Take the Long Way Home

by Judith Arnold

  But Quinn’s intelligence, his career, his local celebrity, and most of all his hotness intimidated Maeve. He’d said he would take her out for a drink so she could de-stress after her dinner with her father, but having a drink with Quinn might cause her even more stress. What if they went to the Faulk Street Tavern and Ashley Wright walked in, radiantly beautiful and stylish and certain about her rightful place by Quinn’s side? What if a song played on that antique juke box and infiltrated their brains? What if, instead of “Take the Long Way Home,” the jukebox played something awful, something about pain or violence instead of a homecoming?

  What if, once Saturday ended, she realized Brogan’s Point wasn’t her home, after all? What would she do?

  She would just keep going, she told herself. She was in commit mode. She’d invested too much in the store to decide this town couldn’t be her home. By accepting Harry’s bequest, she’d made some sort of tacit promise to him. He thought she needed to reconnect with her father. She would do her best.

  At least her cat seemed to believe Brogan’s Point was her home. Cookie prowled regally around the apartment, occasionally leaping up onto a window sill to hiss at the mourning doves and sparrows and seagulls that swooped down the alley in search of an open trash bin to pick through. Cookie had established squatter’s rights on the central cushion of the sofa Maeve had bought at the Goodwill store. She’d developed a sadomasochistic relationship with the kitchen sink, staring at the faucet until Maeve turned it on, then swiping a paw through the flowing water, screeching, and leaping off the counter, and then climbing back on and staring at the faucet, watching the water flow from the spout, swiping it, screeching and leaping.

  Maeve would never have Cookie’s abundance of attitude. She had more in common with the skittish kitten she’d found outside the Stonehouse Tavern five years ago than with the sleek, haughty pet who seemed so comfortable in the apartment that Maeve sometimes thought she ought to sign the lease over to her.

  Maeve had sent Joyce home from the shop at five-thirty, locked up, and climbed into her car in the tiny parking lot behind the building. She’d driven to her apartment to change into a clean pair of jeans and a soft gray sweater, to refill Cookie’s food and water dishes, and to take a few deep breaths before heading for her father’s house. She hoped that by thinking of it as her father’s house, she could stop thinking of it as her house, the house she’d grown up in. The house she’d fled.

  “Okay,” she announced to Cookie. “I’m going.” Cookie lifted her head from the paw she’d been licking, gave Maeve a languid look, then resumed her grooming.

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Maeve muttered as she slid the strap of her purse onto her shoulder and left the apartment. The sky was a dense, dark blue with a few smudgy clouds, left over from yesterday’s rain, blurring the moon’s outline. The weather forecast for tomorrow was clear and sunny. That would bode well for her store’s opening. Also for Quinn’s big day at the football game.

  Had she changed into nicer clothes for her father, or for Quinn?

  He wasn’t exactly a sharp dresser, she thought with some relief. She really shouldn’t feel so overwhelmed by him. Sure, he had a lot more going for him than she had going for herself…but she had her cookies. And they both had the song. Take the long way home…

  The bouncy tune and the sharp, sarcastic lyrics filled her head as she drove through Brogan’s Point. Rush hour in the seaside town was nothing like Seattle’s rush hour, but she had to share Atlantic Avenue with more cars than usual, and traffic backed up at the Main Street intersection. It’s Dad’s home, not mine, she told the singer inside her head, but he just kept insisting she was taking the long way home. He didn’t specify whose home she was driving to, but she knew the song was meant for her, for this moment.

  The last time she’d driven to her father’s block, she’d idled at the corner, stared down the street at the house in the distance, and then U-turned and sped away. This time she didn’t have that luxury. Lifting her chin and taking more deep breaths, she cruised down the street, passing the Jorgensens’ house, the Manuzzos’, the Lauersteins’. She wondered if the same families still lived in the tidy ranches, Cape Cods and saltbox colonials that lined the street. Back in elementary school, she and Lisa Manuzzo had been practically inseparable. They’d played Pogs together, experimented with the make-up they’d filched from Lisa’s older sister’s bedroom, and had so many sleep-overs that their mothers bought them spare toothbrushes to keep at each other’s houses. They’d started drifting apart in middle school—Lisa was much more into boys than Maeve was then—but they’d remained friends until Maeve’s mother died.

  Maeve readily acknowledged that the demise of their friendship was her fault. Lisa had said, “You’re nuts, Maeve, you need help,” and she’d been absolutely right. Maeve had been nuts. But she hadn’t gotten help. She hadn’t known how to ask her father for that kind of help. If she had asked, he wouldn’t have known how to give it.

  A chill rippled down Maeve’s back, but she shrugged it off. That was then. A long time ago.

  Her house—her father’s house—hadn’t changed much over the past ten years. The yard was a little tidier, the yews flanking the front porch nicely shaped, the wrought-iron hand rails on the three concrete steps up to the porch painted white. They’d been black and scabbed with rust when Maeve had moved out.

  Her father had left the porch light on for her, as well as the light above the garage. She pulled into the driveway and let out a sigh.

  You can do this, she told herself, deciding to channel Cookie. Her cat would stroll right into the house, head high, tail higher, her sense of entitlement shimmering like an aura around her. Maeve needed that attitude, that confidence.

  She got out of her car and climbed the steps to the porch. Her hand hovered above the doorbell for a long minute. It seemed strange to be ringing her own doorbell—except that it wasn’t her doorbell anymore. It wasn’t her home. She was a visitor. A guest.

  She pressed the doorbell.

  Her father must have been waiting in the entry. The door swung open before the bell had stopped chiming. “Hi,” he said, smiling more brightly than the occasion called for. His hair was disheveled, a dish towel hung from his belt, and his big, beaming smile was contradicted by the flash of panic in his eyes. “Come in. I’m so glad you’re here.”

  He might be panicked, but she knew he was speaking from his heart. He was glad she was there.

  She stepped over the threshold and looked around. Okay. One major hurdle overcome. She wasn’t screaming, sobbing, or bolting back outside to her car.

  She stood in the entry hall, a place so familiar she had to pin her hands to her sides to keep from opening the coat closet door and hanging up her jacket. If she peeked into that closet, would she find her mother’s coats hanging from the rod? When Maeve had left home, three and a half years after her mother’s death, her father still hadn’t removed her mother’s clothing from the house.

  The “Home Sweet Home” needlepoint her mother had stitched still hung in its frame on the wall next to the coat closet, the letters forming trellises for swirling green vines and pink and blue morning glories. The braided oval rug covering the hardwood floor was the same rug that had been there ten years ago. The doorway to the living room arched open to Maeve’s left, and she forced herself to peer inside. She recognized the chairs, the carpeting, the coffee and end tables and the textured beige drapes framing the window. The couch was new, a cheery piece upholstered in royal blue velour replacing the faded brown couch Maeve remembered. Maeve’s mother had lain on that brown couch when she’d been too weak to sit but too stubborn to stay in bed. She’d insisted on being positioned at the center of the house, near her family. She used to say she’d go to bed when she was ready to die.

  She hadn’t, though. She’d died on the couch. She’d been resting there, her breath raspy, her skin pale and waxy, tight against her skull. Fragile strands of hair had stretched acro
ss her scalp like cobwebs, and her bony fingers had clawed at the thin blanket Maeve had spread over her wasted body. Maeve had sat on the floor beside her, her father on the arm of the sofa. Maeve’s grandparents had meandered in and out of the room, returning to the kitchen whenever their glasses of whisky needed refilling. They’d been unable to remain sober while their beautiful forty-year-old daughter was dying.

  No surprise that the old couch was gone. Maeve didn’t blame her father for getting rid of it.

  “Come into the kitchen,” he urged her, wiping his hands on the towel and striding down the hall. “I’m struggling.”

  She tore her eyes from the living room, a place still steeped in sorrow despite the new couch, and followed him down the hall. “Why are you struggling?”

  “I can’t cook worth a damn. You know that.”

  She entered the kitchen, which was a mess. Her father’s mess didn’t at all resemble the messes she and her mother used to make when they’d baked cookies together. Their messes had been sugary, festive with colorful icing and sprinkles and copper cookie-cutters shaped like flowers and snowmen. Their messes had incorporated big ceramic mixing bowls and cookie sheets, spatulas and cooling racks.

  His mess was a man’s mess: a pot of boiling water, its lid rattling and bouncing as steam escaped. Another pot filled with spaghetti sauce, rivulets of red dripping down the sides. A package of frozen meatballs lying on the counter. A head of romaine lettuce resting by the sink, the counter shiny where water had splattered.

  “Gus told me I should buy a rotisserie chicken at the supermarket,” he confessed. “But I wanted to make something from scratch. I thought spaghetti would be easy.”

  “It is easy,” Maeve said, shrugging off her jacket and draping it over the back of a chair at the table. She glanced into the pot of sauce and gave it a stir. “Do you have any oregano or dried basil?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” He rummaged through a cabinet. “Isn’t that already in the sauce?”

  “If the sauce came out of a jar, it needs more oregano and basil. And garlic powder.” She pulled a long-tined cooking fork from the utensil drawer—he hadn’t rearranged the drawers, and she found the tool right away—and twirled it through the pasta, separating the strands.

  “How about you take care of the stuff on the stove, and I’ll make the salad?” he suggested.

  Better to stay busy than to let her memories of baking with her mother overwhelm her. “Go ahead,” she said. “I’ll get this cooked.”

  She was happy for the distraction, arranging the meatballs on a plate and heating them in the microwave, locating the colander in the cabinet where her mother had always stored it, adding herbs and spices to the sauce. She would hardly call opening a jar of spaghetti sauce and microwaving meatballs “making something from scratch,” but it was a step more ambitious than serving a rotisserie chicken from the supermarket.

  And her father hadn’t been lying when he’d said he couldn’t cook worth a damn. After her mother had gotten sick, they’d lived on take-out—pizza, Chinese, deli sandwiches. Once she’d died, Maeve had prepared dinner when she’d gotten home from school. But half the time, the ingredients she needed weren’t there, and she hadn’t had a driver’s license, so she couldn’t drive to the store to buy them. Even if she could, her father was often too drunk and depressed to eat, so what was the point of knocking herself out? That was when she’d converted to the canned-soup diet.

  She hadn’t dared to bake cookies then. Once she’d found her mother’s cookbook, she’d stashed it in her closet, along with the few other belongings of her mother’s that she’d taken. She wasn’t a thief by nature, but she’d been afraid of what her father might do if he discovered that she’d touched her mother’s things. He hadn’t touched them, at least not then. It was no wonder she half-expected to find her mother’s coats in the closet in the entry if she looked inside that evening.

  What Maeve’s mother hadn’t taught her about cooking she’d learned working at the Stonehouse Café. She’d hired on as a dishwasher, and in time she’d moved up to food prep. She’d waitressed. She’d seated patrons and run their checks. Lenny liked to keep his staff lean and flexible, which meant she sometimes found herself both cooking and serving on the same shift. Then, once she’d introduced her cookies to the menu, he’d started paying her bonuses to prepare batches of cookies for him to sell.

  She knew her way around a kitchen. That she knew her way around this kitchen was a bit unnerving.

  She and her father didn’t talk while they prepared the meal. Without conversation to distract her, her mind wandered through the house. What did her parents’ bedroom look like now? Did her father get a new bed when he’d gotten the new living room couch? Were her mother’s dresses still hanging in the closet? Or had Gus Naukonen moved her clothing into the closet? Why didn’t Maeve feel her mother’s presence in this house anymore? Why did she feel so empty?

  Ten minutes later, the food was on the table—the kitchen table, thank goodness. The dining room had always been reserved for festive occasions: Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthdays, gatherings of friends. This was not a festive occasion, and the plain tile-topped table by the kitchen window suited Maeve.

  Her father offered her a glass of wine, which she declined. She would be having a drink with Quinn later—don’t even think about that, she cautioned herself, realizing she could handle only one stressful event at a time. She opted for ice water and dug into her pasta, even though her appetite had vanished.

  “I wish Gus could have joined us,” her father said. “I’d like for you to get to know her better.”

  Maeve shrugged. She had nothing against Gus. If her father wanted female companionship, she was relieved that the companion he’d chosen was his own age and apparently sensible. Maeve had liked Gus when she’d talked to her at the Faulk Street Tavern a few days ago. The woman seemed solid and unpretentious.

  “It’s just that Friday evenings are really busy at the bar,” her father explained.

  “It’s okay, Dad.”

  Another awkward silence. He lowered his fork and gazed at her. “Maeve. I know this is hard. I wasn’t there for you when you needed me, and I’m sorry about that. I wish I could go back and change the past, but I can’t.”

  Well, that pretty much covered things. “Right,” she said. “We can’t change the past.”

  “But we can make the future better. At least we can try.”

  “I’m here, okay?” She felt a shiver pass through her, a combination of rage and anguish and regret. She and her father couldn’t change the past. What more could either of them say?

  “It was all so fast, Maeve. From her diagnosis to her death, what was it? Five months? I was so unprepared. And those months—they were awful. She was suffering so much. It was like driving off a cliff.”

  “I know.” A sob bubbled up in her throat, but she swallowed it back down.

  “And you were just a kid. I was so busy grieving, I just couldn’t give you what you needed. I don’t blame you if you can’t forgive me.”

  “I forgive you,” she said, although she wasn’t sure if she was saying that because she meant it or because she wanted this conversation to be over. “Let’s not dwell on it, okay?”

  They spent the rest of the meal talking about her plans for her store’s grand opening tomorrow. Even with all the spices she’d added to the pasta sauce, she barely tasted her food, and when she finally gave up on eating, most of her food still sat in her plate.

  I survived, she told herself as she helped her father clear the dishes. “Do you want to take any of these leftovers home with you?” he asked, gathering her plate and the serving bowls. She shouldn’t have been surprised that he’d boiled an entire box of spaghetti and heated an entire jar of sauce. Not only couldn’t he cook a damn, but he couldn’t gauge portions.

  “You keep it,” she said, moving unerringly to the cabinet where her mother had stashed all her storage containers. They were still there,
plastic tubs of different sizes, each with its own snugly fitting lid, probably not used since Maeve had left home. She pulled out three and dumped the bowl of cooked pasta, the extra sauce, and the leftover salad into them. “I know how to cook spaghetti and meatballs if I want them. You clearly don’t.” She’d meant the comment as a joke, not a criticism. Her father’s smile assured her he’d taken it the right way.

  He rolled up his sleeves to tackle the messy pots. “I’m going to use the bathroom,” Maeve said, slipping out of the kitchen and heading for the stairs. There was a powder room on the first floor, but she didn’t really need to pee. She just wanted to go upstairs.

  She wondered if visiting the second floor was a wise idea. Viewing her mother’s bedroom would be harder than seeing the new couch in the living room, and remembering the old couch. But she felt driven. She had to know if her father had replaced the bed, and if he’d cleared away her mother’s belongings—the clothing, the jewelry box, the hairbrush with the smooth wooden handle, carved to fit a girl’s palm. Maeve used to love pretending she was a hair stylist and brushing her mother’s hair, piling it on top of her mother’s head or weaving it into lopsided braids. Her mother had had such beautiful ash-blond hair, before it all fell out from the chemo.

  She stepped into the bathroom because that was where she’d told her father she was going, but it seemed unfamiliar to her, not the room where she’d bathed and brushed her teeth for eighteen years. She didn’t recognize the towels. The counter surrounding the sink held only a bottle of liquid hand soap. The shower curtain was drawn shut across the tub.

  She stepped outside and continued down the hall to the master bedroom. It, too, was unrecognizable. Her father had changed all the furniture. The graceful white French Provincial furniture her mother had loved was gone, replaced by boxy modern pieces in a dark-stained oak: a headboard of straight lines and right angles, two cube-like night tables, a rectangular dresser and an armoire that could pass as a coffin for a very fat person. Standing in the doorway, Maeve felt nothing. This was no longer her mother’s room.