No Place (3 page)

*  *  *

Neither of my parents had jobs. After being a stockbroker for a long time, Mom had been let go about five years ago when her firm went out of business. She’d looked for another job for almost four years before giving up. The longer you were out of work, she said, the more people believed there had to be something wrong with you, and the
harder it was to find new employment.

For a while we managed to scrape by on Dad’s salary as a supervisor for the Burlington Inner City Youth Sports Program. But then Dad had lost
his
job and now there was no way we could continue to live, eat, and keep up the payments on the house. The bank had started foreclosure proceedings—they were taking away our home so that they could resell it to someone else.

“When do we have to be out?” I asked, and took a sip of soup. Mom had grown most of the ingredients herself in the garden she tended in our backyard.

“Monday morning, seven a.m.”

Since we’d known for months that this day was coming, my parents had sold a lot of their furniture and had put a few favorite pieces in storage, leaving only the bare essentials we needed to live. Over the weekend we would gather up that stuff and leave. Forever.

*  *  *

After dinner I went up to my room. I probably should have made good use of the time by packing the few things that remained—some favorite trophies, the ball I threw my only shutout with, a couple of cherished team photos, my first mitt—but I couldn’t imagine being in this room without them, even for a weekend. I knew I’d wait until the last moment.

The same went for my clothes, books, and posters. I just couldn’t do it now. It was too depressing. Instead, I took a
shower and changed. On my way out I stopped in the kitchen and called to whoever might hear: “I’m taking one of the phones.”

We were down to two.

Outside Talia waited at the curb in her red BMW convertible.

“So we don’t have to stay at Carrie’s for more than an hour, right?” I asked as she started to drive.

“I promise I won’t keep you away from Noah any longer than necessary,” she half teased.

In the car’s side-view mirror I watched the U-Haul van in our driveway grow smaller and then vanish in the dark. We’d moved into our house when I was two, so I couldn’t remember living anywhere else. I’d thrown my first pitches to Dad in the backyard, and learned to ride a bike in the driveway. We’d had all those Christmas trees in the living room.

How soon before some other family moved in, and it would be like we’d never lived there at all?

“Please think about coming to Hilton Head with us?” Talia asked, pulling me back from those thoughts. “Didn’t we have the best fun during the summer?”

“The best,” I echoed dully. Talia’s family had rented a house and I’d been invited to join them for a week. It had been nothing short of amazing—beautiful beaches, fun fishing, great seafood, living large—but it had been weird, too, doing all this stuff my own family couldn’t come close to affording. “I appreciate the invitation, Tal, really. But I can’t.”

She didn’t reply. While neither she nor any of my other friends knew exactly what my parents’ financial situation was, you’d have to be pretty obtuse not to get a feeling that things weren’t good.

We stopped at a 7-Eleven and Talia said, “Be right back,” which was code for
Stay in the car while I buy stuff for the party.

She returned with two shopping bags brimming with Diet Cokes, Mountain Dews, and an array of snacks. From there we drove to Carrie Bard’s house, where I carried the bags in, as if I’d been the one who’d purchased everything.

 4 

Over the weekend I wandered half-dazed through workouts, homework, helping mom pick vegetables in her garden, and—finally—packing the last of my stuff for the move. When I told Talia that we were going to stay with Mom’s brother, Uncle Ron, the only question she asked was whether my parents were thinking of moving away from Median entirely. I promised her they weren’t and quickly changed the subject.

I kept having this fantasy that we were losing our home only temporarily, that in a week or two something unexpected would happen and we’d get it back, or we’d get another home that was just as good.

The weird thing was, that’s sort of what happened. At Uncle Ron’s, Mom and Dad moved into the guest bedroom and I got the foldout couch in the downstairs activity room. Next to it was the changing room and shower for guests who
used the pool and tennis court in the backyard. So that was my bathroom for now.

It felt strange:

We’d lost our home.

And moved into a much bigger, fancier one.

*  *  *

There must be lots of different reasons why people move in with relatives—houses burn down, parents get divorced, whatever. But I wonder if we all share one similar sensation. That of feeling adrift, like losing an anchor. Walking down the hall at school on Monday morning, I saw Meg Fine pulling books out of her locker. I stopped and stared, recalling that I’d seen her coming out of Dignityville, feeling the unexpected urge to say something, to connect with someone who, just maybe, understood what I was going through.

Unfortunately, by stopping in the middle of the hall, I’d unintentionally created a snag in the flow of bodies. Kids brushed past me, muttering as they detoured. Meg sensed something and looked up.

Our eyes met and she scowled. Suddenly I felt that I had no choice but to go over. “Hey.”

“Oh, uh, hi, Dan.” She swept some of that curly red hair away from her eyes.

“So, how’s it going?” I asked.

Meg’s forehead furrowed. “Okay,” she replied uncertainly, obviously wondering why I’d asked.

She was right to wonder. It must have felt like I was
coming from out of nowhere. I still had time to make up some excuse and move on, but instead, as if under remote control, I lowered my voice. “So, uh, listen, last Friday I was driving through town with Noah? And, um, I saw you.”

Meg stiffened as she recalled where she’d been on Friday after school, then said, “So?” stretching the word into two wary syllables.

Moving a little closer, I softened my voice a bit more: “We just lost our house and had to move in with my uncle.”

Her eyebrows dipped as if she didn’t understand why I felt I had to share this with her. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said in a way that sort of indicated that she wasn’t sorry, not really.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised by her chilly reply, but it caught me off guard. “Well, I mean, both of my parents lost their jobs. Like you and I—”

“Everyone in my family works,” she cut in, a bit harshly. “Except for my dad, who’s too sick to work. My mom and brother both have jobs.”

At that point I should have shut up and dropped it, but I stupidly continued. “Then why are you . . .”

“Living in Dignityville?” She finished the sentence irately. “Maybe because my father’s treatments are unbelievably expensive? And my brother’s got college loans he’s trying to pay back? And after all that, there’s nothing left?”

She was clearly upset and offended. This wasn’t what I’d been hoping for. I’d thought that our common experience would give us something to talk about. But like most
impulsive, poorly thought-out ideas, this one had backfired and now I felt like a jerk. “Hey, listen, I didn’t mean anything bad. . . .”

The bell rang. We were both officially late for class. Meg rolled her eyes as if I was a complete horse’s ass, and hurried away.

*  *  *

After school at Uncle Ron’s house, Mom and Aunt Julie were in the kitchen making dinner. Dad was in the den drinking a beer and watching college football on the big flat-screen HDTV. We bumped fists. “S’up, dawg?”

I shrugged. “Not much.”

“Work out today?”

“Yeah. Core stuff.” I glanced at the screen. For the past two years at our house we’d had to get by on whatever the antenna on the roof would pick up for our ancient twenty-seven-inch cathode-ray TV with its dull and muted colors. In contrast the color on Uncle Ron’s flat-screen was amazing, almost brighter than real.

“Who’s playing?” I asked.

“Michigan Tech Huskies and Missouri Storm.”

I’d never heard of either team and was pretty sure they were bottom-of-the-barrel Division III noncontenders. “Sounds exciting,” I deadpanned.

“Hey, check out the drops of sweat.” Dad pointed at the screen. “The individual leaves of grass.” He slapped the couch. “Grab a beer.”

School rules forbade athletes from drinking, even during
the off-season, but Dad and I had an understanding. I might have taken him up on the offer if I hadn’t had homework to do.

Downstairs, my ten-year-old twin cousins, Mike and Ike (their real names were Michael and Isaac), were playing air hockey. I sat on the couch and tried to read. Adding to the racket of the puck slamming around the table were Mike’s and Ike’s feeble but rowdy attempts to impress me with their G-rated preteen trash talk.

“You’re such a loser!” one of them would yell, glancing out of the corner of his eye to see if I was listening.

“You’re so bad you stink!”

“I’m way better than you!”

“You wish!”

When I realized I’d read the same sentence three times and still didn’t know what it meant, I knew I was never going to get anything done down there. I got up, hoping to find a quieter spot upstairs. As I passed the air hockey table, Mike paused from playing. “How long’re you gonna stay here, Cousin Dan?”

“Don’t know.”

“Mom says you’ve got no place else to go,” said Ike.

“For the moment.”

“So you could live here forever?”

“Doubtful.”

“Because you’re going to college next year, right?”

“Right.”

“But your parents could live here forever because all Aunt
Hannah wants to do is garden and Uncle Paul’s a deadbeat.”

Huh?
Had I heard him wrong? “Sorry?”

“Our dad said your dad’s a deadbeat,” said Mike.

“What is a deadbeat, anyway?” asked Ike.

“It’s when you don’t have a job,” Mike told his brother. “But Dad said even when Uncle Paul did have a job all he ever did was play games with poor kids in Burlington.”

“Was that
really
his job?” Ike asked with kidlike wonder as if it had never occurred to him that you could get a job playing games.

“He supervised after-school sports programs so kids wouldn’t join gangs,” I explained.

“Dad said he could have made more money working at Starbucks,” said Mike, who was leaner and meaner than his more innocent twin.

“That’s not true,” I said.

“Dad said so,” Mike insisted, as if Uncle Ron’s word was law.

I felt the impulse to argue and explain that Dad’s job hadn’t been about making money, but about helping disadvantaged kids have a better future. It was valuable work and probably saved some kids’ lives. But I caught myself.
Why was I even having this conversation?
They were just a couple of ten-year-olds.

Upstairs, Dad waved me into the den. “You gotta see this. The Huskies are first and goal, down by four. Forty-five seconds left.”

It felt a little weird, seeing my unemployed father sitting
in someone else’s den in the afternoon drinking a beer and watching TV. He’d had a few jobs since sports supervisor, but none had lasted. Sooner or later he’d come home saying things hadn’t worked out, and he’d go back to collecting unemployment insurance.

On the TV the crowd roared. It’s hard to imagine a more exciting moment in a football game. Less than a minute left to play and you’re on your opponent’s six-yard line with four chances to score and win. The Huskies ran three plays and got the ball to the one-yard line. It was a classic goal-line stand. Eleven seconds left and no time-outs. One more chance to score. The crowd was still roaring. Dad and I were on the edge of our seats.

The Huskies tried a quarterback sneak.

Bodies piled up on the goal line. One ref raised his arms as if the Huskies had scored; another ref sliced his hands as if they hadn’t. The TV announcer shouted that a penalty flag had been thrown. The crowd went berserk. By now Dad and I were on our feet, totally caught up in the excitement.

That’s when Uncle Ron came in. My uncle is a big, imposing man. Tall, broad-shouldered, with a barrel-size belly. When he entered a room, you knew it. He was wearing a dark suit, shirt collar open and tie pulled askew. Bags under his eyes, his hair falling onto his forehead, and his jaw so dark with five o’clock shadow you had to wonder if he’d bothered to shave that morning.

“Ron, you gotta see this,” Dad said excitedly.

Uncle Ron glanced at the TV as he strode to the cabinet bar, filled a glass halfway with Johnnie Walker, knocked it back in one gulp, and poured himself another.

On the screen the refs huddled. The Huskies players had their arms up like it was a touchdown. The Storm players were chopping their hands back and forth as if it wasn’t. The crowd grew quiet with anticipation. Finally the officials’ huddle broke and the head ref announced that a player for the Huskies had been off side. The play didn’t count. Time had run out; the game was over. The Missouri Storm had won. The crowd began to roar again and Dad clicked off the TV.

“You see that?” he exclaimed, turning to Uncle Ron. “What a finish!” My uncle’s face was a blank mask. He started to take a sip of whiskey, then seemed to change his mind and knocked the whole drink back, banged the empty glass down on the counter, and stalked out of the den.

*  *  *

At dinner Uncle Ron’s bad mood only got worse. “What is this?” he demanded when Aunt Julie placed a steaming bowl in front of him.

“Vegetable curry stew,” she explained. “But we’ve got meat for those who want it.” Mom brought over a plate piled with browned chunks of lamb and added some to his soup. “Anyone else?”

“Me, thanks,” I said.

Uncle Ron glowered at the chunks of lamb bobbing in the yellowish stew, then frowned at Mom, as if he knew
where Aunt Julie must have gotten the idea for this concoction. By then I’d tried the stew and a chunk of the lamb. It was pretty good, but I’d had years to get used to Mom’s recipes. Ron glanced at Mike and Ike, who were chowing down on frozen individual pizzas hot from the oven. “There any more of those?”