You Could Be Home by Now

by Tracy Manaster

  STATES TO THE NORTH

  ALISON BROUGHT THEIR FLATTENED MOVING boxes in from storage and the lunch-bag smell of cardboard filled the condo. She said she’d skip her morning run, restoring box after box to its original shape. The condo wasn’t spacious; the efficient thing would be to fill one box at a time as needed. But Ali had it right. Nearly twenty stood empty at the ready by the time Seth headed out to tender his resignation. The sight hit him, giddy in the chest.

  They were on their way.

  The grounds were a mess, the too-earnest façade of the Hacienda Central presiding over the drunken remnants of a Hallmark convention. A wire Christmas deer lay on its side, as if the adjacent cupid had brought it down. A peevish plastic leprechaun had lassoed an Easter bunny with a string of colored lights. A turkey, its plumage thicker and more vibrant than anything actually farmed for meat, sat atop a foppish scarecrow, and a flock of fake flamingos stood interspersed. Seth took it in a minute, then went to track down Lobel.

  It didn’t take long. The holiday junk was still in situ when he left the Hacienda. He phoned Ali. “Done,” he said. “Two weeks’ notice.”

  “Wow. Terrifying.”

  “Yeah.”

  A groundskeeper began to clear away the chaos. He hoisted the cupid under one arm and Seth realized: The whole setup was so bizarre that the statue hadn’t even registered as a baby.

  “Was Lobel surprised?” Ali asked. “He couldn’t have been.”

  Odd. For all their troubles, Seth must have seemed, during their tenure here, the sort of man who made the love of his wife his life’s rudder. He’d taken a swing—a physical swing—at a septuagenarian who’d looked at her funny. He’d allowed himself to curdle professionally. He felt buoyant. It was no small thing to be thought of as such a man. “You know Hoagie,” he said. “He took it like a cowboy. And get this: He’s going to give us both references.”

  “No.”

  “Hand to God.”

  “Huh. You really did have something on him.”

  “I reminded him of what he said. Remember? When we interviewed? He wanted history where there’s really none.” The way he’d phrased it in Lobel’s office was Alison was giving you what you wanted and she’s not the only one on the books with a slippery grip on the truth. Your IT guys take care of that Rosko glitch? Seth had been glad to be sitting when he said it. He felt like he was reading lines from a play. Lobel seemed more amused than intimidated, but he went along with it, and Seth had felt an unanticipated fondness for the CEO.

  Alison laughed. Actually laughed. “He did say that. You remember everything, don’t you?”

  “I’ve got an ear for it. Things like the periodic table though . . .”

  “Well, who needs the elements?”

  “They only make the whole world.”

  Seth watched the groundskeeper go for the leprechaun. He tugged but the thing held fast. He set the cupid down and used both arms. The leprechaun wiggled and came free, thin metal stakes coming up with it from the ground. The groundskeeper hauled it toward the edge of the grass, where a pickup waited, The Commons’ logo on its door. He’d have to make upward of a dozen trips, though he’d be done in minutes if he were allowed to park closer. But this was The Commons. The grass, if nothing else, was sacrosanct.

  Seth would be jobless in two weeks. He was thirty-two, a husband, and a father of sorts. He began to gather up flamingos; he needed to move, needed to be anywhere but back at his desk. The groundskeeper gave him a funny look but did not interfere. They worked quickly and the truck filled. When the lawn was clear, the other man extended a hand as if to shake, then seemed to change his mind. He gave the pickup an assertive thump and swung up into the driver’s seat. The truck pulled away and Seth wished he’d thought to snap a picture of all those crazy lawn ornaments for Alison. That or snagged a pair of flamingos to bring home like a triumphant hunter, dangling fat birds by their feet.

  He and Ali would travel on. They’d be a pair of blue dots in another red state. Arizona would make the news in the coming years. The Colliers’ inboxes would fill with outrage and grassroots requests for monetary support. Arizona’s definition of marriage. Arizona’s definition of life. Arizona’s vigilantes and Arizona’s anti-immigration measures. They’d make PayPal donations—small ones; after all, they had quit two jobs each in the space of one year—and sign petitions online. They would track, in horror, the breaking news of gunfire in a grocery store parking lot. And Seth would think that it only went to show how crazy they both had been. Half a year in the Grand Canyon State and an oddball display of holiday decor was the nuttiest thing he’d allowed himself to see.

  Veronica spent the morning on the phone with friends and friends of friends, gathering recommendations and securing him an appointment. Next Wednesday, two P.M. The doctor was called Jordan Cable and Ben didn’t know if he should expect a man or a woman. Veronica had him swear up and down that if he didn’t click with Dr. Cable, he would get a referral for someone else. She found an old Bible and made him raise his right hand. That was, they both knew, pushing things a bit too far, but that was how things stood now. There was a new kind of space between them, a space best filled in with bold strokes.

  Ben drove Veronica to the airport. His ex inched the passenger seat forward, her knees folding up like a mantis’. He’d forgotten the way she got jittery with too much space before the dash. The radio saved them from more conversation. Callers argued about a blown call at some baseball game last night. Veronica yawned.

  “Sleepy?”

  “Under-caffeinated.”

  “We could probably track down a Starbucks.” He gestured at the GPS.

  Veronica scrunched her mouth in playful distaste.

  “Next time call ahead. We’ll find the most potent sludge from here to Nogales.”

  “Or you can teach me to use that crazy machine of yours.”

  They were probably both wondering if there ever would ever be a next time. He said, “We’ll track down that Gone with the Wind dirt too.” If she never came, he’d find it himself and send some her way. She could swap it for the sand in her Zen desk garden, comb it with a miniature rake whenever her mind needed quieting. They arrived at the airport. He pulled up to the curb and helped Veronica with her bag. His ex disappeared through the revolving door. Ben thought, as he suspected everyone did now at airports, of the towers and the day they fell. He really was getting old. Old and pickled and ungenerous. Three thousand people died in those attacks and here he was, grateful that he could just go home, that security measures spared him the departure gate question of whether to accompany Veronica in.

  From five states to the North an official proclamation came: I, Jennifer M. Granholm, Governor of the State of Michigan, do hereby declare Armando Galarraga to have pitched a perfect game. Ali’s voice filled the condo that had never seemed properly full before. She was on the phone with one of her brothers, squabbling full tilt. No, Alison was saying, Galarraga should under no circumstances make the record books. Nope, not even with an asterisk. “No. I don’t care what they do in hockey. Instant replay’s for wimps.” The condo was a whirl of to-do lists. She had drawn a neat, open square beside each task to be ticked off in the days to come. He kissed the knob at the base of her neck. She said, “C’mon, Ryan. Would you feed that line to the guys you coach?” Pause. Her brother’s reply was unintelligible from where Seth stood. “Please,” Ali said. “The emperor of Chihuahua can proclaim that I’m a parking meter, but that doesn’t make it true. No—No—Listen, Seth’s here, I’ve got to go, thanks.” This last ran together almost as a single word. She hung up. She told him that she’d had the exact same fight with her brother Neil and again with her brother Brendan. She told him she considered him proof that not all males were gibbering idiots, but that he’d better not think of taking their side. She said that Ryan thought they were nuts to up and leave without a plan but had offered to store some of their stuff in his basement while they found their footing wherever it was t
hey were going to find their footing. They could ship a bunch of boxes media rate. They could Craigslist their heavy furniture. Maybe swap for some quality camping gear.

  Then Ali broke out maps, stacks of them, annotated all over. They had nowhere to be and so could travel slowly; make a big-time road trip of it: Santa Fe, the O’Keeffe museum, the Grand Canyon, Arches, a Shakespeare festival in southern Utah. She’d written that paper on Shylock—remember?—but had never seen Merchant performed. They could hike the Narrows and Angels Landing, see the Tetons and Old Faithful, maybe do some rafting on the Snake. Come August, they could meet up with her brother in Helena. He’d be going up against the AAA Brewers. They’d score tickets on the first-base line.

  And so they packed. Seth started with the books. When they first moved in together, marrying his library to Alison’s had felt like a bigger commitment than picking out a ring could ever be. He checked an empty box for damp and slotted the first book in. Alcott, Louisa May. He worked along the alphabetized shelf. Unless Ali made a big thing of it, he’d jettison the volumes under the sink. She was all zeal and sudden energy; they both were. He wanted to ride that, indefinitely, and the sink books would say it was not to be trusted. The box was full by Bambara, Toni Cade. He tore a strip of packing tape and without warning was lit with a feeling so pure he couldn’t say where it had originated. Despite it all, they were young. They were American. They wouldn’t really be in trouble till they ran out of West.

  Five A.M. Two hours till Lily’s ridiculous crack-of-dawn flight home. Home. The word was a glutinous mass in her stomach. School started up in another month. Sierra’d had a whole summer courting people to her side; Lily would have to be strategic. Forest Park Day had a tradition: Upperclassmen never wore uniforms on their first day, and she was a junior now. People would be watching. Lipstick’s ex-chickadees. Headmistress Brecken. Sierra. Jennifer Vogler, in all probability. She had bitched about the uniforms for years but now she got them. She was still hard at work forming herself. It was patently unfair to expect a visual display of the person she meant to be. Maybe she would wear the uniform. Melt their collective minds, signal that Sierra was the interloper and she was the one who belonged. Lily could work the whole Cathy Coed thing. Saddle shoes. Knee socks. Yes.

  She toweled off and pulled a striped sundress over her head. Cotton, because she was a paranoid little freaknugget. Organic fibers were best for air travel, the logic being that if the plane went down, synthetic ones would melt into your skin.

  In the kitchen, Gran made toast. Lily’s hair was still damp and her blow dryer was zipped away in her suitcase. She grabbed a rubber band from her carry-on. She worked her fingers through her hair and twisted it into a pony. She heard Gran say, “Huh. Here comes Benjamin.”

  Lily looked out the window. Benjamin Thales, sure enough.

  Gran said, “I was teasing him about that giant espresso machine. He said he’d bring some round, start you home with a proper sendoff. Good grief, at this hour.”

  Lily smoothed her ponytail and went to the door. She had been thinking about what to say the first time she ran into any of the zillion people who were ticked at her back home. It had to be polite because she didn’t want to make things worse. It had to be savvier than social autopilot because what if she said something like wow, nice to see you when obviously it wasn’t. She was pretty sure she had a line that worked, and here was Gran’s would-be whatever to practice on. Lily opened the door. She said, “Mr. Thales, what a surprise.”

  He held out a trio of travel mugs. Even though it was dead early, Lily had managed lipstick and blush, eye shadow, liner, and a quick coat of mascara. She still felt impossibly bare. It was, of course, the ponytail. Her thing about ponies wasn’t just that they were lazy. It was that they made it impossible to hide your flaws. Oval faces turned full-on equine; rounder ones chubbed out. Without tendrils to smooth its angles, Lily knew that her face looked sloped and sharp. Well. It was only the per-vet, and she was almost sixteen. About time she learned to carry herself exactly as she was. Besides, even a pony couldn’t screw up her eyes. She had read once that they were the only part of you that stayed the same, their size and shape unchanged from the moment they opened to the day—distant, distant, please distant—they shut for good.

  No one in The Commons noticed when the deed of ownership for 16 Daylily Crescent officially passed from M. Rosko to H. Lobel. County Records recorded it, as it had centuries of transactions and transitions, the land claim of Garner Chalk, the ordinary death of his ordinary wife. No one reported on it. The Crier had been re­imagined as an e-calendar and weekly newsletter and the Rosko story had nothing approaching national legs. No one was left to ask Lobel: Nicky Tullbeck wasn’t digging, not now that the course catalogue for Rice had arrived. And the Colliers were in a grocery store, stocking a cooler with beer; they would cross into Utah tomorrow, camp for a bit around Moab, and Utah was the land of 3.2 percent alcohol by volume. Still, it would have been nice to know. Did Lobel’s checkbook open out of kindness? Paranoia? A circling of wagons, or a true belief in what he’d built? Maybe he’d use it in promotional materials. The Commons: so fan-damn-tastic even the founder bought in.

  Picnic season, the worst of the heat finally waning: Ben packed the last of the donut peaches and the first of the Honeycrisp apples. Crackers remembered at the last minute and soft, herb studded, spreadable cheese. Sugar cookies sliced from a refrigerated tube and baked at three hundred fifty degrees for fifteen minutes. These, he’d rolled in a mixture of cinnamon and sugar before popping them in the oven. A domestic trick of Veronica’s, her failsafe in case of last-minute bake sales, and he pondered the ethics of using it for an excursion with Sadie. It probably wasn’t the thing to do, but his life was here now and he had to get on with that life.

  Sadie stood at her door, watching him cross the street. He liked that he seldom had to knock. That would have brought back too much of his youth: Ben, as a boy, sauntering up the nervous walk in a shirt that his mother had ironed. No. This with Sadie was something different. For one thing, he did his own ironing now.

  “Ready?” Sadie had on funny sunglasses, green and lilting up.

  “Yup. I packed a knife and napkins, the whole shebang. Can’t have you thinking I’m in this because I can’t take care of myself.”

  “Oh, who the hell can take care of themselves?”

  They took Sadie’s car. She was one of those people who actually enjoyed driving. They’d been meaning to have this picnic a long while, but he’d had a hard time pinpointing exactly where they were supposed to go. He hadn’t kept the damn Crier article, and it was harder than he’d anticipated to track the directions down. Follow the belt route to the northern edge of The Commons. You’ll find a shallow box canyon. Park and hike in. In about half a mile, you’ll find a stump. Back when it was a tree, it marked the boundary of Garner Chalk’s holdings.

  They stopped. Sadie’s sunglasses gave her an inadvertently coquettish look. I’m out of practice as a flirt, she’d told him once. I met Gary at twelve and never really learned how. I’m fond of you, Ben, but not enough to learn at this late date. Ben liked that about her, that study in contrasts, because she looked the part to string you along. He spread the blanket on the ground. Pendleton wool, itchy and from another life. The blanket unfolding was ripping and intimate and couldn’t help but call to mind a bed. When they sat, they kept their spines straighter than they otherwise might have.

  Ben scooped up a handful of dust and let it run out between his fingers. “The red earth of Tara,” he said.

  “I’ve never seen the movie all the way through,” Sadie admitted. “I get snippets on TV now and again. Aside from the costumes, I don’t really get the fuss.” She opened a bottle of water. He hadn’t remembered cups, so they took turns drinking. They caught each other’s eyes. The shared gaze was self-conscious, and how could it help but be? They were old enough to know this was the sort of scene they showed in movie previews or used to promote a new brand of
antibacterial soap. What a funny thing. The moment was cheaper for that awareness, but sweeter, too.

  If they’d been looking—and they weren’t—they might have noticed a slight disturbance of earth, a few paces south of the stump. Or they mightn’t have at all. It was subtle, a mound of fist-sized sandstones leaning one against the other. But before Ben or Sadie was born, before their parents were, or their parents before them, that stump was a tree and its branches fanned out, casting its shadow a gracious cool. Garner Chalk had stood there, sweating, its shade the only possible place for the work at hand. He wiped filthy palms against his thighs, then fashioned a wood marker, binding its short planks tight with twine. Sandstones secured its base. The rocks were smaller than the rancher would’ve liked, but the ground was hard and dry and his strength largely spent from digging. The cross was decades gone now, but the rocks endured, and beneath them, in what weathered scraps of calico remained her, lay the bones of Adah Chalk and her unnamed son, cradled quiet in earth that in truth never dressed the set of Gone with the Wind.

  It was dusk when the Colliers passed into Montana. Alison had her feet up on the dash and thumped a drumroll with bare heels. It was true what the license plates said. Big sky country. A thousand blues melded one into the next. Here were clouds, rolling in a thunderous herd. Here were fields burnished by the day’s last light. Seth thought here. This might be a place for us, its dome big enough for the things we feel.