Todd Strasser: No Place

I kept having this fantasy that we were losing our home only temporarily, that in a week or two something unexpected would happen and we’d get it back, or we’d get another home that was just as good.

The weird thing was, that’s sort of what happened. At Uncle Ron’s, Mom and Dad moved into the guest bedroom and I got the foldout couch in the downstairs activity room. Next to it was the changing room and shower for guests who used the pool and tennis court in the backyard. So that was my bathroom for now.

It felt strange:

We’d lost our home.

And moved into a much bigger, fancier one.

There must be lots of different reasons why people move in with relatives—houses burn down, parents get divorced, whatever. But I wonder if we all share one similar sensation. That of feeling adrift, like losing an anchor. Walking down the hall at school on Monday morning, I saw Meg Fine pulling books out of her locker. I stopped and stared, recalling that I’d seen her coming out of Dignityville, feeling the unexpected urge to say something, to connect with someone who, just maybe, understood what I was going through.

Unfortunately, by stopping in the middle of the hall, I’d unintentionally created a snag in the flow of bodies. Kids brushed past me, muttering as they detoured. Meg sensed something and looked up.

Our eyes met and she scowled. Suddenly I felt that I had no choice but to go over. “Hey.”

“Oh, uh, hi, Dan.” She swept some of that curly red hair away from her eyes.

“So, how’s it going?” I asked.

Meg’s forehead furrowed. “Okay,” she replied uncertainly, obviously wondering why I’d asked.

She was right to wonder. It must have felt like I was coming from out of nowhere. I still had time to make up some excuse and move on, but instead, as if under remote control, I lowered my voice. “So, uh, listen, last Friday I was driving through town with Noah? And, um, I saw you.”

Meg stiffened as she recalled where she’d been on Friday after school, then said, “So?” stretching the word into two wary syllables.

Moving a little closer, I softened my voice a bit more: “We just lost our house and had to move in with my uncle.”

Her eyebrows dipped as if she didn’t understand why I felt I had to share this with her. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said in a way that sort of indicated that she wasn’t sorry, not really.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised by her chilly reply, but it caught me off guard. “Well, I mean, both of my parents lost their jobs. Like you and I—”

“Everyone in my family works,” she cut in, a bit harshly. “Except for my dad, who’s too sick to work. My mom and brother both have jobs.”

At that point I should have shut up and dropped it, but I stupidly continued. “Then why are you…”

“Living in Dignityville?” She finished the sentence irately. “Maybe because my father’s treatments are unbelievably expensive? And my brother’s got college loans he’s trying to pay back? And after all that, there’s nothing left?”

She was clearly upset and offended. This wasn’t what I’d been hoping for. I’d thought that our common experience would give us something to talk about. But like most impulsive, poorly thought-out ideas, this one had backfired and now I felt like a jerk. “Hey, listen, I didn’t mean anything bad….”

The bell rang. We were both officially late for class. Meg rolled her eyes as if I was a complete horse’s ass, and hurried away.

After school at Uncle Ron’s house, Mom and Aunt Julie were in the kitchen making dinner. Dad was in the den drinking a beer and watching college football on the big flat-screen HDTV. We bumped fists. “S’up, dawg?”

I shrugged. “Not much.”

“Work out today?”

“Yeah. Core stuff.” I glanced at the screen. For the past two years at our house we’d had to get by on whatever the antenna on the roof would pick up for our ancient twenty-seven-inch cathode-ray TV with its dull and muted colors. In contrast the color on Uncle Ron’s flat-screen was amazing, almost brighter than real.

“Who’s playing?” I asked.

“Michigan Tech Huskies and Missouri Storm.”

I’d never heard of either team and was pretty sure they were bottom-of-the-barrel Division III noncontenders. “Sounds exciting,” I deadpanned.

“Hey, check out the drops of sweat.” Dad pointed at the screen. “The individual leaves of grass.” He slapped the couch. “Grab a beer.”

School rules forbade athletes from drinking, even during the off-season, but Dad and I had an understanding. I might have taken him up on the offer if I hadn’t had homework to do.

Downstairs, my ten-year-old twin cousins, Mike and Ike (their real names were Michael and Isaac), were playing air hockey. I sat on the couch and tried to read. Adding to the racket of the puck slamming around the table were Mike’s and Ike’s feeble but rowdy attempts to impress me with their G-rated preteen trash talk.

“You’re such a loser!” one of them would yell, glancing out of the corner of his eye to see if I was listening.

“You’re so bad you stink!”

“I’m way better than you!”

“You wish!”

When I realized I’d read the same sentence three times and still didn’t know what it meant, I knew I was never going to get anything done down there. I got up, hoping to find a quieter spot upstairs. As I passed the air hockey table, Mike paused from playing. “How long’re you gonna stay here, Cousin Dan?”

“Don’t know.”

“Mom says you’ve got no place else to go,” said Ike.

“For the moment.”

“So you could live here forever?”

“Doubtful.”

“Because you’re going to college next year, right?”

“Right.”

“But your parents could live here forever because all Aunt Hannah wants to do is garden and Uncle Paul’s a deadbeat.”

Huh? Had I heard him wrong? “Sorry?”

“Our dad said your dad’s a deadbeat,” said Mike.

“What is a deadbeat, anyway?” asked Ike.

“It’s when you don’t have a job,” Mike told his brother. “But Dad said even when Uncle Paul did have a job all he ever did was play games with poor kids in Burlington.”

“Was that really his job?” Ike asked with kidlike wonder as if it had never occurred to him that you could get a job playing games.

“He supervised after-school sports programs so kids wouldn’t join gangs,” I explained.

“Dad said he could have made more money working at Starbucks,” said Mike, who was leaner and meaner than his more innocent twin.

“That’s not true,” I said.

“Dad said so,” Mike insisted, as if Uncle Ron’s word was law.

I felt the impulse to argue and explain that Dad’s job hadn’t been about making money, but about helping disadvantaged kids have a better future. It was valuable work and probably saved some kids’ lives. But I caught myself. Why was I even having this conversation? They were just a couple of ten-year-olds.

Upstairs, Dad waved me into the den. “You gotta see this. The Huskies are first and goal, down by four. Forty-five seconds left.”

It felt a little weird, seeing my unemployed father sitting in someone else’s den in the afternoon drinking a beer and watching TV. He’d had a few jobs since sports supervisor, but none had lasted. Sooner or later he’d come home saying things hadn’t worked out, and he’d go back to collecting unemployment insurance.

On the TV the crowd roared. It’s hard to imagine a more exciting moment in a football game. Less than a minute left to play and you’re on your opponent’s six-yard line with four chances to score and win. The Huskies ran three plays and got the ball to the one-yard line. It was a classic goal-line stand. Eleven seconds left and no time-outs. One more chance to score. The crowd was still roaring. Dad and I were on the edge of our seats.