All the Roads That Lead From Home (15 page)

“Come back
anytime,” he says.

“I will.”

She makes
her way across the road in the blinding glare, then in the shade of the
corrugated roof that shields the walk she passes the trash can. Ted has left
the lid off again. She picks up the lid, and as she lowers it to the can she
sees Ted’s forged diary in the remains of last night’s pasta salad.

Inside the
house the cool air is startling. Ted is asleep on the couch, the television
showing another soap opera.
Tell me the truth, Jason, for the love of God
a
miserable old woman pleads to a much younger man
.
Nina turns off the
television set. She sits and recalls Ted’s quiet, anguished voice,
I just
needed to write it, that’s all.

So he
could walk out of his life and get a breath of fresh air. Now he has returned
to himself and let go of Joshua Himes. How odd that it had happened while she
was out drinking with Jud. Well, maybe not so odd.

She
studies his face. It’s calm, peaceful, the jaw line softer with the weight he
gained when he quit smoking. He did that for her, at her insistence. And he
came to Arizona because she thought was that was the right thing to do, too.

His eyes
open slowly, and their light is clear. “Hey,” he says.

“Hey.”

“What time
is it?”

“I don’t
know. A little after four.”

He
stretches. “Jesus, I had the weirdest dream.”

“What
about?”

“An
orange. Or maybe a peach.” He sits up and scratches his chin. She gets herself
a glass of water in the kitchen, drinks it, and pats water on her face with a
dishtowel.

“Hotter
than hell out there,” she says.

“What else
is new?”

This time
of year the breezes off of Lake Dunston are barely warm. The willows on the
shore sway and rustle, as if to music only they can hear.

“You know
what I’m thinking?” Nina asks.

“I never
know what you’re thinking.”

“About
going home.”

Ted stares
at her. “And leave your new buddy? He’ll be crushed.”

“Bull. I’m
not his type. He likes Hispanic women. He’s got one over in Globe, in fact.”

Ted
shuffles the deck he keeps on the coffee table, not well because he doesn’t
know how, and several cards drop to the floor.

“Let me do
that,” says Nina and joins him on the couch. She picks up a fallen card. “King
of hearts,” she says, and kisses his cheek. She collects all the cards, takes a
group in each hand, and shuffles them together quickly and expertly.

He asks
where she learned how to do that, and she says she once had a boyfriend who
worked as a dealer at an Indian casino near Dunston.

“Is that
true?” he asks.

She smiles
and gives him the cards to lay out a new game.

“Forget
solitaire, let’s play poker,” he says.

“I don’t
know how.”

“I’ll show
you. The rules are easy. It’s the psychology that’s tough.”

“As in
having a ‘poker face?’”

“Right.
Just keep your cool, build your hand, and don’t show it until you have to.”

In a year,
or five, or ten, they might mention the diary and say it was Ted’s flight of
fancy, an expression of true creative genius, or they might call it something
else they can’t imagine now.

Because
when he declared those things to her under the stars above the lake, he didn’t
know that Joshua would one day write them in his diary. And the day she saw
Jimi Hendrix at the airport, Nina didn’t know that she would later say Ruth saw
him first and then begged for the autograph when Nina did both, because Ruth
died alone, unable to reach home, and Nina didn’t.

That
autograph still lies in her jewelry box, under her bracelets and chains.
To
Nina, all my love forever, Jimi.

At first it was nothing.
Then it fell harder, and they had to slow down. Cory had never liked snow, even
from inside a warm place. As a child she thought it sucked color from the
world, a comment that made her family laugh. For a few years now they’d circled
her left ankle—balloon heads and dots for eyes—and when she pointed her toe
their faces became thin and scant. Too bad she couldn’t do that to them in real
life, she always thought.

In the
back seat Vic was sleeping off his airplane drinks. At six-four Vic had to curl
up tight to fit in Lander’s car. Lander was Cory’s brother, and she hadn’t told
him Vic was coming. When he met them at the terminal, Lander observed Vic’s
leather coat and shaved head and asked, without offering his hand, “How do you
do?”

“Super,
man, and you?”

Lander
hadn’t said another word to Vic since.

From Newark Airport to Dunston was usually three hours, and now the weather would make it over
four. Just then they were in the wilds of eastern Pennsylvania.

“You
didn’t have to come all the way down for me,” Cory told Lander.

“Just
wanted to make sure you’d make the final leg okay.”

“Afraid
I’d change my mind? Bail out at the last minute?”

“It had
occurred to me.”

Their
father was dying. He’d been dying a long time, a slow progression of some blood
disorder Cory didn’t remember the name of. There had been several false alarms,
and then a slight recovery after each transfusion. Now there was no recovery,
only the certainty that options had been exhausted and the time had come to
gather.

Vic
snored. Lander lowered the window above Vic’s head, and the snow blew in on
him. Cory pressed the button on her arm-rest and raised the window.

“You’re an
asshole,” she said.

“Where did
you get this guy, anyway?”

“Met him
on the plane.”

“Jesus
Christ!”

“I’m
kidding.”

Vic had
come into the tattoo parlor one day and stayed. That was eight months ago.
Since then he’d learned how to ink almost as well as Cory did. He’d done her
latest, an arrow embedded in the tight skin above her heart, the place closed
up and both of them naked, downing shots of tequila, sucking on limes, sucking
on each other, the buzzing pen steady no matter how much booze or sex she gave
him. In spite of that, Vic was really pretty tame. Once, tame would have been a
quick ticket out the door, but now, at twenty-eight, tame had taken on some
charm.
Can’t go on all my life getting bounced off the walls,
Cory had
told him. That was as strong a statement of love as she’d ever made.

The snow
fell harder. Every few minutes Lander sucked his teeth, a habit from childhood
that meant despite the absolute stillness of his face, he was terrified. After
living all his life in snow country it still rattled him. Served him right for
not getting out, the way she had.

Sometimes,
when he thought to call—which he hadn’t done for almost two years before last
week’s summons—he asked when she planned to move back there. As if her going
wasn’t permanent. As if, given the small group of people related to her, she’d
ever consent to live in the Finger Lakes again, or anywhere in New York state,
or the entire east coast, for that matter.

She lit a
cigarette. Lander rolled his eyes. He disapproved of smoking, along with
laziness, tardiness, or slackness of any kind. He held his language arts
students to the highest standards of performance, so much so that he’d been
told twice by the principal to “lighten up a little.” His own wife had left him
two years before for having, as she put it, “a rod up his ass.”

“I need
it. Don’t lecture me about secondhand smoke, either,” Cory said, and blew smoke
his way on purpose. Lander sighed and sounded just like their father who sighed
a lot, brief huffs when he was angry, and a longer, more leisurely release of
air when he wanted to express disappointment. To Cory he had expressed a great
deal of disappointment over the years for not being a good student like Lander,
for having the wrong sort of boyfriend—motorcycle riders, dropouts, even an
ex-con—a general lack of sympathy with the human race and its finer points, but
most of all because she was completely uninterested in the achievements that
had earned him grants, promotion to full professor at Dunston University at a
relatively young age, and later the position of chairman of the English
Department. He had never said so flat out, but she knew this was his major
grief with her—that she refused to be impressed.

Paula had
been impressed enough for everyone.
How can you act like that, Cory? Think
of your father’s reputation! He’s a very well-respected man, you know.

Paula was
her father’s second wife. The first wife, Cory and Lander’s mother, died when
Cory was five and Lander seven. Cory remembered a gray and green funeral
parlor. Summer light fought its way through stained glass windows.
It’s like
a kaleidoscope
, Cory whispered and was pinched hard. Then an urn was put in
her father’s hands. It sat in his closet in the old house, and came into the
house he bought with Paula. Paula wanted it gone. Cory’s father threw the ashes
in Lake Dunston one winter day, his children shivering and whining from the
cold.

Vic
coughed again, stretched, and sat up. “Oh, man, look at that snow!” he said.

“That’s
what it is,” said Cory.

“It’s
awesome.”

Lander
looked at Cory.

“Grew up
in Pasadena. Not used to it,” she said.

“Pasadena. Really,” said Lander.

“Yup.
Nothing but sunshine and blue sky. Some say it’s paradise. I say it sucks,”
said Vic.

“Indeed.”

Lander
left the highway for a smaller state road that would twist and turn them into
Dunston in another hour. The snow went on falling. Lander took some peanut
butter crackers from the box he’d stuffed by his seat—cheaper than stopping for
dinner. Cory fed herself and Vic on two stale bagels and four little bottles of
scotch she’d bought on the plane.

Her father
used to be quite the scotch drinker, himself, every afternoon, home from
campus, in his black easy chair, a glass in hand while the household revolved
around him. Paula asking what he’d like for dinner, her daughter Debbie needing
a kiss on her chubby cheek, Lander quiet and watchful, and Cory pushing past
them all.
I came in third in the spelling bee, Daddy. Missed ‘philanthropy.’
You know my friend, Melissa, her dad teaches, too, some science or other,
anyway, she said I did really great.
To that her father gave a quick nod.
At thirteen she had the word “kindness” tattooed on the inside of her wrist.

Can’t
you understand it’s permanent?
her father
said.
A thing you can never take back?
Like certain words, she thought
later, remembering how he’d called her a “fool,” and then when she was older a
“slut.”

“This was
a bad idea,” Cory said.

“What is?”

“My coming
here.”

“He
asked
for you. How many times must I say it?”

The snow
drove straight into the headlights. Cory stared at the bright rushing mix and
tried over and over to follow the path of a single flake. It was impossible.

“So, when
do I see him?” she asked.

“Tomorrow,
first thing.”

“Fine.”

A car
ahead skidded, its red taillights making a zigzag in the dark.

“Do you
have something decent to wear?” Lander asked.

“Meaning
what?”

“A
turtleneck.”

A vine of
ivy was inked across the skin of Cory’s throat.

“You don’t
think he’ll appreciate the joke?” she asked. Lander’s eyebrows came together.

“As in Ivy
League,” she said.

“Aren’t
you clever.”

“Sure am.”

“And
perhaps childish.” On the phone she’d said it would serve her father right if
she didn’t come at all, that he was probably lying when he said he wanted to
see her. When Lander tried to interrupt, she said,
Fuck him
. “And
resentful. To the point of being unpleasant. Even a bitch, at times.”

“Hey,
Lander. It’s Lander, right?” Vic asked.

“Yes?”

“Now, I’m
not a gambling sort of guy, never was, to be honest, but I still bet you the
lousy fifty bucks I got in my pocket that there’s no need, whatsoever, for that
kind of talk.”

Lander
stared at Vic for a moment in the review mirror. Vic smiled at him and
shrugged.

Cory could
tell Vic things about Lander that would drop his opinion even lower. The
question was whether those things were past or present tense. She pulled down
her visor, leaned into the mirror as if to check her teeth, and looked back at
Vic to make sure he was still staring out the window. She put the visor back,
then she slipped her hand inside the neck of her sweater—a man’s cashmere she’d
bought at a thrift shop—and exposed the soft skin just above her left breast.