Home Again

          Coming to from nitrous is almost as good as going under. Going under is better because you end up, well, under. Coming to felt the same for a minute, but then you were back. In real life.

                   Alex Dean had looked forward to feeling that blissful relief ever since Doc Holcombe told him he needed a root canal. He hadn’t gotten high in years, hadn’t even had a drink since his 35^th birthday. Hadn’t really missed it either. But old habitual thoughts die hard, and his first thought hadn’t been about the pain, it had been about the buzz.

                   In the fading haze of euphoric bliss he thought, “All good things must end,” with the sense of the afterthought, “Then why do things that suck endure.”

                   As his mind cleared, Alex delighted in the smell of fresh cut grass. Stranger was the taste of grass. Sounds, words, laughter. Directed at him? Muttering, “What the heck?” he pushed himself up onto one elbow, then hands and knees, shaking out the cobwebs. As his field of vision cleared and widened, he saw sneakers, jeans.

                   “You back buddy? That looked like a good one,” said a vaguely familiar voice.

                   Alex lifted his head, and looked into the faces of his teenage friends.

                   “What the heck?” came out again, and they all burst out laughing.

                   “Where were you this time?” asked Stevie.

                   Alex recognized where, and when, this was. Sometime during the summer of 1976, the Burwell’s back yard. They were doing the knockout game: hyperventilation, a bear hug, and you fluttered off into the wildest dreams for a few seconds that seemed like days.

                   “Uhhmm…I was at the dentist…”

                   “Wow. Cool, man. Life of the party,” chirped Freddy, always the wiseass. “All the trips out there and you go to the friggin’ dentist.”

                   The gang moved on to the next tripper, giving Alex a chance to get his bearings. Which really needed some getting. He’d had some wild dreams when he fell asleep wearing a nicotine patch, but man, he thought, nitrous kicks the patch’s ass. He could still smell and taste the grass, and felt it in his mouth now, spitting it out. Ten feet away, his one time best friends, including Pete, his first friend. On this day, he’d have told anyone who asked they’d be close forever. A year from now they’d be strangers.

                   Stranger still were the feelings, forgotten but now returned. Belonging. Acceptance. Safety. The guy who sat down in that dentist’s chair didn’t have a lot of warm and fuzzy going on. Except for Zoey. His 7-year old daughter still looked at him with loving adoration. He was her hero. She hadn’t caught on yet.

                   Alex walked over to join his friends, now standing around Stevie, who was out on his back, his arms extending upward gripping the handelbars of an imaginary motorcycle. Alex didn’t know what was going on here, but he remembered something from an article on lucid dreaming he had read: if you think your dreaming, look at a clock or a roadsign, look away, then look back. If you’re dreaming, the clock will change. He needed a clock, where…

                   He remembered the clock in his mother’s kitchen.

                   “Hey guys I gotta go.”

                   “Aw, streetlights coming on?”

                   “Real funny. I forgot something I gotta do. See you guys tomorrow.”

                   Alex walked away.

                   Towards home.

                   Towards his parents.

                   Theresa Dean stood at the kitchen sink, drying dishes, looking out over the backyard. Gleaming white sheets fluttered in the wind on the clothesline. She smiled. The clothesline was one of the few house projects Alex and Howard had done together. Once they decided to give it a go, Alex did his usual deep dive into the subject.

                   “You gotta be real careful mixing the cement Ma,” he reported. “Too much water, it won’t set right, too little and it’ll crack for sure in the winter. And you gotta be real careful pouring it out of the bag, ‘cause if it gets in your eyes? Oh boy. You think we should get one of those eye flush thingies? Nah, we can just have the hose handy I guess…” he trailed off, walking back to his room.

                   Theresa sighed as she put the dishes away. That little boy was growing up. And becoming less, well, less friendly towards her. She knew that was normal, but there were subtle changes that troubled her. Wise remarks, quick dirty looks. She even knew trying out a little beer was some kind of right of passage, but with his father’s drinking…

                   “I worry Ma,” she said to her mother. “And I don’t know what to do.”

                   “He’s a good boy, Theresa, we know that,” Millie said. “It was probably that Kevin Trask.” A loving woman with a heart of gold, but don’t get on her bad side. Even if you were a child. “That one’s a bad seed.”

                   “Oh Ma, ‘bad seed’? He’s only eight years old for cryin…”

                   Her memory was interrupted by the banging of the screen door.

                   “Mom? I’m home Ma!”

                   Alex walked into the kitchen and stared at her like he had bad news. When he woke up that morning, his mother had been dead for eight years. This version of her, the one who hugged him when he was sad, sang him to sleep when he was sick, and threatened a ‘licken’ when he was bad, had been gone a lot longer. He hadn’t prepared himself for this, and found himself on the verge of tears.

                   “Alex, honey, what’s wrong?”

                   He snapped himself out of it. “Nothing Ma, just lookin’ at ya,” he laughed. “What’s for supper?”

                   “Chicken and pilaf, and yes I’ll make it crunchy.”

                   “And gravy right?”

                   “Of course. Are you hungry now, you wanna snack?”

                   Walking away towards his room so she wouldn’t see his eyes welling, he called back, “Nope, I’m saving room for crunchy chicken!”

                   He walked down the hall, went into his room and shut the door, leaning back on it with his eyes closed, catching his breath. When he opened them, he was dumbstruck. Alex was in a museum, and the exhibit was him.

                   His desk, his bed, his dresser. It reminded him of the time he’d taken Zoey to the Louisa May Alcott house, except he’d never gotten around to writing anything. The gerbil cage, the poorly made models on his dresser, the lampshade tilted way over so he could read better in bed. He crossed the room to the closet, remembering how cool he thought it was. It had built in shelves with two drawers below, and had never been used for clothes, but for his stuff. His chemistry set sat on a shelf, abandoned when it went from something magical and cool to his friends to something too much like school.

                   He opened one of the drawers, and took out one handful of baseball cards, and one of comic books, and went over to sit on his bed. The blankets, the sheets, the pattern on the pillow case, all both forgotten and familiar.

                   “Alexxx! Supper!”

                   Alex went over his plan: say little, keep to grunts and nods if possible, and chew with his mouth shut. His father looked over the corner of a flapped down newspaper and delivered a line Alex thankfully recognized.

                   “What’s up, Chuck?”

                   “Not much Farley.”

                   They winked at each other. A little joke they shared, Theresa thankfully never knowing the meaning.

                   “Smells good Ma!” he said, looking over her shoulder as she stirred the gravy. “Ooo boy, looks real crunchy too.”

                   “Yup, came out good this time.”

                   “You’re a breast man, right Dad?” He lightly nudged his Mom.

                   “You know it kid,” Howard answered, as his mother chastised, “Pa-ul.”

                   “Can I put this on the table for you?” Alex asked as he picked up the platter of chicken. As the words were leaving his mouth he knew he had overreached.

                   The corner of the newspaper flapped down, and his Mom looked at him with her mouth slightly opened.

                   “What did you do?” she asked, face turning her version of stern.

                   “Do? What? I can’t help my Mom?”

                   “Ya can, but ya don’t,” she said, laughing at her own little joke.

                   She went back to stirring, his Dad’s eye contact broken only by the newspaper flapping back up. He put the platter in the middle of the table and sat down, as his Mom brought over the pilaf, peas & carrots mix, and her gravy boat and saucer. She looked everything over, and Alex joined her in announcing: “Dinner is served” in their English butler impersonation.

                   Howard took his breast, Alex his two drum sticks, both of them more pilaf than vegetables. His Dad liked a little gravy, Alex drowned his pilaf in it. Theresa just watched as her boys dug in.

                   It was a sensory trip down memory lane. The tablecloth, the mixture of smells, pilaf he never knew how much he missed, the crunch of the chicken. He realized he was chewing, slowly, with his eyes shut. He slowly opened them. They were both looking at him, forks at half mast.

“Everything…ok hon?” Theresa asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, Mom, it’s just really good.”

His Dad looked at him for an uncomfortable several seconds.

“Are you on dope?” The original Red Forman.

“No, Dad, geez. I was just chewing.”

Howard did a double take at him and went back to his plate.

“He is right, Tre, this is really good.”

When the plates were empty, Theresa got up and started to clear the table. Alex wisely remained seated.

“So. What time do I have to be home tonight?”

“Same time as usual,” Howard answered.

Alex couldn’t remember that detail, but had to nail it down.

“How’s 11:30 sound?” he asked.

“About an hour too late.”

“Hey, I took a shot.”

“You’re lucky you’re going out at all. No funny stuff, huh?”

Alex nodded his response and went down the hall to get his dungaree jacket.

“Hey, Alex?” Howard called after him.

Alex turned back, raised his eyebrows and tilted his head back in question.

“Don’t look back kid, they’re gaining on you.”

As Alex walked up to the Burwell’s house, he saw Chris, the little brother, messing with his bike on the sidewalk. His older sister, Bobbi, was approaching from the opposite direction with Pete’s younger sister Donna. As they converged on Chris’s location, Donna said, “Take a picture, it lasts longer.” He’d been staring at Bobbi. Some things didn’t change.

The four of them walked out back together. As they rounded the fence, they saw Ricky face down, pulling up clumps of grass, one foot kicking the ground, the others laughing. Alex was blown away by how lightly they had flirted with brain damage. He recalled one time, the only time Donna had tried it. She came to and started to cry, refusing to say what she’d seen. She’d looked to Pete for help, who whispered to her briefly, then walked her home.

“Are you sick or something?” Bobbi asked him suddenly. He might have been staring again.

“No, why, I look sick?”

“No. I guess not. You just seem a little…off.”

“Yeah, well, you seem off all the time and I don’t bother you about it.”

“Very funny. I didn’t know I was bothering you,” she replied with a playful punch to the shoulder and, maybe, an extra second of eye contact to go with that smile.

“Break it up you two, it’s Alex’s turn,” Ricky announced.

“Nah. I think I’ll take the night off.”

“Aw. Meow.”

“Up yours man. You should take a night off, maybe you could actually pass a couple classes this year.” Junior High started in a few weeks.

Ricky stood there, and slowly looked from one to the other of his friends, then back at Alex.

“Meow?” Everybody cracked up.

“Alright you morons, I guess one more little nap won’t kill me.”

Ricky positioned himself behind Alex, the rest of them faced him from the front. Sometimes the person’s eyes rolled back, no one wanted to miss that.

Alex put his hands on his knees, gulped air and forced it out. When he had taken 20, he held his breath and straightend up. Ricky clamped on the bear hug and squeezed. As the darkness seeped over his field of vision, his friends images melted like wax figurines in a house fire.

Then, nothing.

No dream, no vision. A slight shaking of his arm. A voice.

“Rise and shine Mr. Dean. Are you back with us?”

Alex squinted, a bright light blinding him. He blinked a few times, regained his focus, and looked up at the smiling face of Doc Holcombe.