Word count: 2955

Traces of Energy
by Jeannette de Richemond

“Alison, come home next weekend,” said her mom on the phone.
	Alison wanted to go home, and she wanted to stay at her small liberal arts college. After two months as a freshman, she was just getting the hang of it. She’d found the table next to the window, overlooking the lawn where students played Frisbee, where her new friends sat in the dining hall. She’d made a mental map of where the four lecture halls where she had classes were in relation to her dorm and the dining hall. She was getting used to living in a suite with strangers who were frequently noisy. Alison listened to her iPod to fall asleep every night, and while she was studying to block them out sometimes. Lisa, one of her suite mates, just clicked with Alison so they stuck together when the group went to parties, joined the running club together, and laughed about being “fresh  girls” instead of freshmen. This list flashed through her mind at her mother’s request.
	“Your brothers will be here,” said her mom.
	“OK.”
	Alison imagined what her mom might cook for dinner the whole train ride home: spaghetti and meatballs stuffed with cheese, roast chicken with garlic sauce, shepherd’s pie. She could smell dinner right there in the musty, littered train car. Maybe Mom would bake chocolate chip cookies for her to take back to school. Would she share them or hide them?
	Her brother Ian, who was a senior at the state university, picked her up at the train station in her mom’s gray-blue Volvo station wagon. “What’s up?” Alison asked, “Why the reunion in October?”
	“I don’t know. Everyone’s so quiet, I’m afraid that mom or dad or somebody has cancer or something. But Andy’s OK. He’s at soccer practice.”
	Andy, their younger brother, was still in high school. He shed sweatshirts, big sneakers, and dirty sweat socks the minute he entered the house, leaving a trail to his bedroom. Now that Ian and Alison had both left for college, their mom fretted that Andy spent too much time on X-Box Live, playing games and watching movies from the Internet “instant” queue. 
	Alison and Ian were quiet the rest of the way home. Alison watched the town out of the window, but none of the shops and houses seemed as though they were in the right places. She felt lost in an Alice-in-Wonderland world as though everything was turning upside down and inside out. She wondered if Aunt Anne, who she’d called almost everyday when she was fifteen and fighting with her mom was OK. She couldn’t think about her parents.
	“Ian, what will we do?”
	“We’ll go back to school, I guess.”
	When they got home, the house seemed empty. No dinner cooking. Ian went to make himself a peanut butter sandwich. Alison just stood at the foot of the stairs with her overnight bag, feeling lost. She wondered, “Was this still her house? Would her room still be at the end of the hall? Where was …”
	Her mom flew down the stairs. “Alison.” Hug. “There you are, Sweetie. I’m so glad to see you.” But her mom didn’t see her. She didn’t notice that Alison needed a haircut, and had a blurry henna tattoo from the night she and Lisa tattooed each other and couldn’t stop laughing. She didn’t notice that Alison was wearing the jeans Mom hated, with the ripped knees. Her mom didn’t look her in the eyes. 
	“We’ll have a family meeting as soon as Andy gets home from soccer.”
	“Where’s Dad?” Alison asked.
	“Upstairs. In middle of trying to fix something. Leave him alone for now. Last I heard, he was cursing at the hammer.”
	“When’s Andy coming home?”
	“I have to pick him up from practice now. We’ll be back in less than fifteen minutes.”
	Alison felt afraid to go upstairs or even sit. Her mom was acting so strange that Alison felt like she’d wandered into the wrong house. Or maybe Mom had changed during those two months at college. Alison followed Ian into the kitchen where she started cleaning up after his snack, screwing the lid on the peanut butter and putting the jar away.
	“Ian,” she asked. “Have you seen Dad?”
	“Allie, I only got here about an hour before you did. He’s locked himself in the upstairs bathroom with some kind of DIY project.”
	“What about Mom?”
	“She said she had to finish cleaning out her desk – overdue bills or something – and we’d talk when everybody got here.”
	Alison looked around the empty kitchen as she put Ian’s dirty plate and knife in the dishwasher. “Do you think I should start making dinner?”
	“Maybe we’re going out to eat? I am missing a really great party tonight … my friends are … Kegs … “
	Alison tried to listen, but she wasn’t following what Ian was saying as she was was just waiting to find out why Mom had called them home.
	Andy burst into the kitchen door, and gave her a big sweaty hug. “Andy!” she shrieked.
	“I’ve got to take a shower.”
	“No, Andy,” said Mom. “We’re having a family meeting.”
	“Mom, I have to take a shower. You know, I just got back from practice.”
	“No, Andy,” said Mom. “Let’s sit down at the dining room table. Ian, would you call your Dad?”
	“Mom, I’m taking a shower – right now! I’ll get stink rot. It’ll only take ten minutes.”
	“Andy, your ten minute showers take half an hour,” said everyone in the kitchen in unison.”
	“Mom, I need a shower.”
	“ANDY. NO. STOP. NO ARGUING,” Mom was talking in her strict voice, but it seemed to be quavering. “We’ve all been waiting for you. Just sit down.”
	Andy grabbed a banana from the fruit bowl, and stomped into the dining room.
	Alison followed Ian and sat staring at the table, the site of so many seemingly endless conversations about driving rules, curfews, housework, grades … “
	“Barry, come down now,” her mom called up the stairs, interrupting Alison’s musings. “Barry, everyone’s home. It’s Time.”
	“It’s Time.” The phrase made Alison think of midnight on New Year’s Eve, the split second when the past seems gone forever and the new year is coming, an adventure and a terror, whether she was ready or not. Alison never felt ready.
	Dad came into the dining room. He looked really good for Dad, almost hip. He didn’t look like he’d been fixing the bathroom; he looked like he’d been fixing his hair.
	Everyone sat. Ian, Alison, and Andy looked at their parents, waiting for the announcement. “Barry,” said Mom firmly. “It’s your news.”
	Dad hadn’t even said hello to Ian and Alison, even though they’d been away at school. He just sat at the table and looked at his hands. With a tremor, Alison noticed he wasn’t wearing his wedding ring.
	“Well, guys, I don’t know how to say this,” Dad started. “I’m moving to New Mexico.”
	“With Mom?” asked Ian.
	“Well, no. I finally accepted that I …” his voice trailed away. “I hope you know I’d never want to hurt your Mom. She’s great.”
	Alison didn’t think Mom believed that. Mom was staring out of the window as though if she focused hard enough she could transport herself into the Neilson’s house next door.
	“I’m moving to New Mexico with my friend, Eric. We’re really good friends. We’re together.” He took a deep breath, but never looked up. “I’m trying to say that I’m coming to turns with the fact – and believe me, this is a fact – that I’m gay. You know, homosexual. I’ve always been, well, we can talk about that later.” 
	Andy knocked his chair over, and started charging toward the man they’d thought they knew. “What do you mean?” he shouted.
	“Look, I know this is a big thing.” Dad/Barry said. “We’ll talk about it more later when you’ve had time to get used to the idea. But right now, I’m leaving. The car’s packed. You have my cell phone number.”
	“Where are you going?” asked Ian.
	“Eric’s,” said the man who had washed the cars with them, helped them with physics, loved Monty Python, and took them hiking in National Parks. Now he was a stranger. “I’ll be with Eric,” he said as though he enjoyed the saying the sentence. Then he was gone.
	Alison just got up and went to bed without any dinner in the room that wasn’t exactly her room anymore, in the life that was exactly her life anymore. She could hear her mother and brothers talking until long into the night.
	When Alison woke in the much too neat bedroom, she didn’t know what time it was. The clock had stopped at 8:36.  She showered, dressed in yesterday’s clothes, put on her watch, and went down to the kitchen to drink a cup of coffee with Mom. “Alison, sweetie,” said Mom. “Are you OK? You slept a really long time. Are you hungry? Your dad, well, once you left for college, he started staying away overnight. When he told me about Eric, it explained a lot of things that I never understood. Things I thought were my fault every since I”
	“Mom,” Alison said. “I just want to go back to school right now.” She just couldn’t talk about her dad who wasn’t really the dad she knew but was still her dad. It was too confusing.
	Alison felt a little better on the train. She was traveling between two places, one she was just getting to know and one she thought she’d known but didn’t. The train seemed more like home than home. When she checked her watch to calculate how much longer it would take to get back to school, she found her watch had stopped.
	“Alison,” Cecilia, her room mate said when she opened the door. “You’re back early.” 
	Alison flipped up the light switch, and the light blew out. Cecilia was napping and didn’t notice. She seemed to sleep all day and stay up all night.
	“Yeah, I have a big economics paper I have to finish for Monday.” Cecilia went back to sleep. Alison dropped everything on her bed, and went to take a shower to wash home off her body. She just couldn’t think about home right now.
	Alison powered on her computer and opened the file of her rough draft. She started reading her paper again, but the argument wasn’t what she remembered. Alison looked at her scribbled handwritten notes – prewriting – and they didn’t match the file. Nothing was making sense anymore. 
	She started worked but the keys wouldn’t synchronize with her finger strokes. They either delayed, which made her lose her train of thought, or they wildly accelerated, writing words Alison never intended such as “watching you.” She restarted the computer, but that didn’t help. The “restart” was the complete extent of Alison’s trouble-shooting knowledge, besides checking that computer was plugged in, which it was. Alison checked the clock on her computer. Somehow it had changed to the year 2002, the year before Alison entered high school, when everything in the family was still … with great effort, Alison returned her thoughts to her paper. She downloaded her rough draft to a flash drive, threw all her notes and books in her backpack, and got ready to leave for the library, where she could use a computer in the lab. 
	When Alison got to the library, she tried to decide if she should just start from scratch or look at her rough draft once more. She logged in to the computer, and opened the file on her flash drive. Her paper was gone. Instead there was a brief letter in the file labeled “econ_101909”: “Dear Alison, I’ll be watching out for you where ever you are.” Then the screen went black. Alison pushed her swivel chair as far away from the computer as she could get and looked around the room. She closed her eyes. The message was still there, except now instead of showing in stark black and white, it seemed to be glowing with colors.
	Alison ripped the flash drive out the computer and threw it away. The computer lab monitor came over to talk to her about properly removing devices, and, to her astonishment Alison started to cry. She left the lab and gave up on the paper for the day. As she walked back to her room, she called Ian on her cell phone.
	“Alison, where did you go? Did you ever think that Mom might need you right now?”
	“Ian, I just can’t stand hearing about their marriage. It’s too much for me. I don’t really want to know how he discovered his sexual identity. I don’t want to know that he has a sexual identity.”
	“Allie,” said Ian. “Get yourself together. At least you know you’re female. Andy and I don’t know if we inherited his Y-chromosomes. I mean it’s OK for some of my friends to be gay, but not DAD!  It’s just too weird.”
	“Ian, what will we do?”
	“Just keep going. Be normal.”
	“Ian, right now I don’t think I know what normal is. But this is why I called. I wanted to know if you wrote me a letter on my computer?”
	“Talk about normal. When have I ever done that? I’d send an e-mail or text you. I don’t even know the password to your computer.”
	“Ian, my computer is being really strange. I’m having a lot of trouble with it.”
	“Well, Allie, that’s nothing new. Don’t you remember how we …” Ian stopped talking and took a deep breath. “ … how I always teased you that you had a magnetic field that screwed up your computer. Try a computer in the library. Gotta go. Mom’s calling. Talk to you later.”
	At the dorm, Lisa was waiting. “I heard you were back. There’s supposed to be a great party tonight outside on the soccer field. It’s a ‘bring a bottle’.”
	“Lisa, I don’t know if I’m up for it.”
	“Come on. It’s going to be really good. The sororities are setting up an exotic festival in silk tents, and they’re having jugglers, strolling musicians, magicians, and palm readers. Anyone can come. The tickets are just five dollars. It sounds really fun.”
	“Lisa, I don’t know, I’m having enough trouble with reality right now. I don’t want to know my future.” Lisa persuaded her to go.
	Hours after dark fell, Cecilia, Lisa, and Alison went to the party. Alison didn’t want to go because she thought she saw lightening. Cecilia and Lisa said she saw fireworks.
	Once the three bought their tickets, Cecilia and Lisa wandered away to contribute their bottle of flavored vodka to the vat of punch. Alison looked up at the sky; she was sure there was lightening right over her head. To get out of the open, Alison went into the tent with a sign “Chiromancy” where a woman named Luri was reading palms.  After waiting in line, Luri, wearing a turquoise gypsy scarf with matching earrings lightly held Alison’s cold hand in her warm ones, and studied Alison’s palm. 
	“I see you don’t like one of your classes very much – let’s see economics. Now your family is going through a difficult time. Someone is hiding, and has been hiding for a long time in different places, and may even be lost.” 
	Alison started to shiver, and wished she had a sweater. She was sure she heard thunder, and wanted to leave. Luri patiently held Alison’s hand between both of her own until Alison stopped shivering. “You have two brothers,” she continued. “One of them will become a leader, but right now I can’t tell you which one. This will be interesting.”
	Alison was sure she heard thunder now, and wanted to run. Luri studied Alison’s palm, “There is great psychic energy in your aura, and in your hand. It is something you can develop if you want or when you’re ready.”
	“Bullshit,” thought Alison.
	“I also see that someone is following you, someone very tall named Jack. Do you know a tall man named Jack?  Don’t be afraid. He’s a spirit guide, a guardian. He has been trying to send you messages.”
	“I don’t know anyone named Jack,” said Alison, beginning to feel antagonistic. 
	“He will keep following you,” said Luri looking into Alison with her golden eyes. “He will keep you safe.”
	Alison stumbled out of the tent. She was sure she saw lightening, a jagged flash coming straight for her. Alison ran under the nearest tree, and huddled between its roots. Soon a misty rain began to fall.
	As Alison walked back to the dorm alone in the light rain, she began to enjoy the fresh smell of the rain and the clean feeling of the droplets on her bare arms. “Jack,” she thought. “Jack, who are you?”
	Suddenly Alison saw a clear picture of a tall man playing Legos on the floor with her. She saw the picture in color although the photograph she remembered, stuffed in a box in the armoire under her mother’s silver, was black and white. Alison felt the tall man throw her in the air and catch her. John, her grandfather, her mother’s father, was called “Jack” by her grandmother and their friends. Was Jack following her?
	Although her grandfather had been dead for nearly fifteen years, her grandmother still lit pipes in ashtrays just for the aroma of Grandpa’s pipe tobacco. When Grandma did that, it felt like Grandpa was still home.
	Jack was present.