Think of This as Home

He’d forgotten that sound, the wind sucking through the eucalyptus trees, the groan of a limb threatening to come smashing down. Strips of fleshy bark blanketed the road. The houses along the edge of the canyon, he’d forgotten that, too, how they’d assemble before you as you rounded the curve—a pitched roof, stained glass window, oak door—appearing, then disappearing. 

Probably nobody would remember him here, either. His name had been John Patrick then. Nine years later, it was something different. Hormel for a bit, Du lately. Names and pieces of names he stole from puckered flyers stapled to telephone poles and soggy newspapers. His face was long now and his arms skinny, his T-shirt grimy from sleeping in the doorway of A & G Music last night. It was late September, the morning hot already, the moon a thumbprint still in the sky. 

Around the next curve, her mailbox appeared. The same gunmetal gray, the S slipped down and peeling. Same Toyota in the driveway, too, its blue sun-faded charcoal silver. She’d been old even back then, staring at him with dark eyes that had no centers, wondering which one of the neighborhood kids he was, laughing when she finally remembered. At herself or him, he’d never been sure. “The Murray boy, of course,” she’d say in a wobbly voice. “From down the road.” 

The last summer they’d lived here, he’d fallen asleep under some sour-smelling bushes in her backyard. Even as a kid, he’d liked sleeping outside, the smooth places where deer had left shapes of their bodies in the grass, falling-down sheds, the hollow of a big tree once. It was late afternoon before old Mrs. Spooner had discovered him in her yard, his cheeks sticky with bits of leaves. Instead of yelling, she’d brought him inside for some ice water, then pushed a five-dollar bill into his hand. “Here. Tell your parents you were helping me clean up the flowerbeds.” Later he wondered if she hadn’t felt sorry for him, knew his mother was sick, the kind of sick people didn’t like talking about. 

The gate fell open when he touched it. He had planned on climbing the fence, higher now and thick with some weirdly purple vine, but here he stood now in her backyard, breath stuck in his throat. 

He waited for her face to appear in the window. When it didn’t, he cut across the warm grass. The bushes had been ripped out and weeds stood in clumps, left to grow as tall as they wanted in places, hacked back in others. A rusty sprinkler lay tipped next to a plastic glass that looked vaguely familiar. He walked faster. It’ll be easy, he told himself. Just grab a few things, take off. He wouldn’t hurt her or anything. 

The rooms inside were cool and dark, he remembered, the wood cabinets glowing with oil. A long stretch of table sat in the dining room with just two oak chairs drawn up. The living room couch lay covered in books, heavy, gold-tipped things that splintered when you turned the pages too fast. He’d taken one once just because he liked the feel of it in his hands. Old Mrs. Spooner hadn’t noticed. At least, never mentioned it.  

The window frame crumbled as he tried to lift it. Inside, a dog barked, a fierce hoarse sound that got louder and closer. Fuck. She’d never had any dog. He took the back steps in one leap. 

“Say!” a voice warbled. “Don’t you want this?” 

He looked around. 

Her hair was thinner and whiter, her ears poking through on both sides. In spite of the heat, she wore a red argyle sweater, the two top buttons buttoned wrong. 

Mrs. Spooner stared at him a long moment, then her eyes refocused on his chest. “The lady on the phone said nine. But no bother. I’m up.” 

She thrust something rectangular and heavy-looking at him. A laptop, he realized, as he slowly accepted it. “I’ve got a couple more things for you,” she said. “Here in the study.” 

When he didn’t follow her, she looked at him as if he might be slow or something. “Here,” she said, motioning to the back door. “In the house.” 

*          *          *

The picture window overlooking the canyon was blocked by the oak trees that had grown taller and thicker and his eyes needed a moment to adjust. The Naugahyde couch sat empty now, its seams oozing tufts of beige stuffing. A burnt smell—toast or a fried appliance maybe—hung in the air. A black lab thumped its tail against the old lady’s leg, keeping pace with her as they walked through the dining room and down a threadbare carpeted hall. 

There, off another hall, she tipped the door open to a windowless room he’d never seen. One wall was painted red and a desk pressed up against it with its surface crowded: two bulky computer monitors turned to face one another, an immense black tower with a panel missing, piles of disconnected keyboards. Three laptops sat open, their screens blank. 

“As soon as something new comes out, we buy it,” she said, motioning to the computers. 

He remembered hearing about a son once, living someplace weird, Naples, or San Bernardino. Or could be she had a husband now to replace the one who’d left long before they’d moved here. Or maybe a live-in helper. 

He nodded, shifting the laptop to his other hip. 

“You can’t just throw away the old stuff, you know.” She ran her fingers through her hair as if the whole thing made her nervous. “What am I saying? Of course you know.” 

He stared at his grimy fingers. Okay, he thought. Yeah. When he looked up again, he was grinning. “You’re right,” he said. “That’s our job. Secure disposal.” He’d seen the words on a van in downtown Oakland. This was a MacBook, he was pretty sure. He might get a hundred for it on Telegraph Avenue if he was lucky. Enough for a night at the New Empire, anyway, and take-out. Take-in, too. Fat blunts that plastered your head against the ceiling, and the peach vodka that eased you down again. 

He took the stupid monitor she wanted him to, figuring he’d chuck it on his way down the hill. The two power cords he stuffed in his pocket. 

*          *          * 

Three days later, he walked to a pay phone on Broadway—his cell got lost weeks ago—and punched in the collect access number. He waited for the operator, listened to voices go in and out. “That’s right… Yes… Yes… ” When the silence was steady, Du spoke. 

“Hey, Dad.” It’d been a month since he last called. He usually phoned every two, three weeks, just enough to keep them from searching. 

“John Patrick? That you?” 

“Yeah.” It was past seven in Philly, he figured. 

“How’s the internship going?” There actually had been an internship once, at Community Options of Oakland, one he’d landed after barely making it through high school in Phoenix, the place they’d lived after San Francisco and before Philadelphia. The position—organizing the library and ordering office furniture and calling board members to remind them of meetings—had lasted a hot four months. And in spite of what they’d promised, it led exactly nowhere. He’d found a smaller room to rent, then one without kitchen privileges and no first and last. About a month ago, he ran out of money and hung out with some guys in Mosswood Park. When it got late, he fell asleep on the grass. He was surprised how much he liked it. Sleeping outside, drinking from people’s hoses. 

“Internship’s fine. Boring sometimes, but good.” 

“Well, nothing’s perfect.” 

“Yeah.” 

A double bus hurled by in a haze of exhaust. The light changed and suddenly he was surrounded by people walking, jogging, a guy listening to tunes in his earbuds, R&B from the way he was dancing. A woman stared, and he saw his greasy hair and safety-pinned pack through her eyes. He turned his back to her. 

He imagined his father standing there in tasseled loafers, gazing out the wall-size window of the condo he’d bought with the woman he’d married. That’s what Du called Tess, not his stepmother. He had moved back to California just to be free of them. 

“What’s that you say?” his father shouted 

“Hey, Dad—” He was about to ask for money, then changed his mind. “Dad,” he said, his voice upbeat. “I called to tell you the news. My internship’s wrapping up, so I got a job. With computers.” 

“Computers. Wow. I’ll bet that’s lucrative. Sales, service, what?” 

“Both, actually.” For one strange moment, he felt proud. Then he heard a high-pitched voice in the background, and the sound blotted out. He was ready to hang up when his father’s voice returned, suddenly loud and clear. 

“Son, Tessie’s telling me we’re late for our reservations at Delacroix. And you know how hard those are to get. So call back tomorrow, would you? We’re around all day.” 

“Okay, sure.” 

“Here. Say hello a sec, she’d love to—” 

He hung up before his father could finish. 

*          *          *

Two days later, he was back to eating Dumpster pizza. The day after that, salad from the plastic containers left outside Zack’s. He got a job washing dishes at Merritt Bakery, but when he didn’t show after a pretty messed-up Saturday night, they took him off the schedule. Permanently. 

He shouldn’t have gone back. She was an old lady, after all. And nice. But the money that had come so easily disappeared so fast. So here he stood on Blue Canyon Road at nine in the morning, wearing a wrinkled work shirt from the free box and Nikes that almost fit. This time he walked up and knocked on old Mrs. Spooner’s door. 

The dog barked wildly, but from upstairs. 

She appeared in the doorway wearing a quilted robe with a coffee stain over one breast. “Yes?” 

“You called, ma’am?” he said, surprised she didn’t recognize him. “For disposal of used electronics?” 

“Oh,” she said, tightening the sash. She looked exhausted, the folds of her eyelids nearly closing her eyes shut. “That’s right. Tuesday.” 

“Wednesday, actually. But no problem. We appreciate your business. What have you got for me today?” 

“Well—” She motioned him in. He led her down the hall to the closed door and pushed it open so she could go in first. 

A young woman sat staring at the screen, her fingers flicking the keys. She tilted her head slowly to one side. 

“Julia?” Mrs. Spooner said. “The man is here. You know, the one who takes away the old equipment?” 

She didn’t answer. As Du stood at the threshold, the face of a thirteen-year-old girl emerged from that of the young woman before him. Jewell, everybody called her. She’d showed up the last summer they’d lived here—his mother had been alive then—Mrs. Spooner’s grandniece or something. Jewell tore through the neighborhood, shooting off the BB gun she’d discovered somewhere, back-flipping off the edge of the pool in Redwood Park though it was expressly prohibited, teaching a bunch of them to play Mumblety-peg, then winning every game using a stupid steak knife. When somebody’s mom came by to see what they were doing, Jewell would slip the knife under her pant leg, talk on and on about what a gorgeous day it was, and how happy they were to be outside simply enjoying it, and the mom bought the whole thing.  She was still short, he saw, with a fierce jaw line and burning green eyes. But her hair looked different, the bright red streaked green, which gave it a strange Day-Glo look. 

“I told you, Aunt Ruth,” she said, irritated. “There is no old stuff. I gave you everything I wanted to get rid of.” 

He used to race her across the pool but was unable to keep up with her longer arms and legs. She’d grin when he finally touched the cement side, his lungs about to burst. Their last race though—late August maybe or early early September—he’d unexpectedly won. Later he figured she had let him. 

After a long silence, Du spoke. “I believe,” he said, keeping his voice even, “she’s inquiring about outdated items and models you no longer have use for.” 

He’d liked standing out on the road to watch them eating dinner. Mrs. Spooner would come out from the kitchen with a casserole, big enough for six people it looked like, all steamy and delicious looking. She’d ladle out huge portions, and the two of them would lift their forks to eat. His mother did not cook. She picked her way through the evening, her long fingers opening and closing cupboards, moving a bag of potato chips or box of pretzels from one to the other. “Dinner’s DIY tonight, honey,” she’d say, softly slurring. “Make yourself whatever looks good, sweetie.” He scrounged from the refrigerator—strawberries and cheddar cheese, marshmallows coated with peanut butter—and ate in front of the TV. His father got home around eight. 

Jewell’s mouth opened when she saw him. An expression he couldn’t read crossed her face, then swiftly erased itself. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “I need everything here. I’m not just playing around, you know. This is what I do. Rebuild. Defrag. People give me what’s broken and I fix it.” 

“Well, then—” Du turned around, coughed. 

“Hey,” she said slowly. “Are you the one who took the laptop?” 

He nodded, keeping his back to her. “Mrs. Spooner gave it to me. She’d called our office and they assigned me the job.” 

“That big monitor, too?” 

“That’s right.” 

“I told my aunt not to touch my stuff without asking me first.” 

Du shrugged. “I disposed of everything per protocol.” The dog clicked into the room and sniffed him, sending his heart into a spasm. Dogs sense more than people, he thought. But the lab brushed past him and nuzzled against Jewell. 

“Well if you won’t be needing my services—” 

“Come to think of it,” Jewell said, so softly it scared him, “I do have something.” She passed him a bulky printer. “This, too.” A dead cell phone. 

He reached for them slowly. 

“I’ll walk you to the door,” she said, the smile soft, too. “Getting out of here can be a little tricky.” 

The entire way she kept asking him technical questions—stuff she had to already know herself—that he could only mumble half-assed answers to. 

The dog trotted alongside them, wagging his tail whenever Jewell reached down and scratched behind his ears. Salvatore, she called him. 

“You’ll send us an invoice, right?” she said. “For this and your previous service?” 

He nodded in a way he hoped looked convincing. 

She kept him at the front door, saying how she’d graduated from Evergreen College, and how impossible it was to get a job in the Bay Area, even with a degree. “Then it hit me,” she said. “You’ve got to make your own work. With whatever you’ve got.” She turned and looked at him. “A lot of people do.” 

“Truth is, I’m not sure of what all I have in there,” she went on. “Neatness is not one of my afflictions. Inherited it from Aunt Ruth, I guess.” Her eyes flitted past him. 

Du looked around and saw the old woman coming toward them from the computer room. 

“Check back, would you?” Jewell said. “We might need your help.” 

*          *          *

He stayed the fuck away. Spent three nights at DeFremery Park until some fool went crazy with a gun, shooting and singing “Cel-e-brate good times! Come on!” as if life were one big party, and he had to dive into the pine trees. The next night he sprawled out on the sidewalk. Around dawn, a cop slapped his leg hard with a flashlight and said to get a move on. “Now!” he growled. “You’re blocking public access.” 

That morning, he staggered around, met some heads from Mendocino with a van. Sold a little dope for them, smoked more than he sold. They pushed on to L.A. So he hung outside the Chop House, where people were generous with their leftover omelets and half-finished lattes, which he doused with milk and sugar. He slept in Mountain View Cemetery behind the hulking headstone of a woman who died in 1878. Nobody hassled him. 

Then it started to rain. A cold October rain that blackened the sidewalk and raised the smell of dirt. It had rained like this the day his mother died, though the smell had been sharper. He started to walk. When he reached Blue Canyon Road, the rain let up and the sun flicked in and out, but his jeans were soaked and his hair dripping. At the dead end of the street, he took the path that wound into the woods. He’d pitched a tent around here somewhere when he was a kid. He’d outfitted the whole thing: spare T-shirts, a flashlight, pots and a pan. He’d pretend sometimes he was cooking, mac and cheese, chili. He chewed grass and spit it in the pan so it’d look like spinach. But mostly he’d lie back, watch the light climb the canvas walls, happy to be in a place all his own. 

Du searched the area, but the stand of eucalyptus had been chainsawed: trunks with missing limbs that looked like torsos cut off at the armpits, chopped stumps, bark gouged with deep strips. The sawdust smelled like cough medicine. He climbed over two still-leafy branches crisscrossed on the ground. Finally, there off a faint, higher trail, he spotted something buried in the dirt. He climbed to it. 

The summer he’d set up the tent—their first summer here—his mother had been okay, not drinking, not sad all the time, though she’d had “her moods,” as his father later put it, marbley eyes, talking sometimes to the teacups as she lifted them out of the sink. Once she’d stuck her finger between his toes and laughed way too loud, threw every ounce of cheese in the house out on the grass, said the male rats could feast on it. He’d never seen any rats, and anyway, how could she tell the boys from the girls? 

But there’d been good times, too, that summer: a real turkey dinner once with real silver spoons, piano music swelling on the stereo, chapters of The BFG read out loud on hot afternoons, his body pressed to hers. He remembered his mother’s black hair pin-curled with sweat along the side of her neck, the pale skin of her knees against a dark blue denim skirt. She sang Beatles and opera, wanted him to sing, too. Don’t tell me, she’d say, in mock terror, that my son doesn’t know the words to “Let It Be.” 

She came up to the tent once: she must have seen him climbing the path. He’d heard footsteps approaching. 

“John Patrick, are you in there?” she called. 

He kept still. 

“You have my saucepan, don’t you?” 

“No.” He pictured her standing outside the entrance, her gray eyes half-closed, her long arms wrapped around her waist the way she did whenever she wanted something. 

“You picked a good spot. View runs all the way to the bay.” There was a long silence, then she asked, “Can I come in? Your father has decided to take himself elsewhere.” 

“No.” 

She took a step closer. “Why not?” 

“Go away.” She was always messing with his stuff, moving his droids and trucks and comic books around, always changing. 

Du pulled a corner of frayed green now from the rain-dark earth. It tore as it came, but he kept pulling, the canvas shredding in his fingers. 

Finally he walked down the hill and stood at the top of the still-ungated driveway. Instead of blue stucco, he saw gray clapboard. A third story had been added and what was once his bedroom window was covered with yellow smileys. Crooked hopscotch squares were chalked across the driveway, the neon pink and green nearly washed away. Even the front door looked different, black with a frosted window that no one could see in or out of. A high-pitched hissing filled his head as if he could hear the blood going around and around in his ears. He’d always wondered: Was his mother glad to be dead? 

He didn’t know how long he stood there. He just looked over and there was Jewell walking on the other side of the road. When she saw him, she glided across the street. The streaks in her hair were white-blonde now, so pale they blended with the skin of her face. “You came back,” she said. 

“So?” 

“So—I’m not surprised.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“Nothing.” 

He glared at her. “Go ahead. Call the cops. Everything I took, you guys gave me.” He started to walk away. 

“Okay, so I know about your fake business. The computers. But what I mean is, I know about your mother.” 

He turned. 

“The summer after you moved away, I spent that August with Aunt Ruth and—” 

He opened his mouth to tell her to stop, but Jewell kept right on, the end of every one of her sentences hooking onto the beginning of the next. People in the neighborhood were still talking about it that summer, she said. Not many, a few. Aunt Ruth said it’d been an accident. Of course it had. Mrs. Barry on the other side had a hard time seeing it like that, Jewell told him. The way water was still running, how far she’d slipped under. 

It was his father who found her. His mother had called wanting to talk, urgently, his assistant said, something she’d never done before. His father had her taken away before he got home from school. Five months later, they were living in the fanciest neighborhood in San Francisco and his father was telling everyone it was cancer. A terrible, fast cancer. 

The night before the funeral, he had asked if he could see her. His mother hadn’t seemed different the morning she died: poured his Grape-Nuts in a bowl, set the milk and spoon down, and walked back upstairs without a word, like she always did. But his father had refused. “Let’s remember her the way she was, John Patrick,” he said. And his ten-year-old head had nodded, as if agreeing with his father might bring his mother back. If only he’d been home that day, sick or something. Had let her come inside the tent. 

The thing was, he couldn’t remember. Pieces floated into his head: not just his mother’s black hair curling against her neck and soft skin of her knees, but a smear of chocolate-pink at the corner of lipsticked lips, the dark blue line that circled her eyes up close, the way her loafers slipped off whenever she hurried upstairs. But none of these memories came together to form a whole body, a full face. 

“Mrs. Lewis thought maybe—” Jewell went on. “But you know how she was.” 

“What? What did Mrs. Lewis say?” 

“She thought maybe it’d been the drinking. What else, she said, could have—” 

“Shut up!” he yelled. “Just shut the fuck up!” 

She stepped back quickly. For the first time, he realized he stood a foot taller. 

Jewell looked up at him, her eyes frightened. Then her jaw jutted out and her shoulders squared. “I will not shut up,” she said. “I mean, look at you. Ripped shoes. Thrift shop shirt. Who do you think you’re fooling?” 

Now he did walk away. Let her call whoever the fuck she wanted to. 

He was nearing the first curve when she shouted, “Guess you don’t want to hear what else I had to say.” 

He didn’t answer. 

“We were wondering if you’d like a place to stay.” 

When he turned, Jewell’s eyes were shimmering. “It was Aunt Ruth’s idea, really. She likes you. Still calls you the Murray boy.” She smiled. 

“Wait. What? She knew. This whole time, she knew?” 

“No, not right away. But she figured it out. Your voice, she said, something familiar in it. Aunt Ruth may be old, but she’s not completely dotty.” 

“So you want me to live there? With you?” 

He pictured himself sitting at Mrs. Spooner’s table, the plates heaped with meatloaf or roast chicken, Salvatore slipping around their legs, begging for a handout. After dinner, they’d play Scrabble or Parcheesi maybe, or one of those corny games he’d loved as a kid. He imagined Jewell padding around the house in polka-dot socks, Mrs. Spooner making them mint iced tea. Upstairs, his bedroom would be sheltered by an oak tree. 

He’d help out, of course. Weed the yard. Cook a dinner or two. 

“No, that’s not—” Jewell looked down. “Ruth found this program downtown,” she said, her words coming now in a rush, “where everybody gets their own room and there’s meals and classes and health care and everything.” 

A program, he thought. Classes. Not “The guest room upstairs, that’s yours.” Not “Think of this as home.” His stomach tightened. 

“I gotta go,” he told Jewell and pulled himself away. 

No one had come for him that day after school. He’d watched blue SUVs and black station wagons pull up, kids get in, cars take off. “Can we give you a lift?” one of the other mothers called. He shook his head, worried he’d miss his mom driving in the opposite direction. After what seemed like hours, he walked to the edge of the parking lot, willing the next car to be theirs. The sun was bright, but rain fell suddenly, cold and sparkling. A greasy rainbow appeared on the asphalt and still no one came. 

Finally he walked home. The house was empty and living room dark because all the curtains were drawn. The air smelled like someone had way overdone it with one of those fake flowery scents. It hadn’t smelled like anything when he left. Upstairs, water was pooled in the hall. When he came back down, a woman was standing in their kitchen. 

“I’m Miss Blevin,” she said. “But call me Tess if you’d like. Your father sent me.” 

“Where is my mother?” 

“Do you like lemonade, John Patrick? We can make some if you want.” She opened her bag to show him a dozen bright lemons. 

“Where are my mother and father?” 

“Do you like honey or sugar in lemonade?” 

He didn’t answer. 

“Why don’t we add a little of both?” 

He didn’t want to, but he drank what she mixed up, what tasted so sweet it made his front teeth hurt but felt good going down this throat. She smiled, put the pitcher in the refrigerator, and they sat and watched TV until his father came back from the hospital. 

No. He remembered what he’d forgotten long ago: the glass slipping out of his hand and smashing on the white floor, Tess crouching, sweeping wet splinters out of the corner and without looking up saying in much too calm a voice, “Everything will be fine, John Patrick. Hard, maybe, at first. But then, fine. I promise.” 

Du pushed straight uphill to where the cliff got so steep the houses disappeared, to where he had to keep himself from falling backward. Fuck. He’d live out here—forget hoses, drink from streams. The canyon was full of hollow places he had yet to find, clearings padded with weeds. His mother had had this book, how to live off plants in the wild. The blackberries were dead, all shriveled heads and broken stems, but there was plenty of miner’s lettuce left. He’d tried some once. Tasted pretty good. 

The trail was slick and gashed with rain. Mud stuck to the bottoms of his shoes, making every step feel strange. He unrolled his sleeves and pulled them down over his wrists. There was a thread of cold in the air, part of the shivery cold that would come full-on the next day. 

He kept climbing, his heart banging in his chest. At the top of the hill, he’d let himself slow down, head off into those eucalyptus trees, lie down maybe on the smooth, damp dirt. He’d stare up at the branches, watching his mother’s face float between the leaves, all of it coming this time he hoped: her eyebrows, lips, the soft slope of both cheeks. 

LAURIE ANN DOYLE

Laurie Ann Doyle is the author of World Gone Missing, which New York Times bestselling writer Edan Lepucki called a “gorgeous debut.” Winner of the Alligator Juniper Fiction Award and nominee for a Pushcart Prize, her work appears in McSweeney’s, Alta Journal, Under the Sun, The Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere. She teaches at The Writers Grotto and UC Berkeley Extension. Find her at laurieanndoyle.com.