Home Again

The trees passing by the train window were taller than he remembered. When Leroy took the train out of town headed to university more than ten years ago, the trees didn’t look as tall then. During their last stop at a neighboring town, he noticed that the paint on the “Welcome” sign looked a bit more worn. Years of being in extreme cold and the baking sun would do that to an old wooden sign, he thought. He sat on the train, his hands sweaty, knee bouncing, and his left-hand scratching at the stubble he had let grow on his face. The creases in his forehead were for sure getting deeper. Luckily for him, he was sitting in a row by himself. He couldn’t imagine having to share space with anything more than his thoughts. He looked at the empty seat next to him. The train had done some renovations. They had replaced the old, tattered fabric that, for some inexplicable reason, he could never identify. It didn’t look or feel like cotton. Polyester blend, maybe, he guessed. 

Leroy looked around the train at the type of people who would be going to Ahot, WI. Or, as he not so affectionately called it, Ahole, WI.  Many men wearing dusty work boots but what looked to be their best shirt and tie combo. Many women wore their Sunday best coats, which still had holes, while children looked out the train window in amazement at how everything looked funny whizzing past the window. So much had changed, but still, so much was the same. A little boy with pants that looked too short and a coat too little looked Leroy in the face, smiled with two front teeth missing, and waved. Leroy turned his head and looked back out the window.

Leroy never intended to stay away from home this long. He couldn’t afford to come back during college, and his parents surely couldn’t afford to send for him. Not with them needing a new water heater one year, an engine for the car another, and so on and so forth.  Then after college, one year turned into two, and before he knew it, he hadn’t been home in more than ten years. So long, he had never met his six-year-old little brother. If he were honest, he would admit that the act of not communicating with his family had been deliberate but cutting off all communication had been unconscious. When he first left, he spoke with his parents regularly enough. Then he ignored his mother’s calls while entertaining a girl or studying for class. Then he stopped returning her calls when he was free. Sending one call to voicemail and failing to call back twice led to him not speaking to his family for years.  

He stopped telling people how long it had been since he heard from or saw his family because they always asked the same question: “why?” But what they really meant was, “what did your family do to justify you not speaking with them?” The answer was absolutely nothing. His parents were pleasant enough. His siblings, or at least the one he knew before he left, was a cute and joyous baby. But Leroy always wanted more. More than his average family or the bad-off town could offer. And when he took the train out of town and started getting more for himself, his small-town family didn’t fit into his new life. While that was the God-honest truth, it apparently wasn’t good enough to starve off the stares and bad looks he got when he told it to people. So, he just stopped sharing the information. Despite the judgment, Leroy had no regrets. He had lived a good life. That is, until last week when his world imploded. His now ex-girlfriend Jennifer thought he didn’t take their relationship seriously because she never met his family. Them spending every waking moment together or moving in together did nothing to make her feel secure that they were headed in the right direction. He came home from the worst day he had ever had at work to find all her belongings gone and a note that told him it wasn’t going to work. 

He stopped looking at the trees as they passed by the train window, laid his head back, and closed his eyes, mentally preparing for his arrival. The next thing he knew, he heard the conductor calling the stop for Ahote. His head perked up quickly, and he instinctively wiped drool out of the corner of his mouth. His brain was relishing in the fact that that was the most sleep he had gotten in days.

Leroy got out of his seat, checking the back of his jacket to make sure nothing had transferred from the chair to his expensive trench coat. He then checked the bottom of his Ferragamo shoes. He grabbed his attaché and started walking towards the exit. He tried to maneuver through the crowd while not touching anyone. But people had no sense of personal space.

He got off and grabbed his luggage.  The man who threw it from the train not caring that it was Louis Vuitton.  He walked outside and was inundated with joyful music.  In the reflection of his glasses danced festival lights. No matter where he turned, he couldn’t get away from them.  He pulled his trench coat tighter against his body, trying to starve off the hawk that was whipping past. He had stepped outside less than a minute earlier, and his nose was already running, and his ears hurt. This is what he forgot about. The cold. He readjusted his glasses and moved side to side to generate some warmth.  He kept thinking about how he identified with that song where the lady kept telling the man she wasn’t going anywhere because “baby it’s cold outside.” While contemplating why anyone would willingly live in these temperatures, he heard the distinctive sound of a muffler dragging underneath a car. He looked up from cowering his chin in his coat to see his Aunt’s Ford LTD Country Squire pulling up to the station. He recognized it because the front bumper still had the dent in it from when Aunt Roseline ran Uncle Ruckus and his mistress off the road and hit a pole. He went to put his luggage in the backseat and noticed the handle was still missing. That was from the time Uncle Ruckus ripped it off while trying to get into the car as Aunt Roseline drove away with her paramour. If the cold wasn’t permeating into his bones, he would have noticed that someone slapped a new layer of powder blue paint on it and seemed to have buffed the wooden panels.  He went to the trunk and maneuvered his bag around the spare tire, toolbox, random pieces of wood, and a reusable bag full of other bags.   He gently closed the trunk, and it popped back up. 

“You gotta slam it, baby,” Aunt Roseline yelled out the window.  He grabbed the trunk and slammed it down, losing his footing on the slippery ground for a second. He quickly recovered and scurried to the passenger side door.

“Hey baby,” Aunt Roseline said with a look on her face that could only be described as an intersection of a smile, a frown, and pity. 

“Hi, Aunt Roseline,” he said, leaning over the seat into her hug. She held him there longer than necessary, and he felt his body melt into hers.  “Welcome home, baby,” she whispered.  For the first time since getting the news, Leroy’s eyes started to leak. It was only a single tear, but he wondered when it would show up. When grief would rear its ugly head. Turns out it only took one hug from a woman whose underarms jiggle to get him there. He wasn’t dead inside like Jennifer claimed.

She took his face and put it between her fingers.  She gave him that pity, frown, smile again and then turned back to the steering wheel and pulled off. As they drove away, snow started lightly falling out of the sky, kissing the windshield before melting.  “It’s good to see you, boy, although I am sorry for the circumstances,” she says, patting his knee.  

“Thank you, Auntie,” he said.  “I’m sorry to you too.”

She shook her head, gripped the steering wheel tighter, and lowered her head. Leroy was somewhat worried because she didn’t seem to be watching the road for a second. He knew it was icy, and she needed to pay special attention.  They rode in comfortable silence for a few minutes. 

“Thank you for stepping up. After the accident, we had no idea where the kids would go. I would take them, but I’m too old to take care of kids,” she said, turning the corner towards his parent’s house.  He hadn't been there in years, but it felt like he never left.  The house on the corner still looked abandoned, like no one bothered to trim the trees or shovel the snow. The house to the left of it was what Leroy considered to be an awful pink with a porch that looked like it would collapse if the wind blew too hard. “Plus, I’m not blood, and when you have a tragedy like this, kids should be with blood. You need one another to lean on.”  Leroy leaned against the window and could feel the frost on the top of his head.

“I just don’t know what to do or say, Auntie,” he said, sounding a little distressed.  He was minutes away from meeting his siblings for essentially the first time. He started fidgeting in his chair and wringing his hands. He had a million questions. Would his sister remember him? Would his brother accept him? Did his parents leave any insurance money for the burial? Could he really deal with being back in his old town? He didn’t have time to fester on those thoughts because before he could settle into his own depressive state, they were pulling up in front of the house. For better or for worst, it looked the same. The one-story white house, with a detached white garage and black shutters and trim. Outside were two big bushes that his father had strung lights on. Leroy could see his father spending hours outside in the cold to make sure the lights were on perfectly straight. He took pride in everything he did, including the decorations in front of the house. The blow-up Black Santa Clause blew in the wind. When it shook hard enough, it belted out a hearty “Ho, ho, ho.” Leroy remembered his mother had been so happy when she found a Black one.  

“Was it a problem getting time off your job? Will you be working on that, what’s it’s called? They always talking about it on tv?” She put her hand to her chin, thinking. “Remote!”

I’m as remote as you could get, Leroy thought. “No. I was able to take time off,” he said, looking down and touching the side of his face. A sabbatical is what his job had called it. They told him to take three months of unpaid leave to think about whether the company is where he wanted to be. It had been humiliating cleaning out his office and walking out. It felt awful when he returned to a deserted apartment and a now ex-girlfriend. And the day officially became the worst in history when his Auntie left him a voicemail later that night.

Leroy noticed the deserted-looking street and driveway. His shoulders sank, letting go of the tension in his body he didn’t even realize he was holding onto. As if she could read his thoughts, Auntie said, “I told everyone to go home and give you time to get settled before they came over to say hi.” Leroy shook his head in gratitude. He got out of the car and grabbed his luggage. He slammed the trunk so hard it made a smacking sound. He waited until his aunt walked up to the door to follow her. They walked into the house, and Leroy felt transported back in time. To the left of the door was the table where his mother kept everyone’s baby pictures. His parents, his siblings, and . . . He stretched his neck to look around for his picture. It was nowhere to be found. The picture frames looked like they had been recently dusted as a part of his mother’s Saturday morning cleaning ritual. He stood staring at the table, not so much looking at what was there but more at what wasn’t. 

He turned around and headed to the family room on the right. Before he entered was the wall where his father marked the kids' height. Leroy’s last entry was when he was 18 years old. 5’11. He had grown a little since then, reaching an even 6’0. He thought about how on his 14th birthday, his dad made such a big deal about how he had grown four inches in one year. He could see from his siblings' entries that they were as tall as he was when he was their age. He looked a little further into the room and saw the Christmas tree. Considering the day, underneath it sat an uncharacteristic number of unopened presents.

He stood in the entryway holding his bags, unsure of what to do or where to go. He felt like a visitor in a familiar land. 

“You know the house only has 3 bedrooms, so I figured you could stay in your parents' room if that’s not too weird,” she asked, sounding unsure of her suggestion. He gave a lopsided smile.

“That’s fine.” 

“Great. For now, put down your bags, and let me take you to the kids.”  

She walked towards the back, where the kitchen was. He watched her gait as she leaned on her right leg and quickly followed it by walking on her left. Leroy never knew what happen to his aunt to cause her to have a walking issue, and he never felt it was his place to ask. Even though she wasn’t his real blood Auntie, the sandy brown, round plump lady who lived next door always showered him with love, and anything beyond that felt unimportant. As they approached the kitchen, Leroy expected to hear something. Children laughter. The noise of playing. An adult yelling at them to settle down. Anything. But all he heard was a deafening silence.

Auntie opened the door, and sitting at the table with her back to them was a scrawny little girl with copper skin and pigtails. Almost comically stuck to her side was a hefty little boy with dark brown skin and a large afro. They wore matching Santa Clause pajamas while looking out of the window into the backyard, where everything was blanked in snow and ice.

“Leila and Larry, come meet your brother,” Auntie said unceremoniously. Both kids snapped their heads around quickly. Leroy couldn’t tell if they were startled by the sudden intrusion of people or by the statement.

Leroy stood there with his hands in his pockets, sweat on his brow, staring straight ahead. The kids stayed seated but looked directly at him. If he weren’t so wrapped up in his own nervousness, he would see the bags under their eyes and hear his brother trying to sniffle back tears. Leroy waited to see if any recognition flashed across his sister's face, but none did. His shoulders slumped at the realization that the only people on earth who shared his blood had no idea who he was. He was shocked at his reaction. Had his parents completely erased him from their lives as he did them from his, he wondered. His siblings still had complete shock on their faces.

He stepped towards them, and the little boy tightened his grip around his sister.

“Hi, I’m your brother Leroy.”