So with that in mind Eric studied the faces of the passengers in the rows behind him above their blue shrouds. The large man in overalls was hard to miss, not only because of his girth but also because of the labored noises he made—something between a snore and the unavoidable spillover of suppressed pain. His face was bright red against the blue, his forehead a mass of rising wrinkles broken here and there by creases of strain. His hair was white with yellow discoloration near the scalp, as if he had not washed it thoroughly in some time, or maybe his skin color was slowly leaching out of him, pulled skyward by the centrifugal force of the orbiting alien satellites Eric had heard some of the neighboring farmers talk about when he was a boy. This man looked like every other father in this region of farms and lakes, no doubt like Eric’s own father if he had lived another twenty years, long enough to be a beloved grandfather figure who told stories to anyone who might listen. Eric would have been glad to get married and have kids simply to provide an audience for such a man.
Behind that man, sleeping restlessly over three rows, were half-a-dozen teenagers apparently back from some big city adventure, their oversized shopping bags still tightly clutched in their hands to ward off theft even in sleep, the remains of fast-food packages and dog-eared glossy magazines wedged almost obscenely between their tight embraces, their clothes looking new, unnecessarily expensive, and wildly impractical. They smelled bad, like hunting dogs after a hard run.
The woman behind them on the right, sleeping alone with an unwelcoming layer of newspaper—the fragments of harsh headlines (Murder, Disaster, Accidental Death) offering sad warning—adding an additional layer of insulation over half her blanket, looked familiar enough that Eric was sure he must know her. He couldn’t quite decide how old she was, which usually meant somebody was close to his own age. He stared at her long enough that she must have sensed something uncomfortable, because suddenly she opened her eyes and stared back, but in such a fixed way he thought she might not be seeing him at all, might still be half asleep. A slight smile passed across her lips then, triggered by dream or a particular memory perhaps, and something about that thrilled him to the point of embarrassment. As if in response to his embarrassment she turned her profile to him, and the curve of her neck, and the steep angle of her ear, let him know, surely, it was Nancy, whom he’d dated a few months during his junior year, and whom he had imagined he loved.
He half-expected her to turn again and beckon him over, to smile and mouth his name, and he was already nervous, imagining he would probably handle that reunion in the worst possible way, when she did nothing at all but close her eyes and fall back into sleep and whatever bits of shared history old girlfriends dream of.
Either she hadn’t recognized him or she had recognized him and had feigned sleep or death, or maybe she had never been completely awake, just as he’d at first speculated. Of course he would never know for sure because he would never ask her. Instead, he wrapped himself up like the others, one more traveling mummy on the bus, and closed his eyes.
Anyway, he never got to know her that well. They’d never been comfortable with each other. Especially not with Mother around.
Nancy was the only actual date Eric ever brought back to the farmhouse. There had been childhood friends of the opposite sex, now and then dropped off by their parents for a birthday party or the two or three “play dates” he could remember. Once the parents got to know his mother, however, a certain reluctance to leave their precious children in her charge took precedence. By the time Eric was in junior high all such visitations had stopped, except for Jack, a long-time friend, Eric’s only friend, actually, who would come and go at will. Lucky Jack had parents who didn’t care where he was or what he was doing, or apparently if he came back to them at all, which one day in fact, he would fail to do.
There had been other girls in Eric’s life, although admittedly no more than two or three over the four years of high school. Nancy had been special. She hadn’t grown up around there—her parents moved her down from Charlotte toward the end of tenth grade. She knew a world outside their very small world, and although she wasn’t super-sophisticated, or arrogant, or the least bit disdainful, she looked the part of someone from another place.
Once he knew he was serious about her, Eric unfortunately decided he should bring her home. Not that he wanted to—the very thought terrified—but he felt it was something he was supposed to do, something a girl from Charlotte and her parents would expect.
So he asked Jack to take them back to the farmhouse after school that day, and Jack, driving a car he had bought and fixed up himself, was quite proud to do the favor.
“Your mom’s gonna shit!” Jack’s eyes were BBs in boiling milk that day.
“Don’t talk like that! Nancy might hear.”
“Shit … sorry.” He looked genuinely apologetic. Jack had yet to have his own first date, but with the car they both knew that day couldn’t be far away. So Jack was in student mode, and Eric, who could hardly believe it himself, had become the teacher.
“I’m not going to surprise her,” Eric said. “You don’t try to surprise somebody like my mom.”
Jack nodded vigorously as if he knew exactly what Eric meant. The unfortunate thing was, he probably did.
“She might be okay,” Eric said, but he could hear the doubt in his own voice even as his words broke the air. “She’s kind of a show off, so maybe she’ll make things nice. You know, to make an impression. I’ve never brought a girl home before—it’s hard to predict how she’ll be. Maybe they’ll hit it off.”
Again Jack nodded a little too enthusiastically.
Eric tried to make a smile at Jack that said no big deal, but he suspected it was saying we’re headed for disaster.
Jack dropped Eric and Nancy off at the house around four o’clock, and was supposed to come back at seven unless Eric called first. Eric had dressed up in his best jeans and one of his dad’s old white shirts—a little too big for him, but not by much. Nancy had a matching blue skirt and sweater, white shirt with Peter Pan collar buttoned tight against the base of her throat. Late August was far too warm for such an outfit, and Eric figured it was the one detail that betrayed her nervousness. For other than that she was perfect, a little more stylish than you’d expect in their town, but not enough to draw too much attention to herself. Looking at Nancy he decided he finally got what “classy” meant.
He held her hand as they walked up the dirt path his mother called “the driveway,” his palm growing increasingly sweaty so that he was looking hard for the opportunity to let go for a sneaky wipe across his jeans, but afraid too she might not let him take her hand again. At last she let go to grab the rail and lift herself onto the first porch step, and he rubbed his hand quickly against his jeans. Then he grabbed her hand again to guide her to the porch swing. He allowed her hand to slip so that they were linking only a few fingers as she sat down on the swing, pulled her skirt tight over her knees, and her smile became a soft curve.
“Can I offer you some tea or lemonade?” he asked, just as he’d practiced.
“Tea, please,” she replied, saying her part just as he’d imagined.
He went into the house then, trying not to rush through the screen door as he was afraid he would, and he didn’t slow down to the perfect pace he’d wanted, but close enough. Now he just had to tell his mother they’d arrived (or maybe, surely, she’d been watching from one corner of the front bedroom window—her window). He’d also tell her Nancy would like some tea. If they even had tea. God, why hadn’t he checked?
Things were surprisingly quiet inside, and for a moment that pleased him, because his mother obviously was making an effort. Normally music would be blaring from two different radios, tuned to two different stations. She’d be in her tattered lavender housecoat, smoking like an old barbecue if she was in a foul mood, drinking heavily if she’d had a good day and was ready to spread the joy. Jim would be in the front room reading some old magazine, and wouldn’t even b
other to look up, but you’d feel him there even if you didn’t see or hear him at first.
Today you might think you’d walked into an abandoned house. Eric raised his head rabbit-like and sniffed the air. Cigarettes and alcohol, but that was to be expected. Burnt dinner maybe, sour body odor. A trail of tissues leading to (or from) the kitchen. She’d been crying. He took a deep breath, felt his own emotions jangling. She could make things so hard if she was feeling sad today.
The front hall was dark, the sun off the porch giving it that yellow cast it often had just before sundown, as if everything inside was made of cheap iron going rusty. “Mother?” It didn’t feel as if the word traveled very far in the dim clutter of rooms. Sometimes she didn’t even hear him when he was right in front of her, shouting. At least the living room appeared vacuumed, but it looked as if she had abandoned cleaning halfway to the dining room, giving the arrangement a lopsided appearance, as if something had picked up the house and tilted it, shaking their belongings into one end. No pretense of cleaning or straightening in the dining room: they would have to haul two feet of outdated catalogs and magazines off each of the stained dining room chairs if they hoped to sit and eat indoors. Eric was used to eating with his mother and brother on the front porch swing, but didn’t know if Nancy would find it quaint or low-class.
He had only a mild curiosity about where Jim might have gone off to. Jim had graduated high school the year before, but stayed on the farm, reading and talking with their mother late into the night about god-knows-what. They, at least, appeared to understand each other. Eric was the odd one in the house. When pressed, Jim said he was the oldest so he had to watch out for the farm and get it running smoothly again, but Eric had seen not even a suggestion of progress in that direction over the past year.
There was no sign of his mother, but clear signs of where she had been: more Kleenexes, mounded into small abstract sculptures on the counter near the stove. Part of one of the figures (a stork, a crippled chimpanzee?) had turned to ash, so obviously there had been some sort of fire. White flour had been spread across the kitchen table, ridged like snaking sand dunes, far more flour than what he would have thought necessary for the single shepherd’s pie she’d told him she’d make. Some of the flour had made its way into dough—several sharp fragments lay like random shrapnel across the dunes.
And on the very edge of the kitchen counter, almost obscured by greasy sacks and scattered papers and half-open containers, teetered the shiny open bottle of whiskey. Eric felt himself sway, thought he might faint. His feet stumbled into something like a dance step as he tried to steady himself. Just like the way she danced. Always catching herself from falling at the last second.
Out on the porch a sandpapery laugh. Oh, God. No.
Eric raced back through the dining room, toppling one of the heavy stacks of periodicals, ramming his knee into the rotted arms of the couch, which to his dismay tore with an amplified rip.
He stumbled on the doorsill as he stepped inelegantly back onto the porch.
Nancy looked somewhat smaller now than when he’d left her. Looming over her, his mother’s broad form was stuffed into a tiny bright blue prom dress whose seams appeared more damaged than the couch’s sour upholstery. What bothered him more—and the fact that he would even think of it truly amazed him—was that he had never seen this prom dress on his mother before. She had an obsession with trying on and showing off every out-grown garment in her five-and-a-half closets. The miniature prom gown had to have been bought recently.
In her left hand a glass of amber liquid made small circles in the air above Nancy’s head. The right hand bore a cigarette in a red lacquer holder. Her large head suddenly jerked in Eric’s direction. Nancy scooted the swing back to avoid the sloshing alcohol.
“There he is! Quite the man, don’t you think?”
“Mom …” Eric tried unsuccessfully to keep the pleading out of his voice.
“Don’t be shy, sugar.” She took a step toward him, grabbed him by the neck and pulled him into her chest, planted a wet whiskey kiss right on his lips. She turned back to Nancy and laughed. “Damn fine kisser, too. And do you know his daddy always thought he was a queer?”
“Mom!” Eric heard himself wail like a little kid, saw the acute embarrassment on Nancy’s face, and just wanted to run away or die. But he knew he had to hold it together at least long enough to get Nancy out of there.
In the meantime his mother was dancing, swaying her hips in grotesque parody of sensuality, shuffling her slippers on the porch boards, spilling drops of whiskey here and there as if bestowing her blessing.
“Mom, Nancy’s real sorry but she can’t stay for dinner.”
“Wha …” His mother looked at him as if he spoke another language.
“My … my grandmother’s been sick.” Nancy was already up on her feet. “I’d really like to stay, and I really appreciate the invitation, but my dad wants me home.”
“Does he now.” His mother’s tone was dangerous.
“Yeah, it’s really too bad.” Eric could feel himself going too far, but he couldn’t stop. “She’s been talking about coming over all day.”
“Maybe I should call your father.” Mother had turned around, looking at Nancy as if she were a bug she might squash. “Maybe he’ll let you stay a little while longer if I ask him right. Men will do things for you sometimes.” She made a ghastly cow-wink in Nancy’s direction, her mascara molten. “If a woman just asks them the right way. But I’m sure you know that already, don’t you, honey?”
Nancy looked up at her as if in shock.
“I mean, I see the way my son is about you. It’s like he never saw a skirt before, at least not one with those shiny little legs coming out of it. Look at him! He’s all sweaty for you. Hey, I don’t think it’s me. Least I hope not!” she cackled. “He’s got a thing for you, sweetheart. If you know what I mean.” Mother looked at Eric from under a stiff wing of dyed hair fallen across her eyes. “You want her to stay, don’t you son?”
“Sure, Mom. But she just can’t.” He thought he sounded pleading again. That was a risky way to be with his mother.
His mother stared at her drink, considering, then finished it, done. “Then you best get her out of here, son.”
Eric and Nancy walked a couple of miles to the nearest neighbor’s and borrowed the phone to call Jack. They sat in Jack’s back seat and even the usually socially inept Jack knew not to ask questions. On the way to her house Nancy patted Eric’s hand a few times, but they never talked about the afternoon, then or after.
And he never asked her out again. In fact, he didn’t think he’d even talked to her again for more than the occasional hello.
Eric woke up inside a tin box thrown into the fire. The bus was parked in a gas station parking lot somewhere. No one else was aboard. Eric saw the driver outside talking to the attendant. Occasionally both of them stared right at Eric.
Finally he recognized the gas station, despite the fact that it was considerably more worn down than he remembered. Knee high grass along one side of the peeling building, bare wood turned gray showing through the white paint on the garage doors. The “Henry Brothers” sign up on the pole almost unreadable through pustules of dark paint. This place lay on the outskirts of Millerville. The family farm was no more than five miles away.
“You want me to drop you off down the road?” The driver had stuck his head between the doors.
“Do you do that sort of thing?”
“This isn’t Charlotte, Sir. We’ll drop you off pretty much wherever you want to go, then I find a place to back the bus up and leave you to your life.”
Eric considered. “Okay then.”
The farm wasn’t too far outside town. He recognized the road in front of the farm by subtracting some of the overgrown bits from his memory picture of the place. The large willow still stood on the opposite side of the road, but atrophied from the weight of honeysuckle and miscellaneous other vines covering the outside surface o
f the boughs. The ditches out here didn’t appear to have been mown in several seasons—the county must have had some cutbacks, but in any case a number of marginal issues such as vegetation trimming were always affected by where the newest county commissioners and their largest supporters lived.
Some of the vines had actually made inroads into the pavement, which meant real trouble after a few cycles of freeze and thaw. Similar problems troubled the dirt drive that led from the road to the farmhouse: the trash trees on either side of the entrance were overgrown, the branches hopelessly entwined overhead. One of the trees had a great deal of gray wood—it was either dying or already dead, no doubt held erect mostly by its twin. Obviously Jim still hadn’t bothered to get a car—unusable under these conditions, surely—even though he’d been talking about it for years, had circled hundreds in those old magazines of his. Eric wasn’t even sure Jim had a license, although he knew he’d driven when he was younger. Mother never had driven—she used to say that women looked “common” behind the wheel.
The front field, split by the dirt drive, was a variety of weeds topping three feet. Eric remembered when it had been row after row of corn. When his father was alive they’d eat corn every night, give away large amounts, and sell the excess at a little roadside stand his father ran, where he sold the neighbors’ produce as well as their own. Eric’s job had been to carry customers’ purchases to their cars.
The tall weeds kept him from seeing the front of the house, which they’d always been able to do even when there was corn here. His father said a welcoming view of the house was important even if they had to lose a few rows of crop in order to preserve it. Now all Eric could see as he walked in the deep ruts of the driveway was the top two or three feet of roofline, sagged now like a sloppy gray hat collapsed around some old man’s head.
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