“You doing okay?” she asked Cory. Cory knew she smelled of whiskey. The old sense of exposure, of being found out.
“Fine, thank you.” Up straighter in her seat. One hand gliding through her emerald hair to keep it smooth. “But I think he might need something,” she said.
Nurse Huge turned his way. “Mr. Giles? Can I bring you anything?”
A head feebly shaken. A sympathetic glance exchanged between the women in the room.
The nurse then bent down to Cory and whispered, “You’re all he needs, all he’s asked for these last weeks, God bless you for being here, for coming such a long way.”
“Further than you know.” But she was gone, that good nurse, on to some other sufferer, and Cory was sure she hadn’t heard.
“What?”
“Nothing, Dad. Just talking to myself.”
“You used to.”
“No. You’re thinking of Lander.”
Alone in his room, his voice stopping, then starting over, as if rehearsing a part in a play, only the play was his own life, she is pretty, yes, oh, she is pretty, is she as pretty as the one who got sick and died, do you mean your mother, I mean nothing, oh, then nothing makes you mean, his wordplay brilliant, scary, tragic.
“He’s—unbalanced,” her father said, then added that Lander had tried all his life to regiment things to cover his own foibles. He was rigid, uncompromising, lived in a little box because it was safe. His mind was reliable enough, but his spirit was wild, destructive, untrustworthy. He was as hard as stone, yet without the slightest degree of self-control.
What about me? Cory wondered. She’d been a madwoman herself. Bouncing from passion to passion, full of nothing but bitter dust. She came back to Dunston only for revenge, she realized, to sit by her dying father and remind him of all the hurt she’d suffered. He was the one suffering, though. Who had suffered, perhaps as much as she.
“He always admired you in a way I found—disturbing,” her father said.
Cory crushed her scarf in both hands. “Well, he—”
“It became dangerous as you grew older. I’d hoped nothing would come of it, but I was wrong.”
Cory released her scarf. The liquor was stale in her mouth.
“So I sent you away.” He swallowed. “I saw the harm that might come to you otherwise.”
It is necessary for me to separate you from your brother, and that’s the only explanation I will make. She’d begged to stay, not wanting to leave her few friends and oddly enough, even Lander. Lander might have known her father’s mind. His letters to her were overly kind. Everyone misses you, even Debbie, though she’s too snotty to say so. The kindness faded in time, replaced with neutral updates on the family, and later, as she responded by detailing the seediness of her life, contempt.
Her father’s eyes closed once more, and his chin sank to his chest. Soon his breathing was deep and slow. Cory rose, and made her way through the hall with her coat already on, down the elevator, through the sliding doors, and into the cold. The flakes were fat now, meaning the storm was nearly done. A nurse sat on a bench, wrapped in a parka, smoking. She nodded at Cory, and Cory nodded back. Cory found her own cigarettes, lit one, and went on standing in the spinning snow. She stuck out her tongue, let a flake land there and melt.
Lander came through the door, walking his crooked gait.
“What are you doing out here?” he asked.
She lifted her cigarette. He dug his hands into his lower back, then twisted side to side.
“What did you do to yourself?” Cory asked.
“Shoveled too much snow.”
“Jesus.”
They reminisced about the time their father had a similar injury, how he roared and bellowed and ordered everyone out of his way, then demanded ice packs and a stiff drink.
Vic came through the door next, his magazine rolled up under his arm.
“Why didn’t you come and get me?” he asked Cory.
“I just had to get outside.”
“I know. But I can’t give moral support if I’m sitting in there on my ass.”
“Sorry.”
He flapped his arms. He was probably freezing and didn’t say so. Cory liked that about him.
Then Lander turned to Vic and said, “I’d like to talk to Cory.”
“So, talk.” Vic stayed put. That morning after breakfast Cory heard Lander and Vic in the kitchen. Vic said he thought the house was great, he’d had no idea that Cory had grown up in such a place, that he himself had lived in a trailer park after his father went to jail, and Lander said he hoped Vic wasn’t getting any ideas about a big inheritance Cory might be in for, at which point Vic asked if Lander would like to get his ass kicked, free of charge.
“It’s okay. It’ll just be a minute. Go back and get warm,” said Cory.
“Nah.” Vic moved off, picked up some snow, packed into a hard ball and pitched it out over the lawn of the hospital. He turned back and grinned.
Lander watched Vic throw more snowballs. Then he looked at Cory with their father’s same eyes, only deeper, and more intense.
“So, how did it go? Did he say anything important?” he asked.
“Not really.”
“You sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
Even when they were kids, Lander had had keen radar. Why do you look like that, Cory? Isn’t there something you want to tell me? And there usually was. I spit on Debbie while she was sleeping. I stole Paula’s pin and threw it in the woods.
“No hidden fortunes? No confessions about how one of us was really adopted? No last-minute revisions to his will?” Lander never did well, trying to be funny.
Even from about twenty feet away Cory heard Vic’s cell phone sing out a cheerful up-and-down tune from the depths of his coat pocket. He took it out and looked at the screen.
“Bernie,” he called to her. “Think I should take it?”
“Sure. See what that fat fuck wants now.”
Bernie was their sometimes roommate. When his wife got sick of him, which she did every few months, they gave him their spare room in exchange for a couple of hundred dollars. At the moment he was house-sitting for them. House-sitting amounted to watering the two ferns, putting the mail where they could find it again, and making the place look occupied so no one broke in.
Lander was still looking at Cory, willing her to speak.
The harm that might come to you, otherwise.
“What is it?” Lander asked.
“Nothing. I just feel—”
“Yes?”
“Stupid.”
“He always makes you feel that way.”
Her gaze settled on a tree in the near distance, its branches all white and fluffy. A gust of wind sent flakes and ice crystals around their heads. All of a sudden she remembered sledding out on the old golf course.
Vic returned. “He wanted to know if he could rent a movie on our account at the video place.” Cory looked at him. “No, not porn. Documentary on Africa, if you can believe that.” He blew on his hands, which were pink from the snowballs. He looked at Cory, then at Lander, then at Cory again.
“You know how to make snow angels?” he asked.
“What?”
“Isn’t that what kids do around here? Make snow angels?”
The back yard full of them, Cory and Lander back inside just long enough to get warm, then out again to make more.
“I guess,” said Cory.
“Show me.”
“Go on, I should get back,” said Lander.
Cory watched Lander go, his head down, hands shoved deep in his pockets.
“Come on. Show me!” Vic said again. He threw a snowball at her. She ducked. She led him onto the lawn, lay down on her back, and swung her legs and arms up and down. The snow was refreshing. It had stopped falling, she realized.
“Cool!” said Vic. He plopped down, made one of his own, then lay laughing at himself. He got to his feet and brushed himself off. Then he pull
ed her up and brushed her.
“You know, it’s fucking freezing out here. What say we go in and get a cup of rotgut coffee?” he asked.
Arm in arm they walked. Vic shivered. “Fuck. Got some in my boots.”
“That’s the problem with snow.”
“Still, it makes everything pretty, don’t you think?”
All around them the new snowfall took on a silver light under the weak sun, but then as the clouds moved southward into the valley and opened the sky above the hills, it became pure white, absolutely clear, and almost too beautiful to bear.
The Comforts of Home
In the Finger Lakes town of Dunston, New York, the spring rain had fallen for four straight days, and was falling again when the old man moved in. He carried one box at a time from the trunk of his Cadillac while Beau stood across the street and watched. He wondered what it would be like having an old man in the trailer park. Everyone else was younger. Beau and his wife, Eldeen, were in their twenties. The people next to them were about the same age, with four kids who slept in bunk beds in their living room. On the other side of them was a gay guy who worked at Target, and next to him was a retired cop. No one was friendly or even nice, something Eldeen often complained about.
The old man was careful as he hauled his boxes inside. Beau had seen old men like that in Iraq, setting out their fruit in the market, their veined hands slow and sure. The younger men’s hands were fast and reached his way to greet or beg, or sometimes were hidden deep in the pockets of their Western pants, which made him go quiet and cold wondering what they’d pull out.
Beau wished he had his old slingshot. Even a small rock would make a big noise on the metal siding of the old man’s trailer. The old man might hit the deck, thinking he was being shot at. That would be something to see.
The old man hauled another box to the trailer, and stumbled on the top stair. Beau laughed. He couldn’t help it. He’d always found that kind of thing funny. Once, Eldeen stumbled and he laughed for about five minutes. She didn’t talk to him then for three whole days.
The old man appeared in the doorway, stared down at his car as if he’d forgotten what he was doing, and went back inside. Beau wondered if he were loopy. His own grandfather had lost his marbles in his early seventies and imagined a whole family of people who’d never existed. Eldeen said he couldn’t have suffered from Alzheimer’s in that case, because if he did, he’d have forgotten people, not made them up. Eldeen thought she knew what she was talking about because of her leg. Suffering might give you wisdom, Beau thought, but then again, it might not.
Eldeen drove up in their pickup truck. She was a pretty woman, with wavy brown hair she liked to put clips in. Today they were shaped like strawberries. She’d had to go to the grocery store and he didn’t want to go along. Grocery shopping was the most boring thing he’d ever done. Eldeen didn’t mind it. She went up and down the aisles talking to herself, commenting on the prices of things, wondering aloud if she should make this or that for dinner. He used to tell her not to, because people looked at her.
“They look at me anyway,” she said, again because of her leg. Sometimes she used a crutch with a brace that went around her upper arm. It caused a sore just above the elbow, so she only used it when she had to.
Eldeen got out of the truck.
“Who’s that?” she asked Beau.
“Beats me.”
“Must be a new neighbor.”
“Must be.”
Eldeen limped across the road. It was a fairly wide road, and it took her a little time. When she reached the old man’s car, he came down the stairs and shook Eldeen’s hand. Eldeen ran her fingers through her hair, something she did when she was nervous, then pointed behind her. That’s us, just across there, Beau imagined her saying. Oh, yes, it’s a nice little place here, isn’t it? Eldeen was upbeat. A little too upbeat at times. The old man lifted his arm toward his open door, and they both went inside. She didn’t come out for several minutes. Why, if this isn’t the cutest old place you have here! Folks that lived here before weren’t too neighborly. Eldeen had tried to make friends with them, too. She and the wife had had words in the end, about what Beau didn’t know. Eldeen appeared in the door of the old man’s trailer, then limped down the three concrete steps that all the trailers in the park had, across the road, and up the stairs to her own home.
Beau brought in the groceries from the truck. At the store someone else loaded them for her, and then Beau was always home to bring them inside. Beau had been discharged from the Army for over six months and still hadn’t found work. He spent a lot of time eating cereal and watching the news. Eldeen kept the books for a liquor store three days a week. They’d asked her to go full-time. She didn’t care to, but would if need be. “And you know what that means,” she said. She threatened to turn all household chores over to him. Beau hadn’t handled a broom, vacuum cleaner, or dirty dish since he returned. Before he enlisted, he helped out a lot, even though he had a full-time job then as a cashier at the drug store.
With the recession the only place hiring was the gun factory, and Beau didn’t want to think about guns. A guy he’d gotten close to in Iraq shot himself in the head one night after another guy they sometimes played cards with got blown up in a roadside bombing. Beau had tried to wrench the gun free from the dead guy’s hand, and couldn’t. He didn’t remember trying to remove the gun. The whole thing was a blank. Someone else had told him what he’d done. He’d tried to put it together, make sense of his action, and couldn’t. “Maybe you were only trying to help him. Maybe you didn’t know he was already gone,” Eldeen said. Beau thought it was possible. His uncle, the one who lost his mind in Vietnam, sat around his parents’ basement and played Russian Roulette with his sidearm. One day the uncle was passed out drunk, and Beau took the gun and threw it in the creek. He wasn’t accused of taking it because everyone knew the uncle wasn’t right in the head. It was said that he had hocked it, or locked it up some place he couldn’t remember. Eldeen kept a nine-millimeter in the drawer of her bedside table. “In case we get robbed,” she’d said. Beau thought she was nuts. For one thing, she didn’t know how to use it. For another, they didn’t have anything someone would risk getting shot at to come in and steal. He’d like to get rid of that gun, too, and knew he’d have to explain himself to Eldeen. So, the gun stayed put.
Summer came, and everyone’s windows opened. The trailers were in a tight cul-de-sac and sounds normally kept inside leaked out. From the cop’s place came classic rock. The big family had Disney tunes. The Target guy, when he was home, liked opera. Only the old man kept quiet. Beau was charged with keeping the grass cut along the common strip, and once, as he pushed his mower, he leaned in close under the old man’s kitchen window and heard a talk radio program discussing the pros and cons of uniform health coverage.
One evening Eldeen and Beau sat on their stairs and watched the twilight fall. He took her hand in his, and after a moment she took it back and ran it through her hair.
“Guess what?” she asked.
“Can’t.”
“I asked Sam if you could drive their delivery truck.” Sam was Eldeen’s boss at the liquor store.
“I don’t want to drive a truck.”
“He said he’d see what he could do.”
“I don’t need his charity.”
“It’s not charity if he’s paying you.”
Her eyes were different, he thought. They had a quiet, private look to them that wasn’t there before.
Beau kissed her neck. “You worry too much. Everything will be fine.”
The old man came walking down the road. He had on khaki pants and a pressed shirt. He saw Eldeen and Beau and made his way over to them. Eldeen smiled. The old man held out his hand to Beau.
“Clifford Benderhoff,” he said. Beau shook his hand.
“Beau,” he said.
“Lovely night.”
“Yeah.”
“Just out taking my constitutional.”
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“Right.”
Mr. Benderhoff shifted his focus from Beau to Eldeen. “Well, good night,” he said.
“Good night,” said Eldeen.
Mr. Benderhoff went briskly across to his own trailer.
“He talks like a professor, doesn’t he?” asked Eldeen.
“If you say so.”
“He used to teach college, you know. He told me so that first day.”
Beau snorted. Someone was pulling Eldeen’s good leg. No one who used to teach college would end up living in a trailer. Beau didn’t know why the old man would say such a thing to her, and figured he might be a little loopy, after all.
After that Eldeen looked out for Mr. Benderhoff. She brought him bland casseroles and cheese bakes, stuff Beau couldn’t imagine a guy with no teeth would manage, given how hard and chewy everything Eldeen made was.
“What makes you think he has no teeth?” Eldeen asked. She was at the sink in a sleeveless top with a little lace collar that made her look cute.
“So, he’s got teeth. How come you gotta feed him all the time?”
“Hon. It was last Tuesday, Thursday, and today.”
Beau scratched his chin. He was growing a beard. Eldeen said once that she liked beards.
“Where’s his family to feed him?” he asked.
“Widower. Daughter all the way out in California.”
“He should move out there. Old people need lots of sunshine.”
“He’s not that old. Just seventy-two.”
“That’s pretty old, if you ask me.”
Her expression said she wasn’t asking him, and wouldn’t.
***
The first time Eldeen visited Mr. Benderhoff, he said she should call him Cliff, short for Clifford. He invited her to sit in a chair by the living room window. Nearby two other chairs were wrapped in old blankets. Boxes were stacked against the far wall, and a robust ivy plant sat on the kitchen table and trailed down to the floor. Cliff saw where she was looking and explained that he’d had the plant for many years and had taken it with him every time he moved. She asked why he moved so often, and the slow wandering of his clear blue eyes, as if he were struggling to make sense of his new home, said he was lonely. Eldeen understood about loneliness. It had been hard having Beau overseas. He was gone a total of four years, with one visit home in between. Then she found that in some ways she was lonelier after he returned than before. She thought it was a matter of getting used to one way of life, then having to get used to another one all over again. Cliff offered a cup of coffee, which she declined. The next visit she accepted, and on the third he asked if it were too early in the day for a small whiskey. She didn’t think it was. By then Cliff had arranged his things in a very homey way. The kitchen table had deep red placemats. The trailing ivy now sat atop the entertainment center, and reached its way towards the light from the nearest window. The two wrapped chairs were gone and replaced with a new sofa. A round coffee table stood in front covered with neatly laid out magazines whose titles Eldeen had never seen, The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, The Economist, and one she did know, Arizona Highways. Eldeen asked if Cliff had been to Arizona and he said, yes indeed, several times. He was looking at a little place out there where he’d go for good, as soon as some of his investments came due in the fall. Though Eldeen had only known him for a week or two, she was sad to think he’d be gone that soon.
All the Roads That Lead From Home Page 12