“What,” said Maxon.
“That … smell. The smell outside.”
“Smells like oil, tetracycline, carbon monoxide, and decomposing biomatter.”
“No, it doesn’t, ass. It smells good. Virginia doesn’t smell like this.”
“The air in Norfolk, Virginia, has eight percent more sodium chloride in it.”
“Be nostalgic, Maxon. Remember something.”
They were driving on rolling hills, in and out of farmland and woods, down Route 38 and all across Yates County. They passed dilapidated barns on the verge of falling down, gutted roadside stores, little creeks, cows in rows, and pointy little white churches. Sunny felt a familiar and unwelcome warmth and connection to the place. She felt guilty she had not been home more often. She had left her mother alone. All because she did not want to face her in a wig. That was wrong.
“Okay,” said Maxon. “I remember when the guy who lived right there turned out to be a pervert.”
“Bad,” said Sunny. “Nostalgia is supposed to be warm. It’s supposed to create a warm feeling.”
“Okay,” said Maxon, “I remember that in August of 1991, it was so hot we couldn’t go upstairs for a week.”
“Not literal warmth!” said Sunny, smacking him in the arm. “Please tell me you don’t need this explained.”
“I don’t remember anything,” said Maxon. “I’ve erased those years.”
“Don’t you love me, Maxon?” said Sunny, falling into a familiar trope. It was this way she signaled to him that she was done talking. It was one of many scripts she had written for them that they played out on a regular basis.
“I do,” he said.
“How much?”
“Tons,” he said.
“How many tons?”
“A Brazilian tons.”
At the corner of Route 38 and a road called Bear Run, she suddenly clutched his arm.
“Maxon. I have an idea. Let’s go see your mother instead.”
ONE MILE OFF THE main road, over a hill and down through the woods and over a one-lane bridge that crossed a mountain stream, they pulled up to Maxon’s old house. The original house was barely visible, piled all around with firewood in measured, regular stacks. The old barn, once stuffed so full of oily implements, piles of forgotten roofing tiles, tins of unguents, copper pipes, and other detritus, was now wide open, stacked with clean, orderly lumber. Out in the pasture that had once been dotted with foraged cars and mangy sheep was what appeared to be a fully functional mill, a rain of sawdust issuing from an opening on one side, a forklift in operation bringing in new wood. Maxon’s makeshift bicycle shop was gone. In its place, a lath cutter.
“I don’t want to see my mother,” said Maxon.
“What the hell has she done with the place?” marveled Sunny, stepping out of the car. “We were just here, five years ago, Maxon. It was a pit.”
“She married that guy from Butler,” said Maxon. “Come on, let’s go. This is uncomfortable. I don’t know what to say.”
“Say, ‘Hello, Mother. I am just stopping by to say hello, since I was in the area. This is my wife and child.’ And then wait and see what she says. I’ll help you.”
“She’s never seen the—” Maxon began.
“The what?” Sunny asked. “Child or wig?”
Maxon got out of the car, too, stood with one hand clamped on the roof, one hand clamped around the doorframe still. In the back of the car, Bubber woke up.
“Get Bubber out, would you?” said Sunny, brushing off her beautiful cream-colored maternity pantsuit, smoothing it over her belly. “Let’s go knock.”
But they didn’t have to. A man was coming up out of the barn, covered in a fine dust of wood shavings. He was maybe sixty. He took his hat off as he approached.
“Y’uns want firewood?” he asked politely. “I got lots, real dry.”
“No,” said Sunny. “We’re here to see Mrs. Mann.”
“You know Laney?” he said. He looked incredulous.
“We do,” said Sunny, her arm now wrapped protectively around a sleepy Bubber. She picked up the boy, held him on her hip, kissed him soundly on the head. “Is it okay if we go up to the house?”
“Uh, it’s Laney Snow now. I’m her husband. Nice to meet you, Ben Snow.”
They shook hands. Maxon looked at her, and his face correctly registered surprise.
“Mom,” said Bubber quietly. “I have to go potty.”
“Oh, sure,” the man said. “He can use the bathroom up ’ere too. Let me show y’uns in. Laney’ll be real glad to see you. She’s been doin’ books all day, she’s pretty close to crazy with all them numbers and what all. Be glad to see some visitors.”
The man took them toward the door of the old house. Instead of the frenetic clutter Sunny remembered, it was clean, neat. Still old, but cared for.
“Hey, Laney,” he yelled, swinging open the door. “You got friends here to see you, girl. Get on out here and say hello.”
“Come in,” came a high voice from inside the house. “Come on in, I’m in the kitchen.”
Maxon hung back, saying he would wait outside, but Sunny pinched his arm, propelled him onward until they were standing in a bright little kitchen.
THE LAST TIME SHE had been in this kitchen, it was the summer after Maxon’s first year of college. When school got done in May, he’d gone straight to Europe, cycling and backpacking up and down the Alps and the Pyrenees, following bike races and sleeping anyplace he could plug in his laptop. He came home in August, with just a week to spare before he went back to school. She expected him to come rushing right over, burst into the kitchen, ask Nu for something to eat. She waited, but he stayed away, for three days, and no one at the Mann house would answer the phone. She felt irritated and confused. After all, she was going off to college herself in a few weeks. He had written her, e-mailed her, called her on the phone. Why would he not want to see her, to say hello and good- bye?
Her disappointment finally led her to action, and she marched across the valley, yanked open the door to his house, and went right in. She found him alone, sitting at the kitchen table in the middle of towering piles of paper and rubbish. The kitchen was dim, grim, and dirty; there were piles of dishes and papers, bags of fabric, garbage, and what looked like a squirrel’s nest on the counter. The space right around him was clear, and he was typing on his laptop, his head bent low over its blue light. He wore faded jeans and nothing else, and his head was shaved, tanned in stripes from his bicycle helmet. She knew he had been shaving it for her. The sight of his rib cage, his sternum, his collarbones, made her physically ache for him. She wanted to hold him, and feel him breathing.
But he was upset; he told her she had to go. “Sunny,” he said. “You can’t be here.”
“Why not?” she said. “I don’t understand.”
He stood up and came toward her, as if he was going to touch her, grab her, clamp her in his arms, but he stopped.
“Wait. I have to tell you something,” he said. “I was in France a few weeks ago. And I wrote a poem.”
“You wrote a poem?” In the middle of her confusion, she had time to be incredulous.
“Yes, I wrote one.”
“An actual poem, like with words and feelings and stuff?”
“With words.”
“Can I see it?”
“No, I didn’t write it down.”
“Well, can you tell me what it was? Do you remember it? How are you going to remember it?”
“I remember it.”
“But you won’t tell me what it was?”
