by T. Greenwood
“It’ll be okay,” she says to her dad. “It’s just a week.”
“I want your phone fixed,” her dad says, and her mom nods. “And I want these goddamn rodents gone. I’m going to set some traps, and as soon as the mama is caught, you need to call Animal Control to come get them. If you can’t take care of that, Ruby is coming with us.”
“Of course,” her mom says, nodding again. It’s like her head is attached to a spring. “I promise.”
They all go into the house, and she can see her father start to relax. Despite whatever it is he was expecting, the house is spic and span like it always is. Her mother could never stand the messes they all made. She was always chasing after them with a dish rag and a bottle of 409. She used to make her dad and Jess wipe down the toilet seat with a Clorox wipe every time they peed. She used to say that living with two men in the house was like living in a barn. To this, Jess would always push his nose up with his finger and snort like a pig and Daddy would make that great rumbly blowing sound through his nose like a horse.
Ruby’s got her backpack, but Bunk has to go back to the car and get all her other stuff. It’s not much really, just a duffle bag of clothes and books. It’s only a week, and it’s still summer; she doesn’t need much besides her swimsuit and some T-shirts. Flip-flops and her Chucks. Her bike, which Bunk is wheeling up the tangled mess of a driveway. She’s got a cell phone, but it won’t work for anything but games out here.
Daddy tells Bunk where to find the traps, and Bunk disappears into the shed to look for them.
“They won’t hurt her, will they?” Ruby asks.
“They’re padded,” he said. “Shouldn’t hurt her at all.”
Daddy is at the kitchen table thumbing through the phone book. “I want you to ride your bike up to Hudson’s later today. See if you can use their phone. If not, there’s a spot up there where you can get pretty good cell reception. Here’s the number for Fairpoint. You need to tell them to come out and fix the line. Ruby, I’m not kidding. This needs to get done today. I want you to call me to let me know as soon as it’s taken care of. And Syl, you need to let her do this, you understand?”
Her mom nods.
Ruby leans down to give her father a hug and wishes she hadn’t. Despite everything, she suddenly does not want to be left here. She wants nothing more than to leave with him and Bunk, to get in the van and go.
“You sure you’re going to be okay?” her dad asks as Bunk wheels him back down the makeshift ramp.
Ruby nods even though she’s not sure. Not sure at all. The lump in her throat is back and the words can’t get past it.
When they pull away, she watches her father perched up in the front seat of the van, waving. But he’s scowling too, like he’s also having second thoughts. But Bunk keeps backing out anyway, and then the van is just a flash of white through all that thick green foliage.
It is morning, finally, and they are getting close. She can feel it. Nessa peers out the bus window at the blur of green, all of it shrouded in a hazy mist. A river coils like a snake below. It has been almost two years since she left Vermont, but she remembers this landscape. It is as familiar to her as her own skin.
Home.
When Nessa still spoke, this word in her mouth felt like a sigh. How strange, she thought, that it felt so similar to whole, to hole. A heavy exhalation followed by the meditative om, which was the very first sound. The sound of both beginning and end.
The baby kicks her gently in the ribs, and she presses her hand against her belly.
She is going home, though now the word itself—home—feels like a relic from childhood. A forgotten toy. A half-remembered story. It’s been two years since she left, two years since she’s uttered that word, that sigh. That incantation, that prayer.
She wonders if the pull that this place has is something else she inherited from her mother. For as many times as her mother left, this was the place her mother always sought when she was most lost. Like a flower seeks the sun. Like a junkie seeks a fix. She tries to imagine her own mother’s journey home seventeen years ago, her own belly swollen with Nessa. Did she feel this same aching? Did she long for the same impossible thing? She squeezes her eyes shut and tries to dream her mother’s face, her hands. But they are obscured by the same mist that obliterates the river.
This is definitely where it began. After she was born, she and her mother lived here, at the lake with her grandfather, until she was six years old. From those early years, Nessa remembers only yellow wallpaper, a drawer filled with pencils and tools and matches, a creaky staircase. These images themselves seen through the hazy lens of memory, distorted, lacking clarity. A voice (her mother’s?), her feverish cheek resting against the cold porcelain sink and hand touching the space between her shoulders, a purple Tinkerbell nightgown riddled with holes. Her grandfather sitting in a chair by the fireplace, the steep corduroy climb onto his warm lap. Colorful books and his soft voice reading to her until her eyes were too heavy to hold open. This is the crumbling foundation of Home: soft sheets, the distant sound of a train.
She doesn’t remember leaving back then. It’s as though she fell asleep one night and woke up in a new life. A world where Home became nothing more than an idea. An abstract. A word signifying nothing. The memories of the apartments where she and her mother lived after this (Hartford, Springfield, Worcester) run together like ink in water: the smell of natural gas and mildew. Rust-ringed toilets and cigarette-singed counters. Men in and out of the house, in and out of her mother’s bed. The rumble of a dryer, headlights racing across her ceiling at night, and the wailing of a neighbor’s baby.
Then one afternoon, after school, she found her mother shoving her clothes into a suitcase again, her eyes wild. Desperate. Nessa swears she could smell the need coming off of her, like something chemical.
“Where are we going now?” Nessa had asked.
“We’re going back,” her mother said. “Home.” And in that moment, the word sounded like a promise.
Nessa had stood watching her in the bedroom doorway, plucking a bit of peeling paint from the frame. And she’d allowed herself to believe. That Home, like God, was something other than a wish.
It was with this hope that they had come back here, taken a bus almost exactly like this one, her mother wringing her hands in her lap and smiling nervously the whole way. She hadn’t had a drink in three days, and had made a terrific show of flushing her pills down the toilet. But when they got to the lake, none of it mattered. Nessa’s grandfather had passed away while they were gone, and her mother hadn’t even known.
Nessa imagines it’s foolish of her as well to think that after two years her mother might still be living here in that cramped apartment above the hair salon. That she can just knock on the door, and that she will answer.
Since Nessa left, she’s sent exactly two postcards to her mother: one when she arrived in LA, to let her know she was safe, and then another one a week ago from Portland, to say she was coming back. But she didn’t offer a return address, because each time she’d written there hadn’t been one to give.
She tries to remind herself that the important thing is that she has returned. That she has come back to take care of things. That she has stopped running away. Her grandfather taught her once that if she was ever lost in the woods, she should stay put, wait for someone to find her. She fears she might never find her mother if she’s on the move again. But she tries not to think about what lies ahead if her mother has left, if she’ll have to face this alone. Whenever she does, she feels her entire body tense, harden with fear.
Home, she prays silently, because she doesn’t speak.
She tries to stretch. Her back hurts, and the baby is restless, tossing and turning inside her as though trying to get comfortable. Neither of them has been comfortable for weeks now. She continues to press her palm against her stomach which is so distended now she feels freakish, and the baby rolls again, listlessly.
Home.
B
ut is this the beginning or end?
The bus exhales, stops.
“Quimby!” the bus driver says, and she stands and makes her way down the long aisle to the doors.
Sylvie stands in the kitchen, her entire body trembling inside her robe. Ruby is standing on the porch still, watching Bunk’s van pull away, until the rattling of the muffler is gone. It is only nine o’clock, but the sun is starting to burn through the misty morning.
“Why don’t you come inside,” Sylvie says, hoping the tremor does not reach her throat, doesn’t expose how frayed she feels. She touches Ruby’s shoulder tentatively, as if she might turn to dust with her touch. “I fixed up your room,” she offers, and Ruby turns to her and nods.
Sylvie tries to see the house through Ruby’s eyes. Her world from her daughter’s perspective.
This is still Ruby’s house. Even though it’s been nearly six months since she’s slept overnight here, Sylvie likes to think that her staying at Bunk’s is just a temporary thing. Until she gets better. As if this is all just a passing malady rather than the chronic chaos it is. On good days, she imagines getting help. Getting past it. Getting over it. She is reminded of the game she used to play with Ruby and Jess when they were little. The one about the bear hunt. We’re going on a bear hunt! We’re gonna catch a big one! I’m not afraid! But then the whole journey is one obstacle after another. Things they have to go over, under, through. We’re coming to a wide river. And there’s no bridge going over it. No tunnel going under it. It’s just plain old water. And we’re gonna have to swim . . .
With Ruby beside her now, she realizes how dark she keeps the house. She clicks on one of the small lamps she uses for reading and the whole room is illuminated.
“Wow,” Ruby says, her eyes widening.
Sylvie realizes this is the first time Ruby has seen the birds. She’s only been collecting them since the spring, but the entire mantel over the fireplace is littered with glass jars. She has donated all of her old books to the library to make room in the built-in bookcases. And she’s fashioned additional shelves out of some old two-by-fours and bricks she found in the shed.
“Are these real?” Ruby asks. She picks up the one with the barn swallow inside.
Sylvie nods. And she remembers the swallow, because it was the first.
It happened last spring, not long after she got out of the hospital. After Ruby’s last visit. She had been washing the dishes, caught up in a strange reverie brought on by the medication and exhaustion, when she saw the flash of something against the window and heard what sounded like a gunshot. The sound tore through the haze enveloping her, and she dropped the dish she’d been washing, watching in disbelief as it shattered on the floor. Trembling, she pulled on her coat and opened the back door. It was the first time she’d walked outside in nearly a week. The cold air made every nerve ending feel raw. She found the swallow in the deep tangle of grass beneath the kitchen window. And as she knelt down, she’d felt overwhelmed with sadness. The violence of it, the suddenness too much.
Cradling the bird’s warm body in her palm, she was transported back to her childhood, and she recalled her grandmother’s collection of birds. After her mother left, her grandmother had tried to teach her, and Sylvie had watched her from a distance, because the process both fascinated and horrified her. Her grandmother had learned taxidermy from her own grandmother, this sanguinary art handed down from one generation to the next. This brutal craft was her inheritance, she supposed. Her birthright.
And the birds kept dying. A baby robin was next. A grouse. It was as though they were offering themselves to her, as though God were plucking them from the sky and presenting them to her, providing her hands with the distraction they craved. She requested books from the library on home taxidermy. And it really wasn’t difficult. She had most of the tools she needed already at home: cotton balls, Borax, nail scissors, a needle and thread. And over time, she too became skilled in this particular art of preservation.
“This one is so small,” Ruby says, peering in at the hummingbird.
The hummingbird had been difficult. She’d had to use tweezers and a magnifying glass. It was delicate work and had taken her nearly three full days. But the finished product was astonishing: the emerald throat, the eyes she’d replaced with tiny black glass beads, the illusion of flight achieved with invisible wires.
Ruby wanders around the living room looking at the birds, as though she’s stumbled into a museum. And as she studies Sylvie’s birds, Sylvie studies her. She’s gotten taller, at least two or three inches since last Christmas when she and Robert moved out. Her hair has grown, her two braids traveling nearly to her waist. She is still a tomboy, wearing ratty cut-off jeans and a sweatshirt. Tall athletic socks and sneakers. Her long pale legs are riddled with bug bites and bruises. She is eleven now, but she is still such a child, her body still that of a little girl.
The sweatshirt is one Sylvie hasn’t seen before, and this, more than almost anything, tears at her heart. A mother should be the one who shops for her daughter. When Ruby and Jess were little, she loved picking out clothes for them. The tiny T-shirts and jeans for Jess. The impossibly small high-top sneakers and baseball caps. And for Ruby, tiny dresses and rompers, the miniature tights and shoes. The fact that Ruby is wearing a sweatshirt Sylvie has never touched, never washed, never folded, makes her want to cry. And despite every effort not to, she feels her eyes well up.
Ruby looks up from the barred owl Sylvie finished last week. Ruby is smiling, but when she sees that Sylvie is crying, her face falls. And then she throws her shoulders back, hardens. “You don’t have to do this, Mom. I could just go stay at Bunk’s house by myself. Or with Izzy. I’m sure Gloria wouldn’t mind.” Ruby looks at her blankly. “It’s no big deal.”
“No,” Sylvie says, shaking her head, brushing her hand in front of her face. Ashamed that she is unable to control any of her emotions. “It’s fine. I’ll be fine.” She stops before she makes any more promises she isn’t able to keep. “I’m glad you’re here. Really.”
Ruby is holding the owl. “Can I maybe put this one in my room?” she asks.
“Of course,” she says, nodding. “Any of them that you like. Here, follow me,” she says, as though Ruby no longer remembers the layout of the small house. As though she needs a guide.
Behind her, Ruby carries the owl carefully down the hallway. When they get to her room, Sylvie pushes the door open gently, but doesn’t go in. Her instinct is to turn away, as though there’s something radioactive and glowing inside. But everything’s exactly the same as it used to be. Ruby’s bed and Jess’s bed. The pictures of them stuck into the corners of the dresser mirror. Jess’s Sox cap with the ketchup stain on the brim still hanging on the hook at the back of the door. There’s the stuffed SpongeBob Robert won for her at the fair. Empty hangers lined up in half of the closet. Ruby goes in and sets the owl on the nightstand. When Sylvie finally joins her inside, she shows her the room, like Ruby is only a tourist, and Sylvie is the guide, a docent to this sad museum.
“Thanks, Mom,” Ruby says, and Sylvie takes it as her signal to leave.
“Okay. Let me know if you need anything. I’ll make us some breakfast.”
Sylvie returns to the kitchen and tries to imagine all the other mornings with Ruby. How many were there? Ten years of mornings. Thousands of breakfasts. As she pulls the dusty mixing bowl from her cupboard, she is transported back in time, when she used to make pancakes for the kids that looked like Mickey Mouse, chocolate-chip eyes, jelly mouths. The bowl, the ceramic bowl that Gloria made for her, conjures other mornings: the sound of bickering coming from the kids’ room, the distant sound of the shower as Robert got ready for work. Some mornings she wouldn’t even have gone to sleep yet, coming home after a delivery, bleary-eyed and exhausted, wanting nothing more than to slip under the covers and sleep. She remembers wishing she didn’t have to make breakfast, check homework, pack lunches. She remembers wishing sometimes she were alone.
“. . . now classified as Tropical Storm Irene, it’s a slow-moving storm, expected to pass through Puerto Rico tomorrow and then head northwest through the Bahamas. It is difficult at this point to determine whether or not it will make landfall on the East Coast and what effects it will have . . .”
She thinks of rain. Of storms, and as she looks into the bowl, its depth is suddenly distorted. She grips the edge of the counter as if it can keep her from plummeting, keep her steady as the earth drops out from beneath her.
Ruby puts her clothes into the empty drawers, stacks her books next to the owl on her nightstand, and shoves the empty duffle bag under the bed. She looks around the room, remembers how excited she was to have her own room. How her dad promised a window seat that looked out over the river. She remembers how Jess talked and laughed in his sleep. How he would pounce on her bed to wake her up every morning, Superman cape flying behind him. How messy he was. How annoying. It makes her throat feel thick just thinking about how much he irritated her.
Since she and her dad left, she has been able to push him out of her mind, just as she used to push him away from her stuff, to the other side of the backseat, out of their room. He was easy like that. He never put up a fuss. When he started to annoy her, she just had to say, “Get out!” and he’d shrug his shoulders and go. She was not a very nice sister. She could be mean and selfish and unkind. There were times when she wished he’d vanish. When he broke her protractor, when he spilled grape juice on her Red Sox jersey. When he tried to explain his long and complicated dreams to her while she was still trying to sleep. These are the flashes that come to her, even as she tries to keep them at bay. Her own cruelty. Her failures. He is a reminder that she is not a good person. That, maybe, she was the one who wished him away.