You Could Be Home by Now (11 page)

“That's not why I don't like him. He—”

“I thought you might want the space.” Another sigh. “I know you're having a prickly time of it back home.”

“I'm not. I'm fine.”

“Your folks said a change of scene would be just the trick. Sunshine, sleeping in. A chance to take your mind off things. The last thing I wanted was to smother you, but if you prefer”—she spread her arms wide—“this old girl's ready to smother away.”

“Gran. They didn't pack me off here like a delinquent.” They'd sent her down for Gran's sake, so she wouldn't be alone as her first year without Grandpa passed. An open-ended ticket because it was anyone's guess how much she'd hurt, and how long.

“Nobody thinks that. Nobody.”

“I'm not some kind of
project
.” Lily was fine. Better than fine. She was SAT word
superlative
.

“Of course you aren't. You're a welcome guest. Always. Whatever the reasons.”

“
You're
the reason.” Only: Dad and Aunt Manda's plan came right on the heels of Headmistress Brecken's office. “
You're
the project.”

Gran's expression was unreadable, or maybe Lily was lousy at reading them.

“I'm here because of you. They wanted me to check you're okay. And I'm going to tell them no, you aren't. I'm going to tell them you had a
boyfriend
over.”

“Lily.”

“I'm going to tell them about the walks and the barbecue. You cooked him Grandpa's favorite biscuits.” Great. Another five seconds and she was going to cry. Four seconds. Three. “I hate him. He's always staring. He's got this creepy thing about girls. And he was
vile
to Ms. Rosko. He called her”—she wasn't going to say it in front of her grandmother—“the C word.”

“I'm sure he'd never.”

“He did. On television. A vinegary old—”

“Lily.”

“I'm going to find it.” She opened the computer. “It's online. You'll see. I'm not making it up. And he went off about all these missing girls. Gran. He's the emperor of sketch.”

Gran shut the laptop, hard. She slid it across the table, yanked the plug out, and tucked it under her arm. “Enough. Ben Thales is a good neighbor. There must have been some misunderstanding.”

“Yeah. Because so many things sound like—”

“Blunt.” Gran's voice was light.

“I can't believe you're taking his side.”

“Stunt.”

“No, wait. I can. He's the
boyfriend
. He's got a
penis
and he calls you on the
telephone
.”

“Grunt. Runt. Punt.”

“He's
so
cute and he takes you places in his car.”

“Brunt. Lily, I made the damn biscuits for you.” She held the computer tight across her chest and drew a serrated breath. “Twice. I burned the first batch.”

And here were the tears, only a bit behind schedule. “You didn't have to do that.”

“It was my pleasure.” Gran set down the laptop.

“I'm not making it up. I wouldn't be able to even think that up.”

“With your grades? And I'm sure they teach fiction in that fancy school of yours.”

“It isn't funny.”

“Anything can be funny if you box it hard enough.” Her dorktastic grandmother assumed a Tae Bo stance. “Anything,” she repeated, and she punched at the air.

“Grandpa.”

“Dropped dead while I was in line for the ladies' room.” She let out a mordant chuckle. “Not even a real washroom. A bank of Port-a-Potties.”

“It's not funny.”

“No, but I try.” Gran's fists flailed. Jab-jab-uppercut. Lily recognized the combo from Sierra's stepmom's DVDs. She mirrored it. Gran repeated it, faster now. “That's my girl. Ben's a friend and—you know what the stupidest thing about this year was?” Her hands stilled.

Lily shook her head. She stood by one arm of the sofa, Gran at the other, and she remembered the star and crescent bookends Gran gave her when she was tiny and wanted to be an astronaut.

“People who said if you need anything, ask.” Gran snorted. “Like I'd done this before. My God. I could barely butter my own toast and they wanted to know what I needed.” If the moral of the story was that she needed Ben, Lily was going to do the following things in quick succession: hurl, pack her bags, and hitchhike to the airport. “Ben never asked,” Gran said. “Ben never gave me a look like the one you just did if I found something to laugh about. He was—a presence. He'd drop by.”

Great. So he was moving in on her from the start. “That only—”

“Wait.” Gran held up a shushing finger. “He's a friend. No, a friend. And I won't have you up in arms over an unkind thing he said to a woman who never even sent a card. No, wait.” The finger again. “I know that woman has burdens of her own, and I know that child's turned your head. I don't understand it, but I know, and I'd never stand in the way of your trying to do them a kindness.”

“But he—”

“He has opinions that are damn close to my own after those redneck things she said to my favorite granddaughter.”

“I'm your only granddaughter.” The relief on Gran's face at that weak old joke was ridiculous. Lily swallowed down her next barb and the morning passed with an awkward string of moments nobody commented on. Mona Rosko emerged for her paper and Gran turned on the oldies station. The per-vet collected his mail. Lily didn't say a word. The refrigerator schedule advertised a one o'clock beading class and Gran suggested they grab a bite beforehand. Lily agreed, even though her stomach felt gnawed away from within. Gran offered to let Lily drive the cart and Lily pulled off giddy teen with panache. Gran whipped out her camera for a picture. Lily giraffed her neck so there'd be zero chance of double chin. She asked if the camera was a real camera for the sake of having something to say.

“It's digital. I've been digital for years.” Gran slid into the cart beside her. The seats were hard and plastic and much too hot. “I can program my own DVR, too. This is no ordinary grandma you're dealing with.”

“I didn't mean—it looked like a real one. The shape of the lens and all.”

Gran laughed, the same chesty huh-huh as Dad. “I like that you call the old ones real. Your kids sure won't.”

“I'm not going to have kids.”

“Oh, not for ages. And it'll be a different row to hoe for you. But there's always the sperm bank.” To deserve all this, Lily must have been Stalin in a previous life. Everyone else made it to adulthood without once hearing their grandmothers say the word
sperm
. Gran winked and handed over her key ring. Junk outnumbered the keys: a plastic-encased school picture each of Lily and her cousins, a breast cancer awareness ribbon, and frequent shopper barcodes for half a dozen stores. Lily put the cart in reverse and focused on her guts' hard, bright, budding feeling. Pearl-like, it grew, layer by layer of bitter nacre. One layer for Rocky. One for Ben. One each for self-absorbed besties and anonymous complaints and parents with ulterior motives. One for the C word. Another for a batch of burned biscuits.

T
HE PHONE AGAIN.
N
ATURALLY,
V
ERONICA.
It was the landline, after all, and only she and robocalls used it. Ronnie, pissed off, and on schedule. Someone had sent her the link. “Hello?” Might as well get this over with.

A silence.

“Veronica?” Ben kept his voice pleasant. When Ronnie was in a state, you didn't offer extra ammo.

He heard her breath.

And then the blare of a dial tone. Typical Veronica. In the thin, fraught months before their marriage ended, she'd imbued the silent treatment with so much elegance he'd almost had to admire it. He dialed her number, a subtle bud of defensiveness starting. Voicemail. His breath caught, reflexive, at her recorded voice. And then the pang. No fool like an old one. Corbin instead of Thales got him every time. His hand was still on the phone—an ancient thing from their old den, none of the screens and bells and whistles you got these days—when it jangled back to life.

“Hello?”

Another protracted silence. The ungenteel clearing of a throat. She had a finicky way of rubbing her neck when she did that, as if such sounds were beneath her.

“Nice, Ronnie. Real nice. Grow up.”

“This isn't Ronnie.” A man's voice, bland and flatly Midwestern.

“Okay?” Ben asked, trying to place the voice.

“I don't know who you think you are.”

“This is Ben Thales.” A wrong number, maybe. Hadn't had one of those in an age.

A heated noise on the other end, edging toward a growl. And then his own recorded snarl.
Vinegary old cunt,
it looped,
vinegary old cunt.
Ben hung up. There was no sense reasoning with people. He'd watched the clip and it was no worse than he'd expected. The cursing, the fly, the way he'd built to a royal lather. You could see how people might take offense. You could get the impulse to look up his number. But the planning involved in that little trick. Recording his voice, cueing it, playing it. Even with the tech they had these days, someone had gone to a fair bit of trouble. It made Ben more jittery than he'd care to admit. People could be unspeakably nasty.

His limbs felt too long for the muscles that tensed along them, and he wished he'd ponied up for some damn curtains. He went to the computer and watched the clip again. So he'd sworn. So a fly had landed on him. So what? Ben rubbed his cheek. People were laughing in the comments. People were phoning his home. A fine world. A fine response to the sight of a man turning himself inside out. He watched again. He looked slack. He looked sick.

No wonder the kids were worried.

The phone again. A woman this time. She identified herself, which you had to respect. “Lois Kibben. You don't know me, and after how you've represented our community, I don't care to know you.”

“Lois. Ms. Kibben. Lady.” His hands had begun to shake. Only a little, but still. If Veronica were here, she'd sure as hell have spotted it. “You're the one who called me.”

“People have standards and if you can't—”

“You called me.” He felt his pulse, a hot, defensive tattoo. He hung up, then clenched and unclenched his fists, getting his fool fingers back under control. His body was a fight-or-flighty old bastard with no sense of proportion. It was only the phone. Toward the end of things, he and Ronnie had seen a counselor. A two-seventy-five-an-hour dud, but you didn't walk away without trying. Dr. Flynn would've had Ben break out some
toolkit
to manage this, forgetting that the human heart was nothing but a muscle, that it could go ahead and muscle through. All right then. Ben unplugged the phone. He wound the cord with exaggerated care. He'd like to see them pester him
now
. He unplugged the bedroom phone for good measure. His heartbeat was perfectly normal.

He let himself out onto the back patio. There had been good reason to buy here. A yen to start over. The whole, clean feeling of a safe and self-contained world. The built-in sociability, and the 2007-vintage confidence of an eventual tidy profit. But sometimes Ben thought what had tipped the balance was the clear, pure scent of grass. He inhaled, and the foul thing in his gut resettled. You didn't get wild or weedy notes here to muck up the smell. You got one thing only, and that could be very soothing. Out by the water hazard, a pair of golfers teed up. The ball made its neat, predictable arc. Ben's sister liked to tease that any game you had to buy more than a ball for was a game for people with notions. Maybe she was right, and maybe he'd become one. Well, he'd earned it. He'd worked hard for his place here. The Commons. He thought of the prissy way the Kibben woman had said
community
on the phone. How they'd had him list his home number for the directory. The second golfer swung, the ball skewing right. The callers were neighbors. Every last one, he'd bet.

The grass scent, at least, remained uncomplicated. He breathed, his body overstretched and spongy. That heart of his started hammering again. He went into the house and then the garage. He started up the cart but didn't floor it. His foot wanted to, but he'd show some restraint for once. Invent an errand so none of this would feel like flight. He puttered along. Immaculate grass. Sculpted rises and shallow dips. A whoop carried across the green, an unadulterated peal of joy. Ben felt a sullen barb of envy and allowed himself to pick up speed. Another cart approached and from its passenger seat, Sadie Birnam called his name. The granddaughter was at the wheel. She didn't have the best handle on the thing. When she braked, both women rattled forward. The carts drew up face-to-face. Ben eased to a gentle stop.

“Sadie! Where're you off to?”

“Jewelry making. There's a class at the Hacienda.”

“I can't wait,” said the granddaughter, only she said it
cunt
.

He pretended not to notice. Sadie smoothed her hair, which wasn't mussed in the first place. Lily looked at him as if he were something smeared on the sole of her best shoe. “I can't believe all the amazing things there are to do here,” she said. Again, the inflected, not quite
can't.

“It's a pretty special place,” he offered.

“And I can't believe Gran's letting me drive.” That
can't
again. Wasn't she a clever one.

Ben Thales was a decent man. He should be feeling the bright kindle of shame; this girl had clearly seen him, heard him, and there was a time when he'd have wanted to deck anyone who used that kind of language in front of
his
daughter. Instead, he bristled at the finicky pitch of Lily's voice. There was a fulsome sense of sheen about her, as if she'd come out of shrink wrap. “Drive safe,” he said, and he indicated his chest. “No seatbelts.”