Chapter 7 - The Eviction Clock Runs Out
The storm hit on Sunday night, bringing sixty-mile-an-hour gusts off the Atlantic that tore the last red leaves from the sweetgums and rattled the heavy sash windows of the old house.
Upstairs, the sounds were not of dinner parties, but of suitcases being dragged across floorboards, of hangers screeching against metal rods, of cabinet doors slamming with final, desperate anger.
Sloan was leaving.
She wasn't leaving with dignity; she was leaving like a squatter who had been smoked out of a cellar. Her sister’s fiancé had returned with a rented cargo van, backing it up to the kitchen steps in the pouring rain, while Sloan hauled out designer garment bags, stacks of shoe boxes, and the small high-end appliances she had bought with my stolen money.
Harrison did not help her.
He sat on the bottom step of the back porch stairs, wearing Arthur’s old oiled-canvas rain coat, the hood pulled down, watching the rain fill the tracks the van was gouging into the gravel path.
Sloan came down the steps with her final load—a large plastic storage tub filled with her winter sweaters. She stopped in front of him, the rain plastering her blonde hair to her skull, her face stripped of makeup, looking ten years older and unimaginably small.
"You’re nothing, Harry," she said, her voice competing with the roar of the wind through the pines. "You know that, don't you? Without this house, without your father’s name, you’re just an empty suit. In six months, you’ll be sleeping on a cot in some county shelter."
Harrison didn't look up. He watched a beetle struggle against the torrent of water rushing down the stone gutter.
"At least I won't be sleeping with a thief," he said.
Sloan’s mouth twisted. She looked toward the lit window of the kitchen, where my silhouette was visible against the yellow light of the lamp. She reached into her pocket, pulled out the scorched, shriveled remnant of the Gucci purse—she had kept the blackened, ruined thing in her trunk like a relic—and flung it with all her strength against the kitchen door.
It hit the glass with a dull, wet thud, leaving a smear of black ash and rain, then dropped into the mud beneath the porch steps.
"Enjoy your cemetery, Evelyn!" she screamed into the gale.
The cargo van’s doors slammed shut. The engine roared, tires spinning on the wet crushed shells, spitting white gravel against the cedar siding before catching traction and hurtling down the long driveway toward the highway. The iron gate groaned, clicked, and locked behind them.
Then there was only the wind.
Harrison sat in the rain for another twenty minutes. He didn't move. The water poured off the brim of Arthur’s canvas coat, dripping down his nose, soaking through his trousers.
Finally, the kitchen door opened.
"Harrison," I said.
He slowly turned his head. His face was soaked, his eyes red and swollen, his lips blue from the October chill.
"The thirty days are up," I said.
He nodded once, slowly, like an old man accepting a diagnosis. He stood up, his knees cracking, and stepped onto the porch. He didn't try to come inside. He took off the oiled-canvas coat, folded it carefully over the iron rail of the porch, and reached into his pocket.
He laid two brass keys and an electronic gate fob on the small wicker table beside the door.
"I called Bradley Vance this afternoon," Harrison said, his voice hoarse from crying and the damp air. "I signed the confession of judgment for the thirty-four thousand dollars. He’s putting a lien against my future wages once I find work. It’s the right thing to do."
I looked at the keys on the table.
"Where are you going, Harrison?"
"The YMCA in Wilmington has an adult men’s transition program," he said. "They have single rooms for eighty dollars a week if you work forty hours in the regional sanitation or maintenance departments. Bradley found it for me. He said... he said Dad would have told me to start with a shovel."
A lump formed in my throat, hard and sharp as a peach pit, but I did not swallow it down with an offer of the guest room. I did not reach out to wipe the rain from his hair.
"Your father spent two years working a timber crew in Oregon before he ever touched an architect's pencil," I said softly.
Harrison looked down at his sneakers, which were soaked and covered in gray clay.
"I’m sorry about the cake, Mom," he whispered. "I’m so sorry. I knew she was going to do it. I saw her look at the table before she even stood up, and I didn't stop her because... because I was afraid of her. I was afraid that if she left me, I wouldn't have anything left."
"You had yourself, Harrison," I said. "You just didn't think that was worth very much."
He wiped his nose with the back of his wet hand, took a deep, shuddering breath, and turned toward the dark driveway. He didn't have an umbrella. He had one duffel bag slung over his shoulder, containing three pairs of jeans, some shirts, and his work boots.
"Goodbye, Mom."
"Goodbye, Harrison."
May you like
I stood on the porch and watched him walk into the darkness, his figure growing smaller under the weeping live oaks, until the red taillights of the world swallowed him whole.
***
