The Language of Love and Loss

by Bart Yates

Genres: Family Life

Synopsis

Readers of Mad Honey will adore this clever, deeply touching, buoyant new novel from an award-winning author. When his difficult mother is diagnosed with ALS, a sharp-witted yet sensitive artist reluctantly returns to his New Hampshire hometown—and all the ghosts he left behind.



As it turns out, you can go home again. But sometimes, you really, really don't want to . . .



Home, for Noah York, is Oakland, New Hampshire, the sleepy little town where Noah's mother, Virginia, had a psychotic breakdown and Noah got beaten to a pulp as a teenager. Then there were the good times—and Noah's not sure which ones are more painful to recall.



Now thirty-seven and eking out a living as an artist in Providence, Rhode Island, Noah looks much the same—and swears just as colorfully—as he did in high school. Virginia has become a wildly successful poet who made him the subject of her most famous poem, "The Lost Soul," a label Noah will never live down. And J.D., the one who got away—because Noah stupidly drove him away—is in a loving marriage with a successful, attractive man whom Noah despises wholeheartedly.



Is it any surprise that Noah wishes he could ignore his mother's summons to come visit?



But Virginia has shattering news to deliver, and a request he can't refuse. Soon, Noah will track down the sister and extended family he never knew existed, try to keep his kleptomaniac cousin out of jail, feud with a belligerent neighbor, confront J.D.'s jealous husband—and face J.D. himself, the ache from Noah's past that never fades. . . . All the while, contending with his brilliant, unpredictable mother.



Bittersweet, hilarious, and moving, and as unapologetically candid and unforgettable as Noah himself, The Language of Love and Loss is a story about growing older, getting lost—and finding your way back to the only truths that really matter.

Release date: May 23, 2023

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 256

Sample

The next time Mom wants me to come home, remind me why I’d rather roast my own balls over a campfire.

First off, the only transportation I can afford is the Greyhound bus—aka mobile purgatory—and I always get trapped, just like now, with a total wack job for a seatmate. Every single person who’s ever sat next to me on the bus has a quaint, harmless-sounding name, like Edith, or Lawrence, or Eunice, but they smell like a cat box, or they pick their noses when they think I’m not looking, or they fondle my knee while telling me about last night’s wet dream, or their ongoing struggle with herpes, or how they came to believe that the lady driving the bus is really Benito Mussolini. Where do these hapless, lonely lunatics come from? Mom says crazy people talk to me because I have a kind face—masking my inner Visigoth—but I think it’s because I’m too much of a chickenshit to tell them to shut the fuck up.

My seat partner this time around is Brenda, a massage therapist with a lazy eye, ratty sandals, and breath that smells like a putrid blend of hummus and peanut butter; she just finished informing me, in painstaking detail, about her rare collection of Peruvian salt shakers. She’s pleasant enough, I guess, and harmless, but she’s also boring as hell, and keeps leaning in close and spraying spittle at me with alarming regularity as she talks. Every time she does this I pull back but she doesn’t take the hint; her face is never farther than three inches from mine, no matter how I contort myself to escape.

By the way, just so you don’t think I’m a total dick who hates everyone—though you wouldn’t be the first to draw that conclusion—there was a little girl in the seat across the aisle from me earlier this afternoon, with a haircut like Einstein’s and big serious eyes like a Saint Bernard, who kept singing snatches of “This Old Man” under her breath while solving a maze in a Highlights magazine, and I fell in love with her the instant I saw her. I also really liked the old guy with no teeth who kept using the restroom in the back of the bus, because the third time he passed my seat he grinned when we made eye contact and said, “Do me a favor, kid, and trade bladders with me.”

Anyway, another reason I dread going home is because my nominal hometown—Oakland, New Hampshire—is so mired in the past that it makes Pompeii look trendy. Nothing has altered there for eons, nary a parking meter nor pothole. It’s a pretty little town, but it’s so sleepy I’m not sure anyone who lives there actually has a pulse. (Save for Mom, of course, who has the heartbeat of a hummingbird.) During the two years I lived in Oakland as a kid I didn’t mind the dullness so much, but now it drives me batshit, as does the absence of anything resembling culture. There’s a bookstore at the small college where Mom teaches, but the fiction section is less avant-garde than the menu in the town’s roach-ridden Dairy Queen; there’s a movie theater, but the likelihood of a foreign film ever gracing Oakland is about the same as a choir of castrated goatherds yodeling Verdi’s Requiem at the elementary school.

Thirdly, there’s Mom herself: the great Virginia York, Pulitzer prize winner, current New Hampshire Poet Laureate, and standard bearer for all things literary and/or hoity-toity. Of course I love her, but that’s beside the point. She’s arrogant, moody, and a major pain in the ass, and never more so than when she’s in her own fiefdom; we end up fighting within milliseconds of me stepping through the front door. When she visits me in Providence, we get along ten times better; she doesn’t seem to feel the need to treat me like a kid, so I don’t feel the need to act like one.

And last but not least, there’s Mom’s beautiful, brooding, Victorian monster of a house. I know every square inch of the place, having basically rebuilt it from scratch nineteen years ago, when I was a senior in high school, after Mom had a psychotic meltdown and morphed into a giant, bipedal termite, chewing the walls apart faster than I could repair them. She’s fine now, thank God, and the house looks better than ever, but there are a thousand stray memories in every room, floating around like dust motes and making it hard to breathe. Oddly enough, the majority of these memories—aside from Mom’s illness, and a few other nightmarish moments—are good, even great, but therein lies the problem: I hate being reminded how much I fucked up my life.

The only place the bus stops in Oakland is at the corner of Main and Linden, next to Bridge’s Pharmacy, and I’m the sole passenger getting off, right before sunset. The pharmacy is already closed for the day, and since my only luggage is my backpack the driver just opens the door and tells me to have a good night. I wince as I step into the late summer heat and watch the Greyhound pull away from the curb, on its way to the next zombified town, twenty miles down the road. My ex-seatmate Brenda now waves at me through the window as I hitch up my backpack and wave back, heaving a sigh of relief to escape her clutches.

Downtown Oakland is just two blocks long, and it’s deserted this time of day. Oakland has a couple thousand people, give or take, but only when Cassidy College is in session, so less than half that number are currently in town. I turn west on Main Street—an uneven, beat-to-hell brick road—and start down the sidewalk to Mom’s house, about a mile away, also on Main. I could call Mom to come get me, but I like walking, and I want to clear my head before I see her. I’m dressed lightly, in sneakers, shorts, and a T-shirt, yet I’m already sweating; the setting sun is brutal and the air is so wet I feel like I’m trudging through a Louisiana swamp. I hear a vehicle approaching from behind and I glance over as a green, mud-spattered pickup passes by. The beefy, sunburned driver has his window down; he’s wearing a sleeveless shirt, and his muscled shoulder and arm are slick with sweat. He slows his truck to a crawl, then a full stop.

“That you, Noah?” he calls out, as I draw even with him.

I come to a halt as well, not having a clue who he is. I’ve only come back to town a handful of times since I left for college, and I’ve forgotten most of the people I used to know.

“Yep, sure is,” I say, searching his face. He’s got a thick red beard, and it’s hard to make out his features—but he looks to be about my age, and his voice is oddly familiar.

“You don’t recognize me, do you? I’m Perry. Perry White.”

My stomach muscles clench. Jesus Christ, what are the odds of meeting this dick-wad, two minutes after getting to town? Perry White and some of his ape-men cronies once beat the living shit out of my ex-boyfriend and me. They got arrested for it, too, but a troglodyte judge let them off with just a slap on the wrist. I haven’t seen White since my high school graduation, but I have no doubt he’s the same award-winning prick he always was. I eye him warily, praying he’s not in the mood to risk another run-in with the police. His biceps are bigger than my thighs, and even though he’s not threatening me at the moment, God only knows what’s going through that cinderblock of a head.

“Hey, Perry,” I say, forcing myself to sound casual. “Long time no see.”

“You ain’t aged at all,” he says. “I recognized you right away, second I saw you.” He pauses for a second, looking uncomfortable. “You visiting your mom?”

I nod, wondering why he’s bothering with small talk. I know for a fact he’s got some nasty scars under that beard, courtesy of me; I damn near tore off his cheek when he and his friends jumped J.D. and me.

“Yeah, I just got here,” I tell him.

“Bet she’ll be glad to have you home.” He pauses, then grimaces. “That lady sure hates me. Every time I see her around town she tells me to go to hell, even when I got my kids along.”

I don’t know what surprises me more: the rue in his voice, or the way he keeps avoiding my eyes. I shrug. “Yeah, well, she takes a dim view of people who beat up her son.” It’s unwise to provoke him, but my mouth has a mind of its own. “She’s funny that way.”

He flushes a little, but otherwise doesn’t react. “Can’t say as I blame her none.” He finally looks at me directly. “I know you hate my guts, Noah, and you got reason. I been wanting to say sorry for a long time, but I ain’t seen you till just now, or J.D., neither.”

I blink, having no clue how to respond. I haven’t thought about this asshole in years, but now that he’s right here in front of me, all my old anger and helplessness are waking from a long coma. He and his friends put J.D. and me in the hospital; I came close to losing an eye. Does he really think it fixes anything to say “sorry”? It’s all I can do to not flip him off and start chucking rocks at his truck; I’d be more than happy to tear off his other goddamn cheek. I don’t trust myself to answer, so I just nod, acknowledging that I heard him. He watches me for a minute before he figures out no forgiveness is forthcoming, then he sighs a little and nods back.

“Okay, guess I best be going,” he says, popping his truck in gear again. “Welcome home.”

I watch him drive away, irritated at myself for feeling guilty about how sheepish and sad he looks. It’s his own damn fault if he feels bad, and there’s no reason on earth for me to accept his apology. I’m not his father confessor.

I kick a tuft of grass at the edge of the sidewalk, staring after the green truck until it disappears. “Yeah, fine, whatever, numb-nuts,” I mumble.

I’d be lying if I said there’s nothing I miss about rural New Hampshire. I miss all the old oak and maple trees, for instance, and the stone fences lining the street; I miss watching kids playing touch football and tripping all over themselves on their lawns at dusk, and the smell of salmon being smoked on a charcoal grill, and the bawdy chorus of birds, singing their horny lungs out to attract a mate. I miss how easy it is to get around everywhere on foot; I miss the freshness of the air, and the huge green spaces between the houses, and the lack of car horns and sirens; I miss having the sidewalk to myself, and not having to dodge around people yapping on their cell phones; I miss the red and yellow glory of an unobstructed sunset, and the quiet, steady cadence of my sneakers on the concrete, and the heady, distinctive scents of mint, goldenrod, and New England asters, growing wild in an abandoned lot. It may sound like a Norman Rockwell picture come to life, but it’s real, and the peacefulness here goes soul-deep. It’s the sweet flip side to the small-town dullness I was just bitching about a few minutes ago.

What can I say? A lot of things worth hating are also worth loving.

I’m a block from home when I see Mom, sitting on the steps of our front porch. The sun is a bare sliver on the horizon now, but there’s still enough light to see her clearly. She hasn’t noticed me because she’s staring down at her bare feet; she’s wearing a bright blue summer dress, and her long hair—once raven black, now streaked with white—is tied in a ponytail she’s always messing with, draping it over her shoulder and worrying at the strands with her fingers while she thinks about whatever weird shit poets think about. She’s sixty-eight, but she could easily pass for fifty, save for the wrinkles around her eyes that you can only see up close. She’s waiting for me, of course, but even if she didn’t know I was due to show up, she’d still be outside right about now, watching the sunset.

Virginia York: the most complicated person I know, running the gamut from holy woman to gargoyle, depending on the day.

Before Mom’s psychotic break, she was already a well-respected poet, but not many people outside of academia knew who she was. I miss those days, to tell the truth, when she was more anonymous, even though I hated her poems back then—she went out of her way to be unintelligible to anybody who didn’t have a thesaurus wedged up their butt. After she came unglued and put herself back together, however, her style gradually changed, and her audience has grown exponentially. She’s not yet in the same ballpark as people like Maya Angelou or Seamus Heaney, but it’s not just scholarly geeks who love her these days, and I run into strangers all the time who freak out when they learn I’m her son.

I’m not the one who tells them this, by the way; I don’t have to. Anybody who’s ever read her stuff knows the goddamn poem she wrote about me dropping out of art school when I was twenty. Considering that only a tiny portion of the world’s population actually reads poetry, you might think I’d be safe from meeting so many people who do, but since I mostly hang around places like bookstores, art galleries, museums, and coffee shops, it’s a rare week that goes by without someone wanting to know what it’s like to be “The Lost Soul” in the poem’s title.

Just peachy fucking keen, I always tell them.

She claims, in the poem, that I stopped painting, but I never did; I just dropped out of the Rhode Island School of Design. Mom acted like this was the end of the world, though—Jesus, she was pissed—so she told the whole damn universe about me “breaking faith” with myself, and wasting my talent. Granted, it’s a lyrical, masterfully crafted sestina, about a lot of things outside the scope of my personal life: parents and children, heartbreak and expectations, innocence and mortality—but all these high-minded, philosophical musings are a little hard for me to appreciate, given that they came at the expense of my privacy.

Anyway, suffice it to say that being Virginia York’s offspring has been, is, and always will be something of a mixed blessing.

She finally looks up just as I reach the edge of our property. She tosses her ponytail back over her shoulder and gets nimbly to her feet, smiling, as I cut across the lawn. We haven’t seen each other in almost eight months.

“You made it,” she says. Oddly enough, her fondness for stating the obvious is kind of endearing.

“Just barely.” I shrug my backpack off at the bottom of the porch steps. “My seatmate’s salivary glands came close to flooding the bus.” She leans down to kiss my cheek, and I lift her off the steps and spin her around in a circle, her feet resting on mine. “You’ve lost weight,” I tell her. “Do you have a parasite or something?”

“Not since you were in my womb,” she says, making me laugh. She hugs me hard, then grimaces at my sweaty shirt. “You’re soaking wet. Why didn’t you call me to come get you?”

“I wanted to stretch my legs.” I set her down again and we step back a little to study each other. We look alike, but she’s a whole lot prettier. We both have olive-colored skin (her mother was Portuguese), and we’re skinny and short, with the same narrow shoulders, small noses, thin lips, and black hair— I’m starting to get some white in my hair, too—but Mom could wrap herself in a burlap sack and shave her head without losing any of her natural beauty; her cheekbones alone are enough to make people stop and gawp at her on the street. That being said, the first thing most people notice about her is her intense green eyes. When she looks at you, really looks at you, it’s like stepping in one of those airport scanners that sees you right down to your pubes.

“What’s wrong?” she asks me.

“Nothing. I’m just a little tired. It was a long week.” I retrieve my backpack. “Have you had supper yet?”

“Nope. What are you hungry for?” She leads me in the house. “The pantry’s full, so take your pick.”

She’s always glad to have me home—at least for the initial few minutes—but she seems abnormally pleased tonight, glancing over her shoulder and beaming at me as I stop for a second in the entry hall to kick off my shoes.

“Anything’s fine,” I tell her. “I’ll help cook, but I need a shower first. I feel slimy.”

“Take your time. I’ll make drinks while you’re de-sliming.”

She goes in the kitchen and I head upstairs. It’s hot and stuffy up here; Mom hates air-conditioning, and the ceiling fans and open windows are no match for the summer heat, at least until the temperature falls at night. My old room still looks pretty much the same—window seat, huge walk-in closet, lots of bookshelves—but most of my old stuff is in Providence, or boxed up in Mom’s basement. My bed is still here, though, and my dresser, which still has some of my clothes from high school; in the corner is my old easel, along with paper, canvas, and a much-abused set of brushes and paints. I left the clothes and my spare art stuff here on purpose, so I wouldn’t have to pack a lot when I visit. The sight of my bed, with its threadbare blue spread, makes me smile; J.D. and I had a lot of fun in that bed.

I drop my backpack on the mattress and wander down the hall to the bathroom, past Mom’s room and the two unused guest rooms. This house is way too big for just Mom—it was too big for three of us, when J.D. and I also lived here—but she’ll never sell it, and I’m glad. It’s easy for her to keep clean, because all the floors are wood, and she doesn’t have a lot of stuff; I’m pretty sure she was a Spartan warrior in one of her past lives, and clutter makes her homicidal. The only exception to her no-clutter rule—and it’s a huge freaking exception—is books. She’s probably got five or six thousand of the things, overflowing shelves, tables, and chairs in every damn room save the kitchen and bathroom. To be fair, quite a few were Dad’s that we brought with us from Chicago after he died, but he’s been gone for twenty years, and every time I come home Mom has added at least two or three new bookshelves to the house, sprouting up here and there like creeper vines on a wall. I inherited my parents’ genes for book-hoarding; I can barely take a step in my apartment in Providence without stubbing my toe on a goddamn novel or short story anthology.

The shower is an old clawfoot bathtub with a curtain around it. I strip off my clothes and climb in, turning on the faucet as cold as I can stand it. I gasp a little as the cool water cascades over me, but it feels great to rinse the sweat from my body and hair. I close my eyes to wash my face, and the memory parade starts up in my head, just like it does every time I come home.

How many times did J.D. and I shower together in this tub? A few hundred? He’d usually stand behind me, resting his chin on my shoulder and clasping me around the waist; I loved the feel of his body against mine, and the sound of his voice in my ear as we talked. He liked to sing in the shower, too, and he had a great voice, but sometimes he’d purposely mess up songs I loved, just to rile me. One time, for instance, he sang Tom Waits’s “Romeo Is Bleeding,” but he did it in an eerily accurate Bee Gees falsetto; I sprained my thumb trying to cover his mouth and shut him up. Another time, he—

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” I mutter, opening my eyes. I crank the water to freezing, in punishment for letting my mind wander. “Give it a rest, loser.”

I fish out an old pair of soccer shorts and a tank top from the dresser, then head downstairs, barefoot. Mom’s back is to me as she chops vegetables at the counter, and there’s a big, ice-filled pitcher of what appears to be rum and ginger ale—a summer staple in the York household—on the island in the middle of the room. Our kitchen is gigantic, with a breakfast nook in the corner and a huge window over the sink; Mom is listening to piano music on the radio as she works.

“What can I do?” I ask.

Startled, she glances over her shoulder. “I didn’t hear you coming. Pour us both a drink, will you?”

I obey, bringing her a full glass, and she tells me we’re having burritos. We toast each other, and I lean against the counter and watch her mince an onion. She usually chops stuff so fast that the knife blade is a blur, but tonight she’s going at a more leisurely pace, humming to the music and looking out the window. The sun is down now but Mom never turns on lights until it’s full dark, so she can still see outside.

“New neighbors moved in last week,” she says, nodding at the house across the lawn. “A middle-aged couple, with horrifying taste in furniture. I haven’t met either of them yet, but I’ve been spying on them ever since they moved in.”

“That’s very neighborly of you.” I wander to the refrigerator and find a block of cheddar cheese to grate, knowing she’ll want some. “So what’s the verdict? Friends or foes?”

“The jury’s still out, but I’m not optimistic. The man threw a hissy fit at the movers for tracking dirt in the house, and the woman wears more makeup than a geisha.” She steps back from the counter, allowing me to get the cheese grater from a drawer. “They have a nice dog, though—a cocker spaniel who comes over to visit every time I sit on the porch. It has a severe underbite that reminds me of one of my old boyfriends.”

She’s being so chatty and cheerful that she’s actually starting to weird me out. The last time I came home, we barely greeted each other before she started in on me about my lack of a serious job (I teach art classes, part-time, at the community center, to supplement the spotty income I make from sales of my paintings); she then moved on to everything else I’m missing in my lif. . .