What do you call that? I say.
Oh, what can we do? he says. What can we do?
The time for doing been passed, I say.
He says my name again and throws up a hand. This man is an expert too, has lied to himself about what he’s done to me. Their old Chihuahua barks in a back room. The refrigerator groans. It wouldn’t kill you to call me Dad, he says. That is, after all, who I am.
That is, after all, who who is? I say.
Is this why you came? he says. I know this can’t be why you came.
Correct, I say.
Then why? he says.
To invite you to church, I say. Come with me one Sunday, I say. Just one.
I’m not so sure about that, he says.
Why not? I say.
He gets up and pours himself another drink and pours me a glass of water and carries them both over. What is it you want from me? he says
You don’t get it, do you? It’s not what I want from you. It’s what I want for you.
He’s glum under the light, this man who’s been a man for all but me. I shove away from the table and stomp into the living room, stopping to gawk at the shrine of Pat and my adopted sister, a girl who was more of the girl he and his wife wanted than me — the first true hurt. I turn a family portrait of them facedown and whisk into the living room, where the wife is sitting on the couch smoking. I stop a few feet from her. She crosses and uncrosses her legs and blows outs smoke. God bless you, I say. May God have mercy on your soul. She looks over my shoulder and I look over my shoulder at Andrew, her husband, who’s standing in the kitchen’s entrance.
He has the face of martyr, this man, he who hasn’t been crucified enough for his sins.
Chapter 18
What I could tell him about my Sixth Street crew.
Under a sky the color of dried tears I push past a politician’s campaign sign. The sign is plunged into the front yard, into dry grass, cause it ain’t been a drip of rain (which you should know by now is a small-scale miracle) in the P for days on end. I knock and stand back, peeking through a split in the curtain of the front door’s oval window, hoping for a few smart words, maybe a sentence, weighing one last time if bothering these people that don’t know me from the next nigger is worth what it might cost in expectations.
Life has what?
Breaking out now is still one of them. Abandoning this shit altogether, before the door swings open and my options (what options?) taper to none. Got that coward’s-retreat weight on my heels when a woman answers, standing barefoot and blowing on a black mug with her long gray hair parted and her eyes creased with lines. She greets me with a smile that’s straight and blanched.
Hello? she says. Her voice means peace.
Hello, I say, and pause.
Blame these sprint-twitch shivers. There’s still time to turn tail, to claim I’m a Jehovah’s Witness, a salesman hocking magazine subscriptions, a distant neighbor hounding after a lost puppy — still time to claim any one of these excuses and she’d probably close the door and spare me the risk of making a fool of myself.
But what do I do? Apologize for the bother and ask if I can speak to her about the house.
Our place? she says. She cups her mug and moves to where I can see her better. She gives me the once-over. I give her a twice-over on the sly. She’s got green eyes, a regal neck. Do you mind? she says. She eases the door shut, leaves me on the porch, and through the glass I see her evanesce.
I swing around to face Sixth, see the wind blow the peak off a pile of old leaves in the yard, shiver a naked tree branch. This is a last chance, and because it is, I plant a foot so as not to be foiled by my wayward courage.
The woman opens the door and there’s a man standing behind her. He steps out in front and introduces himself and offers me a palm knobby with calluses.
What can I do for you? he says.
Sorry to bother you, sir. This may seem strange. Well, it is a bit strange. Okay, let me back up. I used to live in this house. My family and I. This is weird, I know, sir, miss, but I was wondering if I could have a look inside, I say. If it would be too much of a bother to maybe have a look around at our old place.
And your names is?
Sorry, sorry. My names is Shawn, sir. Shawn Thomas.
Shawn, a look, you say? You mean a tour? he says. He turns to his wife and she looks at me. He steps aside and points me to the living room couch. His wife asks if I’d like a drink and shuffles into what was the kitchen and probably still is. There’s glassy magazines fanned across a nicked wood table, framed pictures hung on the walls — a black-and-white wedding photo, a flick of what looks like the husband holding a fish long as a shark. He lowers himself into an easy chair and leans forward and clasps his hands. One of his thumbnails is obsidian.
Worked construction most of my life, and let me tell you, they just don’t build them like this anymore, he says. These days they pour a weak base, slap a few beams together, and tack up thin Sheetrock. Do it all in a matter of weeks. Used to be we’d take our time. Lay a thick slab of concrete, plaster the walls, drive a nail with the intent the beams would last. He falls back. But hey, it’s hard to find anything of character these days, he says. And that goes for house or human being.
Sir, I say, extra emphasis on the sir. I don’t know much about building a house, but I know how a home can make you feel.
Right, right, he says, and stands. You’re probably itchin to see what we’ve done.
We start in the basement, in the same back room where Bubba, my great-grandfather, used to collect his junk. Bubba was a heavyweight hoarder, believed that everything he touched deserved a second life. We (the we being my bros, my cousins, the neighborhood kids) spent hours rooting through what Bubba had saved to resurrect. The old junk room’s a hardware store now stocked with shelves of hand tools, and power tools with cords looped and tied. Nubuck belts hang against a wall, a massive metal cabinet is pushed in a corner. This is my sanctum, he says, sweeping his arm. A man has got to have a place that gives him peace.
He snaps his suspenders, snaps them joints the same way Bubba did. My great-grandpops wore the same thing every day save Sunday: a flannel shirt and gray slacks up near his navel. It was Bubba that did most of the disciplining back then. He had this way of standing, when he was about to soften a tough ass, with his head cocked and his thumbs hooked in the waist of his suspenders, that let you know he meant business. He’d seize you in one of his Nordic glares, make you kneel, lock your head between his legs, and ask if you knew why you were being punished. Then he’d tan your ass, open-hand, no belt, or with a thick black whip (a real whip!) so tough you wondered if he was working for honor.
But one thing about Bubba, he never exacerbated a mauling like Mama Liza, never said shit like, This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you, never proselytized: If I spare the rod I’ll spoil the child. Not him. He’d whoop you with heroic silence, then offer you the hankie forever folded in a pocket.
We wander into the basement’s main room. He shows me his wife’s potter’s wheel. This here is where she spends her time, he says, plucks a paintbrush from a handmade cup, and runs that dark thumb over the bristles.
We stroll past an ancient fridge and stove into the room where Mama Liza kept a contraption that dried fruit (you’ve never seen a family more stocked with raisins, prunes, and dates!), a room that’s empty now. When I was young, they kept the room decked with tweed couches that we’d stand on to watch the foot traffic: a man collecting shopping carts, a chick tottering home from a night on the stroll, grandmothers carrying jumbo Bibles into the storefront church next door.