The Breakdown Lane

by Jacquelyn Mitchard

  “There’s no Leo Steiner around here,” Virginia said dryly, as she came back to the side of the car. “But up in that house where Joyous Devlin lives, is a man called Leon Stern.”

  Leon.

  I began to walk, with Caro slipping along behind me on the wet leaves. So did Virginia. “You don’t have to come,” I told her. “We don’t expect you to do any more for us. You’ve done more for us than most of our family, to be honest.”

  “No reason to stop something I started,” said Virginia. “What if he’s not the man, your father?”

  “We never said it was our father,” Caro murmured.

  Virginia smiled tightly. “Lucky guess.”

  The girl who opened the door was older than Caroline, maybe twenty. She called for another girl, who was probably a little older than her, maybe…you can’t tell how old women are. Maybe she was twenty-five. “Hi,” she said. “Do…can I help you?”

  “Well,” Virginia said evenly, “they want to see Leon Stern. Is Leon Stern here?”

  A voice came from the back of the house. “Is it Jim? Tell him I’m not done. Rome wasn’t built in a day.” And he came in off some kind of porch, wearing his stupid rubber shower slippers he always wore in the morning, and a shirt with little woolen checks over a plain white under-shirt. He was thinner and had a beard. He was my father. He was carrying a little baby who looked just like Aury looked when she was practically a newborn. Caroline cried, “Daddy!” and began to step up into the house, but the older girl blocked her way.

  “Wait a minute,” she said, not unkindly. “Just…wait a minute. This is my house. My little boy is in there. What’s going on here? Leon? Who are these people?”

  “Hi, Leon,” I said.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Second Samuel

  EXCESS BAGGAGE

  By J. A. Gillis

  Distributed by Panorama Media

  Dear J.,

  I could die. Really. We were at this outdoor cookout and suddenly my best friend blurts out this horrible, embarrassing thing we did when we were about twelve years old. She was laughing hysterically, but everyone else got silent, and stared at me! And now, everywhere I go, someone acts like they’ve heard about it, and I’m sure they have. There were fifty people there. This was the person on earth I totally trusted. Plus, she did it, too. I don’t know what my kids are going to think if they hear. But I don’t want to lose her friendship! Because it’s been forever! My best friend and I are both 37.

  Outraged in Oregon

  Dear Outraged,

  You have what they call on cop shows a legitimate beef. You have every right to feel hostile and hurt and to behave like a ninth-grader—all of which you’re doing, by the way. One thing you deserve is an answer, a chance to find out why, after so many years of closeness, she felt the need for an overt act of hostility, and don’t kid yourself, this is what that was. Maybe she’s been holding on to a grudge. Maybe you two can talk it out. But if she says it was all a joke, ixnay with the friendship. Even if she apologizes, which I wouldn’t expect, remember you’re accepting a “pardon me” from a snake that bit you. Some people don’t get another chance.

  J.

  Dear J.,

  My mother totally invades my privacy, reads my e-mail, makes me leave a phone number wherever I’m going, has me call her from there, and generally is ruining my life. I’m thinking of running away.

  PO’ed in Plankinton

  Dear PO’ed,

  Ask your mom to respect your privacy in certain things, like written communications and phone calls. Tell her that if she has to ask questions, and all good parents who give a damn do, to try doing it without being judgmental. In exchange, you give your promise to be honest. It has to be a two-way street. But if you really want to punish her, by all means, do run away. Of course, you’ll also ruin your own life and spend the next twenty years trying to get it back, and you’ll learn how it feels when nobody at all cares whether you leave a number or not. But your mom will be really miserable.

  J.

  On the Saturday before Easter Sunday, I woke feeling exceedingly odd, as if someone had subleased my body during the night. I probed for what the difference was.

  It was this. I wasn’t dizzy.

  I stood up. I wasn’t dizzy.

  I walked around the room. I wasn’t dizzy.

  I took a ballet stand and spotted on the Chinese powder jar on my shelf. I did a cabriole, expecting a concussion. But I didn’t fall. I did another. I ran down the hall to wake Cathy, too selfish in my exultation to realize that she’d been the sole caretaker of a preschooler, a toddler, and an invalid for nearly a week, and deserved to sleep past seven A.M. I felt good, not just better, or getting over my reaction to the medicine, but really better. Good. Like myself. Cathy would fall over. But she was already awake, Aury was in her bed, playing with Cathy’s hair.

  “Cath!” I whispered. “Watch.”

  I did it again, in the hall, the cabriole.

  “Julie!” she cried, with appropriate amazement and joy.

  “Oh, please, Cathy, can we go to class? Please? Can we leave the girls with Connie just for an hour? This stuff is working, can you believe it? I feel like…like a person. Like me!”

  She smiled and yawned and said, “Sure. That’s so great. Jules, I’m happy.”

  I showered, marveling at the splendor of the grains of oatmeal in the soap, at my ability to lift one leg and soap my toes, clip my own nails into the toilet without following them in, pull on my unitard and lace my shoes. Myself! Good girl, Mommy! I ran out into the kitchen and swung Aury around. She felt as though she weighed seventy pounds—maybe she did weigh seventy pounds—but I could spin around and not hurt my little girl. We bought the girls breakfast sticks of some variety from the Culver’s custard stand, then headed to Connie’s. “I want to take them in,” I begged Cathy. “Look, Cath. There’s a snowdrop. There’s a daffodil, Connie! Watch,” I commanded her and did an open pirouette in the driveway.

  “What’s come over you, Julie?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, I guess, I guess this is what they were hoping would happen!”

  “Don’t be overdoing,” Connie remonstrated, drawing the girls to her, “you know that can lead to worse.”

  “But I feel like overdoing! This didn’t used to be overdoing, Connie. It used to be doing.”

  “I know,” she said, “but you’re ill now.”

  “Not right now,” I told her. “Not right this minute.”

  Except for Leah, who said, “Hello, Julieanne,” the rest of them behaved as though a ghost had walked into the room. They placed themselves along the barre, giving me extra room.

  It was hellish. I hadn’t done any exercise since Caroline and I had gone to ballet months before. My arms felt as though they were wrapped in sandbags, my legs ached, and I could feel the muscles object, then refuse my long-neglected turnout. After fifteen minutes, I was covered with sweat. After a half hour, I had to go and sit down on the Pilates mats and slug down a whole bottle of water.

  The time for center-floor work arrived, and Leah, for reasons inscrutable to me, prescribed a combination that included a series of glissades ending with a ballotte. “Julieanne, please demonstrate,” she said, and I looked up at her, horrified.

  I could not get up off the pile of mats.

  I willed my arms to push me off, and they remained rigid, my hand clenched around the water bottle. The women watched; one teenager tapped her toe. Finally, Cathy walked over and pulled me to my feet, and, as if I were a wind-up toy set in motion, I walked to the far corner of the room and did the combination. Grand jeté, now, the instructor continued, and I did…three, the sensation of flight now a sensation of pulling a large animal from sucking mud.

  “Now, let us stretch,” she said. And as we began walking back to our places, this little red-haired woman I recognized only because she lived not far from me and seemed to have a dozen or so red-haired children whom she was always pushing or carrying
on her back as she jogged, began, lightly and timidly, to clap. Cathy joined heartily, and soon all of them were clapping. The instructor walked over and took my shoulder. “Brava, Julieanne,” she said. And no one said another word. We stretched.

  My second shower of the day was accomplished by sitting on a rubber stool in the bathtub.

  I wasn’t disease-weak. I was worn out. Good tired. I’d moved that morning more than I had in ages. But I was grateful to feel that way. Still capable of feeling that way. Cathy went to her mother’s for lunch and then said she was going to take advantage of the weather and take the little girls to the park.

  So I slept for five hours, even though I was afraid I might sleep through the kids’ call. The kids would be home from my sister’s tomorrow anyway, and the closing for the sale of the house would be Monday. There’s a strange sensation—you recall it from childhood—about sleeping in the afternoon. You rise into a different world from the one in which you lay down. The shadows have been rearranged. There’s a sensation of sad sweetness, as if something has been overlooked. I used to feel it coming out of the movies just before dinnertime, after the matinee. How, I wondered, did Broadway actors face it, this bittersweet sense of time’s slipping past. When I woke, the first sight I saw was the windmilling shadows of the blades of the ceiling fan above my head as I lay in a room darkened by the approach of sunset.

  I thought I was dreaming then, because I heard something. A cry. Not Abby or Aury. I heard a little baby cry.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Gabe’s Journal

  My father is probably unflappable, or he would have flapped his way out the nearest window the minute he saw us. He recovered quickly, though I could see him swallowing as though he had a bread ball stuck in his throat. How glad he was to see us, his best beloved and bedraggled children, after fucking six months, was touching.

  He looked at us like we were bringing him a subpoena.

  “Umm, Joy,” he said, after a pause so long it was more expressive than any words could have been, “I want you to meet my children. My other children. This is Caroline and this is Gabe.” In some miserable fashion, I wanted to laugh. Here we were, like the people Cathy talked about so much. Othered.

  The older girl shook hands with us. She had long, freckled hands and smelled sweetly of peach. “I’m Joy, and I’m sure you’ve guessed that this is Amos.”

  We sure hadn’t guessed that this was Amos, or who Amos was. But that was quickly cleared up. “Amos is Joy’s and my son,” said my father, not just the new Leo, but the newborn Leon.

  “Dude,” I said, “have a cigar.” I would have fallen down in a chair had there been one.

  “How did you…get here?” my father asked.

  “Jeez, we’re glad to see you, too,” I told him.

  Virginia was still standing in the doorway, a solid pillar of Yankee outrage. “I drove them here, sir. And I want you to know, they’ve come all the way from Wisconsin on a bus.”

  “We had to find you,” Caroline apologized, slipping under Dad’s free arm. He handed the baby to Joy. It was a pretty cute baby. Still is. But then, Aury had been a pretty cute baby. Still is.

  I said, “I’m sure my father would also have liked you to meet his other daughter, Aurora Borealis Steiner. She’s two, and not old enough to bus cross-country.”

  Joy, dressed in black tights and a long sweater, looked bewildered. I was to learn this was her regular look.

  “Well, I’m grateful to you,” my father said. “I’m grateful for your making sure they got here safely.”

  “I made sure they got through the last two hours safely,” said Virginia. To Caro and me, she said, “Good luck. And remember, if you need a ride back, please call me.” We thanked her. And she left, angrily shaking her keys out of her pocket.

  “ ’Bye, Missus Lawrence,” Joy called. “Imagine, of all the people in all the world, you meeting Missus Lawrence. I’d call that a miracle, though my mother is pretty well known….”

  “Well, it saved us a two-hour bus ride and, oh, about a two-hour walk,” I said.

  Then everyone stood there.

  “I guess I should explain,” Leo finally said, with a sigh. I gazed pointedly from Joy and…Amos (he was probably named after Tori Amos, judging from the look of the place). You can tell if a house is normal by a quick scan of the books. On Joy’s shelf, there were about eight—three of them by Danielle Steel. The rest of the shelves looked like India Holloway’s office: birds’ eggs and dried grasses stuck in straw holders. India had at least three yards of books, all serious. But I digress. “This is Joy’s sister, Easter,” my father added.

  “Call me Terry,” said the younger girl, or woman, what have you. She was also very cute and curvy, and if I hadn’t wanted to rip out Leo’s lungs, I would have spent more time staring at her. As it was, she made some blithe excuse about having to get something “at Mom’s” and made herself scarce.

  Finally, I leaned against the front door and said, “Come on, Pop. Calm down. We don’t have to leave right away. Quit making such a big fuss.”

  “Would you like something to eat?” Joy asked. “I guess we weren’t expecting anyone. Or some iced tea? I make great green tea with spices on ice. Don’t I, honey?”

  My father winced. “This looks very different from what it is, Gabe,” he said. “Actually, there was a tacit understanding between your mother and me—”

  “She’s pretty tacit all the time now, Dad,” I said. “She has multiple sclerosis.”

  A legion of emotions crossed his face: pity, relief, and a sort of eye-rolling “what next” expression. Finally, he slumped and slapped his forehead. “What are you telling me? What are you talking about? Are you sure?” he asked and sighed.

  “I came, uh, about fifteen hundred miles to talk to you, and that was going to be one of my higher-agenda items,” I told him.

  “We got fake driver’s licenses…” Caro began.

  “I think somebody here needs to eat,” Joy announced, jiggling the baby, who was whimpering. She headed for the sunroom, God granting at least one small favor in that she didn’t whip out a boob right in front of us. “There’s mint in a dish on the windowsill if you want it with your tea.” I had to drink the tea her hands made because I was so dry my tongue was mortared to the roof of my mouth. Caroline began wandering around the room, picking up and examining things. She held up one little carved wooden statue of a barrel-chested little guy with a huge dick.

  “Looks like Muir,” she said to me.

  “You met Muir?” my father asked. He had not yet invited us to sit down.

  “I’ve got a better question. It’s a ‘why’ question. Why is Amos living?”

  “Come on,” Leo said, “let’s take a walk.”

  “Well, no, Leon,” I told him. “These here boots are pretty much soaked through, and Caroline’s tennis shoes are from last year. We’ve had to tighten our belts a little and cut down on all the electronic gadgets and such. Like, clothes. So if we could just sit down here in your house for a moment.”

  “You know, I love both of you very much,” he said.

  “We know, we know!” I said, parodying Grandma Steiner. “With this much love, I’d like to try hatred.”

  “Look, come and sit in my study, both of you. There’s a great view of the woods….”

  I lost it there. “Listen, you dumb asshole, no disrespect intended, that’s a description, not a cuss word. Your daughter, the one who’s here, almost got raped on the way here. I almost got arrested. I’m fifteen fucking years old, Dad, and I’ve already stolen a car and pistol-whipped a guy. I’m doing part of Mom’s job, and half the time she says ‘banana’ when she means ‘backpack.’ We found a gun in your bedroom drawer! Are we getting through to you? I don’t care about your view of the fucking woods! I don’t care how at peace you are! You need to answer to us, Dad! Leon! You need to tell us what gave you the right to ditch us and refuse to answer our phone calls, so that we finally had to track you down li
ke you were some fugitive….”

  “Gabe,” he said mildly. “I am a fugitive. Or I was. Until I found home. You’ll understand someday. Home is not a place. It’s a place inside you—”

  “Listen!” I shouted, and from the other room, I heard Joy whisper, “Shush,” and quietly close the door. She began to say a rhyme.

  Goodnight moon, I thought. I was standing here talking to some stranger who’d once thrown me up over his head, who’d taught me to read by spelling out the letters in headlines in Rolling Stone, who gave me half his genetic material, and who obviously was as attached to me as he would have been to a virus. On some level, buried, I realized I had hoped, even until the last step up into this house, that Leo would still want us, that he would still be our father. I think I had some vestige of belief in that most adults are good. Or at least most adults I’d known. But he sat there like a mope. Like it was tiresome how we’d shown up and stomped his day. I finally said, “You’re totally happy. Zippy for you. But your happiness means that our mother, your legal wife, is completely miserable, not to mention in really bad pain. And there’s the matter of us, and you have another little kid, you remember her, you must have guessed, that would be Aurora Borealis Steiner. And she’s using your power whatever to sell the house….”