You Could Be Home by Now (19 page)

It was the combination of words that did it. First Sierra, then Gran. Lily was destined for a lifetime of getting ditched for some skeezy possessor of a ding-diddle-dong. Her nails clicked against an eggshell's white-blue curve. She wasn't going to cry two times in as many days. She said it simply. “I lied.”

“Yes, Lily. I deduced that. Saint Louis University, remember?” Gran tapped her head in imitation of Nicky.

“I wanted him to feel bad.” Right now, she wanted that for everybody. “He was being creepy.”

“How?” Gran waited.

Lily talked with her hands more than she realized. She was completely inarticulate now that they were full of eggs. Mom would never ask how. Mom's general preoccupation with the many ways
Internet
and
pedophile
were predestined to intersect made
creepy
the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card. “You really wouldn't get it.” Gran liked Ben. Her sketch meter wasn't calibrated right.

“I probably wouldn't. I'm notoriously unsympathetic. Christ, Lily. I live here. I'll still be living here once you leave. What goes on in your head?”

That things were better yesterday. That an astounding number of things rhymed with
cunt
.

“And now we're going to have to deal with that woman again. Let her know you've loosed a reporter. It doesn't feel good to be blindsided. I'll tell you. It does not.”

“He's only an intern.” Lily wanted to crunch the egg in her hand. First the pop and then the splintering, then the bright ooze of yolk out her fingers. A measuring look from Gran said: I know your makeup entirely. Two-thirds water, one-third viscous fuckupitude.

Lily said, “I should apologize.”

“To Benjamin, too.”

A door-to-door campaign. Let the trumpets sound.

“Everyone will be at the HOA meeting. We can catch them there. Them and anyone else you manage to piss off.” An electronic beep punctuated the words. Gran had left the refrigerator door ajar too long. She banged it shut with a quick jut of her hip. A clock once hung on the wall of Gran's St. Louis kitchen, its face sunk into the round belly of a happy sculpted chef. She must have left it behind when she moved. The clocks here were digital and the silence between Lily and Gran was itchy for want of that old-fashioned
tock
and
tick
. Gran sighed. She fidgeted with the tuck of her blouse. “I said some terrible things,” she said, and laughter escaped, brief and blunt as a bottle uncorking. “I can't believe I said those things to you.” She shook her head. Her earrings jangled and there was laughter in that sound, too, silvery and gentle. “Your grandpa and I always fought fair. You say what's upset you. You say why. Then it's done.” She made a fist and slapped it into her open palm. “Angels and orifices. Too many people don't know how to fight fair.”

“I didn't hit him on purpose. Ben. Mr. Thales.”

Gran nodded, the earring chime a cue that Lily could set down the eggs. She lined them end to end, careful, as if they were irreplaceable.

“Benjamin lost his daughter at your age. I just found out. He doesn't like to talk about it. She was troubled; then she up and left and he never saw her again.” Another head shake, the earrings' melody out of place now. “I can't believe I said those things to you.”

Brainflash: the per-vet had better reason than basement bodies for the encyclopedic mess he'd made of himself on TV. For his freakish take on twenty questions: do you ever hitchhike? Have you studied self-defense? Today's special chez Commons: a plate of pan-seared context. Benjamin Thales was sad.

Brainflash squared: Gran liked him
because
he was sad.

It was a thought too intimate to lend voice to. Instead: “Gran. I'm not going to run away because we're in a fight. I'm not that big an idiot.” One egg nested in her grandmother's hand. Lily picked up another. She hoped so hard it felt like prayer: Let the eggs be the reason they didn't touch, not the ugly things that hung between them. Gran returned her egg to the carton. Lily handed her a second and then a third. She reached for a fourth. She cast her mind forward to the HOA meeting and then to the guest room down the hall and along the row of hanging blouses for the neckline best suited to penitence.

W
HEN MIDNIGHT CAME, AND THEN
one, and Ali still wasn't home, Seth pinched a dose of the Ambien she never used and went to bed angry. He wasn't supposed to do that; just ask half the people who'd offered that chestnut, unsolicited, at his wedding. Yet the world still spun on its axis. He woke hours later to a soft headache and blanched light. There was soap in the soap dish now. There was no hair in the drain. His skin looked mottled and the inside of his mouth felt foul and plush. He was glad he'd taken the Ambien. He could blame the back-bottle list of side effects that he hadn't bothered to read. He didn't have to be the kind of man who felt physically wrecked because he'd fought with his wife.

The shuttle took a circuitous route and he was late to work. Main Street was closed to all but foot traffic as workers set up for Founder's Day. Aside from a Post-it that said Nicky Tullbeck was out firming up sources, Seth's desk was empty. He had no pressing matters to attend to. He was not usually a breakfast person but felt inexplicably ravenous. He ate the salad he'd brought from home and someone's lemon yogurt from the staff fridge. He heated water for the Top Ramen he kept in his desk for emergencies. His tongue felt corroded from the salt, and he longed for the orange that had been on Alison's desk. He took an early lunch break and dawdled over his burger. Back at the office he won several games of FreeCell. Out his window, the festival stage went up. A parade of golf carts were turned away from Main Street and puttered off in search of parking. Carnival booths unfolded. Three o'clock and he was hungry again. Plenty of time to grab an iced coffee and apple hand pie before the HOA meeting. He walked to the café. He walked back to the Hacienda Central, brushing crumbs from his hands. He hated that building. He'd hated it a long while now. He hated its clock tower and its terra cotta roof, hated every turquoise and buff tile in its mosaic window borders and the way the foyer had the hushed, echoing quality of a capitol rotunda. He passed a couple reading the plaque Alison had put up, commemorating the 2008 restoration of the building's original Mission-style details. It was the size and shape of a small gravestone and implied rather than explicitly stated that the building had been around long enough warrant such attention. He wanted to remind the couple that Hoagland Lobel broke ground on the place in April 2005. That or tell them how much of their HOA dues were going toward Alison's eBay price war over the 1906 cornerstone from some failed Kansas savings and loan. Lobel's contractor claimed it would be a piece of piss to fit the block neatly into the overall façade, making it look as if the building had been around that long.

No wonder Alison had made their life look sunny-sweet online. It was bound to come easy to her. His wife, the professional liar. His innards puckered. The man at the plaque slung an affectionate arm around his companion and Seth wanted to tear it from its socket. He followed the couple into the meeting room. His guts resettled when the pair no longer touched.

The meeting room was crowded, row after row of folding chairs, a wheeled cart of sound equipment, and a speaker's podium that bore The Commons' logo. All the men had the same haircut and everyone held cardboard cups of coffee. A table along the back displayed a carafe each of decaf and regular and a picked-over catering tray, more doilies now than pastries. Residents chattered, one voice layering over another. If it weren't for the occasional word he caught—
polyps, grandbaby, par five
—it could have been the din of a North Chettenford assembly. All the gunk he'd stuffed his stomach with congealed. Up toward the front, that man, Something Stouser, who'd made all that fuss when the
Crier
misspelled his grandkid's name, waved him over. Seth made his face affable, stepped forward, and tried his damnedest to think of a pleasant thing to say that was unconnected to the baby.

Then the world went black. Cool hands covered his eyes. The word
hiya
crooned low and lulling in his ear. His wife's voice, only Alison was in a towering fury and had never said
hiya
before in her life. He shrugged off the hands and there she was, shorn and smiling sweetly.

Stouser shook some other spry fellow's hand and sat. He hadn't been waving at Seth at all.

Alison darted forward to peck Seth's cheek, which didn't make any sense.

Maybe it was the Ambien. People sleepwalked under its influence. They drove across whole towns and cleared out their refrigerators without knowing it. Maybe he'd gotten down on his knees last night for Alison. Maybe he'd quoted Neruda at length.

Ali took his hand and rolled lightly onto the balls of her feet. She wore the suit she'd interviewed in. A single, wheat-colored strand of long hair clung to her sleeve. It would be years before her hair grew to that length again. She swung his hand in hers back and forth. That chip of a diamond he'd saved for threw back the light. For the cost of that glint, they could've bought plane tickets anywhere. He said
hiya
back. It made about as much sense as anything. This was a lotto ticket of a moment, an unearned, colossal win. Because this wasn't how Ali did kiss and make up. Alison didn't do cutesy and she didn't do slippery nonapologies either. When she had something to say, Alison said it.

And how.

It's
so
hard, finding new ways to make an ass of yourself.

I'm supposed to be mothering a baby. Not someone who acts like one.

Seth wrested his hand away. Alison reclaimed it and her smile broadened, taut as a tightrope. There was something wrong with her eyes. They darted minnow-like to the door. And there stood Hoagland Lobel. “Hoagie loved my presentation,” Alison said. “He gave me a lift home and back so that I could freshen up for it.”

“Gotcha,” Seth said, because he did. They were to pretend in front of the boss because God forbid Alison feel embarrassed. He kissed her forehead because he was in Lobel's line of sight. He kissed her forehead because as a general rule she didn't like that. It was patronizing, she said, and it made her feel short.

Lobel worked his way across the room. He knew everyone's name. He had a vigorous handshake, full pump, but took tiny, mincing steps. He reached the Colliers. “Seth!” It came out sounding more like a nickname than a proper one, something he'd call a favored nephew, like Bucko or Sport. “I liked your piece this morning. Figure it should just about clear this nonsense up.” He said morning
marnin'
. He flashed a toothy beam.

“Thanks,” Seth said. He looked at Alison, chic and compact. She still had no idea what he'd done. It had taken all of twenty minutes to bang out a thousand words on Lobel's glitch. He'd worked in a quote from the man himself, some fabricated puff about being sorry for Mona Rosko's inconvenience; Seth was in suck-up mode and had the sense Lobel got a kick out of seeing his name in print. Lobel clapped a hand on Seth's back and Seth tried not to visibly recoil. He squeezed Alison's hand, harder than he knew was comfortable. He kissed her forehead again.

“The golden couple,” Lobel said. “Between the two of you, this mess will blow right over. The missus tell you why she's here?”

Ali hated that brand of reductive naming: the missus, the little lady, the ball-and-chain. She hated it, but no one would ever guess that from her face. Seth draped an arm around her shoulder. Her body radiated unexpected cool, though it was well over a hundred degrees outside.

The woman was immune to everything.

“Not a word. What's up, Ali cat?” They didn't really do pet names and Alison loathed that one in particular.

Lobel answered on her behalf. No way in hell would Ali-of-old have stood for that. “We're announcing the name change to Adahstown at the start of the meeting.” That
we
. They sounded like a couple.

“Adahstown or Adahstowne-with-an-e?” Seth asked.

“Plain old Adahstown.” Lobel said. “Last-minute decision.”

Ali said, “We couldn't decide. Hoagie flipped a coin.” Again with the Hoagie and the first person plural. See if he cared. She could pack her bags and Lobel's too and run off to Gibraltar.

Only Alison was crap at packing. He was always the one who organized their suitcases. Well, fine then. Let them get to Gibraltar and discover they had no clean socks.

His life would be simpler, anyhow. He slipped behind Alison and began to rub her shoulders. “You're tense,” he said.

“Public speaking. You know me.” He did. Her case of nerves was roughly as genuine as the Hacienda's Mission-style details. Lobel probably thought it was charming.

“Imagine them in their underwear,” he said. She really did have a knot in her shoulders; that much at least was true. He worked it, hard and round as a coin beneath her skin. He pressed and she winced. Another response that was actually real.

“That hurts.” She wriggled away. “Seth, enough.”

“Sorry. Just trying to help.”

Lobel sauntered to the front of the room; everyone stilled. “I know most of you folks are here to talk current events, but I got a big announcement first. Was saving it up for Founder's Day, but I never could keep a secret. Some of you may know Ali here, our town historian. Well, this special lady's come to talk about another special lady. And you heard it here first. We're renaming our town for her.” He held a hand out for Seth's wife. Before she could step away from him, Seth gave her shoulder another squeeze. Gentle this time, with all the tenderness he could muster. She managed a smile that was credibly sweet. He did his best to mirror it. Why not? It could turn true if they kept pretending.