Barbara Samuel - No Place Like Home

No
Place Like
Home

Barbara Samuel

BALLANTINE BOOKS NEW YORK

Table of Contents

FROM THE AMTRAK DINING CAR LUNCH MENU:

Chapter 1

The April I was thirteen, I went to sleep a good Catholic schoolgirl, and woke up the next morning burning. The transition was like the flip of a coin, and made me as dizzy as an airborne dime.

I was sick for days with itdrunk on the new green of globe willow leaves against the slate of a heavy spring sky; feeling the itch down my spine and the sides of my legs from the seams of my clothes; eating gluttonously of every lasagna, every olive, every bowl of cream I could put my hands on. A cat crawled into my lap, and I petted him for hours, a cat I had known all of my life, and I ached with the incredible softness of his long fur, the astonishing sound of a purr.

My mother said it was puberty. It would pass.

More than twenty-five years later, the great cosmic hand flipped the coin again. I went to bed a woman of the world, and awakened the next morning desperately homesick for the world of the girl Id left behind. I turned over in my beda futon shoved against the wall of the living room of my Greenwich Village apartmentand remembered, suddenly, what it was like to awaken to complete morning silence. Not a plane or a taxi or a clatter in the street, only the voices of birds or the purr of a cat. I stared at the square of obstructed sky I could see above the curtains and remembered a bowl of sky stretched hard from the yellow, elm-pierced east to the dark jagged blue of mountains to the west. It seemed I could smell sage and rain, dust and onions, lasagna and perfume, all at once, mingling like a siren song.

That day, a registered letter came from Passanante, Corsi, & Cerniglia, Attorneys-at-Law, and I opened it to discover that my aunt Sylvia, ninety years old, had passed away and left me her house and all the lands that went with it. It was so precipitous, I knew my grandmother must have been very, very busy lighting candles to every saint on her list for a special intervention. Saint Judeoh, he of hopeless causes. And certainly Magdalena, who would understand fallen women so very well.

It would not have surprised me if it had been Sylvia herself whod brought all that homesickness to me, sitting on my bed in mischievous, ghostly humor, taking care of one last thing before she went on to meet her husband, Antonio.

Truth was, though, I had probably known that going home was the only answer. My best friend, Michael, had collapsed on the stairs the week before, unable to manage the steep narrow flights of our building any longer, and Id acceptedeven if he hadntthat hed be living with us soon. Which, considering Id blown the engine in my delivery van and didnt have anywhere close to enough money saved to think about a new place, was more than a small hurdle.

And as if that werent enough, the building was sold out from under us to a developer who wanted to put in condos. We had two months to find a new place.

I moved my index finger over the embossed name on the letterhead. No choice.

When Shane, my seventeen-year-old son, came out of his room, rubbing his chest in an unconscious gesture, I said, Babe, were going home.

Home?

I took a breath, waved the letter. Pueblo.

For one long moment, he blinked at me, maybe waiting for me to say, just kidding . When I didnt, he scowled, his dramatic dark eyebrows beetling above the brilliance of his blue eyes. Im not going there.

Yeah, kid, you are. I tossed the letter down and poured some coffee into a ceramic mug Id picked up from a street stall. It doesnt have to be foreverbut we have to take care of Michael.

He slumped on a stool, leaning his elbows on the counter and putting his big, dark head in his hands. Although he was a fairly typical mix of the arrogance and uncertainty that represents seventeen, he was both more and lessthanks to his music and the lessons of the past couple of years. It hadnt been easy, for either of us, and now we were facing the hardest hurdle of all. Mom

I know. I took a breath, let it go, focused on the irregular rooftops I could see from our fifth-floor window, grimy with soot even though I tried to keep it clean. A year, Shane, tops. You finish school, we take care of Michael, you can meet your family.... I shrugged. Then youre free. The music isnt going anywhere.

His broad shoulders hunched against me, or maybe against the knowledge that he couldnt really refuse this request. After a minute, he nodded.

I touched his shoulder on my way by. Thank you.

Im sure the thought of going home and taking Michael with me must have been in the back of my mind for months, triggered by little thingsthe cadence of Italian-accented English in the voices of people walking below my window, the wrong taste of salsa made by recipes that were nothing like the ones at home, an illusory scent of sage and rain on the wind. After more than twenty years away, there were suddenly reminders of my hometown on every street corner in New York City.

But until we were actually on the train, settling in the generous seats of the Three Rivers Amtrak, I didnt really believe I was going to do it. And even then, as the wheels started to clack across the rails, making that particular and hypnotic sound, I was absolutely sure something else would come up and save me from having to face it. Michael looked at me. You okay, kid?

I smiled brightly. Fine. I really think youll like it.

Im, uh, really sure I wont, Shane said from across the aisle. He used Marlon Brandos Godfather voice, slumping deeper in his seat, his electric bass guitar slung over his knees, a badge and a shield. Hed been hustling every avenue, every lead, every possible way to keep us in the citywhich was, after all, pretty much all he remembereduntil it was plain we really did have no other option.

His idea of Pueblo was my fault. Ive spent most of his life making wry little asides about the placehad perfected an entire spiel on Pueblo, a one-horse little steel town that barely managed not to die when the industry collapsed in the 80s. I delivered the monologue in that peculiar accent Id worked so hard to losea blend of Spanish and Italian and Irish cadences, mixed with a good helping of country Coloradomaking insider jokes about the mill and neighborhoods and ethnic groups that nobody outside the city could understand.

Home sweet home. In my memory, it lived under a white-hot summer sun, one of those dog days of August when all the colors in the fields had been bleached out, when the mercury shot up to 101 and the world thumped with the sound of swamp coolers and overhead fans.

My father, too, walked through my memories of home. Romeo, who made me dolls of hollyhocks and spent rainy afternoons with his daughters, cooking zeppoles in the shapes of letters and animals and stars.

My father, with whom I had not exchanged a single word in twenty-three years.

It took two days. We spent most of the time sitting in the observation car or in the lounges, staring out the windows at those pastoral landscapes. The hours were very melancholy, at least for me. I dont know if it was for Michaelits hard to ever know what Michael is really thinking. Hes made an art form of inscrutability. For the trip, he turned himself totally anonymous in a pair of jeans that bagged around his skinny rear and a pair of mirrored sunglasses.

Not many people recognized him, of course, not like they did in New York when his restaurant was in full swing and in the papers, so he didnt have to deal with those expressions of hastily hidden dismay hed often run into in the city, but some people still remembered him from the days when he and my nonhusband Billy were still making records. Michael, being Michael, made it easy for them by cracking jokes about being a missionary in Africa, where rations, you know, are slim. They loved him for it, as they loved him for everything he did. To a lot of people, Michael Shaunnessey was a god.