A. Homes - Things You Should Know

“Is that you?” her mother finally asks when she’s two feet away.

“I’m home.”

Her mother hugs her — her mother is smaller too. Everything is shrinking, compacting, intensifying. “Did you have a good flight?”

She has never flown home. “I took the train.”

“Is Ray back?” her mother asks.

“Not yet,” her father says as he puts two heaping tablespoons of green powder into a glass of water.

“Where did you meet this Ray?”

“Your father left his coat at the health food store and Ray found it and called him.”

Her father nods. “I went to get the coat and we started talking.”

“Your father and Ray go to vitamin class together.”

“Vitamin class?”

“They go to the health store and a man speaks to them over a video screen.”

“What does the man tell you?”

“He talks about nutrition and health. He tells us what to do.”

“How many people go?”

“About thirty.” Her father stirs, tapping the side of the glass with his spoon. “This is the green stuff, I have two glasses of this twice a day and then I have a couple of the red stuff. It’s all natural.” He drinks in big gulps.

It looks like a liquefied lawn.

“See my ankles,” he says, pulling up the leg of his pants. “They’re not swollen. Ever since I started taking the supplements, the swelling has gone down. I feel great. I joined a gym.”

“Where was this Ray before he came to you?”

“He had a place over on Arlington Road, one of those apartments behind the A&P, with another fellow.”

“Something happened to that man, he may have died or gone into a home. I don’t really know,” her mother says.

There is the sound of a key in the door.

“That’s Ray.”

The door opens. Ray comes in carrying groceries.

“In your honor, Ray is making vegetable chow mein for dinner,” her mother says. And she is not sure why vegetable chow mein is in her honor.

“You must be Ray,” she says, putting her hand out as Ray puts the bags down.

“You must be the daughter,” Ray says, ignoring her hand.

“Did you get the crispy noodles?” her mother asks.

“I don’t eat meat anymore,” her father says. “I don’t really eat much of anything. At my age, I don’t have a big appetite.”

“I got you some chocolate rice milk — I think you’ll like it.” Ray hands her father a box of milk.

“I like chocolate,” her father says.

“I know you do.” Ray is of indeterminate age, somewhere between fifty-five and sixty-five, sinewy with close-cropped hair, like a skullcap sprinkled with gray. Each of his features belongs to another place; he is a little bit Asian, a little bit Middle Eastern, a little bit Irish, and within all that he is incredibly plain and without affect, as though he has spent a lot of time trying not to be.

“And I got the noodles,” Ray says.

“Oh good,” her mother says. “I like things that are crunchy.”

Her mother and father peer into the grocery bags. She wonders if Ray pays for these groceries — if that’s why they’re so interested — or if he makes them pay for it.

“Nuts,” her father says, pulling out a bag of cashews. “And raisins.”

“Organic,” Ray says, winking.

Her father loves anything organic.

“Remember when we couldn’t have lettuce because it wasn’t picked by the right people, and then we couldn’t have grapes. And after that it was something else,” she says.

“Tuna,” her mother says, “because of the dolphins.”

“I have something to show you,” her father says, leading Ray into the living room. There is a drawing on the dining table.

“Very nice,” Ray says.

Her mother walks past them. She sits at the piano and begins to play. “I’ve started my lessons again.”

“Let’s hear the Schubert,” Ray says.

Her father proudly shows her more drawings. “I’m taking classes, at the college. Free for seniors.”

It is incredibly civilized and all she can think about is how bad things are with Steve and that she needs to come up with a slogan for adult diapers by Monday.

A little later, she is sitting in the den. As her mother knits, they watch the evening news. Her father is in the bedroom, blasting the radio. Ray is in the kitchen with the pots and pans. The smell of garlic and scallions fills the house.

“You let him just be in the kitchen? You don’t worry what he does to the food — what he puts in it?”

“What’s he going to do — poison us?” her mother says. “I’m tired of cooking. If I never cook again that’s fine with me.”

She looks at her mother — her mother is a good cook, she is what you’d call a food person.

“Does Ray have a crush on Dad?”

“Don’t be ridiculous — what am I, chopped liver?” Her mother inhales. “Smells good doesn’t it?”

A noise, an occasional small sound draws her out of the room and down the hall. She moves quietly thinking she will catch him, she will catch Ray doing something he shouldn’t.

She finds him on the living room floor, sitting on a cushion. There are small shiny cymbals on his first and third fingers and every now and then he pinches his fingers together— ping .

She goes back into the den.

“He’s meditating,” her mother says, before she even asks. “Twice a day for forty minutes. He tried to get your father to do it and me too. We don’t have the patience. Sometimes we sit with him, we cheat, I read, your father falls asleep.”

Again there is the sound of the cymbals— ping .

“Isn’t that the nicest sound?”

“Does he do it at specific intervals?”

“He does it whenever his mind begins to wander. He goes very deep. He’s been at it for twenty years.”

“Where is Ray from? Does he have a family? Does he have a job? Is he part of a cult?”

“Why are you so suspicious? Did you come all the way home to visit or to investigate us?”

“I came home to talk to you.”

“I don’t know that I have anything to say,” her mother says.

“I need advice — I need you to tell me what to do.”

“I can’t. It’s your life. You do what’s right for you.” She pauses. “You said you wanted to come home because you needed to get something, you wanted something — what was it, something you left in your room?”

“I don’t know how to describe it,” she catches herself. “It’s something I never got. Something from you,” she says.

“I don’t really have much to give. Call some friends, make plans, live it up. Aren’t any of your high school buddies around?”

She is thirty-five and suddenly needs her mother. She is thirty-five and doesn’t remember who her high school buddies were.

“What does Ray want from you? What does he get?”

“I have no idea. He doesn’t ask for anything. Maybe just being here is enough, maybe that’s all he wants. Everyone doesn’t need as much as you.”

There is silence.

“Damn,” her mother says. “I dropped a stitch.”

She leaves the room. She goes downstairs. She wants to see exactly what he is up to.

The door to her brother’s room is cracked open. She pushes it further. A brown cat is curled up on a pillow; it looks at her. She steps inside. The cat dives under the bed.

The room is clean and neat. Everything is put away. There is no sign of life, except for the dent in the pillow where the cat was, and a thin sweater folded over the back of a chair. By the side of the bed is a book of stories, an empty water glass, and an old alarm clock, ticking loudly.

“Can I help you?”

Ray is in the room. She doesn’t know how he got there, how he got down the stairs without a sound.