Another voice from the kitchen. Ryan had arrived.
He was standing with his back to her and she snuck up behind him and tickled him in the ribs. He must have heard her coming because he reached around and hauled her around by her arm. She wriggled loose and grinned at him. “Hey big shot.”
“Hey small fry.” The only time Torrie ever felt short was around her brothers.
“You look like a total hippie burnout,” she said. His hair was in a ponytail and he wore a denim shirt under his corduroy sports jacket.
“Thank you.”
Their mother said, “Please tell me you brought some other clothes.”
He reached into a duffel bag and came up with a red paisley tie, which he looped around his neck and into a knot, then stood back to let them judge the effect.
His mother sighed. “How much can I stand.”
“Relax. I brought a suit for the funeral.”
Anita had a cloth napkin pinned around Matthew’s neck and was feeding him chili. “I don’t know what you’re trying to prove with that hair.”
“I could say the same thing about you.”
Their mother said warningly, “Ryan, you haven’t been in the house five minutes. Why don’t you put your suitcase away and get some chili. Your father and Blake are going to meet us there.”
“When’s Jeff coming?” Torrie asked her sister.
“He can’t make it tonight. He’ll come to the service tomorrow.”
“Oh, that’s too bad.”
Anita gave her an unfriendly look. It was almost unfair to make fun of her. She didn’t have anything like a sense of humor she could use to fight back.
Their mother was putting out the bowls and spoons and crackers for chili. “Here,” she said, handing Torrie a bowl. “You need to eat something. I made a vegetarian batch just for you.”
Torrie filled the bowl halfway and ate a few spoonfuls. It tasted greasy, and the smell of it clogged her head. “I need to get dressed,” she said, taking the bowl back to her room.
She found a white shirt and a pair of dark pants, added a gray sweater and low-heeled boots. She brushed her hair, scraped the chili into a plastic bag from the drugstore, twisted it shut, put it into the pocket of an old coat, and carried the empty bowl back into the kitchen. “OK, I’m ready.”
She rode with Ryan to the funeral home, leaving her mother and Anita and Matthew to follow. Torrie and Ryan usually wound up together because everybody else in the family was so terminally uncool. “We’re taking the long way there,” Ryan announced, lighting a joint and getting busy with it.
“You are nuts,” Torrie said. It was not yet dark and enough dinnertime traffic was on the road so that cars passed them on almost every block. “You want to get me thrown off the team? No, I don’t want any. Besides, pot gives me the stoned munchies.”
“Can’t have that.” He opened his window a crack and blew the smoke outside. The rain had diminished into drizzle and fog, the sky softening into a thick gray veil.
“You are something else,” Torrie said, turning her face to the window to watch the uninspiring view of Grenada. Streetlights reflected on the wet pavement. The little houses looked lonesome in their big yards. It was impossible to imagine one interesting thing going on inside any of them. If they were the only shelter from the storm, Bob would stay out in the rain.
Ryan had put the joint out and was driving even slower now. She said, “Tell me you don’t cruise around Chicago blowing dope.”
“Not usually. Traffic’s too heavy.”
“It’s messed up that you’re a teacher.” He was getting his master’s degree and taught discussion sections of the big poli-sci lecture.
“If you’re lucky, you’ll have a teacher as cool as me in college.”
“Yeah, can’t wait.” She only made it sound sarcastic. She felt a wave of longing for the life she hadn’t started yet. School was the quickest way out of here.
“Sad about Aunt Martha.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Kind of the last of the old-timers.”
Torrie didn’t say anything. She guessed that somebody had to be the last.
“Look, Mom wanted me to talk to you. About this not-eating thing.”
“She really, really does not have enough to do these days.”
“Yeah. But she’s worried about you. Me too. Your legs look like two sticks rubbed together.”
“Gee, thanks.”
He sighed. “Scratch that last part.”
“I am not too thin. That’s just her. God, could she just get off my case? Does her whole life have to be about stuffing people with food? What did she do, call you in Chicago? You guys were talking about me?” The minute Torrie said it, she knew she was right. They’d been having whole conversations behind her back.
“She worries, OK?”
“Just because I don’t want to eat dead cows and pigs, it’s some big deal.”
“This isn’t about being a vegetarian.”
“Isn’t it? You know what she’s like. It’s just too weird for her. If you don’t eat three helpings of glop at every meal—”
“Not everything is glop.”
“What am I supposed to do, whip out a milk shake and scarf it down? Would that make you happy? Huh?”
“Never mind. Forget I said anything. You should do whatever you want.”
Without her realizing it, they’d reached the funeral home. The parking lot was in back and cars were already lined up, people hurrying inside through the early darkness. She was probably related to most of them. It wasn’t a thought she liked having.
“Look,” she said, talking fast because she didn’t want him mad at her for some completely stupid reason her mother had come up with. “I’m sorry I’m being kind of a brat, but you don’t know what it’s like being stuck there with her picking on you constantly because nobody else is around. She never does anything anymore. Ask Dad. She watches TV and knits stuff nobody wants to wear and cooks stuff nobody wants to eat. She’s the one everybody should be worried about.”
“I do worry about her.” He was occupied with finding a parking space. He seemed to be done with talking.
“Come on, Ry. Give me a break. I’m never going to do anything right, far as she’s concerned. Dad too.”
“Why’s that?” He pulled into a space but let the engine idle. His arms were draped over the steering wheel. He didn’t have to get stoned. It was stupid.
“Because I’m not Anita.”
She was afraid he’d laugh, and he did. “Whoa! Good thing too. What?”
“Nothing.”
“What? Come on. Why’s it so tragic you’re not Anita?”
“Because I’m not gonna hang around here my whole life and pop out grandkids and I don’t think the world ends at the state borders and I don’t live and breathe the gospel according to Martin Luther.”
“Well I’m not that way either. But there’s times I kind of wish I was. Come on, we need to get inside.”
Half the town was there. The country relatives made up for the other half. They had to squeeze through a hallway packed with people shedding their damp coats, milling around, gabbing. Ryan saw some guy he’d gone to school with and stopped to talk to him. Torrie pushed ahead, looking for Michelle.
In the viewing room, flowers in clumps or sprays were arranged on pedestals. It was probably more florists’ flowers than Aunt Martha had ever seen in her lifetime. The coffin was up front on a little stage. Torrie gave it a quick, horrified look. Martha, or what used to be Martha, was propped up with her hands folded across her chest. They’d left her eyeglasses on and dressed her in the same gray print dress she’d worn at Norm’s funeral.
Almost the worst part of being dead was thinking about what people would do to your body. And there wouldn’t be one thing you could do about it.
Michelle came up to her then. “Hey. Do you have to go view her?”
Torrie looked around and didn’t see her parents. “I can just say I did.
” They sat down on one of the upholstered sofas in the back. A box of Kleenex sat on the table next to it, but she didn’t see anybody in the room crying.
Michelle nudged her. “Oh. My. God. You brother is like, a hair queen.”
Torrie watched him enter the room trying not to look stoned. He tucked his chin under and clasped his hands behind his back. Like he was really going to blend in. She hated being embarrassed about him. “He’s a dick.”
“Yeah, but he’s cute.”
Here were her parents, and her brother Blake and his skanky girlfriend. The girlfriend wanted to get married in the worst way, and as Torrie’s father liked to say, that was probably the way it was going to happen.
Her mother waved Torrie over. Michelle said it was OK, she was going to go talk to Kurt and Denny. Torrie saw them leaning against a wall across the room. Two of the boring generic boys that everybody thought were so cool. Neither of them could carry on a conversation for more than three minutes. “Go for it,” Torrie said.
“Hey Dad. What’s up, Mom?” They were standing up front near the coffin. Torrie tried to keep her back to it. She thought she smelled the flowers, a cold, waxy perfume.
“Would you go watch Matthew so your sister can pay her respects? She didn’t want to bring him in here.”
“No prob.” Torrie was glad for an excuse to leave. She wondered how old Matthew had to be before he got dragged in to see dead relatives.
“Thanks, sweetheart. Say hello to your Aunt Pat and Uncle Morgan.”
Torrie did so, murmuring that she was sorry about Aunt Martha. Pat was Martha’s oldest. Norm and Martha had been like the nursery rhyme about going to St. Ives, and the man with seven wives, and every wife had seven sacks and every sack had seven cats and so on, well, not the seven wives part, but they’d had a ton of children and all those children had a ton of children who were now busy making more big, round-headed, humorless Peersons. The world wasn’t going to run short of Peersons anytime soon.
There was a gaggle of Peerson grandkids in the room, among them Bradley Goodell, who was her second cousin or second cousin once removed or something. He saw her and pretended he hadn’t. She was relieved and pretended she didn’t see him right back as she left the room.
Last winter she’d had sex with Bradley in the basement rec room of some kid’s house, a party where the stereo kept playing “How Deep Is Your Love” over and over because it was stuck, and everybody else was passed out upstairs except for one guy who was passed out in a corner. Torrie lay beneath Bradley on the itchy tweed sofa, wondering how long it was supposed to take and if it was supposed to feel good or something. They hadn’t said ten words to each other before, during, or after, and nothing since, and that was just fine with her.
God, a Bee Gees song! Could anything have been worse?
She found Anita and Matthew in the coatroom, where Matthew was running in and out among the coats, hiding and tangling himself in them. Anita looked frazzled. “Tag team,” Torrie said. “I got him.”
“He keeps knocking everything off the hangers, but it makes him happy.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll put them back, go on.”
“Thanks,” Anita said, hurrying off to where the coffin action was.
Torrie told Matthew that she was going to wrap him in a coat and then sit on him, which made him shriek and flail harder. She followed in his wake, picking up coats and stray gloves and hats. She wasn’t sure she got everything back where it belonged, but figured people could get it sorted out at the next funeral.
She looked up. Her Uncle Ray stood at the door, watching them. “Hey,” he said. “That looks like fun, Matthew.”
Matthew, of course, wasn’t expected to answer, but she was. “Hi Uncle Ray. Yeah, he’s a wild man.”
Uncle Ray stood with his arms folded across his chest, smiling. He was the nice uncle. He was the one who dressed up as Santa Claus at Christmas parties, the one who always had the best Halloween lights and spooky bats and skeletons. “Did you need your coat?” Torrie asked him.
“Naw, hon, I was just thinking, Audrey never lets us forget she had the first grandkid.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Torrie shrugged. It wasn’t a topic she was anxious to discuss. “Yeah, Mom goes ape . . . she’s nuts about him.”
“All things come to he who waits,” Ray said, which she guessed was supposed to mean that sooner or later one of his kids would get it together. The girls, you had to figure. It wasn’t considered polite for people to ask about her cousin Chip anymore; he was assumed to be in murky, faraway circumstances, living a life of unspeakable and thrilling degradation.
The noise from the entryway welled up just then, more people arriving, and Torrie thought it was a good excuse to leave. She hauled Matthew up underneath his arms and walked him forward, his feet on hers. “Beep beep,” she said to Ray, who was still in her way.
He patted her hair and then her shoulder, a clumsy pawing. “When you’re older you’ll understand how great it is, a time like this, to see a young one running around.” He turned and walked away into the milling crowd.
She hated it when people said, When you’re older, blah blah blah. It was like a present held up just out of your reach, one you probably didn’t want anyway.
• • •
Ryan got his hair cut for the funeral service. He turned up the next day at lunchtime with the ponytail shorn three inches above his collar. It wasn’t exactly short—was still some bushy stuff over his ears and in the front—but it was the shortest any of them had seen it in years.
“I bet they had a good time with you down at Hookstra’s,” Torrie’s father said. Hookstra’s was where elderly barbers in white smocks attended to men wearing seed-company windbreakers, and the radio was always tuned to the farm station.
“There were a lot of jokes about sending me down to the beauty college,” Ryan said. He seemed pleased with himself, turning his head from side to side as if to catch the breeze on his newly exposed skin.
“Why now?” Torrie asked. “You could have gotten it cut in Chicago.” It irritated her that he’d made himself into a spectacle twice. First when he’d shown up looking like a total dirtbag—like some out-of-it, granola-eating, clueless dirtbag—and now, when everybody would see the difference and talk about it.
“I dunno, I just felt like getting it cut. Sign of respect.” He shrugged. “It’s a funeral, you know?”
“It’s not like Aunt Martha’s going to notice.”
Their mother came in then. She was wearing her church clothes and she smelled powerfully of perfume. “Victoria, I don’t want to hear you say anything that ugly ever again. I think your brother looks very handsome.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“Yeah, so does he.” Torrie was still mad at him for getting on her case, for doing their mother’s bidding. Like he cared in the first place. She’d eaten a whole bag of Doritos last night. She felt fat, soft, totally disgusting.
“What is the matter with you?” Her mother’s made-up eyebrows gave her a menacing look. “Would you please try to remember that today is about honoring a woman who loved you very much and was never anything but kind to you and suffered terribly—”
“Maybe I should get all my hair cut off too.”
Her mother sat down heavily on a kitchen chair. “I can’t stand it. She was my sweetest, sweetest little baby girl. And now she hates me.”
“Come on, Mom. Nobody hates you.” Nobody ever knew what to do when her mother cried. It was the worst feeling, as if you’d killed somebody’s dog with your car.
“All I ever did was love you. All of you.”
“God, Mom.”
“None of that talk,” her father said. “You are way, way out of line, miss.”
Torrie shook her head and tried to catch Ryan’s eye: See? This is what I was talking about. But he wouldn’t look at her. He was on their side now.
“Would you like to stay home by yourself?” her father asked. “Because that’s exactly where y
ou’re heading.”
Would she ever. If only they’d let her. If only she wouldn’t have to sit in the backseat with Ryan, holding casseroles for the supper, while her father drove too slow and everybody in the car was mad at her. Instead she muttered No, she wouldn’t, and waited until her father was in the bathroom and her mother and Ryan were busy with something in the den. She grabbed her coat and keys and yelled that she had to go pick up Michelle and she’d see them at the service.
She drove to the Casey’s on the north edge of town, filled the car with gas, ordered a whole sausage pizza and ate it in the parking lot.
Once she was pretty sure enough time had passed, she set out for the funeral, still dawdling. Scouting the highway ahead and behind her, since she didn’t want to encounter her parents’ car on the road. It wasn’t raining but the farm fields were soggy and soaked, the crops disked down for winter, and the sky looked as if it could go either way, clear off or dump more water. There had been a phone conversation she wasn’t meant to overhear, her mother speculating with someone about whether they could get a grave dug in this kind of weather.
When she thought about being buried in mud, it made the pizza in her stomach turn into something hot and crawling.
She considered not going. Just driving around for a while and then heading back home, making some excuse later. Her mother would worry about her the whole time, which would serve her right for all her stupid guilt trips. They might even send somebody out to look for her. Torrie turned west instead of heading straight toward Hardy, trying out the idea. She wanted to make them worry, but it would be a seriously bratty thing to do at a funeral, which after all was about somebody dying, even if they had been really old.
She drove five miles or more into the country, deciding what to do. There was absolutely nowhere to go, and nothing to see except a treeline off in the distance. Hopeless. But when she tried to jog north again the road veered and curved, and a thick, ugly cloud cover was edging up on her left, and it scared her a little, because her mother’s car sometimes stalled out or acted up, and when she finally got back to the main road she was glad and drove faster to make up time.
The Year We Left Home: A Novel Page 11