At the Soup Kitchen

GABRIEL

I get out of the house like it's on fire and start driving. I smoke with the window rolled down and I know it's a rental and I was told explicitly by the woman behind the desk "obviously, there will be a fee assessed," as if she knew by the sight or smell of me that I needed to be told. I will probably have to pay some exorbitant tack-on fee as a penalty. I don't really care. I cannot simply smile, shake hands and pretend like things are okay, can I? Won't that be the same as handing over to him some vital organ with a big, fat smile on my face? What if I say, 'you know what, dad? Things are fine, you're a great guy now"? How do I know he won't clap his hands and laugh that circus clown laugh of his and say, "gotcha!" 

I could kill. Anyone and anything.

The soup kitchen is a squat brick building next to a catholic church and I can remember vaguely that it was not here when this was my home but I cannot recall what was in its place. A parking lot? A gas station?

Inside is a large cafeteria-style room with checkered linoleum floors, halogen lighting,a kitchen at the far end with a serving window. There is a line of people leading up to and running alongside the serving window, their steps toward food as sluggish and belabored as steps towards death. The place smells of bleach and canned vegetables, hot dishwater and body odor. Behind the serving window I see three or four young guys, all in t-shirts and white smeared aprons, dishing out spaghetti and diced carrots. School lunch. Not one of them looks like what I am expecting of Matty. None of them have my mother's red hair, my father's height and the breadth of his shoulders, his blue eyes hard and cold as a precious stone on someone's finger. I cannot remember what Matty looks like outside of my own imagination; whose eyes, whose hair has been passed down to him.

And then he comes out through the swinging door, peeling a pair of vinyl gloves from his hands and looking around. He is tall, like my father, like me, but even from a distance he looks like my mother, like the pictures of her I have kept with me all this time, pictures taken before I was born, before so many things happened to alter her appearance. He has dad's strong chin and mom's dark red hair, a dark red belonging to a shiny car, rusty, almost like blood. It is parted and swept across his face like a strong wind has blown it that way, the smoothness of it nearly pretty. Nearly effeminate. He brushes it out of his eyes and then those eyes find me. 

When I look him square in the face I see all the endowments that I never received from my mother; fierce green eyes and a smile that comes easy, round cheekbones that compliment the square jaw of my father. Even the lightness of his step came from her, I can tell. I am not expecting him to hug me but he does, squeezing me once and then stepping back before I have a chance to return the embrace or reject it. He smiles but tries to hide it, like there is something taboo or vulgar in the expression.

"Mom told me you were coming by," he says.

"Yeah, I thought I'd come see you work."

"It's not exactly work," he says, "I mean I don't get paid."

I realize that he is nearly my height, his shoulders nearly as broad as mine. I had been expecting a child, maybe an almost-adult still clinging to the skinny awkwardness of adolescence but here he is and practically a man. Even his hands are scarred, well-used. But he is nervous, I can tell and underneath his polite exterior I can sense that he is making up his mind about something; about me. He is deciding if he should be rude, if he should be stingy with niceties; if the desire to be hostile and unforgiving is even still valid. He is deciding, much like I am, if he still has the right to be angry.

"Even better," I say, "it's good of you, doing this. You should be proud."

He shakes his head, and I see this little half smile, like his mouth hasn't completely decided to show such an expression, like half of him is trying to suppress it, to keep a serious appearance. This reminds me so much of my father than I cannot look.

"Service for service's sake," he says. 

"Right," I say, "Of course." 

My mother used to drag us to the catholic church, the one right next to this building, when dad was having a bad day, a bad week. She would even dress in black, I mean, come on, it's like the woman already saw herself as a widow. I look at Matty and suddenly remember him sitting beside me, his young face glaring up at the ornate, gilded artwork, the towering image of Christ in his most gruesome state, just staring, like he understood it. I could never really look at it for very long before it started to get to my stomach, before I started having that feeling you get right before someone grabs you from behind. It never seemed to bother Matty. He would stare at that thing the whole time, not even playing with the little toy cars he had stuffed his pockets with.

"You're not a believer," Matty says now, with nothing but fairness in his voice, "it's cool." |

Then he turns back toward the serving window and gestures towards me but doesn't look at me. One of the other guys mouths 'what?' and then nods, waves a dismissal. Matty unties his apron and says, "you smoke?" then goes towards the double doors that lead to the street. I follow. 

To the right of the door is another line of people waiting to get in, to get a table and Matty takes a sharp left around the side of the building, leading me into a narrow alley between the soup kitchen and the church and I tease him, saying, "do born-agains smoke?" 

He laughs as he smacks a pack of Camels against the heel of his hand.

"We're all a work in progress, man. I'm not the one doing the miracles."

He hands me one and then a lighter but doesn't offer to light it for me. Then we make small talk and it's positively agonizing. He has been volunteering here for two years, off and on. 

"Off and on?"

"Well I got busted for underage consumption at a party, and got stuck here for community service but I met Father Lawson and he's actually a pretty good guy so I kept coming. And dad thought it would be good for me to stay busy. But then I went to Camp Warren for a few months and Lawson said he'd take me back whenever I got out." 

"Camp Warren?" 

"Yeah. It's a fancy-pants juvenile facility upstate."

"How'd you end up there?" 

He pauses, squints at me and asks, "mom and dad didn't tell you this?" 

"I don't talk to them, remember? Least of all about you."

Matty seems satisfied by this so he continues. He says he was drinking way too much, peddling some painkillers that the FDA had never even seen before but the judge let him off easy because the church was willing to pay for him to go to a private facility. Mom and dad were grateful, and are still in the debt of the church. 

"So I keep volunteering." 

"And that's when you took to Jesus? When you were locked up?"

"Jeez, you make it sound like prison," he says, "I mean...yeah. That's when I came to know the Lord."

"Wow."

"What?"

"Nothing, just...isn't that exactly what happened to dad, too?"

"Yeah, I know it's weird. But that's the way it happened." 

I think this over, looking over my brother with unabashed curiosity. I can't stop looking at him, trying to identify what of my mother he still has, what of my father. The  more I look, the less I understand. 

"You of all people should know how desperate a person can be on the inside," he says. 

"Hey, I was actually in prison." 

"That's what I'm trying to say." 

"And I wasn't in there for doing something wrong."

"You threw a guy in front of a moving car."

"You know about that?"

"Everyone knows about that." 

"Still. That wasn't the same thing."

"Right. Because you were a big hero."

"Hardly."

"No, man, I mean it, I'm not trying to bust your balls. Dad's told me all about it. First in Michigan, you save a woman from getting hit by a car, and the town gives you a medal. Then in Texas you save a woman from getting raped and they throw you in jail for it." 

"I didn't save her from anything."

"Still sounds pretty noble to me." 

"If it's all the same to you, I'd rather not talk about it." 

He throws his cigarette down and nods, sticks out his bottom lip and says, "fair enough." I am already done with mine, having smoked with more speed and desperation than he. Matty makes no motion to go back inside.

"So mom and dad told you about the trip?" 

"A little bit," I answer, "sounds exciting."

He nods and shrugs. "Yeah," he says without enthusiasm, "it's a pretty big deal." 

"You don't seem that happy about it."

"Oh I am," he says with renewed vigor, "it's just a lot of responsibility. You know, being The Light of the World." 

I chuckle and don't try to hide it and thankfully, Matty doesn't rebuke me for it. He tosses his cigarette and crushes it underfoot. Once the embers are all out, he picks it up, then mine as well. He holds them loosely in one hand.

"So do you go to a shrink?" he asks. 

"Why?"

"Do you?" 

"I see a court-appointed psychologist."

"You sound like dad after he started seeing Rusty every week."

"Who's Rusty?"

"Head pastor at the church. He's alright. He actually used to play for Kansas State but he had an injury and started drinking...had a pretty bad time before he became a Christian."

"So why didn't you ask me if I go to bible study every week?" 

"Oh, you definitely don't have the Lord in you. No offense, or anything, but after a while you can tell. I mean...you're not a christian, are you?"

"Definitely not." 

"So is your shrink a total government hack, or what?" 

"No, she's cool. She plays it straight and she doesn't take bullshit."

"She? Is she hot?" 

"She's sixty-three, man. But she could probably kick my ass on a bad day and she could definitely kick yours." 

"Yeah," Matty smiles, "that's kind of hot." 

"There's the Matty I was expecting."

We both laugh and try to drag it out to avoid the uncomfortable silence that will undoubtedly follow. But it comes, like a cold gust of wind it comes and leaves nothing between us but more questions. And Matty is the first to ask. 

"Do you talk to her about what happened?"

"You mean...what happened here?" 

He is not looking at me. But he nods, suddenly, in his timidity, losing all the years and all the strength I had just attributed to him.

"Yeah," I answer, "I do. I talk to my shrink about that."

Mom says Matty wasn't always like this. She says yes, he is a perfect gentleman. She says he is responsible, mild-mannered, helpful and understanding. He is patient and obedient; docile even. But she says he wasn't always like this. 

I sit at the butcher-block table in our family's kitchen--not the hotel; I would prefer to stay out of the ruckus that is the preparation for tonight's Christmas party. I wasn't exactly asked beforehand if I minded coming home not only to my family, but to a house full of strangers each with a thousand questions that will no doubt all be the same, but when Mom finally did ask me, it was moot, since the invitations had already been handed out, the arrangements made. Canceling would have caused a scandal. So here we are, Mom preparing gallons of cole slaw in our kitchen because the hotel kitchen is completely overrun with extra helpers. 

"Matty was such an angry adolescent. I mean, for years. We didn't know what to do with him. Eventually we had to send him away. It was the only thing to do." 

"So what is Camp Warren? I mean, it sounds like a boot camp." 

"No," she says, smiling with a warmth I find odd given the topic, "it's like a safe haven. There are all kinds of young people that are sent there. I mean, young men. Just young men." 

"Still sounds like a boot camp." 

Mom rolls her eyes, poises a large knife above a head of cabbage but stops. 

"Yes, Matty needed discipline. But it was more than that. You know it was more than that." 

"So what did Dad do? I mean, it's not like Matty's problems sprung from nowhere." 

"Your father got involved. They had family sessions every week. At first, Matty wasn't very cooperative. He wouldn't come see us on visiting days, and during the sessions, he would just sit there. It was impossible. He hated your father for putting him in there." 

"Why did you? I mean, what specifically, made you decide to put him away?"

"Well, first there was the drinking. Your father put him on a strict curfew, but Matty kept breaking it. He was making good grades in school but they started to slip; he wasn't showing up, he got suspended for fighting." 

"All of this at the public school?" 

Mom nods, starts chopping. I watch her closely, the meticulous way she protects her fingertips, the speed with which she can chop and the orderly little strips of cabbage that fall to the cutting board after each stroke. I remember a time when Mom wasn't even allowed near a sharp object. I remember it well. 

"Your father had put his name on the waiting list for the Christian Academy before all of that got started. Conrad, the head of the upper school, said the wait time was maybe a year, less if a space became available. But with everything that was happening...let's just say they were more than a little reluctant to let Matty in. So your father had a meeting with Conrad and a few other people and Conrad agreed to put Matty at the bottom of the list, which would delay his entrance but not take him off completely, if Matty could get some real help. The public school was about to expel him anyway; he was impossible.  But then one day dad found him laying in bed with all of his clothes on. He was soaking wet and all scratched up, filthy. He was ranting about a ghost, about a house in the woods."

"So what was wrong with him?" 

"Lord Almighty, he was completely strung out on something called...DMT? Not having a good time of it, I would say. He was like a fish out of water."

She says all of this with complete nonchalance. No more rattling, no more wringing her hands, pulling out her hair, no more screaming over the voices in her head. No more downing pills and red wine. I should be happy, should be comforted or even elated, but instead I am disturbed, and then guilty for admitting to such a feeling. She chops up more carrots quickly and expertly, though I am nervous for her fingers.

"He'd been talking about the house before, though. That was the weird thing. We all just thought it was another of Matty's stories to scare the crap out of the younger ones. But then that day...even if it was just that Matty believed it was there, it was scary enough. He had said something about seeing an old house out in the woods past the park, a falling down old place, way off the path." 

"So, is there one?" 

"Well no, sweetie. There was your great-grandfather's plantation house but that got torn down same time the carriage house did."

"What carriage house?" 

"The house your daddy was born in." 

She stops chopping and doesn't look at me when she speaks. 

"The house your grandmother died in." 

The memory, like so many others, presents itself to me as if it's new information; for the first few seconds it really seems like I am hearing this for the first time. But I know this already. I know about my grandmother, the baby that came after my father, the baby that killed her and then died right away, like its short life had been created for one horrible purpose and only one purpose. I know all of this. I've just forgotten. 

"Oh," I say, quite stupidly. 

"Yeah, honey, I mean, I was only six years old but I remember going to the demolition like everyone. Nobody could believe your grandpa would want to tear down his family's home. I mean, honestly, it was falling into disrepair so I can understand he wouldn't want to incur the costs..." 

She chops up three more carrots and then starts on the onions, tired of talking, tired of rehashing. I have only been here a few hours, and already she's tired. 

Thank God, I think.