by Tami Hoag
Where am I?
My room.
Where is my room?
Home.
She looked down as something stirred among the soft folds of the blanket. A black-and-white cat snuggled up against her stomach.
“Tuxedo!”
The cat awoke, yawning and blinking. He rolled and stretched and purred and yawned, then looked up at her with a self-satisfied cat smile and began purring like a small engine, kneading the covers with white-mittened paws. Dana stroked a hand over him, soaking in the sensation of peace that simple action gave her.
She had rescued the cat from a shelter in Minneapolis after interviewing the shelter director on the early-morning news show she had anchored. Tuxedo had been one of three cats brought along to promote an adoption event. He had spent the remainder of the day snoozing in an open desk drawer, curled up in a cashmere cardigan.
Dana had only a vague memory of the story—and her mind may well have pieced that memory together out of the details other people had given her. Until her mother had brought a framed photograph of Tux for her to keep in her room at the Weidman Center, she hadn’t remembered having a cat. But stroking his glossy fur brought back a strong, familiar feeling of peace and contentment.
Across the room, the door cracked open and her mother peeked in.
“Just checking,” she said, letting herself in. “Did you sleep well?”
Dana nodded as she sat up and leaned back into a mountain of frilly pillows. Tux immediately resituated himself in her lap, chirping and trilling as he curled into a ball.
Her mother sat down on the edge of the bed and reached over to scratch the cat’s ears.
“He’s missed you.”
“I missed him.”
“I think Roger is allergic to him,” her mother confessed with a little smile.
“Too bad for Roger,” Dana said without sympathy.
“That’s what I told him. The girl and the cat are a package deal,” she said. “Dinner’s on the way from Anthony’s. I ordered all your favorites.”
“What are my favorites?”
“Meatball ricotta pizza with mushrooms. Baked ziti. The big salad with chickpeas and red onions and tomatoes, with red wine vinaigrette. And garlic bread with cheese.”
“What if those aren’t my favorites anymore?”
“Then we’ll find you new favorites.”
So many things were different now. She had lost her taste for certain foods and craved flavors she had never cared about before. Her injury had taken away even the simplest of familiar small pleasures. She had to rebuild everything from scratch, even her likes and dislikes.
“It’s all going to be fine, honey,” her mother said. “The only important thing is that you’re home. Who cares if you don’t like chickpeas anymore? If you can’t stand the smell of my perfume, just tell me. It doesn’t matter.”
“I can’t stand the smell of your perfume anymore,” Dana said. “Seriously.”
Her mother smiled and laughed. “I’ll throw it out tonight—even though you gave it to me for Christmas. What else?”
“I’ll let you know,” Dana said, finding a little smile of her own. “I’m not crazy about that sweater either.”
They laughed together, something that would have seemed unlikely earlier in the day. Her mother patted her cheek.
“I love you.”
“I love you too,” Dana said. “I’m sorry if it doesn’t always seem like I do.”
“You don’t have anything to apologize for, sweetheart,” her mother said softly. “You have one thing to concentrate on: getting better. I don’t want you to worry about anything else, okay?”
Dana nodded.
Her mother got up from the bed, busying her hands by folding the pink blanket. “Now, you should freshen up. Dinner will be here soon. And Frankie and Mags are coming too. Do you want me to help you unpack?”
“I can do it,” Dana said automatically, a decision she regretted almost as soon as her mother left the room with Tuxedo tagging after her in hopes of a meal.
She opened her two suitcases and emptied the contents onto the bed and was immediately overwhelmed by the questions of what to put away where, what should go on hangers and what should go in drawers. Deciding the best decision was no decision, she abandoned the task and went into her bathroom to check herself out in the mirror.
She had changed out of her drenched pink hoodie for a gray hoodie before lying down, and now she looked like she had just crawled out of a laundry basket. Wrinkles creased the top, but she couldn’t bear the idea of having to pick something else to change into. Her short hair was sticking up in all directions. Her solution was to put up her hood and call it good enough. There would be no television cameras at dinner, no strangers to judge her.
Still, she felt nervous. She tried to tell herself no one was going to expect anything special from her. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t had dinner with her mother and Roger before, or that she hadn’t seen her aunt Frankie since everything that had happened. Frankie and her partner, Maggie, had been regular visitors to the Weidman Center. But it was somehow different because she was now home for good.
This was the first day of the rest of her life. What if she didn’t pass the test of behaving like a normal person at dinner? What if she couldn’t find her way to the bathroom? What if . . . what if . . .
What if she couldn’t find her way to the kitchen?
The idea would have seemed ridiculous to most people. She had grown up in this house. How could she not know where the kitchen was? But she hadn’t navigated this house in a long time, and even if she had gone from room to room ten times today, there was no guarantee she would remember the path without having written it down.
She snatched up her iPhone from the nightstand, brought up the notes app, and typed:
DIRECTIONS: from my room to the kitchen
Her bedroom was located on the lower level of the house along with a large family room, giving this floor the feeling of being its own apartment. Both rooms faced out onto a large flagstone patio scattered with lounges and cushioned chairs that invited guests to relax around tables or the fire pit. Beyond the patio, a green area sloped away to woods.
After spending her childhood in a bedroom down the hall from her parents, Dana had been so excited when, at sixteen, she had been allowed to move downstairs, giving her the extra privacy and independence every teenage girl wanted (and giving her mother and Roger, who were newly married, the extra privacy they wanted as well).
Dana left her room and turned right, going toward the light-filled family room. Her mother, no doubt, had turned on the fat ginger-jar lamps that squatted on the end tables beside the big overstuffed leather sofa. A stone fireplace dominated the end wall, with a huge television hanging above the thick mantel.
A gracious curving staircase led the way up to the first floor, where Dana paused to recalculate. Turn right? Turn left? From where she stood she could see the front door, the door to the powder room, the staircase that curved upward to the second-floor bedrooms. She stood quietly, taking in the details, listening carefully, trying to call up memories.
Left. Turn left. She made the note on her phone and continued down a hallway that opened to a formal living room on one side and a dining room on the other. She could hear voices now. Women’s voices. Familiar voices. She paused and listened.
“I saw it on the television at the gym. I couldn’t believe it! How did they know Dana was coming home today?”
“I don’t know. Roger said I shouldn’t have put the balloons on the mailbox.”
“Oh, for God’s sake! What a dick! He puts the blame on you? Like you don’t have enough stress?”
“But he probably has a point—”
“Don’t defend him, Lynda! How dare he do that to you? And you know darn well it was probably Wesley Stevens who t
ipped off the newspeople. Anything for a media moment. Please tell me he’s not coming to dinner. He clings to Roger like he’s made of Velcro.”
“Wesley is not coming to dinner. Family only,” Lynda said. “And Roger didn’t want what happened in the driveway, Frankie—”
“Well, it got him on television, didn’t it? And it didn’t cost a dime. And it’s a news bit, so no equal time for the opponent. I hear this senate race is too close to call.”
“I’m not going to believe Roger had anything to do with that. He feels terrible that Dana was upset.”
“I feel terrible that Dana was upset, too,” a third voice chimed in. Frankie’s partner, Maggie. “Dana is where our focus should be, Frankie. The look on her face . . . broke my heart.”
“What that newscaster had to say made me want to break her face,” Frankie said. “And bringing up Casey Grant. What the hell? That was years ago! Why bring that up now? Nobody knows what happened to Casey. Leave it alone, for Christ’s sake. Even if there was some connection, what possible difference could it make now?”
“Can we not talk about it?” Lynda said impatiently. “Dana’s going to be coming up here any minute. I don’t want her hearing any of this. She doesn’t need to be reminded about this afternoon, and she certainly doesn’t need to be reminded about Casey. It’s her first night home. That’s stressful enough for her. Let’s just be happy and positive we have her back.”
Someone sighed.
“You’re right,” Frankie said. “I’m sorry. It just made me so fucking angry.”
“Let it go, Frankie.”
“I will. I am. It’s gone. See? Happy face! Now, where’s my niece? I want to welcome her home.”
“She had a nap,” her mother said, “but she’s up—at least, she was up. That’s not to say she might not have forgotten about dinner and gone back to bed.”
“How is she?” Maggie asked.
“She seems better now that she’s rested. She just got overwhelmed by all that madness in the driveway.”
“Understandably so. I felt overwhelmed just watching.”
“It scares me when that happens to her,” her mother admitted. “I don’t know where her mind goes. It’s like she doesn’t even recognize me.”
“Don’t take it personally, Lynda,” Frankie said gently. “The brain’s first instinct is to protect itself. That fight-or-flight response is the strongest thing we have. I’m sure it’s only more so in Dana, considering everything she went through.”
“I don’t even want to imagine what would be left of my mind,” Maggie said. “I don’t think I could have survived what that madman did to her. I really don’t. She’s so brave.”
“Should I go get her?” Frankie asked. “I’ll go get her.”
A chair scraped against the floor.
Dana stepped backward one step, two steps, not wanting to get caught eavesdropping.
“Hey there, sweetheart!”
The voice was behind her, big and deep, startling her even as she stepped backward into its owner—Roger.
Her heart leapt into her throat, and she spun around, tripping over her own feet.
Roger grabbed her upper arms, catching her, holding on to her.
“Wrong way!” he said, smiling, laughing.
In the dim light of the hallway he looked sinister, towering over her. Dana tried to turn, to wrench out of his grip.
“There she is!” Frankie said, coming out of the kitchen. “I was just coming to find you! Welcome home, Li’l Dee!”
And then she was out of Roger’s grasp and into Frankie’s hug and being swept out of the hall and into the kitchen.
“We’re so excited to have you home!”
Maggie came across the room, smiling, reaching out. She was all soft lines and gentle curves—the body of a yoga enthusiast and a dancer, while Frankie was the feminine version of Dana’s father: compact, athletic, angular. Frankie had a handshake that could make a man wince, and the trademark rectangular Nolan smile and stunning blue eyes. In contrast to her partner’s long dark hair, Frankie kept her hair in a punkish platinum crop that always sported a new splash of color, purple being the current choice.
“Come sit,” Frankie said, herding her toward the harvest table, which sat in an alcove of windows. “We get to wait on you tonight.”
“What would you like to drink, Dana?” Maggie asked. “We brought sparkling cider to celebrate. Does that sound good?”
“Yes, thanks.”
Dana slipped around to the far side of the table, putting her back to the windows. She worked to slow her racing heart and racing mind by slowly taking in the familiar room, focusing one by one on the things she recognized—the antique white cupboards, the big island with the dark granite top, the copper pots that hung from the iron pot rack. On the counter a giant pottery cat dressed as a butler stood upright holding a menu board that read: LYNDA’S KITCHEN.
Maggie set a champagne flute on the table in front of her. Dana dutifully took a sip of the sparkling cider.
“So,” Dana said. “Did anybody catch me on the news? Was I the lead or the human interest story?”
Everyone froze for an almost comic second. Frankie glanced at Dana’s mother as if asking silent permission to comment.
Lynda frowned. “Can’t we just let that go for the evening?”
“Like it never happened?” Dana asked.
“Yes, exactly like that. I have no problem with that. Denial can be a wonderful thing.”
“Then I have to be the elephant in the room?” Dana said. “Everybody has to walk around on eggshells and pretend I didn’t have a big meltdown in front of multiple TV cameras? I’d rather not. Might as well acknowledge the madness—mine and theirs. People still think I’m news, so I’m news,” she said. “There must not be much going on in the world today.”
“There’s never anything much going on here,” Frankie said. “This is rural Indiana. The crop report is news. You survived a horrific ordeal, Dee. That would make you a headline anywhere. Here you’re going to be ranked right behind the Second Coming of Christ.”
“Did I miss that while I was away?” Dana asked.
Frankie laughed. “No. The biggest thing you missed was the scandal of the Sweet Corn Festival Queen getting caught half-naked in a car with the high school baseball coach. You definitely beat that, Dee.”
“People are fascinated with stories of survival,” Maggie said. “As intrusive as it seems to us, you can’t blame them.”
“Yes, I can blame them,” Lynda argued. “My daughter is not a curiosity.”
“Sure I am,” Dana said. “I’m a freak. Look at me.”
Her mother scowled harder. “Dana . . .”
“Lynda . . .”
“People are ghouls who slow down when they drive by car wrecks,” Frankie said. “It’s lascivious voyeurism.”
“I don’t think that’s all of it,” Maggie countered gently, taking the seat next to Dana. “I think people hear Dana’s story, and they want to know what does she have inside her that got her through it. They wonder if they would have that kind of strength and determination if they found themselves in that situation.”
“I think people are slugs who have no lives, and they like to look at the tragedies of other people so they can somehow justify their own choices to merely exist,” Frankie said.
“I think you’re both right.”
The women turned and looked at Roger as he opened a beer and poured it into a pilsner glass.
Frankie made a face. “Spoken like a politician.”
“Nothing is black-and-white,” Roger said. “And we live in this age of instant stardom through electronic media. People all over the world know Dana’s story. They’ve become attached to her. They’ve invested in her emotionally. They want to know more.”
“They should mind
their own business,” Lynda grumbled as she dug silverware out of a drawer and dumped it on the island next to a stack of plates.
“That’s not going to happen, Lynda,” Roger said. “And we might as well face it. We’ve had calls from 48 Hours, 20/20, Dateline . . .”
Dateline. There was irony, Dana thought. She had aspired to be on Dateline as an on-air personality. Now Dateline was calling her to be the subject of a story.
“If we ignore them, eventually they’ll go away. And next week something horrible will happen to someone else, and they’ll be news,” her mother said as the doorbell rang.
“That’s probably Dateline now,” Frankie said. “Roger, you get it. Maybe you can sidetrack Lester Holt onto a story about Indiana politics. Get some more bonus airtime.”
Roger frowned.
“I’m hoping it’s the pizza,” Maggie said. “I’m starving. How about you, Dana? You’ve had a long day. You must be hungry.”
Dana shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Sometimes she has trouble distinguishing between hunger and fatigue,” her mother said.
“Don’t talk about me,” Dana said irritably. “God, that’s so annoying. I’m right here.”
“And we’re glad for it,” Frankie said, taking the seat on the other side of her. She reached an arm around Dana’s shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “We’re all so happy to have you home, Li’l Dee. Don’t give us too hard a time for fussing over you and protecting you like we’re a whole pack of mama bears. It’s all because we love you so crazy much.”
The pungent aroma of garlic preceded the food coming into the kitchen. Frankie began chanting “Pi-zza! Pi-zza!” as she popped up out of her chair to help. Maggie got up as well, going to the island to help organize the dishes.
They had ordered enough food for an army. Roger came back into the kitchen, arms full of Anthony’s bags, followed by the deliveryman with the pizzas.
Dana remained in her seat, her focus on the delivery guy. He looked familiar, but she couldn’t place him because she didn’t know any pizza deliverymen. Her brain repeated that truth over and over as she tried unsuccessfully to find another context for him. There was something familiar about the angle he held his head at, the set of his shoulders, the line of his jaw.