The Way Here [2:4]

Part 2: Chapter 4

Streator. The row housing. The tracks. The glass plant rising out of the mud intersection, rising out of the massive earth plot with its steel and aluminum siding. The glass plant over the four routes of iron rails that were there, beyond his first home. The plant that was with the girded footbridge. The bridge with its metal cage-work to keep people from jumping or falling or whatever the hell they did. Spare rusted rails were there. Rotted ties. A line of boxcars waiting. A plot of green near the brick depot shown like an island amid the red and brown rusting of earth and iron. Brick. Water in spots from the latest rain.

He heard the sound of his feet over the rails’ gravel bed or he walked with uneven strides from tie to tie and heard his feet soft over the soaked hardwoods. He heard the hollow echo of his steps along the footbridge, that same echo always. The industrial universe, he walked. The mechanical and metal and manufacturing world with its near silences now. Streator’s good hard industry long passed to Chicago and Detroit and the Indiana lakeside.

The sky was empty of clouds when he walked or it was filled end to flat end with the gray canopy. Or great storms rolled through and he walked despite the rain or the black clouds looming. The sky was always empty or the sky was always filled. What it wasn’t was broken into parts by rising, jutting mountains with the gray faces or snowcaps. What it wasn’t was broken by concrete topographies and Eastern European brick on brick. What the sky wasn’t was obvious to him, perhaps for the first time. It was little more than its own collection of flat blues and whites and he watched it—cloud-filled or blue—as if he watched for something to happen. It was empty and waiting for something to take it, challenge it or change it, but no movement of thunderhead or pastel stroked cirrus would do. The sky was flat and waiting.

The sky was all flatness and the roads he walked or the straight lined tracks or the dirt ways around the factories were all flat too. So he climbed the footbridge for the vantage and he saw again how flat and expectant the sky was, how flat and rusted the world was.

He walked towards St. Stephens on Shabona. The brick building and high walls. Its cornerstone—1907. He sat in its balcony with those kneeling in the pews below, those kneeling in silent or humming penitence. Looming acceptance or forgiveness. Newly expectant. The vaulted ceiling and the stained glass. The deep purples, blood-like, of the altar’s fabrics and the gilded pieces glowing.

He walked LaSalle Street near the river’s silent eddies. He walked the brick sidewalks overgrown with grass edges, misshapen with the roots of trees growing. The brick streets with their high gutters and their worn lanes like prairie ruts.

This is where I have been, he thought. This is where I’m from. And I am overgrown as that sidewalk there. Rusting as those rails. Empty and expectant as that sky, for something to fill me or make me new.

He walked in the morning with the dog or he went in the evening. Or he drove west out of Streator, west along straight two lane roads. He drove west through peak cornfields and the furrowed rows of rich produce. The black soils, mineral heavy, spotted, stretched left and right of the road and were crossed by the iron tracks that ran there too. The soils were interrupted by farmhouse and silo or the gravel lined access roads that left the highway at random intervals.

He drove with his two hands on the wheel and his eyes focussed or unfocussed on the horizon. And in every direction it was the same flat meeting of earth and sky so that if he looked in absent wonder, his eyes taking the whole in view, he could see the globe’s own slight curving and steady arc. A round world, a cyclical universe, so that to keep going and going you would no sooner reach a destination than pass through it and find yourself there, sitting there, driving there, where you started.

“Do you remember where you were when I forgave you for being who you are?” She was standing in the doorway, arms crossed.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I remember where you were,” she said. “You were on your way to Vietnam and I was giving birth to your first little girl. And I forgave you when I saw what you had given me, when she was healthy and beautiful. And I forgave you for being where you were and not here with me. That was the first time I forgave you for being you and it was the first time I knew that I would only ever love you.”

“The first time?” He was sitting in the leather chair, feet up. “There were others?” he asked.

“I’ve had to over the years,” she said. “To forgive you when you were absent and I was here alone or with the girls and you were gone. I’ve forgiven you all my life. You’re the bravest and most loving man I know but you yourself have always been afraid of that. You are. You’ve been afraid to be where you needed to be.”

“Do you remember when my father died?”

“Of course.”

“Do you remember him much?”

“Of course,” she said again.

“He worked in this town his whole life,” he said. “As hard as he was the man loved only one thing his whole life, his wife and kids. He worked his whole life for us, never did anything for himself except a piss-drunk Sunday. The last night I spent with him was a Friday and we had a drink at Omar’s. You remember where that was?”

“Of course.”

“All he did that night, he looked at me and he looked at the TV. He smoked, the man always had a cigarette in his mouth, and he drank. He shook my hand the next day and I drove down to Carbondale with Jer and never saw him alive again.”

“I don’t know where you’re going.”

“My dad loved one thing and that one thing killed him here.”

“Loving his family did not kill your father.”

“I think that while he loved us he never knew how much he hated it too. A wife working. Four kids. All of us in that one bedroom place in Painter’s Addition. It was all he could manage. That was all we ever had and when he died it just got worse for Mom and James and my sisters.”

“I still don’t understand where you’re going.”

“I think I’ve always been afraid of both loving and hating you. He never got out of here and I was determined to.”

“What am I supposed to say? That I’m sorry your family was here and you had to keep coming back to us?”

“No.”

“That it’s my fault—the girls’—that you made a career coming and going?”

“No.”

“That we’re the reason this thing happened?”

“What thing?”

“Thomas. I don’t know.”

“Helen, no. You say I’m brave but I’ve always been so scared of failing and at so many levels. A failure here, for you and Sarah and Leslie. Not being able to do what Dad did. Scared of being here just the same, and living and dying like he did too. I’ve always been afraid of not being where I needed to be. Or being in the wrong place for the wrong reasons.”

“The life you want and the life you’re supposed to have?”

“No.”

“What?”

“You have to forgive me one more time,” he said. “You have to know I’m sorry and you have to forgive me.”

“Forgive you for what? Leaving me all these times? Forgive you for…”

“Everything,” he said.

“Tell you again that it’s okay? That I understand?”

“Yes.”

“How do I know? Why? How do I know it matters even a little?”

“You have to believe me that I’m here because I need to be.”

“I want you to be here because you want to be, not because you need.”

“I do want.”

“How do I know?”

“I’m asking you to believe in me once more. I’ve never asked more and I’m asking you again. I know what I’ve done.”

“Do you?”

“I know the damage I’ve caused.”

“Do you?” She walked into the room there, her arms still crossed, hair done, makeup. Her woman’s figure. She leaned against the desk and repeated, “Do you?”

“Do you know how embarrassed…”

“I don’t want you to be embarrassed.”

“Do you know how sorry I am that this is who I am?”

“I don’t want you to be sorry about who you are.”

“I’m sorry that I’ve brought this hurt to you. I love you. I always have loved you and I always will but what happened to me I cannot be sorry for.”

“I can’t understand you.”

“You have to. What I brought here, I’m sorry for. But what happened there I have to deal with differently. I lost something I loved when…”

“I can’t understand you.”

“You have to because it’s the truth. It was my fault. I was the reason he was there. If I had not wanted…” he stopped. “And because I was there, because he was there, because of me. Because I have never known just where was right or wrong I lost one thing I loved and I need to replace it.”

“That doesn’t make sense to me. Do you mean Thomas? What do you mean? Do you mean you have room enough to love so many things and you need that room filled?”

“I mean that I am at the age my father died and I have spent my time trying not to die like he did.”

“I still don’t understand any of this.” Exasperated.

“I just need you to forgive me.”

“How can I when you’re not sorry?”

“I am.”

“Sorry for what?”

“I don’t regret what I have learned. Maybe how I learned it. Do I think about what happened there? Yes. But did that thing that happened teach me something about this place here? Yes. And that I can’t regret. I can’t regret learning to love where I am, wanting to be back where I am. But it’s not overnight that I’m okay here. I have seen and known too much to ever be okay okay, really okay with this place we live in.”

“This home? Streator?”

“This place that has so much. We have so much and so many have nothing and I am dealing with that. I have more than any man could ever dream and I am not perfectly comfortable with that. That is what I must learn, too. To be comfortable.”

“You have never been comfortable? You expect me to believe…”

“I’m trying so hard to keep from going crazy. I’m trying so hard my whole life…”

“This is what’s crazy…”

“I’m trying so hard…”

“You are crazy to think…”

“I am not going anywhere…”

“Or just go…”

“I left for you, for this…”

“Why…”

“It was a thing that happened…”

“How…”

“It was a thing I did…”

“What were you…”

“It was a thing I didn’t understand…”

“No, I don’t understand. I can understand forgiving you. This I can understand. I can understand your being lonely or your being sorry. This I can understand. I am the one that can’t understand how you think about this. How Thomas, how your father fit into this. How this,” she swept her arms around the room, picked up a book from the desk where she leaned. “How can this here lead you to do what you do?”

He laid in the grass and thought of a time when they were young. He laid in the grass with the trees moving above him there and the sky a white-blue. He watched the moon move above in shadowed form, its arc fading into unfinished expression against the sky. He laid with the air moving over him and the branches playing lightly and a bird passing over too. The smells meeting him were fresh grass smells and the breeze washed this away so he smelled nothing.

He felt the lawn against his back and the grass scratching above his collar. He felt his pant leg moving with the breeze and heard the leaning, bending tree limbs. A sound inside the house. A door closing, a cupboard. And the sound of running water. In the distance he heard sirens and then they were gone with the water sounds too. The sounds of cars coming and going.

The dog was there, lying on its side with its one foreleg stretched out and its others straight in the grass. Another sound and the dog’s head raised, its ears perked, and he watched its one eye stare in the direction of the house and then he watched the dog lay its head back down and re-stretch its foreleg.

And he lay there thinking of a time when they were young and together. When their moments of lust or passion made him love her. He loved the feel of her hair in his hands, her lying on top of him. He loved her skin and her smell. He knew he loved her then and he had loved her since but how do you show your love after all this? After that? When you’ve come this far how do you know it’s still love?

They met in high school and became sweethearts. Her friends and his friends made for a group of German and Slovak kids whose parents worked the glass plant or the mines. Neither was as popular as the kids they ran with, kids with nicknames like Toad and Skiba. Muck and Sully and Paddle Foot and Comb. He was doughy and not athletic. She was quiet and sincere. And love was a stages thing. And the two of them came to know each other, learned about love and sex in clumsy but dependent ways.

In college you were an item still and she in Rockford and you in Carbondale. You were there with your friends and your fraternity and there was no thought for the future. The future would find you. The war had your brother and you had your deferment and when you married you had that too.

The first time you left her it was for Fort Gordon, Georgia. The deferment was at its end and when you were drafted they put you to work writing stories and shooting photos. Morale pieces. No flag-draped coffins arriving there, no wounded walking the tarmac.

Your brother died without you knowing it, your being done with him after… And it struck you in such and such ways and you dealt in such and such ways. A father and a brother inside two years and when you asked to go over they sent you. Some strange reconciliation. Ghosts to gather.

When you asked to go they sent you and Helen said go, too, knowing for the first that the man she’d learned to love was one with something of his own still to learn. And then you were gone, really gone and she was back in Streator with her family there. She was here and you were there, and your chase began. But how do you chase for something you don’t understand? How do you chase after something like that?

You do what you did. First you’re here and then there and she waiting, still with her patience and her silence and her sincerity. And slowly—though in the end you can’t say if it was a slow or quick thing—you become the person you are and the two of you go on with that because soon there are two girls and a house and a lawn to be mowed and a church to attend.

And the idea that you’re seeking something is lost and where you find yourself you’d have never guessed, but you keep on. You keep on and your successes are lauded and your missteps are few. You keep on and who would have imagined, small town boy makes good, and the wife and children are trophies themselves because your life led you there. It was there for you and so it all continues, the birthdays and the family travel and the anniversaries that come and go. The house you build in that new development where the city’s industry is a faint scent on a summer’s wind and the place you were—as a child—is a landscape turned foreign.

You like your name in bylines. You like your objective stake in it all. You like your high-mounted vantage and your steady payoffs to the Securitat or the government minders poured into cheap suits and sitting behind desks with shuffled papers and rotary dial phones. You like your adventure though you reference it glibly, smugly, as if you’re in it for the power of truth.

And then you find yourself here. You know what you’ve missed, you know the half-truths and the untruths in your own little story of progress. The home here you built, sure, but the home here was another object along the way and everything inside it—your wife, your kids—lived on with and without you. You know what you missed with your sleeping in unheated hotel rooms or eating candy bars and Coke while writing Breadlines: How Communism Failed Itself. You know what you missed with all that time in Turkey and Greece, then on to Moscow and the rest of the Bloc. You know what you missed and more importantly, you sit there and know what you’re missing.

It was okay to get where you were going without asking. But you’re laying there now, the sky overhead and the trees moving in gentle sway, the sounds you hear drawing your eyes this way and that—you’re laying there now and you’re trying to move on from it. You got where you are without asking, and now you’re not sure it’s where you belong. Or you’re not sure it’s where you want. Or you’re not sure it’s where you deserve. And the ghosts that haunt you will haunt you still. Your father maybe. Your brother. Maybe Thomas. No, Thomas surely. And the others? How many follow you and how many lead you still?

Jonathan watched a neighbor mow his lawn. He watched the man follow the hard buzzing of the motor in shorts that dipped beneath his knees. He watched the man with his knit shirt and his bald head mapped with age—broken blood vessels, bruises, the creases that ran off his smooth head as if the man’s skin were pooling toward his jowls and neck.

This is what we do now, he thought. I am steps behind that man with his weight gaining, his shoulders sloping. I am steps behind that man as he welcomes some bit task—washing the car, mowing the lawn, the Florida vacation—as substitute for the search. Accepts them as if some reward for the thirty years behind the desk with the secretary patiently waiting for another phone to ring and the men’s room humor waiting for the prostate to start and stop.

He saw the man finish mowing. He saw the man sweep a sidewalk, a patio. In the late afternoon the man lit a grill and later still he sat with his legs up or poked and prodded whatever was cooked. He and a woman ate a meal with the sun going down and the day’s heat waning. They talked about their summer’s trip west or their plans to see the coast in the winter. Won’t it be lovely? The kids with their own families now. And what beautiful grandchildren to have and what gains the son-in-law is making. Quite a boy, yes, and aren’t we lucky? Yes, we’re blessed.

Or he saw the man in his home, drink in hand at midday with the lawn mowed and scenting the neighborhood with its fresh cut grass. He saw the man with TV or book but mostly with drink, and slowly the man dozed in the chair, a leather number with matching ottoman.

His wife came in later with a head already shaking. Her husband of—how many years now?—drunk and sleeping and on such a fine Saturday too. Is this what I married? And later still, with a ball game on the television and new drink in hand, they ate a meal of her making and spoke little. They spoke maybe of plans for tomorrow and in the end, the conversation finished with we’ll see and maybe, sure.

Inertia may lead us, Jonathan thought, but whether in lines or cycles we still don’t know just where we’re going. We know only where we’ve been.