Hurry Home

by Roz Nay

  “She’s a virus.”

  “Wow. That’s pretty harsh. She doesn’t look that bad to me.”

  He shifts so his back is against me, and I lie down, too, but there’s no way I can close my eyes. She’s cleverer than both of us, I want to say. I don’t care if that’s cold. I don’t care what she thinks of me and nor should you. But I don’t say anything, and within minutes he’s asleep. It’s like he has a sleep switch he can instantly flick on or off. I hate it. I listen to the softness of his breathing, and then the padded creep of my sister’s footsteps out of the bathroom and back to the couch. For the first time in ten years, I’m lying in the dark near my sister. I lie stiffly, afraid that she’s a spider that will move while I’m not paying attention.

  There have been chances before this to tell Chase more about Ruth, to sketch in all the details of my family, tell him everything that happened in Horizon. But the truth is I’ve moved on and I don’t want to look back. I’ve dealt with the mess Ruth left me. And it’s over. I have a stable life here—I’m a social worker; I’m helping people—and I won’t let her ruin that.

  Out in the living room it’s quiet, but I know she’s awake. I still remember the rhythms of her sleep. Perhaps that’s the real intimacy: to know how someone else breathes when they’re asleep. To know the patterns, to predict how they’ll move. In our old room as kids, our beds were so close together that Ruth and I could reach out with our fingers and touch. One time, when I was in second grade, I’d taken a treasure from the teacher’s desk. It was a round piece of basalt stone, smooth as skin. The teacher used to run it under hot water and give the warm trophy to the kid who’d done the best that day. She never once gave it to me. When I stole it, I hid it in the vent in our bedroom. I was stroking a forefinger over the top of that stone when Ruth saw me.

  “Alex,” she said, coming right beside me. She reached out a hand and moved hair from my forehead. “I’ll get you your own perfect rock. Put that one back tomorrow before the teacher notices it’s gone.” That was when she still had my back.

  Ruth left the farm when she was twenty, seven years after she tore our family apart. Mom didn’t want her to go, even if she couldn’t say it loudly. Every time Ruth passed by with a new armful of belongings to put into her boyfriend Hal’s stupid car, Mom touched her on the shoulder or arm, but Ruth kept going. Hal offered her a get-out-jail-free card, and she took it. He burned out of our driveway in that car, rock music blaring in Mom’s face. There’s no doubt in my mind he’s the father of Ruth’s baby. She can say he isn’t, that he’s a thing of the past, but there’s no way. I don’t believe it for a second.

  Two summers after Ruth took off, Dad found Mom lying face-first in the field out back of the house. She used to walk on her own each evening. It was a heart attack, which sounds right if you’re listing organs most likely to store sadness. They said it happened fast, but I know that part’s a lie. It was slow and insidious, and Ruth was at the root of it all.

  I’ve spent years sorting through the things Ruth has done, putting them away, rising above them. I doubt she’s been doing the same. She definitely hasn’t come here to apologize.

  From the living room, I hear her stir and turn over. I push the duvet aside and get out of bed quietly, anxious not to wake up Chase. She must have heard me, too, because she whispers hoarsely into the gloom.

  “Alex, is that you?”

  Of course it’s me. And she knows it. “Yes. It’s me.”

  Silence. She’s thinking. I’m standing at the crack in my bedroom door.

  “Remember when we were little and the wind would blow against the house?” Her sentence has a smile in it. “You used to think it was lions roaring.”

  I was so small then, I could curl the whole of myself against Ruth’s body as she hugged me. She would stay like that, a canopy over me until I fell asleep. But it wasn’t just the two of us then. The memory’s swift and visceral. I feel him, right there with us, curled up beside me and Ruth, so close that I can feel his little heartbeat. I know what Ruth’s doing now, how she’s softening me. But still I let her. I close the door to my bedroom and walk down the few stairs toward her. “We were sure those lions were right under our window.”

  Our voices are velvety in the high-vaulted space as I turn on the dim lamp by the television.

  “That’s better,” Ruth says. “I can’t sleep in here. It’s too quiet, and the fridge keeps plinking.”

  I don’t answer her. She’s sitting, stooped like a vagrant on a park bench.

  “Alex,” she says again, her whisper softer. “I really need your help.”

  She’s never said that before. Not once. Chills shiver down my back. I sit down next to her. She drags the sheet to hook it around my shoulders, but I shrug it off.

  “Will you help me?”

  There’s a swell in the deepest part of me, a heaving undulation. She’s shifting a rock at the bottom of the seabed, and I don’t think I want it moved.

  “You’re my sister. The only one I have.” She edges closer. “Anyway, I thought coming here would be good.”

  She reaches to move hair out of my face, just like the old days, but I dodge her.

  “Good for who?” I ask. “For you?”

  “Yes … yes, I suppose, but also good for you. After everything that’s happened, Alex, I thought the timing was right. We’ve both made mistakes.”

  Both of us? Any mistakes I’ve made, Ruth was at their very center. How could her coming here pregnant and destitute, and wanting help, ever be good for me? I take a deep breath and remember Chase’s words about family, about being there.

  “Are you clean?” I ask.

  She nods.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, Alex. Yes. I’ve been clean for years and years.” She glances across the room to the coat hooks, where her bag hangs in the shadows. “Totally. One hundred percent. I’m clean and sober.”

  “Okay, that’s good,” I say, not that I believe her. But this does feel different. In the past, she would slide away from any answer, slippery as an eel.

  “Go to sleep now. We’ll talk about this more in the morning.” I tiptoe toward my bed again, toward the safe blank slate of Chase. Her plea hangs in the air, but I refuse to give her an answer now. I need time to think.

  “Sleep tight, Alex,” she says. “This could be good for you, you know.”

  I feel the fire surging in my belly, but I don’t turn around. I don’t bite. I won’t dare say another word.

  RUTH

  I wake to the sound of a blender crunching ice in the kitchen. It’s midmorning, judging by the light streaming in through the window. I sit up, pulling the sheet around me, and see Chase by the counter.

  “Hey,” he says, opening the lid of the blender and poking inside with a spoon. “Sorry about that. I guess I woke you.” He’s dressed in workout gear, complete with an enormous watch on his wrist. “I’ve got an acai berry immuno-enhancer going here. You’re welcome to a glass.”

  “I’m good,” I say.

  “You’re missing out.” He reaches up to a cupboard and grabs a glass from a perfectly symmetrical row. There are also white coffee mugs in there, identically spaced.

  “Where’s Alex?” It’s so quiet: even with the window open, there are no sounds to suggest other people exist. I’m not used to being in such a small town anymore.

  “Oh, she left at sevenish. Guess you’re a pretty deep sleeper, huh?” Chase pours the purple gloop into a glass. He tastes it, then sucks a thick foamy line from his upper lip. “She works eight till four at Family Services.”

  Family Services? “That can’t be right,” I say, trying to keep my voice even.

  Chase cocks his head to one side. “Don’t tell me you don’t even know what your sister does for a living.”

  “I had no idea,” I say. And it’s true. Alex cut off all communication after I left.

  “She’s a social worker. Child protection.”

  I nod slowly, light daw
ning. Child protection. The irony is astounding.

  “You really didn’t know?” He sets down his smoothie.

  “We haven’t exactly been BFFs.” I get up, bunching the sheet into a ball behind me.

  He takes a long draught of his juice, watching me over the rim of the glass. When he’s done, he wipes his mouth with the back of his wrist. “But you were close as kids? You grew up together?”

  “Oh, we did everything together,” I say. She’s told him nothing at all, I see that now.

  “But it was a tiny town, right? Alex told me she grew up in North Dakota, but when I googled the town name—Horizon—I saw only grain silos and fields.”

  “That’s all there is. That’s the heart of it.” Now would be a good time to excuse myself and take a shower or something, but I feel trapped here in men’s boxers and an oversize T-shirt.

  “Can I ask you something?” Chase sits down on a stool, lacing his fingers in front of him. “Why did you leave it so long to get back in touch?”

  “I couldn’t leave it a minute longer.”

  He bites his lip for a few seconds. I’m giving him the answers he wants, and still he doesn’t like them.

  “But you left in a hurry,” he says. “You’ve brought nothing with you. And what’s that—” He points at the side of my face until I rest my palm there. “There’s a mark. There—by your temple. That’s a bruise.”

  “No, it’s not.” I pull my hair forward to how it was last night. “It’s nothing. I just banged myself against the window on the bus.”

  He nods quietly in the way people do when they don’t believe you. He’s more observant than I’d given him credit for. It’s true I left in a rush. Packing would have raised suspicion, and it wasn’t safe for me to stay in Pittsburgh any longer, not after what I’d done. I push those thoughts away and take a seat at the island, wondering what he’ll ask next. Mostly I just want to find out more about him and Alex. I heard them whispering last night but couldn’t catch what they were saying.

  “If someone’s hurt you, you can say so, you know.” He looks down at the countertop. “I don’t know much about that kind of stuff, but it would be okay.”

  I smile. If Chase knew the kind of trouble I’m in, he’d kick me out of his apartment right now and lock every door and window.

  “You have such a nice place here, Chase,” I say, diverting the subject. “Where are Alex’s egg-smeared plates, her trail of toast crumbs?”

  “Her what?”

  “Never mind. So … Alex works with kids, right?”

  “Yes. Kids who need help. She’s really good at it.” Chase sighs, part resigned, part proud. “I know she doesn’t like to talk about the difficult parts of her life. I thought you might know more.”

  “Have you asked her about the difficult parts?”

  “Yes, but she’s not all that forthcoming.” He scratches an itch between his shoulder blades. “I do want to know her.”

  I study his quarterback-stud face. Alex always went for the poster boys. This one seems like a decent-enough guy, but he has no clue who he’s living with. He’s completely out of his depth.

  “So … you say you two were pretty close?” he says. “What kind of things did you get up to?”

  “This and that. We grew apart as teenagers,” I say. “If you have questions, you should ask her.”

  He takes his glass and places it into the sink, pressing it there for longer than he needs.

  “What do you do for work?” There’s a tone in his voice. He doesn’t want a freeloader in his home.

  “I wouldn’t say I’m career-oriented.”

  “No? That’s interesting. Because Alex is very driven. I have this thing where I like to give everyone I know a word to describe them. It’s helpful—like a radar, or a GPS. Anyway, that’s my word for Alex. Driven.”

  I drum my fingers on the counter. It’s clear his word for me is less flattering, but that’s okay. I’m used to sideways insults, and besides, his GPS is broken.

  “So what? You don’t … work?” he asks.

  “Not presently.” I don’t tell him about our ramshackle house in Pittsburgh, ashtrays on tables, whiskey bottles with no caps. I don’t tell him about what happened with Hal, or later with Eli. I don’t tell him any of that because none of it will help me. “Alex says you’re a ski racer,” I say.

  His whole face brightens. Bingo. He can’t help himself. I’m free.

  “I used to race, yes. I was kind of a big deal, to be honest, on the national team, but I blew out my knee at twenty-four, so I had to quit competing. It is what it is.”

  “Oh.” I try to sound disappointed for him.

  “It’s okay, it all worked out. I took four years of school in Cali for marketing and resort management. The hill here is just starting to explode, and I’m the face of all the advertisements. It’s more modeling than it is me running Powderkeg, but it’s pretty cool, all the same. Right now it’s my off-season, but I’m on billboards all over Colorado.”

  “Wow,” I say because I think he wants me to be impressed. I’m tempted to ask if Alex skis, but my stomach growls and I shift in my seat. He must have heard it, too, because he opens the fridge to reveal rows of marked Tupperware and a fully stacked vegetable drawer. There’s soy milk in the side compartment. No ketchup. No beer.

  “Can I make you some breakfast?” Chase asks. “Something healthy?” He looks down at my belly, which I don’t like. I instinctively rest my hand on the small bump there.

  “Do you mean toast?”

  “No.”

  “An omelet would be great. Lots of cheese, please. Thank you.”

  Chase grabs eggs and what appears to be ham, juggling both to the countertop. “So Alex said you guys grew up on a farm. That must have been pretty great. A farm in Horizon, North Dakota.” He sighs as if relaxing, but I know what’s coming. “Why did you leave?”

  He’s persistent. Careful, Ruth. He really doesn’t know the basics of what went down. Or perhaps he does know, and this is a test. Maybe he wants to feel powerful, to make me say it. He’s hoping my face will crease or go pale. That I’ll act grief-stricken and traumatized. Is that what he wants? Is that what she wants? Well, I’m not playing that game: I’ve played it my whole life.

  “There was a problem,” I say. “Something happened. It was better for everyone that I leave.” It was better for everyone except me.

  “A problem,” he says. He slices ham with a ridiculously sharp knife, shaking his head as he does so. “You and your sister have something in common, I see. Not big on sharing details from the past. I wonder why that is.”

  I blink and say nothing. When the omelet arrives, it tastes of cloth, and Chase isn’t generous with the salt. I eat silently, and as soon as I’m chewing the last bite, he whips the plate away.

  “Did Alex and you decide if I could stay here?” I ask as he stashes the plate in the dishwasher.

  “You need to talk to your sister.” He won’t look me in the eye. “That’s her department.”

  “Her department, but your apartment. Interesting.” I cough into my hand. “I think I’ll take a shower … if that’s okay.”

  He sweeps one hand in front of him, a magnanimous gesture although his expression doesn’t match it. “Knock yourself out.”

  I slide off the stool, grab my bag from the hook by the front door, then creep to the bathroom, where I kneel, unpacking everything I brought with me onto the mat. A passport, outdated. A toothbrush, fuzzed with lint from the bottom of the bag. I forgot toothpaste anyway. My purse, old-fashioned. It used to be Mom’s. Eli’s Folgers coffee tin that I’ve wrapped shut with Scotch tape. A weathered old clothespin, the wood smooth as silk with R-A-W scratched into the side, that I held all the way here on the bus. And the photo, taken on the farm the summer before everything went wrong. I’m thirteen in this picture, so Alex must be eight. Pim, my brother, he’s four. It’s the summer when we were all still smiling.

  I stow everything but the toothb
rush and the purse back into my bag and jam it into the cupboard under the sink. She won’t find it. She’s so repulsed by me she would probably never touch my bag anyhow. Then I shower and dress in the same clothes I wore yesterday.

  In the living room, Chase is sitting on the couch reading a magazine about fit people.

  “I’m going to go check out the town,” I say as I hover by the front door.

  He looks up but only for a second.

  “Bye,” he says. “Maybe later we can have another chat.”

  That’s definitely not happening. I nod and head straight out of the door.

  ALEX

  I texted Sully because I needed to talk. Yesterday was a brutal day, followed by a shocking night. First, Buster. Then my sister appearing back in my life out of nowhere. After I finally drifted off to sleep, leaving Ruth in the living room, I had a nightmare about the Floyd baby, that little baby boy. He was older in the dream but still in his bulging dirty diaper. In his hand was that little blue car, and in the distance a figure beckoned him toward a ravine. I couldn’t stop him from going to the stranger. And the worst part—the part that woke me with a jolt in the darkness—was that the figure in the distance was Ruth.

  Sully’s already at the Oven when I get there, travel coffee mug full, leaning over a book. He’s never on his phone, only looks at it if it actually rings or beeps. I like that about him. The books he reads are tomes, too, great, celebrated works by writers I’d never attempt. French ones, sometimes Russian.

  I buy a cup of tea and join him at the table. He closes his book, and I get that comfortable surge that seems to emanate only from him.

  “How are you?” Sully watches me sit down, moves my mug while I settle so I won’t bump it. “Your text message sounded urgent.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “No, it’s fine. It’s just … what’s going on?”