The house still stood. It stood in its dirty white body, chipped and washed out along the roof and baseline. On my journey back, I thought I had lost its grasp – its picture shoved against my mind like a fading childhood photograph. It had been five months since my feet had settled in this patchy grass filled with weeds and gentle mole hills. When I stepped on them, I was always afraid I would crush one of the soft creature’s skulls, its brown fur splitting from the pressure of my guarded steps.

         My mother had no knowledge of my homecoming. What would she think of me for having left her? What would they all think of me, their brother, their son, traipsing in Europe, tangled with people so much different than them? What would they say if they knew what had happened?

          As I made my way up the porch stairs, I could still see my father’s face perched in the yellow rocking chair, dough-like and tanned, his body spreading beneath it like a soft, black whale, the erudite fingers strumming a guitar – his one love besides drugs. How simple it had once seemed.

         Wiping my feet on the pale, gray doormat, I turned the knob, its weight giving in, the door swinging back on its hinges, revealing darkness in the hallway, drawn curtains, and small piles of newspapers strewn along the kitchen table to my left. There was the distinct stench of something wet and warm. And there, in front of me, was my mother. She was draped in quilts on the sofa, her arms tucked tight to her ribs so that she resembled some kind of amputee. Her feet balanced on the coffee table, her body swooping in one lone arc, pressed down by gravity and sickness. At the sound of my entrance, she rolled her bleak, wasted head toward me, the skin of her cheeks mashed in toward the bone, the skull void of hair but left with a grayish fuzz. Her eyes were runny, and a bright plastic bowl perched beside her, brimming with the chemo’s effects and food she could not keep down. She opened her mouth just as I opened mine.

         “Daniel,” she whispered.

         “Mom,” I said.

         Loosening my backpack from my shoulders, I stepped forward, surprised to find my grandfather in the chair opposite my mother, having been busy with a task I’d obviously interrupted. In his hands he held a pair of scissors and a roll of duct tape, while one fiberglass leg was propped up on the same coffee table as my mother’s feet. Hers were wrapped in three pairs of navy wool socks, the excess drooped over like a wilting flower. Milton had been rolling the tape around his fake ankle, attempting to make his foot stick to the rest of his leg. When he saw me, his face changed from that of concentration to fury.

          “Good Christ, Daniel,” he sputtered, moving his leg back down to the safety of the ground, “what do you think you’re doing back here?”

         Eyeing the scissors in Milton’s hand, I couldn’t bring myself to answer. He’d cut off his own legs, so I knew what he could do to mine.

         From the kitchen, scents drifted through the beige swinging door,and I heard the sizzling of hot food – the smell of French toast cooking. Before I could get out one word of defense, the door swung forward and there stood Louisa, frying pan in hand, steam rising off the top like a small cotton castle. She stopped when she saw me, stopped like she’d seen the dead rising, stopped like she’d had a heart attack, stopped like she’d just seen the face of her past love. Her eyes were tired, her dress frumpy, her purpose in this house evident for the one I could not manage. Her hand trembled with the skillet and I knew that hand wanted both to hit and hold me. I was dying to touch her face, a face of the familiar, a face not from Rome but from Kentucky, a face of young nights and long kisses. Yet guilt had robbed me, had ruined the good and replaced it with something unfamiliar.

         “Daniel. My God, Daniel. What are you doing here?”  Louisa set the pan on the table next to her, staring down at it for a moment before looking back up at me.

         “I’m home,” I said, swallowing hard, pushing the thumbs of each hand into the pockets of my jeans. “I came back for Mom. I couldn’t stand the thought of her –”

         “Her what, Daniel? Her death? Because you being gone didn’t help that cause.” Louisa spoke quietly, but her words pushed through to the vulnerable places. From across the room, Milton stood, fingering his shirt back down into his trousers.

         “Your mother has been wasting away for damn near half a year and all you can say is ‘I’m home’ like some idiot? What’s wrong with your brain, son? This is life and death we’re speaking of! This is your mother!” Milton advanced, fist raised, the sharp edge of the scissors gleaming down at me.

         Louisa rushed to loosen his grip and wrestled the scissors from him, reaching up to whisper something in his ear. He grumbled, glaring at me, before storming out onto the front porch, a spare piece of duct tape dragging on the floor behind him.

         I took a deep breath, shoving my hair back off my forehead and taking Louisa in, her slim hips, the weight she’d lost, the length of her hair, all piled messily in a bun. She turned to go to my mother, who, in all the commotion, I’d nearly forgotten about. Louisa fussed with some pillows, took the bowl from her, not even flinching at the rank smell of the vomit, and dumped it down the drain of the sink in the bathroom. She returned, took my mother’s temperature and then went back to the kitchen, scooping up the frying pan in the process. She turned before pushing through the door, and whispered, “Talk to her, Daniel. She has days left. Days.”

         Swallowing, I hesitated, before moving toward the couch, everything slowing around me. There was the ticking of the clock that sat above the mantel, the weight of my feet creaking over the beaten up floors, and then my mother, gasping for breath, one eye half-open, a trail of liquid coming out of the tear duct and running under the handmade red and white checked quilt.

         “Mom.”
          My mother did not speak, but rather pulled her lips back in a smile. I could not grasp this change. This was not my mother. This was not the woman who’d read Stuart Little and The Mouse and the Motorcycle to me when I was just a kid. This was not the woman who’d tickled me before bed, and spanked me with her bare, tempered hands. This was some other creature, some ill twist of life. How could one body do this? How could one sickness take so much of a person in such a short time?

         She shifted and I moved forward, as if to help her. I wanted to ask why she was here and not in a hospital, but it didn’t matter. She was looking at me, looking right through me. I felt like saying so much then. Telling her all about Nina, about her pregnancy, and how the baby had almost felt like mine. I wanted to tell her about the food in Rome, and the people and the culture. I wanted to tell her about the trains and the small bathrooms and the cigarettes and free beer. I wanted to tell her about losing another person I cared for, and how it had changed me forever. I opened my mouth to speak – to give her some part of where I’d been and what I’d seen. But she closed her eyes and took a long, shattering breath. I felt my heart sink as I looked at her, as I watched her give up, as I watched her turn in. I wanted to cry but I had no tears for what I was experiencing. I saw her chest rise and fall, her final breath moving out of her dry lips. I moved forward to envelop her.

         She had just left the world.

 

 

Author’s Bio: Rea Frey is the author of one novel, A Woman's Ring. She is a recent graduate from Columbia, where she obtained her B.A. in fiction writing and graduated valedictorian of her class. She is the recipient of the Hill House writer's retreat and is currently working on her second novel, Angels In The Water. Homecoming is from an excerpt from Ms. Frey's third novel, Wherever You Go.

 

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