Things You Should Know (10 page)

“Should I not bother you?”

“It's okay—you're not here very often,” her mother says.

“What's Ray doing?” her father asks.

“Rearranging the shelves in the kitchen, throwing clay pots and firing them in the oven, and koshering chickens for tomorrow.”

“What makes you always think everyone else is getting more than you?” her mother asks.

“You're hiding in your bedroom with the door closed and he's out there—loose in the house, doing God knows what. He's completely taken over, he's running the show, don't you see?”

“We're not hiding, we're spending time alone together.”

She sneezes four times in quick succession. “Cat,” she says.

“Did you bring anything to help yourself?”

“What the hell makes him so special that he gets to come and live here with his cat?”

“There's no reason not to share. In fact it's better, more economical, and he's very considerate,” her father says. “If
more people invited people in, it would solve the housing shortage, use less natural resources. We're just two people. What do we need a whole house for? It was my idea.”

“Why don't you just open a shelter, take in homeless people and offer them free showers, et cetera?”

“Don't go completely crazy,” her mother says. “There are no homeless people in Chevy Chase.”

She looks around the room. “What happened to Grandma's table? It used to be in that corner.”

“Mini-storage,” her mother says. “We put a lot of things into storage.”

“Boxes and boxes. We loaded a van and they took it all away.”

“The house feels better now, doesn't it? Airier, almost like it's glad to be rid of all that crap,” her mother says.

“Where is this mini-storage?” she asks.

“Somewhere in Rockville. Ray found it. Ray took care of the whole thing.”

“Have you ever been there? How do you know your stuff is really there?” She is thinking she's figured it out, she finally has something on Ray.

“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.

She gets out of the car.

“Remember when I was little,” she calls down the hill. “And we used to rake together. You had the big one and I had the small bamboo…”

He turns. A terrifying sensation sweeps through her. It's Ray.

“I want you out,” she says, shocked. “Now!” He intentionally misled her. He had to have known what she was thinking when she drove in, when she beeped and waved, when she said, remember when I was little. Why didn't he take off the hat, turn around, and say, I am not who you think I am?

“Where is my father? What have you done to my father? Those are not your clothes.”

“Your father gave them to me.”

She moves toward him.

Ray is standing there, her father's cap still on his head. She reaches out, she knocks it off. He bends to pick it up.

“It's not your hat,” she says, grabbing it, throwing it like a Frisbee across the yard. “You can't just step inside someone's life and pretend you're them.”

“I was invited.”

“Get your stuff and get out.”

“I'm not sure it's entirely up to you,” Ray says. This is as close as he comes to protesting. “It's not your house.”

“Oh, but it is,” she says. “It's my house and it's my family and I have to have some influence on what happens here. They're old, Ray. Pick on someone else.” She grabs the rake and uses it to shoo him inside. “It's over. Pack your bags.”

Her mother comes home just as Ray is trying to put the cat into his travel case. The cat is screaming, howling. The cab is waiting outside.

“What's going on? Did something happen to the cat? Does he need me to take him to the vet?”

“He can't stay,” she says. “He was in the yard acting like Daddy, he was wearing Daddy's clothes. He can't do that.”

“He's your father's friend. We like having him here.”

“He can't stay,” she repeats.

“Maybe you shouldn't have come home,” her mother says. “Maybe it's too hard. You know what they say.”

“I'm just visiting,” she says.

Ray comes up the stairs. He has a single suitcase, the cat carrier, and a brown paper bag filled with his supplements, his wheat germ, and the red and the green stuff.

“It doesn't have to be this way,” her mother says.

“It does,” she says.

“Good-bye,” Ray says, shaking her mother's hand.

There's something about his shaking her mother's hand that's more upsetting than anything, it's heartbreaking and pathetic, it's more and less affecting than a clinging hug.

“Don't forget us, Ray,” her mother says, walking him to the door, letting him out almost as easily as they let him in. “I'm so sorry, I apologize for the confusion.”

 

And then he is gone. She goes down to his room. She checks the doors. He has left his key on the bed along with her father's clothes, neatly folded, his bedding all rolled up.

 

She comes back upstairs.

“Now what, Mrs. Big Shot?” her mother says. “Now who's going to take care of us?”

“I don't know.”

“Your father didn't even have a chance to say good-bye.”

“I'm not saying they can't be friends—I'm sure he'll see him at the next vitamin meeting—just that Ray can't live here. This isn't a commune.”

 

She is sitting in the den. Her mother is knitting.

Her father comes home. “I made a nice drawing today,” her father says.

“That's nice,” her mother says.

“Were there any messages?”

“No,” her mother says.

They sit in silence for a few minutes longer.

“Where's Ray?”

“She made him leave,” her mother says, gesturing toward her with a knitting needle.

“He was in the yard, raking. He had your clothes on. I thought he was you—he scared me.”

“He did a good job,” her father says. “The yard looks good.”