Teresa glances at me. “I meant what I said, earlier. In the restaurant. About you doing the reno on Mom’s house.”
“I know you did,” I answer, wishing that she would just drop this conversation.
“But you don’t want to talk about it. Obviously.”
“I’m not sure I want to do it, Teresa.”
Teresa and I are sitting on the deck in back of her house; Duane has—by accident or design—absented himself from this discussion. He knows it can be between only the two of us.
“Is it something your firm could do?” she asks.
I think about it. At least, I give the semblance of thinking about it. “It would be… difficult.”
“Why?”
“It would have to be long distance. There’d be no money in it. You’d be better off to find someone local to do it.”
“It’s a great house.”
“I know it is, Teresa. I’d say this about any house like this. It makes sense to redo it only if you’re a flipper or if you plan to live in it.”
Teresa falls silent, staring out onto the placid surface of the lake, nearly a mirror of the evening sky. She tries again. “Why do you hate it?”
“Hate what? The house?” She nods; I roll my eyes. “I don’t hate it. It’s a perfectly fine house. It’s a beautiful house. What I hate is what happened in that house, the kind of life I had in that house, the kind of life we had in that house. Or had you forgotten?”
“It wasn’t that bad.”
I can’t hold back. I snort out my derision. “You have to be joking, Teresa.”
“I know she was… different, but—”
I cut her off. “She was crazy, Teresa. You know that. Mean crazy. Jesus, Teresa!—look at that house! That’s the house of a crazy person.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You weren’t here.”
“That’s why I wasn’t here, Teresa. It would have been meaningless for me to have been here.”
“Sticking me with it.”
I bite back a lot of what I want to say. What comes out isn’t necessarily any better; I’ve just taken out the obscenities. “Nobody ‘stuck’ you with her, Teresa. You stuck yourself with her, if anything.”
“What would she have done, Mark? Without me here to help her?”
I throw my hands up in the air. “Find somebody else to do it for her. That’s what she did, Teresa. She always found someone to do what she wanted. She was very good at that. If you’ll remember.”
“Well, maybe I don’t remember it the way you do. But somebody had to stay and—”
I cut her off again. “Ever since I was thirteen and she thought I was fooling around with Tom Hanna, she never let up on me. Every day, I had to hear it from her… how sick I was, how much I’d disappointed her, how I’d be going to hell, that she would be praying for my soul. Every day, I had to wake up to that. You try living with someone who treats you like shit and see how you feel after five years.”
“Well, look at it from her standpoint, Mark. It has to be hard for a mother to learn that her son is… that.”
“I understand that, Teresa. Completely. I do. And parents can go two ways with it. They can either accept it or they can’t. Mom couldn’t, and made it very clear to me that she couldn’t. When I could do something about it, I did. I left.”
“I never saw any of that.”
“I’m sure you didn’t. She probably made sure you didn’t.”
“You should have said something, Mark.”
“To you?” She nods. “What would you have done, Teresa? Anyway, she was too busy molding you into a little… clone of her. You were her perfect child. I was the anti-Christ.”
Teresa sighs. “Is that what you think, Mark? That she was trying to make me into her?”
“That’s what it looked like to me.”
Teresa falls silent. I’m not sure where this conversation is going or where it will end up. It could easily end up with me storming out of the house.
When Teresa speaks again, her voice is quiet and very small. “I guess she was trying to do that. And, yeah… maybe I let it happen. I guess I felt… bad for her. Sorry, maybe. She was all alone and just had us to rely on. But she didn’t, in the end. Make me just like her. She… ” Teresa trails off.
“What happened?” I try to make my voice equal hers, maybe trying to salvage whatever exists between us.
Teresa chuckles. “Another Hanna, as it ironically turns out.” She glances at me, to see if I know what she’s talking about. I don’t. She fills me in. “Michael.”
Even in our largely-Catholic little town the Hannas were a minor wonder. Eleven kids came out of Mary Elizabeth Hanna; eight of them lived. The last one took his mother with him when he died. I always wondered how she and Matthew kept them all straight. Michael was a few years older than Teresa and I.
“Michael?”
“Got me pregnant. My freshman year at UK.”
A minor revelation, perhaps, but still surprising. “I… didn’t know that, Teresa.”
“Nobody knew that. I made sure they didn’t. I never told anyone. Of course, neither did Michael. He didn’t want it. Ended up not wanting me, either.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugs. “I blamed it on my bad grades, of course. That I had to drop out. At least, that’s what I told everyone, including Mom. She was disappointed, of course, but I’m not sure she really minded.”
“Because she had you back where she wanted you.”
Teresa nods. “I guess so. Win-win for everyone, right?”
“Except you, maybe.”
“Ah, it worked out in the end. A year or so later I met Duane and the rest is, well… ” She waves her hands around. I chuckle.
“He’s a good guy.”
She nods again. “I know he is. He works very hard to keep us here.”
“Would he be interested in the house?”
Teresa purses her mouth, thinking. “You know, I don’t know. I never thought to ask him. Maybe. I mean, he’s got more skills than just painting.”
“Something to think about.”
“But then he’d want to sell it.”
“Well, yeah, of course.”
“I know, but… I’m still not ready to let go of it.”
We’ve just had this conversation; I say nothing for a bit, but it’s my turn to speak, so… “So, about tomorrow… do we—”
“Are you happy there, Mark?”
Her question takes me by surprise. “In New York?”
“Yes.”
Am I? “Happy enough. Busy.”
“Busy… good?”
“Yeah, I think so. It’s tough, having your own firm. It’s a very demanding profession.”
“Do you… have anybody there?” Somehow I know she means personally instead of professionally.
“No. Architecture is a very exacting mistress.” I’ve tried, in the past, to have someone in my life… but too many missed dinners and parties and staying in the office all hours put a quick end to anything like that and I’ve since simply accepted it as a corollary to the profession. I know I’m not the only architect who’s sacrificed that part of his life. I keep telling myself that eventually things might let up enough that I might settle down with someone… but I’m getting nearer and nearer to forty every passing year and sometimes I see the best part of my years slipping by me.
“Do you regret it?”
“Mmm… no, not really. I won’t say it’s the same as having kids, but for me it’s very similar. There’s something about going to a building or a space and saying to yourself ‘I did this. I built this.’ Maybe it’s an ego thing, but it makes up for a lot of the other stuff.”
“Still… ”
“I know, I know. I suppose if I ever get tired of it I’ll stop doing it.”
“Or do it somewhere else?” There’s a lilting bit of rising intonation in that phrase, turning it into a sort of half-question.
I smile. “You just don’t give up, do you?”
She knows I’m kidding; I can hear her hissing laugher. “Never. I know I’m being a pest. It’s just… we’re all we’ve got right now, Mark. Except for some cousins and whatever that we never see.”
“Because Mom drove them all away.”
“Pretty much. I don’t want to lose you, too.”
Not much to say to that. She’s right, of course. We’d had a certain closeness growing up—motivated chiefly by our shared fear of our mother—but I know it wasn’t what other siblings, even if they weren’t twins, experienced.
“She did a number on us, didn’t she?”
“Yep. It helped —a lot—when I married Duane and had kids. I couldn’t stay there, and then Duane bought this place and I could always beg off on going over there and doing stuff. And, you’re right; she did always seem to find somebody else she could talk into doing stuff for her, so I didn’t feel all that bad. Even though I got a lot of guilt for it, the next time I saw her. ‘So-and-so took me here,’ or ‘XYZ fixed the sink because Duane didn’t find time’… shit like that. She always had a way of letting you know that you let her down, somehow.”
“I never got any of that, thank God.”
“Well, you were in New York.”
“And I also refused to take any of her calls.”
“Seriously?”
“I told you. I made a promise when I left that that was it, that I was done with her. She ended up writing me a bunch of very long letters, which I sent back to her, unopened.” I glance at Teresa, smile. “I presume she got my address from you.”
“Probably. Sorry. I didn’t think it was a big deal.”
“Don’t worry about it. She didn’t give up, though. I got a lot of letters.”
Teresa says nothing; more not-uncomfortable silence stretches between us. Then, “I ran into Tom Hanna a few weeks ago.”
I chuckle, but part of me goes on a yellow alert. “Oh?”
“Yeah, downtown. He, um… you know he’s selling the dairy.”
“No. I did not know that. Wow.” The dairy had been in the Hanna family since the 1870s.
“I know, right? Everybody in town was just floored when they found out.”
“Did he give a reason?”
“He said he was having a harder and harder time competing against some of the bigger players. Somebody finally came in and made him a good enough offer. Made him some promises about maybe keeping the name, at least locally. I don’t think he cares, though. He’s done with it.”
“Nobody else wants it?”
“No. None of the kids wants a part of it. Tom may be the only one left in town any more. Everybody else just scattered after his dad died.”
“Michael?” I can hear her laugh.
“Well, for me, he’s in the lowest circle of hell. But, I heard something about him being in… Fort Wayne, maybe, or Valparaiso… some shithole like that. So, close enough for me.”
“Hell hath no fury… ”
“Well, he seriously fucked up my life. Of course, I let him.”
“How was Tom?”
“Good. He looked good. Seemed happy, now that he doesn’t have to worry about the business any more.” Teresa risked a quick glance at me. “You should look him up, while you’re here.”
“Ah, I don’t know… ”
“Well, whatever. He looks good.” She grinned, made a face. “For a man your age.”
I chuckle. With moonlight glancing off the water, I excuse myself and go to bed.
And to dreams of Tom.
—
Today is the day for the memorial. We’re not in charge… not really.
“You’ve been to this church, I assume,” I ask Teresa, over breakfast.
“Once.” Teresa fixes me with a strange look.
“And?”
“Oh, my God… ” Teresa rolls her eyes, shivers.
“What?” I venture. “Snakes? Speaking in tongues? Voodoo?”
She smiles. “No to the snakes and voodoo. Yes to speaking in tongues. And other weird shit. It’s… ” She breaks off and makes some gesture of dread mixed with disbelief. “I don’t know how she found them. It’s a mix of a lot of different things. Basically, it’s ‘Jews for Jesus’ mixed with… what do you call it… evangelical. With a bent towards the apocalypse. Revelation and all that. Cheery.”
“Leave it to her to end up there. I think she ran through everything else. I take it this is not your church.”
“Hell, no. I mean, we go to church, yeah… but it’s not like that. We rarely, if ever, speak in tongues.” She smiles again. “I take it you don’t… ”
I shake my head. “Nope. She burned all that out of me a long time ago.”
“It’ll be… interesting, I guarantee you.”
“And we don’t have to do anything but show up?”
“That’s what they keep telling me. They’ve got everything covered. I sent some pictures of her… ones that I’d taken now and then. And a little bit of money for refreshments.”
I make a promise to pay her back for all of this.
“Any family call? Michelle? Kenny?” Sister and brother to our mother; aunt and uncle to us. We might have met them once or twice during our childhoods.
Teresa shakes her head. “Nobody’s called me. Michelle’s over in Ashland; she can just drive down this afternoon. Kenny’s in… Owensboro?” She shrugs. “He’s got kids up in Paris, anyway. He’ll probably just stay with them.”
I think again of our fractured family. Our mother had been systematic in driving wedges between her (and us, her children) and every other member of her family, had left nothing to chance, had left all of us scattered from hell to breakfast in this part of the country, too afraid to talk to each other, too afraid to talk to us… all of it my mother’s sad legacy.
—
We spend the rest of the day at the house; when we pull up to it, a dumpster has already been set in the driveway. While Duane mows, Teresa and I pull on gloves and start mucking out the interior. The first part of it goes surprisingly well, and quickly; we don’t bother looking at the many hundreds of pieces of junk mail. We just carry armfuls of it out and watch as they splash down into the metal maw of the dumpster. When Duane’s done mowing, he comes in and helps. In the space of an hour, the rooms are noticeably cleaner.
The rest of it, though…
“We could hold a garage sale,” suggests Duane.
“That’s probably where she got half of it, anyway,” answers Teresa.
“Goodwill or places like that might take some of it,” I say.
Teresa smiles. “And that’s where she got the rest of it.”
“How about we just open up the front door and put a sign up saying ‘Free to good home?’ Let people just take what they want.”
Teresa and I look at each other, shrug.
“Fine by me,” Teresa answers. “I don’t need to make any money off of this stuff.”
“Well, now… wait a minute,” I counter. “Some of these pieces might be worth something. Isn’t that Nana’s rocker? And that looks like a piece of Eastlake.”
And thus, it starts.
In the end, we manage to get some of the better pieces corralled in the living room, and it actually looks presentable; maybe we can use some of these pieces to stage the house if and when it goes on the market. We accomplish this by shoving things around, rather like rearranging deck chairs, but we do manage to get rid of some more boxes of obvious trash and unwanted items.
And then we go onto the upstairs, and our rooms.
—
I think it’s going to be more of the same, and it is, at first. My room seems to have become a repository for all things boy: action figures, Matchbox cars, remote-control vehicles, model spacecraft from movies I’d never seen. Who is all this stuff meant for? Corbin? Has he ever seen it?
I think to ask Teresa if she wants to run all of it by Corbin before we chuck it, but I think he’s too old for most of it. Also, everything is obviously used, in some way; the figurines are missing limbs or are dog-chewed, the remote control cars have cracked bodies or corroded battery compartments, the Matchboxes are chipped and battered from years of rough play.
All of it goes, splashing-crashing into the dumpster, unmourned. I imagine the house groaning as it unburdens itself from this detritus. But, of course, there’s the sadness of toys that never got played with.
But then, further down, I discover me.
It starts out innocuously: I discover my high school annual, senior year, the only one of four annuals I’d ever bought. Jacketeer, on the cover in gold foil on imitation black morocco; what the hell is a Jacketeer? I’m not sure I ever found out. I open it; scrawled inside the front cover are the usual “Well, we made it to senior year… ” kinds of inscriptions from people I barely remember. I flip to the section showcasing my class and there I am… “Mark Davenport” underneath a man-boy of seventeen, face lean and still spattered by remnants of acne, sporting a scraggly beard and mustache, eyes hooded, face blank, no smile. Here, yet not, the most unimaginable secrets coursing just under his skin.
I stare at myself for a long moment, fighting back all the memories that threaten to bubble up into my conscious. I don’t want to deal with them. I start to close the book; on impulse, I flip a few pages further on and there he is, Tom Hanna, smiling and happy.
I close the book and keep going. I remember watching a show one time on TV about archaeologists. First they remove what they call the overburden, the dirt and rock and residue that doesn’t matter. Then they get to the serious stuff.
More of it is here. Spiral notebooks of classes taken and forgotten long ago, my scrawl filling page after page. Papers written, graded, discarded. Sketchbooks filled with work of another kind, the first attempts at an artist-manqué at drawing, including sketches of—embarrassingly—boys I’d been infatuated with back then. Had my mother seen them? Had she understood their import?
There are books I read, a smattering of science-fiction and fantasy for the most part, the literature of a boy trying to escape reality. There are tapes and CDs of music I listened to, one-hit wonders now consigned to history. There is a great deal of ephemera: newspaper articles I’d thought important enough to clip, tickets to concerts I barely remember, programs of school plays I’d attended.
There is a letter jacket, the only one I ever got, for cross-country. Running by myself through the Kentucky countryside, another solitary pursuit.
There is a Bible, my Bible, covered in some kind of dried-blood-red leatherette, each page edged with gold. I flip it open and there is my name, written by my mother in her crabbed and back-slanting hand when she’d given it to me when I’d turned six.
I come up for air; the house is silent save for small noises I can hear from Teresa’s room; is she as lost in her past as I am?
I look at the pile of my life around me. I want all of it; I want none of it. I compromise, gingerly picking the sketchbooks out and setting them aside. The rest of it goes.
—
On one trip back up, I surprise Teresa in my room. I’ve emptied the room of nearly everything except the furniture. We look at each other and I can see the same haunted look on her face.
“You’re not keeping any of it?” she asks.
I shake my head. “No. No room for it.” In my apartment as well as in my life.
“Well, I… ” she starts.
I shrug. “It’s okay. I understand.”
I help her take it to Duane’s truck.
Posted 4 December 2024