Home Again

The Keeper of Hours

Chapter 41: Home Again

Marcus pulled into the driveway of the small brick house on Park Avenue on Saturday, June twelfth, twenty twenty-seven, at eleven forty-three in the morning, in a small U-Haul twenty-foot truck, with his old Atlanta apartment in the back and the small silver Civic Tiana had helped him pick out on trailer behind.

He had left Atlanta at four that morning.

He had driven the three hundred and eighty-four miles in seven hours and forty-three minutes, stopping once at a gas station in Tupelo to buy a cup of coffee and to sit in the parking lot for ten minutes with his hand on the steering wheel and the small quiet thought: I am moving home. I am moving home. I am moving home. He had said the sentence three times in the Tupelo parking lot. He had said it out loud once. He had then driven the last seventy miles with the windows down.

Yvonne was on the porch.

Carl was in the driveway. Carl had been at Park Avenue since ten — he had been on front-yard patrol, because Yvonne had been at the stove cooking the three pans of lasagna she had decided last week would be the dinner for the family tonight, and Yvonne had needed Carl to be the one who met the truck. Tiana had been at the unit for a morning half-shift but was going to come over at twelve-thirty.

Carl walked to the driver's side window of the U-Haul as Marcus put it in park.

"Son."

"Dad."

"You are home."

"Yes, sir."

They did not, for a moment, say more. Carl Brooks had been the father of a son who had lived in Atlanta for eight years. The father had been a quiet supporter of the Atlanta years. The father had not, in any of the eight years, asked his son when the son would move back. The father had believed, without saying so, that the son would come back when the son was ready.

The son was back.

Carl put his hand through the open window. Marcus took it. They held for a moment — not the hand of hello, not the hand of departure, but the small specific hand of a father and son acknowledging that a long arrangement was completing.

"Park it here, son. I will help you unload. Your mother is on the porch."

"Yes, sir."

Marcus got out. He walked to the porch.

Yvonne, at the top of the steps, did not, at first, move.

She had been, in the last two weeks, preparing this moment by not thinking about it too much. She had cleaned the spare room Marcus had slept in during his Friday-night stays for a year. She had filled the small dresser with clean linens. She had put a small framed photograph — one of her mother and her father and Marcus at Easter in 2005 — on the dresser, because she had wanted him to have a picture she had not, in his Atlanta apartment, seen him have.

He came up the steps.

He did not, at first, say anything. He just hugged his mother.

She held him. She held him for a long minute. She did not cry.

She said, against his shoulder: "Baby. You came home."

"I came home, Mom."

"Your grandmother prayed this for eight years."

"I know, Mom. I have been thinking about her the whole drive."

"She is in the cloud, Marcus. She saw you pull in."

"Yes, Mom."

They stood on the porch for another minute. Then Yvonne released him. She patted his cheek. She said: "Go wash your hands. Eat. Then we will unload."

He went.

The apartment he had rented was in East Memphis.

He had, in May, driven over with Tiana to look at four apartments, and he had picked the third one — a small one-bedroom on the second floor of a small brick building on Getwell Road, with a kitchen window that faced a small courtyard and a pecan tree in the corner of the courtyard that had caught his attention. He had told Tiana, in the hallway outside the apartment, I want the tree. Grandma would have said something about the tree. Tiana had said, Grandma would have.

The apartment was a twelve-minute drive from Park Avenue. It was a fifteen-minute drive from Whitehaven. It was eight minutes from Mt. Calvary. It was a small functional space he intended to make into what his grandmother had called a real kitchen table, which had been her phrase for the specific furniture a young person needed to begin building an adult life.

The truck was going to be unloaded into the apartment later — he had a three-day rental on the truck. Today, at Yvonne's instruction, he would leave the truck at Park Avenue and come back in the morning to begin the unloading. Today was for family. Today was not for boxes.

They ate at one.

Tiana had come at twelve forty-three. She had brought a small brown paper bag with coffee beans in it — some fancy brand she had bought at a place in Midtown — because Tiana had decided, on Tuesday, that her cousin's first Memphis kitchen deserved a good bag of coffee as a housewarming gift. Marcus had laughed when she gave it to him. He had said Tiana, your grandmother would have approved of this gift in a way she would not have of anything else. Tiana had said I am learning what she approved of.

After lunch, the four of them sat in the front room with coffee.

Marcus was on the small couch. Tiana was on the floor with her back against the couch. Yvonne was in Eldridge's chair — she had, in the six months since her mother had gone, begun to sit in the chair during the afternoons, which was a small inheritance Tiana had noted and had not commented on. Carl was in the small wooden chair by the door.

Yvonne said, after a while: "Baby. Tell us about Atlanta."

"Mom?"

"The leaving. I have not asked because I have been — I have been trying to give you room. Today you are home. You are allowed to tell us about the leaving if you want to."

Marcus thought.

He said: "Mom. Atlanta was good. I did not want to leave because Atlanta had been bad. I wanted to leave because Atlanta had been the right place for me at twenty-two, and for eight years, and it was no longer the right place. That is what I want to say about the leaving. The leaving was — Mom, the leaving was clean. I told my boss in March. He was gracious. He approved the full remote arrangement. I told my landlord in April. I packed for three weeks. The last Saturday in Atlanta I had four friends over to my apartment and we ate pizza on the kitchen floor because I had already packed the table. They gave me a — they gave me a small going-home speech, collectively. Three of them cried. I did not. I was, Mom, already home in my head. I had been for four months."

"Yes, baby."

"And the drive this morning — Mom, the drive was the best drive of my life. I had been preparing for it. I had been thinking I would cry. I did not cry. I got to Tupelo and stopped for coffee and sat in the parking lot and said I am moving home three times. I cried then for maybe forty-five seconds. Then I drove the rest. The rest of the drive was — Mom, the rest of the drive was quiet in a way that felt like the Lord driving with me."

"Yes, baby."

"I am home."

"You are, Marcus."

Tiana, on the floor, said: "Marcus."

"Tiana."

"Naomi knows?"

"She knows since last weekend. I told her last Sunday at her house. Sheryl was there. Reggie was there. I sat on the floor of her room with her and I said baby, I am moving home to Memphis. I will live in an apartment near you and near your Great-Grandma Tate's house. I will see you most days. Is that all right?"

"What did she say."

"She said — Tiana, she said, Daddy, I have been hoping for that since January."

The room was quiet.

Tiana said, softly: "She has."

"I know."

"When are you picking her up today."

"I told Sheryl I would come over at five. I am taking her to the small park on Highland for an hour. Then I am bringing her here for dinner. The Hightowers are coming too. Sheryl says they will come at six-thirty. Dinner is at seven."

"Yes, Marcus."

Yvonne said: "Marcus."

"Mom."

"Your grandmother told me in December that you would come home in twenty twenty-seven."

"Mom — she told you that?"

"She told me on the eighth of December. In the bedroom after supper. She said Yvonne, baby, Marcus is going to come home. In June, I think. I have been seeing it. He has not decided. He will. I had not told anyone until now. I am telling you now."

Marcus did not, for a moment, answer.

Tiana said: "Grandma saw it."

"She did."

"She saw it because the Lord told her, Mom?"

"Baby, she saw it because she had been watching Marcus for eight years and she had been watching the Lord move in him. She put those two things together. She called it seeing. I do not know the technical word for what she did. She called it seeing. She was right about you many times over the years. She was right about this."

Marcus put his hand over his eyes for a long moment.

Then he said, quietly: "Mama Tate."

"Yes, baby," Yvonne said.

"You saw me."

"She did, baby."

At three-thirty Marcus rose to go get Naomi.

He had told Sheryl he would come at five. It was three-thirty. He was, he told his mother at the door, going to drive by the apartment first to open the windows and get a sense of it one more time before tomorrow's move-in. He would then drive to Whitehaven.

Yvonne said: "Baby. You going to be all right?"

"I am, Mom. I am excited. I want to see her."

"Go on, son."

He went.

At five oh-six Marcus rang the doorbell at the Hightowers' house.

He had been ringing the doorbell at the Hightowers' for over a year because the Hightowers preferred the doorbell to the knock. Sheryl opened the door. Naomi was behind her, in a small red dress, holding her small backpack with her small cardigan inside.

"Daddy."

"Baby."

"Are we going to the park."

"We are, baby. Get in the car. I will talk to Grandma for a minute. Then we go."

Naomi ran to the car.

Sheryl, in the doorway, stayed.

"Marcus."

"Sheryl."

"Today is the first day."

"Yes, ma'am."

"I have been — Marcus, I have been sitting with this week all week. I am happy. I am also — the also is not about you. The also is about me. I have been her only Grandma for two years. Today is the first day I am sharing the day with you in the full sense. I am — Marcus, I am having a small private moment about it. I want to name it. I do not want it to hide under the surface of things."

"Yes, Sheryl."

"I am not asking you to manage me. I am asking you to know."

"I know, Sheryl."

"Good."

"Sheryl."

"Yes."

"Aliyah — Aliyah would have wanted this arrangement."

"I know she would have, Marcus."

"You and me, sharing. The way we have been. Now more. Later less. You and Reggie do not get pushed back. I do not push forward. The shape stays the shape."

"Yes, Marcus."

"I have been — I have been praying for the steadiness of that shape, Sheryl, for a year."

"Yes, Marcus."

"Your aunt Grandma Tate was teaching me about the shape before she went. She kept telling me the grammar matters. You step into her life. You do not bring her into yours. I have been listening to that sentence for a year. I am still listening."

"Mother Tate was wise, Marcus."

"She was, Sheryl."

Sheryl, at the door, opened her arms. Marcus, after a small hesitation, hugged his daughter's grandmother. They held for a long moment.

She said, against his shoulder: "Take her to the park, Marcus. Have her back by nine. We will see you at your mother's at six-thirty. We are coming."

"Yes, ma'am."

Marcus and Naomi went to the small park on Highland.

They went to the small swing set. Naomi was five and a half and was by her own assessment too big for the baby swings but too small for the big swings, and she had decided over the last year that the small in-between swing — the one with the strap across the bottom — was her swing. Marcus pushed her. She asked him to push her higher. He pushed her higher. She laughed.

After fifteen minutes she slowed herself to a stop. She said: "Daddy."

"Yes, Naomi."

"You live in Memphis now."

"I do, baby."

"In an apartment."

"Yes, baby. On Getwell Road. I will show you the apartment next weekend. Grandma and Grandpa said I could bring you. The apartment is small. You will have your own drawer in the dresser — a small drawer, one drawer, because you do not stay there often. But the drawer is yours."

"A drawer?"

"Your drawer, baby. For the small things you leave at my apartment."

Naomi thought.

She said: "Daddy. Can I put Mr. Apatosaurus in the drawer sometimes?"

"You can, baby. Mr. Apatosaurus can stay at the apartment one weekend at a time when you come. Then he goes back to Whitehaven with you. He travels. He has jobs at both houses."

Naomi laughed.

"Okay. I will bring him next weekend to meet the drawer."

"Yes, baby."

At six twenty-two they pulled up at Park Avenue.

The Hightowers were already there — Sheryl and Reggie had driven in their own car, arriving at six-fifteen. Yvonne had lasagna on the table. Tiana had made a salad. Carl had poured wine for himself and iced tea for the rest.

They ate at seven.

Naomi, in her seat, which was the chair Mama Tate's great-grandchildren had always sat in, had her small pale blue handkerchief tucked into her pocket. Sheryl had put it in for her this morning — not because today was a Big Day in the formal sense, but because Sheryl had decided, on the drive over, that the first day of Marcus living in Memphis was big enough for the handkerchief, and she had quietly slipped it into Naomi's dress pocket before they had left the house.

Naomi had not, at dinner, taken the handkerchief out. She had known it was there.

After supper, on the porch, with the June evening going the long gold of early summer, Naomi climbed into Sheryl's lap and then — after about five minutes of resting against her grandmother — she transferred to Marcus's lap, which was new, and which Marcus received with the small careful motion of a father who had not, in any of his Saturday visits over the past year, been the lap of the evening.

Sheryl, in the wicker chair beside him, was watching Reggie on the porch steps listening to Carl tell a story about the hardware store. She was not, Marcus noticed, watching him and Naomi. She had made a decision about watching.

Naomi, on Marcus's lap, looked up at him.

"Daddy."

"Yes, baby."

"I am glad you live here."

"I am glad too, baby."

"Do you want to come to Grandma and Grandpa's tomorrow for Sunday dinner."

Marcus looked at Sheryl. Sheryl, still not looking, said quietly: Reggie is making gumbo.

Marcus said: "Yes, baby. I want to come."

Naomi nodded.

She settled her head against his chest.

Tiana, on the porch with the rest of them, watched.

She thought: Grandma. You saw this. You saw it in December. You told Mom. You did not tell anyone else until Mom told us today. You saw Marcus on this porch with his daughter on his lap on a June evening when he was a Memphis resident again. You have been seeing this for a year.

She said the thanks in her chest.

She looked at her own mother, who was at the far end of the porch with her hand in Carl's hand and her face set in the small receiving expression Tiana had been learning all year to read — not grief, not joy, but the complex quiet expression of a woman who was living inside an arrangement her own mother had prepared for her.

Yvonne caught her daughter's eye across the porch.

She did not speak.

She lifted her chin a small fraction — the small private signal Mama Tate had used with Yvonne across rooms for fifty-eight years, which Tiana had seen hundreds of times in her life but which her mother had not used with her until today.

The signal said: Yes, baby. The Lord has been the Lord.

Tiana lifted her own chin back.

The evening ended gently.

The Hightowers left at eight-thirty. Naomi was asleep in Reggie's arms by the time he reached the car. Marcus walked with them to the curb, helped Sheryl fasten Naomi into the booster. He kissed Naomi's forehead. He said see you at Sunday dinner, baby, quietly, and Naomi, not quite awake, said, okay, Daddy.

He walked back up the path.

He was at Park Avenue through the rest of the evening. He would sleep at the Cordova house tonight because he had not yet moved into the apartment. He and Carl would start the unload at seven in the morning. Yvonne would bring coffee at ten.

At nine-thirty he said goodnight to his mother.

"Mom."

"Baby."

"This was a good day."

"It was, Marcus."

"Grandma was here."

"She was."

"I felt her on the porch when Naomi climbed into my lap."

"I felt her too, baby."

He kissed his mother on the cheek. He went with Carl to Cordova.

Tiana stayed a while longer. She sat on the porch with her mother. They did not, for a stretch, talk. They watched the small June moths move under the porch light that Yvonne had turned on at nine.

After a while Yvonne said: "Baby."

"Yes, Mom."

"Mama had a whole year of the future lined up in her head before she went."

"She did, Mom."

"I keep finding pieces of it."

"We are going to keep finding pieces, Mom. I think — I think we will keep finding them for a long time."

"Yes, Tiana."

"She left it all arranged."

"She did, baby."

Tiana drove to her apartment at ten-thirty.

She sat at her kitchen table with the composition book for a moment.

She opened it. She turned to Marcus's entry on the active list.

She added, in small careful letters below the existing notes:

June 12, 2027. Moved home from Atlanta. Getwell Road apartment. Near Naomi. Near Park. Near Mt. Calvary. Naomi on his lap on the porch. The Lord arranged.

She underlined Moved home.

She closed the book.

In Cordova, Marcus was in his old bedroom in his parents' house for what might be, he suspected, the last time he would sleep in that bed as an Atlantan. Tomorrow he would sleep in the new apartment. The life would change.

In Whitehaven, Sheryl and Reggie had tucked Naomi into her bed. Sheryl had taken the pale blue handkerchief out of the dress pocket and had, in the small ritual she had developed over the last sixteen months, folded it carefully and put it in the jewelry box. The photograph of the three of them on the porch was in the box. The handkerchief was in the box. A small yellow ribbon from Naomi's last birthday party was in the box. The small archive of her small life was gathering.

In the cloud, or somewhere in the small arrangement of the prayer-floor on the other side, a great-grandmother who had told her daughter on the eighth of December that her grandson would come home in June of the coming year was, Tiana believed without claiming, at her own chair, not surprised.

Summer was coming. The pecan tree was full.

Marcus was home.