All the Roads That Lead From Home (5 page)

“Who’s
gone, Sher?” asks Ed.

“My mom.”

“We know,
hon. We know.”

“No, I
mean she’s really,
really
gone.”

They
expect me to cry, I think, because they’re all there around me, hands on
shoulders, murmuring tones of comfort.

I don’t
cry. I don’t laugh. I only turn to the window which shows a slice of blue sky
so lovely I can’t speak. When I turn back I realize I’ve given them my bad
side. But it doesn’t matter at all because I’m no worse than they are. I’m no
worse than anyone, and I never was. That’s for sure.

The woman in green talks
again about her boy, Joey. Her face bears all the pain he’s put her through,
the broken promises, the stolen money, the calls from the police. Joey can’t
stop shooting drugs into his arm, so he’s in rehab again. Only on Thursday he
gets out, and this woman, whose name you can’t remember, is sure the cycle will
start all over.

She
doesn’t know what to do with Joey, and you don’t know what to do with your
father. Your father is not a drug addict, only an old man who likes to give his
money away. Joey has a problem with self-control, your father has a problem
with self-control, so you, the woman in green, and five others who bear
responsibility for a wayward soul meet today with Dr. Schiff in a church
basement—the best he could arrange after hearing that his office had flooded
overnight.

You don’t
want to be here, but your husband insisted. He says it’s time to get at the
root. When your father’s retirement home called last month to say he’d written
them a bad check, you paid the bill, then went into a bit of a tailspin, it’s
true.
What’s pissing you off goes a lot deeper than money
, your husband
said. Maybe yes, maybe no. The point is, you recovered. You always do.

Dr.
Schiff—Leonard—moves on to Edmund. Edmund’s wife is an alcoholic. She hides
vodka everywhere, including the toilet tank where Edmund discovered two bottles
when the plumber came to fix a leak. Edmund told the plumber the bottles were
his.

“Did
anything bother you about that?” asks Leonard.

Edmund
seems to consider the empty space above Leonard’s head. Finally he says, “Yeah.
The look on his face.”

“And what
look was that?”

“Like he
was sorry for me, like he knew I was lying.”

Edmund’s
eyes are troublesome. One is blue, the other brown. Leonard’s eyes are like
dark honey. Their deep grief says how much the world has had its way with him,
how much he’s given up against his will.

Edmund
says nothing. Leonard lets the silence continue. People stare at their own
hands. Someone coughs. Your mind wanders. What are you going to make for
dinner, you wonder. Is your husband going to be home before you? And what about
the yard work you’ve been putting off—all those shrubs to be dug up and
replaced with something more attractive?

“Ralph,”
says Leonard. “How’s it going with Lisa?”

Ralph’s
daughter shoplifts. She’s thirteen, and has been in and out of juvenile
detention.

“Fine,”
says Ralph.

“Just
fine?”

“Well, I
had to tell the police she’s getting counseling.”

“I see.”

“But she’s
not, is she?” says Miranda, whose sister steals, too, but only from family.

“No,” says
Ralph.

“Because
she doesn’t think she has a problem.” Miranda’s eyes burn with bitterness.
Miranda’s sister ran up her credit card in Vegas for over ten thousand dollars,
then begged for a plane ticket home.

“Right,”
says Ralph.

“She
probably thinks
you’re
the one with the problem.”

Ralph
nods, his big eyes sad, like a spaniel’s. He has big ears, from which tufts of
hair reach out. His shoulders are huge, but his feet are small. You’ve never
seen a man with such small feet, smaller even than Leonard’s, which sit primly
in their shiny brown wingtips.

The church
basement is cold, and hard morning light breaks through high windows. The gray
carpet is stained with coffee, and you imagine Styrofoam cups in the hands of
pious people, deciding how best to raise money for that new steeple. You are
not a churchgoer. You’re not an atheist, exactly, but the idea of organized
religion sits poorly with you. Your father was once a Quaker, a leaning he
inherited from his mother, a woman you didn’t know and of whom he said little,
except that she never raised her voice. You cannot imagine this petite, quiet
woman. You’re neither petite, nor quiet, facts your father seems to regret when
he looks at you.

“Darlene,”
Leonard says. “Why don’t you tell us how it’s going?”

You shift
on your metal chair. Your pantyhose make a rasping sound as you cross your
legs. You can’t think of anything to say.

“Have
there been any more incidents?” Leonard asks, urging you with those anguished
eyes.

“Well,
yes. He wrote another check.”

“A big
one?”

“Two
thousand dollars.”

Ralph
whistles. “That’s not chump change,” he says.

“Who’d he
give it to?” asks the woman in green.

“An old
student of his. Guy got a Ph.D, then some teaching job that fell through.”

How can
you ask me why, Dar? Because I know those clowns who denied him tenure. No job,
and stuck at home now with a sick baby. Didn’t know that, did you, about the
sick baby?

A sick
baby would be easier to handle than your father.

After the
bounced check to the retirement home, he took cash advances on credit cards
whose monthly payments he can’t meet. It’s less important to stay current with
them, since there’s nothing they can attach if he doesn’t, but staying current
with the retirement home is key. If he falls too far behind he’ll be asked to
leave, and his only option then will be a Medicare facility, which wouldn’t
have the wide green lawns, nice artwork, and afternoon teas he has now.
I
don’t care about any of that, Dar. I’d be happy in just a little room. As long
as it’s clean. And has the
Golf Channel
. I’ve come to enjoy the
Golf
Channel
quite a bit.

“What kind
of loser asks an old man for money?” asks Miranda.

“He didn’t
ask. My father offered.”

 “I should
get his number.” This is from Janice, the group’s most hardcore sufferer. Her
husband sleeps with any woman who will have him, and apparently many will. He
always returns, and she always takes him back.

“What does
he say when you ask him to stop?” the woman in green wants to know.

“Nothing.”

Because
you never asked him to stop. You can’t even bring yourself to remind him that
he owes you money for the retirement home bill.

“Sounds
like my daughter,” says Ralph. “Just looks away and pretends not to hear.”

Nods of
sympathy all around.

Janice’s
cell phone rings. She grabs it from her battered vinyl handbag, stares at the
caller’s number, then silences it. No one asks if it’s her husband. Everyone
knows it is. He calls with an excuse, a lie, a story, to say he’s working late.
All eyes are on her now. Everyone feels her pain. As she returns the phone to
her bag you see that the laces of her athletic shoes are mismatched. One is
silver, the other white.

Leonard
concludes by asking everyone to reflect on the limited ability to control
another person. Living with destructive behavior can turn us into control
freaks, he says. To regain your balance, you’ll have to find a way to accept
what you can and cannot change.

This is
where you’re way ahead. You’ve known forever that there’s no changing your
father. Who he is was determined years before you were even born.

***

Your mother always blamed
him on the war. Your father was an ordinary person with an extraordinary
ability to recognize complex patterns. This was not a skill he knew he
possessed before a military analyst discovered it. How the discovery was made
you’re not exactly sure. Some aptitude test, probably, which quickly eliminated
the possibility of active combat and moved him right into code-breaking. After
the war, rather than make a full-time career in military intelligence, he
became a professor of history. His time was divided between known events and
secret ones. How he reconciled these two worlds you don’t know, except by what
he said and what he didn’t. He was open about his life in the university, winning
grants, beating out colleagues for promotion, but on the military life he
continued to lead when called upon he was, by necessity, absolutely silent.

The
balance he struck didn’t work for your mother. She needed all of him, not part,
and left after twenty years of marriage.

She was
soon replaced with a second wife who had no interest at all in your father’s
secret world. You were replaced with a stepdaughter—Leslie. You grew up, got
married, lived your life. You had regular contact with your father, cordial and
impersonal correspondence, brief well-managed visits. You always wanted more.
There was never enough real interest in who you were, as if your father could
have been sitting across from anyone, instead of his only child. How that hurt!
How hard to keep that hurt secret—your own secret—your own dual life.

Not long
ago the second wife died. Your father paid you another visit. Although it had
only been about a year since you’d seen him, you thought how much older he’d
become, how frail. For a moment your heart went out to him, the lonely widower.
You prepared a nice dinner, and got a bottle of Johnny Walker Red, his
favorite. He was grateful. He enjoyed himself. He mentioned the sale of the
house he and his second wife had long occupied. You said you were glad, because
he’d have plenty now to meet the retirement home’s steep entry fee.

Oh,
I’ll have to scramble a bit for that
, he
said.
I let Leslie have it all
.

You fell
silent. It’s possible you even made a face, because when you father looked at you
he said,
She needs it, Dar. She’s had such a hard time.

The hard
time, you soon learned, consisted of not being able to find a job, not being
able to make the rent on her small apartment every month, not being able to
find a good man to spend time with, and so on. Then your father added that he
wouldn’t need his car at the retirement home and would give that to Leslie,
too, since her car was so old and undependable.

He went to
bed early, not long after you cleared the table. You sat in the living room alone,
drinking your own gift of scotch, and drafted the letter you’d write the next
day to Leslie about responsibility, trying harder to get a job, not taking
money from your father, who had reached the time in his life when he must
survive on a fixed income.

Her return
letter arrived quickly enough to make you certain that she felt terribly
guilty. She didn’t feel guilty. She wrote:

It was
weird to hear
from you after all these
years. You don’t exactly stay in touch. Your father used to say he wished you’d
pick up the phone or drop him a line once in a while. I hope you’re not mad I
said so. I’m very concerned for your father’s welfare, as you know. I’ve made
every effort to keep him company these last few months, and I don’t mind
telling you that your poor father is very grateful to me. The time I spend with
him has made it hard to develop my pet sitting business. Your father is very
supportive of my career. It gives him pleasure to extend his support and thanks
to me. I know you understand that it would be unkind of me not to accept it.

You
remember Leslie as a child when you were still one, too, and the visits to your
father’s new home on Sundays, the one day the divorce agreement allowed.
Leslie’s mother insisted on eating in the formal dining room, an ugly box with
deep red wallpaper and dark, heavy furniture. Conversation centered on your
father, his students, the papers he was grading. And then it always came, that
moment when Leslie wouldn’t eat her vegetables. Your father made her sit at
table staring at her cold plate, while you stayed tensely in the living room.
You wonder how she has forgiven him, and think maybe she hasn’t, that wanting
money lies behind her kindness. You’re proven right, because with the house
gone, and the car in her hands, she’s nowhere to be found.

***

You skip the next meeting
of the group. Things have gotten crazy at work. You’re facilitating the
acquisition of a large electronics company by an even larger discount chain.
The dreary time you spend negotiating the buyout ratio makes you regret
majoring in economics. You would have preferred to study English Literature,
but your father discouraged you on the grounds that he wanted you to make a
good living, and not struggle for money the way he always had to.

Several
days later a social worker from the retirement home tells you long distance
that your father fell in his room and needed to be hospitalized. His condition
isn’t grave, but she thinks now would be a wise time for a visit.