Fortunate Sons

By Sarah-Jane Riordan

"There are good things and bad about being part of a big Italian family in a small American town. Good things and bad, and mostly you couldn't get a cigarette paper in the gap between them. That's because they're the same things."

 

When Robbie Giraldi drags himself reluctantly back to his dilapidated hometown, it's definitely just for a visit, and the only bright spot he foresees is an opportunity to reconnect with his brother Cris. He doesn't expect to promise anybody he'll come home for keeps, and he doesn't know how he's gonna deliver on the pledge he's made...

 

Cris, on the other hand, knows he's back for good. His marriage and career are both emphatically over, his plans for the future in ruins. Always the steady, reliable son, he's increasingly shouldering the burdens of older relatives, while keeping characteristically silent about his grief, his loneliness, and his growing resentment of  Robbie's apparently charmed life...

 

A story about family, betrayal and forgiveness – and about truly coming home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WordNerd Press
• Release date: Mar 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9780473587437

Sarah-Jane Riordan

Sarah-Jane has been entertaining a jostling cast of characters in her head ever since the days of tea-parties with imaginary guests, and has many times been moved to give them space on a page just so she can get a bit of quiet! Fortunate Sons is her first full-length novel, but check out her website: sarahjaneriordan.com for other free content and news of upcoming projects.

Book preview

Prologue

July 1991

I look down again, trying to force myself to actually focus on the water’s surface. It’s not so far, which makes it worse rather than better, ‘cos it isn’t the vertigo that’s eating at me just right now. It’s more the way the bridge squats in such intimate proximity to the ugly churn below – I can see in too much detail what awaits, and I suspect such a meager drop won’t concuss me.

But in this featureless landscape, there aren’t any secluded ravines or gorges to slink away to. There aren’t even any decent overpasses. This is it.

It’ll do the job plenty well, I acknowledge, watching the current as it’s forced reluctantly apart by the stanchions, tucking into and under itself either side in a swirling dive, like footage I’ve seen of cloud formations played back many times faster. Anything on top goes all the way under just there. And then what? Where does it come up again? How far away?

Everything sinks out of focus as my eyes well with tears. I can’t. This isn’t the way to do it either. But what is?

I discarded the idea of cutting myself, straight off. I didn’t think I had the courage, the stomach to do that, to sit and watch it happen. The other obvious methods seemed to carry too much risk of only almost-working, if I messed something up very slightly. I went through the options dispassionately multiple times, and this was what I settled on.

I’ve actually felt better the past few days – lighter, easier, almost weightless on occasion, with the relief of knowing I’m nearly there, nearly done. Just a little bit further, only a few more yards.

And now? I look up, around, swiveling a full three hundred and sixty degrees. Now I’m a long way away from anywhere, with nowhere I want to be. Okay, I’ll just walk, I think. I’ll walk, and keep on walking until I can’t walk anymore ...

I’ve only just left the bridge – I’m trudging along on the hard shoulder, head bowed, shoulders slumped, kicking at loose chips – when a dark gray pickup skates and slithers to a stop right beside me. The driver reaches across to shove the door open, beckoning with his head.

Get in.

I’m in a kind of stupor, so I don’t think to question him. I don’t think at all, I simply obey, and the guy’s hauling the wheel around, bringing the truck sharply back on the road and haring off northward again even as I’m still shutting the door. After twenty seconds or so he says to me;

Where you headed? I’m goin’ all the way to Lismore, so I can drop you anyplace between here and there.

I glance across at him – a regular sized, regular featured guy, probably in his mid-thirties, with a General Custer mustache.

Uh, Lismore’s good, I guess, I reply. I can catch a bus home from there at least.

Okay, he grunts, as he reaches for a coffee in a Thermos cup and sucks on it briefly. After replacing it in its holder, he flicks a brown paper bag across the seat to me, saying, Want some lunch?

Dude, I can’t eat your lunch! I protest.

He shrugs. If it makes you feel better, it’s only half my lunch. I ate one sandwich and all the choc-chip cookies already. So there’s just a sandwich and one of those shitty cartons of orange juice with a straw that’s impossible to get out of its casing, impossible to extend, and then impossible to stab through that foil hole, and has no caffeine in it anyway, so why would I bother?

I laugh in spite of myself. "So why did you bother?"

I didn’t, he says matter-of-factly. My wife makes the lunches, and they’re all exactly the same, so there can’t be any mix-ups.

I don’t know precisely what it is about that statement, but suddenly I twig that this is weird – this whole thing is off.

Why is he trying to feed me? Why did he stop for me? Why did I just ... get in? Oh fuck, what have I done? Is he gonna drive me to some backwater, rape me, strangle me, and chuck my body in a ditch? And, uh, why exactly do I give a shit? Is it a problem if somebody else does the job for me?

Why’d you stop? I croak, my throat constricted. Why’d you pick me up? I wasn’t hitching.

He looks at me, looks away. Drums his fingers on the wheel for a few seconds then half-turns again. Truthfully? ‘Cos I wanted you as far away from that bridge as possible.

Wha- I stammer, what? Why?

Why? So you can’t change your mind again and do the thing.

"What thing?" I spit back.

You were gonna jump, he tells me, calm and bland.

Wha-aat!? I hope I sound incredulous. Just because you saw me hanging out near a bridge you assume I’ve got some kinda death wish?

"I saw you on the bridge as well, he reveals. I saw you when I went across north, standin’ lookin’ down. After a coupla miles I decided I didn’t like it, and I turned around. I saw you still there when I went across south. I thought to myself, goddamnit, I’m gonna have to call the cops."

He sighs. But there’s no highway phone for ages that direction, so I turned around again. I was gonna come past and use the phone in that gas station a half-mile north of the bridge. But then you were standing someplace I could stop. So I did.

Fuck ... I drop my head in my hands. Seems like I can’t do anything right.

"I’d say walking away is the one thing today you can be sure you did do right, comes the reply from my left. Hey, why not eat the damn lunch? He looks me up and down. You could do with it and, just guessing here, but maybe, maybe you forgot to pack your own?"

I glare at him. Dickhead.

That’s the spirit, he huffs. Now why don’t you sit there and eat, then tell me what your whole malfunction is, after which I’ll lecture your sorry ass the rest of the way to Lismore. In return, you can call me dickhead as many times as you want while I’m doing it. Deal?

Whatever, I sigh, opening the paper bag and looking inside. Sandwich – nuh-uh. Orange juice? That might work ...

It’s warm, but it works. It goes down, and gives the feeling of something that’ll probably stay put. I gaze out the window at the uniform green of corn, around chest-height by now, punctuated here and there by a driveway, a row of trees, a house.

Okay, so what’s all this about? the guy prompts after a spell. Tell me what you did, huh? Unless you murdered someone, in which case don’t.

I say nothing.

"Uh, so I guess you did murder someone, then? he teases. Well, no matter. There’s a police station in Lismore."

He breaks out laughing at his own wit while I sit, still mutinously staring the other way. I don’t owe you any explanations. Any anything. I didn’t even ask for this ride.

Like that, is it? he says eventually. Well, I reckon I can come up with a few scenarios. One, you failed maybe, and you’re not gonna be going to college after all, and the folks don’t know yet, because you were gonna tell your dad tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and every day it just got harder instead of easier, and by now it feels impossible. Mmh?

I can sense him looking at me as I study the empty carton of juice in my hands.

Two, he continues, "you screwed your best friend’s girlfriend, could be? And you feel so bad about that, you’ve convinced yourself that some sort of grand gesture of guilt is the only thing that might fix it, perhaps?

Three, maybe you don’t got your license yet, but you were driving anyhow, and you hit something or someone, and you know it’s only gonna escalate, and you’ve concluded you don’t wanna be around anymore when the shit starts raining right seriously. No?

I say nothing, simply forcing the straw down, telescoping back on itself, all the way down, and into the carton.

The guy sighs. Okay, so you’re not gonna talk to me. Guess it gives me more time to talk to you. Lemme explain something here. I have three kids, though none of ‘em are as old as you, hence the stupid little juice cartons. But I’m a parent, which means, by the way, that I have plenty of experience tryin’ to communicate with someone who’s sittin’ in a damp heap with that kinda look on their face. Yeah, even toddlers can do that shit, my boy.

He fumbles a cigarette out from a packet wedged in amongst a pile of cassette tapes and other assorted junk, lights up one-handed, and begins again around it.

"Look – kids are the best thing in the world. The best thing. They are also undoubtedly a total pain in the ass some of the time. It’s highly confusing at first, having two sets of competing ideas in your head, but you adjust, you get used to it.

"So anyway, it makes perfect sense to me, and probably to most any other parent, to think; ‘You’re a pain in the ass, but I’d still jump in front of a bus for you. You’re a pain in the ass, too, but I’d give you my right kidney without even stopping to consider it.

"You – the middle one – are a royal pain in the ass, but even so I literally can’t bear the idea that you might be sad, or lonely, or desperate.’ That kinda thing. And the idea, he jerks his head around swiftly and just happens to catch me eye-to-eye, seriously, I cannot think of a worse thing that could happen to me than to have to deal with the fact that one of my kids killed himself. I’d rather be cut with razors and dropped into a cold vat full of sharks, and I am not kidding you, boy!"

He winds the window down viciously, tosses the stub of his cigarette, and winds it shut again equally energetically, turning my way again.

"Look, you’re not a baby, so I’m just gonna be real blunt here, and suggest you grow the hell up a bit to match your height. Whatever your particular problem is, I don’t doubt you feel down, you feel lost, you feel trapped, you feel tired of it all. I’ve felt like that. Jeez, probably most people have at some point. But if we all decided to solve our problems by tipping ourselves off bridges, the world would be pretty sparsely populated, wouldn’t it?"

Dickhead, I interject mechanically, apathetically, as he pauses to draw breath.

Mmh, comes the response. There’s been a bit less of that than I was bracing myself for, so maybe some of this is gettin’ through to you, huh?

A silence settles. I pick at the folded-down flaps of the carton, and he drives, smoking again. He eases back on the gas as the thirty-mile signs for Lismore came into view.

Where you want me to put you down? You live here?

Nope, I reply, but I can get a bus. Main Street is fine, or just anywhere.

You need a fare? he asks me challengingly, eyes boring in, brows raised significantly. You didn’t come out short of a wallet, by any chance?

I shake my head. I’m okay. I’ve got my wallet. I thought it’d be wise to have some ID on me ...

The pickup swerves off the road with gut-twisting abruptness, coming to a jouncing stop in front of a hardware store.

Okay then, he says. Well, I needa get some pipe clamps from in here, but I guess you know your way, right?

Yeah, I acknowledge. Thanks for the ride.

As I reach for the door handle with my far hand, a dinner plate-sized palm slaps down over my near one, pressing it firmly to the seat. I keep my body very still, turned toward the door, but let my eyes swivel back to him.

Hey, he says quietly. I only look dumb as a carthorse, by the way. I know this isn’t the end of it. I know you can always go back there another day if that’s actually what you want. Nobody’s gonna be able to stop you, except you. But ...

He pauses and swallows. Swallows again, audibly. But kid, if you love your dad at all, don’t do it, eh? On the other hand, if you wanna kneecap him so badly that he’s crippled for life? Well, now you know how. Now you know.

I nod wordlessly, and the pressure from above eases a fraction, allowing me to edge my hand out and slip down from the cab.

The shelter by where the buses leave for Littrick is empty when I get there. I figure that means I’m in for a long wait, ‘cos probably one just left. At least with nobody else around, I can use the down time to get my shit together without being hassled for change, or having to try and deal with anybody tracting me or wanting to sell me weed.

I lean against the wall at one end, glazedly regarding the permanent marker, the scratches, the cigarette lighter pockmarks on the perspex front. There are posters at each end under more perspex.

The one behind my head is some public awareness thing about house fires. The one at the other end’s another one of those ‘Army – be all you can be’ posters. Three guys rappelling down a rock face, geared up to the eyeballs, nothing backgrounding them but indigo-blue sky. I shudder. Screw that ...

I’m hot and itchy and I need to piss, but I don’t want to run the risk of missing another bus, so I’m stuck waiting. Scratching at my thigh through my jeans, I wonder what the time is. I left my watch at home on the dresser – there seemed no point ruining it in the water.

My eyes travel back to the recruiting poster opposite. There’s a paragraph of small print under the bold black heading. ‘In today’s army ... blah, blah, blah ... time and time again, you’ll meet the greatest challenge of them all – yourself. You’ll learn to face the tough problems, to think them through, and find the solution.’

Well, I fucking doubt that. But hey, it’d get me away from here. A long way away. I might never come back either – and this way, nobody would need to wonder why. Yeah ...

1 – Robbie

August, 2000

I don’t get bored. Not anymore. Three tours of duty gave me a whole new set of parameters for that kinda thing. The petulant restlessness I’d have felt, sitting cooped up in this uncomfortable polyester velour seat, wedged between a window and some silent stranger – it doesn’t happen nowadays.

I haven’t forgotten how to freak out though.

I’m doing it right now, even if I look relaxed, slouched motionless, hands in pockets, gazing idly out the window. I’ve got headphones over my ears, but no music, no beat pouring through. They’re just a barrier, a more pointed ‘do not disturb’ message than a book on my lap would be.

They’re also blocking the engine’s grumble and the people-noise so effectively that I can hear the wet swoosh of my heartbeat pulsing past my eardrums, and that’s never been a good sign.

I needed to think – I needed to think about all this stuff, I needed time to anticipate questions and prepare responses before everybody was up in my face, talking, talking. I just didn’t need this much time.

Four hours on the airplane already, before this damn bus, and it’s the first time I’ve travelled alone in ... I don’t even know how long. The first time, probably, since I last traipsed along this road going the other way.

I don’t want to be doing this. When I left, I wasn’t gonna come back at all. I was kinda hoping Uncle Sam might send me home in a bag instead. I was at that point. But it didn’t happen, I’m not at that point any longer, and it’s been nearly a decade. I can’t keep dodging shit forever. Time’s up.

I’ve made a mental list of things to remember, what I ought to say, to tell, to ask. I’ve got photos with me to flesh out my stories, snapshots of Hana and Dylan, of me with them. Here we are picnicking, we’re feeding bread to the birds. In the bath. Eating ice-cream. Here we are, doing all the regular things that people do.

And yeah guys, here I am. I came back.

I came back because I would’ve needed a really solid excuse to miss something like Nonna’s funeral, and I didn’t have one this time – least, not one I could put into words. Just that familiar slippery feeling in my gut.

It’s only a week. I can do it. I’ll be respectful, I’ll be sensitive, appropriate, and polite. I’ll put up with being fed and over-fed by folk who love me, I’ll make sure to look a little bit embarrassed when they say ‘I wouldn’t have recognized you!’, and on Sunday morning I’ll navigate my way through the backslapping and the hugs and the tears, then I’ll gather up my shit, heft it back to the terminal, climb onto a bus again, and do this whole thing in reverse.

This whole thing. ‘Cos by the time I report back, I’m gonna need to be completely re-assembled as that active, zealous, straight-up, next-door-looking kind of everyday joe they put on all the fucking posters. Except the poster boys are all about twenty-one, which makes sense. Nobody goes in the army when they’re pushing thirty – that’s when they start to fall out.

Somebody’ll ask me this week, somebody – I’d bet real money on it. With an undercurrent of ‘When are you coming home?’

Sorry, but I’m not. I can’t.

I wish there was some way to lessen that blow, that I could say, ‘Don’t stress it guys, it’s not you, it’s me’, but then it’d be ‘What about you?’ and ... nope, not touching that one. Straight through to the catcher.

Probably best to just leave it, and to stop combing over everything so much. If I go through stuff too many times, I’ll come off as rehearsed ...

I drop my temple against the glass of the window, and as it becomes pleasingly numbed by the vibrations, I try to let go, and just look, just drink in the scenery. It’s early evening and probably still hot out, but the light’s really beautiful, the way it’s hitting things – there’s a sort of softness to it that you don’t see in Texas. You don’t see a lot of softness in Texas, period.

About a half-hour to go now, and the country, the landmarks, the names on the factories and billboards, they’re getting more familiar. Then the bus makes a sharp right and lumbers with a clatter onto a low utilitarian bridge over a wide expanse of turbid water. I can’t help it – I recoil, shrinking away from the window, shuddering internally.

Fuck! All those hours of measured thinking, all those scenarios, how did I not remember to prepare myself for that?

That goddamned river, I can smell it still ... dank, metallic, foreboding. I can see it on the insides of my eyelids, up close, too close – the bridge, it’s not built high enough, and the channel itself seems continuously in flood, shapeless and swollen always, brimful to its banks, bloated and barren.

Sooo fucking ugly. Scummy, septic and polluted, churning, roiling, beckoning ...

You okay?

I’ve inclined toward my seat-mate without realizing it, when putting distance between myself and the window.

What’s got you spooked then? she persists.

I’m coming back to myself, a bit. I lift the earpiece nearest her reluctantly, with a querying look. Hmm?

She stares levelly back. You heard me alright, she replies. There’s nothing piping through those.

She’s about forty probably, blond and gently freckled, heavy-jawed, with the tell-tale posture of the very fit, and an aura of ... not exactly authority ... accomplishment, maybe?

Whatever it is, I’m definitely not going to invite her to mind her own damn business. It’ll just be easier, quicker, to square with her than to fence, so I raise my eyebrows in acknowledgement of her point and confess;

I knew some kid chucked himself off there, see, flicking my head back toward the river, thankfully behind us. Quite a few years ago now, but ... trailing off meaningfully.

She nods slowly, a couple of times. Nasty, she says, pursing her lips, nodding again. My sympathies, son.

That was a lie, and like all the best and worst lies it contained a kernel of truth. But I don’t really see why I’d complicate things, and tell her that the ‘kid’ didn’t, ultimately, jump. That instead he just stood there, at the very center, in front of a riveted brass plate bearing the terse legend, ‘Lismore County, 1956’, staring down at the churning slurry for a long, long while before he turned away again, recoiling in disgust at the idea that this loathsome swill should be his last ever lungful.

So ... thank christ it isn’t a pretty river. No, thank the county for that. The stuff they let people sling in there – I used to wonder how it happened.

I don’t wonder now. It’s the same everywhere you go. There aren’t many problems that can’t be taken care of with money, and the county’s always short of it. A proud local business steps into the gap, stumps up for some important renewal project. There’s a photo in the paper with a gigantic cardboard check, and possibly a fat wad of bills passing hand-to-hand behind it.

Done and dusted, everybody wins, while the sluice-gates stay open a little longer, and the Mekinoqa hurtles on by with its payload of box-ticked discharge ...

A little further on, a deal closer to home, it looks like Bartlett’s Foodstuffs are no more. The sign on the roof of the main shed’s gone, but the cannery’s obviously still operating. There’s the same jumbled stacks of bins and pallets two stories high, the belching steam, the insistent beeping of fork-hoists, and the trucks. Always the trucks.

The hoarding by the barrier gate, as we rumble past, shows the insignia of the ubiquitous Grofresh Incorporated. I guess they got swallowed. God, it’s a stupid logo, with those stylized leaves clinging to the ‘f’ and the ‘h’.

What do you care? I ask myself. Canned food’s canned food, and a job’s a job, right?

It’s behind us now, then there’s the junkyard, and the building merchants selling shiny new versions of the same stuff, the industrial lots abruptly giving way to houses on neatly ranked rectangles. The houses themselves aren’t so neat, out this side of town.

The bus makes an inelegant pirouette around the final sharp corner, shuddering to a hissing stop. I take off my headphones, stuffing them in my breast pocket, and turn to ask my seat mate to move, but she’s already on her feet in the aisle, shaking the creases out of her pants.

We disembark together, just the two of us, and stand about awkwardly in the muggy moth-festooned dusk while the driver wrestles our bags free from the bowels of the bus, sweating and cussing profusely.

I half-hear her addressing me, as he climbs back up the steps and slams the door behind him with a reverberating crash.

Uh, pardon? I say.

She smiles. You live here?

I shake my head as I’m picking up my pack, shrugging into it. No, ma’am. Do you?

Me? No! she exclaims, sounding relieved rather than offended. I have to get up to Lismore yet.

I look across at her. That’d be right. Lismore, just a little more gracious, a town clock, a statue of somebody or other in the square, a flowerbed or two – then I remember.

But that bus is going to Lismore! I exclaim, gesturing after it.

Sure, she says, smiling. Sure it is. By way of Maysonville and Randwick and every other two-bit town on the way. Takes over an hour. Faster to get off here and wait for a local. I checked. Where are you headed, then?

I live here, ma’am, I respond, blinking as the words come out. "That is to say, I used to live here. I’m from here, originally."

She nods slowly. You been away for a while, huh? Down south someplace? You’ve got yourself a bit of a ... she folds her lips in, thinking, a bit of a different tone starting to happen there.

I don’t know why I’m still standing here doing this, but the whole thing’s harmless, and she’s got nobody to wait with, so I nod, and confirm;

Yuh, nine years, and counting.

Where at? she asks, eyes drilling me keenly now.

Texas, mostly, I reply. San Antonio, then shrugging, or nearby, anyways.

She nods in return, reaching down for her bag, and I assume I’m dismissed, but as I’m turning to go she speaks again.

How old was your friend?

I swing round, wide-eyed. What?

Your friend, she says, slowly, deliberately, gesturing with her head, back to the road behind us, like I did earlier. How old was he?

I scrub at my scalp with the heel of my hand. I want to be gone from here, right now, but ... Uh, eighteen, ma’am. He was eighteen.

She sighs, so big it’s basically a groan. Aggh. I work with kids, y’know, high schoolers. I’ve seen a bit of it, and these ... they’re not the troublemakers usually, but the carnage they leave behind – well, it kinda doesn’t matter how long it’s been, does it? I’m sorry for your loss, son.

Damn, that’s shook me up and then some, but I manage to gather myself enough to mutter;

Thank you, ma’am. Goodnight. I hope you get on up to Lismore okay.

And then I’m trying to leave again, but this woman, she’s got one more surprise in the bag. She steps forward to shake my hand, even though we haven’t exchanged names, then as she falls back she eyeballs me fully and says;

Thank you for your service.

Shee-it. I tuck my chin in and regard her warily, without responding.

She chuckles. Hey, she offers, hands spread, palms up, a glimpse of a grin on her face, I can spot ‘em a mile off. My father was a Marine, my uncle too. M’little brother still is.

I breathe in, out. I’m not a Marine, ma’am. Just a grunt.

She tips her head to one side, watching a moment more, assessing. It’s still service, isn’t it? she says quietly, before turning to walk into the station’s shelter.

I jog my pack up so I can clip the waist strap and start my last walk, blinking, shaking my head to clear it. I could’ve done without all that. Especially the last bit.

I hate it when folk say thanks. It makes me feel like some kind of fraud, as if the whole thing’s a martyrdom rather than a job, and a better job than most you’d find staying around here. It’s a dangerous job, sure – at times.

But plenty of jobs are, and no stranger in the street ever thanked my uncle for climbing up utility poles in the wind and the rain, in the middle of the night. And if you don’t give a shit whether you live or you die when you sign on, then what are you sacrificing, exactly?

Despite my unhurried pace, it only takes ten minutes to walk to the house. It’s not dark yet, but it’s reached that part of the evening where things are changing fast when I actually draw level with the place.

Everything’s pretty much as I remember, maybe a little faded, a little smaller somehow. Except for the crab-apple tree out front. It’s both bigger and leggier, wavering uncertainly, drooping almost to the sidewalk. The little low hedge that Mom was always trying to coax along has just given up entirely, and the front yard could do with mowing.

I shake my head at it all as I trudge up the path, lean on the bell. Yeah. No sons at home any more, to be whipping into service doing yard work.

In a matter of seconds the door swings open, and standing there framed by a rectangle of light – is Nico!

Nico! I exclaim, at the exact same instant he hollers;

Robbie! Jesus god! Fuck me!

From within the house floats Mom’s voice, Niii-co! Language!

We look at one another and laugh aloud, and hug. I’m surprised, delighted – and surprised to find myself delighted. He’s really not my favorite, but just like the house, the yard, I can tell in a flash he’s the same Nico, despite being different.

We’re still standing in the doorway, sparring now, shadow-boxing, trying to work off whatever excess just caused that embrace.

He was fifteen when I last saw him, I think. Fifteen. He’s grown, like anybody could’ve picked, to look like Dad – more across-wise than up. He’s husky and swarthy, with a stark line part-way down his neck where he’s decided, apparently arbitrarily, to be done with the shaving, and the inevitable widow’s peak is beginning to form at the edges of his forehead.

Nico quits and steps back abruptly, giving me a deal of side-eye. What?

Hah! I huff, caught out. You look like Dad, y’know.

He shrugs, unperturbed. Of course I fuckin’ do! I reckon I-

"Ni-coh!" from down the hall again.

He steps forward a little, dropping his voice, and whispers with a one-sided grin, "I reckon I can fucking handle it, brother. Least I don’t look like Sal."

He gives the door a little flick with his heel, and then he’s ushering me down the corridor with ungentle shoves to my backpack, left, through to the kitchen where Mom and Dad are standing mutely in front of the open dishwasher with a sort of wary formality that reminds me for a moment of that famous painting, the Iowa farmhouse ...

You forgot the pitchfork, guys.

But I can’t hardly blame them for being a little off-beam just now. I am too, and for the same reasons. It’s been a long time, a lot of water under a lot of, um, bridges.

The unease is sailing right over Nico’s head, apparently, because he claps me hard on the shoulder, carolling;

Look who I found! Back from the fuckin’ dead! and Mom, instead of saying, ‘Robbie! So good to see you again’, throws up her hands and rolls her eyes to the heavens, as Dad leans in toward her, smiling gently.

Liza ... he doesn’t even know he’s doing it.

She rolls her eyes again and says, Does Janelle not-?

Nico chuckles, shaking his head. Mom, Janelle is hot shit, as you well know, – ohmigod, I think, you sure haven’t lost your taste for danger – "but even so, if she was pulling me up about my cussing every ten flippin’ seconds, I wouldn’t have asked her to marry me. I wouldn’t have asked her on a second date!"

Mom leaves off pursuing this and steps forward to hug me – a little awkwardly, ‘cos I’m still wearing my pack.

Have you eaten? We had some casserole a couple hours ago, but there’s plenty left, do you want me to heat some for you?

I shake my head. No thanks Mom, I’m all good.

Well, should I make you an omelet or something? she persists. You can’t go without dinner!

I’m fine, I say, and I’m kinda laughing on the inside – oh, more things that haven’t changed! I had a sandwich at Evansburg.

"A sandwich?" she echoes, sounding horrified, as if I’d reported eating snake served in a sauce of its own blood. And now I’m laughing for real.

Yeah, a sandwich, I confirm. Y’know, bread, bologna, cut in a triangle, plastic wrap? You must know the sort of thing?

Her mouth twitches, but she’s not done trying, not quite yet. Well then, would you like a cup of coffee? A hot chocolate?

I grin. Okay, I’ll have a coffee. Decaf if you’ve got it.

At some point in our exchange, Dad sidled away out of the room, and now he reappears, standing behind Mom with his arm upraised, bobbing a bottle of Johnnie Walker from side to side, dancing his eyebrows in silent invitation: ‘Coffee – you sure ‘bout that?’

"Oh, now you’re talking! Nico crows. Hell yeah! And it’s the good stuff, by the looks!"

Dad’s rootling around in a high cupboard now, head behind a door, but I hear him ask through the clinking, Are you in then, Robbie?

Sure, I say, thanks. But I’ll still have that coffee, I reckon. I’m dry as Nevada after all the canned air today.

Nico jabs me in the ribs a couple of times. Why don’t you go drop that pack off somewhere, dude? I’m pooped just lookin’ at you, here. How far have you hefted that thing?

I frown. "For crissakes! Allll the way from the bus station! A whole, like, mile, or something! I’m collapsing! But if it makes you feel better ..."

I’m not sure why he’s following me at first – it isn’t as if I’m gonna have forgotten where the stairs are, but then he says;

You’d better rack up in our old room, unless you feel like listening to me snore. I helped myself to Lucca’s spot already.

Why Lucca? I ask, meaning ‘why not your own old bed?’, but Nico takes it differently.

Well shit, there’s no way I’m gonna sleep in Sal’s bed, is there? He mock-shudders. Not touching that mattress. Nuh-uh. Whole thing prolly just needs to be burnt.

He’s ramming the innuendo in with an ice pick here, and it finally penetrates my tired skull. I swing round on him in protest, stabbing him in the chest with my finger.

"Hold up! The way I remember it, you were the one – it was you who was – it was you ..." I run out as it hits me. Sal was pretty much a kid when I left, so what would I know?

Nico’s completely unabashed. He just grins lewdly. "Honestly? I got nothin’ on Sal. I talk dirty. Sal is dirty. But still, he quirks an eyebrow, guess you might wanna stick to your own bed for safety’s sake." He saunters off, chuckling to himself.

I’m not laughing. My own bed. My own bed. Yeah.

I let myself into the room. My own bed. I shrug off my pack to thunk down beside it and walk across to the window, pulling the curtain closed. Then I take a deep breath and square my shoulders. I’m gonna go downstairs now and have a drink, and answer people’s questions. I’ll deal with all of this later.

Later. When there are no more distractions, diversions, obligations. Later, when everybody else is asleep, I-will-deal-with-all-of-this. Whether I like it or not.

*   *   *

Entering the living room, it’s like seeing the outside of the house again, like meeting Nico. The same, but different. Same curtains, same rickety china cabinet, same wall of family photos, old and new, expanded ever larger, piano in the same spot, but they’ve updated the lounge suite, and recently.

Two humungous black leather couches, big enough to dwarf even heavy machinery like Dad and Nico, near-swallowing Mom. They’re a little bit ... hmm ... they’re a little bit porno, but I’m not gonna say that. I’m gonna be respectful and appropriate and polite. Like I practiced.

Nico’s jawing away about the traffic in Columbus, or possibly the traffic out of Columbus.

"-it’s just, honestly, it’s totally, uh ... boned, the whole thing, and somebody needs to own up to that before it can get addressed, but no, they’ll just keep shunting it off to another committee. Meantime, there’s money for sculptures and fountains and art galleries, and stupid freaking promenades by the river, ugh ..."

I feel a glimmer of a grin leaking out of me. My little brother, bellyaching about where his tax dollars are going. Priceless ...

He’s still at it. -least it didn’t make much either way today, ‘cos I got away before all the other assholes, just put the boot down and, y’know. With all this damn weather, it’s not like I have much goin’ on at work. Three or four days of rain and I end up, yeah, basically a glorified janitor, so-

You’ve had four days of rain? Dad’s saying. Nothin’ like that here. Two days I think, more’n a week ago. Pretty decent on the whole.

Nico jabs across at him with a toe. Then why’s your yard in that state? D for effort. Must try harder. Either that, or get yourself three angry dogs on chains and a coupla broken refrigerators out there to complete the look. Crack house central.

That gets Mom’s back up. "Domenico! Are you telling me you think your childhood home looks like a crack house?"

He softens immediately. No Mom, of course not. All I was saying is, the yard needs mowin’.

Well I know that, don’t I? Dad says testily. Thing is, I can’t start the mower these days without starin’ down two or three days of livin’ from one dose of Vicodin to the next. So I don’t do it too much. Cris, he's been doin’ it for me, but he’s pretty busy just lately, and that’s a good thing for him, so I’m not gonna hop about demanding he makes my grass a priority, am I?

I’ll mow the yard, I offer. I’m here ’til Sunday, and I don’t like to just lie around. These days. I get a meaningful nod in response, which seems to say, ‘I’ll hold you to that’.

Beside me, Mom pushes herself to her feet with a bit of a grimace, saying, Well, I’m done in. I’ll just leave you boys to it, I think, and see you in the morning. Are you finished with that coffee, Robbie? Give me your mug, I’ll take it to the kitchen on my way.

I hand it to her, smiling up. Thanks.

With her free hand, she brushes the back of her fingers across my upper cheek and over the bridge of my nose before turning away, and everything goes into