All the Way Home

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Then, slowly, she makes her way back through the house up to bed, turning off the lights again and trying not to be spooked by the path of darkness behind her.

  When she’s back in bed beside Lou, with the pillows once again strategically placed and her bladder empty and her stomach settled, she can’t fall asleep, even though she was yawning only minutes ago.

  For some reason, she keeps thinking about those stupid crackers.

  Keeps wondering why, if she really did eat them, she hadn’t just finished them, instead of leaving two measly crackers and some crumbs in the bottom of the bag. Lord knows, she’s eaten everything else in sight lately.

  Okay, if you didn’t eat them, she asks herself reluctantly, then who did?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “What are you doing?”

  Rory jumps at the sound of a voice behind her and turns to see her mother standing in the doorway of the kitchen. Her hair is disheveled and she’s wearing a faded floral sundress Rory remembers from her childhood, which means it must be at least ten years old, probably more. Her feet are clad in heavy burgundy pumps and she’s clutching a black faux leather handbag, neither of which go with the summer dress. Despite the June heat, there’s a white sweater over her shoulders, the long sleeves hanging empty and the top button fastened at her throat.

  “Good morning, Mom. Are you going out?” Like that? But she doesn’t say the last part. She’s not a teenaged girl anymore, worried about what her friends will think of her crazy mother in her crazy get-­up. She has her own life, far from here, and she couldn’t care less if ­people talk about Maura.

  “I just came back from church.”

  “Oh, right.” Rory hadn’t realized she was gone. But she should have known. Maura never misses daily mass. “Can I make you something for breakfast? There are bagels and lox and—­”

  “What are you doing, Rory?”

  Mom is staring at the open paint can on the newspaper-­lined linoleum; at the dripping white-­coated brush in Rory’s hand.

  “I’m painting the woodwork,” she says in a small voice, feeling suddenly like a little girl.

  She braces herself for her mother’s reaction.

  There’s no raised voice. No how dare you?

  Her mother’s eyes move to the frame around the window over the sink. There’s a vivid line between the bright new white paint and the dingy old part.

  “Good” is all Maura says, with a shrug.

  She moves to the stove, sets the beige teakettle on the burner, and lights the flame.

  Rory goes back to her painting, trying to think of something to say as her mother measures imported tea leaves from a metal canister. Mom has always been frugal, but she orders the tea directly from Dublin, her one indulgence.

  Finally, her mother seats herself at the kitchen table with her steaming mug—­liberally sweetened as always, Rory notices as she counts the heaping spoonfuls of sugar Maura dumps in.

  “Where’s Molly?” she asks; there has been no sign of her sister yet this morning.

  “In bed, I guess.”

  “Does she always sleep this late?”

  “It’s only nine o’clock.”

  Rory, who has been known to sleep until noon if undisturbed, has no response to that.

  There’s silence in the kitchen for a while, broken only by the soft, swishing sounds of Rory’s paintbrush and her mother’s occasional sips and swallows.

  Finally, Rory says impulsively, “I know the stereo in the den is broken”—­she had already tried that, earlier—­“but is there a radio around someplace, Mom?”

  There’s a pause. “I don’t know.”

  “I just thought it would be nice to listen to music while I work. There used to be that transistor radio of Dad’s in the hall bathroom upstairs, but it’s gone.”

  “Mmm.”

  “And I know Molly has a boom box in her room, but I can’t ask her to borrow that. I know how teenaged girls are about loaning their stuff to . . .”

  She trails off. She was about to say, To a sister.

  Once again, Carleen’s ghost seems to have seeped into the room. Rory wonders if her mother is remembering, as she is, the battles she and her sister used to wage over clothes, record albums, books.

  She used to sneak into Carleen’s room to borrow things, and would promptly put them back in perfect condition, yet, somehow, Carleen always knew. Sometimes, she would let Rory slide, only later making a catty comment like “I hope you enjoyed wearing my jean jacket last weekend.” But most of the time, Carleen would throw a fit.

  As if she never borrowed my black velvet headband or my one perfect pink frost lipstick that didn’t clash with my hair.

  Rory realizes that she’s thinking like a fifteen-­year-­old again. That, in her mind, Carleen will be forever seventeen.

  We never got the chance to get past all that sibling rivalry stuff, she thinks with a pang of loss. We never got the chance to grow past it, to become friends.

  She glances over her shoulder and sees her mother just sitting at the table, her hands cupped around the half-­empty mug of tea in front of her, a faraway expression in her eyes.

  “I thought I’d take a ride over to Saratoga Springs one of these days,” Rory says, after more uncomfortable silence.

  There’s no reply.

  “Would you like to come with me, Mom? We could go to lunch at Hattie’s Chicken Shack, and maybe do some shopping. There are some nice stores on Broadway and I’d like to get—­”

  “I can’t.”

  That’s all Maura says, in a clipped tone. Just I can’t. No reason. No excuse.

  Why can’t you? Rory wants to ask. But she doesn’t dare. She knows the reason. Which reminds her . . .

  “So, Mom,” she says conversationally, “what’s up with Sister Theodosia these days?”

  Her mother blinks. “What do you mean?”

  “Is she still in Buffalo? What church was she at? Wasn’t it Our Lady of . . . something-­or-­other?”

  “No. No, it was St. Lucretia’s.”

  “Is she still there?”

  Her mother nods.

  “Do you see her often?”

  “Not often.”

  When was the last time? And does she realize you’ve gone crazy?

  Rory dips her brush and slaps more paint onto the woodwork; too much. It spatters and starts to run down and she quickly catches the drips with her brush, smoothing the excess paint over the edge of the frame. She concentrates on getting it into the cracks at the corner, making sure there are no bare patches.

  “It would be nice to talk to Sister Theodosia after all these years,” she says after a few minutes, when the painting is under control again.

  Will her mother know she’s lying? Of course she will. Surely Maura can’t think Rory was actually fond of the dour-­faced nun. But then, Carleen was the only one brazen enough to vocalize her dislike for Sister Theodosia.

  “Mom?”

  Rory turns to see that the chair at the table is vacant; even the mug of tea is gone.

  She hears footsteps slowly ascending the creaky hall stairs.

  With a sigh, she dips the brush into the paint again.

  “No, Ozzie, on the paper. On the paper!” Michelle grabs her son’s chubby hand, which is dripping with red goo, just as it’s about to come down on the top of the picnic table. She guides it to the shiny white paper, already covered in smears of green and blue.

  “That’s right, sweetie,” she says, watching him spread streaks of red over the page. “See? Isn’t finger painting fun?”

  “Fun,” agrees Ozzie. “More paint.”

  She catches his hand before he can tip over the shallow foil dish of red paint, and helps him coat his fingers with more.

  With a sigh, she watches him go to work again, an expression
of pure bliss on his chubby features. After a moment, she grabs a blank sheet of paper for herself and dabs her forefinger into the red paint.

  “Mommy paint, too?” Ozzie asks, delighted.

  “Sure, why not?” She drags her finger over the page, creating intricate swirls of red.

  Gee, haven’t you come a long way? she asks herself sardonically, thinking about the long-­ago summer she spent in Paris, seated before an easel on the Seine. It was ten years ago this year, she realizes. She’d been a college student then, an art major at Buff State, and dazzled over the opportunity to study watercolor technique with Marcel du Bois, one of the world’s greatest living painters. When she’d left Lake Charlotte in May, she’d been reluctant to go so far from home—­from her mother and Lou, whom she’d been dating for a few years by then. But how could an aspiring artist stay homesick for very long in Paris?

  August had arrived much too soon, and her instructor had encouraged her to stay, telling her she had a rare talent and he’d like to keep working with her. Praise from the great du Bois never came easily, and Michelle had actually hesitated, albeit briefly, before telling him that she had to get home. Back to Lake Charlotte and Lou, for a brief week together before she went back to Buffalo and he left for Long Island, where he would enter his first year of law school.

  Now she remembers how much they’d argued during those fleeting days together. Lou seemed to have changed over the summer; he was no longer his happy-­go-­lucky self. Part of that might have been due to the summer job he’d taken to pay his law school tuition—­working on the new sewer line the town was building out on High Ridge Road. Great money, but who would be thrilled with the long, grueling hours in the heat of summer? Certainly not Lou, who had been a lifeguard out at the Curl beach every summer since he was sixteen.

  But Michelle had known the job wasn’t the only miserable thing about Lou’s summer. He resented her for leaving for three months; he’d even tried to talk her out of going to Paris before she left. And once she was back, it seemed as though all he did was gripe about all the great times they could have had together, making her feel guilty for ruining his summer. She had half expected Lou to break up with her that fall, but when they saw each other again at Thanksgiving, he was his old self again.

  A month later, he gave her an engagement ring for Christmas. In January, she transferred to a state school on Long Island and finished her degree there. Lou talked her into changing her major to elementary education so that she could teach art, pointing out that she could hardly expect to build a career as a painter. Lou had always been practical. And she was always a dreamer.

  Still am, she tells herself now with a faint smile as she spirals a bit more red paint onto her paper. She watches Ozzie mix a splotch of red with blue to make purple, and wonders whether he inherited her artistic talent. Too early to tell.

  “Good, Ozzie,” she tells him. “That’s purple. See? Red and blue make purple.”

  “Purple. Like Barney.”

  “Like Barney,” she echoes, smiling.

  She and Ozzie work quietly, she with careful strokes and he in slapdash toddler style, and she’s lost in her memories of the past. She remembers the crummy one-­bedroom apartment she and Lou rented in Smithtown after they were married, and how she worked two waitressing jobs to support them as Lou struggled through law school. He had terrible study habits—­he liked to be active, out playing sports or hanging around with friends, rather than sitting in a chair poring over texts and notes.

  Still, he graduated and managed to pass the bar—­on the third try—­then landed a job with a small practice in their hometown. He had hoped to settle in New York City with a high-­profile firm, but Michelle refused, wanting to be near her widowed mother. As an only child, she felt obligated.

  Thank God Lou finally gave in on that one. At least I had a few years with Mom before she died. And if we hadn’t lived with her and saved money, we would never have been able to afford this place, she thinks, looking up at the back of the big house.

  Pretty soon, the shady spot where she and Ozzie are sitting at the picnic table will be encompassed by the new family room. The yard will still be a good size, though, she concludes, glancing around. It stretches quite a distance back, with raspberry bushes rambling along the property line.

  Michelle and Ozzie had inspected the briars this morning before settling down to paint. There’s going to be a large, early crop this year. Another day or so, and the berries will be ready to pick.

  Maybe I’ll make a berry pie, she decides. Or preserves, even.

  Her mother had always put up jars of homemade jam in midsummer.

  Then again, the thought of slaving in a hot kitchen isn’t entirely appealing. Especially with Ozzie getting underfoot, and her belly growing more enormous with every passing day.

  “Mommy paint,” Ozzie commands, realizing she’s stopped and jabbing her in the arm with a purple finger.

  “Careful, Ozzie!”

  Michelle grabs one of the damp paper towels she had the foresight to bring outside, and wipes at the streak of paint. It’s the washable kind, but she doesn’t want to get any on her one decent pair of maternity shorts.

  “I think we’re done painting for this morning,” Michelle tells her son, who promptly lets out a shriek of protest. She wipes both of his hands, and then her own, on the paper towels. Then she wearily grabs him by the arm, careful not to brush his paint-­smeared hand against her clothes, and starts pulling him toward the house as he continues to bellow.

  “Quiet, Ozzie,” she says firmly, glancing over at the Connollys’ house on one side, then the Wasners’ on the other. “The neighbors don’t want to hear you screaming.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” a voice says.

  Michelle gasps and spins around.

  “Sorry . . . didn’t mean to scare you.”

  A face peeks through the honeysuckle hedge on the property line, and Michelle recognizes Rory Connolly. She’s never met Molly’s older sister, though she vaguely remembers seeing her around town years ago, when Michelle was in high school and Rory just a freckled little kid with that distinct mop of red hair.

  In fact, Michelle’s friend Sarah had baby-­sat for the Connolly brood a ­couple of times, before declaring them too wild. Especially Carleen, the oldest—­the one who had later disappeared, that same summer Michelle was in Paris. She had returned home to find Lake Charlotte in turmoil over the four missing girls.

  Now Michelle looks at the middle Connolly sister and decides she looks nothing like Carleen or Molly, both of them dark-­haired and blue-­eyed. Rory’s auburn curls fall in a glorious mass to her shoulders, and Michelle’s artist’s eyes note the intense, varied shades of red glinting in the sunlight.

  “I’m Rory Connolly,” the woman says in a likable, straightforward way. “I don’t think we’ve ever met.”

  “Michelle Randall. I don’t think so, either, although I do remember you when you were a little girl.”

  “Really? You’re from Lake Charlotte, then?”

  “Yup. I used to be Michelle Panati.”

  “Shelley Panati?”

  “That’s me. At least, it was.” Michelle smiles at the old nickname, the one she’d had her whole life, until she met Lou. He was the first one who had ever called her Michelle. “Michelle, ma belle . . .” He used to sing the old Beatles song in her ear when they slow-­danced. He hasn’t sung it in a while. Years, probably.

  But then, when was the last time they slow-­danced? At their wedding? And if they tried now, he wouldn’t be able to get closer than a few feet away, Michelle notes ruefully, glancing down at her protruding belly.

  “I remember you,” Rory is saying. “You hung around with Sarah Carter, our old baby-­sitter.”

  “That’s right.”

  “She stopped coming after that night Carleen locked her in the linen closet.
God, she was always such a terror when we had sitters . . .”

  Rory trails off and her green eyes cloud over.

  Michelle realizes she’s thinking about her sister. Nobody ever did find out what had happened to her or the other girls.

  It’s bad enough when someone close dies, Michelle thinks, an image of her mother popping into her head. But it must be even more horrible to live your life wondering whether someone you love is dead or alive, the way Rory Connolly has.

  Michelle can’t think of a thing to say. For a moment, the only sounds are chirping birds and a lawn mower rumbling in the distance.

  Luckily, Ozzie fills the gap by announcing, “Paint.”

  “No, Ozzie, we’re through,” Michelle tells him, then sees that he’s pointing to Rory. She realizes her neighbor is dressed in a dark T-­shirt and shorts that are covered in white spatters, as are her arms and legs.

  “That’s right, little guy,” Rory says with a wry grin. “I’m covered in paint. Just like you.”

  “Luckily, his is the washable kind,” Michelle says.

  “Unfortunately, mine isn’t. I never should have started this project. I’ve only been at it a few hours and I’m already sick of it—­not to mention a mess.”

  “What are you painting?”

  “The trim in the kitchen. I thought I’d perk the place up a bit. It’s so damn dreary. Oops, sorry.” She belatedly covers her mouth with a hand and glances down at Ozzie. “I’m not used to watching my tongue.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Anyway, I had planned to do some painting when I decided to come home for the summer, but I was thinking more along the lines of oils and watercolors than latex semigloss.”

  “You paint, then? I mean—­”

  “I majored in art in college. Berkeley.”

  “Me, too. Buff State. Then I switched.”

  “Majors?”

  “And colleges. I ended up majoring in education and teaching art—­but I’m not even doing that anymore. This is about as artistic as I get these days,” Michelle says ruefully, gesturing toward the picnic table, where the finger paints are still spread out.