This Is Home

by Lisa Duffy

  “I’m not really a bad driver,” I tell her, pressing the buttons for our windows to go down and breathing in when the fresh air fills the stuffy car. “Desiree’s an awful teacher—sort of like a psycho drill sergeant—and she’s mad that I won’t do any of my supervised drives with her anymore. I won’t kill us, I promise.”

  “You won’t hear any complaints from me. I feel awful that I screwed up your day.”

  “Leaving thirty-three kids at a birthday party isn’t screwing up my day. Desiree’s, maybe. Your boss is waiting to talk to her about how to clean the bowling balls.”

  Quinn groans. “She’s got a big heart. It’s just hard to see sometimes under all the other stuff.”

  “You could be describing Desiree,” I tell her, and she smiles briefly before she breathes in and closes her eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Libby. Do you mind if we don’t talk? I’m trying to figure out if I’m having cramps or it’s just my mind messing with me, and I need to concentrate.”

  “Yeah, sure. We’re almost there.”

  We drive in silence the rest of the way to the clinic. When I pull up at the front door, I tell her that I’ll be right in after I park, but she says not to wait—that she’ll call a cab to get home. But I drive around the block anyway and find a spot on the next street over.

  Inside the waiting area, the receptionist tells me to have a seat—that she has no idea how long it will be.

  The waiting room is empty aside from an older man in the far corner, his chin resting on his chest and his eyes closed. I sit in the row of seats by the window and check my phone, wondering how Desiree is doing with the roomful of kids.

  There’s a bunch of messages from Katie—a selfie of her and Erin in bathing suits on the deck at Katie’s beach house, followed by a series of messages demanding to know why I’m not there. Like, NOW!

  Next time, I text back.

  Even though I know it’s a lie.

  Her summer cottage down the Cape is great—walking distance to the beach, a pool in the backyard. But I can’t be in the house without thinking of the night I found out Bent was hurt, maybe even dead, when he was deployed.

  Years have passed, but the smell of that house—the very air inside of it—brings me back to that night.

  Katie’s room has changed—even the bed where we were sitting is different: a twin replaced with a queen—but when I’m in her bedroom, my body tenses, my heart pounds, as though I’m waiting for the door to creak open, for Katie’s mom’s face to appear in the small sliver of doorway.

  If I close my eyes, I can hear her voice, feel the walls closing in around me.

  Libby, she’d said, and paused, her expression making my breath catch in my throat. I knew before the words came out of her mouth that it was Bent.

  Even before Katie’s mother sat on the bed, folded me in her arms and said things like bomb and explosion and surgery.

  Before Katie gripped my wrist so tight, I thought it might snap while her mother spoke in a soft, reassuring voice about how strong my father was and how she knew he’d fight to come home to me.

  It was Lucy who’d called Katie’s mother and asked her to tell me. Lucy who dropped everything and got in her car to come get me. Lucy who made sure I heard about the explosion first from an actual person, before I might hear about it on the news.

  No one could find my mother. She’d dropped me off at Katie’s house earlier that week and kept driving. She didn’t think to let anyone know where she was—that someone might need to get in touch if something happened to her husband. Or her daughter.

  I prayed that night. Made deals with God that I had no right to make. Take her instead, I remember thinking, and then felt awful for it.

  When I look back on it, I try to forgive myself. I was just a kid—angry and hurt that my mother wasn’t there when I needed her. That she was never there when I needed her.

  But even now, all these years later, with my mother gone and Bent alive—if I’m honest, I’d make that same deal.

  I’d make it every minute of every hour of every day.

   10

  Quinn

  She’s parked on a tree-lined street across town in the wealthier section of Paradise. Quinn’s familiar with the area—Madeline lives two blocks away—but she hasn’t been on this street in years. Not since the summer after high school.

  John’s childhood home looms in front of her. A white sprawling house with large columns and a manicured lawn so meticulous, it could be a painting.

  The FOR SALE sign on the lawn has been updated to SOLD, and Quinn wonders why John’s mother has asked her here. Quinn hadn’t even known Susan was back from Florida until she’d called that morning and asked her to stop by. Quinn had been exhausted, her body tired from sleeping poorly and her mind numb since yesterday.

  The hours she’d spent in the clinic swirled in her head. The only moment she could clearly remember was the picture of a heartbeat on the ultrasound screen. The sound of the doctor telling her not to worry—the bleeding wasn’t uncommon; her levels were normal, and the baby looked just fine.

  Still—she finds herself moving more carefully today, and she wouldn’t have come at all if Susan hadn’t practically begged her.

  Please, she’d said to Quinn on the phone. For John.

  Now Quinn gets out of the car, walks to the door, and presses her finger to the doorbell. She listens to the chime, and a minute later, Susan opens the door.

  She’s a tiny woman—blond and polished and nearly wrinkle-free, even though she’s in her early sixties, perhaps older.

  One of the perks, John used to say about his mother’s marriage to his stepfather, a prominent cosmetic surgeon. He’d say it with a smile, make a joke of his mother’s artificially plump lips and taut skin, but there was an edge to his voice that didn’t match his expression.

  “Quinn,” Susan says now. “It’s been a while.”

  “Yes,” Quinn agrees, not sure how to respond—she can count on one hand the number of times they’ve talked in the past few years. She might not even need all five fingers.

  Susan looks rested, serene, but she’s fidgeting nervously with her bracelets, and Quinn wonders how much of her placid expression came from a vial of Botox.

  Susan gestures for her to come in, and Quinn follows her down a long hallway to the kitchen.

  The rooms are empty, the walls bare, and their footsteps echo in the immense hallway. A spiral staircase winds through the middle of the house, and she glances up at John’s old room.

  She always felt out of place in this house, with its lavish drapes and expensive rugs, not a single thing out of place—so different from her house across town with books piled on every surface and the same faded curtains covering the windows year after year.

  Finger sandwiches are on a plate on the table, a large pitcher of lemon water next to it. Susan offers her both. Quinn declines, says she’s already had lunch and she’s in a rush. Truthfully, she doesn’t want to be here any longer than necessary.

  “Thanks for coming. I wish we lived closer to see each other more,” Susan says, as though the physical distance between them is the reason they rarely speak.

  “Have you heard from him?” she asks, and Quinn shakes her head.

  “I’ve called. Almost every day since you told me he left,” Susan offers. “Not that I thought he’d pick up. He was always hard to reach when he was overseas, but now since he’s angry with me, I don’t hear anything at all.”

  Quinn had called Susan several days after John went missing. She hadn’t thought Susan would know anything—and she was right—she hadn’t even known John was stateside, had been for months.

  “When was the last time you talked?”

  “He was in Iraq. Somewhere. I called him to talk about an . . . opportunity. And he hung up on me.”

  Quinn frowns. “That doesn’t sound like John. He just . . . hung up?”

  “Well, no. He said he couldn’t hear me. I was telling him about a
job—a position in medical sales that Richard said was a wonderful opportunity. John told me it was a bad connection, and the line went dead. But he could hear me just fine.”

  “You called him in Iraq to tell him this?”

  “I just wanted him to know he had options,” she says defensively. “Maybe he felt like he had to do this army thing because of the situation . . .” Her voice trails off, and in the silence, the word situation rings in Quinn’s ears.

  She knows Susan is referring to her pregnancy. The twins. She swallows, reminds herself that it was a long time ago. Even though the memory of it is as fresh as if it were yesterday.

  John had been at boot camp when Susan had called her after the miscarriage, the wound still raw, and she’d said to Quinn, in an almost upbeat voice, Well, you’re both so young. Perhaps it’s for the best.

  Quinn never told John about it. His relationship with his mother and stepfather had already been so strained, so tenuous—had been for as long as she’d known him—she didn’t feel right mentioning it.

  But she never forgot the blow of those words. The way they seemed to slam into her body with a force so powerful it took her breath away.

  Susan picks a crumb off the table, puts it on the plate next to the sandwich she hasn’t touched.

  “I just want him to be happy—to have a normal life. Apparently, I’m an awful mother for wanting this. My husband could have opened any door for him that he wanted. Instead, he threw it all away. And somehow we’re the bad guys now.”

  Quinn slides off the chair, stands up.

  “I need to get going. Why did you want to see me?” she asks Susan.

  Susan studies her for a moment, walks over to the table behind her. When she returns, she’s holding a photograph in her hand. A Polaroid picture of something Quinn can’t make out.

  “The movers took John’s bed apart, and this was hidden between the mattress and the box spring. He was very upset we moved when he was at school. I know he blames me for that. Even though he knew he had a plane ticket waiting to Florida whenever he wanted—”

  Susan keeps talking and Quinn tunes her out, remembering John’s first semester at college.

  How she’d called him one night and he’d sounded upset, although she could hear in his voice he was trying to hide it.

  “Come home next weekend,” she said. “I’ll come pick you up.”

  He paused, the line between them silent.

  “John?”

  “About that,” he said. “Susan and Doc are heading south. Some swanky retirement community in Florida where Doc can make even more money on boob jobs and lip fillers. They’re renting the house out to some other family. So, technically, there is no home.”

  “What?” Quinn replied, shocked. “When?”

  “It’s happening as we speak. They’re renting it furnished, I guess. I asked Susan if I could come home and pack my own stuff, and she told me the movers had already packed everything and she just knew I was going to act like this and put her in the middle of this mess. Which is just Susan’s way of throwing Doc under the bus. Not that he doesn’t deserve it.”

  Quinn had been stunned, silent. “Did you know they were planning to move?” she asked finally.

  “I knew they were only staying until I finished high school—I was lucky to dodge boarding school after Susan got hitched—but I didn’t know they meant, like, right after I finished high school.”

  “What about your job at the hardware store? Your friends? Me?”

  “Minor details,” John said. “How I feel about it isn’t part of the Susan and Doc How to make a successful person guidebook. Missing chapters include love and affection.”

  John spent the summer in Paradise, crashing on couches of various friends. As far as Quinn knew, he never once set foot in Florida.

  She hears her name and blinks. Susan’s holding the picture out to Quinn, and it’s a minute before Quinn takes it.

  She looks down at the Polaroid. A group of soldiers are sitting on the ground, several stretched out, arms behind their heads, looking up at a man who’s standing above them. He’s telling them a joke, or a funny story, from the way the other soldiers are laughing, some doubled over, hands over their mouths.

  She studies the man, recognizes the face, but not the body, as though John’s head has been placed on a stockier, thicker version of himself.

  “Who is that?” she asks Susan.

  “John’s father. It was taken when he was in Vietnam.”

  Quinn brings the picture closer. Looks at the same lips she’s kissed a thousand times.

  “John doesn’t talk about his father. He said he died before he was born.”

  “He doesn’t talk about him because he doesn’t know very much. I didn’t know he had that picture. It’s the only one I ever had. He must have found it in the attic tucked away in a box of my old things.”

  Susan takes a sip of water from the glass in front of her, and her hand trembles when she places it back on the table.

  “I met him in a bar.” She points to the man in the picture. “He was older than me. This handsome, mysterious man who had his own apartment. I remember wondering why on earth he didn’t belong to someone else.” Susan folds her hands neatly in her lap, twists the stack of diamond rings on her finger.

  “We’d meet every couple of nights and have a few drinks and I’d go home with him. It was so exciting. Carefree. Of course, looking back on it now, it was careless. Nothing more than careless.” Susan smiles at Quinn, and if not for the small twitch in her right eye, Quinn would think Susan was happy, relaxed.

  “I got pregnant and we moved in together. And then everything fell apart. And started to make sense—why this handsome, charming guy was single. Never married. No children.”

  Susan takes the picture from her, looks down at it.

  “He’d have night terrors so bad, scream so loud, he’d be hoarse the next day. I’d wake up to him grabbing my wrist. Or my arm. Sometimes so hard I thought it might snap. And it wasn’t just when he was asleep. We’d be out walking on the street, and a helicopter would fly overhead, and he’d duck, cover his head. His hands would shake for the rest of the day. That’s when the drinking got worse. Or that might not even be true—I can’t say it got worse, because I barely knew him. Maybe it was always that bad, but nobody was around to see it.”

  She hands the picture to Quinn and crosses her arms, as though the memory of it can somehow hurt her.

  “He went out one night a month before John was born and was killed in a car accident.”

  Quinn nods. “That’s the story I heard—that he went out one night to buy you ice cream because you were craving it and was killed by a drunk driver.”

  “That’s the story John knows.” Susan pauses, clears her throat. “The real story is . . . he was the drunk driver. He was drinking at home one night. And we argued. He told me he was going out to buy another bottle of vodka, and I told him if he did that, well, not to come home. He left anyway. Went to a bar, drank some more, and then got behind the wheel and drove straight into a stone wall. And when I say straight, I mean, straight into it. The police said it was an accident, but I don’t think it was. There were no skid marks—and he hit that wall so hard, he toppled it. He didn’t even try to stop.”

  Quinn puts the picture on the table, away from her, as though giving it back will erase what she’s just been told.

  “Why doesn’t John know any of this?” She hears the blame in her voice. But it’s too late to take it back.

  Susan hears it too, and looks down at the table, avoiding Quinn’s eyes.

  “I’m not trying to justify it. I should have told him. But he wasn’t even born yet. And then the years passed, and it was just me and John, scraping by. Things were hard, hard enough without John knowing the truth. Then I met Richard, and everything changed. We moved out of that awful apartment into this house, and finally . . . we . . . John had a stable life.”

  Quinn remembers John talking about t
hat apartment. How he loved the nights his mother would come home from her waitressing job and bring them dinner from the restaurant, and they’d sit on the couch in front of the TV and eat from plates on their laps.

  “She was fun then,” he’d said. “Not all the jewelry and makeup and fake shit. Just, you know, normal.”

  Susan has her head down, and when she looks up, her face is wet. Quinn realizes she’s crying, although her expression hasn’t changed.

  “I never expected to have my son in a war, in any war, much less on the front lines. All those years he’s had this picture. And what little I told him about his father was good—that he was funny and charming and considerate—and he was. But that was only one side of him. One part of his life. He was also hurt. In a lot of pain. In need of help that he couldn’t or wouldn’t ask for. And it eventually killed him.”

  Susan grabs a tissue from the box behind her, dabs delicately under her eyes. “When I found this picture under his bed, something occurred to me, and it’s been on my mind since you called.” She sniffs, holds the tissue to her nose, waits a moment until she’s composed. “My fear is that this is my fault. That all those years, John thought he was looking at a picture of a happy man. A man he wanted to become.”

  The picture sits on the table between them, and Susan picks it up, holds it out to Quinn.

  “Take it. Please,” she begs. “I don’t expect you to tell him—that’s my job. Something I should have done years ago. But I’m leaving, and I want him to have it. When he comes home, give it to him. Ask him to call me. Tell him he must call me.”

  Quinn takes the picture, slips it into her pocketbook. She doesn’t say anything—what is there to say?

  Susan walks around the island, leans forward, and gives Quinn an awkward hug, kisses the air next to Quinn’s cheek so as not to smudge her lipstick.

  “I’m sorry,” Susan says, and Quinn’s not sure if she’s sorry John is missing, or sorry she’s given away the only existing picture of her son’s father, along with a story she was never able to tell.