Authors: Don Hoesel
Graham rebounded and took it to the perimeter. “Do you think we’re stupid?” he asked. He shot a look at his brother as CJ moved to cover him. “Do you think
I’m
stupid?”
“No, Graham, I don’t think you’re stupid,” CJ answered with a smile. “Not very good at basketball, maybe. But definitely not stupid.”
Graham shook his head, and CJ could see the beginnings of real anger on his face. Which was fine by him; Graham couldn’t sink a shot when he was angry. CJ moved out farther but left his brother room to shoot, daring him to. Instead, Graham made a move to pass on CJ’s right, along the base line. CJ cut him off, so Graham was forced to pick up his dribble and, with his brother’s hands in his face, take a poor shot that left him no chance at the rebound. CJ recovered it easily and moved away.
He gave Graham time to get set. It wouldn’t do to clinch his first win against his brother and leave room for him to complain about how he hadn’t been ready. Graham walked slowly to the crack in the driveway that served as the foul line. The older man had his hands on his hips, his breath coming in labored draughts, but his jaw was set.
With a nod, CJ started.
There was nothing uncertain about his movements now— none of the feeling each other out that had occurred at the start of the game, or the more tentative play that came from weariness. CJ took it straight at Graham, leading with the ball. At the last second, before his brother could swipe it away, CJ spun to his left and ducked past him. He’d caught Graham going right, and now CJ had a straight shot to the basket. He took three steps and left the ground, extending the ball for the winning lay-up.
Then he ran into a brick wall. Graham’s forearm caught him in the neck in mid-jump, and CJ felt himself being thrown to the pavement. As if in slow motion he watched the ball work its way up the backboard, swirl once around the rim, and roll off. He hit the ground hard, feeling something give in his knee, but he barely registered that through the pain in his throat.
Graham was standing over him. His brother held the ball in his hands, and he looked down on CJ with as hard an expression as CJ could ever remember having seen before.
“Don’t dig yourself into a hole you can’t get out of, Charles,” Graham said.
He dropped the ball and went back inside the house, leaving CJ there to think about it.
If the house on Lyndale carried the weight of Baxter history, the more modest dwelling on Beverly Drive provided the framework for CJ’s personal narrative. And it was interesting to see that the framework had not changed a bit in seventeen years.
“Do you want something to drink?” his mother asked him. She started for the kitchen but then hesitated, looking back at her son with a frown. “I’ve got some scotch. Do you drink scotch?”
“No thanks, Mom. I’m fine.”
She chuckled, touching a hand to her neck. It was a nervous gesture that she’d never been able to break, even under his dad’s verbal assaults.
“It’s just—it’s just strange. You were a kid when you left. Now all of a sudden you’re a man.” She gave him a long look up and down before turning and disappearing into the kitchen. He heard her rummaging around in the cupboard, heard the clink of a glass.
She’d left everything as it was when he lived here, down to the old chairs, the brown carpet, and the upright piano he doubted anyone had played since his last lesson in tenth grade. The only things his observant eye could see that kept it from being a carbon copy of the room from 1993 were the cane that his mom said she used on her tired days, which was leaning against the arm of the couch, and the absence of pictures that included his father.
He lifted a framed photo off the piano. It was one of him and Graham posing with a large brook trout they’d pulled from the Ottawa River. In the original version, their father stood behind them, a hand on each of their shoulders. Now there was a silhouette, and CJ shuddered to think of what his mother had done with the effigy of her ex-husband once she’d extricated him from the photo.
“Have you seen him?” His mother had returned from the kitchen, holding a glass of something dark, chilled with a pair of ice cubes. She took a sip and set the glass on the coffee table.
CJ frowned at the glass and looked at his watch, but his mother seemed oblivious to his disapproval.
“Not yet,” he said, replacing the picture on the piano.
Dorothy Dotson sat on the arm of the couch, and Thoreau got up from his spot by the window and moved his large head beneath her hand. She absently scratched behind his ears while reaching for a pack of cigarettes in the pocket of her housecoat with her other hand. She shook one out, removed it with her lips, slipped the pack back into her pocket, and then lit the cigarette, all without removing her hand from the dog’s head.
She looked up at CJ and saw that his eyes were wide.
“What’s the matter with you?”
CJ shook his head. “Since when do you smoke?”
“Since the day that sorry excuse for a human being left,” Dorothy said, gesturing with the cigarette. She took a long draw on it, then stopped petting Thor long enough to lean over, get her drink, and take several sips. After setting the glass back down, she clarified. “And in case there’s any doubt, I’m referring to your father.”
CJ had no response, because that would have meant having to pick his jaw up off the floor. This woman looked like his mother—or at least an older, hard-worn version of her—but it was like she’d taken a role in a bad dinner theater. When he left for college his mother was June Cleaver. Now she was something out of a Tennessee Williams play.
He’d heard the divorce, now almost fifteen years past, had been contentious, and a long time coming. While his dad’s infidelity had been the final straw, enough water had passed under the bridge to make the ending inevitable. Sal had filled him in on the main points, convincing him there was little to be gained by his coming back from school and getting involved. Graham and Maryann had been here to handle whatever needed to be handled.
“I was smoking long before I met your father,” Dorothy added. “And I smoked when I was pregnant with your brother. But let that be our little secret, alright?”
“Whatever you say, Mom,” CJ said.
Dorothy Dotson’s face still evidenced the chiseled lines of East Coast refinement years after her looks had stopped turning heads. Her father, Major Dotson, inherited the money his own father had inherited and, true to the Dotson pedigree, had proceeded with the serious business of increasing the family wealth. When Dorothy, at seventeen, announced her intention to wed George Baxter, the Dotsons were the third wealthiest family in New York, and her father had responded in a fashion befitting their status. As the bruise faded, Dorothy, along with a more sympathetic ally in her mother, dove into the planning of her wedding, knowing that even though he disapproved, her father would foot the bill. If he opted for anything less than extravagance, it would have been the talk of the social circles, which was the reason for the major’s opposition to the union in the first place.
By the time the sixties rolled in, the Baxter name had lost much of its former cachet, and there was little merit the major could see in the union of the two families, save that proceeding with the marriage was a lesser evil to the possibility that his strongheaded daughter might elope with George Baxter and thereby provide fodder to every gossip within a hundred miles. The wedding was held in the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, and then Dorothy was shuttled off to Adelia, with the major turning his hopes toward a more appropriate arrangement for her younger sister.
Dorothy had been in exile ever since, and such was the totality of the divorce from her own family that divorce from her husband had not prompted her to return home, even with her father long dead. There was also something to be said for spite, which was a habit one could nurse over the course of decades. Dorothy had vowed to die in this house rather than let George ever get his hands on it, and that vow extended to every item in it—including those things that the terms of the divorce did not entitle her to. When the judge gave her the house, he also granted George several items within it, such as his guns, the record player, the antique bureau that was a family heirloom, and his clothes. To date, not a single item, not even George’s cotton drawers, had made it through the door. Early on, when her ex-husband still had something of the younger man’s blood in him, he’d shown up on the porch, demanding his things. On occasion, he showed up with the law at his side. She wouldn’t answer the door, and eventually they would leave. Those times when he showed up by himself, banging on the door and shouting, she called the law herself and then watched through a window as they hauled him off.
Even then she knew that had he pressed matters—perhaps gone to the judge and sought a warrant—he could have gotten everything belonging to him. But he didn’t, and without knowing how, she knew he wouldn’t. Maybe it was a penance he’d given himself after the years of other women, and the shouting, and the one time he’d hit her. In the same way she knew that Adelia would see snow in January, she knew George would never have her arrested, and that was boon enough to keep her from destroying those things he wanted. But it wasn’t enough to make her forgive him—or to grant him a single thing in the house.
“Where are you staying?” she asked CJ.
He shrugged. “I don’t know yet.”
“I thought you’d stay at
The House
,” she said. She’d always called it that, even during what CJ would have dubbed the happy times. It was the way she accented it that made it a proper name.
“I don’t think so,” he said, resisting the urge to rub his neck. “Too much going on over there.”
Dorothy nodded as if she believed it. “You could stay here.”
He couldn’t tell if her tone was hopeful or not. Regardless, he didn’t think that was a good idea either. It was a case of too much, too soon. Besides, he wasn’t sure he was up to sleeping in his old room. For some reason, the thought unsettled him.
Fortunately, he didn’t have to say anything. It must have been evident on his face, because his mother offered a sad—and perhaps slightly relieved—smile.
“I’ve probably been alone too long to have to deal with a roommate anyway,” she said.
CJ just nodded, and neither of them said anything for a while. He could hear what sounded like a delivery truck go past the house, heard it slow at the stop sign, then turn right onto Floral Street, its tires sinking into what had to be the world’s oldest pothole—one that he’d caught a time or two in his old Mustang.
“I’ve read all your books,” Dorothy said, pulling him back.
“I would hope so,” he laughed. “You are my mother.”
“So much cursing,” she said with a
tsk
. “Where did you learn that kind of language?”
“Where did you learn to like scotch?” he countered.
“My father’s liquor cabinet,” she answered. “Then, after I had you kids, I would sneak some when you were asleep. Your father didn’t want me drinking in front of you.”
It was another thing he’d learned about her that didn’t seem to engender an adequate response. He just shook his head. Dorothy offered a self-conscious smile before looking down at the dog. Thoreau appeared caught in that quintessential place where the urge to lie down competed with the desire to have the petting continue. It looked as if the former need was about to win out. With a grunt the Lab sank to the carpet, nose between his large paws. Dorothy watched him until he closed his eyes and started to drift off.
She sighed. “Have you ever known a dog with insomnia?”
“I can’t say as I have. Are you having trouble sleeping?”
“Only when I’m awake,” she said with a chuckle. She watched Thoreau for a while longer, until the dog began to snore. She looked up at her son, and despite the scotch, her eyes were sharp. “They don’t like you being here. You know that, right?”
He didn’t say anything for a few moments. Then he shrugged and said, “That might bother me if I stop and think about it, so if it’s alright with you, I won’t.”
Dorothy snorted. “It’s not like it’s such a big deal. Sal’s the only one of us
you
liked.”
“Now that
does
bother me,” CJ objected, but Dorothy put up a hand.
“It’s alright, CJ. Really.” She looked as if she would say more, but she stopped and let her eyes fall to the sleeping dog. When she looked back at CJ, she wore a resigned smile. “You haven’t come home since you left for college—that’s a pretty clear indication of the regard you hold for your family.”
“You have no idea what kind of regard I hold for the family,” CJ said, irritated both by the fact that he’d been drawn into an uncomfortable conversation, and because he couldn’t exactly argue against his mother’s accusation with the sort of vehemence a legitimate denial would have required.
“None of us are idiots,” Dorothy said. After a pause, she added, “Well, maybe your father is. But the rest of us are pretty sharp.”
CJ threw up his hands. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Mom.”
“Then you’re either obtuse or a liar,” she said. She pursed her lips as if remembering something distasteful. “The way you write about us . . .”
“I write fiction. That’s all.”
She shook her head. “No you don’t. No sir. You might as well call every one of your books a memoir.” He was about to interrupt, but she cut him off before he could start. “Don’t get smart with me, mister. I haven’t seen you in almost twenty years, but I’m still your mother and I won’t have it, you hear?”
She stopped and waited to see if he would say anything— which he didn’t—before she continued.
“You write with all the stuff reviewers like. Grand themes, big words, endings you have to think about for weeks before you can figure out what happened. But everyone here can see themselves on those pages.”
“People see what they want to see,” he shot back.
She shook her head. “You don’t get it.”
“I get it just fine, Mom.”
She gave him a reproachful look, lips pursed, before saying, “You’re a wonderful writer, CJ. You earned your award and I’m proud of you. But it’s not fiction, not all of it.”