like basement and cat-piss

We entered our new house, Dad’s old one, and dropped our duffel bags on the curling linoleum by the washer and dryer in the kitchen. He gave us the tour, cordial, like out-of-town guests, but we had been here before, spent at least a week out of every summer here for the last seven years. The house was natural for him, the rain-stained ceiling tiles and wood-paneling fit him like tucked in t-shirts and steel-toed work boots. But he seemed uncomfortable nonetheless – “this will be your room Tyler, it’s the master, plenty of room for you to do whatever you do. And the queen waterbed is all yours”. It had been all his and my step-mom’s. “This is the only bathroom boys, but we’ll make do right?” and he rubbed our heads in that way that messes up your hair but wasn’t intended to necessarily, makes him almost apologize. “Of course you could always piss out back behind the porch if you really needed to.”

He showed us the entire house, dank basement with his model railroad fetish. Back yard with his two dogs, our dogs, we were strangers to them. Brenda sniffed my knee incessantly and turned to lie down in the corner of the porch. At the fridge he muttered, “Not a ton in here right now, not for two growin’ boys at least, but we’ll figure something out” as he pulled a pitcher of apple juice from the door, shook it. I wasn’t 100% sure he was talking to us.

A three-way hug: Robby, nearly fifteen, myself, and my father, a close-eyed smile masking years of distance, a dirty clothes pile of mistakes, scratchy beard smelling of 10W-40. We turned soon as his grip relaxed, then that extra squeeze on the top of a man’s, a young man’s shoulder, that says “I’m sorry,” “Thank you,” “I’m scared,” saying I’m not sure exactly what it’s supposed to say. We sat spread out on the family room couches, What is the room called when we’re not here?, and I stared around, not directly at them, but at the blank 20” tv, a reflection of my father and brother side-by-side, trapped, isolated on the dark screen. At the rack of rifles above the dining room table: a 12gauge, .22, and a .30-.30 (the one that would shoot my one and only deer with). I looked out the family room window onto Pearl St. where the sidewalks were cracked and the wind swayed oak tree branches so they appeared to be waving, welcoming us, or shaking heads mocking, depending on how you looked at it. I saw a green pickup truck pass, plywood stacked in the bed. A girl on a mountain bike. 12? 13? Does she live around here?

“I know, guys, this will be difficult for all of us. It hasn’t been easy for your mom or me.” His second wife had just left him; she wanted nothing to do with raising teenage boys. “But I think it’s for the best in the long run.” These were the same two couches we sat on years earlier as Mom said, “Your father and I love you both very much, and this isn’t your fault, I promise, but …” My nose was burning at the stench of cat-piss stains on the scratchy carpet.