You Could Be Home by Now (7 page)

A moment or two passed. The reporter cottoned on to the fact that Mona wasn't answering. She had the cameraman set up on the Rosko lawn, which probably was in direct violation of a strident clause or two of the HOA. Marvin and Ed loped over to brownnose. The reporter was gracious with her handshakes. Ben wondered how long it would take for her to do her thing and get gone.

Then the quick glint of light on glass. Mona Rosko, opening her door. She had a large hammer slung over one shoulder and a sign of some sort rucked up under the opposite arm. Long pants and what looked like a denim work shirt, the last thing you'd want in this heat. She moved with a startling, cool fluidity. An Arizona lifer, so who knew. Maybe heat actually worked the way idiots said heartache did: Live with it long enough and whole days can pass without it registering. Mona stood a moment beside her door, gathering herself and their attention. She stepped out to the center of her lawn.

Her stance had him very aware that she was holding a hammer.

Her stance had him wondering what it was for.

She hefted it higher. The camera, he thought. A rush of childlike glee. One hit and it's a splintered assemblage of wire and casing. But no. Mona busied herself with the sign. A simple, red For Sale sign, the kind you saw in neighborhoods where such
departures from our shared Southwestern aesthetic
weren't prohibited by the Flamingo Police. Mona swung hard. There was thunder in her shoulders. Ben thought, for the first time in ages, of those yellowing pinups he'd found taped to the underside of his father's workbench. Tame things, even back in the day, big-busted dames with toolboxes and lug wrenches, Rosie the Riveters with legs. Those girls were pretty where Mona wasn't, tarted up where she wasn't, but as far as specimens went, his neighbor was the more impressive, beautiful in her hardworking context instead of simpering along beside it. She checked the sign over to make sure it was even, stood a grim moment with her hands at her hips, pivoted abruptly, and went back into her house.

She never spoke a word.

Everyone on Mona's lawn began scurrying at once, as if they'd been wound with a key. Marvin and Ed gestured furiously in his direction, and Ben let himself out into the street.

“Ben! Over here!” Ed Runch waved as though hailing a Manhattan cab. You can take the man out of the city and so on. Ed told the reporter, “Here's the guy you'll want to see.”

The reporter had blunt blonde hair and several inches on most of the surrounding men. She walked his way. The cameraman followed as if tethered. Marvin and Ed, too. A bunch of damn ducklings. Ben forced his face into a cracked plate of a smile. Don't blame the press, Veronica always said. If it weren't Tara, would
you
be interested?

And that was Veronica, resolute and practical, except when she wasn't. Between Olympics, she had a friend over at Nike, someone she knew from the Women in Business Council, collect tapes of figure skating that didn't air on U.S. television. Whole weekends passed freeze-frame by freeze-frame, Ronnie scanning the faces in the crowd. When she was small, Tara had loved the sport. His wife wore contacts for the workweek and glasses on the weekends. The screen reflected in her lenses, and he wondered if she actually believed they had a chance of spying her, easy as that, cheering from a stadium in Barcelona.

“Did you
see
that?” Ed asked. “How's that for drumming up interest? This guy caught it all.” He jerked a thumb toward the cameraman, then ran a hand through his hair. He still had plenty. “House'll sell now. Like they say. Silence. It's golden.” He said it like a slogan. Ed used to be in advertising.

“This is Emmy,” said Marvin, his voice cutting high across Ed's. “You know, like the award? Feel like helping her get one?”

“Emily Rourke.” The woman extended her hand. The coloring was off—too fair—but she had the same careful, Gallic prettiness as Veronica and that caught him right in the throat.

“I know Mona a little, if that's what you're asking.”

“Would you be willing to talk with me a bit?” Emily Rourke made it sound like she was asking for just that, a chat. No clip-on microphone, no signed releases. None of whatever else media attention entailed. She leaned in, smiling, and he—because you never get over being a sucker, never get over that hindbrain—was glad he was taller than both Marvin and Ed.

“Be sure to film in black and white,” said Marvin. “Get a load of those pants.”

Ben looked down. Your standard-issue garish golf pants, a Christmas gift from Veronica. Every year post-divorce, she sent him a new pair. Because she made a joke of the holiday, Ben did too. He sent umbrellas, knowing damn well that in Portland only out-of-towners used them.

Ed chuckled. “We told you he was a funny guy. Hey, Ben, tell us again what brought you to The Commons.”

Emily Rourke beamed, an on-purpose expression that worked on him despite the fact that he
knew
it was working on him. “The pants are fine,” she said. “I think that's the plaid they use for my stepdaughter's school uniform.”

“I'm not sure I'd be much use to you. Mona's my neighbor, that's all.”

“We'll just talk. Casual as can be, okay?”

Casual as a person could be with a microphone threaded up his back. Ed and Marvin stood off to the side. Ben couldn't think of a thing to say. Look at me and not the camera, Emily instructed. That should've been easy—decades of Ronnie bristling when he looked at pretty women and here was license to do exactly that—but it wasn't. He saw the camera. He saw the guys. The things his ex would say about the whole scenario. Benji, you do know you're only going along with this because those two goons wish they could, don't you? Christ. You'd think with the divorce finalized he could get her voice out of his head. The interview started with him stating and spelling his name.

“Tell me a little about your life here at The Commons.”

Golf and tennis sounded so frivolous in list form. He must have said
um
twenty times in the space of two sentences. “I used to be a veterinarian,” he added, because he needed gravity from somewhere, “up in Portland. I did a lot of pro bono work with service animals.”

“And what brings you to The Commons?”

If Marvin and Ed hadn't been right there, beyond the camera he wasn't supposed to be looking at, it never would have slipped out. That stupid joke they liked so much. “Well, I'm newly divorced. And without my ex, I need the HOA to tell me what to do.”

Emily Rourke would never get far without work on her poker face, but he wasn't her father and he wasn't going to lecture. She recovered well, which was something. “Have you found the Homeowners' Association intrusive?”

“That was a joke. Not even a very good one. I hope you won't use it.”

“You're doing fine. Can you talk a bit about the HOA? All those rules . . .”

“Everyone jokes about it.”

“Why?”

“Like you said. All those rules. It's funny.”

“Funny how?”

“Because it comes down to have a little taste, don't be stupid, and don't be rude.”

“Do you think that applies to the Rosko situation?”

“Look, I said I don't know Mona all that well.”

“You're doing great,” Emily repeated. The more she said it, the more he knew he wasn't.

“I'm sorry. I know this isn't going well.”

“How has Mona Rosko been as a neighbor?” The cameraman stepped back. He at least knew a dud when he saw one.

“Quiet. Nice enough, I suppose. People are always having barbecues and things like that, but she doesn't show up all that much.” He sounded like every neighbor, ever, describing every serial killer, ever, on the news. At least he knew better than to express that particular thought. “That makes sense now, knowing about her grandson. It's a pretty big secret to keep.”

“And how do you feel about that?”

“Bad luck all around. For the kid that he doesn't have anyone else, at least if what you lot are saying is true. For Mona, too, stuck until her place sells. I don't know what they're going to do.”

“What about personally? How do you feel about this? As a neighbor or as a—do you have grandchildren?”

“No.” A sore twang beneath his breastbone: the truer answer was none that he knew of. “No,” he said again, because you didn't admit that you had no earthly idea to a stranger. You didn't cop to the daydream: Tara and some kindly boy in a shelter—not something crueler, and not something she did to survive—the shock of it waking them to responsibility, to her parents at the ready to help them along.

“Okay then,” said Emily. “Thank you for your time.”

“Wait,” Ben said. Mona Rosko had them all fawning to help her, a full cast of marionettes. And then not a peep. There was pride, he got that, had plenty of it, had allowed it to make a mess of him time and again. There was pride, and then there was the sweat and dirt of the world they actually lived in. Time was, he and Veronica would have liquidated their portfolios if it could have bought this kind of attention. And Mona flounced off. “Wait, please.” Tara was gone, probably forever. Rand said so. Veronica, drunk, once even said the words aloud. But if she was out there, she might be near a TV. Tara might see him. It wasn't likely, but it was likelier than Barcelona. “I have something to say.” Ben shut his eyes and thought of a newsreel bomb falling in black and white. The bigger the blast the wider its radius.

The cameraman stepped closer.

Emily Rourke nodded for him to continue. His mind went kaleidoscopic with everything he should have said in his life but hadn't.

Marvin and Ed paid no attention at all.

Ben wasn't nervous. A debate scholarship had helped put him through college and his ex said he was the only man alive who actually thought in bullet points. He took a breath and looked straight at the camera.

“That Mona Rosko is a vinegary old cunt.”

I
T WAS WAY TOO EARLY
for SAT words, so when Gran said, “I believe you have a swain,” the best Lily could manage was a slurred
huh?
and a series of thick blinks.

“That young man.” Gran indicated the window. “I doubt he's here for me.” Her weird accent was back and she brought a hand theatrically to her heart. “Clearly smitten. He must've spotted you from afar.” If Mom ever spied a lingerer she'd be dialing nine-one-one and saying stalker. Dad, too. The parentals had some highly detailed theories about what happened to little girls who played on the Internet.

Lily said, “If he's here for me and he's a he, he's out of luck.”

“Poor fellow.” Gran tapped the window. Sure enough, the guy stood smack in the middle of the street like an out-of-uniform traffic cop. And not just any guy. Rocky. Rocky Ludlow. Sierra's Rocky. Holy Little Black Dress.

“I know him,” Lily said, running scenarios, all of which hovered around the Gouda level of extreme cheese. A pregnancy test, positive, Sierra's. They were en route to elope and wanted her as witness. A pregnancy test, positive, not Sierra's. He needed her to intercede before Sierra castrated him with a melon spoon.

“Oh?”

“From school. I'm going to see what's going on.”

“Let him down easy.” Gran winked. If plotted on a graph, her swoony silliness would peak each morning before her walk with the per-vet. They'd watched him on the news last night. Some brief per-vet platitude about being sorry for Mona Rosko. Then the lady herself, large and stern. She hadn't been ugly though; her stillness transformed her. Her silence, too. The way she'd crossed the lawn. She'd worn beat-up sneakers, but she moved like a bride. The hammer split the air and Lily felt all flutter and gauze in the face of the woman's
I am.
Gran didn't get it. She wondered why they'd only used a few seconds of Ben. There needed to be a verb. Crushversate: to obsessively bring up one's crush in conversation.

Of course Gran thought Rocky had come a'courtin'. Her whole mind was wired that way.
Let him down easy.
Har-dee-har. “Things aren't always about that,” Lily said. Her parents' friends always teased her about dating, like talking romance was the accepted shorthand for acknowledging she wasn't a kid anymore without having to actually engage. In the street, Rocky bounced foot to foot. Trust the Rockster to get himself the thousand miles to Arizona and then forget her grandmother's address.

“Things aren't always about what?” Gran asked.

“Love.” Lily made a sour-milk face and wondered if Grandpa would have started crushing so soon if Gran had died first.

“I know. But wouldn't it be better if they were?”

Lily was spectacularly unqualified to say. Her one kiss had been a disaster. She went out into the morning bright. Rocky's head whipped around. His features resolved: almost Rocky, but not quite. The mouth was broader, and arranged into an expression of completely un-Rockified pensiveness. He waved, which if Lily were ever crowned Queen of the Universe, was a gesture she'd ban about twelve seconds into her reign. There was always that moment of social panic: how to be one-hundred-percent sure you're the intended recipient. She didn't wave back. For all she knew, the guy had a dandruff problem and was raising his hand to scratch. Rocky II came sprinting over. “Hey, check it out. That's my paper!”

“No way. It's my gran's.” Aside from his mouth, the resemblance to Rocky I was terrifying: the hair, the chin, the slightly crooked nose. The absent-from-kindergarten-the-day-they-taught-sharing impulse to waltz on up and say
mine
.

Rocky II laughed. It made his Adam's apple prominent. “Yeah, sorry. I meant that's the paper I work for. Nicky Tullbeck,” He extended his hand like a mayoral candidate.

“My grandmother said you were lurking.”