A. Homes - Things You Should Know

“I have the key,” her mother says. “And Ray made an inventory.”

“Fine, first thing in the morning I’m going there. We’ll see what’s what.”

“Why are you so suspicious? Your father doesn’t have many friends, this is nice for him, don’t ruin it.”

“What do you even know about Ray — who is he really?”

“He writes,” her father says.

“Yeah, he keeps a journal, I saw it downstairs.”

“You shouldn’t be poking around in his room,” her mother says. “That’s invasion of privacy.”

“He’s written five books, he’s had stories in the New Yorker, ” her father says.

“If he’s a world-famous writer, why is he living with you?”

“He likes us,” her father says. “We’re common travelers.”

“We should all be so lucky to have someone willing to pay a little attention to us when we’re old — it’s not like you’re going to move home and take care of us.”

“I came home because I wanted you to take care of me. Steve and I are having a hard time. I think Steve may move out.”

“You have to learn to leave people alone, you can’t hound someone every minute. Maybe if you left him alone he’d come back.” Her mother pauses. “Do you want Ray to go back with you?”

“And do what, help Steve pack?”

“He could keep you company. I’m not sure he’s ever been to New York. He likes adventures.”

“Mom, I don’t need Ray. If I needed anyone, it would be you.”

“No,” her mother says. Simply no. She hears it and knows that all along the answer was no.

Her bedroom is simultaneously big and small. She is too big for the bed and yet feels like a child, intruding on her own life.

She pulls the shade and undresses. The night-light is on, it goes on automatically at dusk. She lies in the twin bed of her youth, looking at the bookcase, at the bear whose fur she tried to style, at her glass piggy bank still filled with change, at a Jefferson Airplane — White Rabbit poster clinging to the wall behind the dresser.

Stopped time. She is in both the past and present, wondering how she got from there to here. The mattress is hard as a rock. She rolls over and back. There is nowhere to go. She takes a couple of the new pills — Products for Modern Living.

She dreams.

Her mother and father are standing in the front hall with old-fashioned American Tourister suitcases.

“I’m taking your mother to Europe,” her father says. “Ray is going to keep an eye on the house, he’s going to take care of the dog.”

“He’s lonely,” her mother says. “He came for coffee and brought us a cat.”

She is hiding in the woods behind the house, watching the house with X-ray specs. Everything is black and white. She calls her brother from a walkie-talkie. “Are you out there? Can you hear me? Come in, come in?”

“Roger. I am here in sunny California.”

“I’m watching Ray,” she says.

“The mail just came,” he says. “Ray sent me a birthday card and a hundred dollars in cash. That’s more than Mom and Dad ever gave me.”

“Do you know where Mom and Dad are?”

“I have no idea,” he says. “They didn’t even send a card.”

And then Ray is chasing her around the yard with the cymbals on his fingers. Every time he punches his fingers together— ping —she feels a sharp electric shock. Her X-ray specs fall off. Everything changes from black-and-white to color.

Ray runs into the house and closes the door. The deadbolt slips into place.

She is on the other side of the glass. “Open the door, Ray.”

She finds the key hidden under the pot. She tries it. The key doesn’t work — Ray has changed the locks.

“Ray,” she says, banging on the glass. “Ray, what have you done to my parents? Ray, I’m going to call the police.”

“They’re in Italy,” Ray says, muffled through the glass.

She is on the walkie-talkie, trying to reach her mother in Italy.

“You’re not understanding what I’m saying,” she says. “Ray stole the house. He changed the locks. I can’t get in.”

“You don’t have to yell, I’m not deaf,” her mother says.

She wakes up. The house is silent except for two loud, sawing snores — her parents.

In the morning, she dresses in her room. With Ray in the house, she feels uncomfortable making the dash from the bedroom to the bathroom in her underwear. She gets dressed, goes to wash her face and pee, and then heads down the hall to the kitchen.

“Good morning,” she says.

Ray is alone at the kitchen table.

“Where is everybody?”

“Your father had an art class and your mother went shopping with Mrs. Harris. She left you her car and the key for the mini-storage.”

Ray holds up a string, dangling from it is a small key. He swings it back and forth hypnotically. “I’ll give you directions,” he says.

She nods.

“Would you like some herb tea? I just made a pot.”

“No thanks.” They sit in silence. “I’m not exactly a morning person,” she says.

As she steps outside, Mrs. Lasky is across the way, getting into her car.

“How are you?” Mrs. Lasky calls out. “How is life in New York?”

“It’s fine. It’s fine.” She repeats herself, having nothing more to say. “And how are you?”

“Very well,” Mrs. Lasky says. “Isn’t Ray wonderful? He keeps my bird feeder full. The most wonderful birds visit me. Just now, as I was having my breakfast, a female cardinal was having hers.”

The mini-storage facility is called U-Store It. “U-store it. U-keep the key. U-are in charge.” She locates the unit, unlocks the padlock, and pulls the door open.

There was something vaguely menacing about the way Ray was swinging the key through the air — yet he drew the map, he seemed not to know or care what she was thinking.

A clipboard hangs from a hook by the door. There is spare twine, tape, and a roll of bubble wrap. She recognizes the outlines of her grandmother’s table, her father’s old rocking chair. Each box is labeled, each piece of furniture well wrapped. On the clipboard is a typed list of boxes with appendices itemizing the contents of each box: Children’s Toys, Mother’s Dishes, World Book Encyclopedia A — Z (Plus YearBook 1960–1974), Assorted From Kitchen Closet, Beach Supplies, etc. She pries open a box just to be sure. She’s thinking she might find wadded up newspaper, proof Ray is stealing, but instead, she finds her book reports from high school, a Valentine card her brother made for her mother, the hat her grandmother wore to her mother’s wedding.

She seals the box up again. There is nothing to see. She pulls the door closed, locks it, and leaves.

Driving home, she passes her old high school — it’s been gutted. BUILDING A BETTER FUTURE FOR TOMORROW’ S LEADERS. READY FOR RE-OCCUPANCY FALL 2002. GO BARONS.

She drives up and down the streets, playing a nostalgic game of who lived where and what she can remember about them: the girl with the wonderful singing voice who ended up having to be extricated from a cult, the boy who in sixth grade had his own subscription to Playboy, the girl whose mother had Siamese twins. She remembers her paper route, she remembers selling Girl Scout cookies door to door, birthday parties, roller skating, Ice Capades.

She goes home.

Every time she comes to visit, it takes twenty-four hours to get used to things and then everything seems less strange, more familiar, everything seems as though it could be no other way — entirely natural.

She slides the car into the driveway. Her father is in the front yard, raking leaves. His back is toward her. She beeps, he waves. For a million years her father has been in the front yard, raking. He has his plaid cap on, his old red cardigan, and corduroys.