You Could Be Home by Now (17 page)

“The hell, Alison?”

“All our friends. Every single one.”

“We never even talk to them.” It hurt, the furious concern she had for them. Them, not him. The ones who chugged blithely along.

“That's not the point and you know it.”

“We came here to start again.” He shook his head but it didn't clear. There was usually an underlying logic when they fought, a dance of sorts. But this. They were in real trouble. It was like trying to argue with a Magic 8 Ball.

“Start over, sure,” said Ali. “But I never said we should salt the earth behind us.”

She never said anything. He might as well live with an ornamental plant. Seth said, “At least I'm making an effort.”

“
This
is making an effort?” She brought her hand down, hard, on the desk and he hoped she'd shatter one of the fine bones of her wrist.

“You have no idea the effort I make.” He saw it, in sixteen-point font.
Slow Sale of Rosko House Due to Internal Error
. Those were some fundamental fucking principles he'd laid down, easy as he'd set a bag of groceries on the kitchen counter. All for Alison. All so she could come back to herself, here, in the deliberate, painless place he had found for her.

“Sure,” she said. “It's so hard, finding new ways to make an ass of yourself.” She smoothed her skirt. Heat had come to her cheeks.

“You're
embarrassed
,” he said, like he couldn't quite believe it.

“You bet your sweet ass I am. The last one to hear that my husband is out of his gourd.”

Good to know she could actually feel. Cold perfectionist bitch. He said, “Oh, go have a run.”

Alison stood. A comma no more. An exclamation point. One of those upside-down ones, with her round, close-cropped head and lean, straight body. There had to be a word for those, and there had to be a word for this feeling. He wanted to shake her until her insides resonated with the shaking of his own.

Alison had graduated
magna cum laude
.

Alison had made teacher of the year her second year on the job.

Alison remembered names and birthdays. She kept in touch with former professors. She'd sweet-talked their old landlady into replacing the ancient orange carpet and negotiated an extra fifteen hundred off their Camry. She could change a flat tire and check her own oil. His wife. In certain lights, she literally made him short of breath.

A petty smallness within him triumphed. For once, he was better at something than Alison. He was better at mourning Timothy.

He almost said it, but there are things you can't take back.

Alison knew that, she had to. She was always so careful with her words. Still, she could be ruthless. Still, she forged ahead. “I'm supposed to be mothering a baby,” she said, and her arms cradled air. “Not someone who acts like one.” Seth left without a word. Halfway to the elevator he heard her chair squeak. It was all too stupid to even be a metaphor.

I
N THE DIVVYING OF THEIR
possessions, Veronica had wound up with the Thales' aging Mr. Coffee. Ben, as if to insure against a solitary life of single cups, had acquired what his son and daughter-in-law called the Chrome Monstrosity: an Italian-made coffee and espresso machine with built-in tamper, grinder, and steamer. The Monstrosity could drip twelve cups of coffee at a go. It could spit out hot water for tea, could froth up proper lattes at the press of a button, and, for all he knew, had the power to retroactively regulate those bastards at Lehman. He topped off his mug and sponged the Monstrosity down; the auto-clean setting, alas, applied only to internal components. Across the way, Sadie Birnam came out of her house. Ben blew into his cup and sipped. Sadie had a neat, deliberate walk. She passed the foot of her drive, and Ben felt the shy, seeping spread of bashfulness. She usually just collected the paper, her scoop and pivot married in seamless motion. He wasn't, thank goodness, a blusher, but he felt a flutter of heat. He knew her morning postures. He'd been watching for weeks now without really thinking about it. She was in the middle of the street and coming closer. Chin up, eyes fixed as if to return the cumulative weight of his gazes.

His house felt like it was built entirely of windows.

Sadie reached his lawn and cut across mown grass. He opened the door. No sense pretending he didn't know she was coming. A quick breath, hers, and too-bright, high-pitched
hello,
his.

Yesterday's declaration snaked bald between them.

They said good morning. The greetings were just off of simultaneous.

“I made coffee.” He raised the mug. On it, bold letters warned: Don't Mess with Veterinarians. They Know How to Neuter. It could've been worse. He had another that said Save a Horse, Mount a Vet. Both had been gifts from Stephen. “Can I interest you?” he asked, and the question hung there, more layered than he'd intended.

“Smells great, but no. I, ah—”

“Do you want to come in?”

“No, Ben. I, um—I guess I should check. Are you feeling all right?”

“Yeah. I'm fine.” There was something at play here that he didn't quite get. Something too intentional in her bearing. He asked, “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Okay, well. The thing is. I saw your interview online.”

He saw the granddaughter in her then, mercurial and sullen. “Ahh, yes. I guess you were bound to.”

“It wasn't for kicks, Ben. I wouldn't have bothered, only—it did a number on Lily. She's under my roof. I had to see what upset her. And, well. I'll tell you. It was quite a—”

“Disaster.” He was glad Sadie had not come in; he felt a fool to have even offered.

A patrician smile. “I was going to say performance. But yes. You have a mouth on you.”

“Not generally.”

“I was shocked, hearing you like that. It was shocking.”

“I never talk that way. I don't think I'd said that word before in my life.”

“I don't do offended, Ben, but that was ugly.” Above them, the sky was the irresolute blue of early morning. Sadie's eyes were bluer by far. Ben felt a cottony pang for the boy he'd been, who'd have felt a drunken, romantic pulse at that, who hadn't seen enough of eyes and skies to know that sometimes that was just the way they looked.

He said, “You don't have to tell me that.”

“I do. If I—”

“No, you don't.” The hazy boy he'd been would've simply apologized.

“It'd be
there
otherwise,” Sadie said. “Every time we talked. Ugly and there. I didn't want that.”

“So, what now? You going to run me down with a golf cart?”

“That was ugly, too. You know that Lily never meant—”

“You know what? I
feel
ugly.” He shifted a little to bar the threshold she'd made no motion toward crossing. His home. There was a sectional in the living room he'd bought because it looked like the one he'd bought with Veronica. The kitchen cabinets were crammed with dishes he and Ronnie had registered for way back when. Keep the lot of it, his ex had said, and Ben reckoned her post-paperwork restocking was propping up the economy's homegoods sector. “I feel
damn
ugly,” he said. “You come to my house to tell me—”

“I told you, and now it's . . .” Sadie exhaled and spread her fingers wide, as if to pantomime dandelion spores on the wind.

“No, now it's
here
.” He motioned at the space between them, where, for the moment, no tender thing unfurled. “And you know what else? Inviting yourself over to tell me off wasn't the prettiest maneuver on your part.”

“Well, then. Sir. I humbly take my leave.” Sadie gave a low, elaborate bow. Even Veronica seldom achieved that level of baroque bitchiness. So perhaps this was the alleged wisdom of age: You got a faster, firmer sense of how the people in your life would make you crazy. Sadie was blunt. She could pat her back and dress it up as virtue. Package and rebrand it as forthrightness. It didn't matter what she called it. He still felt bulldozed.

“I had my reasons, you know. For saying all that.”

She pufferfished her cheeks and sighed. Ben braced. With Veronica, sighs were the stepping stones to screaming. “I know,” Sadie said. “I figured. Your daughter.”

He didn't want to admit she was right. He didn't like how obvious that made him.

Sadie asked, “Why didn't you mention
her
?”

“My son said the same thing.” He should have led with Tara, no matter the girls he had memorized alphabetically. It was a simple, basic, human rule: family first.

“Stephen?”

“Yeah. Stephen. I don't have a secret third.”

She gave him a wry look, freighted with all he'd withheld. She said, “He seems like a lovely young man.”

“He is. His wife's lovely, too.”

She nodded. They weren't fighting anymore, somehow. A release of tension from his limbs, followed by the quick flare of something like disappointment. Then exhaustion. If this—whatever
this
was—was ever going to happen, there was a whole language he had yet to learn. Sighs meant something else when Sadie sighed them.

He felt like sighing himself. “About Tara. I guess—we tried to be private about it. As a family. Old habits.” It was out there, of course. They'd had to ask everyone they knew. Presumably the cops had too, and thereafter, Rand Danovic.

Sadie said, “I'd have told everyone. On the off-chance—sorry. I don't mean to second-guess you.” She fiddled with a loose lock of her hair, rolling the ends between thumb and forefinger. How was that for a language lesson? This was Sadie ill at ease. She realized it and stopped. When you got to be their age, you knew your own tells. She looked at him, earnest as a proselytizer. “I'm sure—I
know
—you did everything you could think of.” Chicago glinted between them. The sun on Lake Michigan the day he flew home, ribs still knitting back together, bruises still mottled, his slurry mind straining for the blacked-out days that would never be returned to him.

He said, “You can always do more.”

“Ben.” She sounded like Veronica, though Veronica would've said Benji. In the ICU and after, Ronnie had harped. Absurd. If there was any one thing that did them in. The borders of his bruises grew indistinct and vanished. His sutures dissolved, leaving behind the fine white vein of a scar. Months passed and then one day he found he could breathe without pain. And still Veronica wanted to talk about it, the way she never had with Tara. On and on. To everyone they knew. To the goddamn world and his dog.

“You can always do more,” he repeated. “Always. We did what we could, but . . . Veronica thought—we thought—that the quieter we were about it, the easier it would be for Tara to slot back into place. You know, when she came back.” They'd kept her room in stasis. Tara's closet brimmed with clothes so far out of date they'd be on trend again any day now.

“I guess I can see that.” Sadie felt sorry for him. He could tell by the line of her jaw, soft, but strangely eager. Another reason he didn't talk much about Tara. Once you shared, people expected you to keep sharing. The same way he'd thought, gawking at girls way back when, that as soon as you got the first one to lie down with you, the rest of your life would be hot and cold running sex.

He swallowed a lukewarm mouthful of coffee. “After a while it was habit. Not talking about her. Habit. So don't tell me we did everything we could.”

“I never meant to imply—”

“And then it was more than habit. You get so damn tired. It's lousy being that sad, crazy couple everyone avoids at parties.”

“Of course you're sad.”

“Yeah. But after a year or so, nobody wants to hear it.”

“Oh, Ben. I can't imagine that's true.”

A bitter flash at her prim piousness. “Sure,” he said, “and folks are lining up these days to talk about Gary.”

“Huh. You really go for the jugular. I wouldn't have guessed.” Her face betrayed no emotion; it hadn't at Gary's funeral either. She simply touched her neck, right where the vein was.

He said, “You get mad. You can't help it. Seeing how the world trucks along. Hence my . . . disaster.”

“Performance.” She softened a little. “Those girls you mentioned. Mimi, Tenana—”

“Tenaya. Tenaya Alder. Mimi Asencios. Christy Aves. Lisa Balish. There are lists out there. Whole databases. Like I told that reporter. No one gives a damn. Meghan Bagnall. Renee Bench.”

“You memorized them all?”

“No. You'd need to be a supercomputer. These are the ones who went missing right about when Tara did. All the girls her age. Noelle Cabley. Sarai Cabotaje. I'm never sure if I'm pronouncing that one right.” He shut his eyes. “I used to run through the names before I fell asleep. All the way to Gabby Vullo.”

“Like counting sheep.” Once again, he'd missed the pivot point of their return to civil conversation.

“No,” he said. “Like prayer. Like when you were a little kid and you felt—I don't know—comforted?—kneeling down before bed.”

“Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep.” Sadie's voice was singsong. There was motion in the Birnam house, Lily ricocheting through her morning. He hoped Sadie would notice, then skedaddle. He hoped Sadie wouldn't, and stay.

“Right. Like that. But real. Instead of what you did there, rattling off words. It felt like—I know it's silly but—if I was thinking of these kids, maybe someone out there was thinking about Tara. And that made her more real. It meant Ronnie and I weren't alone.”

“Ronnie?”

“Veronica, sorry. She thought I was nuts.”

“Do you still do it?”

“I don't. I haven't since—I can't recall. Maybe I should start again.”

“It's been getting a lot of attention. Your”—Sadie didn't wink, but her eyebrow quirked—“performance.”