You Could Be Home by Now

by Tracy Manaster

  She would sit with her application packet—early decision to Smith, huge cliché, sure, but one she hugely wanted. Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.

  No duh she should choose Lipstick or Mona. How I Built and Lost My Blog but Learned Valuable Lessons about Being a Better Person. How I Wanted to Help but Got in My Own Damn Way. Both subjects cast her just right. Accomplished, then humbled, left eager for the tools that would help her go forth and do righteous things. But instead she’d fix upon this moment. The cool, cultivated scent of green. The bright plastic riot of flamingos. The eclectic array of her grandfather’s collection and the childish dream of all the holidays come at once. Fastidious Gran producing Kleenex to wipe the work from their hands and how, for an instant, the world had the unwavering grace of an equation.

  SAFE AS HOUSES

  BEN SHOT OUT INTO THE street; there was smoke, most definitely. The bite of it in the air. How much was hard to say in the gathering dark. Veronica followed, calling his name. From inside the Rosko house, a shriek pitched higher than sirens. Some other neighbor had the stereo on, something plaintive involving dulcimers. Another shrill from Mona’s courtyard. The sky turned glancing bright, and then dim again. Ben’s eyes smarted. His lungs gummed up with all the smoke he’d ever breathed. Childhood bonfires. Out camping with kids of his own. Warming his hands in squats out looking for Tara. They had cast strange light, those fires, and the smell stayed with you. Needful smoke. There was something of that in the air tonight.

  Bile rose. His throat clenched too tight to release it.

  He’d been beaten in late summer. His bruises yellowed with the leaves. In Hyde Park no fires had yet been lit. The scents, until the blood and the wet leaked out of him, had been remarkably clean. Even so, the air now brought it back. Everything inside him coiled for another cascade of blows, but he was on the Rosko steps now, sprinting up to the door. If he didn’t run to, he’d run from and he wouldn’t be able to stop. His blood knew this, his marrow and breath.

  The house was not illuminated. Ben called in to his neighbor.

  Veronica, huffing, called him back from the street.

  It was a still night, that quick desert cool he still hadn’t gotten used to. Mona’s front door was open, welcoming the air. A latched screen door kept the gnats away. The smoke smell was stronger now, the interior of her home dim, and Ben could feel the air thicken around him. No response when he called their names. No help for it then; he put his foot through the screen. The mesh peeled away like the skin of a blister and he ducked inside, pulling his shirt collar over his nose and mouth.

  A light switched on. Ben threw an instinctive arm up to shield his eyes. From fist or flame he honestly couldn’t have said.

  “What the hell?” Mona Rosko stood beside the light switch. She wore a yellow robe. Her legs beneath it were solid and bare. She held a cut glass vase aloft as if to parody the Statue of Liberty. A bang carried in from the courtyard and footsteps ran pell-mell down the hall. The child appeared. He wrapped his arms around Mona’s waist and peeked out from behind her hips.

  “I smelled smoke,” Ben said. The words came out choked, like he’d been breathing it in by the lungful. He smoothed his shirt. He must look like a bandit from some old Western film.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake.” Mona lowered the vase and drew the edges of her robe together.

  “I’m sorry.” Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, or so the adage went. He was sixty-eight though. Entirely too old set his life by such things.

  “My husband will pay for your door.” Veronica peered at them through the battered screen. Her fingers wriggled in a cheery wave. Two thoughts twisted into one. She shouldn’t have followed him here. She shouldn’t be saying husband. Good Lord was he ever tired.

  “Get out. Get.” Mona hefted the vase again, her free hand gathering terrycloth across her chest. The raised arm cast a shadow on her grandson’s face. “This is still my home. I’ve still got my thirty days.”

  “I smelled smoke,” he said again. He backed away, hands up, absurdly, as if in formal surrender.

  “So call the Flamingo Police.”

  Sadie called them that. He’d thought she was the only one.

  “I said get. And you’d best wipe away that smirk.”

  “It’s a good turn of phrase, that’s all. Flamingo Police.” As for the smirk, it was the natural shape of his smile. Fond. Sadie would know that. Veronica did, too, but she did not come to his defense.

  “Get out.”

  “We really are very sorry,” Veronica said. She stood outside the useless door. He’d only really wrecked the bottom bit. The top part hung intact, pixelating her face.

  “This is Veronica. My ex.”

  “Fantastic,” said Mona. “It’s lovely to meet you.”

  “Ben,” said Veronica. “Let’s go.”

  “Okay, okay.” He retreated. On an entry table, Mona had placed a lacquered bowl for change and keys. One of her lamps looked like one his mother had owned. They’d been neighbors for more than two years. They’d never been inside each other’s homes. Veronica held the door open. The burning smell hung heavy all around. “There really was smoke. I’m only trying to be neighborly. Don’t you smell that?”

  “I swear to God, when I get back on my feet my next neighbors are going to be ten miles away in all directions. I got an offer on this elephant. So, fireworks. Had to use them up anyhow. Ty and I’ll be long gone by the Fourth.”

  “An offer? That’s wonderful.”

  “Cash on the barrel. Not much of it, mind. And he wants us out ASAP. Nevertheless.” Mona shrugged and the robe gapped a bit. You could tell she was a woman given to emphatic gesture. The vase in her hand bobbed about like a conductor’s baton. Down the hall, Ben could make out the sturdy brown of boxes. In the living room, the built-ins were mostly bare. And the lacquered bowl was empty. He’d only guessed at the keys, the change, the everyday artifacts that belonged there. He closed the screen gently, like gentleness still mattered. Now it was Mona Rosko who seemed televised, an amalgamation of colored points. “I worried,” he said. “Veronica saw it across the way. It’s a fair bit of smoke.”

  “So call the fire department. I’ve got every other kind of do-gooder waltzing through. Social workers and all these neighbors who up and decide to bring food.”

  The boy said, “Miss Annie let me use her markers.”

  You could tell Miss Annie was the social worker from the barbed thing Mona did with her mouth. “This, though. This is beyond.” She kicked a bare foot at the battered screen. “I should call the cops.”

  Tyson’s eyes saucered. “Are they going to jail?”

  “You people,” said Mona.

  “Come on out and I’ll show you. The scent really carries.”

  “I should’ve brained you with this thing.”

  Veronica said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know what he was thinking.”

  “You’re the one who mentioned burning the place. You’re the one who put the thought there.”

  Tyson asked if the police were really coming. Mona’s grip on the vase tightened. She kicked furiously at the broken door. Her robe fell open. Beneath it she wore drawstring shorts and a T-shirt with the faded logo of a hardware store. “That girl’s a real piece of work. Lily. Telling a child like that. She’s not right. A girl like that, who knows what she’d do? I was up all night thinking she’d burn us out.”

  Tyson said, “My mom is in prison. That’s the same as jail.”

  “That’s private, Ty. We talked about that.”

  Ben said, “If you thought a fire was possible, you can see how I—”

  “I should’ve called nine-one-one the instant I saw you. Look. I’m setting off firecrackers and burning some old Bon Appétites. If I let you check, will you go away?” She held the door wide. The raw edge of the screen snagged on the carpet. “Come right on in. Take a picture. Turn it over to Sadie
. That’ll get the word out.”

  “The Sadie who lives there?” Veronica pointed at the wrong house, but Mona nodded.

  “Neighborhood busybody. And that granddaughter—well, like they say. Every pot has its lid.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ben asked, “you’re burning Bon Appétite?” Veronica had a subscription, too. Every month, she clipped recipes and tucked them away in the binder that she’d organized by course. Ben estimated maybe five percent of those recipes had ever been attempted.

  “We’re not going to have a whole lot of space. And maybe you haven’t noticed, but they gouge you on trash services.”

  Fifty bucks a month and they separated the recycling for you. It hadn’t seemed unreasonable. He didn’t remember anymore what the cost had been in Portland.

  “I told Ben he’d get screwed buying here,” his ex-wife said.

  Mona agreed. “And how.”

  Somehow, allegiances were shifting. He’d always been a bit dense when it came to the social stuff but Ben was pretty sure he got it this time around: Veronica liked that crack Mona made about Sadie. Tyson asked if he could please do another sparkler.

  “In a minute. Once our guests leave. How about you pick one out and wait?” The boy trotted off. Nothing about Mona changed, but the sum of her seemed harsher without the child to counterbalance. She set down the vase and wheeled on Ben. “I don’t let him play with matches. I supervise. Be sure to tell Sadie that. Her granddaughter, too. I look after my grandson. Safe as”—she paused and Ben could see how the phrase got caught in her throat. Safe as houses. The older you got, the less apt those old sayings were. “I do for him,” Mona said. “I never stop doing.”

  “He’s a lovely child,” said Veronica.

  “There’s a lot of his mother in him.”

  Veronica smiled like she knew the mother in question. “Little boys.” She shook her head. “They’re almost prettier than little girls because you know in a few years they’ll be these galumphing creatures. With girls, there’s a chance they’ll hang on to some of that—” she stopped.

  “Delicacy,” Mona Rosko offered. The same word had been on Ben’s lips. He was thinking of Veronica though, not Tara. And of Mona, too, unexpectedly. The play of lamplight on skin no longer young.

  “That’s it,” said Veronica. “Delicacy.”

  “My Carrie—she looked young when I visited, not hard like I’d thought she’d be. They don’t allow makeup.”

  Prison. Rand Danovic routinely checked records for Thales, Tara R. in correctional facilities across the fifty states. Ben wondered how it would feel to learn she was actually in one. He asked Mona, “When does Carrie get home?”

  An assessing stare. “Out. Most people say out.”

  “Sorry. Out. When does she—”

  “Ty’ll be in grade school.”

  “What—” Veronica started to ask.

  “I don’t talk about that.” Mona drew the robe back around her. “Good night.”

  “Grade, I was going to ask. In school? I wouldn’t ask the other.”

  “Third, maybe second. With funding cuts and good behavior—it’s more fluid than you’d think.” She shot a dark look toward Sadie’s windows. “Carrie didn’t want Ty to know. That delicacy you mentioned? That’s where it is. That’s how I see my girl’s still my girl.”

  “Our daughter ran off when she was sixteen years old,” said Veronica. “No sign of her since. Vanished.” Hearing it like that made him think of those nutjobs going on about Roswell. Tara on some violet planet, lit by a dozen glowing moons, tracking the complicated tides.

  “Huh. At least I know where Carrie is.”

  “She was a junkie.” The unstinting ugliness of the word shocked him every time and Veronica knew it. She used it even so. And she was right, they had to face facts, he got that much, but still, that word. Its emphasis on junk. The child they’d made reduced to litter.

  “Carrie’s been going to meetings inside, and her cellmate—Cellmate. I can’t believe that’s even a part of my vocabulary.”

  The women shared a bitter laugh.

  For all her graces, Ben knew that Sadie would never be able to have this conversation.

  And he knew this, too: There was a rich vein of weakness in him. That Sadie couldn’t have this conversation was one of the reasons he liked her.

  “Where are you heading?” he asked, if only for the sake of changing the subject.

  “My husband’s sister’s kid did up her basement as an apartment. Up in Eloy?”

  Ronnie nodded like she knew the geography.

  “She’s putting us up till I find—who am I kidding? She’s putting us up for the foreseeable. Half what she’d normally ask for rent. She was always a twit.” The insult sounded graceful and extraordinary, like something keen and lithe slinking through the trees.

  “Nice of her.”

  Ronnie glowered. As if he hadn’t realized how sickeningly pious that sounded.

  “I’m losing my home.” Mona Rosko’s tone was frank. “Gary loved this place. He’d worked hard all his life. He wanted to play. I’m glad he never saw—” For a confused moment, Ben thought the woman meant Sadie’s Gary. The two dead husbands must have had the same first name. He wanted to tell Mona. Look. Everyone in the universe has some slight thing in common.

  Veronica said, “I’m sorry.”

  Mona’s arm twitched like she was considering a handshake. “You aren’t one of those women who never does sweets, are you? All the guilty neighbors have been baking. Going to rot that kid’s teeth and leave me with the dentist bills. More pie than I’ll eat in my life. Let me get you one.”

  She retreated. The torn screen hung limp. Veronica nudged it with her foot. “I hope she overcharges you for that. You’re a disaster.”

  “What?”

  “We were fine at the house. Comfortable, talking, and then you run off to—Jesus Christ.” Veronica bent and fingered the broken place.

  “You’re the one who called smoke.”

  “It was a joke. A little puff, a little joke, and you ran off screaming. That’s not normal.”

  “I wasn’t screaming.”

  “Here.” Mona was back, extending a tin topped with a sudsy billow. “I think it’s lemon under there. You mind? Citrus makes Ty blotchy.”

  “Lemon’s great,” Veronica said. “Thanks.”

  From the courtyard Tyson whined for his grandmother to hurry up. Mona looked the two of them over. She sniffed. The smell of smoke was everywhere. “You don’t have to share with him,” she said, and she closed and locked the door.

  Veronica shook her head.

  A high shrill sounded, and then a percussive crackle. Tyson with a firecracker.

  Ben said, “Credit where credit’s due. I hardly know the woman and I was willing to run into a burning—”

  “You actually thought it was burning. Firecrackers, Ben. It breaks my heart.”

  An eruption of sparks. The timbre of the boy’s laugh. Buyer wants us out ASAP, Mona had said. It was possible he’d never see her again.

  “Are you this afraid all the time?” Ronnie asked.

  “I wasn’t. I’m not.”

  “Ben.”

  “I’m fine. This week—it’s been a weird one.”

  “But there’s no telling when it’s going to be weird. You could have fifty-two weird ones in a row.”

  Not here, he almost said, and he saw it like Veronica would. The daily perimeter walk. The easy pattern of sport and sociability. She’d have another name for all this peace and she would not be entirely wrong. Instead, he said, “Weird can be good.”

  “Not for you. You look wrecked.”

  “Okay. Yes. Maybe weird throws me more than it should.”

  “You think?” Another round of ricocheting light. He made sure not to flinch at the pops. Veronica studied him. “There’s tense and then there’s—”

  “Point taken, Ronnie.”

  “If there’s really a fire, you don’t run into it. Yo
u call the—” She paused. “And of course you don’t have your phone. You’re a mess.”

  “I’ll get it tomorrow. My phone.”

  “That was blind panic back there. It wasn’t pretty.”

  “Look. What time’s your flight?”

  “It’s a problem, Ben. It’s not going away because you offload me. You can’t possibly—”

  “What time?”

  “Eleven. Ish.”

  “Okay. So I need to stop by the hospital and get my phone anyhow. You come with me, you see me make an appointment to talk to someone, you go home happy.”

  She had something to say. Ronnie always had something to say. She worked the words over in her mouth like a cherry pit.

  “I’ll go,” he said. “Scout’s honor. I’ll go for a run of—let’s say—four appointments.”

  “Eight.”

  “Ronnie.”

  “Can’t help it.”

  “Four. But I’ll have them take my picture. Right in the guy’s office. With the day’s Times, like a hostage.”

  “Now you’re making fun.”

  “A little. But if it helps you feel better.” At his age you had to be able to look at yourself unflinchingly. And with that eye he could see that he was past due for some help. He’d been getting by, yeah. He’d had a lovely, predictable idyll. Golf twice a week, tennis twice a week, a daily long-distance brain twister. It was nice. It was safe. It was passing time though, not living.

  Veronica said, “It’s not my place to feel better.”

  “Come off it. Will it help?”

  “Yeah. It would.”

  “One condition.”

  “Shoot.”

  He made a swipe at the tottering meringue. She shrieked; the sound carried and then was matched by another Rosko firecracker. He lunged. She dodged. He knew what it must look like. Pie. He knew the connotations. Veronica was jogging now, the tin held awkwardly before her. The air in the street was acrid, and Ben drew in a deep breath of smoke. Veronica turned and walked toward him. He inhaled once more and remembered how his lungs had burned during her last month at business school. They’d bought a case of cigars because she was going to learn to like them, damn it. The men all did, those titans in their hushed, upholstered rooms. She was going to join them, breathe it all in till the world was hers. How he loved her then, how he loved her still. But the look she gave him. You never looked that way at a husband. It was an expression he’d seen before, soft, lit with pride, tempered with a startling bloom of sorrow. She’d worn it as their children, backs slim and squared, rode away from them for the first time, wobbly on their bikes.