Home Again

Carver DeMaris guides his rental car off I-76 and makes a right at the intersection a few miles from the house he lived in for the first seventeen years of his life. Twenty-one if you count intermittent breaks from college. He only counts the first seventeen.

He passes familiar sights. The high school, with a sign out front still congratulating the seniors who graduated months earlier. The post office, one lonely car parked next to the flagpole. Cookley Park, the grass short and brown in the August heat.

He turns left onto a wider road. A succession of signs dominate the view: McDonald’s, Arby’s, Dairy Queen, Village Inn, Sonic, Burger King. They used to call it Fast Food Alley. Maybe they still do.

At the light past the Burger King, before the traffic backup waiting to enter the Walmart parking lot, Carver makes another turn. A half-mile down the road he passes a peeling sign—“Welcome to Patience: It’s a Virtue”—and the car bumps over a set of railroad tracks poking through crumbling pavement.

There’s no need to slow down. Patience—in the flat eastern plains of Colorado—hasn’t seen a train for a long time.

A few more turns and he spots the white clapboard house. The hedges are overgrown.

He’s home.

His sister’s Lexus is in the driveway, so new it still bears dealer plates from a Denver auto showroom. He parks behind it, grabs a small suitcase from the backseat and walks toward the rear of the house. Three wooden steps lead to a side door—there’s also a front door no one ever uses—but he passes them and continues to the backyard.

The lawn needs attention, but his mother’s marigolds look healthy, vibrant even, in the growing shadows. There’s not a lot about Patience to miss, but he’ll miss those marigolds.

Carver lets himself inside the house through the unlocked door into the kitchen. He lets his eyes adjust to the light, taking in familiar objects in the gloom of early evening…. He’s home, but he’s not. This really isn’t home anymore.

A click click click approaches, hard heels against hardwood.

“I thought I heard someone down here.” His sister Julie flicks the light switch and gives him a brief welcoming hug. She takes after their father, dark and short. He’s their mother’s son, fair and tall. “Carver DeMaris has come home. Let the party begin!”

[Later, after their reunion, in which Carver learns how bad their mother’s health is and discusses his unfinished business with her…]

It gets dark. Back in the kitchen, Julie turns off the overhead light. The only illumination comes from the range hood over the stove.

“It’s been a long day.” Her yawn is exaggerated. He knows it’s a hint. “I should get some rest. I’m going to need a lot of strength over the next day or two.”

“We’re going to need strength,” he corrects her, and she surprises him with a tight embrace.

“Yeah, little brother, we, not me.” She tightens her hold on him and sighs into his ear. “This sounds horrible—I know it does—but I just want it to be over. For her. For me. For you.”

Before she can leave the kitchen he asks, “Does Tom Melvin still work at Gus’s?”

The question seems to annoy her. “You’ve been home for less than two hours, our mother is dying upstairs and now you want to organize a reunion with your high school buddies?”

“I’d just like to see him. To say hi.” This much is true enough. Also true, but unsaid, is that he has more unfinished business.

She frowns but hands him a key to the side door. “Don’t stay out too late. I’m tired of doing this alone.”