A Place to Call Home (33 page)

H
e bought a box of Earl Grey and a box of English Breakfast tea
from me
,” Aunt Jane relayed to Mama and the other sisters during a Saturday brunch in the dining room of Hawks Ridge Country Club, Brady’s golf-community development about ten miles south of town. Hop and Evan are two of the main residential contractors for the development, building half-million-dollar homes on lots barely wide enough to mow the sodded grass. There are no more hawks around Hawks Ridge now, and the ridges have been scraped clear of trees, and neither my mother nor any of her sisters play golf, but these ironies paled in comparison to Roan buying tea from a member of the family. “He was very polite but not very talkative,” Aunt Jane confided. “Still, I consider it a fine sign that he remembers me so kindly. I believe I was one of his favorite people.”

“Good lord,” Aunt Irene retorted. “I was the one he’d ask for extra helpings at Sunday dinners. And he sure didn’t speak to anybody else at those dinners.”

“Y’all are worse than Arnetta,” Mama told them. “She’s insisting that she tried to talk Holt and me out of sending Roan to the church home. That’s not how I remember it. God forgive us all.”

“Our memories are kinder to us than the truth is,” Aunt Jane admitted wistfully. “I suppose all he wanted was
to buy some tea.” There was considerable silence at the table after that.

I soon realized that Roan didn’t really need anyone’s good references, including mine.

He brought in his own crew to renovate the cabin at Ten Jumps. Uncle Eldon told us about it the day he sold the crew’s foreman a tractor-trailer load of lumber, plumbing, electrical supplies, nails, screws, concrete mix, and assorted other necessities.

Then Uncle Winston, who had purchased a motel franchise in town, where the crew had taken rooms, reported that Roan and the dozen men were working day and night at Ten Jumps. “They got a couple of big electrical generators,” Winston told us, “and enough high-powered lights to hold a football game. You look west over the trees late at night, you can see the glow.”

He was right. I sat outside on the veranda, with a huge gathering of family, and looked that night. The horizon over Ten Jumps was bright.

The crew immediately cleared, scraped, and graveled the dirt road that led to the lake and cabin, then built a pair of stacked-stone columns where the dirt road ended at the paved public road and hung an elaborate, stately set of black iron gates. Everyone was flabbergasted. “I don’t know what to think about that gate,” my father said to me angrily. “Roan’s thumbing his nose at us. What are you going to do about it?”

“What are you going to do about him?” Mama added more specifically. “Because he’s not coming back over here. That’s obvious.”

“If I go I’m afraid I’ll lose something,” I said, shaking my head at my own vagueness. “I’m afraid he’ll make me choose sides and that it’ll be forever. And I don’t know which side I’d pick. I don’t want him to ask me to choose.”

My parents stared at me, unsettled by that honest information.

“Make up your mind quick,” Daddy insisted. “Before he starts building a fort around his place.”

Mama came to me in private later. She said she had missed so much of my “young womanhood,” because I went away to college and stayed so busy—we both knew the truth, that I’d rejected her and Daddy as soon as I was old enough to leave home—but she told me how much she’d missed all the mother-daughter part of that time and I admitted I’d missed sharing it, too. She brightened immediately and got straight to the point. “I never even knew when you had sex the first time,” she said. “I assume you’ve had sex.”

I stared at her. My face grew warm. “Yes,” I managed to say.

“My point is, I’m aware you’re in an awkward circumstance, living at home, a grown woman. If you want to buy some birth control … just go ahead and don’t feel you have to sneak around. I’ll get it for you.” She paused. “Of course, we’re not going to tell your daddy about it.”

I wanted to laugh at her, but I also wanted to slip down low and hug her around the waist with my head on her breasts. To be small again and give us both a second chance at those years we’d missed.

I took her hand. “I don’t intend to have sex with Roan anytime soon, if at all. But thanks. I love you.”

She thought for a minute. “I expect he’ll supply his own, but I’ll get you some condoms just in case,” she announced.

I dreamed at night of faceless women who danced naked, and cats who slept on hard pillows, and other more blatant symbols that included myself, and Roan, and made me forget that my leg ached when I moved.

Food. Of course. Like the old days. I would send him food.

I enlisted Hop and Evan, Uncle Winston, and some of the cousins to take it to him. With the assistance of Mama,
Renfrew, and various aunts and cousins, we put together boxes and ice chests filled with enough food to feed him and an entire army of construction workers for several days. Food is a primitive gesture of welcome; food is apology; food is a sacrament. There is more generosity in pies and casseroles than in a thousand pious words. We knew those facts by heart; I hoped he remembered.

I went through some of the storage boxes from my apartment in Florida. I found the large paperbound road atlas, one of those oversize, colorful editions with each state’s map on a separate page. The pages were worn and curling at the corners; the major cities and towns of each state had black lines drawn through them.

I wrapped the atlas in tissue paper and enclosed a note:

“What did he say?” I asked after my stocky, placid brothers returned from delivering the food. We sat in the living room with Hop’s kids watching a cartoon video in the corner near the piano. “He looked pleased, I guess,” Hop said, frowning. “You know something? I remember his stare when he was a boy, and he’s got that look honed to a hard edge. He’s got that Clint Eastwood/Dirty Harry thing goin’ when he levels a look at you, and you can’t tell if he’s likely to smile or take you by the throat. I told him he shouldn’t have brought in outsiders, that me and Evan would have sent a crew, but he just shrugged. If he hadn’t shook our hands I’d have been a little antsy. Him and that crew’re working like they got no time to spit. You ought to see what he’s done with the place in a week’s time.”

“That’s what Roan said,” Evan interjected. “ ‘Tell her to come see for herself. I wanted a nice spot for us to get to
know each other again. It’s almost ready. She can come anytime.’ ” He nodded fervently. “After he looked at that package you sent with the food, he got a funny expression on his face. You hit him somewhere soft, sis. He gave me something to bring back. That’s a start.” Evan presented me with a large, bulky manila envelope.

I laid it on my lap, ripped the envelope quickly, and pulled out a half-inch-thick portfolio bound in leather.

I hurriedly scanned the handsomely printed columns and lists on the pages inside the binder, cupping one hand to my throat as I did. I saw an address in Seattle. On the other side of the country. Seattle, of all places. Why there? Hop and Evan peered blatantly over my shoulders.

Land. Houses. Apartments. Warehouses. Buying. Selling. Leasing. Several states, several cities. Good lord, I was stunned by the enormity of it, set down on paper. He was proud of himself, but this ambition was part of a bigger mystery that had kept him away for two decades.

“Good lord,” Hop breathed. “This is some kind of prospectus on his property holdings and investments.”

Evan exhaled loudly. “He’s telling you what he’s worth, baby sister. And he’s worth a fortune.”

Roan had also sent a note. Written on pale gray stationery, it said:

I took out the piece of old wood he’d carved with our names. I wrapped it in handsome gift paper, with a bow, and Hop delivered it to Roan with my note:

He didn’t offer any answer at all in response.

I got up at dawn the next day, dressed in my white terry-cloth robe and jogging shoes, went to the sunroom, and stepped very slowly onto a treadmill Violet had sent over after I hit her with the pillow. I had written her a long letter of apology, and she said she had forgiven me, but she wouldn’t risk being walloped again; she told me to walk.

Josh strode into the room; he’d arrived from Atlanta well past midnight in the staid, gray Town Car that said he was prosperous, conservative, and didn’t believe in bucket seats. The click of my oldest brother’s shoes on the sun-room’s rust-red tiles—custom-made for Mama by a potter friend in Mexico—made my nerves pop.

We brusquely exchanged good mornings. He sat in a wingback wicker chair with his coffee cup perched on his
knee. He’s built like a barrel with legs; his red hair has receded into a V that sweeps back from his forehead. I call it his
Republican mohawk
, and when I do, he has enough humor to laugh at himself.

He flicked invisible wrinkles from his white dress shirt and pinstriped pants, adjusted the knot of a silk tie with one hand, and held the coffee cup in the other. He told me he had a full week planned: speeches, meetings, the care and contrivance of his state senate district. He still used his old bedroom at home, plus a second one he had converted to an office. But he was away three weeks out of four, either traveling or attending legislative sessions in Atlanta.

He dated an administrative assistant from the state department of transportation. Her name was Lin Su; she was working toward a master’s degree in political science at Georgia State. She was also only twenty-five years old, born in America but Vietnamese by heritage. Mama and Daddy kept asking to meet her, but Josh insisted she wasn’t significant.

“I’ve got no use for Roan if he’s here to cause trouble,” Josh said finally. “He’s made his money, but money’s not the same as family. He can’t buy family.”

“Don’t preach at me,” I said.

“You’ve lived away from the family. You and I are the only ones who’ve really seen what the world is like on our own. Brady sees the world as one big cookie jar. Hop and Evan don’t have the imagination to worry about the bigger picture. Mama and Daddy secretly wish Eisenhower was still president.”

“Cut to the chase, big brother.”

“It means so much to Mama and Daddy to have you back home. To be close to you. I don’t want the family torn apart over you and Roan.”

“Then don’t take sides.”

“Mama will say what you want to hear because she wants you to forgive her. Daddy prides himself on being fair; he’ll bend over backward to right an old wrong. The
rest of the kin will keep their mouths shut for the most part, out of respect. All I’m doing is playing devil’s advocate. Somebody has to.”

“I have no intention of tearing the family apart. Roan redefined this family,” I panted. “Brought out the best and the worst in us. Now it’s time to prove we’ve changed for the better.”

“You think I’m a hypocrite.”

“On the contrary, I think you’re desperate to believe the world isn’t completely screwed up. That’s why you’re afraid to get close to your own daughter. You’re afraid to care too much. I understand how that is.”

“Don’t change the subject. How do you plan to deal with Roan?”

“I plan to do everything in my power to make him feel welcome in this family. To make him believe it’s possible for him to still be part of the family.”

Josh craned his head. “You talk as if you’re planning a future with him. But he’s a stranger, Claire.”

“He’s not a stranger to me. He never will be.”

“Face the fact that Roan may not want to resolve anything. Face the fact that you could let yourself get … attached to him and then be forced to make a choice that would hurt you for the rest of your life.”