Chapter 6 - The Packing
The sun moved over the big white pine at ten o'clock, turning the gravel driveway into a white, blinding mirror that smelled of hot dust and rubber.
They packed in silence.
Not a clean silence—a heavy, greasy silence filled with the sharp zip-zip-zip of cheap luggage zippers, the heavy thud of cardboard boxes being dropped onto the Buick's trunk lid, and the wet, heavy breathing of four people who weren't used to lifting anything heavier than a grocery bag.
I sat in the green wicker rocker.
I didn't rock. I kept my back straight against the high back, my heels together on the cedar planks, my hands resting on the curved arms of the chair.
Frank sat on the top step below me. He had a small pocketknife out and was whittling a small piece of pine stick he’d picked up near the well-house. Long, yellow curls of wood were falling down onto his brown leather boots.
Arthur came out first with his clothes.
He had three armfuls of shirts—his golf polos, his work button-downs, his six pairs of khakis—stuffed into two big black trash bags. One of the bags had a rip near the bottom, and a yellow striped tie was dragging in the dirt behind him like a dead snake.
He didn't look at me. He threw the bags into the back seat of the Buick, where Brenda was already sitting with her arms crossed over her stomach, staring straight ahead at the garage wall.
Caleb came out next.
He had his sports bag—the blue nylon one with Chemung Track printed in white letters along the side. He was carrying his small plastic fan under his left arm, the gray cord trailing behind him and snapping against the grass.
He stopped at the bottom of the porch steps.
"Grandma?" he said.
I didn't turn my head. I looked at the far shore, where a red pontoon boat was moving slowly through the channel, leaving two long white lines of foam in the green water.
"Grandma, my track shoes are still in the hall closet," he said. His voice was thin, high, like he had a cold. "The white ones with the blue stripes. Can I get 'em?"
Frank looked up from his stick. "Frank," he said to me softly. "You want me to get 'em?"
"In the hall closet," I said. "Bottom shelf. Behind the boots."
Frank stood up, went inside, and came back out thirty seconds later with the white shoes. He didn't hand them to Caleb; he threw them down into the clover at Caleb's feet.
"Take 'em," Frank said. "And get in the car."
Caleb picked up the shoes. He looked at me once more—his small, wide-set eyes wet around the corners—and then he walked to the Buick, opened the back door, and slunk inside.
Brody didn't come out. He stayed in the house until eleven-fifteen, packing his video games and his three pairs of basketball shorts into a laundry basket.
When he finally came through the front door, he was carrying something under his arm.
It was a picture frame—a small, eight-by-ten silver frame that had been sitting on the sideboard in the dining room since 2005.
It was a photograph of Arthur, Brenda, and the two boys at the state fair. Brody was three, sitting on Arthur's shoulders, eating a pink cloud of cotton candy. Arthur was laughing, his face young, his hair thick and dark, his arm around Brenda's waist.
Brody stopped at the railing.
"Can I have this?" he asked.
I looked at the frame.
The glass was dirty—covered in small, greasy fingerprints that Brenda had left when she moved it to dust the sideboard three weeks ago.
"The frame was your grandfather's," I said. My voice was quiet, but it carried over the cicadas buzzing in the pine trees. "Take the picture out."
Brody stared at me.
"Take the paper out," I repeated. "Leave the frame on the step."
Brody's fingers twitched. He turned the frame over. His small, bitten fingernails worked at the little black metal tabs on the back—click, click, click—until the cardboard backing came loose.
He pulled the photo out. It was curled at the corners, thin paper that smelled of old ink.
He dropped the silver frame onto the top wooden step. It hit the cedar with a sharp clatter, the glass catching the eleven-o'clock sun and throwing a bright square of light onto my navy skirt.
Brody stuffed the photo into his pocket and ran down the steps to the car.
At eleven-forty-five, Arthur walked up the steps for the last time.
He didn't have any bags. His hands were empty, hanging down at his sides like two heavy weights. His polo shirt was dark with sweat under the arms, and his forehead was red where the sun had burned him while he was loading the trunk.
He stopped two feet from my chair.
"Mom," he said.
I looked at his shoes. One of his laces was dragged through a patch of wet mud, and a small dried leaf was stuck to the tongue.
"We don't have enough money for a hotel," Arthur said. His voice wasn't angry anymore. It was flat, dry, and hollowed out, like an old pumpkin left on a porch after frost. "Brenda's card was declined at the gas station this morning. We have seventy dollars in cash."
I didn't move my hands from the armrests.
"The flat in Lansing," I said. "The rent is paid through the thirty-first."
"The landlord changed the locks on Tuesday," Arthur said. He swallowed—a dry, clicking sound. "We were three months behind. That's why... that's why we came out here."
I looked up at his face.
I looked at his chin—the small, square chin that looked so much like Thomas's chin when he was twenty-two and standing in his dress uniform at the train depot in Jackson.
"You have seventy dollars," I said.
"Yes."
"A room at the Motel 6 on Highway 12 is forty-five dollars a night," I said. "That gives you two days."
"And then?" Arthur asked. His eyes were wide, dry, staring at my lace collar. "What do we do after two days, Mom?"
I reached into my navy skirt pocket.
I didn't pull out a checkbook. I didn't pull out the leather ledger.
I pulled out a small piece of yellow paper—a receipt from the grain elevator in Mason, dated October 14, 1994.
On the back, in Thomas's handwriting, was a phone number.
"That's the number for the State Social Services office in Charlotte," I said. "Ask for Mr. Henderson. Tell him you're thirty-nine years old, able-bodied, and need emergency housing assistance."
Arthur looked at the paper. He didn't reach out his hand.
"Mom," he whispered. "You're sending me to the state office?"
"No, Arthur," I said. My voice was very gentle—the voice I used when he was four and had fallen out of the apple tree into the clover. "You went there yourself. You just took twenty years to arrive."
He stood there for sixty seconds.
The wind came up off the lake, bringing the smell of gasoline and wet weeds through the porch screen.
Arthur reached out, took the yellow paper from my fingers, and turned around.
He walked down the steps.
He didn't look back when he reached the Buick. He got into the driver's seat, closed the door—a heavy, hollow thunk—and started the engine.
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The Buick backed down the driveway slowly, its tires crunching through the wet gravel, until it reached the lane. It paused for three seconds at the mailbox—the blue tin mailbox with VANCE - 1142 painted in white letters on the side—and then it turned onto the blacktop toward the highway.
The red taillights disappeared behind the hazel bushes at the corner.
