All the Roads That Lead From Home

by Anne Leigh Parrish

  “‘Something you carry for a long time.’ Six letters,” she says.

  “Grudge.”

  “Right you are!” She fills in the boxes with a smile and a jaunty toss of her head. I can’t take it.

  “Look. Just tell me what you want and then vaporize. Okay?” I say.

  “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake! Of course I’m trying to get rid of you! You’re a fucking ghost!”

  “Such language.” She clicks her tongue. “Well if you must know, I’m here to see something through. And to make you see through something.” She smiles to herself.

  “Yeah? Like what?” I ask.

  She wags her finger at me to say she’s explained enough.

  Yesterday, my boss asked why I was so crabby. I said I hadn’t been sleeping. He sat in the chair across from my desk and said, “Sherry, what you need is a little romance.” His bald head turned pink with the effort it took to say this. “I mean it. You’re young. You’re pretty. No, you’re beautiful. Go make some man happy. Better yet, let him make you happy.”

  He wants to set me up with his son, Derek. Derek is twenty-eight, six years younger than I am, and hung like a horse. I know this because he got drunk one night after work and displayed his equipment to me back by the spark plugs. Derek’s just a fun-loving guy who can’t keep it in his pants. He’s screwed every woman that ever worked here except me. Ed, I suppose, thinks I’d get him to settle down. Ed thinks I’m highly capable because I have a kid with a disability and come to work made up like a starlet. Little does he know how horrible I’d look otherwise.

  “But seriously, what’s really going on?” Ed leaned forward, his gut flopping over his gray polyester pants.

  “My mother’s driving me nuts.”

  “Your mother’s dead, Sherry.”

  “I know that, Ed.”

  “She got killed in that wreck on I-80 last spring.”

  “Yup.”

  “I was with you at the funeral.” His voice took on a soothing, keep-her-calm tone. He leaned back and checked his watch. Derek sauntered by my open door, saw us, then backed up. “Hey, Dad. Sher. What’s up?”

  “Your father thinks I’m nuts,” I said.

  “He’s right.” He grinned.

  “He doesn’t believe that my dead mother comes by every day and tells me how to live my life.”

  He stopped grinning. He scratched his head. “Huh. Weird shit happens sometimes. You just gotta go with it, I guess.”

  Ed waited to see if I’d say anything else. When I didn’t, he said, “Okay, folks, we’re on the clock here.” He gave me a worried glance on his way out.

  On Sunday my mother fades a little. She’s there, but harder to see. “What’s up?” I ask.

  “I’m moving on, that’s all. You didn’t expect me to stay forever, did you?”

  Eric’s father said the same thing just about the time he started fading out, too.

  I never signed on for this, he announced when we found out Eric was autistic.

  And I did?

  Hey. You could have gotten rid of it.

  ‘Him,’ not ‘it.’

  The day he moved out, Eric sat on the floor and said, go-bye, go-bye, go-bye, for about four hours straight. Now, when my mother mentions leaving, Eric looks at her long and hard, with a lot more interest than he usually shows anyone.

  “I thought you said he couldn’t see you,” I say.

  “What? Oh, well, maybe he can. Who knows?”

  I stroke Blobbo. It’s soft and smooth. Touching my face in the dark you’d never know it was there. I can’t even feel it, Eric’s father once said. To be honest, Blobbo didn’t seem to bother him much. He confessed that he thought it made me vulnerable, needy for the attention I probably didn’t get. I translated that to mean he thought I was easy. And I suppose I was.

  Since him, there have been two other losers who felt sorry for me and came home. Joe-Joe, the guy who fixes my car, and Alan, a guy at the hardware store. I gave them what they needed. Maybe they were grateful, or sated for a while—meaning full up, replete, needing nothing more.

  Christ, now I sound just like her. My mother was a high school language arts teacher. She hated it, thought her students were a bunch of morons. She was so tough on them that one took a magic marker once and wrote “Hard-ass bitch” on the windshield of her car. I can just imagine how she was in class. Her voice pleasant, and her words like ice. You should really try to be more careful with your makeup, Sheryl Lynn. That foundation may not suit you as well as you think. I’d started wearing it in junior high. I’d reached a point of despising Blobbo. Years of laser treatments had faded it only a little, and I couldn’t stand the sight of myself in the mirror. If I were home without make-up on, and someone called to say they were dropping by, I’d run to the bathroom and start slathering it on. Only my closest friends ever saw me without it. They were kind, I guess. One said Blobbo looked like a map of something, a country no one had yet discovered, that I alone had the secret to. Her name was Evelyn. She killed herself our senior year in high school over some boy. When my mother heard that she said, Well, that’s not something you’ll ever do, is it? Meaning I’d never be able to get that deeply involved with anyone, because of my looks.

  Sometimes I think she was just trying to train me not to expect anything but disappointment. Other times I think she took out on me things she didn’t like about her own life. Not being able to find another man after my father booked out made the list. Not having much money did, too. What she hated most was having to pretend to be happy. My mother didn’t drink, but one night she got drunk. She’d been to a party at another teacher’s house, and really poured it down. She was driven home, seen to the front door. She always worried about what people thought, so for her to let go like that was really weird. She found me in the living room, wondering where the hell she was. Out of the blue she said, Some day you’ll be glad you were born like that, mark my words. This world is so full of phonies! In the morning she had no memory of saying anything to me, let alone of getting home from the party.

  Eric lines up his tools, now that he is finished putting my clock radio back together.

  “All fixed!” he says, with a bounce. This is the true Eric, underneath it all. Proud as pie about what his amazing little hands can do.

  My mother taps her pencil on the table. “‘The real McCoy.’ Seven letters.”

  “Genuine,” I say.

  “One smart girl, you are.”

  Eric’s up on his feet, his coveralls twisted. He wants a hug. He doesn’t want them very often. I hug him. He smells like sour milk and sugar. He hugs me back, and pats my face. He does that sometimes. He thinks Blobbo’s a riot. Once, he traced it with a Sharpie. Took me days to scrub it off.

  We pull apart. My mother’s gone. So’s the crossword puzzle, her pencil, the tea, and that scent of Chanel. I walk room to room, and even look in the closets, but I know she’s disappeared for good. Don’t ask me how, I just do.

  The next morning I’m late getting up. Weird dreams—none about her, about my high school days. I was picking a place to sit in the cafeteria. The boy I liked had to be on my good side, which was tricky to arrange because that chair was taken. Then it became a game of musical chairs, everyone walking around in a circle until the music stopped, and no matter what, I always got the wrong damn chair. When I finally did, the boy wouldn’t turn the other way, wouldn’t let me see his whole face. I felt totally ripped off by that, and I woke up feeling flushed and cold at the same time.

  Eric doesn’t want to go to day care, which makes everything a struggle. He sits at the table, swinging his legs, not eating his cereal. I give up, haul him into the car, and take him to the day care lady’s house. She stares at me. I don’t know why. Eric’s in clean clothes, his hair is brushed, I’ve packed his lunch. I even remember his beloved animal crackers, though she wouldn’t know about that.

  At work everyone’s clustered by the sales coun
ter. Janice, the cashier, is saying Ed’s a sitting duck. She says there have been robberies in the neighborhood, and they might be the next target, especially after six when Ed takes over from Janice and he’s all alone. As I draw near three faces turn my way. Conversation stops. They stare.

  “Whoa, Sher,” says Derek.

  “Whoa, yourself.”

  I knew I shouldn’t have worn this sweater. It’s a little clingy, and Derek being Derek can’t resist. But what’s Ed’s problem? And Janice’s?

  “What’s this I hear about robberies?” I ask.

  “It happens. Goes with the territory,” says Ed. He’s trying not to look at me.

  “I say protect the territory,” says Derek.

  “We’ve got an alarm system,” says Ed.

  “That’s for the store. Doesn’t protect you,” says Janice.

  Ed reaches below the counter. He’s got a baseball bat down there! Derek steps back. Janice laughs.

  “How long have you had that?” Derek asks.

  “Since this morning. I listen to the news, too, you know.” Ed chokes up his hands and cocks his hips. “Come on, buddy. What you see is what you get!”

  We all laugh. But then they turn to me again, so I make for my office. I sit. On my desk is another stack of invoices. I have to make sure they all add up. So, that’s what I do, number by number.

  On break I hit the Ladies Room, which is just the common bathroom for all of us, and Janice’s job to keep clean which she does for shit, and there I am, in the tiny mirror over the sink, totally makeup-free. Crap! How the hell did I manage that? No wonder everyone’s freaking out! Blobbo’s having itself a field day! For a moment I think I’m going to puke. Slowly my stomach settles. My face is burning. I tap cold water on my temples. I could bail out, rush home, and return intact, but what’s the point? My makeup only does so much. Blobbo’s still visible, a faint shadow, no matter what. Who have I been kidding?

  “You okay in there?” Janice calls through the door.

  “Be right out.” I guess I’ve been holed up in here for a while. I can’t hide forever. I return to my office, past Janice, who watches me go.

  Back at my desk my right hand flies to my rescue, even though I’m beyond rescuing. I used to sit like this, chin to palm, and pretend to be deep in thought. Trouble is, I’m right-handed, so when I had to write something, I had to show myself. I tried writing with my left hand. Ambidextrous sort of thing, only it didn’t work. Sherry’s handwriting has become increasingly poor this quarter, one teacher wrote home.

  Stop it, my mother said, crumpling that note. Just stop it!

  I force myself to concentrate. The invoices add up. Ed’s spends a lot, and makes a little more than he spends. That’s the way it’s supposed to be, I guess, if you call yourself a going concern.

  At lunch we brown-bag it in the break room. No one talks, and no one looks at me funny, so maybe one of them said something to the rest, but then I don’t think so, because they all just seem lost in their own heads.

  Then Derek says, “Dad, that’s my old bat, isn’t it? From Little League.”

  “Yup,” says Ed. Derek, a Little Leaguer? Don’t exactly see that.

  “Can’t believe you still have it,” Derek says.

  “I wouldn’t throw something like that away.”

  “Dad used to coach me,” Derek tells me and Janice. “He was pretty tough.”

  “Too tough, sometimes,” says Ed.

  “Nah, you were fine.”

  “You quit because of me. Because I was such a bastard about your swing.”

  Derek looks thoughtful. Clearly, he’d forgotten that episode.

  And that’s when I remember my last conversation with my mother, the day she died, as she got into her car to drive to the mall, minutes before a semi jumped the median and hit her head on. She was talking about my life again, saying I’d turned into a recluse, afraid to take a chance. She said, You don’t have enough confidence to open up, because—I’d rolled my eyes, turned away, and didn’t give her the chance to finish. If I had, I’m pretty sure she’d have said something like because I’ve been so critical. She’d been reflecting on things a little more those last few weeks. As if she were trying to come to terms, put things in order somehow, or at least make amends. Maybe she had a premonition that she wasn’t going to be around much longer, I don’t know. I’ll never know.

  “She’s gone,” I say, suddenly.

  Derek puts his plastic cup on the table. Janice looks up from her magazine.

  “Who’s gone, Sher?” asks Ed.

  “My mom.”

  “We know, hon. We know.”

  “No, I mean she’s really, really gone.”

  They expect me to cry, I think, because they’re all there around me, hands on shoulders, murmuring tones of comfort.

  I don’t cry. I don’t laugh. I only turn to the window which shows a slice of blue sky so lovely I can’t speak. When I turn back I realize I’ve given them my bad side. But it doesn’t matter at all because I’m no worse than they are. I’m no worse than anyone, and I never was. That’s for sure.

  Loss of Balance

  The woman in green talks again about her boy, Joey. Her face bears all the pain he’s put her through, the broken promises, the stolen money, the calls from the police. Joey can’t stop shooting drugs into his arm, so he’s in rehab again. Only on Thursday he gets out, and this woman, whose name you can’t remember, is sure the cycle will start all over.

  She doesn’t know what to do with Joey, and you don’t know what to do with your father. Your father is not a drug addict, only an old man who likes to give his money away. Joey has a problem with self-control, your father has a problem with self-control, so you, the woman in green, and five others who bear responsibility for a wayward soul meet today with Dr. Schiff in a church basement—the best he could arrange after hearing that his office had flooded overnight.

  You don’t want to be here, but your husband insisted. He says it’s time to get at the root. When your father’s retirement home called last month to say he’d written them a bad check, you paid the bill, then went into a bit of a tailspin, it’s true. What’s pissing you off goes a lot deeper than money, your husband said. Maybe yes, maybe no. The point is, you recovered. You always do.

  Dr. Schiff—Leonard—moves on to Edmund. Edmund’s wife is an alcoholic. She hides vodka everywhere, including the toilet tank where Edmund discovered two bottles when the plumber came to fix a leak. Edmund told the plumber the bottles were his.

  “Did anything bother you about that?” asks Leonard.

  Edmund seems to consider the empty space above Leonard’s head. Finally he says, “Yeah. The look on his face.”

  “And what look was that?”

  “Like he was sorry for me, like he knew I was lying.”

  Edmund’s eyes are troublesome. One is blue, the other brown. Leonard’s eyes are like dark honey. Their deep grief says how much the world has had its way with him, how much he’s given up against his will.

  Edmund says nothing. Leonard lets the silence continue. People stare at their own hands. Someone coughs. Your mind wanders. What are you going to make for dinner, you wonder. Is your husband going to be home before you? And what about the yard work you’ve been putting off—all those shrubs to be dug up and replaced with something more attractive?

  “Ralph,” says Leonard. “How’s it going with Lisa?”

  Ralph’s daughter shoplifts. She’s thirteen, and has been in and out of juvenile detention.

  “Fine,” says Ralph.

  “Just fine?”

  “Well, I had to tell the police she’s getting counseling.”

  “I see.”

  “But she’s not, is she?” says Miranda, whose sister steals, too, but only from family.

  “No,” says Ralph.

  “Because she doesn’t think she has a problem.” Miranda’s eyes burn with bitterness. Miranda’s sister ran up her credit card in Vegas for over ten thousand
dollars, then begged for a plane ticket home.

  “Right,” says Ralph.

  “She probably thinks you’re the one with the problem.”

  Ralph nods, his big eyes sad, like a spaniel’s. He has big ears, from which tufts of hair reach out. His shoulders are huge, but his feet are small. You’ve never seen a man with such small feet, smaller even than Leonard’s, which sit primly in their shiny brown wingtips.

  The church basement is cold, and hard morning light breaks through high windows. The gray carpet is stained with coffee, and you imagine Styrofoam cups in the hands of pious people, deciding how best to raise money for that new steeple. You are not a churchgoer. You’re not an atheist, exactly, but the idea of organized religion sits poorly with you. Your father was once a Quaker, a leaning he inherited from his mother, a woman you didn’t know and of whom he said little, except that she never raised her voice. You cannot imagine this petite, quiet woman. You’re neither petite, nor quiet, facts your father seems to regret when he looks at you.