Wrong Highway

by Wendy A. Gordon

  “Hi,” said Erica, hoping for a glimpse of connection, an undercurrent of shared mirth or pain.

  “Hello, Aunt Rikki,” responded Jared politely. “Whatcha doin’, dude?” he asked Dylan, who was making occasional passes at his soup, reading The Fellowship of the Ring for the twentieth time, and playing the game whenever Ethan passed him the tablet.

  “What happened to your hair?” asked Dylan.

  “A buzz cut happened to my hair.” Jared slid into his seat and took a bite of soup. “This stuff is nasty,” he commented.

  Erica sipped her soup, lukewarm and gluey. “You’re not kidding,” she agreed, wanting to exchange words with Jared, no matter how trivial or desultory. She stood up and walked over to Debbie. “Happy Thanksgiving,” she said, kissing Debbie lightly on the cheek. Her skin felt papery and dry, like an aged grandmother’s.

  “Who’s that, hon?” asked Ron.

  “Rik-ki,” answered Debbie, her hands shaking involuntarily.

  “I wonder what happened to that waiter,” Suzanne said. Her hands kept rising to her lips, like she wished she could smoke one of the cigarettes she’d given up twenty years previously. The twins engaged in a carrot-stick battle with the overweight boy at the opposite table. A carrot stick hit David in the cheek, but he pretended not to notice, sweeping the carrot into his napkin.

  The earnest young waiter finally reappeared with bowls of chicken noodle soup. Jesse and Jake settled down, but Sophia, weary of gumming crackers, slid out of her high chair and circled the table. The little Japanese girls caught her attention. She pulled on their skirts and their family’s orange tablecloth emblazoned with pumpkins. A water glass wobbled off the table and broke. The busboy rushed over to mop up the mess. Ethan looked up from his electronic game long enough to swoop Sophia into his lap. She punched the buttons of the game, laughing at how the colors on the screen changed at her command.

  “We never should have eaten in a restaurant,” said Suzanne, scratching the back of her head. “This was a mistake.”

  The main course arrived, flaccid turkey flanked by a mound of gooey stuffing, grainy mashed potatoes, canned green beans, and slimy canned yams with marshmallows. The old Debbie would never have served a meal like this. The old Debbie researched her holiday recipes diligently. She culled them carefully from Woman’s Day or the food section in the newspaper, protected the recipe with plastic wrap, and prepared the dish as meticulously as a lab experiment, never varying so much as a quarter teaspoon from the recommended spicing. While everyone ate, she bustled around the table, clearing the dishes away before anyone had the opportunity to take seconds. Erica had never particularly cared for Debbie’s holiday creations, but now that she would never eat them again, she missed them intensely.

  Ron fed Debbie potatoes. Occasionally, responding to his murmured encouragements, she made her own ventures with the spoon, dribbling food on the napkin spread out over her lap.

  “She’s losing weight,” fretted Suzanne, and indeed, under the medicated bloat, Erica could tell Debbie had lost her compact round definition. Her skin and muscles drooped on her bones like an unironed tablecloth.

  Erica shoveled food into her own mouth. She felt a restlessness in her digestive tract, akin to nausea, and the mild sweet sameness of turkey, cranberry sauce, potatoes, and stuffing settled her stomach. When she looked up from her plate, she noted that Ethan had disappeared. Perhaps he’d gone outside for a cigarette. He was up to a pack a day now. He’d put Sophia back in her high chair, where she was contentedly smearing a marshmallow around the plastic tray. Dylan was still immersed in his book.

  “Should you let him read at the table?” Suzanne asked.

  “I don’t mind,” Erica shrugged. “It’s for school,” she lied. She wished she could sink into a book herself, or better yet, go back and sit in steamy Vince Volvo, spacing out to Van Halen. She could take Jared with her and rescue him from answering his grandparents’ questions about military school. This dinner would be a whole lot easier to take if they were stoned; they’d gain essential psychological distance. Perhaps they might even find some elements borderline amusing.

  “What classes are you taking, son?” asked Dad.

  “The usual stuff,” Jared mumbled. “English. Calculus. History. Chemistry. Mass murder.”

  Dad blanched. “Have you made any friends?” he asked.

  “Not to speak of. This food here sucks as bad as the food there, by the way.”

  “I don’t like it either,” said Jake, rolling a Matchbox dump truck into the gravy boat, knocking it over into his grandmother’s lap.

  “Jake!” Mom barked. “You’ve stained my linen skirt.”

  “It’s not Jake’s fault!” Erica cried. “He’s just bored.”

  “What do you care, Rikki?” Mom mopped up the gravy with her napkin. “You’re leaving. You won’t have to put up with us for much longer. Where’s Ethan, anyway? Evidently he no longer cares to grace us with his presence.”

  Ethan’s seat was still empty. “I don’t know,” Erica said. “Maybe he has a stomachache.”

  “Can’t you make your children behave? Can’t you have more respect for your sister? Every day she has to live like this.” Mom’s voice broke. Debbie slumped in her chair, her eyes closed. Jared sighed, leaning back wearily in his seat.

  “My children are your grandchildren, you know. What do you expect them to do, stuck in this restaurant? This is a train wreck here”—Erica gestured around the table—“and you want us to stand here and rubberneck for the rest of our lives.”

  Mom scratched the back of her neck. “Train wreck? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Honestly, Rikki.”

  “Now, now.” Dad placed his hand over Mom’s. “This is a happy occasion.”

  “We’ll never have Thanksgiving together again,” Mom bawled.

  “Sure we will,” Erica started to say automatically, but then she stopped. Maybe next Thanksgiving they could visit Ethan’s family and eat a calm barbequed turkey on their patio, on a warm afternoon scented with eucalyptus. Maybe they could deep-fry their turkey or whatever they did down South, all by themselves in their new home. Or they could skip the turkey entirely and eat barbequed shrimp on a Caribbean island. “You’re right—we won’t be back,” Erica said. “In fact, we’re leaving now. I’m going to find Ethan.” She gathered all the toys flung over the table and on the floor. She picked up Sophia, grabbed the twins by the hands, slung the baby gear and entertainment bags over her arms, and, motioning to Dylan to follow, rose up from the table.

  “You’ll miss the pumpkin pie,” Dad said.

  “Too bad,” said Erica as a Matchbox car fell out of the bag and rolled under Jared’s chair. “Bye, Jared,” she said. “Keep in touch.”

  “Whatever,” Jared handed her the toy car.

  She found Ethan at the bar, nursing a whiskey and watching college football. Ignoring the prominent “Absolutely No Minors” sign, she pushed her way up to the counter. “Let’s go,” she said.

  “Say the word,” Ethan replied. From the door of the restaurant, she watched him return to the table and say polite good-byes, kissing everyone on the cheek. Outside, darkness had fallen completely, and needles of sleet battered their faces. The fat boy was standing out there with his family, waiting for their valet-parked car. He and the twins resumed their acquaintance, running in and out of the slush-soaked bushes.

  That Sunday, with sleet once again falling outside and apple-cinnamon potpourri simmering on the stove in their warm kitchen, a medical couple—a gastroenterologist and his wife, a pregnant dermatologist—made a cash offer on the house. It was $25,000 below their asking price, but Ethan and Erica accepted it.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  As soon as the doctors put down their contract deposit, Erica flew down to join Ethan for a whirlwind tour of Florida houses. Once again, she left the kids with Lisa. She ow
ed Lisa a debt she could scarcely repay; she figured she’d buy her the Louis Vuitton bag she’d been lusting after.

  Grant Fishel had changed its ways since the ebullient and expansive spring, housing Ethan and Erica in an anonymous Doubletree Inn by I-90 with no fluffy bathrobes and no orange-scented soap. They wandered through subdivisions with an agent provided by Grant Fishel’s corporate relocations department, a woman named Rosalyn with streaked blond hair frozen into a flip and huge blue glass earrings shaped like dolphins. Rosalyn’s nasal Jersey accent was softened and slowed by twenty years in South Florida.

  She gabbed constantly, like Erica’s mother used to, and Erica let the burble stream comfortingly through her ears. Yet as she ogled each tiled foyer, each Jenn-Air range or steam shower or ballroom-size closet, her disenchantment grew. These houses no longer exuded the luxurious magic of last spring, as if the twins were to return to Disney World and suddenly realize that Mickey Mouse was only an underpaid worker in a hot, smelly costume. Nor, she realized, was Florida far enough away from New York. Her great-aunts and great-uncles and assorted other elderly relatives lived there. Her parents would get over their huff soon enough and visit them; indeed, only a week after Thanksgiving, her mother had already invited them all over for latkes and menorah lighting. The Schrabner family vacationed every year in Fort Lauderdale. It was only a matter of time before she would she’d walk into her new supermarket and encounter someone who recognized her, who would call her Rikki. Her mind drifted back to the Smoky Mountains, beyond the reach of the highway, beyond the reach of the television and the telephone, where the one-lane roads dropped off steeply into darkness.

  Ethan kept shaking his head, complaining that all the houses looked interchangeable, one stucco faux Mediterranean villa after another, with thick spiky grass in front and a kidney-shaped pool in the back. “Don’t you have something, I don’t know, more unique, more classy, than these suburban developments?” he asked. It was already early afternoon on Sunday, with Erica’s flight back to New York scheduled for Monday morning. Time was running out.

  “I don’t know what else to show you, honey,” said Rosalyn, shaking her head so that the glass dolphins rattled against the folds of her neck. She’d definitely had work done, Erica concluded. All the skin above her neck was stretched taut, her lips flat and thin under their cracked ruby lipstick.

  “How about a house closer to the beach?” Ethan suggested. “With a larger yard and mature palm trees instead of these little skinny things.” He waved dismissively at the scrawny specimens supported by wire, smelling of bark dust. Understandable disdain, Erica thought, considering he grew up among redwoods. “A view of the water would be nice.”

  Rosalyn rolled her eyes, even as her smile stayed put. Erica knew what was in Ethan’s mind’s eye: one of those houses along Route 1, the ones hidden far behind their gated entrances, the long driveways shaded by palms. Maybe he believed all the risk he’d taken for the benefit of Grant Fishel had earned him one of those. He was still an MIT geek at heart. He still didn’t recognize his stumbling, half-innocent role in the scheme of things. Even Erica had figured out that those mansions belonged to the likes of Stephan Langston, or maybe Nick Stromboli’s suppliers, once they all got out of prison.

  As the sun set, Erica and Ethan settled on a compromise, a bungalow on the Intercoastal with a couple of waving pineapple palms and a boat dock, in a neighborhood south of Boca. It cost twice as much as their home in West Meadow, but with multiple bonuses sitting in savings, Ethan figured they could pull it off. He especially liked the idea of a boat, and Erica supposed the boys would also. Unlike the ’30s-era homes down the block, this house was as brand-new as the ones in the subdivisions, constructed on the unwanted fringe of someone else’s fabulously large lot. Erica did not want an old house, however elegant. This bungalow was as untouched as the tract homes with their Jenn-Airs and Jacuzzis. It still smelled of paint, and in the warmth of the early evening, the smell of fresh asphalt rose up from the driveway. She didn’t want the worn stucco of the rambling mansion next door, streaked with moss. She didn’t want any of the history those walls might contain.

  “I’m sure this will be a lovely place to raise your beautiful family,” Rosalyn said. They followed her back to the office to sign the papers.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  A moving service, paid for by Grant Fishel, packed up all but the most essential of their possessions and transported them to their new home. Erica and Ethan celebrated New Year’s with a bottle of French champagne and caviar he’d gotten from a client, sitting in their empty living room in front of the fireplace. Without furniture, or piles of paper, or scattered toys, the house looked huge, larger, in fact, than the house they were moving to. Sammy remained in the family room. She’d taken him to the vet and obtained a special certificate of reptilian health; still, he’d need to fly in cargo. He was five feet long now. Periodically, he emitted a high-pitched squeal.

  In the second week of January, with their closing date two days away, Ethan returned for what would be his last week in West Meadow. Lisa offered to take the kids Friday night, so Erica and Ethan could enjoy one last fling in Manhattan.

  Erica dropped them off midafternoon. The weak light was already fading, a light snow beginning to fall, and she needed to drive into the city. Ethan had suggested she take the train—a few flakes of snow sufficed to send him into a transportation panic—but she preferred to drive and, truth be told, had an appointment with Anders en route. Her last. She’d need to figure out a new arrangement in Florida. If Miami Vice was to be believed, that wouldn’t prove too difficult.

  “Tell me the truth—aren’t you going to desperately miss New York?” Lisa asked.

  “I don’t think so.” Erica already desperately missed New York, but it was the New York of her past, or maybe only of her imagination. That was too complicated a truth to share with Lisa.

  Lisa’s face dropped, making Erica feel as if by rejecting New York, she was rejecting her personally.

  “I’ll miss you a lot, though,” Erica assured her.

  Lisa’s round face, framed by wispy blond hair, brightened. “Well, at least I can visit you,” she said. “It’s not like you’re falling off the face of the earth. It’s not like that old boyfriend of yours in high school—what was his name?’

  “Jeff.”

  “Yeah, Jeff. He went to that strange college in Oregon, right? Did you ever hear from him again?”

  “No,” Erica said. Jeff had sent her exactly one letter from Reed, which she’d ripped open excitedly, right in front of the Boston University student union mailboxes. All it did was describe some crazy party he’d attended where he rode a motorized couch. It made him think of her, he said; he thought she’d find it amusing. He’d signed the letter “Sincerely.” The “sincerely” cut her to the bone. She did not write him back.

  “Well, who cares—you’re better off with Ethan,” Lisa said, giving her a hug. “You guys go have a great time tonight. Okay?”

  Erica drove home, changed into her leopard-print bustier dress and leather boots, and paced around the kitchen. She dreaded standing, overdressed, in that deserted and dark park off Utopia Boulevard, waiting for Anders to show up.

  She poured herself another cup of coffee.

  No one but Nick and Anders, and, she supposed, Stephan, knew about the coke. Even Jared thought she’d only tried it a few times. It amazed her how easy it was to hide something so big in plain view. No one was looking for it, because everyone she knew—from Ethan to her mother to Lisa to the ladies in aerobics class to the police—looked only for what they expected to see.

  Her mind drifted to Sophia and how she often woke from sleep in a new location, opening up to that fresh moment with a wide-open toothless grin. That deep honesty, that wide-open vulnerable presence, everyone’s birthright, slipped away while they weren’t paying attention. Her own life stretched forward as far
as she could see, a gray blur, each moment indistinguishable from the next.

  She was as trapped in body and circumstance as Debbie.

  She could no longer live that existence. She wouldn’t allow it. She would dip herself in a vat of acid; she would blast that line of moments open and rub them raw, and stare that pulsing river down.

  She sipped her coffee, thinking of Anders shivering alone in the park, waiting for her. He wouldn’t wait for long. He’d stalk off in disgust and then call another customer in his phone book. To him, she was nothing but an interchangeable commodity. She pulled out the last of her coke and dumped it on the kitchen counter, dividing it into lines, frantically, sloppily, wiping up the leftover grains like pastry scraps and shaping them again. She finished it all, the whole supersize bag of potato chips, right there in the kitchen, looking out at her hand-painted fruit tiles, the bowl of oranges, and the play castle with its crust of frost. Right there out in the open, where anyone could have seen her, if only they were looking. As she straightened up, she banged her knee against the edge of the counter. Blood streamed out of a ragged gash. She pulled down her ripped pantyhose and made herself stare at the red stream dribbling down her leg, willing herself not to give in to the dizziness and the shadows at the corners of her vision. She washed the cut with antiseptic, applied a Band-Aid, and changed into patterned leggings. Her knee stung as it moved against the nubby fabric.

  She checked the clock, confirming that she’d missed her appointment with Anders. The snow drifted down as she drove into the city, melting before it hit the ground. The drops of whiteness shimmered in her headlights, and she pushed her way through the sparkling fog. Her leg throbbed. The rush of blood into the gash dissipated and then surged, in rhythm with her heart, in rhythm with the pulsing traffic. She drove over the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge. This would be the last time she would traverse this tangle of concrete and lights and honking taxicabs, the last time she would park by a manhole spewing out steam.