Where the Heart Is

 

 

 

Where the Heart Is

 

 

Home is where they have to take you in, even when they don’t want to.  Even if you don’t want to be there.  If circumstances demand that you pull out the key and announce in a pseudo-hearty voice, “Honey I’m home.”  And then realize that Honey (and that is the name on her birth certificate) is sitting on the lap of some other guy while your children are watching a massacre movie on Hulu.

So you stand there, kind of shifting from foot to foot with a smile on your face.  You hope the smile doesn’t show your cracked tooth or make you look crazed.  You’re waiting for someone to acknowledge you.  Your presence. Or your voice.  A nice Welcome back, Jeremy is what you hope for, but wouldn’t that be ridiculous?  It’s not like you just stepped out for a loaf of bread or cigarettes or a bottle of Jack.  Well, you did kind of declare in a bitter voice that you were going out to find a drink and fuck sobriety, and you had slammed the door behind you.  You found that drink and a thousand more.

Honey turns and looks in your direction then purses up her lips and wrinkles her brow in that way that had seemed cute when she was seventeen and now makes her look old, although she’s only thirty.  Or thirty-three.  Around there.  You try to remember how old you were on your last birthday but give up. She says, “Jeremy,” in a tone you don’t recognize.

“Yep,” you say.  “I’m back.  Hi kids!”

The kids -- John and Saralee and Frances and a new one that must belong to the new boyfriend -- look briefly in your direction and then back at the TV.  You walk over and ruffle John’s hair.  How old is he now?  Ten?  Twelve?  How long have you been gone anyhow?  You are certain this would all be clear if Honey would pour you a drink.  Or two.

John turns and meets your eyes.  The two of you have the same grey blue sea at storm eyes.  “Dad.”

“Yep, it’s me!”  You’re still trying for upbeat.

John turns back to the television.  “Yeah.”

Honey has moved off the lap and off the couch.  “What the hell are you doing here, Jer?”

“I’ve come home.”  You don’t meet her eyes but you know she knows you only came back because there was nowhere else to go.  “The king has returned.”

“King?"

You are aware of the boyfriend moving towards you.  The boyfriend is a big guy and young and not smiling or anything.  He speaks in a hoarse voice.  “Yeah man you’re a real prince among men aren’t you?”

You shrug and hold out your hands palm up.  “I don’t want any trouble.”  Which of course is a lie.  You always but always and always want trouble.  You invite trouble into everything

One of the kids shuts off the TV and Saralee comes and puts her arms around your waist.  “Daddy!”

You bend down and gather her into your arms.  You are crying.  You hope it works, this crying. This calmness, this sad smile you have plastered on your face.

“Is that Daddy?”  Frances asks.

Honey snaps.  “No it isn’t.  It’s some man who’s lost.  Maybe a burglar.”

John looks from his mother to you, his eyebrows raised and his forehead crinkling like Honey’s does.  “Mom?”

You watch your wife (is she still your wife?  Are you divorced now?  Maybe you’ve been declared dead?) grab her boyfriend’s arm.  “Paul is Daddy now,” Honey says firmly and you watch Paul scoop up Frances and put her on his shoulders.

You try to pick up Saralee, but she’s a solid child (six? seven?) and you can’t get her more than two inches off the ground.  She pats your hand and it almost makes you shed real tears.

Paul reaches a hand out to Saralee and the unknown kid and says to John, “C’mon let’s get some ice cream and leave Mommy to talk.”

You walk around the room wondering if Mommy is meant to talk to herself or the wall or you and then realize it makes no difference.  No fucking difference at all.  You watch your children go with this Paul and wonder if it is the last time you will see them and you think it probably is.

“Jeremy,” Honey says sitting back down on the couch.  “What do you want?”

Well, you think, what a loaded question.  “World peace?”

Her glare pierces what remains of your heart.  “Seriously.  Sit down, Jeremy and stop pacing.”  She looks you over from head to toe, taking in your stained, too tight, white dress shirt, the weird open sore on your thumb, your torn jeans and the scuffed loafers, and you know every inch of you is found wanting.  And that Honey doesn’t want one single solitary one of those inches.  “Why are you here?  What do you want?”  She speaks very slowly and clearly, as if to a child.  A slow child.

Well.  You were a slow child weren’t you?  Not that you weren’t smart but you liked to take your time and consider all your choices, and now you’re a slow man so you are grateful it is so easy to follow what Honey is saying.   You would perhaps be more grateful for a tumbler of whiskey or a warm bed or a shower or a change of clothes.  You would really find it easier to follow though if she were to pour you a glass of whiskey and give you a cigarette because maybe then your hands would stop shaking and you could focus better.

She sighs as if she has read your mind and she must have done so because, sighing again, she gets up off the couch and heads to the kitchen.  You hear a cupboard being open.  You hear the fridge open and the ice rattling into a glass.  You can even hear the whiskey being poured. There’s silence and you think more should be added and try to communicate by telepathy.

Epic fail because the glass she hands you is less than a third full and most of that is ice.  Still you smile at her and say, “Cheers.” Then, “Bottoms up.”

She watches you with that pursed, annoyed look that had shown up after Saralee was born.  “So?”

You hold out the glass towards her.  “Please.”

“So, let’s get this straight Jeremy.  You come back here after sixteen months plus five hours, give or take, and the reason you came back was to finish the Jim Beam you somehow forgot to drain before you left?”  She passes her hand across her face as if wiping away the thought and you and everything else.  Her blonde hair is in a ponytail.  She is wearing black eyeliner but her face is puffy.  You take in the over-sized Illinois sweatshirt and the sweatpants.  Your eyes focus on her stomach, which you can’t really see but you have the sense of it being swollen like her face.  “All right.  You win.”  She comes back with the bottle and puts it down on the coffee table.  “Knock yourself out, Jer.”

You hear a car engine starting up as you fill the glass as high as you can without risking a spill.  You are surprised you left a nearly full bottle of good whiskey undrunk. “Want a swig?” You ask.

“No.”  She pats her stomach and rearranges herself on the faded blue couch.  You remember the day the two of you found that couch at a garage sale over on Seminary Street.  It was old and faded even then. But you liked the comfort the corduroy provided.  Over in the corner is the artificial tree, missing a few branches, that your mother had given to you and Honey for your first Christmas.  It is still dressed in the paper chain, green and red, you’d made in the third grade.  It looks abandoned and you are tempted to go plug the string of twinkly white lights in.

 Honey snaps her fingers in your face and magics the bottle away.  “No more until you give me a straight answer.”

That worries you.  You stop thinking about the couch and the tree and start thinking about how your glass is already half empty and your mind is still fragmented although your hands are now still.  “To what?”

“What do you want?”

“Nothing.  To see you.  See the kids.  Come home?”

“Seen me.  Seen the kids.  No.  You’re not coming back here, Jeremy.  This isn’t your home anymore.  It’s the kids’ home and my home and Paul’s home.”

You realize then…what do you realize?  Something very profound flits across your mind and is gone.  You stare at your glass then drain it and look up into the dark brown of Honey’s eyes.  Her blonde hair is escaping from her ponytail and there is a thin line of sweat across her forehead.  You remember when Saralee was born how you stayed by Honey’s side for five hours and brushed the hair out of her face and licked the salty sweat off with your tongue.  Honey’s hair seemed to smell of sunshine and the sea and flowers. You remember when Frances was born that you didn’t find out for three days until you woke up in someone’s rec room in Rock Island and called your mother for bus fare back home.

You look over at the brown table pushed against the wall, which is covered with photographs.  You and Honey found it left outside one of the dorms when Knox College closed for the summer and you remember the two of you lugging it the seven blocks home. It wasn’t even made of real wood, but it was still somehow heavy.   You don’t see any pictures of yourself. “Where am I?”  You cannot stop yourself from asking.

“What?  Jesus, Jer, should I be calling for the men in white coats?”

“I meant the photos….where are the ones with me in them?  I see you and whatshisname and John and Sara and Frances but not the ones with us in them as a family.”

She stares at you: her pupils are huge and she is frowning.  “Who is Frances?”

You frown too.  “Our littlest girl.”

“Jeremy.  Her name is Francine.”

Oh, you think, shit.  You hold out the glass but Honey ignores you.  You watch her get up and leave the room.  You would like to crawl into your bed now and go to sleep.   You would like to take your clothes off and brush your teeth.  You would like another glass of whiskey.  When you open your eyes you see the last wish has come true and that Honey is holding a stack of papers and a pen.  Beside her chair is a small shopping bag from Carson’s.

“Let me tell you what I want…no…what I need.  What John and Sara and Francine need.  We need you to sign this divorce decree and we need you to sign away your parental rights.  I have the petition for adoption right here.  Paul loves these kids and they love him.  Fucksake Jer, he even knows their names.”  She brushes her fist against her eye then holds out the papers and the pen.

You take a drink and try to savor the taste of the whiskey as it travels through your mouth and down your throat before it gets down to your gut and up to your brain and forces you to take in what she is saying.

“And when you do that,” Honey says, opening the shopping bag.  “I will give you six hundred dollars, which I saved by feeding my children shit and letting them wear clothes that were too small to school.  And I will give you this.”  Abracadabra she pulls out a rectangular box that says Jack Daniels Single Barrel 100 proof.

Your mouth waters and your brain nearly explodes.  You take the pen and you sign away your marriage and John and Saralee and Frances or Francine.  If you hadn’t already sold your brain and your courage and your heart along with any self-respect you’d ever had, you would have signed all of them away too.

You should perhaps have negotiated like that Dale Carnegie course you took a lifetime ago taught you.  You should have demanded the right to see John, Saralee and Fran on Christmas and for two weeks during summer vacation.  You could have at the least asked to be allowed to say good-bye.

But you’re not even kidding yourself here.  The kids wouldn’t be welcome at the Peoria Rescue Mission for their annual holiday turkey and fixings, where not only was the mission dry but also was the turkey.  And summer vacation?  Your mother took your key to her house away six months ago and sent you off without even bus fare out of Galesburg.  No.  Honey knows your price and she paid it.  You’ve known one another since junior high: twenty odd years.  She knows you like an unwanted skin growth and paid you enough to have the pre-cancer removed.  And you know her and she never changes her mind.

Honey hands you the money, which you stuff into your shirt pocket and she lets you use the bathroom to take a shit and wash your face.  You use a pink Cinderella toothbrush and some old Crest to try to clean your teeth.  When you come out Honey is standing there, holding the bag at arm’s length.  “Give me the key Jeremy.  Don’t come back.”

You exchange the key for the bag.  Hell, you would have given up the keys to heaven for that bottle of whiskey.  You think of kissing her goodbye but think better of that.  You would like to ask for a photo of your children and for one of Honey but you don’t do that either.  You look at your phone and see you have time to make the bus back to Peoria and you find your return ticket in your battered wallet along with four dollar bills, your expired driver’s license and a picture of you and Honey taken years ago, when she was sitting on your lap on that same powder blue couch.

It is not a long walk to the bus stop, but it is long enough for you to dream.  If Honey had given you a thousand dollars you might have bought a train ticket to Chicago or even to New York.  You might have started a new life in one of the places you’d once dreamed of before drinking became your only escape from real life.  But, you think, as you watch the bus pull in, a whiskey probably costs more than $7 in Chicago and you smile thinking of how far the six hundred will go in the Judge’s Chambers.

You think about your children, wondering how Frances became Francine.  You are almost positive she was named for Honey’s father and certain his name was Francis.  Tears start forming, but you use your right fist to push them back in: you are glad the children will have a good father instead of you.  Paul seems like a fine man.  You grit your teeth and say it aloud, “Paul seems like a fine man.”

There’s a chill in the air and in the dirty grey bus station Christmas carols are blaring from purple speakers.  You remember then that you’d meant to stop by your mother’s house, ask for a loan, buy a few gifts for the kids and Honey.  You shake your head and cannot even remember if there was a tree up in your living-room.  In their living-room.

Later, sitting in the back of the bus, you finally allow yourself to open the bag and pull out the whiskey.  You had started to open it several times but wanted to savor the anticipation of what the thirty pieces of silver or more precisely the 100 proof bought.  You open the lid of the box slowly and pull out the bottle.  The cap unscrews very easily, but you lean down to inhale the smoky fruity sweet aroma.  Without tasting a drop you realize it’s not the Single Barrel and it’s not even the fifteen dollar a bottle Jim Beam you were drinking back home.  You sniff again:  it burns your nose, but it’s definitely alcohol.  So you tip the bottle into your mouth and begin to empty it.

 

Faith Miller

 

Faith Miller has been published in magazines including Hanging Loose, Chicago Quarterly, Prism International, The Mississippi Review and most recently in Libretto, Africa’s leading literary magazine and the spring 2024 issue of A Door is a Jar. Her work is forthcoming in Bull and Down in the Dirt.  Faith lives in New Jersey and is a member of writing groups affiliated with the New York Society Library and the Boston Athenaeum.  After years in the public and corporate world, she is working on a master’s in fiction at the Naslund-Mann Graduate School at Spalding University where she was awarded an Emerging Writer scholarship.  She is an Assistant Student Editor for their literary magazine, Good River Review.