All the Roads That Lead From Home (4 page)

“‘Something
you carry for a long time.’ Six letters,” she says.

“Grudge.”

“Right you
are!” She fills in the boxes with a smile and a jaunty toss of her head. I
can’t take it.

“Look.
Just tell me what you want and then vaporize. Okay?” I say.

“Are you
trying to get rid of me?”

“Oh, for
God’s sake! Of course I’m trying to get rid of you! You’re a fucking ghost!”

“Such
language.” She clicks her tongue. “Well if you
must
know, I’m here to
see something through. And to make you see through something.” She smiles to
herself.

“Yeah?
Like what?” I ask.

She wags
her finger at me to say she’s explained enough.

Yesterday,
my boss asked why I was so crabby. I said I hadn’t been sleeping. He sat in the
chair across from my desk and said, “Sherry, what you need is a little
romance.” His bald head turned pink with the effort it took to say this. “I
mean it. You’re young. You’re pretty. No, you’re beautiful. Go make some man
happy. Better yet, let him make you happy.”

He wants
to set me up with his son, Derek. Derek is twenty-eight, six years younger than
I am, and hung like a horse. I know this because he got drunk one night after
work and displayed his equipment to me back by the spark plugs. Derek’s just a
fun-loving guy who can’t keep it in his pants. He’s screwed every woman that
ever worked here except me. Ed, I suppose, thinks I’d get him to settle down.
Ed thinks I’m highly capable because I have a kid with a disability and come to
work made up like a starlet. Little does he know how horrible I’d look
otherwise.

“But
seriously, what’s really going on?” Ed leaned forward, his gut flopping over
his gray polyester pants.

“My
mother’s driving me nuts.”

“Your
mother’s dead, Sherry.”

“I know
that, Ed.”

“She got
killed in that wreck on I-80 last spring.”

“Yup.”

“I was
with you at the funeral.” His voice took on a soothing, keep-her-calm tone. He
leaned back and checked his watch. Derek sauntered by my open door, saw us,
then backed up. “Hey, Dad. Sher. What’s up?”

“Your
father thinks I’m nuts,” I said.

“He’s
right.” He grinned.

“He
doesn’t believe that my dead mother comes by every day and tells me how to live
my life.”

He stopped
grinning. He scratched his head. “Huh. Weird shit happens sometimes. You just
gotta go with it, I guess.”

Ed waited
to see if I’d say anything else. When I didn’t, he said, “Okay, folks, we’re on
the clock here.” He gave me a worried glance on his way out.

On Sunday
my mother fades a little. She’s there, but harder to see. “What’s up?” I ask.

“I’m
moving on, that’s all. You didn’t expect me to stay forever, did you?”

Eric’s
father said the same thing just about the time he started fading out, too.

I never
signed on for this,
he announced when we
found out Eric was autistic.

And I
did?

Hey.
You could have gotten rid of it
.

‘Him,’
not ‘it.’

The day he
moved out, Eric sat on the floor and said,
go-bye, go-bye, go-bye
, for
about four hours straight. Now, when my mother mentions leaving, Eric looks at
her long and hard, with a lot more interest than he usually shows anyone.

“I thought
you said he couldn’t see you,” I say.

“What? Oh,
well, maybe he can. Who knows?”

I stroke
Blobbo. It’s soft and smooth. Touching my face in the dark you’d never know it
was there.
I can’t even feel it,
Eric’s father once said. To be honest,
Blobbo didn’t seem to bother him much. He confessed that he thought it made me
vulnerable, needy for the attention I probably didn’t get. I translated that to
mean he thought I was easy. And I suppose I was.

Since him,
there have been two other losers who felt sorry for me and came home. Joe-Joe,
the guy who fixes my car, and Alan, a guy at the hardware store. I gave them
what they needed. Maybe they were grateful, or sated for a while—
meaning
full up, replete, needing nothing more
.

Christ,
now I sound just like her. My mother was a high school language arts teacher.
She hated it, thought her students were a bunch of morons. She was so tough on
them that one took a magic marker once and wrote “Hard-ass bitch” on the
windshield of her car. I can just imagine how she was in class. Her voice
pleasant, and her words like ice.
You should really try to be more careful
with your makeup, Sheryl Lynn. That foundation may not suit you as well as you
think.
I’d started wearing it in junior high. I’d reached a point of
despising Blobbo. Years of laser treatments had faded it only a little, and I
couldn’t stand the sight of myself in the mirror. If I were home without
make-up on, and someone called to say they were dropping by, I’d run to the
bathroom and start slathering it on. Only my closest friends ever saw me
without it. They were kind, I guess. One said Blobbo looked like a map of
something, a country no one had yet discovered, that I alone had the secret to.
Her name was Evelyn. She killed herself our senior year in high school over
some boy. When my mother heard that she said,
Well, that’s not something
you’ll ever do, is it?
Meaning I’d never be able to get that deeply involved
with anyone, because of my looks.

Sometimes
I think she was just trying to train me not to expect anything but
disappointment. Other times I think she took out on me things she didn’t like
about her own life. Not being able to find another man after my father booked
out made the list. Not having much money did, too. What she hated most was
having to pretend to be happy. My mother didn’t drink, but one night she got
drunk. She’d been to a party at another teacher’s house, and really poured it
down. She was driven home, seen to the front door. She always worried about
what people thought, so for her to let go like that was really weird. She found
me in the living room, wondering where the hell she was. Out of the blue she
said,
Some day you’ll be glad you were born like that, mark my words. This
world is so full of phonies!
In the morning she had no memory of saying
anything to me, let alone of getting home from the party.

Eric lines
up his tools, now that he is finished putting my clock radio back together.

“All
fixed!” he says, with a bounce. This is the true Eric, underneath it all. Proud
as pie about what his amazing little hands can do.

My mother
taps her pencil on the table. “‘The real McCoy.’ Seven letters.”

“Genuine,”
I say.

“One smart
girl, you are.”

Eric’s up
on his feet, his coveralls twisted. He wants a hug. He doesn’t want them very
often. I hug him. He smells like sour milk and sugar. He hugs me back, and pats
my face. He does that sometimes. He thinks Blobbo’s a riot. Once, he traced it
with a Sharpie. Took me days to scrub it off.

We pull
apart. My mother’s gone. So’s the crossword puzzle, her pencil, the tea, and
that scent of Chanel. I walk room to room, and even look in the closets, but I
know she’s disappeared for good. Don’t ask me how, I just do.

The next
morning I’m late getting up. Weird dreams—none about her, about my high school
days. I was picking a place to sit in the cafeteria. The boy I liked had to be
on my good side, which was tricky to arrange because that chair was taken. Then
it became a game of musical chairs, everyone walking around in a circle until
the music stopped, and no matter what, I always got the wrong damn chair. When
I finally did, the boy wouldn’t turn the other way, wouldn’t let me see
his
whole
face. I felt totally ripped off by that, and I woke up feeling flushed and cold
at the same time.

Eric
doesn’t want to go to day care, which makes everything a struggle. He sits at
the table, swinging his legs, not eating his cereal. I give up, haul him into
the car, and take him to the day care lady’s house. She stares at me. I don’t
know why. Eric’s in clean clothes, his hair is brushed, I’ve packed his lunch.
I even remember his beloved animal crackers, though she wouldn’t know about
that.

At work
everyone’s clustered by the sales counter. Janice, the cashier, is saying Ed’s
a sitting duck. She says there have been robberies in the neighborhood, and
they might be the next target, especially after six when Ed takes over from
Janice and he’s all alone. As I draw near three faces turn my way. Conversation
stops. They stare.

“Whoa,
Sher,” says Derek.

“Whoa,
yourself.”

I knew I
shouldn’t have worn this sweater. It’s a little clingy, and Derek being Derek
can’t resist. But what’s Ed’s problem? And Janice’s?

“What’s
this I hear about robberies?” I ask.

“It
happens. Goes with the territory,” says Ed. He’s trying not to look at me.

“I say
protect the territory,” says Derek.

“We’ve got
an alarm system,” says Ed.

“That’s
for the store. Doesn’t protect
you
,” says Janice.

Ed reaches
below the counter. He’s got a baseball bat down there! Derek steps back. Janice
laughs.

“How long
have you had that?” Derek asks.

“Since
this morning. I listen to the news, too, you know.” Ed chokes up his hands and
cocks his hips. “Come on, buddy. What you see is what you get!”

We all
laugh. But then they turn to me again, so I make for my office. I sit. On my
desk is another stack of invoices. I have to make sure they all add up. So,
that’s what I do, number by number.

On break I
hit the Ladies Room, which is just the common bathroom for all of us, and
Janice’s job to keep clean which she does for shit, and there I am, in the tiny
mirror over the sink, totally makeup-free. Crap! How the hell did I manage
that? No wonder everyone’s freaking out! Blobbo’s having itself a field day!
For a moment I think I’m going to puke. Slowly my stomach settles. My face is
burning. I tap cold water on my temples. I could bail out, rush home, and
return intact, but what’s the point? My makeup only does so much. Blobbo’s
still visible, a faint shadow, no matter what. Who have I been kidding?

“You okay
in there?” Janice calls through the door.

“Be right
out.” I guess I’ve been holed up in here for a while. I can’t hide forever. I
return to my office, past Janice, who watches me go.

Back at my
desk my right hand flies to my rescue, even though I’m beyond rescuing. I used
to sit like this, chin to palm, and pretend to be deep in thought. Trouble is,
I’m right-handed, so when I had to write something, I had to show myself. I
tried writing with my left hand. Ambidextrous sort of thing, only it didn’t
work.
Sherry’s handwriting has become increasingly poor this quarter
,
one teacher wrote home.

Stop it
, my mother said, crumpling that note.
Just stop it!

I force
myself to concentrate. The invoices add up. Ed’s spends a lot, and makes a
little more than he spends. That’s the way it’s supposed to be, I guess, if you
call yourself a going concern.

At lunch
we brown-bag it in the break room. No one talks, and no one looks at me funny,
so maybe one of them said something to the rest, but then I don’t think so,
because they all just seem lost in their own heads.

Then Derek
says, “Dad, that’s my old bat, isn’t it? From Little League.”

“Yup,”
says Ed. Derek, a Little Leaguer? Don’t exactly see that.

“Can’t
believe you still have it,” Derek says.

“I
wouldn’t throw something like that away.”

“Dad used
to coach me,” Derek tells me and Janice. “He was pretty tough.”

“Too
tough, sometimes,” says Ed.

“Nah, you
were fine.”

“You quit
because of me. Because I was such a bastard about your swing.”

Derek
looks thoughtful. Clearly, he’d forgotten that episode.

And that’s
when I remember my last conversation with my mother, the day she died, as she
got into her car to drive to the mall, minutes before a semi jumped the median
and hit her head on. She was talking about my life again, saying I’d turned
into a recluse, afraid to take a chance. She said,
You don’t have enough
confidence to open up
,
because—
I’d rolled my eyes, turned away, and
didn’t give her the chance to finish. If I had, I’m pretty sure she’d have said
something like
because I’ve been so critical.
She’d been reflecting on
things a little more those last few weeks. As if she were trying to come to
terms, put things in order somehow, or at least make amends. Maybe she had a
premonition that she wasn’t going to be around much longer, I don’t know. I’ll
never know.

“She’s
gone,” I say, suddenly.

Derek puts
his plastic cup on the table. Janice looks up from her magazine.