All the Roads That Lead From Home (3 page)

The
laughter stopped when Shauna opened her door into his. The man’s head pulled up
straight and turned in Maggie’s direction. His eyes were bright and cold, even
though he was still smiling. He rolled down his window and said, “Tell your kid
to watch out.”

“It was an
accident, she didn’t mean—”

“Then
she’s a clumsy little fuck.”

Shauna
looked the man right in the eye. “Bite me,” she said, then hopped into the
front seat, and pulled the door closed behind her. Maggie started the engine
and pressed the button that locked all four doors at once. Once she’d backed
up, she hit the gas fast enough to make the tires chirp. Then she laughed so
much it was hard to drive.

“Are you
gonna tell my mom I said that?” asked Shauna.

“I think I
should.”

“She says
it all the time, but I’m not supposed to.”

“Well,
that makes sense.”

“Why do
grown-ups get to say bad things and kids don’t?”

A deer
bounded lightly across the curving road and melted into the bushes. Maggie
slowed to see if there were others. There weren’t.

“We have
different rules,” said Maggie.

“Why?”

“Because
we have to do things kids don’t have to.”

“Like
what?”

“I don’t
know. Be responsible. Make hard choices.”

“Oh.”

“Of
course, some choices get made for you, and then it’s like being a kid again.”

“Why?”

“Because
you don’t have a say in what happens.”

Shauna
watched the trees and hummed. Then she stopped. “Can we get some leaves? My mom
likes leaves. She puts them in a big book, and then we look at them sometimes.”

Maggie
pulled over where the shoulder widened. They walked a little way into the
woods.
Swoosh, swoosh
went the dead grass below.

Shauna
trotted ahead. Maggie stood, enchanted by the spread of red and yellow at her
feet. That death should cause such beauty made no sense until you realized what
it made way for—the next round of burgeon and loss.

She looked
up. Shauna was gone. Maggie called her name, then louder, until she screamed
Shauna!!
SHAU-NA!!
From behind the trunk of an oak tree many yards ahead Shauna’s
head appeared, then her small body.

“You come
right here, right now!” Maggie shouted. Shauna obeyed, her eyes on the ground.
In her hands were a cluster of red leaves.

“I’m
sorry,” she said.

“You
scared me.”

“I was
playing Hide-and-Seek.”

Maggie’s
hand found Shauna’s spongy hair. “You can’t play if the other person doesn’t
know you’re playing.”

“Can we
play now?” Shauna’s eyes were bright, even in the deep shadows of dusk.

“No,
honey, it’s getting late.”

At the car
Maggie took the leaves Shauna had gathered, removed the last tissues of
Kleenex, and put them in the empty box. It was dark enough then to use her
headlights. They’d been gone more than four hours. The long side of the lake
was the one they were making down now, and it would be another hour and a half
to home. She could turn around, go back and save time, but she wanted to keep
moving forward.

Shauna sat
with the box of leaves in her lap. Soon her chin dropped to her chest, and her
eyes closed. Even tough little girls get sleepy, thought Maggie. And Shauna was
tough. She’d never let anything slow her down for long, and she’d give as good
as she got.

Have I?

A waxing
gibbous moon rose in the purple sky. Another day or two and it would be full.

How like
the sky the night she learned she was pregnant. Lying in bed then she’d loved
the near fullness of the moon, and the slight fullness in her. Donny laughed
and said you couldn’t be a little bit pregnant, so how could you be a little
bit full? But fullness did come in degrees, just like emptiness.

She’d been
as empty as a person could be. And then she’d just gotten used to it, and
didn’t see the point of changing. Donny accused her of letting it work for her
in some way, of taking some benefit from the deep bitterness within.

You’re
too lazy to go on living,
he’d said. How
she’d resented that! She lay in bed a whole day afterwards, and refused to
unlock the bedroom door.

It’s
not just you, Maggie. I lost the baby, too!
It was the first time he’d ever yelled at her. Then he left for hours, and took
himself on a long drive, just as she was doing then.

Sometimes
it was better to move than to stay still.

It goes
around and around and around.

In the
inky, starlit dark, Maggie followed the curve. The lower lake was darkest as
she rounded in to Dunston. The lights came up in bits, and then more and more,
like an idea taking shape.

It’s
time. Life over death now.

The
windows of her apartment were bright. Maggie turned off the headlights, and
then the engine. She got out, went around the car, and opened the door where
Shauna was sleeping hard.

Donny came
down the steps. “Where the hell have you been?” he said. He smelled of sweat
and beer. His hair was spiked in a way she knew, from him running fingers
through over and over.

“Driving
around the lake. I didn’t think I’d be gone so long.”

“Your note
didn’t say anything about driving around the goddamned lake.”

“I’m
sorry.”

He was so
close she felt the heat of his body. On winter nights, before the baby ever
happened, he could keep her warm all by himself.

“I figured
you got pissed off and left,” he said.

“Why?”

“The
statue. The pieces were in the trash, so I assumed you broke it.”

“It was
Shauna.”

Shauna
opened her eyes. “Mommy?”

“No,
honey. It’s Maggie, remember? We’re home.”

Shauna
looked at Donny. Donny stared back. “Come on, now. Let’s get you inside,” he
said.

Maggie
undid the seatbelt and Donny slid his hands beneath Shauna. She seemed small
and light in his arms.

She accepted
being put down on their bed, and then having a blanket pulled over her. Maggie
sat with her, rubbed her hand, remembered a song then didn’t sing it.

Shauna
turned her head, and soon, as she breathed softly, they stood and watched her
in the moonlight.

“I’m sorry
about today,” said Maggie, in a whisper.

“It’s
okay.”

“Didn’t
mean to scare you.”

“I know.”

Shauna
shifted, then was still.

“Donny?”

“Yeah?”

“You know
what I’ve been thinking?”

“What?”

She didn’t
have to say a thing. It was there in his eyes, even before she touched him,
that he already knew.

My mother had a way of
dropping by at a bad time, a habit that got worse after she died. There I’d be
trying to set the table, wash the dishes, or get Eric to bed, and in she’d
waltz and ask when I was going to get a life. This, from a ghost, was not easy
to take.

Forget
being scared. Forget being shocked. That’s for people who think there’s a hard
line between the living and the dead. You see, I’ve always known my mother was
the haunting kind.

That said,
I have to admit the first time totally freaked me out. Not just by seeing her
all of a sudden, but by what I was feeling right before—like an epileptic who
smells something weird then seizes up, though I’m not an epileptic, only
someone who thinks too much sometimes—and it had been an overthinking sort of
day, so I’d taken a shower to relax. My face itched—I have a nasty birthmark
below my right eye I call Blobbo and it was tingling. As if it were coming to
life—like your foot when it’s been asleep. I turned off the water, tugged back
the curtain, and there she was handing me a towel.

JESUS
CHRIST!
I shrieked.

Don’t
be silly, Darling, I look nothing like him.

She was
always witty. Always the card.

I knew I’d
lost my mind. She assured me I hadn’t. I asked if she were real. She said,
As
real as you need me to be.

I hate to
say it, but her tone was almost flirty. Enticing. This wasn’t my mother. My
mother never cared if she pleased or wounded. This was some awful figment—yet
her face was the same. Those thick eyebrows and hooked nose, the small, pursed,
pouting mouth. And her perfume, Chanel Number Five, only . . . fresher. As if
newly sprayed. That gave me the creeps worse than anything.

I dried
off, put on my bathrobe—one she’d gotten me two birthdays before—and asked the
obvious questions.
Why are you here? What are you made of? What’s it like,
where you are?

Look,
this is as much a surprise to me as it is to you,
was all she said.

From then
on she appeared at will, sometimes only in a dream, or a random memory, but
more often than not as a fairly solid being who’d picked up tea drinking
somewhere—not in this world—and always had a steaming cup at her elbow.

This
morning she’s here again at my table doing a crossword puzzle. I’m not happy to
see her. I guess I can’t get used to having breakfast with a dead woman. I plop
the laundry basket down on the table next to her, hoping it’ll make her vanish.

“How
industrious you are,” she says.

“You sound
surprised.”

“Not at
all. I just wish you’d show your good side more often.”

I give her
my good cheek.

“Oh, for
heaven’s sake!”

My son,
Eric, is on the floor, lining up his screwdrivers. Eric has Asperger’s, a mild
form of autism. He doesn’t connect the way other people do. Can’t pick up the
social cues (as in Okay, you’ve said this nine times, you can stop now); can’t
read expressions (Yes, that look of irritation on my face is real, so please
don’t bother me), that sort of thing. Which basically puts him in his own
world. A world with a population of one. Along with the things he picks
apart—toasters, old computers, my hair dryer. Once he dismantled a brand new
vacuum cleaner. There were pieces of it scattered all over the living room
floor, and he put it back together perfectly.

“Why do you
look at him like that?” my mother asked.

“Like
what?”

“Like a
dog who’s just had a boo-boo on the rug.”

“I don’t
know what you’re talking about.”

“I think
you do.”

She used
to say I wasn’t affectionate enough with Eric, that I kept too much distance between
us. I’d like to see
her
try to get close to a kid with emotional
problems. Maybe then she’d get off my case.

I fold the
laundry. Something of my mother’s has made its way into my basket, a lace
camisole I don’t ever remember seeing. I toss it in the trash. My mother
doesn’t notice. Her mind’s on her puzzle. The crease between her eyebrows
deepens. Her lips pucker, as if she’s about to deliver a kiss.

“Help me
with this, won’t you?” she says.

“You know
I’m no good at those.”

“Nine
letter word: ‘Go beyond, in a spiritual sense, perhaps.’”

“Transcend.”

“See?”

She’s been
dropping these stupid hints for days now. I’m suppose to
transcend
my
life. How, I’d like to know. I have a job I hate and can’t afford to quit. I
work at an auto parts store in a windowless, wood-paneled office that smells of
stale Mexican food from the drive-in next door.

I also
have a kid who’ll never fit in. Eric’s day care lady says he’d probably do fine
next fall in kindergarten, but I’m not sure. He can get plenty pissed plenty fast.
Throws things. Pulls his hair. She says he’s frustrated because he can’t
communicate very well. She says everyone will make an extra effort, but how
long will that last once they see what he’s really like? Then I’ll get pulled
aside for friendly chats and told I have to try harder at home, as if this is
all my fault, somehow.

As the
morning light rises, the blue ceramic tile backsplash in the kitchen deepens to
sapphire. It really pops against the white cabinets and countertops. I chose
it. My mother probably thinks it’s overdone—garish, she might say, and I knew
that when it went in, and yes, I took pleasure in that. You see, this is her
house. I inherited it. I had no idea she’d left it to me. The lawyer told me
she hadn’t, in fact, because she didn’t have a will. But that, a mutual fund
and an insurance policy that together added up to about twenty grand came to me
as her only surviving relative. Just like that. Poof! I moved right out of my
apartment. Sold off my shitty furniture, and started replacing some of hers.
There was a lot of going through drawers, donating clothes, throwing out
endless magazines and coupons she never used. In the pantry were about fifteen
boxes of cookies, mostly mint Oreos and Nilla Wafers. She ate those by the
handful in front of the television, talking to the screen, calling the people
on it names. Sometimes she laughed, or made a joke. And sometimes I’d laugh
with her. We weren’t anything like good friends, but we got along okay. Enough
for me to feel bad she was gone. I even felt rotten once or twice, and when it
really sucked I just kept going, moving down the chore list. I tossed out her
knick knacks. Ceramic owls, if you can believe that. I wasn’t allowed to touch
them when I was little.
You better be careful, Sheryl Lynn, or one of those
owls might just come to life and bite you! Then you’ll have two marks to deal
with!
The sound of them shattering in the trash can was beautiful. The
roses were next. Dug them out myself. A bank of white and yellow Queen
Margarets she tended as if they were the baby Jesus. They drove her crazy.
About every other year they’d spot up, get these brown stains on the petals.
She consulted someone at the university, some botanist. I don’t know if he told
her anything helpful. She put special mulch around the base, sprayed them,
watered them only at certain times of day. Once I found her crying over them.
It was crazy.