time. Ryan’s not sleeping. He’s aggressive. She keeps trying to act like it doesn’t bother her. Still doing the family dinner thing. Salad plates, for fuck’s sake.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, who cares about salad when your life is going down the toilet?”

  “Some might say your mom is being courageously optimistic?”

  “Yeah. I get that. But it’s never that easy with Lydia Strickland, is it? Because the thing is she’s lying to all of us. Deep down, she doesn’t even believe this shit either.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  I take a drink and let the syrupy taste roll around in my mouth. I pretend there’s Jack mixed in. I think about smoking that weed Pete gave me. I try to calm the dragon, who has fully woken up and is pacing inside me. “She’s fucking looking for a place to put him. After all this time, after all her bullshit. After everything, she’s going to send him away. None of it mattered. It was always going to end like this. God, she’s so stupid. I’m so stupid.”

  Steve puts the tips of his fingers together, making a v with them. He brings them to his face, leaves them in that space between his mouth and chin. This is my signal to keep talking, but all I want to do is shut up. The anger is churning through me now; all the stuff I’ve been shoving down is boiling out of control, climbing, climbing from my gut up my throat. If I don’t let it out, I’ll die.

  “John? You with me?”

  I stand. “I just can’t take how angry I am around her.”

  “Go on.”

  I’m pacing. “Being in the same room with her makes me feel like I’m on fire. I’m faking it. Big-time. Of course I am. I have to. But I can’
t help how much I hate her sometimes.”

  “Why do you hate her?”

  I shoot him a look that he’s gone too far. So he clears his throat, motions for me to sit, and says, “Instead of faking it, maybe we could work on some strategies to calm the beast.”

  I sit. “I’m listening.”

  Steve lowers the file on his lap. My file. He takes off his glasses. Rubs his eyes. “You know the solution to all the anger?”

  I hold up my hand to stop him. “No.”

  “If we could get to the bottom of—”

  “Off-limits.”

  “It would help. I could maybe hypnotize you so remembering that day is easier.”

  The dragon roars. The fire licks my face like the coffee did that day. I get dizzy. I stand. Have to move. Have to. “No. No. No. I don’t ever want to talk about that day again.”

  “OK. So let’s talk about ways to stay calm when you face the dragon.”

  I should bristle that he’s used that term, but it’s like he uses it to show me he remembers. And that calms me down a little. Steve’s got me. He’s going to keep pushing me and pushing me about that day, the day Old Ryan died, and I’m going to keep saying no. It’s what we do. That will never change. There’s no freaking point to any of this therapy bullshit, but it’s the way things are and always will be.

  The dragon stands down as we listen to Steve tell us how to deal. My hands are still shaking a little, but the heat leaves me, and a coldness replaces it. Like how I imagine swimming in the cold Pacific Ocean would feel. The dragon slinks back into his cave, his cold-blooded body the same temperature as a block of ice—and ice is way better than fire.

  • • •

  When I finally make it out of my appointment and pull out my cell, Emily has texted.

  Ready when you are.

  I have to adjust my brain so I can focus on her message, because at first, it makes no sense. Then I realize she’s talking about coming to get me so I can work on her car. I text back.

  I’m at the Riverbridge building. Pick me up and we can go from here.

  On my way.

  I breathe out, and my fingers wish for a joint to magically appear. I sit on the brick wall and text Mom.

  Emily is picking me up.

  Mom calls right away. “Hey.” I hear Ryan screaming in the background. Screaming his head off. “Hey. It’s fine if you go with Emily, but can you two swing by here? Ryan, it’s OK. Settle down.” Thud. The call drops.

  Suddenly, my beast is standing up, roaring. I call Mom back. “Are you OK?”

  “Yeah.” Pant. “Oh, someone from the therapy place is helping.” To somebody else. “Thank you.”

  “Mom?” In the two seconds it takes her to answer me, my head is exploding. “Mom? Are you OK? Can you please answer me?”

  She’s breathless. “John?” As if she’s forgotten we were actually talking. As if I’m not even a blip on her radar, while I am hanging on her every fucked-up syllable. “John?” A small laugh. “Yeah. I’m OK. Sorry. Go with Emily.”

  Ryan says “Go, go, go.”

  “We’ll see you later. We’re fine. I’m fine. Sorry.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. We’re fine. We’ll see you later.”

  I want to tell Mom she’s repeating herself. I want to tell her to call someone else when she needs help. I want to scream at her until she sees that she doesn’t have just one child. That I matter too. That I exist. Instead, I look up as Emily pulls over. I wave to her. “Em’s here. Got to go.”

  “OK. Let me know when you’re coming home.”

  “Will do.” I hang up, not waiting for any more orders from her. I will myself to stop shaking. To let the fire go out. The thought of the ocean comes to me, and I let it bathe me until I’m cool enough to proceed.

  Emily looks even cuter than I remember her. Her hair is down, silky straight, and her eyes are this amazing hazel color with honey-gold specks thrown in. “Hey. Ready?”

  I banish the dragon for real and jump in her car. “As I’ll ever be.”

  “Well, all right then.” She navigates her car toward downtown. I realize how uncomfortable I am as a passenger in a car. My fingers drum on my leg. Her eyes take in my “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” solo. “A mechanic and a musician. Wow.” We pull into a parking space in front of an AutoZone.

  “You have paper and pencil?”

  She opens her purse, pulls out a small spiral notebook with the Yale emblem on it.

  “You want to be a Yalie?”

  “Or Princeton. Or Harvard. Or USC. Or pretty much whatever school takes me. And gives me a huge scholarship. You know Yale pays full tuition for anyone who gets in.” She hands me the pad. “I want to be a journalist. I think.”

  “USC would get my vote.”

  “You want to go there?”

  “California? Definitely. College probably isn’t in my future.”

  “Why?”

  I pull open the glove compartment and take out the owner’s manual. Write down the model number. Writing things down is good, because when I’m writing, I’m not thinking of Leah. 1996 Camry LE. Silver. I know I don’t need the color, but I wish I did. I wish I had a ton of things to write right now to drown out Leah’s voice that reaches across time.

  “You’d never go to college?” She asked, her voice soft. I’d taken her on a picnic, which was the cutest thing I’d ever done for a girl. She was eating grapes. Everything had been perfect. The day. The picnic. Us. Then that question. “You’d never go to college? You’re so smart.”

  And the realization that for her, I would go to college. I started to work on my grades. It wasn’t hard.

  Dad never noticed. Neither did Mom. I’m not even sure they looked at my grades since I’d left Mom’s. There never was any reason to. I got by doing as little as I could. Solid C work was the way to fly under the radar. Only last year, my guidance counselor, Mr. Hicks, did obviously. He called me into his office the fall after Leah killed herself. Last year. It was supposed to be my senior year until I just gave up and dropped out.

  “We got your scores back on your SAT, John. These are college scores.”

  “I’m not a college kid.” I walked out of the office, slamming the lockers on my way.

  It was like Leah was still with me in that moment. And that should have made me happy, but it just made me madder than I’d ever been. Not the dragon that time. Me.

  “John?” Emily’s voice this time. Here. Now.

  Here, there’s no Leah. No stupid guidance counselor. Nothing. I am in the now. I swear I am. I grit my teeth. Force myself to settle the fuck down.

  “John?”

  “Yeah. Sorry. I was just remembering something I need to do.”

  “Do you want to do this some other time?”

  “No. It’s cool. I mean, there’s something I have to do after this.”

  My hand shakes as I give her back her pen. We walk into the store. She points to the row of jingle bells that hang over the door, announcing visitors. “Welcome to last century.”

  I chuckle, but I’ve already cased the strip mall for the liquor store I need and am readying my excuse to her.

  She’s got this little green leather backpack purse thing slung over her shoulder. It bounces as she walks, and it’s hysterical, because she’s plunged straight ahead without knowing what we are looking for or where we are going. If I was trying to get her to be into me, I’d ride her about it, but since I’ve sworn off being anything but friends, I keep going.

  “This way.” I tug on her bag. “The stuff we need is down here.”

  We are in the right aisle, and I’m looking for the specific part I need.

  “How do you know how to do this stuff?”

  “My uncle Dave is huge into cars.”

  “He the one you were living
with? Before here?”

  And once again, this girl knows way more about me than she needs to. Thanks, Livy. “Yeah.”

  “That’s cool. I guess I’ll have to thank Uncle Dave too?”

  “I still haven’t done anything.” I hand her the box with the part.

  “Well, I’m gonna go buy this, and then I’ll let you impress me.”

  “Sure. I’ve gotta run a quick errand. Be right back.”

  I don’t wait for her to answer before I’m out the front door, the stupid jingle bells accusing me of being an asshole. I’m down the sidewalk in six steps. In front of the liquor store. About to go in when a police car pulls into the parking lot. I stop to fake tie my shoes. The cop goes inside. I freeze. Fuck my life. Even if I wait until he’s gone, the guy in the store will be on high alert. I stuff my hands in my pockets and meet Emily as she’s leaving the Auto Zone.

  “Hey.” Her eyes trace my last steps. They light up along with a wicked little smile. “Any luck?”

  “No.” I rub my hand across my face. Consider trying to lie. Then decide there’s no point. “My good fake ID was confiscated. Didn’t want to try this one with that cop around.”

  “Your lacrosse friends couldn’t hook you up?” She rocks back on her heels, her hands tucked under her backpack straps, a knowing smile on her lips. She’s giving me shit.

  I rub my hand across my stubble. “Sure. But…”

  “Maybe I can help.” She dials her cell. “Hey, Maybeline? I need a favor.”

  I point to the driver’s side, and she shrugs, hands me her keys. She puts her hand over the phone. “What’s your pleasure?”

  I almost choke. “What?”

  “What do you want my friend to get you? Tequila? Rum?”

  “Jack. Jack Daniel’s.”

  She gives the directive into the phone. Before we even leave the parking lot, I’m feeling all kinds of interested in this good girl who just made my day.

  • • •

  I finish fixing the fan, and Emily turns on the car to try it out.

  “All right! You are amazing!” She kisses me on the cheek and holds up her phone. “Let’s go get your reward. It’s two blocks away.”