Page 17 of Missing Moon
He smiles faintly. “It’s still there, but the body is getting old and tired now. Homeless camping across Europe is a young man’s game. C’mon in.”
He leads us inside.
The living room smells like cigarettes that have been sitting in a wet ash tray for a week mixed with marijuana. I can’t help but cough a little on my first breath. I’m kinda shocked at how neat the living room is. I expected to see the packaging from freezer meals and take-out all over the place. Dad had an awful habit of just dropping that stuff wherever he happened to be. With no Mary Lou here to clean up after him, he’d have been a king sitting on a throne of Lean Cuisine boxes… or whatever brand he got to liking these days.
The centerpiece of the living room is an old wide recliner chair, dark brown and droopy. If Pixar made a movie with talking furniture, Dad’s chair would be a basset hound. The ceiling is severely yellowed from decades of cigarette smoke, concentrated in a brownish-orange ‘puddle’ stain directly above that chair.
A few bits of baseball memorabilia decorate the room, along with a big poster of Dad as a young man in mid-swing. It’s framed behind glass so the paper hasn’t yellowed, though a thick layer of cigarette smoke oil coats the glass, yellowing the image. There’s no sign of a baseball in the photo, so I can’t tell if he missed or hit a home run there. He was only ever in the minor leagues, but to hear him talk, you’d think he was Jose Canseco or something.
Looking at that old ‘baseball card’ of him fills my head with his voice telling me that college is for brainwashing people into government control... and I’m not smart enough for it, anyway. Sigh. All these years, I kept telling myself his disapproval didn’t bother me. Guess it did more than I admitted to myself. Freaking Elizabeth knew that, too. She must have. Why else send me to an alternate world where I got to relive that day? Bitch tried to break me, but I’m stronger than I look.
Tammy and Anthony glance around. My son’s face gives away no hint of opinion. Tammy’s got a ‘oof, this is going tobe a project’ expression. Paxton looks like she wants a hazmat suit. She’s standing three steps in from the door, feet together, arms clutched to her chest, as if she’s trying to avoid even touching the air in here.
“Now I know why your brother was always naked,” whispers Tammy. “Your clothes can’t stink like cigarettes if you don’t wear any.”
Anthony laughs.
So does Dusk. “Ahh, Speaking of Clay, have you heard from him at all?”
“Yeah, he stopped by my place not too long ago, for Thanksgiving. Seems to be doing okay for himself.”
“Cool.” Dusk nods.
“Eww,” whispers Paxton. “My hair’s going to reek.”
“Don’t worry.” Ant pats her on the shoulder. “We’ll just burn our clothes, hose off in the yard, and drive home naked.” Anthony nudges her. “I’m not being serious.”
She eyeballs him.
“Or we could wear trash bags?” He grins.
All of a sudden, a breeze whips up and whirls around the room before rushing down the hallway. A faint minty aroma lingers in its wake.
“Whoa…” Dusk turns around in a circle, then gazes down the hall where the breeze went. “Did anyone else notice that... wind?”
“Wind?” I ask. “We’re inside, silly.”
Tammy sniffs audibly, then smiles, proud of herself.
Dusk looks at me as if he’s about to ask something, but athudfrom deeper in the house distracts him. He holds up an ‘excuse me a moment’ finger, then hurries out of the living room.
Equal parts worried and curious, I follow. As does everyone else.
We go through the dining room into another short hallway with two rooms that never really had a defined purpose to them other than storing stuff. At the end of the hall, a doorway leads out into Mom’s ‘greenhouse.’ At some point in this house’s existence, this door went to the outside. Our parents built a greenhouse against the side of the building. It’s not easy getting large trucks out here, so the story goes Dad hand-poured the concrete slab floor over the course of several months.
Six rows of narrow tables hold all manner of potted plants and grow beds, mostly with herbs, spices, and vegetables. Everything growing in here is useful in one way or another… no pointless decorations. I do remember coming here as a kid to get away from the choking cigarette smoke from Dad. This room stinks too… but in a different way. Dirt, plants, wetness, and fertilizer. Not a great aroma, admittedly, but it bothered me less than the choking cloud Dad summoned. Part of me felt grateful he would disappear for days or weeks at a time when his job sent him all over the place. Finally, we could breathe inside the house.
Mom’s sitting on a stool by a huge tray of green bean plants, staring into the leaves with the intensity of a five-year-old watchingTeletubbies. It’s kind of a shock to see her. The reality in front of me clashes with my memory, mostly that her hair has become silver and white. Last time I saw her, she still had brown hair. Mom’s got a poncho on over a sweater, T-shirt, and jeans. She looks so frail and thin.
Seeing her as she is now fills me with a sense of guilt. As a child, I resented her lack of interest in me—in all of us. With the clarity of adulthood, it now hits me that she didn’t have much choice. Standing there watching her, it’s pretty obvious she’s got something going on. Dementia perhaps? Except for her obvious age now, she’s pretty much doing the same thing I remember. Just sitting here in the greenhouse all damn day staring at the plants. Sometimes if we tried to talk to her, she’drespond for a little while, but her moods varied. When she got into one of her manic phases, she’d totally obsess over some hobby until she got bored with it. It was kind of remarkable how she could pick things up so fast. Like, no experience whatsoever with pottery, but she picked it up and started making stuff immediately, as though she’d been doing it for years.
Many times I tried to talk to her as a kid, she’d just sit there silently staring at the plants, often ignoring me. It made me angry and hurt as a kid. Now I feel bad for her.
Dusk’s frantically looking around for whatever made the thud. Nothing looks out of place. Then again, it’s hard to say what’s out of place in a room that looks like it recently experienced an earthquake. Small wooden crates and cardboard boxes are everywhere, pushed aside or stuffed under tables just enough to allow a person to walk down the aisles between tables.
Whatever fell, it wasn’t Mom.
I approach and rest a hand on her shoulder. “Hey, Mom. Sorry I haven’t been around more. Life’s been… weird.”