Chapter 9 - The Eviction of the Past
Two weeks after the bail hearing, on a Tuesday morning when the sky was a pale, blinding blue, a large yellow moving van pulled up to the curb of 442 Sycamore Lane.
The house was cold.
My father was sitting in a federal holding cell in Milan, Michigan, awaiting his formal arraignment before a US District Magistrate. Brandon had managed to post bond through a bail bondsman who took a secondary lien on his prized tournament ski boat, and was currently living in a rented basement room twenty miles away, wearing an ankle monitor that beeped whenever he walked near the driveway.
My mother was sitting at the kitchen table, wrapped in an old woolen shawl, surrounded by unopened mail and legal notices from the bank.
When the front door opened, she didn't jump. She looked up with sunken, bloodshot eyes that looked as though they hadn't seen sleep in a month.
I walked in, accompanied by two bonded movers from a professional relocation service and Deputy Miller from the Delaware County Sheriff's civil division, who stood quietly by the threshold with his clipboard.
"Emily," my mother whispered. Her voice was cracked, paper-thin, stripped of every trace of that imperious suburban authority that had governed my life for twenty-six years. "You came home."
"I came for my things, Mother," I said.
She stood up slowly, her hands trembling as she clutched the edges of the shawl. "The bank sent a notice yesterday. The house... they’re freezing the mortgage accounts because of the federal lien on your father's business. They’re giving me thirty days to vacate."
"I know," I said. "Andrea told me."
"Where am I supposed to go?" she wept, taking two shuffling steps toward me, her arms half-raised in a pathetic, desperate plea for comfort. "Your brother can't get a job. The car dealership fired him on Friday. Nobody at church will look at me, Emily! Mrs. Gable crossed the street yesterday when I was getting the mail! They took your father's truck! They took our savings!"
I looked at her.
I looked for the terror that had kept me awake in that narrow bedroom upstairs, the guilt that had made me hand over my babysitting money, the desperate, aching need for her approval that had made me scrub Brandon's muddy sneakers until my fingers were raw.
It was all gone.
In its place was a vast, quiet plain of indifference. My mother was not an innocent victim of my father’s temper; she was the architect of his impunity. She had built the platform, polished the belt, and served the turkey.
"You should call Uncle Dave," I said quietly. "Or Aunt June. They seemed very concerned about family loyalty on Thanksgiving."
"They won't take my calls!" she shrieked, the old venom flashing through her exhaustion for a split second. "They said Richard disgraced the family name! They said we brought this on ourselves!"
"They're right," I said. "For once in their lives, Mother, they are entirely right."
I turned to the movers. "Upstairs. The bedroom on the left. The white desk, the bookshelf, the storage bins in the closet. Everything else in that room can go to the county thrift store."
For two hours, the house was filled with the heavy thud of boots on the stairs and the sound of packing tape ripping against cardboard.
I didn't take the silver thimble. I left it sitting in the center of the dining room table, right where the dark red wine stain had been bleached into a pale, dead circle on the oak floorboards.
When the last box was loaded, I stood in the empty foyer, looking through the front screen door at the moving van idling by the curb. My Honda Civic was parked behind it, washed, vacuumed, with four new winter tires I had bought with my own salary.
My mother stood in the kitchen doorway, watching me with tears streaming down her hollow cheeks.
"Emily," she whispered, her voice barely louder than the hum of the refrigerator. "Are you ever going to forgive us?"
I stopped with my hand on the brass doorknob.
I remembered the smell of the gravy on my blouse. I remembered the heavy leather striking my back. I remembered her leaning down, pressing her napkin to her mouth, and whispering: You brought this on yourself.
May you like
"No, Mom," I said, my voice as calm and clear as a winter morning. "Forgiveness is for people who made a mistake. You and Dad made an investment. And today, your dividends came due."
I pulled the door shut behind me, walked down the concrete steps, and didn't look back as I turned the key in the ignition and drove away into the bright, open road.
