“You’re such a loser!” one of them would yell, glancing out of the corner of his eye to see if I was listening.
“You’re so bad you stink!”
“I’m way better than you!”
“You wish!”
When I realized I’d read the same sentence three times and still didn’t know what it meant, I knew I was never going to get anything done down there. I got up, hoping to find a quieter spot upstairs. As I passed the air hockey table, Mike paused from playing. “How long’re you gonna stay here, Cousin Dan?”
“Don’t know.”
“Mom says you’ve got no place else to go,” said Ike.
“For the moment.”
“So you could live here forever?”
“Doubtful.”
“Because you’re going to college next year, right?”
“Right.”
“But your parents could live here forever because all Aunt Hannah wants to do is garden and Uncle Paul’s a deadbeat.”
Huh? Had I heard him wrong? “Sorry?”
“Our dad said your dad’s a deadbeat,” said Mike.
“What is a deadbeat, anyway?” asked Ike.
“It’s when you don’t have a job,” Mike told his brother. “But Dad said even when Uncle Paul did have a job all he ever did was play games with poor kids in Burlington.”
“Was that really his job?” Ike asked with kidlike wonder as if it had never occurred to him that you could get a job playing games.
“He supervised after-school sports programs so kids wouldn’t join gangs,” I explained.
“Dad said he could have made more money working at Starbucks,” said Mike, who was leaner and meaner than his more innocent twin.
“That’s not true,” I said.
“Dad said so,” Mike insisted, as if Uncle Ron’s word was law.
I felt the impulse to argue and explain that Dad’s job hadn’t been about making money, but about helping disadvantaged kids have a better future. It was valuable work and probably saved some kids’ lives. But I caught myself. Why was I even having this conversation? They were just a couple of ten-year-olds.
Upstairs, Dad waved me into the den. “You gotta see this. The Huskies are first and goal, down by four. Forty-five seconds left.”
It felt a little weird, seeing my unemployed father sitting in someone else’s den in the afternoon drinking a beer and watching TV. He’d had a few jobs since sports supervisor, but none had lasted. Sooner or later he’d come home saying things hadn’t worked out, and he’d go back to collecting unemployment insurance.
On the TV the crowd roared. It’s hard to imagine a more exciting moment in a football game. Less than a minute left to play and you’re on your opponent’s six-yard line with four chances to score and win. The Huskies ran three plays and got the ball to the one-yard line. It was a classic goal-line stand. Eleven seconds left and no time-outs. One more chance to score. The crowd was still roaring. Dad and I were on the edge of our seats.
The Huskies tried a quarterback sneak.
Bodies piled up on the goal line. One ref raised his arms as if the Huskies had scored; another ref sliced his hands as if they hadn’t. The TV announcer shouted that a penalty flag had been thrown. The crowd went berserk. By now Dad and I were on our feet, totally caught up in the excitement.
That’s when Uncle Ron came in. My uncle is a big, imposing man. Tall, broad-shouldered, with a barrel-size belly. When he entered a room, you knew it. He was wearing a dark suit, shirt collar open and tie pulled askew. Bags under his eyes, his hair falling onto his forehead, and his jaw so dark with five o’clock shadow you had to wonder if he’d bothered to shave that morning.
“Ron, you gotta see this,” Dad said excitedly.
Uncle Ron glanced at the TV as he strode to the cabinet bar, filled a glass halfway with Johnnie Walker, knocked it back in one gulp, and poured himself another.
On the screen the refs huddled. The Huskies players had their arms up like it was a touchdown. The Storm players were chopping their hands back and forth as if it wasn’t. The crowd grew quiet with anticipation. Finally the officials’ huddle broke and the head ref announced that a player for the Huskies had been off side. The play didn’t count. Time had run out; the game was over. The Missouri Storm had won. The crowd began to roar again and Dad clicked off the TV.
“You see that?” he exclaimed, turning to Uncle Ron. “What a finish!” My uncle’s face was a blank mask. He started to take a sip of whiskey, then seemed to change his mind and knocked the whole drink back, banged the empty glass down on the counter, and stalked out of the den.
* * *
At dinner Uncle Ron’s bad mood only got worse. “What is this?” he demanded when Aunt Julie placed a steaming bowl in front of him.
“Vegetable curry stew,” she explained. “But we’ve got meat for those who want it.” Mom brought over a plate piled with browned chunks of lamb and added some to his soup. “Anyone else?”
“Me, thanks,” I said.
Uncle Ron glowered at the chunks of lamb bobbing in the yellowish stew, then frowned at Mom, as if he knew where Aunt Julie must have gotten the idea for this concoction. By then I’d tried the stew and a chunk of the lamb. It was pretty good, but I’d had years to get used to Mom’s recipes. Ron glanced at Mike and Ike, who were chowing down on frozen individual pizzas hot from the oven. “There any more of those?”
“Seriously?” Aunt Julie asked, surprised.
“Yes . . . seriously,” Uncle Ron growled as if he could barely contain himself.
We ate silently while Julie put a frozen pizza in the oven, everyone keenly aware that it was time to tread on eggshells. That’s when my eight-year-old cousin, Alicia, Mike and Ike’s younger sister, turned to her father and said, “Daddy, what’s Dignityville?”
“An incredibly stupid idea,” Uncle Ron grumbled.
Alicia’s eyebrows dipped. “There’s a boy in sixth grade who lives there.”
“Really?” Aunt Julie said. “You mean there’s a homeless child at your school?”
“At mine, too,” I said, thinking of Meg.
“You’re not really homeless, Dan,” Aunt Julie blurted out.
Everyone went silent.
“I . . . wasn’t talking about me,” I said.
“Oh.” Pressing her fingers to her lips, Aunt Julie blushed with embarrassment. “I’m sorry.”
“The boy in sixth grade?” Alicia said. “Before he moved to Dignityville he lived in a tent in the state forest. He said the school bus used to pick up a whole bunch of kids there.”
“Did only children live there?” Aunt Julie asked. “What about their parents?”
As was his habit when his wife said something unintentionally inane, Uncle Ron rolled his eyes. “The parents also live there. They just don’t take the school bus.” He paused, his face darkening, then muttered, “Worst damn idea I’ve ever . . .”
He trailed off. No one spoke. My uncle put down his spoon. “What the hell were they thinking? Putting all those people in Osborne Park, right in the middle of town where everyone can see them. Who in their right mind would move to a town that looks like it’s full of derelicts?”
It was a badly kept secret that Uncle Ron was having financial problems. He was a lawyer and had made big investments in some condominiums that now stood unfinished and empty. And just when things seemed to be getting a little better, the town council decided to erect Dignityville to house the growing number of homeless families in Median.
“I don’t think the town had a choice,” Mom said. As Uncle Ron’s big sister, she was the only person I’d ever seen stand up to him when he got angry. “The homeless were occupying the park anyway.”
“Great, so now we’re giving them food, beds, and a place to go to the bathroom,” Uncle Ron grumbled irately. “How long’s it going to be before every damn bum within five hundred miles moves here? How long before this whole town is completely overrun with them?”
“It�
��s not meant to be a permanent residence,” Mom said. “It’s just a safety net for people who’ve fallen on hard times. Until they can get back on their feet.” She reached over and put her hand on his arm. “They’re not all fortunate enough to have a brother who can take them in.”
Uncle Ron looked at my mother’s hand. She might have had a temporary calming effect on him, but if this was anything like the past, it wouldn’t last.
5
In an effort to make the downstairs rec room feel homier, I put out a few of my trophies, but it didn’t work. Not only was it not my bedroom, it wasn’t a bedroom, period. The space was too wide open and echo-y, and every time someone was in the kitchen or used a bathroom, the sound of water running through pipes was in my ears. Instead of a dresser with drawers, all I had for my clothes was a couple of plastic tubs, and my desk was the folding table we’d used in our kitchen before we’d moved.
With the twins and Alicia constantly going in and out to play or look for toys, it was so hard to do homework that I started going to the media center at school every chance I got. One day Meg stopped at the table where I was studying. “Hey.”
“Uh . . . hi,” I said uncertainly, the awkwardness of our last encounter still fresh in my memory.
She swept a curly reddish brown lock away from her face and bit her lip. “I think I owe you an apology.”
I felt myself relax. “Oh hey, no problem. I was actually wondering if I was the one who should apologize. I mean, talk about being presumptuous.”
“No more than anyone else. People hear ‘homeless’ and just assume drunks and vagrants. You get a little defensive.” Her eyes darted away. “Well, that’s all I wanted to . . .”
I didn’t want her to go, and gestured to an empty chair. “Have a seat.” She was cuter than I remembered. “You look different.”
“It’s what happens when you lose twenty pounds and some zits.” She sat. “I call it the Homeless Diet.”
“Serious?”
She smiled gently. “No. With all the fast food I’ve eaten I should be a hippo.”
It got quiet. She glanced around. I tried to think of something to say. “So, uh, you said your dad was sick?”
The smile left her face. “Cancer.”
“Oh, sorry.” I wanted to smack myself. Why did I have to bring that up? Couldn’t I have thought of something else to talk about? Too late now. “Isn’t the government supposed to help?”
“They do, with some of it. He used to manage a restaurant and they were supposed to pay for his pension and health benefits, but they went bankrupt. There’s Medicaid, but it doesn’t cover everything.”
“If he’s that sick, shouldn’t he be in a hospital?”
Meg stared down at the table. “There’s nothing they can do. He’s just supposed to stay home and take his medicines.”
Home was Dignityville. Now I felt even worse. “Sorry, I don’t know why I brought that up.”
She glanced my way. Her eyes were hazel and pretty. “You moved in with relatives?”
“Yeah, uh, it’s just temporary.” That had become my standard line. Maybe if I repeated it enough, it would come true.
“We lived with friends for a while, but it didn’t work. It’s not easy.”
“Yeah, I’m kind of seeing that. Everyone’s stepping on each other’s toes.”
We’d stumbled into another silent patch. Meg straightened her books and glanced around. Was she thinking that she should go? I didn’t want her to. It wasn’t like I’d ever feel comfortable talking about this stuff with Talia, and even with Noah it would be awkward. “So, uh, you ever think about a part-time job?”
“I bagged groceries for a while. Me and a bunch of old people . . . I mean, really old . . . like in their seventies and eighties, who were doing it because they didn’t get enough social security. It was so depressing. I mean, the ones who couldn’t even stand up for that long? And there was this one old lady . . .” She trailed off, her gaze slanting away as if she was recalling something troubling.
“Yeah?” I coaxed.
Meg sighed. “She was always buying cat food . . . only someone said she didn’t have a cat.”
It took a second, then I got it. “Serious?”
“I don’t know. It wasn’t like I could ask her. The thing is, there’s no reason it couldn’t have been true. I mean, you Google people eating cat food and it turns out . . . like, they really do.”
“It’s safe?” I asked with a grimace.
“I Googled that, too. It’s all cooked fish and meat. And I was thinking that as long as you had a lot of ketchup, and maybe some chopped onions? Could it be that much worse than what they serve in the cafeteria?”
I stared at her, feeling completely grossed out. An impish grin crossed her lips. “Had you there, didn’t I?”
I chuckled and felt myself relax. “Yeah, for a second, maybe.”
We smiled at each other.
“Homeless humor,” I quipped. “I remember . . . you were kind of a wise guy last year. All that stuff you’d mutter about Ms. DiRusso in chemistry.”
Meg waved her hand dismissively. “She was easy. Remember the dust explosion?”
“When her hair caught on fire?”
“And because of the safety goggles she didn’t know it right away?” Meg imitated our chemistry teacher sniffing loudly. “ ‘What’s that smell?’ ”
We laughed and Mr. Smith, the librarian, glowered at us from the checkout counter.
I dropped my voice. “That was pretty sick.”
“And when she demonstrated how to pipette acid and got a mouthful?” Meg whispered. “And she spit it out and was like, ‘Guess I can skip my next cleaning at the dentist!’ ”
We started to laugh again.
“If you two can’t control yourselves I’m going to ask you to leave,” Mr. Smith said sternly.
“Let’s get out of here.” I started to gather my books.
Meg picked up hers and we left the media center. But out in the hall, there was a sort of awkward “Now what do we do?” moment. The period was almost over. But neither of us moved, as if we were each waiting for the other to say one last thing.
“So,” we both said at the same time, then laughed uncomfortably.
“You first,” I said.
“No, you.”
“Well, uh, just glad we talked, you know?” I said. “It’s not like there are a lot of people I’d . . . feel comfortable discussing this stuff with.”
She smiled. “That’s what I was thinking too.”
The bell rang and kids began to pour out of classrooms. Meg gave me a little wave and disappeared into the crowd. And once again, in a school filled with friends, I felt alone.
6
One of the silver linings of life at Uncle Ron’s was that his house had Wi-Fi, so I could video chat with Talia.
“Surprise!” I IM’d later that day. “W2chat?”
It took a while for her to respond. The second I saw her solemn expression on the screen, I knew something wasn’t right. “So what’s up?”
“Not much.” Her eyes darted away, probably to the other conversations she was having.
“Hello?” I said.
Her eyes returned to me, her face blank, her lips a straight line.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“No.”
“Come on.”
“Nothing’s wrong.” She sounded annoyed.
“Now I know something’s wrong,” I said.
Talia wasn’t one to keep things in. “You can do whatever you want, Dan. I have to trust you. I mean, if we can’t trust each other, what’s the point?”
“Someone told you they saw me talking to Meg?”
“Not just talking, laughing.”
“So I’m not allowed to laugh with another girl? Seriously, Tal, we were just riffing on Ms. DiRusso and all the dumb stuff she did last year. Don’t make it into something it’s not. You are my number one and onliest babe. You know that, ri
ght?”
“If you say so,” she said with a sniff.
“I say so.”
After that we began to chat about school and friends, but my thoughts kept going back to Meg, and how it had felt connecting with her and speaking about things that meant something. And how a lot of what Talia and I were talking about now, didn’t.
And then, seemingly from out of nowhere, a hiccup of resentment unexpectedly lodged in my throat. I didn’t want to be living at Uncle Ron’s, using his Wi-Fi to talk to my girlfriend. I wanted to be home, using my own Wi-Fi, in a house where the mood didn’t depend on our host’s daily bank balance. I wanted to go back to the life I’d had when at least one of my parents had a job, and people didn’t act like my dad was a loser.
“Hey?” On the screen, Talia’s expression turned softer, concerned.
“Sorry?”
“You got really quiet.”
“Oh, yeah, just thinking.”
I could feel the ropes that held me together beginning to tighten and fray. “But, know what? I better get off.” I didn’t want this knot of emotion to unravel in front of her. “Hit you back later?”
Talia frowned. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Everything’s fine, Tal. I just need to chill for a moment.”
I signed off and sat there feeling like I wanted to smash something into a million pieces. I needed a window to throw a rock through, or a garden gnome to pulverize with a sledgehammer. Why did it have to be me? Of all the families in Median, why did mine have to be homeless?
* * *
Getting angry didn’t help, but maybe a cup of tea would. It beat smoking and I had a feeling Uncle Ron wouldn’t be too keen on me raiding the liquor cabinet. The hall outside the kitchen smelled of cinnamon, which meant Mom was making applesauce to sell at the farmer’s market. Inside, the air was steamy and pungent. Mom was wearing a blue bandana on her head and a denim shirt and jeans. For a second I flashed on the memory of when she used to get up every morning and put on black pants suits and high heels, grab her briefcase, and go.
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