Todd Strasser: No Place

The Huskies tried a quarterback sneak.

Bodies piled up on the goal line. One ref raised his arms as if the Huskies had scored; another ref sliced his hands as if they hadn’t. The TV announcer shouted that a penalty flag had been thrown. The crowd went berserk. By now Dad and I were on our feet, totally caught up in the excitement.

That’s when Uncle Ron came in. My uncle is a big, imposing man. Tall, broad-shouldered, with a barrel-size belly. When he entered a room, you knew it. He was wearing a dark suit, shirt collar open and tie pulled askew. Bags under his eyes, his hair falling onto his forehead, and his jaw so dark with five o’clock shadow you had to wonder if he’d bothered to shave that morning.

“Ron, you gotta see this,” Dad said excitedly.

Uncle Ron glanced at the TV as he strode to the cabinet bar, filled a glass halfway with Johnnie Walker, knocked it back in one gulp, and poured himself another.

On the screen the refs huddled. The Huskies players had their arms up like it was a touchdown. The Storm players were chopping their hands back and forth as if it wasn’t. The crowd grew quiet with anticipation. Finally the officials’ huddle broke and the head ref announced that a player for the Huskies had been off side. The play didn’t count. Time had run out; the game was over. The Missouri Storm had won. The crowd began to roar again and Dad clicked off the TV.

“You see that?” he exclaimed, turning to Uncle Ron. “What a finish!” My uncle’s face was a blank mask. He started to take a sip of whiskey, then seemed to change his mind and knocked the whole drink back, banged the empty glass down on the counter, and stalked out of the den.

At dinner Uncle Ron’s bad mood only got worse. “What is this?” he demanded when Aunt Julie placed a steaming bowl in front of him.

“Vegetable curry stew,” she explained. “But we’ve got meat for those who want it.” Mom brought over a plate piled with browned chunks of lamb and added some to his soup. “Anyone else?”

“Me, thanks,” I said.

Uncle Ron glowered at the chunks of lamb bobbing in the yellowish stew, then frowned at Mom, as if he knew where Aunt Julie must have gotten the idea for this concoction. By then I’d tried the stew and a chunk of the lamb. It was pretty good, but I’d had years to get used to Mom’s recipes. Ron glanced at Mike and Ike, who were chowing down on frozen individual pizzas hot from the oven. “There any more of those?”

“Seriously?” Aunt Julie asked, surprised.

“Yes… seriously,” Uncle Ron growled as if he could barely contain himself.

We ate silently while Julie put a frozen pizza in the oven, everyone keenly aware that it was time to tread on eggshells. That’s when my eight-year-old cousin, Alicia, Mike and Ike’s younger sister, turned to her father and said, “Daddy, what’s Dignityville?”

“An incredibly stupid idea,” Uncle Ron grumbled.

Alicia’s eyebrows dipped. “There’s a boy in sixth grade who lives there.”

“Really?” Aunt Julie said. “You mean there’s a homeless child at your school?”

“At mine, too,” I said, thinking of Meg.

“You’re not really homeless, Dan,” Aunt Julie blurted out.

Everyone went silent.

“I… wasn’t talking about me,” I said.

“Oh.” Pressing her fingers to her lips, Aunt Julie blushed with embarrassment. “I’m sorry.”

“The boy in sixth grade?” Alicia said. “Before he moved to Dignityville he lived in a tent in the state forest. He said the school bus used to pick up a whole bunch of kids there.”

“Did only children live there?” Aunt Julie asked. “What about their parents?”

As was his habit when his wife said something unintentionally inane, Uncle Ron rolled his eyes. “The parents also live there. They just don’t take the school bus.” He paused, his face darkening, then muttered, “Worst damn idea I’ve ever…”

He trailed off. No one spoke. My uncle put down his spoon. “What the hell were they thinking? Putting all those people in Osborne Park, right in the middle of town where everyone can see them. Who in their right mind would move to a town that looks like it’s full of derelicts?”

It was a badly kept secret that Uncle Ron was having financial problems. He was a lawyer and had made big investments in some condominiums that now stood unfinished and empty. And just when things seemed to be getting a little better, the town council decided to erect Dignityville to house the growing number of homeless families in Median.

“I don’t think the town had a choice,” Mom said. As Uncle Ron’s big sister, she was the only person I’d ever seen stand up to him when he got angry. “The homeless were occupying the park anyway.”

“Great, so now we’re giving them food, beds, and a place to go to the bathroom,” Uncle Ron grumbled irately. “How long’s it going to be before every damn bum within five hundred miles moves here? How long before this whole town is completely overrun with them?”

“It’s not meant to be a permanent residence,” Mom said. “It’s just a safety net for people who’ve fallen on hard times. Until they can get back on their feet.” She reached over and put her hand on his arm. “They’re not all fortunate enough to have a brother who can take them in.”

Uncle Ron looked at my mother’s hand. She might have had a temporary calming effect on him, but if this was anything like the past, it wouldn’t last.

In an effort to make the downstairs rec room feel homier, I put out a few of my trophies, but it didn’t work. Not only was it not my bedroom, it wasn’t a bedroom, period. The space was too wide open and echo-y, and every time someone was in the kitchen or used a bathroom, the sound of water running through pipes was in my ears. Instead of a dresser with drawers, all I had for my clothes was a couple of plastic tubs, and my desk was the folding table we’d used in our kitchen before we’d moved.

With the twins and Alicia constantly going in and out to play or look for toys, it was so hard to do homework that I started going to the media center at school every chance I got. One day Meg stopped at the table where I was studying. “Hey.”

“Uh… hi,” I said uncertainly, the awkwardness of our last encounter still fresh in my memory.

She swept a curly reddish brown lock away from her face and bit her lip. “I think I owe you an apology.”

I felt myself relax. “Oh hey, no problem. I was actually wondering if I was the one who should apologize. I mean, talk about being presumptuous.”

“No more than anyone else. People hear ‘homeless’ and just assume drunks and vagrants. You get a little defensive.” Her eyes darted away. “Well, that’s all I wanted to…”

I didn’t want her to go, and gestured to an empty chair. “Have a seat.” She was cuter than I remembered. “You look different.”

“It’s what happens when you lose twenty pounds and some zits.” She sat. “I call it the Homeless Diet.”

“Serious?”

She smiled gently. “No. With all the fast food I’ve eaten I should be a hippo.”

It got quiet. She glanced around. I tried to think of something to say. “So, uh, you said your dad was sick?”

The smile left her face. “Cancer.”

“Oh, sorry.” I wanted to smack myself. Why did I have to bring that up? Couldn’t I have thought of something else to talk about? Too late now. “Isn’t the government supposed to help?”

“They do, with some of it. He used to manage a restaurant and they were supposed to pay for his pension and health benefits, but they went bankrupt. There’s Medicaid, but it doesn’t cover everything.”