The Way Here [2:6]

Part 2: Chapter 6

Helen answered the phone and listened. She nodded some and Jonathan watched her, knowing what it was. Or knowing something of it in the shape of her silent mouth.

He heard the water running and watched her where she stood. The phone at her ear and her hand poised above the faucet in half-use. She stopped the water’s running and looked at Jonathan. He was looking at her still. Her hand was resting on the silver looking tap and her eyes conveyed some tragedy.

These are the phone calls we get now, he thought. We’ve fielded our share of announcements and invites—dinner or bridge, childbirth—and we’re left with the inevitabilities of our age. Endings.

She said, I see. Uh-huh. And we’ll do what we can.

“What is it,” he asked.

She raised her resting hand.

The conversation ended, or the one side of it ended and she hung up the phone. She stood by the sink, confused of what she had been doing.

“Why was I up?”

“Who was that?” he asked.

“Where?”

“On the phone. You answered the phone.”

Chicken for dinner, did he want chicken? He didn’t care.

“Maybe you should go.”

“I’ll decide soon. I promise.”

“Do you want wine? Carrots or broccoli? Potatoes. We’re out of potatoes. If you go when will you go? Red or white?”

“I’m older now. Why do you want me to keep going to these places. You never wanted me going before.”

“I always supported you. I’ve been devoted.”

“It’s not that.”

“You need to put things behind you. What is it?”

“And you think going will do that.”

“I don’t know what to think.”

When you’re young they tell you how lucky you are. Life ahead. Go any place, do anything. They tell you that now anyways. All at your fingertips, your grasping, greedy flesh and form. Go west, young man. If the world’s an oyster it must be yours. Eat on keep on wash it down with the blood of the river there. Wish I’d had it so good, they finish. Wish I had your options. When you’re young, this is what they tell you.

When they were young it was a different story. Uphill both ways, that sort of thing. You know the bit. When I was young, we didn’t have the chances you have now. When I was young, the world reached no farther than street’s end. You didn’t have much and you didn’t know it.

If I were young I’d be standing there, heat of day rising off blacktop and brick streets, air heavy on my shoulders, and I’d be saying one thing or another about baseball or bikes or the heroes of the day. I’d be there, not a thought in the world about getting here, content with debating Mantle over Maris. I’d be there, standing in disbelief that I’d one day bother with a life beyond the Slovak patch in Painter’s Addition.

You can be anything, they’d say.

I wanted to be like my father.

If I were young I’d be standing here, smell of diesel and sight of exhaust—the glass plant and the brick, the coal industry agog at its bust—and one hand on the bike he bought me, one with the ball or glove. I’d be here, in first reflection over the swallowed pride, his, in having to charge my first Schwinn, and the Sunday guilt, mine, at the purchase he couldn’t make. Not safely. Not without pain of notice.

And the four of us kids not five years apart. And my mom, hard old Slovak that she was, keeping us in our few shirts, our pairs of jeans, the shoes that had to last. And my father who never raised a hand but we all knew it was there. The knowing self, the kind that scares you to see who you are or who you could be. Potential. It was my mom who was kinetic. Handle-flyer and storm of fists.

Not an education among them till I made the go.