No Place (21 page)

“What does Mayor George say?” I ask.

“That it was a worthy experiment,” Dad answers. “What he doesn’t say is that it’s a win for the local landowners. Thanks to them the homeless are invisible again.”

Mom pulls the curtain back to reveal the parking lot, and beyond it, the highway. Tears roll down her cheeks. Dad gets up and puts his arms around her. “Don’t worry, we won’t be here long.”

Her forehead wrinkles as she wipes the tears away with the back of her hand. “How can you say that?”

Dad shoots me a “don’t question this” look, then says, “Just believe me.”

 40 

I spend the rest of the weekend doing homework, watching TV, catching up on sleep, waiting for a chance to get Dad alone. Mom’s gotten a pay-as-you-go phone, and I speak to Noah and tell him I’m okay. I guess I’m lucky that Talia’s away looking at schools. On Sunday night we go to Uncle Ron’s for dinner again. He no longer acts angry, or disdainful of Dad. If anything, he seems puzzled, as if he can’t understand what’s happened to us.

On Monday morning a hand shakes my shoulder and my eyes open into Mom’s face. The motel room is dim, light filtering around the curtains. The din of traffic seeps in. “Hurry, sweetheart,” she whispers. “The bus is here.”

What bus?

“I’ll try to get them to wait.” She hustles out the motel room door.

It seems too early for a school bus, but I pull on
whatever clothes are lying around, try to shake the cobwebs out of my brain, grab my books. Dad’s still asleep.

Outside the chill hits. It’s been a mild fall up till now, but this morning there’s frost on the windows of the cars parked outside the motel. My breath clouds and my broken tooth throbs when I inhale the brisk air. A school van idles at the curb and Mom stands beside the closed door, hugging herself in the cold. Young faces in the van windows peer out at me.

The door opens. As I pass Mom, she gives me a kiss on the cheek. A few years ago a kiss from Mom before boarding a school bus would have scored an eleven on the embarrassment scale of ten, but what difference does it make now? I’ve just come out of a run-down motel with a black eye and a broken tooth. Once again it’s hard to imagine sinking much lower.

Inside, the kids are all ages—elementary, middle, and high school. With only a few seats left, I take one next to a little kid. Gradually waking up, I glance around at my bus mates and notice little things: the frayed hems of their jeans, the worn heals of their sneakers, the holes in the elbows of their hoodies.

The van stops at another crappy motel a few blocks away, and four more kids climb on. There aren’t enough seats, and two of them have to stand in the back even though I thought that’s not allowed on school buses. But this is no ordinary early-morning, long-distance van picking up kids from the hinterlands. This . . . is the Homeless Kid Express.

*  *  *

When we get to school half an hour before the first bell, I realize it’s because it’s assumed that all of us qualify for free breakfasts. Inside the building an envelope is taped to my locker with a note from Ms. Reuben inviting me to stop by her office and chat if I feel like it.

If I do, I wonder what free stuff I can get this time. . . .

Whoa . . . I can’t believe I just thought that.

Welcome to How to Think Like a Homeless Person.

I hang up my jacket, dump some books, and with my stomach grumbling and nothing to do until school starts, give in to hunger and head toward the cafeteria to see what I can scrounge up. Yeah, I know I’m the one who said I’d never stoop to a free breakfast.

Most of the kids from the Homeless Kid Express are down there, along with a bunch of others, including Meg. I never officially signed up for free breakfasts, but Lisa’s in the kitchen and without a word I get milk, a whole-wheat donut, and a bowl of Lucky Charms.

When I sit down opposite Meg, her eyes widen with concern. “What happened to you?”

I’m tempted to go with the old “If you think this is bad, you should see the other guy” joke, but she might think it had something to do with the demonstration. So instead I tell her the truth, then ask, “What about you? Where’re you staying?”

“Dad’s at the hospital because there’s no place for him to go right now. He has no idea that Aubrey’s there. They put
Mom and me in a women’s shelter. What about you?”

I tell her about the welfare motel. “My father says we won’t be there for long. It’s just hard to imagine where else we can go. So . . . does Aubrey know what happened?”

Meg nods sadly. “He’s so disappointed. And you know what’s strange? In a way I almost miss Dignityville now.”

*  *  *

As lunchtime nears, I feel myself growing tight and anxious at the prospect of seeing Talia. In the cafeteria her expression compresses when she sees me. “What happened to your face?”

The table goes quiet. They’re all trying not to stare, probably thinking that this is the sort of thing that happens to the homeless. More evidence that life is rough out there in the world of the disadvantaged. But guys don’t like to admit that they fainted, so I need to come up with something. And it’s going to be a double whammy, because as soon as I answer, she’s going to see my chipped tooth. “I had an accident.”

“In a car?” she asks.

“On an indoor baseball mound.”

“Pushing himself too hard.” Noah comes to my aid, trying to make it sound heroic. And then, to take the focus off me, he asks Talia about the schools she visited over the weekend.

When Talia tells us about Sarah Lawrence, Skidmore, Smith, and Swarthmore, I can’t help wondering if she’s arranged her college visits alphabetically. She talks about how beautiful the campuses are and how she wishes she and her
mom could have visited a few weeks ago when the fall colors were at their peak. It’s pretty obvious that she doesn’t want to talk about my new “situation,” at least not in front of her friends. And of course she can’t possibly have the slightest clue about her father’s involvement in the trashing of Dignityville.

Two squares of pizza lay untouched on my lunch tray. It’s hard to find an appetite when you’re so tightly wound up, but I force myself to pick a piece up and take a bite.

Just in case this is my last meal of the day.

*  *  *

I haven’t given up on the Thanksgiving tournament, but Noah hasn’t said anything about practicing today, which is fine because it’s driving me crazy that I still haven’t spoken to Dad. After school I catch the Homeless Kid Express back to the End of the World Motel. The dimly lit room smells of incense, and Mom’s sitting on her bed, a book beside her. But I get the feeling she hasn’t been reading.

“Been here all day?” I ask.

She shrugs, nods.

“Where’s Dad?”

“He had some business to attend to.”

I can just imagine. . . . Wait, actually, I can’t. That’s what’s so frustrating.

“Come on.” I hold the door open, allowing the sunlight and air in.

“Where?” Mom asks.

“I don’t know. Anyplace but here.”

She pulls on a sweater and shoes and we step around the potholes in the parking lot. The air is foul with car and truck exhaust and the clamor of engines. Across the highway are some gas stations, a pawn shop, and a junkyard surrounded by a tall metal fence.

Not a patch of green in sight.

This corner of the world hardly feels fit for human habitation. Given where we’ve wound up, I wonder if Mom would prefer to be back in the negative energy of Uncle Ron’s, but I don’t ask. If she wanted to go back there, she’d say so.

We stand on the curb and look around forlornly. I’d hoped we’d take a walk, but to where? No direction looks promising. There’s nothing in the distance to fix one’s hopes to. The phrase “no direction home” comes to mind, although I don’t know how I know it or where I heard it.

I feel Mom’s eyes, as if she’s waiting for me to decide which way to go.

Far down the street a U-Haul van turns a corner and starts toward us. There’s no reason to pay attention to it. No reason why it should mean more than any other van. Maybe I watch it because it reminds me of the day we lost our house, the day the Great Pitch Count of Life started to go against us.

The van grows bigger as the distance decreases. I keep waiting for it to turn a corner and disappear.

Strangely, it comes closer and closer until it stops at the light on the other side of Route 7. I can’t see who’s driving through the tinted windshield.

The light turns green, and the van crosses the highway and pulls into the motel parking lot.

The driver is Dad.

 41 

We’re moving, but Dad won’t tell us where—says he wants it to be a surprise. But he’s quiet and moody and hardly seems happy about it himself. Neither Mom nor I press him, maybe because we both know that wherever we’re headed can’t be worse than where we’ve been. With the three of us squeezed into the front seat, it again feels like we’re the Joads, just another Okie family being swept along by forces beyond our control.

A short while later we pull into a fragment of a neighborhood where only a few houses have been completed and a handful more appear to have been started and then abandoned—wooden frameworks and muddy front yards littered with construction debris. The rest of the landscape is unfinished driveways leading to empty lots choked with tall weeds.

Dad parks the van in the driveway of one of the finished houses—two stories high, painted gray-blue, with a red
door. In the front yard a few patches of long grass struggle to survive—the remnants of what was once a lawn.

“What’s going on?” Mom asks.

“Our new home,” Dad says in a flat voice, and starts to get out. “Come on, we’ve got work to do.”

He goes around behind the van. Mom and I stay in the front seat.

“Did you know about this?” I ask.

She shakes her head.

“Hey,” Dad calls from the back. “I can’t do it alone.”

In the back are boxes and the few pieces of unsold furniture we’d put in storage months ago—stuff Dad wouldn’t have taken out unless we were moving somewhere for a long time.

“How is this possible?” Mom asks.

“I’ll tell you later,” Dad answers in his “not in front of Dan” voice.

Mom frowns, but accepts this. Avoiding my eyes, Dad hands me a folding table. But when Mom steps up to take something, he manages a weak smile. “Hey, why don’t you go check out the backyard?”

She gives him a quizzical look, but goes. Before I can say anything, Dad grabs a box and turns toward the house, almost as if he’s trying to avoid me. I follow, carrying the table up the front walk. Inside, the living room is empty, floors bare, no shades on the windows, wires dangling from the ceiling where light fixtures should go. It looks like no one’s ever lived here.

We lug our things into the kitchen. The faucet’s missing and the tags are still on the refrigerator. Through the window we see Mom outside, surveying the backyard.

“Dad?”

“Don’t ask.”

“I
have
to.”

His shoulders sag as our eyes meet. He doesn’t look away, the way someone who’s ashamed of what he’s done might. He nods at Mom outside, then looks straight at me as if trying to say,
Whatever I did, I did for you and Mom.

“That time I saw you get out of Mr. Purcellen’s pickup . . . ,” I begin.

Now he looks away.

I gesture around the kitchen. “Is this why you put him in touch with that gang?”

He jerks his head back and stares up at me with eyes as wide as catcher’s mitts. “How do you . . . ?” he starts, then trails off, clearly stunned.

I tell him what I learned that night in the Range Rover. “Why would Talia’s father come to you?”

He lets out a long sigh. “He knew I had connections to the kind of people he needed.”

“You knew what they were going to do to Aubrey?”

“God, no.” He shakes his head vehemently. “They weren’t supposed to hurt him, just get him to stop trying to make Dignityville permanent.”

“So why didn’t you go to the police?”

There in the empty kitchen, Dad tells me the whole story of how he stupidly agreed to help Mr. Purcellen in exchange for a place to live, and how, after Aubrey was beaten, Talia’s father strong-armed him into staying quiet by threatening to tell me what had happened. He blinks hard. “I couldn’t let you find out. I already felt like enough of a failure.”

“What about ransacking Dignityville?” I ask. “How’d he get you to organize the demonstration?”

Dad runs a finger across the counter, leaving a stripe in the dust. “He said he knew people . . . wealthy donors to Rice . . . who could stop you from getting a scholarship if I didn’t cooperate. I don’t know if it was true, but I couldn’t take a chance. And I was afraid people would be hurt if I didn’t get them out of there.” His eyes glisten with tears of shame and regret. “After what happened to Aubrey . . .” He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand.

Whatever he did, he did for Mom and me.

A man got to do what he got to do.

But what if what he does is wrong?

The back door opens and Mom comes in, throws her arms around Dad and hugs him, burying her face against his chest, not noticing that he’s got tears in his eyes. “It’s . . . wonderful! Oh, thank you, darling, I have a garden again!”

For a moment they hug, but then, still holding him close, she whispers, “But how, Paul? You have to tell me.”

It’s Dad’s turn to give
me
the “Don’t say anything in front of Mom” look.

“If they want to sell these houses, they need to make it
look like people are already living here,” he says. “We’re the decoy that encourages the other ducks to land.”

“How long will they let us stay?” she asks.

“Long enough.”

For now Mom has no more questions. Dad gazes over her shoulder at me with red-rimmed eyes. He knows what he did was wrong, but it was done out of love and desperation. It was the act of a man who believed he was a failure, and had nothing left to lose.