“The cars are gone.”
I pause on the worn red brick path that leads to our parking space. In front of me, the wooden gate that opens into the driveway blows open and closed, revealing and then concealing the bewildering truth that our cars are not where they are supposed to be. The door closes softly in the breeze; I see splintering planks and peeling black paint that I want to believe the cars are behind. A moment later, the door swings carelessly open again and the glaring absence of the vehicles squashes my mind’s hope. Instinctively, I jerk my head sideways and wait for an answer from my mom, standing next to me. A loose brick teeters as I shift my weight back on my heels. On either side of the bricks are layers of dead sod and a few oblong, plastic bags of mulch; the remnants of my dad’s failed attempt to “clean up” this skinny, barren walkway at the end of the garden, behind our house.
A quake of emotion warps my mom’s placid face: Shock. Confusion. And the insufferable pang of dread that surges forth when you have no answers, no words, not even a voice. She stands paralyzed in the moment. She doesn’t want to believe, but the vacant, driveway projects a reality she cannot avoid. A speckled, gray coffee mug bearing Nelson Mandela’s face shudders in her right hand.
“Huh? What’d you say Tim?” My little brother pips up from behind her. Needing one more pop tart, he had left the house last. He couldn’t see the driveway but he could my mom’s face.
“Uh, nothing Nick…nothing. The uh cars aren’t uh parked out there,” I bumble, attempting an explanation and nodding towards the gate. My mom hasn’t moved but her wide, unfocused eyes dart around the path, as if searching for an answer among the weeds, dirt, and bricks.
We have two cars. The Ford Explorer is a 2002, which my dad ordered in navy blue but ended up receiving in purplish eggplant. Because of this mishap my mom has declared the explorer a “lemon” and believes it never functions the right way. Lacrosse gloves, football cleats, and a gnawed, yellow dog bone create a compost pile of kids’ things in the way-back that my friends like to call the black hole. Beach sand fills the cracks and crevices of the car’s gray back seat and carpets the floor. I like to think the car has character and everyone, from neighborhood elders to junior prom dates, has enjoyed its spacious interior.
The second is a dazzling red Jeep Wrangler — my sister’s dream car. The most impressive Christmas present I’ve ever seen, the car was given to my sister and she drives around Georgetown with the rooftop off, hair streaming backwards in the wind, and pop sensation N’Sync’s new album No Strings Attached resonating from black, plastic speakers. Cigarette butts and empty bottles of Yellow Tail wine hide beneath the seats and inside the glove compartment, inconspicuous evidence of teenage vice and rebellion. With her first two periods free, she never drives us to school, but my brother and I always want to ride with her whenever we can.
My brother edges by me and looks through the gate.
“They’re probably just around the corner,” he says. “Right? Don’t you think?”
I don’t think so, but I don’t say so. Quickly, I scan my memory of coming home yesterday and I find no reason for the cars to be parked elsewhere. Seeing our car-less cement driveway both humbles and alienates me. Like walking late into a deserted classroom you expected to be full of familiar people, the absence of the cars creates a vacuum of uncertainty and doubt that I’d never experienced, yet soon would become accustomed to. More than anything, I want to believe my brother’s simple, innocent explanation.
The moist, silvery morning, usually echoing tired grumbles of my brother and I, now permeates a dense, jarring silence, interrupted only by the occasional clack of the gate against its frame. My mom turns suddenly away and moves towards our house. Her lurid expression still stares out at us but it has a purpose behind it now. In short, practiced steps, she brushes past my brother.
“Mom, where are you going? Where are the cars?” He asks. We’re a freshman and a fifth grader. We are dressed in tight neckties, blue blazers with golden buttons, and are lugging backpacks that might one-day cause serious spine damage due to their weight. We are ready to go to school, but we can’t.
“No Nick, they’re not around the corner,” she says without breaking stride. “They’ve been repossessed.”
“Huh? What does that mean?”
* * * *
In the three years since we lost our cars, a family on the brink of disaster has been bewitched by the continuance of a cushy life – new cars, summer vacations, and a false sense of security as our resources dwindle. Lifestyles should have changed and they haven’t. As my Dad’s business has begun to sour, the suffocating shadow of financial collapse envelops my family and casts our futures into darkness.
My junior year ends, but the uncompromising joy of school’s end falls short of our doorstep. Inside 1314 28th street, there are only bare walls, castles of cardboard, and the irritating scratch of heavy-duty tape roles. We’re moving. Our money has run out, and our home must be sold. Even after their separation, my mother would still call my father one of the smartest people she knows, but he doesn’t like to work for people, to work under people, to be told what to do. An aloof man, my dad’s quick grin and chortling chuckle captivate any audience and conceal his intimate ambitions. Because of this, I have never known much about my Dad’s business. A consultant with a degree from Harvard Business, he has been successful. Yet, in the spring of my junior year with too much invested in too many risky ventures and the intolerable pressure to keep his family secure and unaware bearing down on him, the bottom fell out.
A twelve-person crew of Russian movers slowly packs, lifts, and loads every piece of furniture from our house into hulking, steel trucks. I used to walk through our black front door and the “home” aroma would hit me. There’s nothing that can adequately describe the protective, warm, and wholly welcoming smell of one’s own dwelling, but I could close my eyes, be driven miles away and brought back to this spot and my nose would tell me I’m home. Not any more.
A labyrinth of stacked U-Haul boxes, tattered blue and gray sheets used to cover furniture, and a mountain of Hefty trash bags containing stuff we didn’t want blocked my way to the front door.
“Why are we throwing stuff away?” I blurt, suddenly attached to everything we’ve ever owned. I jump over our resting Dalmatian Cleo and attack the first trash bag I can reach.
“This could be my stuff Dad. What the fuck?”
“Let’s be realistic Tim,” he plops his right palm on my shoulder, but makes no attempt to stop me from mangling the bags. “You know there’s stuff we can’t…we don’t need.”
I would never consider the lasting impact of losing our stuff. Along with photographs in their frames, an ornate grandfather clock that stood in our living room, wooden spoons and cooper pots from the kitchen, a white rope hammock that hung from the porch over hang in our backyard, and a forty-five gallon fish tank from my bedroom went part of our history, of our emotion, of our selves – cleaved off, carried out, and locked away in angular metal boxes. Forgotten.
I give up. Reaching the front stoop, I scamper up a wood grain plank laid across the three steps to help the Russians roll pushcarts up and down. I smile wistfully at the loose 3 from our door’s address and shove a wobbly, golden nail through the metal number and into the door.
Inside, the familiar smell is gone. A scratched-up stereo placed on the staircase booms what I assume is Russian music but what sounds more like the honks and yells of rush-hour traffic. The Russians seem to enjoy the frantic thumping. Awkward ogres lifting, pulling, squatting, and bending, they resemble a group of weightlifters working out in our living room. I watch. The milky white couch that I often fall asleep on comes up from the basement and goes out the door on Russian shoulders. Slowly, they take everything: erasing any trace of our existence there. Listless, I meander around the empty rooms and a disorienting wave of change swamps my mind.
Once carpeted in deep crimson and gold that we would slide down atop sleeping bags, the wooden steps of the spiraling staircase are naked and rotten looking. In place of the crystal chandelier that sprayed rays of light on each landing is a hole in the ceiling that casts the entire staircase into shadow. As I mount the stair, the shuddering creak of each step echoes through our hollowed out home. The house’s boisterous centerpiece, the library is cold and barren. Books that once filled the shelves of the room’s four walls litter the floor. The thick, velvety carpet is rolled and stashed a vacant corner. The long halls that once rang with the sounds of capture the flag are sterile and desolate. No one is playing any more.
My dad wanders past me and I have to poke him to get his attention.
“Where’s it all going Dad?” I ask eagerly.
“Huh? What?” he’s distracted by his thoughts and is scratching hard at the back of his neck. “Storage for now Tim, but just for now. It won’t be there long.”
It takes three colossal U-hauls to get it all out. The Russians look upset, clearly not expecting such a load. We walk back outside and see the last of our things stuffed into the trucks.
“Listen Tim, I’ve gotta be somewhere. Are you all right here? Mom said you’re going to stay at the Muses this week. Is that right?”
“Yeah Dad. That’s where I’ll be.”
“Ok, alright, well, give me a call tonight and we can meet up for dinner. See you later.”
I stand alone on the sidewalk. My keys to the house have been taken away. I fight back a piercing urge to hope the side fence, like I always did when I forgot my keys, and amble right into the kitchen for a coke. I know it won’t be there – the fridge or the coke.
My cell phone vibrates.
“Hi mom.”
“Hey sweetie, sorry I couldn’t be there to help today. Did it go alright?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Good. You will go up to the Muses then? Get some dinner? I spoke to Mr. Muse today and he said that he and Tim are so excited to have you. And don’t worry sweetie, we’ll have this figured out by next week.” Her shifty, cracking voice offers no reassurance.
“I know mom, everything will be fine…” I wait for a conformation, some type of confidence boost, but she’s not there – lost the signal or something.
Slowly, I turn to face the painted white bricks and the midnight black door. I cough, not sure if I’m suppressing a laugh or a tear and instinctively lift my right hand to shove the 3 back into it’s place. I pause. It’s a tear and it tumbles from my right eyelid and streams down my cheek. Squeezing my eyes closed, I fight away the tears, fight away the fury, fight away the emptiness, fight away the anguish, and the alarming sense that I have no home. In a quick motion, I unhinge the faded golden 3, slipping it into my pants pocket.
* * * *
“I’ve gotta have pictures mom!”
“Couldn’t you just ask to borrow some from your friends Tim?”
“NO. NO. Are you fucking serious? It’s my senior page. I need my own pictures.”
We’re going out to storage. On a chilly October afternoon, my mom, dad, and I leave the District and travel more than an hour out to Nowhere, Maryland where all of our belongings have been for six months. I’m arguing with my mom about my senior page in my yearbook. Looking back, it was selfish to make my sole purpose in coming to storage finding a stack of pictures that I’d set aside the year before for my senior yearbook. But then it didn’t matter, if everyone else had a page full of pictures, why shouldn’t I?
I’m still living with the Muse’s and my parents’ have moved in with respective friends. Disconnected from both, I’m empowered by an ability to fight, argue, and curse without worrying about normal, parental consequences. The roads change from crowded city streets to freeways and then to single-lane alleys in a deserted area populated by long, flat warehouse-style buildings: dreary, lifeless, cement walls and ribbed, metallic roofs.
“And on the left we have…another fuckin’ storage place!” I mutter as we pass another blank building with no noticeable door or windows. There is no sign of life and no sign of our belongings.
“I think it’s this one,” my dad suggests. I have no idea how he knows this as there is no sign or address to differentiate this structure from the other thirty we’ve already passed.
We leave our car in the middle of the single-lane road.
“I don’t think there’s anyone coming,” my dad quips, while walking towards the building in front of us. My mom looks after him with a mixture of disgust and anxiety. He has clearly changed in her eyes and physically he has changed for everyone: he looks like a scarecrow. Stringy, red hair hangs below his shoulders, unless he’s tied it back in a ponytail with a beige rubber band. His chest is flat, almost concave. Rashy pocks mark a languid and skeletal face. Knees and elbows jut out at sickening angles from withered legs and arms. A man who could once lift his two teenage sons far above his head and outrun both by what seemed like miles looks decrepit and aged. In my father’s emaciated body, I see the immense loss of the past three months physically manifest. But he still laughs. Talking to him on the phone, he gives no impression of the harrowing image he has become.
A thick man with a thicker accent leads my dad around the side of the building. My mom and I follow but not together. Swiveling her head feverishly from side to side, my mom looks neurotic, lost, and entirely unaware of where she is. A disturbing silence pervades the lot. Anticipation and dread cling to our breath. Behind the storage building, rows upon rows of rectangular storage bins stretch in lines beyond visible distance: a uniform phalanx of metallic walls and roofs.
“Dis is yours,” the man purrs. With a curt smile, he leaves before we open the green painted door.
I pull up on a crooked rod holding the bin’s door shut as my dad turns a key in the pad lock. Rusted metal scraps against rusted metal and with a painful groan the door lurches open. My mom gasps and begins to shake while my dad fiddles with a flashlight.
Shadow shrouds more than half the contents in darkness, but piled before us are the broken, shattered, and rotting remnants of everything that represents our family. Smashed chair and table legs stick out from the carnage. Atop a desk splintering down the center, a glass chandelier lays on its side in pieces. A cardboard box with the bottom flapping open spills plastic CD cases at our feet. A warped bed frame thrusts jagged edges into toppled couch – disgorging its cushiony contents. Standing on the grass, looking in at the scene feels like watching a crude yard sale – the dusty, maltreated, unused things from someone’s basement on display to be taken away or left to decay. Everything seems to crumble together in an apathetic mass of glass, wood, and cardboard. My mom breaks.
“Wha…wha…what are we going to do? What are we going to do with all this? Oh my God…I…we…can’t. Oh my God Rich, what do we do?”
A stuttering mess, she sinks away from the open door, unable to bear the sight of her life packed into a box.
“All right Timbo, let’s find what we need.” A man of action and little emotion, my dad attends to the task at hand. In addition to my pictures, we have come to get winter clothes, my brother’s videogame console, and anything small that we can sell.
Flashlight in hand, I ascend the pile. Hoisting myself up onto a box labeled in red marker Boys Bathroom, I leap sideways and cling to the wobbling edge of our long dining room table that’s titled up on its end. The musty reek of an unventilated room with no light attacks my nostrils. I cough and a layer of chalky dust sprays into the air. My flashlight’s luminous beacon careens off boxes and bureaus and fades ten feet in front of me. I step down onto a wide box that gives way and something glass cracks under my right foot. Scampering up, I perch on top of a wardrobe veiled in a padded, pink sheet. An eerie sensation crawls up the back of my neck as my flashlight gives glimpses in the dark of all of our things without any life, without any purpose, without any need. Sliding down my mom’s triangular, cream-colored painting table, I begin to search through several small boxes. A steady drip of water splats down from the roof and below it patches of mold corrode several boxes.
How’s it look back there?” My dad bellows from the entrance.
“Alright,” I lie. “But I can’t see much.”
I open box after box, not closing any I finish with. Like a child on Christmas morning, I tear open each box to find the joy and warmth of an old possession and all the memories that go with it. My demented Christmas deserts me as I realize these things are already mine and should still be in my possession. I grab down into a box and find a St. Albans yearbook from 2003. For the next twenty minutes, I lose myself in the black and white photographs adorning each page.
My dad brings me back to reality.
“Lets-a-go.” I lost track of time in the lightlessness. Quickly, I tumble back towards my dad’s voice.
“Did you find ‘em?” He asks.
“Nope, just an old yearbook.”
“That’s too bad. Lets get going.” The door clangs shut, expelling the light and sealing the pile away. I’m still shocked and I don’t want the door opened again. Yet I never consider that this fleeting image of our mangled belongings would be the last I would ever have of them.
Almost an hour earlier, my mom had retreated to the car. When we approach lugging boxes and bags, she’s still there in the front seat – upright, wide-eyed, and speechless. My dad drops a box with a thud into the back seat.
“Are you ok, Robin?” he questions quietly.
“I just…what are we going to do Rich? How can we…” She trails off.
I don’t understand my mom’s inability to deal with what’s going on and I wish she would stop stuttering and help carry some boxes. The fat man who gave us the key smiles from the front of the building. I sense he’s reveling in our plight and I blame him for the terrible condition of our things. I could kill him. I want to rip his lips from his mouth and lock them away in a metal crate.
I pick up a circular container holding gloves, hats, and thermal socks. The fat man leads us away from his cement prison and stops in the doorway. My dad walks in front of me and I shuffle a little ways behind. The man looks into my eyes as I pass him.
“Take care of your mother,” he says under his breath.
“Fuck off,” I scoff back, so soft that he doesn’t hear.
* * * *
It’s 12:30 pm two months later and my brother, sister, dad and I know why we are here. While we drove together to my grandparents’ Pennsylvania home the night before, my mother is already there, panicking. There is no one home. A fidgety diffidence, which sent her to the first doctor four months ago, has gradually taken hold and on December 24th a bumbling woman poisoned by neurotic insecurity is left alone in the bottomless depths of depression. There are too many pills and just enough time. There is the soft pink carpet of her childhood bathroom that holds her forty-nine year-old body when she falls. There is loneliness, fear, and an overwhelming sense that no one could ever help her. There is my grandmother, forcing open the door and finding her daughter motionless on the floor. There is the frantic call that woke my dad and put us on the road nine hours earlier than we’d expected. On this the last Christmas morning that we would spend together as a family, there is fury, slaughtering sympathy, and pulsing in my veins.
A lady in pink scrubs walks us through automatic doors that seal behind us and, in bold, red lettering, read Mental Health Ward – PLEASE KEEP DOORS CLOSED AT ALL TIMES. I balk at the image of a bone white, padded cell with a Christmas tree in the middle and my mom, in a tan straightjacket, bouncing off the walls. Believing that if I’m the last one in I’ll be the first to leave, I fall in line behind my siblings and my dad.
It is not actually a padded cell but a dingy square room with three tables holding plastic bins of crayons and construction paper. An image flashes in my mind of a mental health ward I’d visited, where incapable patients drooled over mindless crayon doodles. Could she be that far gone? A metallic exercise bike protrudes from a corner; cobwebs hang from the ceiling to the handlebars. We wait for our mom in this room labeled Activities speaking little. The oppressive smell of sterilized hospital walls and floors floods the room.
My dad leaves to find her. Behind the door, my brother sighs, lifts a sheet of green construction paper and begins doodling a bikinied beauty lying on a beach with waves tumbling before her. Attempting cheer, my sister wonders out loud what the best gifts we had gotten earlier that morning were. Neither of us responds. I wish she’d just shut up.
I mount the bike and test the pedals; the unthinking movement of my right then my left foot up and down numbs my mind momentarily.
She comes in behind my dad; her head tilts up, her eyes meet ours. She speaks with soft words and hushed phrases – her mind is still heavily sedated. Gaunt and greasy, her hair hangs limp around her face, as if she’d run for hours in a blistering wind and hadn’t washed it for weeks. Her face has changed. The warmth of her complexion has vanished and in its place tired features mold an expression worn and stale. “Hello Tim,” she whispers in a ghostly tone and turns slowly to embrace. She scares me; I don’t recognize her.
My eyes close while her weak arms hold me. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be in her arms. She stinks of gurney sheets and old vomit. Tied loosely around her back, her cotton gown shifts and nearly slips off her shoulders to reveal her naked. Shocked, I stumble back: the awkward cuddle, foreign smell, and partial nudity of this woman kindle my inner malignance. I want to tell her I hate her. That I can’t believe what she did and I hate her. That she’s not the woman I used to run to when I was upset, the woman who rubbed my back every night before I went to sleep, the woman who read all my papers, did all my laundry, came to all my games, and listened intently whenever I fretted over a girl. I want to tell her that she’s become a different, broken person and I can’t fucking handle it.
I say nothing. Over and over, she says Merry Christmas and I mumble a similar reply, but in my head the unparalleled cheer that we’d always shared as a family during Christmas is lost in this alien environment. My family sits around one square table. No one knows what to say and everyone reverts to the trivial babble of Christmas presents – what they got, what they’ll return, who they got it from. Perched again on the bike, I’m removed from their talk but stare on into the faces of my family: Hovering and hating, I want to lash out at them for ignoring the horrifying state of my mom and the blunt discomfort permeating the room.
Half an hour passes. I speak little, move less and the list of Christmas gifts issuing from my brother and sister begins to run out. The door swings open and a scrawny man with furry eyebrows and a clipboard sails into the room, a sense of pompous title and authority in his wake. Closing the door behind him, he pauses and, as if he had just remember what to say, pipes, “Merry Christmas!”
Silently, I seethe. His routine procedure and cheery manner abhor me. Stone-faced, I stare at him in disbelief with mounting ferocity, as he treats our situation like an everyday check-up. Launching into a terminology-laden speech about our mother’s sickness, how we ought to feel and how we should act, the doctor seems to savor the sound of his own voice. I say nothing to the man and as he rambles on in typically indifferent, doctorial fashion I attack my fingernails. They are an easy target for venting frustration and anxiety, but today they wear down under the weight of pure, vile, hate – I chew my left, middle finger until a speck of blood rises from the soft tissue underneath and I drop my hand back to my lap. As if he thinks that we are too thick to understand the reason for our being here, the doctor states the most obvious:
“You realize your mother has made an attempt on her life?”
I break. Just as my mom’s insecurity and ebbing self-confidence gave way to irrepressible anguish, my inner hate bursts forth with volcanic wrath. The bike teeters, as I shove off it, and clatters to the floor. Adrenaline pumps and I shiver with the sheer expression of my ferocity. The death, destruction and loss of the past six months surge wildly from my mind.
In single step, I’m facing the man who just spoke the one sentence I never wanted to hear. His face is wrinkled. Faint acne scares traverse his cheeks. Primed with the animalistic instinct to fight, my mind blanks. I think nothing; I feel fearless rage. He turns, expecting a docile nod in affirmation of his question. Cocking back my right arm in a swift, practiced motion, I swing. His eyes bulge, but its too late to duck. My knuckles crack against his skull, shattering his glasses and blackening an eye.
He stumbles. My eyes blur. I can only make out his face as he sways, grasping his head in agony. Starting for the door, I glance back. The figures of my dad, brother, and sister are crowding around the bewildered doctor; my mom looks towards me, heartbroken. I leave the room and building – the fury trickling slowly away – for the December cold outside.
* * * *
The hallway walls are peeling. Tiny flakes of beige plaster sprinkle to the floor every time a door shuts. The door in front of us reads 116. Twenty feet to the left is a door that reads 115 and twenty feet beyond that 114.
It’s been two months since Christmas and two weeks since I returned to Pennsylvania to apologize to the doctor. For the past six months, all five family members have scattered around the Metropolitan area. I’ve stayed at my friend Tim Muse’s house after a failed attempt to move into my high school’s dormitory. My mom and brother have spent six months house-sitting in a neighborhood forty-five minutes from our school. My dad frequents cheap hotels and seedy motels. My sister stays at various friends’ houses and even spent one month in the basement of house belonging to my dad’s best friend from high school. Yet in the early hours of a March morning, we find ourselves once again under the same roof.
The Virginian Suites offer a variety of rooms with maid service and even free HBO. Continental breakfasts of stale donuts and weak coffee are served each morning. The air is crisp and cheery – the type of spring morning that ushers in warmer weather – when my brother, sister, dad, mom, and I cram into a single room: one queen-size bed, one cot, a pull out sofa, a TV, and a closet for a kitchen.
No one’s talking. No one has anything to say. Or maybe we all have too much to say, but lack the energy to put it into words. We busy ourselves with the moving process. My dad fumbles with two large suitcases, one brown and the other black. Sweat pours down his chin and forearms. His long face conveys a weariness that surpasses physical exhaustion.
He smiles. Everything changes. Purely comic, his wide grin attempts a security that I know has long since faded.
“Gimme a hand with these huh?” He never mentions a word about anything. Despite his unflappable nature, I wish he would articulate some kind of emotion. I swallow an impulse to scream; to tell him that the time for calm and collected is over and I need to know what to do.
“Got it Dad.”
My mom gulps when she opens room 116 and turns to project her satiety. She masks her reaction when she sees her three children looking back at her: helpless and hoping. Tired of finding words that conceal her distress, of embellishing our situation with feigned optimism, and unwilling to craft fictional descriptions of what is undeniably inadequate, she steps sideways so that we can see for ourselves.
“Shit,” my brother mutters and turns to me.
“Home suite home, right? But it’s not really sweet, it’s just a suite.” My brother snorts a laugh. He’s proved to be the most unaffected, stalwart member of our family.
I retreat behind my siblings. Struggling with the two large cases I place them in the doorway. Standing, I knock my skull into my brother’s chin. Spinning around to apologize, I nearly push my sister over the two suitcases. I realize these awkward movements are unavoidable; the hall is too cramped to move without rubbing against or bumping into a wall or a person.
Eventually, my dad, mom, brother, and sister disappear behind door 116. I remain in the compressed hallway.
“Tim, please?” My mom is holding the door open and her forlorn gaze makes me muddle my words.
“No, I uh, no mom, I won’t. I can’t. I’m staying with the Muses.”
Tears fill her eyes, hovering tentatively on her lower eyelashes. I have no sympathy. I walk out of the hotel and away from my family. Squatting on the stoop outside, I wonder how I will get to my friend’s house.
I never enter room 116. During my family’s four month stay, I deliberately avoid this room, this manifestation of our misfortune, because somewhere inside me, below the anger, the hate, far past the bleak nightfall that has set in my mind and never lifted, beyond the frustration and the tears and the self-pity, there is utter denial.
I never see how small the suite actually is. How the cot sags and the metal frame scrapes my brother when he sleeps. I never see the large, bay windows – supposed highlights of the room – that offer only impossible temptation: a shining view of the city we once called home. I never see my sister, drunk and miserable, sobbing like an infant on the linoleum floor. I never see our luggage, the remainder of our possessions, tossed aimlessly on chairs. I never see the infuriating indifference of my family making a home out of a hotel room.
* * * *
“It doesn’t get better than this fellas.” My friend Jack’s dad has crept back into a side chamber of the National Cathedral’s great hall where my seventy-three classmates and I wait to grab diplomas, shake hands, and leave high school behind.
“Congratulations guys. Enjoy it.” He slips back to his seat.
Dressed in white pants, white shirts, ties, blue blazers and strutting in two single-file lines, we process down the center aisle of the hall. We smile, we wave, and I become quickly absorbed in the infinite joy of this moment. Ornate stained glass windows cast pinks, purples, yellows, and blues across our marble path. The squeak of polished shoes on the ground resonates as everyone attending simultaneously stands when we approach. Draped in their university caps and gowns, our teachers and coaches stroll in front of us. Glancing around with their noses slightly raised, I get the feeling they’re sizing each other up: judging the colors and tassels of each other’s robes and caps, while flaunting their own. We puff our chests out and swing our arms with confidence as we march down the aisle. Pews and pews of glowing parents, grandparents, old nannies, aunts, girlfriends, and uncles surge in silent celebration. Faces shoot enormous smiles at each boy. Cameras flash, eyes wink, and one dad even shakes his son’s hand as he passes.
Subtly I shift my eyes from the right to the left. In the past few months my parents haven’t been around for many of the teas, brown bag lunches, and dinners that litter the weeks leading up to graduation. Though both my grandmothers have flown in on this June day, a familiar pang of doubt shoots through me as I scan the crowd.
My dad pops his head out of one row on the right just before I glide by. In a flash, he bursts into a wide-eyed, teeth-bearing caricature of himself. I chuckle and tilt my head down to hide my reddened face. Turning back, I see my smiley grandma at his side, but it’s just the two of them surrounded by a sea of unknown men and women in suits and floppy, straw hats.
My parents’ separation is unspoken, just as the rest of our trouble has been. After six weeks of hotel life, my mother retreated to her parents’ home in Pennsylvania in April. The growing discord between them has manifest through hateful messages, ignored phone calls, and a blunt desire to avoid interaction. Today, their divergence becomes public as they sit in distant sections of the Cathedral. Crestfallen, I continue to walk, but the glimmer that shines in the eyes of my classmates fades from my gaze. I understand the frustration, the anger, and the pain, but I wish for one moment, as fake as it might be, that they could reconcile themselves and provide me one lasting image, one beautiful, endearing, peaceful picture of the four people who have taught me, sang with me, read me stories; who have schooled me in how to drive, schooled me in videogames, and shown me the art of homemade mashed potatoes; who have consoled me when I’ve been dumped and cheered for me when I’ve scored a goal – of the four people who brought me from burping baby to the healthy, young man walking before them. It doesn’t happen. In the one photo of my entire family that I have from this day, my parents stand on opposite sides of the shot with my siblings and grandmothers in between and me in the center. There is very little cheer behind the forced smiles in the picture.
Just before we pass the final pews, I catch my mom’s eye on the left side. Her expression is purely proud. She gushes smiling adulation. Her head pulls back and tilts to the side, in pleasant awe of her matured son. Her eyes have life again. Her cheeks are rosy and full. Seeing my mom in good health and cheer lifts my spirits. To her left Gaga, my other grandmother, waves at me with a program she’s been fanning herself with. My brother and sister sit two pews behind them, contorting their faces in attempts to make me laugh.
We sit facing an open space. Our teachers sit across from us and our families sit to the right of us. An imposing, stone pulpit, with gargoyles sculpted into its sides, sticks out on the left. For the next two hours, we wait impatiently, clutching lighters and cigars, as our class perfects and various administrators send us off in wordy fashion. Yet, in the culminating address, Reverend Kenworthy, my best friend Stuart’s dad, touches my heart. A man who, over the past year, guided both my parents through the darkness of depression and divorce, opened his wallet for my school supplies, and acted as the parent I lacked for so long, Mr. Kenworthy tells us that our families love us, God loves us, and we should move with compassion into our adult lives.
A rogue tear slips out of my eye. Mr. Kenworthy finishes and we all rise. The silver cylinders of the organ in the choir stiles behind the pulpit project the St. Albans hymn throughout the cathedral and we walk out. Half way down the aisle someone begins to jog forward and we all sprint the rest of the way. We blast forth from the main entrance and into a cheering, jumping, shouting crowd. Lighters flick and we all cough on inhaled cigar smoke. Everyone else files out behind us. In the hectic mass of smiles and pats on the back, I forget the sorrow and uncertainty of the past year.
The swelling symphony of emotion subsides as people slowly disperse, heading towards a tent in the Bishop’s garden where an elegant reception awaits. Puffing hard on a cigar that I can’t keep lit, I linger on the lowest step of the cathedral’s main entrance. Quickly, the fear and the anger resurface. In a void left by the momentary celebration I see the shards of my once proud family scattered in my mind: my dad alone again in the cheapest hotels he can find; my mom clinging to her aging mother for support; my brother becoming increasingly aware of the drastic downfall we’ve taken; my sister drinking herself into a nightly stupor.
A man in a reverend’s collar walks briskly in front of the cathedral. I recognize Mr. Kenworthy and hustle towards him.
“Mr. Kenworthy…”
“Tim.” He stops. He’s tall and lean, a member of the army reserves. His chiseled jaw tilts inward and his gentle, hazel eyes beam down at me. He’s been our family’s priest for ten years, he frequents every athletic event St. Albans has, and has always made a point of bugging Stuart and I whenever I slept at their house. Yet, I never felt closer to him, or anyone else, than in this moment when his colossal hands pull me towards him and neither of us says a word.
I want to collapse in his arms and tell him thank you. Tell him everything I’ve seen and wanted and hated and needed. To tell this man who in the past year has become a mixture of mother, father, brother, and teacher that life sucks right now and I’m having a hard time coping with the supposed, inherent happiness of graduating.
I remain silent. Minutes pass. With his hands grasping my shoulders, he extends his arms.
“Let’s have a look,” he says in his deep, rhythmic tone that resonates every Sunday in his church. I wipe away a flood of tears that cascades down my face and stains my white shirt. I want to look brave. I want to look confident. I want him to think I’m a man.
“We’re all very proud of you.” He doesn’t have the embellished congratulatory tone of estranged relatives and apathetic teachers when he says it. Each word, each syllable carries real, palpable meaning.
He walks away and I sink to the ground. Evoking the tearful sadness and self-pity of all our tragedy, Mr. Kenworthy’s words ring in my ears. I look out at the sprawling greens and tall oaks trees in front of the cathedral. I look towards my future and I don’t see light, I don’t see comfort, I don’t see security, but the definite praise from my reverend helps me keep my feet moving and my mind searching, avoiding the idle, uncaring time that tempts me to give up.
Hopping from the step, I amble towards the jubilant din echoing from the Bishop’s Garden. My mind ponders the words Jack’s dad spoke a few hours earlier.
I certainly hope it gets better than this.
