Hurry Home

by Roz Nay

  “He wasn’t wearing shoes?” Mom asked, looking at Ruth.

  She picked up one sneaker, clutching it to her heart as she moved to the window. Then she stood, watching the field and waiting, with her back to us. Blame began to gather like weather, pressing at every corner of the room, and there was Ruth, right in the darkening middle. But she’d lied. To everyone. She was right where she deserved to be.

  RUTH

  I hold Pim’s clothespin in my hand, trace over our initials. I couldn’t let them bury it with him. At the funeral, while Mom coughed out tight little gasps, I went to the casket to say goodbye one last time and saw it there beside his body, and I took it, hoping that somehow Pim would know that his home was always with me. I don’t consider that stealing.

  But I did steal the photo of Pim from the family album the summer I left the farm. They wouldn’t have given it to me if I’d asked. I took it because it’s happy. It’s as simple as that. There was once a time when everything was okay. There were days when we weren’t in ruin, when I wasn’t the one to blame.

  I took that photo, but I didn’t leave it lying on the coffee table for Chase to find. No, he sifted through my things. Maybe I should be angrier about that, but at least he only searched my bag hanging on the hook and didn’t get as far as Eli’s coffee tin, which remains stashed under the bathroom sink. I’m not mad at him; not really. Rifling through another person’s past is all any of us are doing anyway. And if you give a dog nothing but scraps, eventually it will seek out its own food. I tried to explain that to Alex when she finally returned home four hours later, but she didn’t believe me.

  “You left it lying somewhere on purpose,” she all but spat at me. “You love that he found it.”

  “Alex! Do you think I came here just to mess you up? I’m not trying to cause trouble, you know.”

  “No?” she said. “Why break the habit of a lifetime?”

  Perhaps she doesn’t understand that everything she lost, I lost, too. There are moments even now when I’m still flooded by Pim, the smell of him, his brown-berry summer skin, his laugh. He used to join Alex and me when we snuck out of our bedroom to watch television long after we’d been tucked in.

  Mom liked scary shows—The X-Files or Dr. Who—and every Friday night, she’d make a bowl of popcorn for herself and settle in front of the TV while Dad worked on a puzzle in another room. The smell of warm coconut oil filled the old living room and kitchen. Our farmhouse creaked, but at twelve years old, I’d learned all the floorboards. Alex was seven and followed in my footsteps. Pim was right on her heels. We hunkered at the threshold of the living room and took turns peeping around to watch the TV, the carpet scratchy under our knees. When the show got scary, Pim would gasp, and our gig would be up.

  “Willem Van Ness,” Mom would say, her words elongated. “You’re too young to see this. I’m drawing the line.”

  Behind the couch, Alex and I watched as Pim’s whole face deflated. He covered his eyes with two flat palms, dimpled at every knuckle, as if not seeing the room meant Mom no longer knew he was there.

  “Don’t make me come back there,” Mom would say.

  “Okay. I gotta go to bed,” Pim would announce to us in the loudest of whispers, his dark eyes huge, his hair like alfalfa.

  “You too, girls,” Mom would add. “Take a handful of popcorn to go.” She’d hold the enamel blue bowl high over the back of the sofa and we’d each fill a greasy palm, traipsing out of the living room in a line, back up the stairs, into Pim’s oak-floored bedroom.

  “You did it again, Pimlet,” Alex would say, although there was never any scold in her voice. She would tuck Pim in, give him his clothespin, kiss his cheek.

  Pim would giggle, and Alex and I would snuggle in on each side of him. Often on those nights, we fell asleep right there, three brown cashew nuts in a row, our joints conjoined. In the morning, Mom’s warm flannel blanket was always over top of us.

  I live that memory again and again, and yet the other memories of that miserable September on the farm crowd it out, block the light. Every year that followed in that house was a dirge.

  Alex took what happened and turned it into fire, causing trouble every chance she got. My mom and dad spent more time in the principal’s office than they ever had before, but Alex continued to push them. One winter, some kid in her class was throwing snowballs at younger kids in the school. Alex took it upon herself to teach him a lesson. She was vicious. Relentless. She got sent home for pushing him so hard down an embankment that his shoulder dislocated.

  “But is it broken?” I asked Alex at the dinner table that night. I was trying to fill the silence, to normalize things.

  “Ruth, don’t meddle,” my father said.

  “But I was only—”

  “Stop!” My father pounded the table with his fist, and all the spoons jumped. “Your sister got in trouble at school, Ruth, but at least, at least that’s the only trouble she’s caused.”

  “Joseph.” My mom put a hand on his wrist.

  “Lottie, she’s the oldest. She needs to take some responsibility, to stop pointing fingers at everyone else. All we’ve had from her the past two years are secrets and lies.”

  “What?” I said. “How is this about me? I haven’t broken anyone’s shoulder.”

  “You’ve done worse things,” Alex said. If she’d stuck me with a knife, it would have hurt less. There was silence then, with only the whir of the old fridge as it knocked and struggled in the kitchen. Even Mom kept her eyes on her plate, saying not even a word in my defense. I felt more alone than ever. I was back out in that field, with no one to help me home.

  “You’re dismissed,” my father said to me. “Not you,” he said to Alex. “You stay right here.”

  I slunk to my room. A united front, they watched me go.

  By the time Alex was thirteen, she was acting out as if delivering a direct challenge to the universe. Come and get me, she was saying, with that kind of angry glassiness you see in the eyes of players around a Russian roulette table. She was staying out late, going to parties at the raceway on Friday nights, hanging around farm kids who were nowhere near as smart as she was. Dad didn’t know what she was up to. Only I did. I couldn’t stop her—she wouldn’t listen to me. At school, she aced classes without studying, which pleased Mom and Dad. If her marks were good, surely everything was fine with her. But she was a pressure cooker. The tension was building up inside her, and no one noticed but me. And then, at fifteen, she got into all that trouble with boys. Her whole world burst. And I was the only one who wasn’t surprised.

  By then I had my own life outside the family anyway. I was done living in a house full of echoes. That’s why I clung to Hal. He filled in all the sadness, made me feel safe and loved. Fuck your family, he’d say, handing me a pill to swallow. Who needs them? Stick with me, baby. We’ll make our own home. Every pill he gave me back then made me feel good, let me escape. I laid myself at his feet. I didn’t know then about the other side of him, the side that would sell me out, abandon me in a heartbeat when a jail term was looming. When I did, it was too late. Alex made sure of that, made sure I could never come back to my family. One lie, and she sealed my fate forever.

  ALEX

  I wasn’t the problem child, even though that’s what Ruth thinks. The worst thing I ever did was go to a party when I was fourteen that my mom and dad didn’t know about. It was the height of my sneakiness, which was pretty mild compared to what Ruth was getting up to at the time. Through her last years of school, she stopped trying entirely. She flunked classes, didn’t even show up to most of them. At home, she was quiet and secretive. Mom and Dad didn’t know what to do with her.

  She started smoking weed in eleventh grade. I could smell it on her clothes and in her hair. She hung out with kids in trench coats who drew their eyebrows on in pen. Dad was always getting calls from his friend in the police about her being up to no good. The more she disappeared into that world, the less she held on to any lifel
ine at home.

  But she still thought of herself as my great protector, and whenever I did anything at all that a normal teenager does, she squealed. She caught me sneaking out to that party, and when Dad’s cop friend brought me home, Mom and Dad were right there on the front porch, and she was behind them, her arms crossed, smug.

  “You carry on down this road, Alex, and you’ll be ruined in no time. You’re better than that.” He turned to look at Ruth momentarily, whose face crumpled a little. “You want to end up like your big sister?” He paused, then carried on. “Like her? Be a lion, not a sheep. And don’t lie to me anymore.”

  I couldn’t help it. I started to cry right there on the front porch, and I ran to my mother.

  “It’s not so bad,” she said, enfolding me in her arms and kissing the top of my head. “Just don’t do it again, LittleTiger.”

  “I won’t,” I promised. “I won’t.”

  I looked at Dad. He had tears in his eyes, too. I let go of Mom and went to him, my hands limp by my sides. He hugged me, his rib cage bony under my shoulders. Behind him, I could see Ruth glowering.

  It was only a few weeks after that that Hal Nightingale showed up in our lives. He was fixing a broken fence with Dad, and Mom told Ruth and me to bring them sandwiches and a jug of iced tea.

  “All that’s for me?” Hal said, taking off his cowboy hat and wiping his forehead with the back of his sleeve. He had a deep tan and crinkles around his eyes, like he’d spent a lot of his life squinting into the sun.

  “Hal, these are my daughters,” Dad said. He took a sandwich from the plate and ate half of it in one bite. “Don’t talk to them.”

  Ruth and I headed back to the house, but Ruth kept turning around to see if Hal’s eyes were still on her.

  “Does he work hard?” she asked Dad that night over dinner. He was chewing and stared at Ruth until he swallowed.

  “No. He’s a layabout. And he’s temporary. He’ll be gone the second I find a decent worker. Why are you asking?”

  She shrugged, looking down at her plate instead of at him.

  “What about that other boy?” Mom asked. “That Tommy kid you hired.”

  “He’s green, but he’s good,” Dad said. He put down his fork and pointed a thick finger at Ruth. “That’s a boy to ask questions about.”

  Ruth snorted into her glass of milk.

  It didn’t take long for Hal and Ruth to connect, probably because it was the one thing that my father had forbidden. Dad was right about Hal: he was good for nothing, just a drifter who got by on fake charm.

  Ruth secretly met Hal most nights, his Plymouth Duster parked fifty feet down the grid road where it bent to the left, and the two of them would sit on the hood, passing a whiskey bottle or a joint back and forth. Or so I heard from Tommy Gunnarsson.

  The first time Tommy ever spoke to me, I was sitting alone on the top step of the porch, watching the wind sift the trees. He was just coming in from tying hay bales out in the fields. He had a streak of dirt across one collarbone and his blond hair was dusty but tidily cut.

  “How’s it going?” he asked.

  “Okay.”

  “I’m Tommy.” He offered me his hand to shake.

  “I know who you are,” I said. His fingers were strong and confident.

  He lifted the lid of his lunch box and glanced at me. Then he pulled out a bent dandelion and handed it to me. “I got you this.”

  When I took it, I’m sure I blushed, fully and bright red, a color you can only get to when boys are brand-new.

  “I know it’s a weed,” he said. “But who gets to decide what’s pretty and what isn’t?”

  He stared right into my eyes, and I knew he wasn’t talking about flowers.

  “Thanks.” The yellow head of the dandelion drooped in my hand.

  “I’m buying a Chevy Silverado. I’ll take you for a ride in it sometime. But until then, maybe we could go for a walk some evening.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  He tipped his hat at me, and I watched him walk all the way out to the back field. Every few minutes, he checked if I was still watching him. And I was.

  After that, I started spending a lot more time with him. He’d come by the house and ask, Would you like to take a stroll around a field, Miss Alexandra? Would you care to take a turn about the road? Dad approved, and I enjoyed the attention. Ruth rolled her eyes and called him a choirboy Bible basher behind his back. But, as with all things, she was wrong about Tommy.

  A couple of weeks before my fifteenth birthday, we were walking out at the far end of the property where the fence line bordered the trees. It was a pretty night, bugs skimming the wide- open flowers, and Tommy pulled at long strands of grass as we strolled.

  “Your dad’s land goes on forever,” he said, looking out to the farthest reach of the field. I followed his gaze, too, and squinted. Because there at the edge of the field, rammed hard against a wooden fence, my sister and Hal Nightingale were standing with their pants reefed down. Ruth had her back to us; her hands were on Hal’s shoulders. Mostly I remember the shocking white of the tops of Hal’s thighs, the strange bucking of his hips, the way he kept licking his lips with effort.

  “Holy Moses,” Tommy said. “Is that your sister?”

  I stared, motionless. From forty feet away, Hal saw me, but he didn’t stop what he was doing. He didn’t even slow down. He smiled at me, opened his mouth so I could see his tongue. The noises he was making grew louder.

  “Come on, come away.” Tommy pulled at my arm. “We shouldn’t be here.”

  We stumbled back to the farmhouse, both of us awkward and quiet. As we neared the porch, I said to Tommy, “Don’t tell anyone what we saw, okay?”

  “I won’t,” he said. And he didn’t, although I know the whole scene had him as rattled as I was. And for my part, I never said anything either, not to Ruth, not to my parents, not to anyone. But it was an image that was hard to unsee.

  The day I turned fifteen, Tommy came by the house and brought me proper flowers, from a flower shop. “Happy birthday,” he said as he presented them to me. Then he took me out for our usual walk.

  “How did you know it was my birthday?” I asked him when we were out of sight of the house.

  “I found out.” He took my hand. “I’m trying hard to find out about you.”

  I blushed, thinking it wasn’t that difficult.

  “So,” he said, suddenly standing still. “What else do you want right now for your birthday?”

  I looked up at him, unsure.

  He leaned in, stopping with his mouth very close to mine. “I’d like to kiss you, if that would be okay.”

  I nodded, swallowing fast. He pressed his lips to mine, his hat knocking against my forehead. He smelled clean, like when Mom dried freshly washed sheets on the line. After a few seconds, he pulled back and waited for me to look at him.

  “Happy birthday, Miss Alexandra,” he said.

  I think that was the moment I fell for him. Or it might have been later that evening. But the moment was there—real, and fluttery, and transitory—like everything when you’re only fifteen.

  In the weeks after that birthday night, I thought more and more about what I’d seen Ruth doing in the field. We shared a room, and I lay awake each night long after she snuck back in smelling of booze and pot. She’d fall sleep quickly, but all I could think about was how reckless she was being. What if our parents found out about her and Hal? What if she got in trouble, the really big kind? I was sure we wouldn’t survive another family crisis, but I couldn’t ask her about it or warn her to stay away from Hal. All I got from her by then was derision. So one Friday night when I heard Dad’s rocking chair creaking on the front porch, I went down to join him. Mom was already asleep.

  “Why are you sitting out here on your own?” I asked, curling up next to him in my nightgown.

  The crickets screeched in the bushes. He sucked his teeth so his lips curled. “I’m waiting for your sister. Went out hours ago a
nd hasn’t yet come back. I’m going to tan her hide and skin whatever rat of a boyfriend she’s with.”

  I knew I shouldn’t say anything. I didn’t even want to, but I kept thinking about how Ruth had taken it upon herself to laugh at me and Tommy. Every breakfast, she asked if I’d had good dreams about him, as if she could see into my head and knew all my thoughts. She knew nothing. She had no idea what was in my head. She had no idea what I’d seen.

  “Dad,” I said then. “Are you mad because of what she does with Hal in the back field?”

  He turned to stone next to me, his eyes hollowed out by disappointment, but he thought I didn’t see it. “Hal Nightingale? What do they do in the field?” he asked, his voice too measured to be nonchalant.

  “I probably shouldn’t say. It was … sinful.”

  Dad’s head dropped into his hands. He looked completely worn out.

  “I’m sorry, Dad. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “Go on to bed.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t mind keeping you company.”

  He put a hand on my shoulder. It felt warm for a moment. Then he drew it away. “It’s okay,” he said. “Go.”

  I left him and went quickly to bed. It was three o’clock in the morning when I woke up to shouting outside. At first the noise sounded like thunder, but it was the rumbling of my father’s voice.

  “I know what you did! I know what you’re doing!”

  My sister’s voice was whiny and plaintive. “What? Who told you that? I like him, Dad. He’s not a bad guy.”

  “I heard he deals MDMA to minors. That’s chemical drugs! Are you high right now?”

  “No, Dad—”

  “All summer you’re telling your mother one thing and me another. We won’t be lied to again!”

  There were sentences I didn’t catch then, words spoken too fast and too angrily.

  “Like you’d know,” Ruth said in a storm of defiance. “You washed your hands of me a long time ago. You make snap judgments about people all the time, and then they’re dead to—”

  There was a crash of glass breaking as Dad hurled something against the wooden siding.