All the Roads That Lead From Home (19 page)

After a
couple of minutes Ty asked, “Old lady with her charity again, is she?”Beau
nodded. It was really getting to be too much. He’d decided that Eldeen didn’t
need a kid, but to work in a nursing home so she could play checkers and listen
to stupid stories about the good old days. What the hell was wrong with her,
anyway?

“She’s
unhappy,” he said. It had come to his mind suddenly and explained everything.

“About
what?”

“Don’t
know.”

“That’s
bad. Unhappy women make unhappy men.”

“Where did
you get that?”

“I made it
up.”

“You’re
full of crap.”

“Hey, you
tell me I’m wrong.”

Ty had a
point. Eldeen
had
made him unhappy. And it was all because of Pops over
there across the street. Beau would talk to him and suggest that maybe Eldeen
shouldn’t visit so much, that she needed to be with people her own age. But
then he’d just sound like a fool. Eldeen was going to have to come around on
her own. With a little encouragement, of course.

“Give me
forty bucks,” said Beau. “No, better make it fifty.”

“What
for?”

“Roses.
I’m getting Eldeen a dozen red roses.”

“Buy them
yourself.”

“Can’t.”

“Jesus. I
treated you to rounds all afternoon, now you want more from me?”

“It’s a
loan, that’s all.”

Ty stared
into his beer. Then he reached for his wallet, removed two twenties and a ten.

“Come with
me. Help me figure out what to write on the card,” said Beau.

“How
about,
with love, from your deadbeat hubby.”

“Fuck off,
will you?”

But Ty
went along, steered Beau towards pink roses when the red weren’t available,
saying that yellow or white weren’t romantic enough, and told Beau to write
To
the love of my life
,
lovely as these are, your beauty far outweighs.
Beau thought it sounded stupid, but he wrote it anyway, word for word.

***

Eldeen blushed when she
saw the flowers, and her eyes went big and bright, like a kid’s. She read the
card. Her mouth turned down. She patted Beau’s arm, then limped into the
bedroom. He heard her crying. He had no idea what to do. How could he comfort
her because she was embarrassed at his gift? Where was his
You’re so good to
me, I never should have neglected you,
and
I promise to do right by you
from now on?

For a few
days, Eldeen didn’t visit the old man. Then she mentioned that he’d gone out of
town.

“Elks
convention?” Beau asked.

“Stop it.”

“Where,
then?”

“He has a
friend in Pittsburgh.”

“Bet
they’re painting the town red. Closing the bars. Hitting all the hot spots.”

Eldeen’s
mouth pulled into a narrow line. She sat down, picked up one of his socks that
needed mending from a wicker basket she kept by the couch, looked at it, and
threw it to the floor.

“What’s
your problem?” Beau asked. He didn’t think it was her period. That had been the
week before. Maybe she was coming down with something. Whatever it was, he
hoped it wasn’t catching.

She closed
her eyes for a moment. “I’m sorry. Look, I’ve been thinking. If you can’t find
a job, why not take a class at the community college? The recession won’t last
forever, and in the meantime you can learn something new,” she said.

“Like
what?”

“I don’t
know. Computers. Cliff says—”

“I don’t
give a shit what Cliff says.”

Beau went
outside to mow the lawn. He’d mowed it only two days ago, but he needed
something to do, and it was too early for a beer. He thought about visiting Ty
in the garage he used as a studio, but Ty was pretty weird when he was working,
so he kept pushing the mower back and forth.

***

The kids that belonged to
the family in the trailer park were running around, playing tag. When they saw
Beau sitting on his stairs, they stopped. Their four heads came together in a
huddle, then they exploded with laughter and ran away.

Assholes
, Beau thought. He was in a lousy mood. Eldeen was out
again, he didn’t know where. The truck was gone. She hadn’t left a note. She
used to, all the time, but now she came and went without a word. Beau had no
idea what he’d done to make her this way.

A few days
later, Eldeen came in from outside, stood in the kitchen, and said she was
leaving. She was going to Arizona with Cliff. She and Cliff were in love. She
knew Beau thought she was crazy, she knew he didn’t understand, that all he saw
when he looked at Cliff was an old man. His body might be old, but his spirit
was young, and his soul timeless. Those were her exact words. Cliff made her
feel what she’d never felt before, that she mattered, that she could belong to
someone without feeling owned and all used up. Beau sat on the couch in silence
while she went on and on in a calm, even voice, waiting for her to say it was a
joke, that she was getting him back for something and wanted to teach him a
lesson.

She
stopped talking for a minute, maybe to give him a chance to speak. He realized
then that she’d been standing the whole time, leaning so hard on her crutch
that her knuckles were white.

“You
feeding him Viagra or something? I didn’t think guys that age could still get
it up,” said Beau.

“You’re
disgusting.”

“
I’m
disgusting.”

Eldeen
said that Cliff was better in bed than Beau was. He’d had lots more practice,
knew what women needed. Beau’s head was in his hands by then. She had another
confession to make. She’d been at Cliff’s house one afternoon when Beau was out
and the neighbor kids must have heard them in the bedroom, because all of a
sudden, there they were, with one heaved up on the shoulder of another,
giggling and laughing. She realized then that she couldn’t go on, sneaking
around, that she had to come clean.

“Clean
isn’t the word I’d use,” said Beau. It was dreamlike now. None of this was
really happening. She asked him to try to understand, to see that they’d been
over since he’d come back from Iraq, that in time he’d be happier without her.

And then
she was gone. Her
ka-thump ka-thump
went down the stairs, across the
street, followed by the slam of car doors, and the slow acceleration of a very
big, very strong motor.

He said
her name. He said it again, and remembered the gun. He went to look. She’d left
it right there, in the bedside table. He picked it up. There was still time.
They had quite a while before they hit the interstate. He moved the gun from
one hand to the other and knew it would be easy and right, that he would do it
in a second without thinking twice, if only he could figure what to do after
that.

Suicides shot up that
winter. By Valentine’s Day there’d been four. The victims walked out when the
light was low, usually in late afternoon, say three or four o’clock. They stood
by the rail,
Josh Skinner, age 21, Indianapolis, Indiana
, or
Lisa
Finklestein, age 19, Nassau County, New York
, and waited while their
classmates went by head-bent against the rising wind, lugging their textbooks
home. Lugging their own heavy hearts, too, or so it was generally accepted,
given the highly competitive nature of an Ivy League school. Then, when the
crowd had thinned or was gone altogether, they jumped into the gorge. Not all
went down in waking hours, though. Some crept out in the freezing night. One,
Louis
Kennedy, age 22, Santa Barbara, California
, was found in his pajamas. He
must have been so miserable, so intent on self-destruction, that even the deep
cold couldn’t change his mind.

Kirsten’s
study group lost interest in their Intro. to Econ. class, and focused on the
deaths.

“They’re
like a cult,” said Emily. “They need a name. How about The Plungers?”

“That’s a
plumber’s tool,” said Lee.

“The
Divers, then.”

They all
thought of bronzed cliff divers piercing the surface of a calm, sky-blue sea.

Lee wanted
another pitcher of beer, and offered to pay for it himself. Lee’s father sent
him money whenever he asked for it, which was often. His offer was quickly
accepted.

“Look, we
better study for the mid-term,” said Kirsten.

“We are.
We’re maximizing our utility,” said Tom. His bushy red hair made him seem like
someone you couldn’t take seriously, Kirsten thought, though he clearly was a
serious person.

“Or, we’re
capturing economies of scale,” said Lee. He looked bleary. He wasn’t a
practiced drinker and wanted to be. He talked about drinking as if it were a
sport, something you could win or lose at.

“To stand
there, waiting,” said Emily. “That’s the moment your life changes.”

“Bull,”
said Tom. “The moment your life changes is the moment it ends. The point of
impact.”

“What
about the fall?” asked Lee. “Because then you know it’s all over.”

“Okay,
then, the fall, too. That long, long drop.” Tom lifted his hand and sailed it
slowly down, back and forth, more like an autumn leaf floating to earth, Kirsten
thought, than a body hurtling a hundred feet below.

The beer
arrived and was poured out.

“No. It
all happens before, when you first consider killing yourself. That’s the moment
things change,” said Emily.

Emily wore
nothing but black and pulled her red hair up in a bun so tight the skin by her
eyes pulled up, too, giving her an Asiatic look. She had a reckless streak.
Sometimes she drank too much and went to bed with the wrong men, yet she kept
up her studies, out of deference to her father. She was a good student, better
than the rest of them. Kirsten was jealous of her for that. Kirsten struggled
to get a B average. She sipped her beer. She didn’t like beer, and drank it for
the sake of going along.

“Can we
change the subject?” asked Lee. Kirsten wished they would. For several nights
she had dreamed of falling, but never of hitting earth. In one dream she willed
herself not to fall, but to rise, and that was terrifying, too.

“But think
about it,” said Emily. “Let’s say you go to the bridge, you want to jump,
you’re ready to, then you change your mind.”

“And?”
asked Lee.

“You go
home. It never happened. You didn’t jump and you didn’t die. No one else would
ever know. But you know. You’d always know how close you came. You’d be
changed, after that. How could you not be?”

“So,
you’re saying that wanting to do something and actually doing it are the same
thing,” said Lee.

“Yes.”

“So, our
whole lives come down to what we feel, what we desire, whether there’s any
physical outcome or not.”

“Right.”

“Wait,”
said Tom. “Wanting to kill someone isn’t the same as actually doing it.”

“Or
wanting to die and actually dying,” added Kirsten.

She pulled
her sweaty fingers through her hair. She’d just had it cut in a page boy style
that even she had to admit looked like shit. The others had noticed, naturally,
but said little. Emily, though, had taken her own hair out of its tight bun and
let it drape around her skinny face and shoulders before lifting it once more
from her neck. No doubt a way of saying,
I still possess what you gave away!
Before the cut, Kirsten’s hair had been long enough to sit on. The change was
dramatic, and in the moments before the girl’s scissors had closed down, the
moment before the first handful had hit the floor, Kirsten, in a panic, forced
herself to say nothing and remember that hair, unlike lost lives, will return.

***

The bar was quiet. Tom,
Lee, and Emily occupied their usual booth, fourth from the right by the game
room, where two townies were shooting pool and not saying a word to each other.

Kirsten
had begged off, down with a cold, Emily said. Tom felt he was closer to her
than Emily was, and didn’t see why Kirsten hadn’t called him to cancel.

“She
failed,” said Emily.

“What?”
asked Lee.

“The
midterm. Kirsten failed it. She told me when she called. She said that was
another reason not to come today, because she obviously wasn’t getting anything
out of the group.”

“Weird,”
said Tom. He was worried about her. She’d been growing distant and quiet, even
before the exam. When the group began last fall, she would laugh a lot. Tom
could see she was nervous and trying not to be. Then she stopped laughing as
the end of term approached. After the winter break she came back looking
haunted, as if she were listening to something no one else could hear.