“Once, when I was a little younger,” he imagines saying to Poppie, “I asked Mom how Maddy died just to see what she would say. She said, ‘She just fell.’ So I said, ‘But I was playing with her, wasn’t I?’ Mom turned around to look at me then. She stopped making the bed, but she stayed bent over it with her hands on the sheets. She studied my face to see what I knew and then said, ‘It’s true that you were playing rough with her right before it happened. But I told you to stop and you did. Maddy turned to come toward me. There was a book opened on the floor and she slipped on it and fell back, all by herself. You were a baby yourself then. You can’t possibly remember. I hope you don’t think that you were in any way responsible. I don’t want you growing up thinking that you had anything to do with it. You were just there at the time. Do you understand?’
“She didn’t go back to making the bed until I nodded, but by that time her eyes were all wet, though she wasn’t really crying.”
Poppie, Jake imagines, would only stare, so he continues.
“Maybe I wouldn’t remember the whole thing so well if it weren’t for that dish towel. We still have the thing, and every time I see it, I remember everything that happened all over again. I don’t see it much because Mom keeps it at the very bottom of the drawer. But sometimes, on Thanksgiving or Christmas, the other towels get used up and it gets pulled out. Once, Grandma took it and Mom said, ‘Oh, don’t use that old thing’ and she snatched it out of her hand and stuffed it back into the drawer.
“When Mom got pregnant with Katie, her friends had a shower for her. Her friend Violet took her to a movie, and when she brought her back again, all the women yelled, ‘Surprise.’ They didn’t even hide or bother to turn out the lights. They just stayed sitting on their folding chairs, drinking juice out of paper cups and yacking, and then when they heard the door open, they said, ‘Surprise.’
“Dad left right after that and then I was the only boy there because that was after you stopped liking to drive, so you didn’t drive Grandma and Aunt Sherri up. I had wanted to go out with Dad, but he wouldn’t let me because it was a Thursday and I had kindergarten the next morning. Or at least that’s what he said. I didn’t want to have to hang around with all those gabby women, but I made the mistake of coming out of the kitchen when I was all done with my work sheets, and Violet saw me and made me sit down and watch Mom open up her gifts.
“Mom’s stomach was really fat by then. Her legs were fat too, and she couldn’t even cross them—though I saw her try a lot of times. She looked pretty funny sitting on a folding chair with her fat legs opened and her fat stomach shaking and her face hidden behind all the boxes and bows.
“When everyone left, the house was a wreck with all the boxes and bows and wrapping paper everywhere. Mom made me help her clean up. When we finished, she took off her shoes. Her feet were so fat that there were red marks on them from where the shoes had cut into them above her toes.
“When Dad came in, Mom wanted to open the boxes all over again to show him everything. He just stared at her. She said, ‘Why, Pete, you’ve been drinking!’ You know he hardly ever drinks. You know Mom’s the one who likes to sneak a drink, but Dad never does. Mom didn’t ask him why he’d been drinking because I was there. But she still insisted on showing him all the gifts even though it was clear that he had no interest in them.
“Adults don’t seem to understand each other at all. It’s like they have walls up between them. Even I knew that he didn’t want to look at the gifts because it made him think about the first time they got baby gifts, just before Maddy was born. That’s probably why he was drinking, too.
“Every time Mom put a gift in front of his face, his eyes got wide, like he was having trouble focusing them. And after every gift, he just nodded and said, ‘That’s very nice.’ There was no feeling at all in his voice. Once or twice I even saw him rolling his eyes while Mom was bending to get a new box, like he was thinking, When is she ever going to stop? Mom didn’t notice. She was all smiles that night. She took Violet’s shark out of its box and said, ‘And look at this darling thing! Isn’t it sweet?’
“I guess Dad had enough by then. He said, ‘You call that sweet? A stuffed shark? With teeth! What kind of a gift is that to give a baby? Its expression is ferocious; it looks like it’s about to attack. I wouldn’t want to wake up to that in the middle of the night and I certainly don’t want our child to. You give a child a shark to sleep with, and then, years later, you tell her that sharks are bad and they eat people. What do you suppose goes on in her mind then, psychologically speaking? She’ll think we subjected her to danger because we didn’t love her enough. There’s enough danger in the world without.… Who gave you such a stupid gift anyway?’”
Jake imagines that Poppie would be laughing now. He knows how his father can go on and on and on. When they used to go to the house, before he got sick, Poppie would get up and leave the room whenever his father got started on something. Jake wonders if Poppie would be thinking the same thing now about him, that he’s going on and on. He guesses he’d better get to the point.
“Mom put her hand on his arm. I think only then she realized what was wrong with him. She said, ‘Pete, you’re being ridiculous. You’re projecting all your anxieties about …’ But she didn’t finish. Dad said, ‘Just get rid of it.’ Mom put it back in the box. She had tears in her eyes. Dad said, ‘Who gave it to you?’ Mom hesitated. Then she said, ‘Susie sent it up with Ellie B.’
“Susie was a friend of Mom’s and Ellie B’s from a long time ago. She moved to Texas about a year before this night I’m telling you about. Dad shook his head and walked out of the room mumbling something about other peoples tastes. In a minute we heard the refrigerator door open. Then we heard him putting things out on the table to make a sandwich like he always does at night. I said to Mom, ‘Why did you tell him that Susie sent it up with Ellie B.? Violet bought it! You know that.’ She said, ‘Oh, was it from Violet? Are you certain? There’s so much stuff here. I guess I just got confused.’ I said, ‘Get a life, Mom. You know Violet gave you that shark. You’re not that stupid.’ Then she pulled my head to her mouth hard so that I could feel her hot breath in my ear. She said, ‘Listen. Daddy doesn’t like Violet. If he knows it’s from her, he’ll like her even less. Susie’s gone. It doesn’t matter whether he likes her or not.’
“And that’s when I knew for sure that Dad always hated me.”
Jake imagines that Poppie is still staring back at him expressionlessly. No reaction at all. He figures his grandfather wouldn’t get it, wouldn’t see the connection between Mom trying to protect Violet and Mom trying to protect him.
He decides that Poppie can’t be the one. He’ll have to figure out someone else to tell. But he’s not going to figure who out now. Now that he’s gone over the whole thing, he’s bored with it.
Focusing in on the TV screen again, he sees that the troubleshooter is getting ready to do the lightning round. He’s choosing his consonants, playing for a red Corvette. Jake, who loves Corvettes, hopes the guy wins. He turns around to look at the two on the sofa. Katie is asleep. His father is sitting on the edge of his seat, rubbing his hands together, getting ready to compete with the troubleshooter. Usually his father wins.
Jake jumps up from the carpet and trips, knocking into the on/off button on the TV. Pete yells, “Put that back on!”
“Sorry. It was an accident,” Jake says.
“It was no accident. Put it back on NOW.”
Jake obeys. The game board appears with the ‘r’s’ and ‘l’s’ and the vowel the troubleshooter chose, ‘a.’ There are only four seconds to go. “Red River Valley,” the troubleshooter exclaims.
“Red River Valley,” Pete mumbles. He slaps his thigh in disgust. “You did that on purpose,” he says to Jake.
“I said I’m sorry. I said it was an accident.”
“It wasn’t an accident. You did it on purpose, to punish me for asking you to act your age once it awhile.”
&nb
sp; “It was an accident!”
“It wasn’t an accident! Everything is always an accident with you. When are you going to learn to be responsible for your actions? You can’t go though life saying that everything is an accident.”
“IT WAS AN ACCIDENT!” Jake screams, and he runs upstairs to his room.
SHERRI
Lizzie writes Elizabeth J. Arroway/10:09 and turns toward the elevators. But Jake and Katie and Sherri stop her with their groans and clicking tongues. “What about us?” Jake challenges. “Yeah,” bellows Katie, backing him up, “we’re here too.” “Yeah,” echos Sherri.
Lizzie sighs and adds “and company” after her name. But the other three are still dissatisfied. “That’s cheap,” declares Jake. Lizzie relents and whacks the pen into his palm. It is 10:10 for him, still 10:10 for Sherri, and 10:13 for Katie because it takes her so long to write her name, and then, when she’s finally done, she has to write Isabel’s too. Then she lingers over the sign-in pad and laments that Isabel doesn’t have a last name like the rest of them. Lizzie says she could be an Arroway, but Katie says Isabel doesn’t want to. Sherri suggests she become a Crum, but Katie says Isabel doesn’t like that name.
On the elevator, Lizzie comments to Sherri, “Your handwriting is nearly legible today.”
Sherri replies, “That’s ’cause I’m happy.”
The funny thing about Sherri is that her writing improves when she’s feeling good about herself. Sometimes people can actually understand what she’s written then. She wanted to tell Lizzie about her happiness in the truck, but the music was too loud. When Lizzie is happy, she listens to oldies on “Spirit of the ’60s.” Jake says that’s because she’s an oldie herself. But Lizzie doesn’t care. Sometimes she sings and dances with her shoulders and, at lights, with her foot on the brake so that the whole truck gets involved.
Sherri knows why her sister is happy; Lizzie finally opened her pillow shop. She got three customers the very first day. But Lizzie doesn’t know why Sherri is happy because the music was too loud and Sherri couldn’t tell her over it.
Sherri plans to tell Lizzie when they get off the elevator, but as soon as the door opens, they are assaulted by the smell. They move fast in an effort to get away from it, but it follows them anyway. It seems to be everywhere, piped in somehow, like Muzak. They hightail down the hall holding their breath and fly past all the people sitting in wheelchairs against the wall. They go past an old woman singing, “She’ll be coming around the mountain when she comes, when she comes, she’ll be riding six white horses when she comes …” Sherri says, “Look, Jake. It sounds like your mother.” Jake laughs. “Yeah,” he replies.
Sherri knows Jake likes her.
They pass an old woman who is playing a frenzied version of patty-cakes on her knees. Her eyes slide over Sherri and the others, but she doesn’t miss a beat. She doesn’t smile either. Some of the people they pass aren’t playing anything. They are just sitting with their mouths open and saliva dripping out. Everyone looks at them. Everyone is old except for the nurses. One old man reaches out and tries to grab Isabel. Katie, who is holding her hand, yanks her so she’ll keep pace. Sherri understands; she has pretend friends too. Hers are all men. She gets them off the TV and puts them in bed with her when she’s scared now that Daddy isn’t there anymore. It works pretty well, most of the time. Last night, she put Pat Zacheck in bed with her. Boy, was that a mistake! He was as scared as she was when the trees started their commotion in the middle of the night.
Daddy is in room 808, asleep when they enter. The smell is just as bad in here, but by now they have adjusted to it. Lizzie touches Daddy’s shoulder and his eyes and mouth pop open. His visitors all take turns kissing his cheek, except for Jake, who doesn’t kiss on the face. He kisses the air next to Daddy’s face. Lizzie says, “How do you feel today?” Daddy thinks about it for a long time. Then he replies, “I go to sleep with my eyes open and I don’t feel anything.”
Lizzie’s face darkens, though Sherri can’t think why. Lizzie should be happy that Daddy said a whole sentence. The last time they came, he didn’t say a thing! And they all had a good time anyway!
The last time they brought Brigit because Pete had to work. Brigit, who doesn’t like the car, cried all the way to Newark. When they got to the parking lot, Lizzie said, “I’ve got to find something for her to eat or she’ll never make it through.” Jake said, “There’s a store across the street.” They all turned to look where he was pointing.
There were some men standing in front. Some of them were drinking something from out of paper bags. There was glass and more paper bags on the sidewalk. Lizzie said, “Jake, will you come with me?” Jake said, “No way, José.” Then Sherri volunteered to go. Jake said, “You’re brave. Those guys are thugs.” Sherri replied, “They’re not thugs. They’re just men.” Lizzie said, “He means they look dangerous.” Sherri said, “I know that. They don’t look dangerous to me. They’re just having a party on the sidewalk. A sidewalk is a good place to have a party.” Jake said, “They might have knives. When you run past them, they might try to slash you.” Sherri laughed. Lizzie said, “Okay. Go get her a banana.” Sherri said, “You got money?” Lizzie reached in her bag and pulled out a dollar. Sherri snatched it and slid out of the Jeep. Then Lizzie got out too, saying, “I can’t let you go alone.”
She told Jake to roll up the window and lock the doors. “We’ll die in here,” he said, “it’s too hot.” Katie said, “Let’s all go. Isabel knows Karate.” Lizzie said, “You roll up the window and lock the doors NOW! If I come back and find the doors unlocked, I’ll beat you black and blue.” Jake giggled and asked, “Brigit too?” Lizzie said, “I swear it. I’ll wring your neck. And if anyone comes near the car, you start beeping the horn as loud as you can.” Jake said, “Mom, the horn only has one volume.” Lizzie said, “Buttons down!”
Jake hit all the buttons and rolled up the window. Then Katie banged on her window. Lizzie said, “What?” Katie said something but they couldn’t hear her with the window up. Lizzie yelled, “Jake, roll down the window!” Jake shook his head and made his eyes bug out. He yelled back, “Can’t, not allowed.” Lizzie yelled, “What does Katie want?” Jake made his mouth move, but they couldn’t hear him. Katie was laughing her head off, then she stopped laughing and made her mouth move too. Sherri knew they were only pretending words. Lizzie said, “Ignore them.”
Lizzie and Sherri started for the store. They stopped and turned around when they heard the window going down. Katie yelled, “Isabel wants a banana too.” Lizzie yelled, “Roll up that window NOW!”
The men straightened up and stared solidly as the sisters went by, but no one tried to slash them. They bought a bunch of bananas and two big bottles of apple juice because the store didn’t have small ones. On the way out, one of the men said, “Oh, mama! Ain’t that something special!”
As soon as they crossed the street, Sherri said, “That man likes you.” Lizzie whispered gruffly, “They’re a bunch of pigs.” Sherri said, “He thought you were pretty.” Lizzie quickened her pace and didn’t respond. Sherri found herself running to catch up to her. She said, “I think you’re pretty too. I think you’re beautiful.” Lizzie twisted her head so that her chin aligned with her shoulder. “You need glasses,” she snapped. Sherri replied quickly, “No I don’t.” Lizzie nodded. “Well, thank you for the compliment, but I don’t feel very pretty these days.” “Pete thinks you’re pretty,” Sherri sang. Lizzie mumbled, “No he doesn’t.” Sherri said, “Yes he does. Why do you think he don’t?” Lizzie said, “Doesn’t, and never mind why,” and then stopped short, as if she had just thought of something startling. Sherri, who nearly bumped into her, thought maybe she left the gas on at home. Then she realized that her sister’s shoulders were jerking. Before she had time to wonder why, Lizzie shook it off and was moving again.
When Katie and Jake saw them coming, they started pretending they were dying of the heat. They pulled their clothes away from their n
ecks and let their heads roll back with their mouths open and their tongues hanging out. Sherri said, “They’re so cute.” Lizzie said, “You think so, huh? You want them for a week?” Sherri said, “I want them forever.” Lizzie turned and gave her a look. Then she smiled. She said, “You could come live with us. The weather’s warm now. You could smoke outside. I guess you’d have to sleep on the sofa though.” Sherri said, “I’m not smoking outside by your house.”
Lizzie’s smile bolted and she began to bang on the window for Jake to open up. He shook his head and yelled, “Can’t, not allowed.” When Lizzie showed him the apple juice, he put the button up fast. Lizzie opened the door and Jake rolled out, hanging on the handle so that he wouldn’t crack his head. He gasped, “Quick. Give me something to drink. I’m dying.” Lizzie said, “Stop acting like a fool or we won’t stop for ice cream on the way home.” Jake sat up. He said, “Sure, Mom.” Katie said, “Did you get a banana for Isabel?” Lizzie said, “I got one for everyone.”
Isabel’s banana stunk up the truck on the way home.
That was last week. This week Sherri is even happier. She says to Daddy, “It’s me, Sherri. Guess what. I got a boyfriend.” She says it loud so that Lizzie will hear. That’s why she’s so happy! That’s what she’s been wanting to tell her sister. Her boyfriend found her in the newspaper. He’s not fat; he’s skinny. He has black eyes and black hair and tan skin. First he sent her a picture and a letter. The letter said, “I been arrested a couple of times, but I don’t get in trouble no more. What kind of problems you got?”
Sherri wrote back, “Psychological problems, but I take medicine to stay calm and not to hear the voices.” She wrote her phone number too. And a few days later, he called her.
Homebodies Page 8