“You going home for Columbus Day weekend?” Ben asked. He and Geno were running side-by-side on the treadmills, their feet and elbows pumping in a steady cadence.
“No.”
“Just gonna hang around here?”
“Yeah.”
Left right left right. Sneakers slapping through the background of clinking, clanking weight machines and rock music.
“What do your parents do?” Ben asked.
“Dude, don’t go there.”
“Why not?”
“You’ll be sorry you asked,” Geno asked.
“Come on. What, are they spies?”
Geno counted ten panting steps before answering. “My mother died when I was fifteen. My father and my brother died last July. I’m not going home for break because I don’t really have a home.” He glanced sideways. “See? Now it’s awkward. Magic.”
Ben hopped his feet onto the side plates of the mill, letting the tread continue. “You shitting me? I mean… Sorry, that was a dumb thing to say.”
“Yes it was. And no, I’m not.” Geno swiped a forearm over his sweaty brow and shook it out.
“I’m sorry. You literally have no home to go to? No family, no nothing?”
“I have a half-sister. She’s about twenty years older than me. I lived with her a little while this summer. She’s actually cool, I like her. But I had to leave because… Long story. I just had to.”
“Where’d you go then?”
“Friend of the family’s. He’s my father’s best friend. Was. And our lawyer. He handled all the estate matters and he’s managing my money until I’m twenty-one. I guess technically you could call his place my home. My stuff’s there, anyway.”
Ben hopped back onto the belt and started running. “No grandparents?”
“No.”
“Aunts, uncles?”
Geno didn’t answer. His chest burned with exertion and a strange embarrassment. Why didn’t he have aunts, uncles or cousins around? How did Nathan and Analisa, two only children, meet and marry and not build a great dynasty to take care of their own? Now, on top of all the other injuries he’d suffered, Geno had to explain why he had nobody. It was humiliating.
Where were his people?
“So what will you do for Thanksgiving?” Ben asked. “Or Christmas?”
“I’m Jewish.” Even that felt fraudulent. The Caans’ observancy of Judaism had been bare minimum at best. Geno and Carlos had a bris because their Caan grandparents would’ve died if they hadn’t. But that was the extent of the orthodoxy. Neither went to Hebrew school or had a bar mitzvah. The Caans lit a menorah and had a big Hanukkah party because Analisa liked to make latkes. They hosted a Seder because Analisa liked to gather with friends and cook and celebrate.
We were socially Jewish, Geno thought. Gazing at the tattooed Hebrew letters and Kabbalah symbols on his arms, he added, Or superstitiously Jewish.
“Dude, you know what I mean,” Ben said.
“I don’t know, go to Vern’s I guess. Or book a flight to the Bahamas or something. Be drunk on the beach for a week. I haven’t thought about it yet.”
The burn in Geno’s chest was reaching fingers into his throat and squeezing. Embarrassment morphed into alarm. The belt beneath his pounding feet unrolled like a long, lonely road into the future.
What will I do? Not just this year but all the years to come?
Where will I sit on Thanksgiving?
Where is my home now?
He was in free-falling panic now. His heart and lungs begged him to stop for air but his feet kept going. He had to run and keep running until he got somewhere.
I want to go home.
The little red henhouse beckoned from a glade in the woods. Expanded now with a second story and a porch. Triple the number of windows the light could stream out of. Within would be a big table, long-lost loved ones crammed in elbow-to-elbow, waiting for him.
I want to go home.
His feet ran faster. His heart was breaking.
I want to go home…
“Ben, would you fucking stop apologizing and play?” It was later that evening, and Geno and Ben were playing air hockey in the common room. A Xanax and a four-hour power nap put the floor back under Geno’s feet. A Valium was keeping it there.
“I just feel bad, man,” Ben said.
“A bunch of tragic shit happened to me but it’s nobody’s fault. Nothing you can do about it.”
“Sure there is.”
“Like what?”
Ben stopped the puck with the edge of his striker. “You come to my place for Thanksgiving.”
Geno straightened up and put his hands on his hips. “For real?”
“Talked to my mom. She wants you to come.”
“You didn’t tell her the whole poor orphan tale, did you?”
“Not in so many details. I just said a friend was in a bind for the holidays, had nowhere to go. She was horrified and said, ‘Bring him here or I’ll kill you.’ End of story.”
Geno swallowed. “Thanks,” he said, the word thick in his mouth. “I’m sorry if I…”
Ben shot the puck over. “Stop apologizing and play.”