“It’s still down there.”
The tractor. I had to bring it back up and put it away in the barn. It had been sitting out there at the bottom of the hill since the accident. I didn’t know whether it would start. For all I knew, the gas had all drained out when the machine was upside down. There was a half-full gas can in the barn if I needed it.
“There are things that we have to get figured out,” I said. “About what to do, now that Dad’s, you know, passed away.”
Thomas nodded, thinking. “I was wondering,” he said, “whether it would be okay to put maps on the walls in his bedroom now. I’m running out of space. Because he and Mom said I couldn’t put any on the first floor, or down the stairs, but his room is on the second floor so I was wondering what you thought about that since he’s not sleeping in there anymore. And with Mom already gone, no one’s sleeping in there.”
That wasn’t exactly true. I’d started off sleeping in the empty bedroom next to Thomas’s, the one Mom had always kept ready for me when I came to visit, which was not that often. But last night I ended up moving down the hall into Dad’s room because I could hear all the mouse-clicking through the wall and couldn’t take it anymore. I’d gone in once to tell Thomas to shut it down but he’d ignored me, so I’d switched beds. I felt funny about it at first, slipping under the covers of my dead father’s bed, but I got over it. I was tired, and I’m not much of a sentimentalist.
“You can’t live in this house all alone,” I said.
“I’m not alone. You’re here.”
“At some point I have to go back home.”
“You are home. This is home.”
“It’s not my home, Thomas. I live in Burlington.”
“Burlington, Vermont. Burlington, Massachusetts. Burlington, North Carolina. Burlington, New Jersey. Burlington, Washington. Burlington, Ontario, Ca—”
“Thomas.”
“I didn’t know if you knew how many other Burlingtons there are. You need to be specific. You need to say Burlington, Vermont, or people won’t know where you really live.”
“I figured you knew,” I said. “Is that what you want me to do? Every time I tell you I have to go back to Burlington, do you want me to add ‘Vermont,’ Thomas?”
“Don’t be angry with me,” he said.
“I’m not angry with you. But we do need to talk about some things.”
“Okay.”
“When I go back to my own house, I’m going to be worried about leaving you here on your own.”
Thomas shook his head, like there was nothing to worry about. “I’ll be fine.”
“Dad did everything around here,” I said. “He made the meals, he cleaned the house, he paid the bills, he went into town to get the groceries, he made sure the furnace was working and called the guy if there was something wrong with it. Anything else that broke, he fixed it. If the lights went off, he went down and flipped the breakers to get them back on. Do you know where the breaker panel is, Thomas?”
“The furnace works fine,” he said.
“You don’t have a driver’s license,” I said. “How are you going to get food into the house?”
“I’ll have it delivered,” he said.
“We’re out in the middle of nowhere. And who’s going to actually go to the grocery store and pick out the things you like?”
“You know what I like,” Thomas said.
“But I won’t be here.”
“You can come back,” he said. “Once a week, and get my food and pay the bills and see if the furnace is okay and then you can go back to Burlington.” He paused. “Vermont.”
“What about each day? Let’s say you’ve got some food in the house. Are you going to be okay making your own meals?”
Thomas looked away.
I leaned in a little closer to him, reached out, and touched his arm. “Look at me,” I said. He turned his head back reluctantly.
“Maybe,” I said, “if you made some changes in your routine, maybe you could take on some of these responsibilities yourself.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Well, maybe you need to manage your time better.”
He adopted a puzzled expression. “I manage my time very well.”
I took my hand away and placed both palms down on the table. “Tell me about that.”
“I do. I make very good use of my time.”
“Describe your day for me.”
“Which day? Like, a weekday, or the weekend?” He was stalling.
“Would you say your Monday-to-Friday routine is very different from your weekend routine?”
He thought on that. “I suppose not.”
“Then any day would be fine. You pick.”
Now he eyed me with suspicion. “Are you trying to make fun of me? Are you picking on me?”
“You said you use your time wisely, so tell me.”
“Well,” he said, “I get up around nine o’clock, and I have a shower, and then Dad makes me breakfast around nine thirty, and then I get to work.”
“Work,” I said. “Tell me about that.”
“You know,” he said.