A Short Move

by Katherine Hill

  There were other mysteries, for instance Grandpa’s arm, which was missing, and Uncle Tim, who was at the house now as often as Grandma and Grandpa, and who leaned into doorframes and folded his arms over his chest before he came all the way into the room. When he showed up, it was usually with something in his hands: a ladder to get the leaves out of the gutter, or a bag of green army men, or a big bunch of flowers for Mitch’s mom.

  When Mitch asked him what he did all day, he replied that he was fixing up his family’s house and he was thinking about going to school, “Just like you.”

  Mitch laughed at this; it was preposterous. His uncle had played football in California. He’d been a soldier in Vietnam. He could not hang his jacket in a cubby and keep his pencils inside a desk.

  Grandpa had also been a soldier, and though that had been a long time ago, he sometimes talked about it with Mitch.

  “The war took it,” he always said about his arm, which didn’t exactly make sense.

  “But where did it go?” Mitch finally asked him one day. “Where is it right now?”

  “You planning a trip, son? Hoping to pay it a visit? Tell it hello for me, will you? It’s been a while.”

  Mitch laughed. His grandpa was quiet, a solo smoker, not much of a comedian with anyone else. He saved all his cigarettes for his private time and he saved all his jokes for Mitch. “Okay, but where? Be serious, Grandpa.” A thing his mother often used on him.

  At this his grandpa resumed his standard gaze, filled with hard experience. His empty sleeve hung from his shoulder like a napkin as his remaining arm felt in his pocket for his pack. “Some of it’s in a field in France, where it went back into the earth. The doctors took the rest to save my life.”

  “They took it?”

  “I let them. I wanted to live. I wanted to meet your mom and you.”

  This hardly made sense, since he and his mom did not at that point exist, but Mitch knew he had to stay on track. “And where,” he asked, “did they put it?”

  “Tell you the truth, son, I don’t know. Somewhere safe, I’m sure.”

  Later, after Grandpa came in from his break, bringing with him the faintest trace of smoke, Mitch heard him talking to his mom. “He’s a special one, that son of yours. Most kids want to know why. Not Mitch. All he asks is where, where, where.”

  “Good for him. He’s going places.”

  “Well, aren’t you funny.”

  “It’s just a word, Daddy. I wouldn’t read too much into it.” Even so, Mitch thought she sounded pleased.

  Mom was less of a mystery, having never in her life left Virginia, having always been with him. Her name was Cindy and she made him bologna sandwiches with mustard on white for lunch and fish sticks with peas for dinner, both of which he liked. Other kids’ moms wrote notes on their paper napkins, which at first seemed strange to Mitch, whose own lunchbox came with a sandwich and a folded paper towel, and sometimes a cookie, but that was it. He mentioned to her once that Jeff’s mom had written him a knock-knock joke to go with his orange, and for the next several days he got oranges in his lunch as well. He liked oranges, and was happy to eat them, but what he’d really wanted was the note. He wanted to see what she would write.

  “Why don’t you ever put a note in my lunch?” he demanded one afternoon.

  She’d been hollering at him for sneaking cookies before dinner, a thing he knew was wrong, but not that wrong, and his counterattack had caught her off guard. “A note?” she asked, as though she didn’t know the word.

  “On the napkin. The other moms write notes.”

  She chewed her lip. “You want a note from me? That doesn’t embarrass you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, sure, sweetie. I’ll write you a note.”

  She might not have always understood him right, but she was always true to her word, so the next day, he was not surprised when he opened his Superman lunchbox to find the usual sandwich and orange, along with a folded paper towel. When he unfolded it, he saw that she had written, in thin, light pen marks that nevertheless punctured the towel on the opening “D,”

  Dear Mitch

  You are always in my heart

  Love

  Mom

  He didn’t know what he had expected, but he spent the better part of the lunch period examining her letters, which, puncture marks aside, were otherwise crisp and very straight. You are always in my heart. He felt hot, pictured himself very small inside her body. When he was done with his orange, he wiped his chin, and Mom nearly vanished in the juice.

  “Did you get my note?” she asked him at dinner.

  “Yes.”

  “Was it what you wanted?”

  He told her it was. “You tore the napkin though.”

  “Tough customer,” Tim laughed. Now that his mom was working overnight shifts, Tim was eating dinner with them almost every evening and sleeping in her bedroom so he could look after Mitch. He seemed happy with himself, and with both of them, and this made Mitch feel good about their house. He was growing up in a family. His mom had set it up just right.

  She made a kissy-face at Tim. “See? He notices everything.”

  “Also Jeff’s mom writes him jokes,” Mitch said.

  Tim threw up his hands. “You’re killing me, kid. Give her a break.”

  But she stood, drew her finger along Tim’s ear and neck in a way that made his face go mushy, and took her reminder pad off the hook by the phone. “A joke,” she said, writing it down. “Yes, sir. Will there be anything else?”

  A couple times they helped Tim organize things at his own house, Tim and his mom in jeans and yellow cleaning gloves, while Mitch poked around in the yard. There were always great sticks at Tim’s—which was big and old and surrounded by trees, not like Mitch’s house, which was boxy and new and out in the bright open—and plenty of pine cones he could bring to his mom.

  The first time they went it began to rain and Mitch dutifully came inside. He found his mother in the second bathroom.

  “If you think this is bad,” she said. “You should see how it looked before.”

  It hadn’t occurred to Mitch that Tim’s house was anything to complain about, but now that she’d suggested it, the horror of the bathroom presented itself. There was a window, but it was so covered in its own grime that hardly any light filtered through. Beside that was a buried commode, stacked high with old beauty magazines and catalogs, which started on the floor and reached almost as high as the wall-mounted tank. The sink faucet and handles were bright orange with rust and the free-standing tub was completely filled, not with water, but with objects that Mitch’s mom was sorting: small dusty bottles of personal cream, sets of hot rollers, wigs, several heating pads, two baby dolls with broken eyes, clothes hangers, curtain rods, bars of soap so old they weren’t clean anymore, their wrappings rimmed with rings of brown. Mitch’s mom explained that most of these things had belonged to Tim’s mother and that Tim’s dad hadn’t known what to do with them, Tim’s dad who had died from drinking and left the mess to Tim. The rest were just things he was saving for a future that never came to pass: burnt-out light bulbs, alkaline batteries coated on the ends with furry crystals, a dusty red Coca-Cola crate with twenty-four unopened bottles, a tin of chocolate bars that crumbled pinkishly when he unwrapped one to check it out.

  “Can I have a Coke?” Mitch asked after they tossed the chocolate. She pulled out a bottle and peered up through the foggy bottom and told him she didn’t think he should.

  After the rain let up he went back into the yard and pretended he still had Spike. He threw a few sticks as far as he could and fake-threw the rest because it took some energy to gather them up again, and while he was doing this and thinking of Spike it occurred to him that Spike was probably dead, like Tim’s parents, and that it was possible he hadn’t even run away, but was shot by his grandpa after all, and that maybe Daisy had been, too, maybe even with his mom’s consent. He stood there thinking about this, and about his leg that had
healed except for a few dark marks, and he was proud of himself for not feeling sad about the fate of the dogs. He didn’t even feel wronged. He felt pleased he’d gotten smart enough to see through the plots of adults.

  When their work was done for the day, they made a pile of black garbage bags that Tim would drive to the dump. Several additional boxes were filled with items to take to Goodwill.

  Tim said, “Never give up on a house with strong bones,” a rule that obviously did not apply to dogs.

  On a later visit, Mitch fell out of a tree he was trying to climb. Like the house, his bones were strong, so nothing broke, but his mom was furious all the same. She said he’d been at least two stories high. From then on, she made him help her in the house, where she could watch him. It was still full of things, but the bathroom, at least, was usable. He himself had tested the toilet, aiming at the orange oval at the bottom of the bowl. He didn’t manage to vanquish it but he could feel the possibility as it faded slightly with the flush. When he ran the tub faucet the water now came out clear.

  His mom might’ve bossed him, and covered up dog deaths, but she was careful with him, much more careful than he ever was with himself. One day she made him noodles with butter and cheese, and as he twirled them on his fork she told him calmly, like it wasn’t anything to get excited about, that his father wanted to speak with him.

  “Where?” he asked, thinking he might have to go someplace, someplace he might not want to go. He knew by then that his father was Tim’s younger brother. He’d grown up in the garbage house with Tim, but now lived far away. He also knew their third brother had died in Vietnam, which his mom had warned him never to bring up with Tim.

  “On the phone. But only if you want to.”

  He chewed and swallowed, then said, “Okay.”

  “You sure? Understand you don’t have to. This is only a request he’s made. It’s entirely up to you.”

  Mitch thought for a moment because that was what she seemed to want. “I’ll do it,” he said, after what seemed like a decent interval.

  “Do you have any questions?” she persisted. “Why now? What’s he been up to?”

  Mitch looked at her. She was doing such a good job. Even he could tell that. She really thought about things, his mom. Though he understood now that she’d been talking with this person—Tim’s brother, his dad—and he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about that.

  “I guess I’ll just ask him,” Mitch said, and she let the subject rest.

  It was a few days later that they actually spoke, after school at a pre-arranged time. “I’ll just be in the other room if you need me,” his mom said when she handed him the phone.

  He’d seen photos of his dad—a school portrait with focused eyes, a snapshot with his mom in a parking lot—so he had a mental picture of the voice he was about to hear. But the voice didn’t quite match the picture. It was rusty, as though he hadn’t used it in a really long time, more like the house where he’d grown up than the face in the photos. At first, they didn’t say much. But then his dad asked him how his mother was doing, what she got up to every day, and they coasted along on that subject for a while, Mitch telling him her work schedule at the hospital, the hours she was on and the hours she was off, and what she gave him to eat and what he wished she gave him instead, and his dad laughed and said, “All right,” like he was really enjoying himself.

  “She get you ice cream every now and again?”

  Mitch told him she did.

  “Good. You gotta have ice cream.” And Mitch said that he agreed.

  His dad told him a few stories about his life. How he’d lived all over the place, in New Orleans and Houston and Santa Fe and Denver, and how everywhere he’d gone, even the roughest places, and even at times when he didn’t especially like himself, he’d always found good people. Good women, he said, in particular. They lived everywhere he’d ever been. Now he’d finally found his home in Montana, where he was working construction on a brand new road. He had read a book that had changed his life, and had bought a motorcycle he was learning to fix. It was about speed as a way of slowing down, he said, and it was about quality, a notion Mitch recognized but didn’t really grasp. “I’m no maniac,” he said at one point. “I’m making better choices.” And later, about Tim, “Tell that maniac I say hello.” It seemed to be one of his words.

  As the conversation drew to a close, he gave Mitch his number if he ever wanted to call. Mitch thanked him and said he would, even though he knew he wouldn’t. It wasn’t that he disliked him. He’d liked the sound of his dad’s voice once it got flowing, and he liked the idea of him on a motorcycle out west. It was just that he didn’t call anyone, and anyway he figured they’d already talked.

  “Hello, Maniac,” Mitch said that evening, when Tim appeared in his doorway as usual.

  “Hello yourself,” Tim said. He came over to where Mitch was positioning a battalion of green army men in defense of the Rock’Em Sock’Em ring.

  “That’s from your brother,” Mitch told him. “He said tell that maniac hello.”

  Tim stood over him for a moment, as though he were trying to remember what brother meant, as well as maniac, and maybe even hello, and when he finally did, he tore off, looking for Mitch’s mom.

  “So that’s it? You just let Mitch talk to him? Just like that?” Mitch heard him say. He couldn’t hear the exact words of his mom’s response, but he could tell from her tone that they were strong. He rushed out of his room and found them facing one another in the hall. Tim was looking hard at her, so hard he actually seemed to be looking at himself. His mom was wearing her scrubs and had her hair up.

  “I had to do it,” she was saying. “I mean I had to. He’s already six years old.”

  “I could kill him,” Tim said. “I could kill him.” His hands were swinging at his sides.

  “Tim, please.”

  “I could.”

  His mom said, “Honestly, I should’ve done it a long time ago. When Robbie died”—she tripped on the word—“I should’ve tracked him down.”

  “That was his job,” Tim growled. “That was his job to show up for Robbie.”

  “I know it was, but you know what, maybe the time’s finally right. I’m over it, and he’s cleaned himself up. He’s a Buddhist now.”

  “I told you, you can’t trust anything he says,” Tim said. “He’s a shirker. He’s no good.”

  “Forgiveness, Tim. What about that? You said yourself he always had a good heart.”

  Tim was pacing now, his hands clenching, then unclenching, then gripping the cap of his head. “So he’s coming back, then?” he asked. “Is that what this is?”

  “He lives in Montana,” Mitch explained, and they both looked at him.

  “Believe me,” Tim said. “I know.”

  His mom gave him a look that was love, then turned a similar look on Tim. “It’s just a visit.”

  “You shouldn’t have gone on without telling me,” Tim was saying. “Everything was going so good here with us.”

  “He’s Mitch’s father,” she said. “Don’t you understand that?”

  Tim flinched, resisting her. Mitch himself often resisted her when she tried to force something on him, and he wondered what it was about this moment that was forcing itself on Tim. Her voice was so soft it was practically holding them, and she was merely stating facts. There was no trace of the short, snappish tone, or the universe of impossible requests that usually set off Mitch.

  “Tim?” she said. She was nearly begging. “It’ll be good for all of us. Mitch. You. You and me. It really won’t do any harm.”

  Nights she was home, Mitch sometimes went into her bedroom, even though he was a big boy now. Her grown-up stuff was everywhere, nothing like the disaster of Tim’s house, but maybe on its way there: clothes thrown over chairs, her spiral planner at the bedside, bowls of pine cones she’d collected in the woods decorating the top of her dresser. They were extensions of her, these bedroom objects, things he’d sense on h
er in the light, as she went about her day. But for now, they stood back, respecting his specialness. He fought her so hard during the day sometimes, when frustration possessed him, when she made him do something, or when he demanded something that she had the gall to refuse. At night they got along better. He would look at her clock radio—two o’clock, it often said—and feel himself living an opposite life. He would cuddle up against her in her warm, white night gown and she would tell him he was her little man. “No matter what happens, we’re together. It’ll always be you and me.”

  “Joe’s riding out here,” his mom said a little while later, when it was almost Christmas. “It’ll be good for you to meet him.”

  Mitch knew this was coming, but it troubled him all the same. “What are we going to do?” he asked. It was hard to imagine Joe in person. He pictured himself in an empty room, talking to an intercom.

  “Get to know each other, toss the ball around, I don’t know. Whatever y’all want.”

  He felt hyper. He needed more information. “Is he coming for Christmas? Where’s he going to sleep?”

  “At Tim’s, don’t worry. Not here. And, no, he’s coming before Christmas. We’ll still have Christmas our way.” She spoke like his mother, like she had it all under control.

  But when the day arrived she couldn’t stop looking down the street, even before Mitch’s father—Joe—was late, and when he finally did show up, two hours late at two o’clock, on the noisy motorcycle he’d told Mitch about, she acted almost surprised.

  “Well, hello, stranger,” she said, joining Mitch in the yard, where he’d been messing around all afternoon. Joe kicked the bike off and came up the path in his jeans and a heavy jean jacket. He looked like the man from the photographs—but realer, not black-and-white. He was definitely older, too. The skin on his face was tough and red. He squatted down in front of Mitch, looking confused, like maybe he didn’t have the right family. Mitch was about to introduce himself, but when he glanced at his mother on the step, everything about her posture told him that Joe was supposed to speak first.