Halfway Home

by Paul Monette

  I felt terribly embarrassed for the boy, that he should have to hear his father squirm. I avoided Brian's eyes and smiled at Daniel again. "I'm glad you came. It's a big house for just one person."

  Then I felt the force of Brian's hand on my biceps, tugging me off to talk in private. It was such an eerie echo of the dream, pulling me toward the fatal door, that I shuddered as I followed him into the cactus patch. He felt the tremor and drew his hand away, misreading it as revulsion, I think. For his eyes flinched in shame as he looked over my shoulder to sea.

  "I'm sorry, I should've told you when I was here. My life is totally fucked." Then he clenched his teeth in self-contempt. "And I've got no right to dump it on you."

  I felt light-headed, like someone about to laugh at a funeral. I reached my hands and gripped his shoulders. "Hey—I'm glad you're alive, Ace. Nothing else matters."

  For a second I thought he was going to cry, just from the break in the tension. I liked holding on to his solid mass, but my touch was easy, nothing to weigh him down. He shook his head bitterly, as if to deny himself any release. "We were supposed to be back," he said, meaning Sunday night. "We only stayed over in the mountains because she was getting her period. She didn't want to be sick in the car. Otherwise—" He stared in stupefaction at the water. He was going on the assumption that I knew everything.

  "But I thought—" I didn't know quite how to say this. Certain details might be too unbearable still. "Didn't they find—I mean, there's a picture in the paper of these body bags." Three of them lined in a row on the lawn, a picture I couldn't look straight in the face.

  "Ita and Kim," said Brian, wincing again in shame. Then he must have seen how puzzled I looked. "Sorry—the Vietnamese couple. They've been with us for years. They had a little girl." He gave a helpless shrug of despair at the insanity of it all. "They didn't do anything. Except trust me."

  "So nobody knows you got out of there," I declared, cutting impatiently through his guilt.

  "Now they do. Susan called her sister this morning. The coroner just had a news conference, to say they made a mistake." As he turned his body to face directly out to sea, my hands fell away from his shoulders, reluctantly. "Tommy, I just need a few days to figure my options. I'm not gonna get you in trouble."

  "Hey, not to worry. Trouble's my middle name." I think what startled me most was that I had no sense of judging him. The blood went deeper than what he'd done. This from me, who'd never felt a blood tie in my life, unless you included hate.

  "There's a lawyer out here," he said. "That's who I came to see before, soon as I realized Jerry was setting me up. He's trying to work out an immunity thing. So maybe I'll check in with him." He shrugged again, no more sure of this than any other plan.

  "But nobody knows you're here?" I asked precisely, relieved when he shook his head.

  "We spent the night in a motel down by the airport, full o' hookers." He laughed at the layers of absurdity. "All we got is what we've got on, and one duffel bag from the weekend. We caught a cab up here, took my last thirty bucks. I'm scared to use a credit card."

  His voice betrayed a sort of permanent astonishment, as if he couldn't believe the abruptness of the change, from having so much to nothing. Safe by the skin of their teeth, overnight they'd turned into a little band of refugees—like Ita and Kim on the South China Sea. I turned to look at Daniel, reading his book again. Strangely, he seemed not astonished at all, even rather used to it by now. Just like me. My first conscious memory, four or five years old, was a sinking feeling of having no expectations. Life would just do what it did.

  "The papers didn't mention the dogs," I said.

  "Dead."

  I nodded, studying Daniel, trying to figure how high he'd already built the wall. Then Susan appeared in the parlor doorway, blonder than her picture, stunning even forty feet away in a lilac jogging suit. I lifted a hand and waved, smiling brightly at this woman I'd never met. She didn't wave back, seemed uncertain whether to step outside, as if she had trespassed far enough. "Come on out!" I called cheerfully.

  Brian's head swiveled around as I made a move toward her, and he grabbed my arm, harder than he meant to. For a second it felt like a punch from twenty-five years ago. "Tom," he murmured, squirming again, "she doesn't know about..." It died in his throat, but I saw his eyes lock on my cheek.

  Okay. Gently I pulled away from him and continued toward my sister-in-law. For some reason it didn't enrage me that he hadn't told her. Usually I want it screamed in people's faces. Right now there was too much else, especially when I saw the pained embarrassment in her face, and beneath it, stark as a skull, the fear. "Finally," I said, brimming with warmth, sticking a hand out.

  She barely touched it, her small cold fingers limp. She mumbled hello and stared at her son. By now Brian had strode up beside us. "I told him it's just for a couple of days," he said to his wife—defensive, almost stilted.

  But I'm not sure how much I really picked up. I was too busy overcompensating. "Let's get you settled," I announced—the perfect hostess, who knows just how weary her guests must be from the trip. Imperiously I led the way into the house, and the two of them followed without a peep. Up the stairs, me chattering over my shoulder a shorthand version of the aunts' tale.

  "We'll put the two of you in here," I said, sweeping us into Cora's room. I blinked at the swirl of dishevel, having forgotten we'd slept there. With two men's underwear strewn about, it looked like more than sleeping had been going on. "We'll get this made right up," I declared, as if I had a chambermaid at the end of a bell pull.

  They stood there grimly serious, which I chalked up to the terrible disruptions of the last two days. I ducked into the bathroom and pulled from the cupboard a fluffy stack of towels, for I'd finally done a proper laundry in preparation for Foo's visit, as well as a vigorous scour of the bathroom hardware. I set the towels down on the green wicker chair and beckoned them out to the hall again. At the far corner of the stairwell a low arched doorway opened onto four narrow steps. They followed me up to a small round room with windows in every direction, a sort of squat tower.

  "Nonny's room," I announced with pride. It was sparsely furnished with a single bed and a rag rug, and otherwise cluttered with boxes, having evolved by default into a semi-attic. "He'll love it up here, it's like a lighthouse."

  This didn't seem to perk them up at all. Susan looked mortified, as if she was being reduced to charity. I let her be. Four different AIDS support groups had drummed it into me: you have to let people have their process. So I stepped to one of the casements and threw it open, looking down on the terrace below. "Daniel," I called, and he tore his eyes from Long John Silver, squinting up at me. "This is where you'll stay."

  "Thanks," he replied, rigorously well mannered, but made no move to run up and look. They all seemed so defeated, but could you blame them? When I turned back, Susan was sitting on the foot of the bed staring at the floor, Brian standing above her, a pang of grief in his face as deep but not as clean as death. It was so obvious they needed to be alone. I murmured about checking the linen and beat it out of there.

  As I stripped the bed in Cora's room I could hear Susan raising her voice, hammering at him, shrill with rage. I couldn't make out the words and didn't want to—or only the one word not, repeated like a curse. I will not do something-or-other, she swore at him. This was not what she wanted. I put these beautiful creamy sheets on the bed, the border embroidered in garlands, probably bought when the house was built. I shoved Gray's scattered clothes in the bureau and fussed about with a dust rag, all the while hearing the blur of accusations through the wall. I think what jarred me the most was that my brother appeared to be taking it all in silence.

  I stood there a moment, surveying my chamberwork, winded and softly coughing. I thought: Can't they just be glad to be alive? Awfully Pollyanna coming from me, who bit people's heads off when they told me I looked terrific. Or as one or two former friends had said,Be glad you're alive today. So no, I didn't
expect my brother and his family to be giddy with relief. They were up to their nuclear neck in problems. All I could do—and I liked this part—was make them a place that was safe and calm.

  I came out into the stairhall and was starting down the steps when Brian emerged through the arch from Nonny's room. I gave him a bland smile, not wanting him to know I'd heard his wife's tantrum. He leaned over the banister. "Things aren't so good with Susan and me."

  I nodded dumbly. He turned away and lumbered into Cora's room, closing the door. I hurried downstairs, suddenly fearful that Susan would appear. Don't take sides, I warned myself, knowing the mire was deeper than I was used to, even including Daphne and Mona smashing clocks.

  I saw through the parlor windows that Daniel hadn't moved an inch. Even I, who'd been such a desperate reader at his age, wondered how spellbound he really was. Stevenson was no slouch, but still. I'd done my own share of staring at books till the print ran, when the pain of my father and Brian was too much. How old was he—seven, eight? I'd forgotten exactly, and with no kids anywhere near my orbit, had no skill at guessing. All the same, I had an irresistible longing to go out and sit beside him, stumbling around till I found the words to tell him I understood.

  Understood what—that life sucked? Who said the chaos of his life was anything like mine, eons ago in the Donna Reed graveyard of the fifties? I told myself Not yet, painful as it was to see him out there all alone, finding his island in a book, not trusting the one he had landed on. Let him get settled first. The last thing I wanted to do was come to him from a place of ego, wanting him too much to be like me. Let me want him to be like him, I thought.

  And turned away from his melancholy figure and headed through the kitchen out to the yard. Keeping it simple. I stopped at the potting shed behind the garage and pulled on canvas gloves, grabbing the hand clippers and a basket. I was back to the care and feeding of my guests, and figured they could use fresh flowers, especially if they'd be holed up bickering and cutting losses.

  The roses grow on the south side of the driveway hedge, the hottest spot in the whole five acres and the most protected from the sea. Several bushes were bright with blooms big as a man's fist, bursting into the sun after all that rain. Like I said, I never bring roses in myself, because I can't stand the swiftness of their passage, here and gone. Happily Brian and Susan wouldn't have all that superstitious baggage. I clipped the stems long, laying them one by one in the basket, yellow for Cora's room, red for Nonny's. There wouldn't be quite a dozen for each, but nearly.

  The sweat was pouring off me, and as I wiped the back of the glove across my forehead, I heard the sound of tires in the drive. An instant goose of adrenaline—what if it was the FBI? I didn't know precisely who was after Brian. I tossed my head back coolly and walked to the end of the oleander, prepared to stand my ground and demand to see a warrant. I came around the hedge. It was the pickup. The door opened, and Gray stepped out, flustered already and red in the face, not expecting to run into me so fast.

  "I won't get in your way," he blurted. "I just didn't want you to be here all by yourself."

  "Gray—you won't believe it—"

  "I'd never intrude, I hope you know that." He didn't know what to do with his hands. Jammed them in his pants pockets.

  I laughed to see him so awkward, the laughter startling him. "Gray, listen—my brother's alive." A waver of doubt clouded his eyes, like maybe I just got religion. "He's here. They're all here." He stared over my shoulder at the beach house, still wary, an old frontier stubbornness that demanded proof. "It was this family that worked for them who died. They weren't even there."

  Slowly the disbelief ebbed from his eyes, and he turned them again on me. He smiled his crinkled smile, followed up after a beat by a tiny snort of laughter. Then he glanced at the basket on my arm. "May I quote you?" he said, mocking me ever so gently. "'I hate roses.'"

  "No, I don't. I just don't like them dying on me."

  "Oh."

  He was grinning at me now, but then I may have started it. There was really no one else who could fully appreciate the craziness of the last day, all the way to death and back. Well, Mona could of course, but she wasn't here. I don't know what other people do with the aura of good luck that follows a false alarm. But for me, standing there like the rose queen, it was like waking up from a nightmare to a world of second chances—Scrooge after the ghosts. I thought nothing and weighed nothing, because there was nothing to lose. I picked up a yellow rose and held it out like a specimen.

  "Lord Graham, I hope you won't think me out of line, me just a poor tenant and all. But before that funeral started yesterday, I could swear I was falling in love with you."

  He took it between two fingers, careful of the thorns. Sniffed it, but not floridly. "Oh really? I thought that's what I was doing. According to Merle and Foo and Mona."

  "Yes, well, they got it backwards." I think I was waiting to see him blanch, or shuffle from one foot to the next. Those Jimmy Stewart moves of his, so earnest you wanted to put him in your pocket. I was amazed how cool he took it, frankly, and so I breezed right on. "Don't worry, you don't have to do anything about it. I mean, we don't have to. I just decided to tell you." I shrugged. "I'm terrible with secrets."

  He gave me the most remarkable look, blazingly frank, beyond anything he'd ever allowed himself with me. I did the blanching. "They didn't get it backwards," he said, savoring the repetition. "I've been in it for months now. I just happen to be great at keeping a secret."

  There was a dangerous merriment there. "I warn you, my lord, some people say I'm a dead man."

  "Yeah, so I hear. Same ones who say I'm a hundred years old." His turn to shrug. "You get what you get. Besides, death's very overreported around here, don't you think?"

  He opened his arms wide, taking in all the island. Seeing my chance I moved to embrace him, still holding the shears and the basket. It was a hug of relief more than anything, not especially sexual, more like survivors meeting in the aftermath of a wreck. I was looking over his shoulder toward the house and saw Daniel in the kitchen window, watching. Oh shit, now he puts down his book. Who would he tell, I wondered, his mother or his father? And I knew the answer because he was me. He wouldn't tell anyone.

  "I won't come in," said Gray, easing away.

  "Of course you will," I protested. "You'll meet them. You're my—" Mouth went dry. No word yet.

  "Tomorrow's soon enough."

  He waved the rose like a little flag. I saw that he needed his shyness to curl up in for a while and catch his breath. He was right, of course—I still had to get my refugees squared away. So I let him go without a second thought. Waved him down the driveway after our sixty seconds' swap of declarations. We seemed to have found our own way to smash a clock. He tooted once before he gunned across the coast road and into the Trancas hills. And for once, turning back to the beach house and my blood, tomorrow seemed like a good idea. Because now there would be enough time.

  CURIOUSLY IT FELT ALMOST ORDINARY, THE FOUR OF us together in the house. Not the same thing as normal, mind you, but they had their rooms, and I had mine. At least we weren't on top of each other, the way it had been on West Hill Road the last time I did the family bit. Susan stayed upstairs for the first day and a half, so I didn't see her at all. This I chalked up to female mysteries, recalling Brian's remark about her period. In any case, the connecting bathroom between our rooms required an extra alertness in the locking of doors. Once I went in to brush my teeth and caught a faint whiff of bitter musk—a woman's blood. Instantly I thought of my mother, the only woman whose smell I'd ever known. Yet it didn't faze me at all, this coming full circle. It only served to reinforce the sense of natural history that clung about the beach house. The arrival of my brother's clan seemed inevitable as the cycle of seasons.

  Almost ordinary, especially when Brian and Daniel and I gathered for meals in the dining room. For supper that first night, Campbell's soup and peanut butter sandwiches, the three of us hunc
hed at the table without a word. But I mean, it didn't seem awkward in the least. It was as if we'd been having supper like this for years, no need to speak. And the next morning at breakfast, coming down to find my brother in the kitchen making french toast. It moved me in a very uncomplicated way, to find myself part of the ritual of Brian and his son.

  Only I knew where the maple syrup was, a tin at the back of a cupboard with black molasses rust around the cap. Sitting there scarfing it down—four slices, six slices, trying to keep up with the kid—I almost forgot the upheaval of my brother's plight. Till Daniel drained his milk, set his glass on the table, and addressed his father gravely: "Where will I go to school?"

  "Don't worry, we'll work all that out," said Brian, with a slight burr of annoyance. "You're still on your Easter break."

  The boy nodded sadly. My cheeks were bulging with toast, ridiculously piggish, but I wanted to reach out with my napkin and gently wipe the milk mustache from his upper lip. I didn't. "May I be excused?" asked Daniel, and his father nodded, and he slipped away from the table. I watched him pick up his book off the sideboard and head outside. The book was like ballast, the last thing holding him down from flying away.

  "I'm seeing that lawyer tomorrow," said my brother, no lingering look after the figure of his fleeing son. "Not here," he hastened to add. "At his office. I'm not giving anyone this address."

  I smiled at him. "I guess the idea must be to find you one of those witness protection things. Change your name. Whole new life." Even as I said it I couldn't prevent the creep of envy in my voice. It sounded marvelous.

  Brian laughed harshly, his upper lip pulling back in a sneer. "Yeah, those programs are total bullshit. You know what the rate of survival is? 'Bout fifty percent make it two years before somebody catches up with 'em. Great odds, huh? Just like they swore I'd be testifying in secret." He scoffed in disgust, leaning back in his chair, hands behind his head. The swell of his biceps was taut against the sleeves of his T-shirt.