Sing Them Home

by Stephanie Kallos

  “Why?”

  “My mom has been wondering is all.”

  “Oh.”

  “I see you running by our house sometimes. You sure run a lot.”

  They’ve been watching me, Gaelan thinks, his paranoia intensifying. I’ll have to change my route.

  “Anyway, my mom’s afraid that you’re lifting.”

  “Well, I’m not. You can tell her.”

  “Tell her yourself. You’re out by our house often enough. Just stop by.”

  “Okay,” Gaelan lies. “I might just do that sometime.”

  “Well, good-bye, then.”

  “Bye.”

  Gaelan shuts the door, greatly relieved that he can finally contain the distinct, overpoweringly sweet smell of dope. Moving to the window, he peers out through a tiny slit in the living room curtains.

  After looking around to make sure no one is watching, Eli fastens on his helmet and then pedals off, wobbling alarmingly, looking as though he’s only just stopped using training wheels.

  The days pass.

  Gaelan does not lift.

  He runs in town, he runs out on the highway, through corn and milo fields, and—despite Eli’s disturbing revelation that his movements are being watched—he continues to run along the highway, past the land from whence his mother ascended, past the Ellis farmhouse.

  He cannot get used to the idea that he will no longer come upon his father in this landscape, won’t round a corner and discover him kneeling over some pilot who crashed his crop duster, performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a drowning victim, doing compressions in order to reignite some fallen soul’s stilled heart.

  Sometimes he even expects to encounter an earlier version of himself and Bethan.

  He’s not depressed; he’s just taking a break.

  One positive thing that’s come out of all this is that he’s in the best shape of his life. He started running because he no longer has access to the cardio machines at the gym, and ever since UPS delivered his Bo-flex home gym last month, he doesn’t miss the Y, doesn’t really even need it. Maybe he’ll move back here for good.

  At home, Viney has left a note: She won’t be here for dinner, there’s a frozen entrée if he wants something easy, leftovers if he feels like cooking.

  The doorbell rings.

  Eli again.

  At least Gaelan wasn’t smoking dope or about to violate his physical therapist’s orders.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello.”

  “I was wondering if you’re ready for auditions. I wanted to answer any questions you might have, about the character, or whatever.”

  “Auditions for what?”

  “The Fancy Egg Days Pageant.” Eli frowns. “You forgot, didn’t you?”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “Do you still have those sides?”

  “Sides?”

  “The ones I gave you back in December.”

  “Um, no. I don’t think so.”

  Eli nods knowingly. He unloads a large backpack from his shoulders, places it on the porch, and starts rummaging through it.

  “Listen, Eli,” Gaelan begins, looking down at the top of the boy’s head, which is covered today by a black yarmulke that’s secured with multiple bobby pins. “I feel really honored that you want me to be in your play, but—”

  “If you don’t audition,” Eli says, continuing to forage, “I’m pretty sure the director is going to cast Mr. Canaerfan.” He eventually extracts a large three-ring notebook. “I mean, I’m sure Mr. Canaerfan is a really fine teacher and all but he’s totally wrong for the part, so please try out, okay?”

  Eli holds out the notebook; Gaelan accepts it without comment. For some reason he cannot bring himself to equivocate in this child’s presence.

  “Good-bye,” Eli says.

  “Good-bye,” Gaelan replies.

  Eli fits his helmet over his yarmulke and pedals away. He’s looking more confident now, a fact that Gaelan finds reassuring.

  After fixing himself dinner, Gaelan retreats to his room, lights up, and gives over the entire evening to reading the winning entry in the Fancy Egg Days play competition.

  Entitled Our Little Wales, Eli’s script has three very long acts, is loaded with challenging technical, scenic, and costume elements, and is extremely ambitious in scope—beginning in prehistory and moving through time to the present day. The play calls for the appearance of wooly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers. A wind machine will be used to suggest the tornado that blew Emlyn Halopeter off course, causing him to lose his bearings and homestead here instead of in Wymore. Indian tribes will hunt bison. Sod houses will be built. The Battle of Midway will be reenacted. Gaelan wonders if Eli’s imaginative talents might be better served by the movies.

  Throughout the script Eli has highlighted the role of the Custodian. He has also inserted a two-page, single-spaced letter to Gaelan, supplying him with detailed notes on the character.

  The letter begins: The role of the Custodian is absolutely crucial to the success of the play. He must have a special quality: outgoing but not overly friendly, charming but professional; he has to show both authority and kindness, like a father.

  Why can’t everybody just leave me alone? Gaelan wonders.

  Hearing Viney come home, he quickly puts out the joint, turns on the fan, turns off the light, and burrows under the covers.

  Hope’s Diary, 1973:

  Raising Liars

  It’s a joke at our house. Whenever the phone rings we must ask Llewellyn, “Are you home?” before picking up. This is because nine out of ten times the person on the other end of the line is calling to ask, “Is Dr. Jones there?”

  Usually the secretary of the moment gets a nod. “Yes, he’s here, just a moment, please.” Dr. Jones’s patients all have his home phone number, they always know where to find him, it’s part of what makes him so beloved, no one is more ethical than Llewellyn Jones, M.D., when it comes to responding to other people’s crises and we’d have to be bleeding from our eyeballs before he’d choose us over them.

  However, there are times—rare, but they do happen—when he doesn’t want to be disturbed. If he’s in one of his dark moods, say, or if he’s been out all night on an emergency and is trying to get some rest. In such a case the secretary says, “No, he’s not here now. May I take a message?”

  In waffling circumstances—when Llewellyn can’t immediately assess whether the caller is indeed experiencing an emergency, a post-op complication, or something else requiring his immediate attention—L. prompts the secretary by mouthing “Who is it?” whereupon the secretary will say, “He’s not available at the moment. Who’s calling please?” After the secretary extracts a bit more information and then whispers it, Dr. Jones might decide to be available.

  Both larken and Gaelan possess impeccable phone-answering etiquette. They’ve been well-schooled in this complex form of deceit.

  These are the kinds of things mommies and daddies don’t share with their children: how often mommy thinks about divorce, how marriage is a weight unlike anything and it’s not even about freedom it’s about distance, removal, the horrible treachery conveyed without a raised voice or threatening hand. It’s the weight of silence and old voices, saying, “You were always selfish. You should never have married. You are bad, bad, bad, and you will ruin these children before you’re done.”

  I try to maintain a benevolent silence at least—although in the end it makes me so very tired, because suppressing all that subtext takes energy, and energy is a commodity I cannot afford to spend. In the end my silence isn’t really about anything: There is no hidden subtext, just a great emptiness, a terrific nonthoughtfulness.

  Maybe Mommy and Daddy are all right, I hope the children are thinking. Maybe they’re just being quiet, the way we are sometimes.

  Who knows what the hell they think? I only hope the damage is not too great.

  Marry someone you can talk to, I will advise them, if I live long enough. There is
nothing lonelier than the silence of marriage.

  I wonder what L. is thinking. Maybe he, too, is simply being dragged under by fatigue.

  Part of me wants to be out with it, though: “Must we stay married?” I want to ask, without vehemence or ire, just a simple question. “Do we have to keep on doing this? If you are only bound to me by pity, or by the anchor of obligation, then please, please, let us let it go.”

  But I cannot bring myself to say the words. I can only sit and watch the children color—Larken confidently applying unique, nonnaturalstic color choices to complexions and hair; Gaelan, so intent on staying in the lines; Bonnie scribbling madly and altering the narrative of the coloring books to include all manner of magical creatures.

  The phone rings.

  “Daddy, are you home?” Larken asks before picking up.

  “No,” he might answer, and remain—with us, and yet not with us.

  Tonight he answers “Yes,” signaling (to me anyway) his desire to get out.

  “Joneses’ residence, Larken speaking,” I hear her say—so grown-up, my little girl—and then, “Yes, just a moment please.”

  And then he goes.

  Tell a lie and Daddy stays. Tell the truth and Daddy leaves.

  Such interesting lessons we’re teaching them.

  Chapter 24

  Ex-pats en Route

  After months of catching as catch can—quickies snatched between teaching and grading obligations; late-night trysts during Esmé’s weekend visits; never waking up together, never experiencing the slow, in-sync breaths of a couple in love, a couple who has time—it was supposed to go like this:

  She and Jon, arriving early afternoon, would put in a perfunctory appearance at Viney’s; Larken would show Jon off to her siblings; he’d charm everyone with his Anglo wit and exotic accent; they’d share a meal, lingering just long enough to be polite; and then the two of them would hasten away to Dad’s house, burrow in, and commence their university-subsidized, spring break holiday: a kind of adulterer’s honeymoon during which they’d spend the entire week engaged in nonstop fucking, taking only the briefest of interludes to eat, drink, and watch Merchant Ivory films.

  However, after dinner—during which Bonnie is distant and Gaelan is stoned—Viney insists that they all go for a drive.

  “I bet Jon would enjoy seeing some of the sights before it gets dark,” she offers.

  Sights? Larken thinks. What sights? “That’s nice, Viney, but Jon and I have already seen the countryside. On the way here.”

  “Oh, I know that, but—”

  “Besides, Jon has work to do,” Larken says pointedly. Jon gives her a quizzical look. “On your novel?” she prompts.

  “Oh. Right,” he replies, weakly.

  Obviously she’ll have to teach him the decoding skills this kind of situation requires.

  “But you’re going to be here all week, aren’t you?” Viney asks. “Come on, let’s just take a little drive. It’ll be fun.”

  The expression on Viney’s face is so deadpan and the layers of subtext are so labyrinthine and inscrutable that Larken begins to wonder if her wish for an evil stepmother has finally come true.

  It’s unprecedented for Larken to find herself piloting a High-Occupancy Vehicle. The last time she traveled with more than one other person in the car was in childhood, during the days of Going-Away Clover-Leaf-in-Sunshine Daddy and Coming-Home Cherry-Float Hope.

  It’s March, and even though the air still feels wintry and damp, the roadside ditches are showing signs of life: flowerlet-shaped clumps of leaves, fuzzy and whitish-green, have just broken the surface of the earth and are squatting atop the mud; from their centers, tall verbascum stalks will arise in mid-summer: slender, dotted with yellow flowers the size of small buttons, heavy with bees.

  “I’ve never lived anywhere but Emlyn Springs,” Viney is saying from her position in the front passenger seat; Gaelan, Bonnie, and Jon are wedged together in the back. “It’s nothing fancy, but it’s home. I can’t imagine what it would be like to live so far away from where you were born.”

  “Well, it definitely gives you a distinct perspective,” Jon replies. “The good and the bad are cast in sharp relief, that’s sure.”

  Larken checks her watch again. She wishes she could get to the two-pound bag of M&M’s in her purse, melts in your mouth, not in your hands. She doesn’t usually think about food when she’s with Jon, but at this moment she could use the sedating effects of refined sugar to take the edge off her impatience and boredom.

  They’ve already toured the pathetic sights of town, with Viney narrating bits of Emlyn Springs history, pointing out the school, the library, the churches, the historic buildings that the community hopes to renovate in partnership with their sister city, blah-blah …

  Now—and again at Viney’s request—they’re on the highway, traveling toward Lincoln. Larken has begun to feel as though she’s been unwittingly enlisted to drive the getaway car for a cell block of escaping felons. Her siblings are awfully quiet back there.

  Jon, on the other hand, is being extremely polite, charming, indulgent—all the things Larken expected, and which under different circumstances she’d find charming. And yet, his infallibly good manners are beginning to irritate; it is his apparent interest in all this shit that’s encouraging Viney to persist in her newfound role as tour guide. More to the point, it’s keeping the two of them from getting between the sheets.

  “Do you ever miss England?” Viney asks.

  “Yes,” Jon replies without hesitation. Larken is surprised; she’s never heard Jon express anything but contempt—albeit gentle—for his home-land. Also, the expediency and sureness of his response troubles her. “Certainly not the government policies or the way Britain’s PM seem to be in bed with America. Sorry, Mrs. Closs. No offense.”

  “None taken,” Viney replies, airily. “Please call me Viney.”

  “What I do miss is hard to articulate,” Jon goes on. “I suppose it has to do with how memories reside in place. Does that make sense?”

  “You bet.”

  “I don’t think it’s possible to ever have the same deep feeling for place that we had in childhood.”

  Viney hums and nods. Clearly, she likes Jon very much. This should be a good thing, but it’s becoming harder and harder for Larken to stoke the sparks of illicit lust for a man who insists on being so nice.

  Briefly inclining her left temple against the cool window glass, Larken looks up and out. Overhead, the geese are migrating: large flocks pass over them, one after another. Their formations look raggedy, disorganized—as though their V has been penned by a weak, unsteady hand.

  They’re approaching the Vance farm, with its long bordering row of cedar trees minus one. It occurs to Larken that no one besides the people of Emlyn Springs knows the history behind this stand of trees and its absent fellow—and sometimes even they forget.

  “Why don’t we turn around here,” Larken suggests. “Head back.”

  “That would be fine,” Viney replies. “But oh! I haven’t seen Clara for a long time. Do you mine if we stop? Just for a minute so I can say hello?”

  The question seems to be directed at Larken, so she replies, “No, of course not.”

  She parks the car. Gaelan and Jon are quickly unhooked from their seat belts and standing outside, stretching, chatting. Bonnie remains huddled in the center backseat.

  “I’m sure Clara would love to see you, too,” Viney says to Larken. “Come on up to the house with me.”

  Larken sighs. “Sure.” But Viney is out of the car and hippety-hopping away before she can even unbuckle her seat belt. She turns to face Bonnie. “You coming, Bon?”

  “No,” Bonnie snips. She’s pouting, mad about who knows what, engaged in a sullen stare-down with her kneecaps.

  Larken sighs again, feeling more and more beaten down by the way the day’s events have played out. “Fine.”

  Her body no longer buzzing with lustful intent, she heaves
herself out of the car and starts plodding toward the farmhouse. Behind her, there’s a burst of laughter from Jon. Up ahead, Viney has already arrived and is ringing the doorbell, gesturing Larken to hurry up. Her big, scooping, come-hither movements have the effect of warping time and space: The front door suddenly appears to be miles and miles away instead of only a few hundred feet.

  Larken trudges on.

  Jon’s right: The smells of this landscape have had an imprinting effect—regardless of how she feels about the landscape itself. The scent of the air today—damp, undercut with the heavy warm odors of manure and wet hay—has become an unaccustomed one for Larken, and yet it is so familiar that she is enveloped with a longing that is both potent and beyond the ability of language to describe.

  Clara Vance is standing at the open door chatting with Viney as Larken makes her approach.

  “Larken!” she cries. “How nice to see you!” Mrs. Vance is in her sixties—a contemporary of Larken’s parents—and she still bears a slight disfiguring scar on her upper lip where Larken’s father removed and biopsied a large mole thirty-some years ago.

  “Hello, Mrs. Vance,” Larken says. “It’s good to see you, too. How’s Mr. Vance?”

  “Oh, fine, just fine. He’s over at the Co-op. He’ll be so sorry he missed you.”

  Larken still remembers what Mrs. Vance’s mole meant to Gae and her: It was a terrifying possibility that exploded into their lives in the form of a new and ugly-sounding word—cancer—and threatened to change everything, because after all, if Mrs. Vance could get cancer, so could anybody’s mom or dad. But the mole turned out to be benign: a meteor that unaccountably veered off course just as it was about to obliterate the earth.

  She was lucky, Dad said, in a voice that made it sound like he wasn’t sure this luck would last.

  But it did. And here she still is.

  “How are the grandkids?” Larken asks.

  “Oh, thanks for asking. I was just telling Viney, they’re wonderful …”

  Harold Vance was so grateful—as if Dad himself were responsible for the happy outcome—that he gifted the Jones family with a side of venison that took up the better part of their freezer for over two years, constantly reminding Larken that gratitude = food and food = gratitude.