Marie-Helene Bertino - Safe as Houses

She arranges Bob Dylan at the counter with a knife and a cutting board. I excuse myself.

The downstairs bathroom is lit by a candle. Over the toilet seat, an American flag.

When I return, there is a new voice in the kitchen. I am in time to hear my mother say, “He came with your sister,” referring to Bob, who has amassed a sorry pile of gnarled beans.

“Jeeeeesus.” My brother recognizes him immediately. “It’s nice to meet you.” They shake hands. “Wow, man, wow.”

My brother’s face is blurred with nap but in his eyes grows an ambitious light. It is a spark that could vanish as quickly as it came or succeed in splitting his face open into reckless laughter. I know it can go either way.

I make my voice soft. “Hi there.”

“Hey.” My brother turns, lifts his nose, and sniffs. His smile recedes. “Still smoking?”

I nod. I say, hopefully, “You met Bob.”

He nods.

“Can you beat that?” I say.

“I didn’t know it was a contest.” His smile is gone.

My mother leans over Bob, to reexplain how much of the string bean is “end.”

“I thought you would like to meet him,” I say.

He shrugs. “I thought it would just be family.”

…

I can tell when Bob Dylan needs a cigarette. We excuse ourselves before dinner to the backyard, where everything is dead. In the corner near the fence is a pile of lawn ornaments my mom will put up in the spring. She’s had everything for years. The newest thing is the dining room table, a mahogany affair, and even that is only allowed in the house two days a year, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Bob Dylan never has his own cigarettes. I thought this was charming at first.

“We’re going to get you a pack today, buddy.” I hit mine against the inside of my wrist and unwind the plastic. I brought Bob here to remind my brother how he used to be, before American flags and Iraq. I thought at least it would give us something to talk about. I give myself the length of a cigarette to admit it; my plan is not going to work.

Bob and I smoke on the edge of the yard. There are no lights on at the Monahans’ house, our neighbors. They normally go to a cousin in New Jersey’s for Thanksgiving.

The grass is frozen. Every so often I stamp on it to hear the crunching sound. Then, without speaking, Bob Dylan and I have a contest. He expels a line of smoke clear to the middle of the yard. “Damn,” I say when mine dies not three feet in front of me. He exhales again, this time surpassing mine by yards. “Damn,” I say. He is good at this, but he has years on me.

We go back in.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” my mother says. “The whole family around the table.”

My brother is wearing new clothes. I am spooning mashed potatoes onto my plate when I ask, “When do you leave?”

“Two weeks.”

“Isn’t it wonderful?” my mother says again. “They let him have a good Thanksgiving dinner before he goes.”

The presence of Bob Dylan seems to make my brother anxious. Our dinner conversation is punctuated by his glares toward Bob, as if I have brought him here as another fuck you: Look at the friends I have made in New York City . Thankfully, Bob is oblivious, admiring each string bean on all sides before plunging it into his mouth.

Later, there is an argument. There is something my brother wants me to admit and I won’t. Bob Dylan ends up with a busted lip.

My mother wants us to sit back down and eat the turkey. She is trying to hold a bowl of corn and pull me back into my chair.

I say, “Bob, let’s get out of here.”

…

It is cold but there is sun. Bob Dylan and I drive through dead trees and I point out personal landmarks that make this Not Just Any Neighborhood. This is where I got my first kiss; this is where I worked that summer; this is where I went to school.

There’s the hospital where I was born. Small and curled like a comma, smears of mustard-colored hair, there’s the hospital where I was born. My brother was at home on the stoop, passing out candy cigarettes to the other six-year-olds.

My car rattles on an overpass. Under Bob Dylan and me sweep the arms of the turnpike. Over our left shoulders, north of the city, nothing.

“You used to be able to see the Vet from here,” I say, as if I’m narrating. “Great times had at the Vet. Years ago on opening day, a big fight broke out on the seven hundred level. The Daily News got a picture of my brother.”

A curious train runs next to my car. It ducks me, reveals to me its silver flanks through the trees, and ducks me again. It plunges farther into the crunch as I turn off. The sky is blue.

I stop at a red light on the Boulevard. A man on the median is breathing into his cupped hands. He is selling roses.

Someone in the car in front of me calls to him. It is my brother, ten years ago.

He is fighting with my mom and I am in the backseat, caught up in being eleven, ignored and ignoring. My mom’s cheeks are wet.

…

He asks how much the red ones are.

“On second thought, it doesn’t matter,” he interrupts himself and buys twelve. They are wrapped in plastic and smell like exhaust, but it ends the fight.

This happened years ago. He is a good son. My brother is a good son.

The light changes to green. I make the turn.

…

On one of the lawns facing the Little League field, an older couple is hauling leaves to the curb in a quilt that is too nice to be used in this way. Their progress is slow but they couldn’t have asked for a better day. It is cold, but there is sun lighting up my windshield, warming me at red lights. The sky is blue. The turkey is steaming on its plate.

Do they hope to clear the lawn of every leaf before the kids arrive? This is one of those unrealistic expectations parents have. That their children will be smarter than they are or will like each other, that no Thanksgiving dinner will ever be interrupted by the hard sound of someone upending a chair.

There are too many leaves. Bob Dylan and I both know: they will never get all of them cleared in time.

There are American flags on buses, on coats, on bandanas tied around the necks of Golden Retrievers. Hanging from every tree, reflected in every window.

Bob Dylan is upbeat. His lip has stopped bleeding and he wants to know, Do I consider myself to be an American Daughter?

I have been vaulted from the Thanksgiving table. What’s more American than that? How many people have left their steam-filled homes to drive around and think about old things? I pass car after car.

…

Outside the Slaughterhouse Bar, the pay phone hangs from its cord. There I am six years ago, an unimpressive fifteen. No breasts, arms and legs beyond my control, making a phone call to my brother in the middle of the night.

“Stay right there,” he says. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

I walk in place to stay warm. Every so often a car drives by and hurls its lights at me. Ten minutes later he pulls up, brakes sharply.

“I ran away and I’m never going back.” I am crying.

He waits for me to fix the long strap over my shoulder before he pulls away.

I look at him, then the road, then at him.

“Are you going to yell at me?”

“Do you know what tape this is?” he says.

I listen. There is music playing.

“No.”

“It’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan .”

“Oh,” I say. “What’s that?”

“Bob Dylan.”

“Right.”

We watch the road in silence.

“Are you going to take me home?”

“More people should listen to Bob Dylan,” he says.

He drives to the Red Lion diner. We sit in the big plastic seats and give the waitress our order. He buys me a bowl of French onion soup.