Part 2
From then on until the outskirts of Sedalia, nothing worth mentioning happened. I watched soy and corn fly by outside my window, and ran over some road-killed raccoon or opossum. By the time I saw that faded, lime-green water tower peek up over the horizon, I was almost happy to be back in Sedalia. Seven hours later, Highway 72 turned into Main Street, even though the new black asphalt didn’t look too different from the old. As my depressed Buick broke the town boundary, old brick-face buildings invited me inside with fake hospitality hanging in the windows.
The smooth tarmac kept on going out of town, but I had to say goodbye and turn off of it at Third Street. I left the highway for a bumpy, cobblestone road with watermelon-sized potholes, where missing bricks could only taunt you from the beyond. Even without the craters, on a more maintained section of the street my butt-cheeks felt no relief. Outside, the f aux-brick businesses of Main Street had vanished for sparse, large estates that made up the neighborhood. Several looked worse than how I remembered them, including the Wilson’s place.
It used to be such a well kept home, and they had four boys grow up there! Four little-dicked sea urchins if you ask me, unfit for life on dry land. They egged our house while I was in high school. But the Wilson's also had a daughter, and she was the main reason I felt torn up inside seeing their grass grown tall and their windows lifeless.
Layne Wilson wasn’t like her brothers, or anybody else she lived with. Granted, there were only three girls in town whom she could’ve been compared to, but even when we went to Devon high school she was different. She wore these beautiful, hand-made skirts and dresses that made her look elegant and refined, like she didn’t belong in this backwater town. She looked like how I wanted to feel.
I remember watching her, practically stalking her, in the halls of our magnet high school, so desperately anxious and terrified at the same time to be noticed by her. But that’s all it ever amounted to. If I could’ve mustered up some kind of incredible courage, and if I had known how to dance, and if I was handsome back then, I still would’ve sat by myself at that folding table in the corner, where I watched her dance alone at our Sophomore Homecoming party.
...
I pulled into the driveway of the most hostile environment I’d ever encountered. My “Coming-Home” party, as Dad called it, may not have seemed immediately dangerous, but mentally, I was bracing myself for the intellectual chaos. Actually, I lied. I told you that I pulled into the drive-
way, when in fact I had to park on the side of the road, three cars down. As I opened my car door, the depressed stink of cow feces burned my nose
hairs and watered my eyes. So familiar and so terrible at the same time.
Disgusted, I tromped slowly towards my parent’s house, over long, wet blades of grass. They had repainted it a horribly bland yellow, perhaps
in some attempt to entice me back home. I could see the paint sweating, and the original navy blue from the previous paint job dotted out underneath. Can’t fool me, Pops. It’s the same old town.
Already, before I could even reach the front door, the anarchy began. A pair of 30-somethings, much less refined than yours truly, watched me take to the unfinished curb and climb up the driveway. As I drew nearer, the shorter, fatter one whistled at me and said:
“There’s the man himself! I told you we would see him first if we waited out here!” I could practically taste the meaty dip that hung in his mouth. He and his pal had been sitting on a couple of empty five gallon buckets, but after noticing me, they practically stood at attention.
“Astronaut Charlie Brick! It is an honor to make your re-acquaintance, sir. You remember me and Mikey from junior high don’t ya?” The taller, slightly scrawnier redneck said. He sounded like he had practiced that line, and begged me with his smile.
“Of course I remember you guys, how long has it been? Only twenty-some odd years?” Funny how easy it is to get back into the habit of lying. Luckily neither of them picked up on my dryness.
“Yes sir, just about!” The one who was not named Mikey gloated, “Your parents and everybody else from town are waiting inside your living
room, ya want us to grab your bags?” As I considered his offer, I noticed that Mikey was bouncing with anticipation. He was ready to sacrifice
himself for my single duffel bag, should the need have risen.
“That’s okay fellas, I’ll grab it later.” This time I wasn’t lying.
Together, we awkwardly ascended the cement stairs to the front door of my parent’s home. Mikey and “Not Mikey” as he will be known hence-forth, followed me closely and tried to make small-talk out of all the town history I’d missed. The responses I gave should have been vague enough to clue them into my disinterest, but they kept on talking. I felt a lukewarm pity for the two of them well up inside of me, as if none of us deserved to be in this situation at all.
But when Not Mikey finally opened the door, and I saw thirty-plus pairs of eyes locked onto us, that soggy disappointment evaporated. They all seemed so unfamiliar, a foreign bunch of laughing baby-boomers, and yet all disquietingly recognizable. Polos and khakis hung on the old men like the smell of shit hung on Sedalia, and the old bitties all wore floral sundresses intended for less-fashionable women half their age.
“Charlie!” They all gurgled joyously, without sense or unity.
I had no choice but to step inside. The liar’s smile reappeared on my face as bright as when it had first greeted my companions. Even though the outside of the house was noticeably different from how I remembered it, the furnishings indoors had largely remained unchanged. We still had the
mini chandelier, the family portrait, and that worn-out grandfather clock. It actually made me a little more comfortable, the sea of nostalgia did. “Hi everybody! It’s so great to see you all!” I announced like the green college student they remembered me as. From the back of the warm-colored living room, my father struggled to his feet and pronounced with all his remaining vinegar:
“Boy, come over here!”
“Pops!” My first genuinely happy response of the visit. I’d missed my old man more than I had realized, and Mom sat next to him, waving. I saw in them an oasis, a refuge from the day.
But, in order to get to them, a gauntlet of grandparents stood in my way. First was a man claiming to be the principal of my magnet junior high school, he was a bald, jolly fellow with a flat nose. He received a hearty “You look great!”
The next was a woman I’d rather not have seen at all, a very recognizable Mrs. Edny, my single elementary school teacher. For six years, one woman had taught the eight of us every subject in the K through 5th grade curriculum. She’d also taught me that God doesn’t bless every woman with the same gifts, because if he did, she wouldn’t have been such a colossal failure for most of her pupils.
She was the same age as my parents, so her wrinkled skin and gray bob haircut meant she was aging as expected. Since our last encounter, her right eye had gone lazy, and her mole had drooped down her cheek at least an inch, but otherwise she was all there. I detected a subtle note of disdain in her voice, like she didn’t want to be here anymore than I did. She received a comforting “Good to see you.”
A few more sacks of creased flesh and a few more hallmark-card responses later, I was hugging my delicate father as gently as I could. His rounded, hairless head and deep, sad, green eyes meant so much to see in person. He was 70 years old, and healthy for the moment, what more could I ask for? I let him stare at me a little longer after our embrace, till he ended it with a swift slap on my shoulder, to prove he was still my old
man.
People cheered and cooed like a sitcom’s studio audience, and I tried to ignore it. Someone else stood up to make room for me, and I sat beside my father on the plastic sealed couch, after hugging my mom of course. She was so sweet, bless her, but she was starting to lose it. When she had to strain to recall my name, it broke my heart.
As
I settled into the squeaky, sterilized couch, questions were hurled at me from all over the room. “What was it like, being in space so long?” A
buzzed gentleman asked from behind me. “Why didn’t you guys actually land on the moon? Why did you come back?” A woman with firm, gray hair pondered out loud. “Find any cute scientists down in Florida?” Even Not Mikey had a quandary. “How does that Astronaut food taste? Is it still toothpaste?” Brilliant.
The whirlwind of inquiry felt like press day all over again. I started to see pale, fluorescent light bleed through our old incandescent bulbs, and the crowd of wrinkles became younger, and more clean cut. A woman with dyed brown hair and an orange, leathery jacket approached my family from the front, offering to take a picture with her digital camera. At least I think she was offering, the sound of the room had been drowned out by noisy blood pumping in my eardrums.
It was from her body language that I assumed she offered, her saggy torso bowed slightly and her head was turned as if to ask a question. She pointed at her metallic-pink, point-and-shoot camera, and winked at us for some reason. I’m not sure why she did that, honestly. I think her name might’ve been Helen.
Whatever her name was, she stooped and pointed her camera at us. I felt my father’s arm reach around my shoulders and pull me closer to him. We stared into the