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My car is packed on Wednesday night with everything I can take with me. My mother’s box sits on the floorboard behind my seat, under my backpack. The front trunk is full of clothes, and the few things I’ve acquired while during my time here. In my glovebox is the address and directions that Lola has written out to help me find the next place I will live. Life House. She had called them for me while I sat gnawing my nails, or what was left of them, then she closed up the shop and we walked down to the diner for breakfast.
We talk about other things, besides the baby, and I know that her measure of me has elevated some today. She has offered to drive me down, if I am scared to go alone, but I figure it’s time I start dealing with my life, and I tell her as much. She hands me an envelope of money, more than I have earned this week, but instead of making a fuss, I just thank her and give her my best hug. She didn’t let me come back to work, instead sending me up to get myself packed. Life House has a bed for me and are expecting me on Friday.
I sleep on my mattress on the floor for the last time on Wednesday night and drive out of Greenville, down 27 and out to 10, passing Marty’s Diner, to Bo Bradley Road, and then to the third driveway. I recognize Steven’s truck. Alongside it is a black Trans Am with the eagle stenciled across the hood. I don’t know who it belongs to. I had hoped to be the first one here. Barb had said I could help with some of the Thanksgiving preparations, and I’m nervous because I don't even know what that will involve. I hope she doesn’t think I know anything about cooking or how a fancy table should be set.
The front door is open, with only the storm door breaking the cold air. There is a strong wind with a bitter chill crossing the lawn today, and the swing on the porch is tied to a column to keep it from banging into the window. My hair whips across my face as I stand at the door, listening as the bell chimes through the house, waiting to be let in. It is Will who opens the door and welcomes me inside, giving me a solid squeeze before the door can even fall shut.
“So glad you are here,” he says, and my heart warms. The house is steaming hot, but the smells coming from every direction are delightful and overwhelming. Thank God the morning queasiness has mostly passed. I can’t even identify all the different smells, but I let my nose lead me to the kitchen, where Barb is just putting a pie into the oven, where another casserole dish is already happily bubbling.
“Wow,” I say, my mouth commencing to drool. “It smells fantastic in here.”
Barb bounces around, her face flushed with the heat of the oven and the kitchen and her exertion. “Oh Alison! I’m so glad you’re here.” She gives me a sticky hug and sets me free.
“I'm glad to be here,” I say, nerves notwithstanding. “What can I do to help?”
“Well, first you better go say hi to your Uncle Steven. He’s out back trying to catch the whole blame yard afire.”
“Oh. Okay.” There are six steps leading out of the kitchen to a landing that opens to the back yard. A right turn from the landing reveals a basement, raw and unfinished but with tools and equipment, like a circular saw and a band saw, and something that has a spindle table leg clamped horizontally upon it. Gauging from the amount of wood lying about, I suspect that it’s a much-loved hobby. I open the back door and am caught again in a whirl of icy wind. Twenty feet away from the house, in the middle of the sidewalk, Steven and two boys, one probably my age and tall, and the other maybe twelve, are standing around a cauldron. A turkey is stuck to the end of a spit, bubbling in the steaming oil. The boys are clean cut and smiling, their hands stuffed deep in their pockets. They are both the color of nicely creamed coffee and beautiful.
“Alison!” Steven motions me out. “Meet my boys, Tyler . . .” the tall, older one nods, smiling slightly, not sure of me and withholding judgment, “. . . and James.” James smiles wide, showing braces on his large, white teeth, clearly in need of being braced.
I reach out my hand to James first, and he shakes it, pumping.
“Hi,” I say, smiling my best imitation cheerleading smile. My best Kelci Bancroft impersonation. It feels wrong, phony, and I let it go, dropping to my more common look.
“Hi,” he says.
“So you’re Aunt Alice’s kid?” Tyler asks.
“I am.” My smile slips, feeling the sense of being pinned, and my instinct is to run away, but I plant my feet and hold my ground, keeping my back as straight as I can.
“Cool,” he says, nodding his head, letting a smile spread his lips, showing straight white teeth, having already been through the braces his brother is suffering now.
I put my hand out, and he shakes it, his hand completely folding over mine with a quick squeeze. I glance around the yard, quickly, beneath my lids, wondering if the mom is here.
Steven says, “Tyler is actually heading up toward your old neck of the woods for college next year.”
“Oh,” I say nodding, trying to be casual. “That’s cool.”
“Gonna play ball.” Tyler mocks shooting a basketball, falling back a step with the imagined release.
“You play basketball?” I ask because he’s obviously proud. I work to keep my little green monster caged. If I had been Steven’s daughter, I would be heading to college. I would have dreams. But the reality is I don’t have any dreams, only the starkness of what-is staring me in the face. “What are you going to study?” I ask, because isn’t that why you go to college, to get an education, to start a career? He shrugs, an excessive “who cares” shrug. It’s the shrug of a child who has been raised as a have and not a have-not, with that sense that everything will be okay and that whatever he decides to do, it will be fine. What a luxury, that sense of have.
“Cool,” is all I can think to say.
“So, how did you find Grandma and Granddad?” Tyler asks. The little green monster shivers at his casual use of these names. She took so much from me. I’ve not been angry at her for a while—it seems pointless to be angry—but this awkward conversation is just putting into perspective all the deficits in my life.
“My mom left me a letter,” I say, kicking myself for that answer. It sounds dirty. She left me a letter because she never told me I had grandparents. She left me a letter because she would never tell me anything. She didn’t talk to me about these things. We lived our lives like fugitives in hiding.
“Wow. That’s cold,” he says, meaning some slang, I think, and his dad sees the look on my face, the closing down, the turning in, and he reaches up to smack his son on the back of the head. “What?” Tyler says, not getting it. His dad gives him a raised-eyebrow look, which I interpret just fine and realize that maybe this was a mistake. This is a family here, and I am an outsider. They don’t know me except for the stories they’ve heard, and even though I left out all the worst of it, I know they can read between the lines. Even though I’m clean, wearing a nice outfit Lola gave me that somebody left behind. I look monied . . . I look right . . . but this kid, who has never seen me before, sees the tinge of yellow from that dirty well water out there in the country. He sees it on my skin, in my chewed-up nails. My mother’s voice comes so loud in my head that she could be standing beside me, “You can dress a pig in a dress, but it’s still just a pig.”