You Could Be Home by Now (12 page)

The girl gave an elaborate shrug. “I can't imagine Gran would let me do anything dangerous.” Except for the unsubtle
can't
, her tone was very prim.

Ben was approaching his eighth decade. It still surprised him, sometimes, how thoroughly what he felt and what he ought to feel diverged. History like his, you'd think he'd clench up in the face of an adolescent snit. Instead he felt a fluid, internal lightening and something like tenderness toward the girl. Let her have her moods and brackish places. She wasn't his daughter or any of his concern. The crank calls weren't either. A bunch of dithering busybodies with nothing better to do. Ben beamed at Lily. He offered a courtly little bow.

Lily scowled. Her hair made a dark halo, hateful and kinetic. The cart jerked forward.

Sadie's voice rose in reprimand and then the world went slow, peach lit and syrupy, as if ladled into a jam jar. Ben's eyes met Lily's, which were an extraordinary blue. They widened, white and shocked and unveined.

Impact.

The jammy world unstuck. And then the women were beside him, terrible and tall. Sadie knelt to touch his shoulder, which meant he'd wound up supine and on the ground. He gave a lung-stuck wheeze and struggled against the light of fantastic pain. “You with us?” Sadie asked. He nodded. Something leaden thrummed where his skull met his spine. Sadie's eyes were the same bold blue as her granddaughter's. Ben shut his own and the blue stayed, Bunsen burning, as an afterimage. Tara's eyes had been brown, straight-up brown, no romanticized flecks of green or gold. Still, they let her get away with claiming hazel. Veronica had said it was important for girls to feel in control of their looks. Christ on a bike. No wonder their family went wrong. Some things simply
were.
It was a waste of your finite life to pretend.

S
ETH WAS IN HIS OFFICE,
daydreaming. A letter of resignation, terse and dignified and cutting. A lesson for Lobel: saying something didn't make it so. He shook his head, as if words were marbles rolling around in there. Ali was good at this sort of thing, but he wasn't about to go running to her. Not after being an ass about the shower drain. He grabbed his
Roget's
. There had to be a way to say
personal and professional integrity
without sounding like an outrageous prig.

“Hey, Boss?” Nicky Tullbeck hovered, uneasy, in the doorway.

Nicky was a boy like any other boy, not big, exactly, but tall, hapless, and waiting for his body to catch up with his bones. The kid was okay. Still, every time he saw him, Seth felt pummeled. In Chettenford, he would have been kind. He'd found
something
likeable in each and every one of his students. He made himself gesture encouragingly. That grizzled fraud Lobel wasn't Nicky's fault, and the boy wasn't to blame for the thinning treads of Alison's running shoes. Seth's smile felt frayed, the curve of his lips thin and chapped. “Yeah?” he asked.

“I met a girl this morning.”

“Okay. Congratulations?”

“Not met a girl like
met a
girl.” Nicky waved a top-bound reporter's notebook and wrested a pen from its spiral. “She's the official spokesperson for the Roskos. Some kind of neighbor. Says she was the one who saved the kid and all.”

“We're not going to be putting anything else about that family out there. It isn't news. It's a family matter.” Seth liked the way that sounded. He'd use it with Lobel. Polite and resolute, but still
no
. He was an adult, after all. If you believed CNN, he and Ali had snagged the last two jobs in the Continental United States. Enough with the daydreams. It was time to act right. Be responsible. Play a few innings before calling the game.

Nicky said, “The
Daily Star
doesn't think it's a family matter. They had another article this morning and—”

“A family matter, Nicky.” Seth would have liked the kid in Chettenford. He wouldn't have had to force it. Nicky had gumption. Nicky had stick-to-itiveness. Seth had a barely animated wife, a son who'd never drawn breath, employment at the whim of a venal cowpoke, and all the zing of canned peas. He tamped down a sigh.

“
USA Today
had it, too. As, like, their Arizona thing. You know how every day they do a few lines for every state?”

Seth didn't know offhand. The last time he'd seen a
USA Today
he and Ali had been in some nowhere of a motel on their drive out to The Commons, still working under the theory that because the move was new it was destined to be good. The sigh he'd been fighting escaped. “Okay. What've you got?”

“Two ideas, really. The main one is local response. You know, since we're all about what goes down here in The Commons.” Nicky's voice slid deeper in an attempt at professionalism. Seth pretended this was office hours, that the town where he'd been teacher of the year wasn't two thousand miles away.

“Go on.”

“Okay. So there was this man who freaked out about it online. One of the Rosko neighbors. It's pretty funny—there's this crazy fly—and it's getting a ton of hits. And Lily, that's the girl I mentioned, she has a Facebook group going in support of the family. So I thought I could frame it as The-Commons-meets-cyberspace. Like, our little community is a part of the whole big world.”

Back home, at least two students a semester had pitched some spin on the same idea. Once upon a time, Seth got a kick out of that. How happy they were, so sure they were thinking something new. He'd tell Ali about it tonight. She'd laugh the wry laugh she'd had back in Chettenford. She would soften then. She'd be on his side. And then he could tell her about Lobel. She would rail on his behalf. They'd either get out their suitcases or come up with a plan.

Nicky tore a page from his notebook. Two web addresses were spelled out neatly on it. The ripped page was the only one in the pretentious little book with any marks on it at all. That kid. Add a fedora and press pass and send him off to a Halloween party. Something viscous and nasty thickened in Seth's throat. He'd been a boy like that once. One in an ambitious blush of boys. Only, it wasn't right to say ambitious. It was more the lazy confidence that all would be well. Even into his thirties he'd assumed as much.

And then.

Nicky used vocab words,
source
and
lede
and
nut graf
, to explain that he'd also like to explore the military family angle. Seth told him to focus. One thing at a time. Seth indicated the piece of notepaper. He said he'd check it out. He did these things so that he wouldn't say something cruel.

“Seriously? You'll look into it?” The kid looked like he was about to break into song.

“I told you I would. Now quit hovering. I'll tell you if I think it's something.”

“And I'll get to write it? If it is?” Nicky's frame filled the door.

“Maybe,” Seth said and the boy retreated. He'd like a word with Nicky's journalism teacher. The Colliers had put that whole world behind them, but still, as a professional courtesy. Seth opened his browser and entered Nicky's first address. The page loaded. None of
Seth's
students would have come running to the editor for consent if they thought they were onto something. His kids would trust their damn instincts and dig. On screen, the clip began to play.

It had been evening when Ali was finally discharged from the hospital. She still looked pregnant, and she moved as if the sidewalk had been iced over. The world was dense with shadows. Three miles on surface roads and then eight on the freeway. On the radio, NPR appealed for money. Lights flared assertively from the opposite lane. Seth only got that they'd been flashing their brights when he pulled safe into the garage. He killed the engine and realized. He'd driven the whole way home without headlights.

And.

Ali's parents had come. Her mother said, tea, though he and Alison were both known to be java heads. Seth found a kettle. He filled it and placed it on the stove. He watched the flame and waited. Alison's father came into the kitchen to see what was keeping him. Evidently the kettle had been shrieking a solid minute or so.

And.

He had taken off his glasses. He'd set them on the nightstand. He brushed his teeth, then tried to pop out his contact lenses. His finger grazed his pupils. First the left, then the right, as the optometrist had instructed back in sixth grade. He tried each eye three times before it registered.

And.

And.

And.

And the man on the screen was as broken in his own right. Seth swiveled in his chair. There was no way in this world or the next that he'd let Nicky Tullbeck blunder this story. That husk of a man. Seth knew what grief looked like. There'd been times when a fly could have taken up residence in the well of his tongue without him feeling it. One fly, two flies. A whole business of flies. Seth put his head out the door. “Tullbeck! Got a name on the ranter?” Nicky beamed and checked his phone. Proof positive. The notebook was all for show. Nicky said the man was called Benjamin Thales. The directory listed a home number. Seth dialed. As the phone rang, he entered a few of the names Thales had mentioned—Tenaya Alder, Mimi Asencios—into a search engine, guessing at the spellings. Missing. And for more than a decade. He felt a pulse of vindication. Everyone and their busybody cousin told Seth and Alison to give themselves time. But look at Benjamin Thales. Ten years from whatever had happened and still a mess. Time was as true a balm as platitudes.

The phone was still ringing. It kept on and on. Benjamin Thales was the last man in America without voicemail.

And that was just as well. Seth would let Benjamin Thales be. He would rely upon the books beneath the bathroom sink. He'd work. With Lobel. Around Lobel. Simply work. The books all said there was consolation to be had in that. Seth glanced at the second address Nicky'd given him. From the looks of it, a Facebook page, someone tallying other someones in their casual support of the Roskos. Now that was the real story. The psychology of the absurd. The minimal effort it took to get that puffed-over sense of having done good. The phone was pressed close to his ear and still ringing. He returned the receiver to its cradle. Cradle. He tried hard not to dwell on the word.

G
RAN SENT HER TO FETCH
Ben a glass of water, but the bitter slant of her mouth said she was sending her away, period. Lily walked from the hospital waiting room, carrying herself very erect. Swan neck, high sternum. The stance all the magazines promised would shave off ten pounds. She was going to be flawless from this moment forward: stay offline while she did her homework and abstain completely from swearing. Compost, floss, and use SAT words. She was going to be perfect for the rest of her life.

Perfect. And also, enrolled in some hippie mountain boarding school where the sole computer still took floppies and the uniforms were made of wool from sheep the students sheared themselves. With luck she'd have
Lipstick
back by 2060-never.

She passed one drinking fountain and then a second. No cups. Stay tuned for this week's episode of Bad Decision Theater: Lily brings her grandmother water in her own cupped bare hands. See the water run out the cracks. Watch the penitent mascara run down her cheeks. It's a nice image, ladies and gentlemen, supplicating on a quasi-biblical level.

Not that Lily would know. Her parents didn't really go in for all that church stuff.

They probably should have.

Maybe then they wouldn't have a freaknugget daughter who went around running men over.

Oh, and who stole.

She had Ben Thales' cell phone. She had honest-to-eye-shadow taken it to help the guy out. It was lying there beside the cart and he probably didn't want to lose it. Nobody saw. Ben had sat bow-shouldered on the grass, eyes tracking the busy back and forth of Gran's finger. He knew the day of the week and the name of the president. He took his own pulse and pronounced it fine. His pupils weren't dilated. He stood. He walked completely unaided. Lily should have returned the phone then, with apologies, as the man checked his limbs over, stretching and bending, swiveling his hips like an advertisement for extra-strength brain bleach. She'd been about to when he shot her a pinched, waspish look and asked if Gran might take him to the hospital.

Which meant that the two things Ben Thales and Miss Bra Strap Bigmouth-Blogkill back in St. Louis had in common were (a) skin so thin it hardly counted as epidermis and (b) an inexplicable urge to ruin Lily's life, and that consequently the hottest piece of tech Lily was going to be let near was whatever they used for telegraphs back in the day. Maybe this time Mom and Dad would respect her enough to
say
it was a punishment, not like this nice-little-visit-to-make-sure-Gran-was-holding-up.

Sure. And a fleet of Nigerian princes were dying to give her millions.

She couldn't
believe
she'd fallen for the parental line. Sign her up for a brain transplant already. A pair of women approached in blue scrubs, their flat shoes slapping efficiently on linoleum. They looked a little sick themselves, but everyone did under hospital lights.

Hospital. Fuck. Oh, fuckadee fuck fuck fuck.

She'd put a man in the hospital.

He was going to be all right. He had to be. You didn't have excess energy for slit-eyed glares of doom if you were dying or even hurt. He was simply spinning things to his best advantage, salivating at the prospect of returning her, vanquished, to sender. No one now between him and Gran.

Lily one hundred percent hadn't wanted to hurt him. They had to know that.

She wasn't some kind of sociopath.

She wasn't even going to spit in the water she brought him once she found a cup.

She found a vending room. It hummed with refrigerator sounds. Sad sandwiches and pudding cups rotated behind Plexiglas. She checked her pockets for cash, keeping the ill-gotten phone pocket for last. In it she found two crumpled dollars. It took three rounds of smoothing for the latte machine to accept the bills. Lily chose hazelnut at random—she didn't drink coffee, ever; who wants teeth like a high school civics teacher?—and a cup dropped into its slot. The machine made stuttering foamy noises. Lily sat. Drew her legs in. Chin on her knees. Everything was going to be fine. If the per-vet were really hurt, he'd have made stuttering foamy noises too instead of chatting with Gran the whole way over about some biography of FDR they were plowing through for book club. A loudspeaker sounded, paging a doctor whose name she didn't catch, and then it was Lily making the choked little keening sounds. She leaned back against the coffee machine, the latte steaming the air up above her. She dug a fist into her stomach and tried to control her breath. She'd only wanted to see him flinch. To know he'd bolted from a
girl
. Her foot had hovered above the accelerator. Her nails had glittered and she'd hesitated long enough to see that a green bead on her ivy-patterned espadrilles was coming loose. Then she'd met Ben's eyes and stepped down, hard.