All the Roads That Lead From Home (7 page)

“There are
a few photo albums you can have, and some costume jewelry of your mother’s,
although I don’t know why he kept it, under the circumstances. Oh, and you can
take the ashtrays. You know how he loved those,” said Fran.

And the
bars he lifted them from, with Angie on the lookout, those many nights when
staying home was no comfort at all.

In the
beginning they were turned away.
What are you thinking, trying to bring a
child in here?
In time they were allowed to stay. And stay they did,
through the lunch crowd, the after-lunch crowd, the happy-hour crowd, smoke and
laughter taking them towards night.
Everything I ever learned, I learned in
a bar
, Angie had told Kevin more than once.

What she
learned was how to use silence and wide eyes to get pretzels and soda,
sometimes a sandwich, sometimes a sweater or a pair of shoes that no longer fit
the bartender’s son or daughter. People gave you what they thought you needed
easily enough. The trick was getting what you wanted.

“What
about that old piano?” Angie asked Fran.

“The one
in storage? Goodness, I’d forgotten all about it.”

Angie’s
father discovered it in the basement of a church where he’d woken up after
walking the streets and screaming at the violet sky. Angie had spent the same
night alone in their drafty house, with only the television’s gray-blue face
for company. Later at the church she held her father’s sweaty hand, thought of
how hungry she was, and looked at the piano. Tiny painted roses decorated the
closed keyboard lid. The finish was dull and scratched, something her father
pointed out while he haggled with the Father.

You’ve
a keen eye
, the Father said.
I can see
you’re a man of taste. If I weren’t a good Christian I’d drive a harder
bargain, but the truth is that this room’s to be converted, and we’ve no more
need of it.

Then the
Father asking her,
Can you see yourself here, playing those fine, round
notes all up to Heaven?
His hand in her hair, on her neck, then under her
shirt because her father was gone then, off to the bank for the money, and the
Father said he’d give her breakfast because it looked like she could use it,
but all he did was tug her forward
why don’t you and I just sit here a bit,
on this nice, fine bench?
What a shame it is to let it go.

“Well,
it’s yours for the taking. I suppose you’ll want to sell it,” said Fran.

Angie
didn’t know what the piano was worth. Maybe a thousand dollars. That would be a
lovely windfall. She could get that leather coat she’d had her eye on, and that
silver-and-turquoise bracelet she and Kevin saw at the mall. The rest she could
bank for that rainy day that always came along so fast. Kevin, though, would
want to put it up his nose. His cocaine habit used up all the money his father
gave him. There was more money to be had, but his father had become difficult
and cut off his allowance.

“Good
plan. Better to sell it here, though, don’t you think?” Angie told Fran. That
way Kevin wouldn’t have to know a thing.
Listen, Babe, things didn’t work
out so well. That Fran, she’s got things tied up tight. Must be how my old man
wanted it, leaving it all to her. Figures, doesn’t it?

“Suit
yourself, only I’m leaving first thing in the morning,” said Fran.

“Really,
why?”

She spoke
of a brother out in Santa Barbara and needing a change of scene. It occurred to
Angie that she could do with a few more days away from Kevin. They’d come to
that hard point between lust and love and spent more and more time on their
bare mattress, a mattress she’d like some sheets for to cover the brown stains
of her period, and the yellow stains of her sweat.

“I’ve got
enough for one night at the motel, but after that I don’t know,” said Angie and
glanced at Fran, who stared firmly into space.

“I can
stake you to a second night.”

“Oh,
you’re sweet! But don’t you think it would be easier if I just stayed here?
After you’re gone, I mean. Don’t like to be underfoot.”

Fran
turned her leaky eyes on her. “I’m sorry, honey, you can’t.”

Angie had
visited last year with Boomer, Kevin’s predecessor. When they left Fran found
herself missing a silk scarf, a pair of gold earrings, and a fountain pen she’d
won in a church raffle. Angie sometimes wore the earrings and scarf. The pen
she’d never used. When her father called to report the loss, Angie blamed
Boomer. She said he was a recovering heroin addict (he wasn’t), and that he’d
spent time in jail (he hadn’t done that, either). Her father believed her.
Obviously Fran didn’t. Boomer, who knew nothing of the theft or the phone call,
moved out several weeks later when he realized Angie had been helping herself
to his wallet.

Fran
offered to ship the piano down. Ann Arbor to Dunston was a pricey distance, a
fact Fran regretted with a lift of one eyebrow. Angie wasn’t moved. There’d be
no distance if Fran had stayed put. When Angie struck out on her own at
seventeen, with no desire to finish high school, Fran pulled up stakes and
dragged her father back to her hometown so they could float on the sale of her
late husband’s grocery store chain, forget the past, and begin again.

Angie
wrote her new address on the back of a museum flyer Fran had on the coffee
table by the whiskey.
The French Impressionists. February 4
^th
-
March 31
^st
. Gauguin, Renoir, Cezanne.
Angie couldn’t imagine her
father going to see that kind of nonsense, but then with Fran her father always
thought he was better than he was.

“Well,
then. I’ll call a mover. They’ll let you know when to expect it,” said Fran,
and drained off her glass of whiskey. She stood and tugged the jacket of her
stylish black suit into place. Angie got up, too. She towered over Fran. Angie
was five foot ten, skinny as a boy, with size-ten feet. She’d stuck out at the
funeral with her torn jeans and red linen jacket. She looked down at the white
roots running through Fran’s dyed black hair and kissed her hard, right on the
top of her head. Outside, the heels of her cowboy boots banged on the wide
brick steps. Above her the sky was a tender blue, the yellow clouds a dream.

Fuck, she
thought. It would have to be a beautiful day.

***

The piano was an upright,
not a grand, and because a ramp had been built for a handicapped tenant some
years before, the movers were able to get it inside Angie’s apartment without
loading it onto a dolly.

Angie shoved
it around the coffee table, which she realized later could have been pushed
aside, to the wall by the kitchen. The wheels gouged the wood.

“Cool,”
said Kevin when he came in. Then, “Look what those morons did to the floor.”

“Yeah.”

“Better
not lose my damage deposit.”

He smelled
of cigarette smoke, which meant he’d been with Ramon again. Ramon was where
Kevin got his coke. If he had any now, it would have been on loan, because
Kevin’s father was still being a jerk. Angie had met Ramon only once. He was so
short she could have put her chin on his head. He worked as a car mechanic and
promised to get Kevin hired on to do oil changes. Of course nothing had come of
it.

Kevin went
to the kitchen and made himself a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. Marta, his
German shepherd, clacked across the floor and sat politely in front of him. He
offered Marta some sandwich, then pulled it back just as she opened her mouth
to take it. After the fourth time, Angie said, “Stop being such a mean fuck and
give her some.” His blow sent her sideways into the kitchen counter. The blood
tasted like metal and made her suddenly remember falling on the school
playground. Kevin stared at her. He was still chewing. The hand he’d hit her
with had opened from its hardened fist and was poised in mid-air, fingers bent,
like an old man’s.

On the
street, without her coat, she shivered. Her lip went on bleeding. She could
feel it swelling. The Chinese restaurant smelled of hot grease as she passed.
Bits of paper lifted in a gust of wind, swirled, then floated back to the
sidewalk. At the corner a homeless woman sat on the steps of the church, her
garbage bag below. She wore new track shoes with silver laces.

They
looked at each other. “Somebody got you good,” the woman said to Angie. “Somebody
with good aim.” Angie stood with folded arms. Her lip throbbed. Behind a square
glass pane on the wall by the door the message “I AM THE LIFE EVER AFTER” stood
in white letters, advertising the sermon that coming Sunday. “You go on in,
clean yourself up,” the woman said. She drank from a tall plastic coffee cup,
then looked at her wristwatch. Not homeless, Angie realized. Just sitting
there.

“What you
doing, girl?” Angie asked.

“Name’s
Yolanda. Waiting on a guy. Coming to get a donation.”

“Of what?”

“What you
think? Clothes. Food.”

“In a bag.
You put it in a bag.”

“You got
something better?”

Angie went
up the stairs. Inside was dark and smelled of dust and wood. The daylight
leaked through the stained-glass window. The ladies’ room down the hall had a scent
of bleach. Angie examined her lip in the small mirror over one of the two
porcelain sinks. She felt her teeth. None were loose. On her way out a bulletin
board with squares of bright paper caught her attention:
Babysitting, call
Clair. Moving? call Jerome. Yardwork. Home Health Aide. Used van for sale.
Wanted, upright piano for Church Basement/Nursery School.

Angie took
the long way home, down the street towards the record store and dry cleaners,
then past the park where the children were warmly dressed. She kept walking
until she was too cold to walk anymore, and then she went home.

***

Kevin watched her across
the candlelit table. The sky had given in to snow and the power had gone out.
Angie wore long underwear beneath a cotton skirt. On top she was naked but for
a jean vest of Kevin’s she’d grabbed in the bedroom. They’d had sex for hours.
He’d dug inside her until she was as dry as dust.

“God, you
have great tits,” he said.

“For a
skinny girl.”

“For
anyone.”

Kevin
leaned back in his chair, his arms folded across his bare chest. Angie admired
Kevin’s arms, his shoulders, too. Sometimes she pressed her teeth there, and
sucked up the salt on his skin.

“Know what
I think?” asked Kevin. “I think you’re the kind of girl who can take a whole
lot of a guy.”

“You’d
know.”

“Maybe you
can take some more.”

“Maybe.”

She sipped
icy vodka from the coffee cup. In four days her lip had healed a lot.

She’d been
hit by men before. Not by Boomer, whose real name was Brad. The nickname had
come from his mother, because he’d been such a loud baby. He wasn’t loud when
Angie met him. He never once raised his voice to her, except when he found out
about the money she’d taken from his wallet. He called her a cunt, which hurt
more than she thought it would. Before Brad there was Toby, a bicycle
messenger. He didn’t hit her, though she’d hit him for cheating on her with
their downstairs neighbor. Before Toby was Pat, and Pat had blackened her eye
when she wouldn’t get him another bottle of beer.

Kevin
looked at the piano. He asked her again about selling it because now Ramon was
pressing him for the two thousand he owed. Kevin’s father was out. The last
time Kevin called his father said,
It’s time to face facts. All the money in
the world’s no use to you.
And when are you going to get rid of that
slut?
Angie didn’t think that was the word his father would have used, and
that Kevin had chosen it for effect.

“I’ll get
on it,” she said. She thought of the ad she’d seen, and of the piano returning
to a church, going back where it came from, like ashes to ashes and dust to
dust. She laughed softly, then with a harder edge. Kevin went on watching her
with his blue marble eyes.

***

Ramon sat at the far end.
Angie waited for Noreen to get him, but it wasn’t Noreen’s station and Noreen
knew it, so she let him sit.

He had the
fidgets. One thick tattooed arm jiggled on the bar, one leather-clad boot
danced on the bar rail.

“Hey,”
said Angie, and put a clean square napkin down in front of him. “Where’s Kev?”

“Thought
you could tell me.” He pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head.

“He said
he had a job interview.”

“Not
likely,” said Ramon.

“No,
probably not.”

He asked
for a scotch and soda. She mixed it and brought it to him. He stirred it with
the red plastic stick she’d dropped in.

“When you
see him last?” he asked, looking at her tits. She saw herself in his eyes. The
blonde dye she put in three months before had slid down and left a wide cut of
black. Her pink tank top and the cold in the bar brought her nipples up like
two ripe olives. Kevin’s words, not hers. Angie had never eaten an olive in her
life.