The neat, large farmhouse was different from what he remembered. Even though he had been back for a few months already, it still took him by surprise some mornings: the wide plank, light wood floors, butcher block countertops in the kitchen, cool tones on the walls, books everywhere, fresh coffee brewed by the time he stumbled in from his bedroom. It was a bright house. Clean everywhere, new towels hanging in the bathrooms, even his sheets coming up crisp and changed every few days, his laundry hung in the closet, folded into the dresser.
Hooper hoped that his daughter, Hannah, had not been the one cleaning his room. He liked the sense of order, but he wished he could ask if his wife—his ex-wife, he remembered—Mary Elle, or her lover, Jeannie, were the ones changing the sheets, tidying the bathroom. He did not want his daughter to see the bloody tissues in the trashcan, to have to touch the linens that soaked up the sour smell of his body. Though maybe if Hannah did clean up after him, then things would change, maybe then she would begin to notice him. Sometimes Hooper thought he must already be dead, so insubstantial was his existence to Hannah. He thought that his presence was only a physical obstacle, only something that Hannah had to walk around. He should not have expected anything else, he thought, after going through a decade and a dozen cities since leaving this Midwestern college enclave behind, and along with it, his marriage, his family: Mary Elle and Hannah; he had no real claim on them. He knew he was not much of a father, not while he was gone—a few cards, a few letters from jail—and not now, fading away, dying, ghoulish and sick, just an inconvenience to his daughter.
He supposed that the only reason Mary Elle took him in was because he had been gone long enough so that her anger and resentment had burned away, so that all she carried with her were good memories, the thoughts of why she had loved him in the first place. And Mary Elle had Jeannie now, which was part of it. Jeannie occupied whatever void Hooper had left behind. Or maybe he was flattering himself; maybe he had not left a hole at all; maybe his empty space filled over without a ripple; maybe by the time he left it was a relief for Mary Elle to have him gone; maybe the reason that she took him back in was because she was thankful that he had left in the first place.
Hooper did not know what he had been expecting, but it had not been this: it had not been this farmhouse, so familiar and yet so new, had not been his ex-wife with a woman for a lover, had not been his daughter as something unrecognizable, as a teenager, a creature he could not possibly understand and who could not understand him. Coming home—he thought of it as home again, even after such a long time gone and such a short time back—was a surprise to Hooper; his limited correspondence had all been one-way. He had somehow pictured Mary Elle and Hannah as existing in a stasis, as remaining unchanged.
Things had changed, of course, and Hooper did not only have to contend with Mary Elle and Hannah. Mary Elle had been kind, gracious, forgiving of a man whom she had little reason to forgive, but on that first night, when Mary Elle had brought him back from the airport, Jeannie had been clear about Hooper’s failings, pointing and hissing at him, her body uncomfortably close to his on the red, overstuffed couch. She kept her words quiet and clipped, conscious of the girl sleeping upstairs, but that did not blunt them. He thought it was somehow worse for him because he did not know Jeannie, and while he sat there nodding like an idiot, she scolded him like a child, acting as if she knew him, as if she had soaked in his history simply by her own history with Mary Elle. Still, sharp and jealous, Jeannie had not said no, could easily have said no, and as she badgered him, there were times when he even thought she felt sorry for him.
“I don’t understand why you’re giving him another chance,” Jeannie said, “why you’re taking him in after all this time.”
Mary Elle did not answer, but they all knew why she was taking him in: because, at the most basic level, she was a generous and forgiving woman, because she had loved him once, because he had left before he had destroyed her, because he was dying, because he had asked, because as much as Jeannie had helped to raise Hannah, there was still something of Hooper in the girl. All simple things that did not need to be said.
They had sat quietly for a while, Hooper disoriented from the travel and from the pain, but when he saw Jeannie staring at the burn scars that snaked out of his T-shirt and down his arm, he knew that both of the women believed him when he said he was done with meth. He had said it to Mary Elle before, on the same night that he slipped away for the better part of ten years. This time he was done, though, the cancer beating out the addiction.
He had not been eating much. His doctor had told him that in a few more days the nausea would wear off and he would be ready to eat again. “Try to pack on as much weight as you can,” Dr. Yokimbe had said, “you’ll need it for the next round.” But now, even though it was almost noon, he was not hungry.
The kitchen was quiet when he slowly walked out of his room. He picked up the note next to the small basket of muffins on the counter, reading the hastily scribbled words, “try to eat something, these are fresh,” and with a different colored pen but the same writing, “call if you need anything.” He recognized the writing as Jeannie’s.
He heard the bite of tire on gravel and looked out the kitchen window. The women were back earlier than he had expected.
Hooper pushed the muffins to the back of the counter. The scrawled note, the looping letters in blue ink, “try to eat something, these are fresh,” made him smile again.
He stared at the coffee pot for a moment and then took down a mug from the cupboard. The rough, coiled, clay mug was obviously handmade, though rather poorly, like something a child would make at school, and when Hooper turned it over he was surprised to see Mary Elle’s name rather than Hannah’s. Three months and still there were surprises. He did not know that Mary Elle had tried pottery. He smiled and thought of the first time he saw her and Jeannie kiss; there were bigger things than an interest in pottery that he had not known about Mary Elle.
“Did you eat anything?” Jeannie said, by way of a greeting as she came through the door.
“No,” he said. “Thought I’d try some coffee.” He poured the coffee into the mug, and though the steaming smell made him gag, he kept the bile down until the milk hit the black liquid, pooling out like an oil slick. He vomited into the sink, knocking the mug onto the floor with his elbow.
“Here.” Jeannie held his arm, pushing a tissue into his hands. He wiped his eyes, nose, and mouth, and watched Jeannie clean the coffee from the floor with a dishtowel. The rim of the coffee cup had chipped, and the handle had separated and broken into two pieces, but when Jeannie picked up the mug, Hooper stopped her before she could throw it out.
“I’ll glue it,” he said, taking the pieces from her. “It’ll give me something to do. You won’t be able to tell about the handle,” he said, “though I can’t do much about the chip in the rim.”
Hannah laughed. “Don’t bother.”
His daughter’s voice surprised him. He had not heard her come in, Mary Elle behind her.