Todd Strasser - No Place

“Okay.”

“Talia?”

“Fine.”

“Your friends?”

“Okay.”

“Life on Jupiter?”

“Huh?”

“Just checking. Something’s not okay.” Mom mushed cooked apples through the sieve.

We both knew why she’d said that. It had been about a thousand years since I’d sat in the kitchen and watched her cook. But I didn’t want to tell her I was angry about having to live at Uncle Ron’s. She would definitely think I was blaming her. Instead, I asked, “How’d you know you were going to like growing vegetables and cooking stuff?”

“I didn’t.”

“Then how…?”

“I just tried it. I had to do something or I would have gone crazy. I mean, looking for jobs that didn’t exist.” She paused, then added, “And I was lucky. Not only did I find something I loved, but it gives me a sense of… well-being that I didn’t have before.”

If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I might not have believed it was possible to find happiness going from a high-paying corporate job to something menial like gardening that hardly paid at all.

“Is that why… it kind of seems like… what’s happened to us doesn’t bother you that much?” I asked.

Mom wiped her forehead with her sleeve. She had a way of looking at me, almost like she was looking through me, and into the place where she could see what I was really thinking. “It’s really bothering you , isn’t it?”

I almost denied it, but she’d know I was lying. So I just shrugged and nodded. “Yeah, it’s like… it’s always on my mind, you know? And every time I think about it, it’s a total buzzkill.”

A crooked, worried expression etched itself onto her face. “It’s been a shock for you. Your dad and I had time to prepare for this. Maybe we tried too hard to make it like nothing in your life would change.”

“But it did anyway,” I said. “We stopped going on vacations and out to dinner. We got rid of cable. We had to cut back on everything.”

“But your day-to-day life stayed the same.” Mom picked bits of skin and seeds out of the sieve. “You still went to school and played baseball and spent time with your friends. So this… is a much bigger disruption to you than to us. I’m sorry, sweetheart. I wish it wasn’t this way.”

I felt some of the anger and resentment evaporate. Mom put down the sieve. She stared into the sink and then slowly brought her gaze up until her eyes met mine. “You know what I’m going to say?”

I did. About two years after she lost her job, a friend of hers convinced her to try yoga and something called mindful meditation. Mom had gone into it reluctantly, but it wasn’t long before she became a full-fledged convert.

Now it was my turn to gaze down at the counter.

She slid her hand over mine. “I’m not saying it’s a magic cure-all, but it helps. I don’t think I could have survived the last three years without it.”

Steve Carlton, one of the greatest pitchers in the history of baseball, had meditated regularly, and so had a bunch of other players. But I still couldn’t see Dan Halprin doing it. “Sorry, Mom.”

No surprise there, but what Mom did next was. She went to the kitchen door, peeked out, then returned. Speaking in a hushed voice, she said, “There’s something else. Just between us, this isn’t a good place. There’s way too much negative energy.”

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know who she was talking about.

“But we don’t have a choice,” I said.

Mom picked up an apple and began to mash it into the sieve. “There’s always a choice.”

Call it negative energy, stress, or tension. Whatever word or phrase you chose, Uncle Ron was dealing with a lot of it. He’d leave for work at dawn, come home after dark, and still be on the phone for hours. One night at dinner, when Dad came into the kitchen singing some song about freedom being just another word for nothing left to lose, Uncle Ron’s knuckles turned white around the handle of the knife in his hand, and I braced myself.

The house may have been large, but it wasn’t soundproof. On another evening we waited at the kitchen table for Ron, who was on the phone in the den. Dinner was getting cold and the twins and Alicia were whining. Finally Aunt Julie went into the den to see if she could get her husband to join us. Agitated grumbling followed. We didn’t hear what Aunt Julie said, and Ron surely didn’t want us to hear his reply, but his harsh whisper made it back to the kitchen anyway: “No, it can’t wait. Not unless you want to see us lose everything and wind up like my sister and that loser husband of hers.”

I winced. Alicia’s mouth fell open and the twins went silent. Dad hung his head. Mom blinked hard like she was fighting back tears. When Aunt Julie returned to the kitchen, her face was red. She said we should start dinner.

The next morning I couldn’t wait to get out of that house. Was Ron right? Was Dad a loser? All my life I’d told myself that other things besides making lots of money were important, like being a good father and helping people. But now I was starting to have doubts and feel resentful. Noah’s dad, Dr. Williams, was a good father, helped people, and made a good living. Why couldn’t my father do that too?

It was sunny and warm, and when I went outside I heard yelling from the elementary school bus stop. A circle had formed around Mike and a bigger kid. They both had their fists up. At first it was hard to tell whether they were fooling around or serious, but when Ike kneeled behind the kid and Mike pushed him, the picture became clearer. The kid tumbled backward and my cousins pounced on him with fists flying.

Not every brawl is the same. In some, one kid just wants to prove that he’s stronger and a better fighter, and once he’s done that, it’s over. In other fights kids really wail on each other with a fury that doesn’t seem proportionate with whatever the dispute is about. You get the feeling a kid is really upset about something else altogether and just needs to find a convenient human punching bag. That definitely seemed to be the case with Mike and Ike. The irony of it struck me. Why should I be the only one in that house who felt angry and resentful and wanted to hit and break things?

Even though the kid was down, Mike kept hitting him, and Ike added a kick. You could see by the way the kid curled up into a fetal position with his arms protecting his head that he was no fighter. I knew I had to break it up. Taking my cousins firmly by the arms, I pulled them away and told them to stay put while I checked on the kid they’d been hitting. His eyes were watery, his face red and smudged with tears. I felt bad for kids like him, the gentle-giant types who other kids pick on because it makes them feel better.

“You okay?” I helped him up and brushed him off.

He nodded and wiped his nose on his arm. I guess the good thing about most ten-year-olds is they can’t inflict much harm.

Meanwhile, Mike and Ike waited with arms crossed and chins jutting defiantly as if they knew what they’d done was wrong, but were still determined to claim that they were right.

“Have a seat, guys.” I sat on the grass with them.

“He started it,” Mike insisted.

“Doesn’t matter,” I said.

Mike and Ike glanced at each other uncertainly.

“You guys must be pretty angry, huh? I mean, to pound on another kid like that?”

Their foreheads bunched.

“So what are you so angry about?” I asked.

Neither answered. Mike pulled a few blades of grass out of the ground, and Ike followed his example. Maybe asking ten-year-olds to get in touch with their feelings was a bit too much. I decided to try a hunch: “How about this? Suddenly there’s this other family in your house, and your father’s stomping around pissed off all the time, and your mother spends half her life crying. Must be kind of upsetting, huh?”