You Could Be Home by Now

by Tracy Manaster

  Gran ogled outright, a dieter’s-eye view of a rotating pie case.

  Someday, Lily would forgive Sierra for the severe case of Sierra-noia that had lost her Lipstick. For the brain cells she’d exhausted saying Sierra, chill, you’re cuter than/hotter than/better than the proverbial Her, and for the drama that was yet to come. Because all that investment had yielded this small return: Lily was prepped with the exact right thing to say. She indicated Die Exfrau. “Talk about a woman with a fatal case of duck neck.”

  It was clear from Gran’s expression that she knew duck neck wasn’t actually a thing. “She made tea.”

  Lily didn’t follow.

  “Last night. At Ben’s. I saw through the window. Her first time visiting and she knew right where he kept the teabags. I miss that. Having someone in the world just know.”

  Lily shut her eyes. “Teabags. Upper cabinet, left of stove.”

  “You’re a sweet girl. Upper cabinet on the right.”

  “I meant left as you’re facing the table.”

  Gran snorted. “We should dance.”

  Lily had an official policy about dancing with girls and that official policy was a full-on, plus-size no. Somehow, it always devolved into a game of bumper-tits for the benefit of some boy watching from the dim. Now she had no idea what to do. But Gran had attended cotillions as a girl; she’d met Grandpa at twelve and they’d twirled in country club ballrooms. She positioned Lily’s hands, ceding to her the stance reserved for girls. “Box step,” Gran instructed. “Forward, together; side, together; back, together; side, together.”

  They moved slowly, the music an exuberant universe apart. Gran asked, “Back at the necklaces. Did you really have to pee?”

  Perhaps Lily wasn’t the most subtle girl on the planet. “No. I just didn’t want to see Mona.”

  “Good. Front, together. Side, together.”

  “What?”

  “Back, together. I thought it might have been the necklaces.”

  “Huh? They were pretty.”

  Gran nodded and the spoiled, fetid feeling Lily’d had at the jewelry booth returned. Gran would think she was hinting for one. There hadn’t been any obvious price tags, which translated to a lot. “They were mourning pieces,” said Gran. “Side, together. I thought maybe you’d figured that out. Back, together. It’s the kind of thing you’d know.”

  Lily heard morning not mourning.

  Gran shuddered. “Front, together. Side, together. They used to make them out of hair. You learn something every day. Back, together. Side, together. No, other side.” Gran laughed. “It probably put a dent in the open casket business.”

  “Gran.” There was a bank of Port-a-Potties across the floor. Gran had stood there last year, unknowing, while Grandpa crumpled and fell. And Lily. Even looking right at them, she’d heard morning and not mourning. Dancing gave her an excuse to look away, down at her feet and Gran’s, twins in their Velcro shoes.

  Gran said, “Widows used to wear black for a year. Why on earth would they need their husband’s hair in—I don’t know—a needlepoint locket?”

  Grandpa’d been balding Lily’s whole life, but she’d seen the wedding pictures. Gran’s girlish dress, puff sleeves and a sash, a bow tucked up under her breasts like a secret, Grandpa’s hair thick enough to lend him extra height. Her feet navigated another box and Gran said, “It’s appalling. Just imagine. Having to make a big show of it. Appalling, but goddammit. At least you’d know what you were supposed to do. Let’s try it up to tempo now. Ready? Front, together; side, together.” The lead mariachi yipped again; his backups clapped in unison. Lily managed not to step on Gran’s feet. “Coming here today was ridiculous,” Gran said. “I know that. This whole idea.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I wanted a nice, sweet, sane normal day. I thought it would honor all the nice, sweet, sane, normal days we had.” Gran didn’t sound nice or sweet or even very sane.

  “I’m having fun,” Lily said.

  “You’re full of it.” Gran sounded amused, or mostly so. A layer of amused over the rest.

  “Maybe a little.”

  Lily was starting to get the hang of this. Front, side, back, side; lather, rinse, repeat. Her grandmother’s gait was even, her arms strong-set and supple. With a better partner, she’d be a very fine dancer. Gran said, “I think you’re ready for some turns.”

  “No,” Lily said, because they couldn’t possibly: a rotation of one hundred eighty degrees and Gran would face the outhouses. Ninety one way would be the mourning pendants; ninety the other, the incredible spinning Thaleses.

  “Have a little confidence.”

  What was she supposed to say? I am the only thing here that it is safe for you to look at. She shrugged. A surprisingly graceless gesture, given the formal position of her hands.

  “Okay, then,” Gran said. “It’s walk, walk, side-close-side.” She executed a fast series of steps that Lily would be able to master shortly after her reincarnation as Anna Freaking Pavlova. And they turned: the jeweler, the Thaleses, the people in line. Her grandmother’s face betrayed no pain. She muttered something though.

  “Huh?”

  “Paper, cotton, leather, silk. The anniversary gifts. I used to know a rhyme to help me remember.” They’d reverted to simply box stepping. Lily couldn’t see the Thaleses anywhere, which meant they were behind her, directly in Gran’s line of sight. “There should be some sort of list to mark this. A year now he’s gone. There isn’t even a word.”

  “Reverse-iversary?”

  “You’re funny.”

  “I’m not trying to be.” She should be thinking only of Grandpa and Gran, but brassy old Sierra elbowed her way in. All their gods and goof-words, their codified Laws of Cheese. The point of an inside joke was to put the lesser rest of the universe outside it. Which was stupid. Your friends should make your world expansive, not exclusive. When she was small, Gran had pushed her on the swing and the whole of Lily felt open and endless as the sky.

  “My funny girl.” Gran let out a whoop. She spun Lily and landed her in a low dip.

  Lily let out a surprised, strangled sound.

  “Oh, relax. I’m not going to let you fall.”

  “People are looking.” Not that she could actually see them upside down. Only, there were Ben and Die Exfrau, leaving the floor. They didn’t touch, but every causal step narrowed the gap.

  “Let ’em look,” Gran said, but righted her. “It’s my paper reverse-iversary. I’m going to do whatever the hell I want.” She watched the departing couple. They both did. Anyone could see their paths were not parallel and must therefore intersect.

  “Okay,” Lily said. “Whatever you want.”

  “Good. Let’s do something terrible.” It wasn’t the heat but the vim of all Gran’s years that shimmered around her. She stepped back from Lily. “Something just—terrible.” She nudged her with an affectionate elbow. “You’re on a roll. You’ll come up with something.” She giggled like she was Lily’s age, lips pressed against her knuckles. Time was a funny thing, or maybe only posture was, that so small a gesture could winnow away the years that cut between them.

  WHAT THE GROWNUPS DO

  TWO THOUSAND MILES AWAY, BAT and ball connected. Home field advantage: the stadium roiled with sound and superstition. Fingers crossed, lips mouthed prayers and go-go-gos. Cups upended. Popcorn and beer. Peanuts. Cracker Jacks. Detroit, Michigan. Two of the Big Three had filed for Chapter Eleven the previous year. Unemployment was closing in on thirty percent and whole neighborhoods teetered toward foreclosure. If ever there was a city in need of a spectacular win.

  Ground ball, right side.

  The Homeplate held its breath.

  The batter ran like hell for first.

  Galarraga sprinted to cover the bag.

  Seth couldn’t hear it, but he knew from childhood the ball’s leathery thwack as the pitcher caught it, the solid planting of a white shoe on first base. Out! A perfect game! The crowd erupted, spo
rtscasters crowed, and teammates tensed to rush the field.

  But baseball’s a funny sport. Even Alison, raised on its easy pace and lyricism, would have to admit that much.

  Because here came the official call. The first-base umpire raised his hands to his chest. He was a professional, impartial to the point of anonymity. But not for long. In a second the world would know his name. Jim Joyce’s arms splayed out, unmistakably to the side.

  Safe!

  The call was flat-out wrong. Obvious as the top E of an eye test. But this was baseball: no instant replays. No take-backs or appeals. The rules were the rules. A funny sport indeed.

  For a slow, muscular moment, Seth thought his jinx had bent the universe and he shook off an unseasonal chill. The crowd’s jubilation downshifted. Sportscasters lamented through the replays. The Homeplate deflated and diners began to make fussy check, please gestures. “Wow,” he heard a McCain say, elongating the word by two syllables. His McCain-companion griped that in football they could have changed the call. They used instant replay in hockey and basketball; hell, they even used it in figure skating.

  “It’s the game,” Seth said, because Ali would have said it had she stayed. The league had a history older than Adah Chalk.

  “Well, it sucks,” said the McCain, using slang he was much too old for.

  Seth felt ancient himself. Ossified and done, too ground down to connect, though connecting was why sports bars existed, why sports did. “It’s the game,” he said again, and sat silent through the postmortem. Jim Joyce wept openly and apologized. Galarraga said he understood. He hugged the man. He said without bitterness, “Nobody’s perfect.” He said this without the slightest ironic lilt, the kind of man Seth knew that he was not, clear-eyed and accepting. Rules were rules even when they did not serve you well. The past was past and unreachable by wishing. Galarraga said, “I know that I pitched a perfect game, I believe I got it.” Seth thought, Yes. It happened. So what if they won’t count it. It was real. Galarraga said, “I’m going to show my son. Maybe it’s not in the book, but I’m going to tell my son, ‘One time I got a perfect game.’” Son. Seth waited for the astringent pulse of envy. When it didn’t come, he got out his wallet. He thought of the U-Haul. One state of fifty or another, randomly assigned. That preposterous bet. He had no clue if he’d won or lost it. Galarraga had pitched a perfect game, and also he hadn’t. Seth didn’t wait for the tab. He left a crumpled twenty.

  The festival was still in full swing, which felt strange. More time should have elapsed. He threaded through the crowd, gathering quotes as Lobel had directed. The couples he chatted with could just as easily have been brother-sister as husband-wife. A breeze started up without warning. Strings of paper lanterns bobbed. One mariachi song bled into the next and the air felt battered and fried. He passed a display of chili pepper wreaths, their colors tradition reversed. A booth of purportedly authentic Navajo dream-catchers whose dangling peacock feathers belied the claim. A floor of dancers who weren’t much better at it than the kids back in Chettenford and, beyond it, the mariachi-filled festival stage where in an hour or so his wife would regale them with the mighty frontier deeds of Adah Chalk. And there, beside the stage, in the sparse shade of a cultivated palm, was the lady herself. Ali.

  He was too far away to read her face, or even to make out its individual components. He knew her by body type and by the clothes she had worn in The Homeplate. Add a list of distinguishing features—her appendectomy scar, the navel piercing she’d allowed to close up years ago—and you had exactly what the police would note if she simply vanished. What a terrible mind he had. Alison kicked off her shoes. She rummaged through her bag for something. Her phone. His rang a breath later. The anachronistic jangle his wife liked best, saying phones should sound like phones. She could be such a goddamn snob. He answered, shrinking to the far side of the dance floor, knowing he could watch without her seeing him watching.

  Ali asked, “Where are we on that amnesty?”

  “What?”

  “The amnesty thing. The game.”

  “You never took the bet.”

  “Pretend I did. Where are we?”

  “It’s hard to say.” He knew what happened and Ali did not. His wife, who could rattle off the names of pitchers like they were the names of all the saints. This was what power felt like. Power, and also pettiness.

  “It’s simple, Seth. A game is either perfect or it’s not.”

  But it wasn’t. He explained, looking deliberately away. This was the intersection of history and baseball, absolutely the kind of thing she’d get off on. He didn’t want to see how much more it meant to her than real life. All along Main Street, McCains drifted from one booth to the next. The Mrs. McCains did, too. Seth couldn’t recall the name of the senator’s wife.

  His own said, “So. No amnesty then.” She sounded less keyed up about the blown call than he’d expected. Seth checked. Alison wasn’t even on her feet.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Does it become a perfect game in the moment he pitches it, or does it become one when the umpire says so?” They used to talk like this, debate; they used to actually talk.

  Alison only said, “You should have studied philosophy.” She stretched and did something fidgety in the neighborhood of her shin. Stockings in need of smoothing, maybe. She’d put on the whole getup for her big Adah speech.

  “I don’t know,” Seth said. “Maybe. I’d probably have talked myself in circles.”

  “I guess we’ll have to decide ourselves. About the game. The clean slate. All of it. Make up our own minds. That’s what the grownups do.”

  “Or so I’m told. Okay, then. Amnesty.” Who knew what he’d have said if he was close enough to read her face. Who knew what message she’d have spelled there.

  “Don’t say that yet.”

  “Huh?” A Mrs. McCain brushed past him toward the line for frybread.

  Ali said, “I’m stalling. I have something to say. Full disclosure, before you make up your mind.”

  “Amnesty, Alison. Period.” God knew Seth needed it. He’d come inches from hitting a man. He’d daydreamed of U-Hauls and harbored visions of her copulating with their boss.

  “I’ve been fired,” she said.

  “What?” The dance floor couples kept dancing. He must not have been as loud as he thought.

  “Let go. Laid off. Made redundant. Shit-canned. Just now, in Lobel’s office.”

  “With the lead pipe.”

  “I’m not joking.”

  “Please. Hoagie loves you.”

  “Loved.” She didn’t shrug, but she used a shrugging sort of voice. Perhaps she would have shrugged if she’d known she was being observed. She didn’t look like someone who’d been sacked. She was crisp and coiffed and didn’t have the requisite cardboard box.

  He said, “I call bullshit.”

  “Call it what you want.”

  It was possible that she hadn’t taken anything with her. Her still, spare office hadn’t had much in it. The orange on her desk. The overly bright stuff of still lifes. “Did you take the orange?”

  “What?”

  “The orange on your desk yesterday.”

  “That’s what you ask me?

  “Fine. I’ll play. What happened?”

  “Your intern spent the day at county records. Acting on some kind of tip he got at the HOA. Anyhow, he found the paperwork. Adah Chalk died two and a half years into her marriage.” Alison sounded grim and pissed about it, like the woman had let her down. “Hoagie wasn’t pleased.”

  Seth should be doing frantic math, tallying their savings and monthly expenses. Instead, he thought, Good for Nicky. The kid had chops after all.

  Alison said, “I really fucked up.” She stood then. The edge of her slip showed. Even at a distance he could see it, a frail, white strip of lace. He should tell her. Ali wasn’t vain, exactly, but she liked to look put together in public.

  “Seth. At least say something.”

  “Ad
ah’s got to be a pretty common name. Back then, anyway. So you made a mistake. Once Lobel has a chance to calm down—”

  “I didn’t make a mistake. I made it all up.”

  “You can’t have. There were letters. You quoted from Susan B.—”

  “Everything. The letters. The schools. The clinics. The lemon pie.” Thank God for the square of dancers separating them. The hours she’d gone on about Adah. He could’ve slapped her. “The snakebite cure. The English lessons. The fight for women’s suffrage.” She made it sound like a game, like she was back in the café, naming pitchers.

  “This is our life, Alison.” A nearby McCain tightened his grip on his wife. A reasonable enough response, if he recognized Seth from the HOA mess.

  “I said I was sorry.”

  “You didn’t. You said you fucked up.”

  She sighed, breath blasting through speakers. “You should’ve been a lawyer.”

  “You don’t get to make this funny. Fuck, Alison.” The music had stopped. The band opened bottles of water. The books all said it was toxic to score-keep. Even so, the emotional calculus. His fistfight. Her fraud. Stick it out and one of them was going to wind up with enough ammo to win all the fights, forever.

  Ali said, “It’s not—not a disaster.”

  “It’s one whole income we’re down.”

  “The contract was up in a few months anyhow. We knew that. Our rent’s dirt cheap.”

  “You lied. You got up in front of everyone and lied.”

  “I—I couldn’t write it the way it was. Adah Chalk.” Her voice. She had more tenderness for the dead woman than she’d had for him in months. “She died in childbirth. Twenty years old and no doctor for miles. Stuck in this nothing with a husband who couldn’t even write his own name. And that wasn’t even her first child. There’d been a daughter the previous year. Breach. She didn’t make it. I wanted to fix things.”