Nowhereville

I read through the lines again, thinking how peculiar the whole thing was. Why would a woman who had tried to erase all signs of two of her children’s existence leave everything that she owned to the same two children? Of course, “everything” wasn’t much: just a half-rotten, moth-eaten house in the middle of nowhere. However, it still didn’t make any sense. Why didn’t she leave this dark, gloomy pit to one of those other pale- and serious-faced boys and girls I had seen in the family portrait on the stairs? Why would she choose her least favorite sons as the ones to inherit everything she would leave behind after she left Earth? But then my eyes drifted toward the first line of the scribbled manuscript of the will, and an unpleasant idea as to what might have been the reason of the strange choice made by the old woman, started forming in my mind. What if the explanation for the peculiar will was in front of my very eyes, written in the old woman’s messy handwriting? It was the simplest, yet the most unsettling explanation I could think of. What if, what if they had all died? What if all of the dark-haired, gaunt-faced children in that picture were all six feet under now, as I was sitting at Grandma Faye’s makeup table, reading her last wishes? Although I had never known them, and although there was nothing relating me to them other than the blood running through my very veins – which now seemed more important than ever – this perspective was too alarming to even consider at the moment, so I took the will and stuffed it inside my messenger bag, knowing that I would need it later, and then left the room.

I looked up at the now completely black night sky as I sat outside on the balcony at the end of the upper floor corridor. I had found an old rusty lounge chair, which creaked as I sat down in it. I took out my battered Zippo lighter and lit a Marlboro red. As the smoke filled my lungs and the nicotine spread through my body, I instantly felt better. There was something about cigarettes that always had a benign effect on me when I was stressed or scared. I had tried to quit, but I couldn’t kid myself; I needed them. It’s ironic, isn’t it, depending on something so small – just a bunch of dried up leaves rolled up in a piece of paper. I sometimes hear myself say that I can’t live without cigarettes, but is it really so? How many little things like cigarettes do we cling on to for no apparent reason except for our own volition? Isn’t it true that, although we always say that we are independent, we in fact weave around us the very cage that keeps us from being free?

Although the sun had long gone below the horizon, the stifling heat persisted in the night air. I could see almost nothing, no matter how much I squinted through the pitch black. There was no light, as far as I could see, around me. The balcony was at the end of the house opposite to the street; it probably stood over the back yard. I couldn’t be sure, because I couldn’t see anything.

I liked this darkness. It was real, not like the fake darkness of the big city. In Cali, night was just about as bright as day. During the day, you had to squint through the bright California sun, and at night, your eyes were repeatedly stabbed by the cold, rude glare of artificial light. Right now, here, in the middle of all this soft, velvety darkness, my eyes could finally rest.
The silence was complete, no leaves were rustling (not that there were any trees around), no dogs were barking, no cars’ engines could be heard; none of the normal noises you hear in any normal place on Earth. There was nothing. The silence was thick, dense, and it filled my years as if it were water. It pressed against my eardrums to the point where my head started aching. I stubbed out my cigarette and after the tobacco smell disappeared, I caught another smell. It was something foul, sweet, and heavy that almost made me dizzy. I couldn’t locate its source. The darkness that at first had seemed benign and relaxing was now heavy and oppressing. I didn’t like the old house, but I didn’t like being outside of it either. Both my prison and my shelter against the darkness, I recalled the old woman’s words.

When the darkness, the silence, and the smell all became insufferable, I stepped back inside and closed the glass door behind me. Because the sight of the darkness outside through the glass panes, like a black hole gaping into the abyss, unnerved me, I drew the curtains. I walked into the big bedroom and once again headed toward the makeup table. I picked up the receiver, expecting it not to work. However, when I put the receiver next to my ear, I was surprised to hear the tone. Therefore, I reflexively dialed my dad’s house number. I pressed the green button and I waited impatiently for him to pick up. He eventually did on the fourth ring.

“Hello? Dad?” I said.

“John? Is that you?” I heard dad’s husky voice. When I heard his voice, I could see his image in my head; his tired, sad face and his droopy, bloodshot eyes. I fought with myself to replace that image with the one I had seen in the black and white picture on the staircase.

“Yeah, Dad, it’s me,” I answered, smiling to myself. No matter how tired his voice sounded, I was still happy to hear it. “I’m just calling to tell you that I’m okay and that I’m here and I managed to find the house.”

“Oh, I thought something was wrong,” he replied hesitantly. Reading between the lines, I knew that he meant that he didn’t see the reason of calling him if everything was okay and wished I wouldn’t have. Although he had never talked explicitly about his feelings related to his childhood, his family, and this place, I knew that he didn’t want anything to do with any of it. But still I called because I was convinced that for once in his life he had to take some form of responsibility for what was going on around him. So I prodded him on.

“You know, Dad, you never told me how beautiful this house was,” I lied shamelessly. Hearing that he didn’t reply, I continued. I was determined to at least hear him talk about it. Before, when I had been waiting for him to pick up the phone, I had realized just how much anger boiled inside me; I was angry at him for sending me up here, in the freaking middle of the goddamn Mojave desert, in a God-forsaken town where only freaks like that horrible girl I had met lived. I continued relentlessly. “And there’s so many pictures, Dad! There even was one of you and uncle Merv, you know?” I continued softly, enjoying every syllable I spoke, because I knew how uncomfortable it made dad feel. I heard a sharp intake of breath at the other end of the line, and I knew that I had hit where it hurt most.

“Oh, really,” I heard him answer hesitantly after a long pause. I could see him, although he was hundreds of miles away, fidgeting ike an anxious teenager. It depressed me, seeing a full-grown man being so vulnerable, so insecure. However, just imagining his weakness made me want to go even further with my cruelties. “That’s great, sonny, just great. Um, look, I have to go now, John. You do what you have to do there, and then –”

“You know what I noticed, Daddy,” I interrupted rudely, in the sweetest voice I could muster. “All of us, me, you, uncle Merv and Grandma Faye and everyone else in the family, we all have the same nose. And we all look so much alike! You never told me that.” There was a hiss at the other end of the line after I had finished my remark and I instantly knew I had gone too far. Dad was seemingly an inoffensive, harmless guy, almost to the point of pushover-ness. But when you crossed the line with him, you really crossed the line. And then and there, I had crossed it.

“Now you listen here, Johnny-boy, an’ you listen well,” he started in a harsh, adamantine voice. “You know since you were this big that I don’ like talkin’ ‘bout that stuff and you know it damn well. So if this is some sort o’ joke you’re playin’ on me, well, I’ll be damned if I don’t hang up on you right this very moment an’ you can call back as much as you want, I’m not gonna answer.” He drew his breath loudly as he finished and then remained silent, waiting for my reply. His scorning words echoed in my brain for a while. Dad, whenever he was angry, forgot all manners of correct English speaking and broke into a sort of a Southern dialect combined with a fine choice of swear words. He had, indeed, caught me off-guard, so I had to think for a while before answering.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” I answered shamefully. All of the anger that had been welling up inside of me just a moment ago had deflated instantaneously when I heard the tone of my father’s voice, being replaced by a strong surge of shame. “I guess I just—” I trailed off, not knowing what would be the appropriate expression. I knew what I was thinking, but I couldn’t exactly tell that to my old man. Fortunately, he came to the rescue.

“Never you mind, sonny, it happens to the best of us,” he answered, in a soft, soothing, but rather sad voice. This change in his tone increased the feeling of shame hundredfold. Why had I even thought about doing that to him? He was just an old man, and the years had not been easy on him. It was natural of him to send me to deal with all this; after all, who would want to be in the situation of having to revisit their childhood home, in the case when they had been most brutally banished from it by their own mother, all those years ago? Indeed, the memories would be overpowering for someone who already was under enough stress. It seemed the most selfish thing now, wanting to make my own father feel guilty for asking me for help in such a delicate situation. I wanted to apologize on the spot, but he didn’t appear to want to talk to me anymore. “Now, my lad, you watch your step over there, ‘cause it’s not exactly a friendly place. You do what you have to do as quick as you can, and do not linger there any longer than you have to, no matter the circumstances, you hear me? Come back as soon as you can. That place, it’s not a good place, if you know what I mean.” There was an earnestness in his tone as he said all that that made me suspicious.

“No, Dad, I don’t know what you mean,” I replied. My curiosity was now positively itching. “What are you talking about?”

“Never you mind,” he repeated in the same passionate voice. “Just come back as soon as you can, ‘kay?”

“Sure, Dad, don’t you worry for me, not one second,” I answered reassuringly, not wanting to push him any further down memory lane than I already had. “I’ll talk to you later, Dad, all right?”

“Yes, yes, John. You take care, my boy.”