You Could Be Home by Now (30 page)

Veronica said, “He'd never have met Anjali at Case.” She glowed at the mention of her daughter-in-law. At the thought of their happy son.

“No. He wouldn't have.” You couldn't frame it as a trade. Not if you wanted your lungs to keep doing their thing. Still, he thought of Anjali, whom they both adored. Of the bedroom she'd taken the trouble to paint summer blue, though the kids were renting and would be moving on in a matter of years. It's our home right now, she'd said. If the landlord gives us trouble, well, why else did Stephen and I bother with law school? Stephen had brought her home for the first time midway through his 2L year. Thanksgiving. The table looked right again with four people around it. Anjali and Stephen were all ambition and subtle touches. The space between them crackled. When they held hands for the one prayer Ben spoke aloud each year, they had seemed connected by live wire. It wasn't about sex, at least not sex alone. It was the pure rightness of possibility. Their fingers stayed twined after the amen. There was nothing like that between him and Veronica. The wire that linked them was down, and down was worse than disconnected. Touch it wrong and you'd fry.

Veronica helped herself to a last bite of chicken. She pinched it right off the platter like she would've at home.

“What are we going to do?” he asked.

“You and me?”

“Yeah.” The bulk of his life lay with this woman. Nothing would ever tip that balance.

“Oh, I don't know.” She sounded casual and exasperated both, like she was standing before the mirror in their bedroom, debating between two blouses. “I should probably let the house go. Buy something manageable.”

“You could come down here. I've got a neighbor looking to relocate.”

“So I hear.” Veronica stood, cleared her plate, and looked out on the twilit cul-de-sac.

“It's not the stupidest idea ever. Just because it turns out we can't live together doesn't mean we can't—”

“Golf.”

“Sure. Or play tennis.”

“Do yoga.”

“It'd make things easier on Stephen, for holiday visits. And we'd be right there for each other in case—”

“It sounds like a sitcom. The ex next door.”

“Always popping round to borrow a cup of sugar.” That sounded more licentious than he'd intended.

“I could take up bridge.” She turned back from the window, her expression brimming with fun. “Chaperone you and Sadie.”

“She's a good neighbor.”

“I'm sure she is.”

He pushed his chair back and went to stand beside her, swept up in the lovely improbability. “The Rosko place is priced to move. You'd get it for a song.”

“Bad bargain,” said Veronica, pointing. Her finger tapped the glass. “Looks like your woman's Lily never got the message. See? Smoke.”

T
HEY BOUGHT GLITTERY PINWHEELS.

Gnarled little gnomes.

Even some actual pink flamingos.

TP-ing the Hacienda Central was the best terrible idea Lily could come up with at short notice. Gran hadn't even asked what the initials stood for, just smiled and said they should invest in enough supplies to
really
piss off the Flamingo Police. She hadn't called it stupid and she hadn't called it juvenile, and in the absence of those adjectives Lily felt how true they were. They loaded the car. Gran had a good eye for spatial relations. She could have been an architect or a Tetris grand master. The garage was much too hot, like standing inside a horrible mouth. Gran pointed to the boxes on a low shelf, labeled with Grandpa's deliberate hand:
xmas, vtines, hween, mischols.
“We should use those.”

“Gran. You'll want them later.”

Gran lifted
hween
, turning it so Lily could see the seam of unbroken packing tape. “We haven't opened them since the move.” Her voice went singsong. “Blame the HOA.”

I'll
want them, Lily thought. But what was she going to do? Be that creepy girl at Wesleyan/Brown/Oberlin/Smith with a plastic leprechaun and full-scale scarecrow in her dorm?

“I live here now, Lily,” Gran said. She raised the box higher and Lily could see the definition of her biceps. “I'm building a life.”

Maybe if she were supremely confident, Lily could make the scarecrow her big ironic thing.

“I'm never going to use them,” Gran said.

“You might move. Somewhere else. You never know.”

“Even so. Gary had fun with it. On my own . . .” She gave a hapless shrug. There it was. The quick, treacherous bite of guilt. When Gran and Grandpa said they were moving away, Lily had been sad, of course. But she'd also been in middle school. There'd been an undeniable bloom of relief. No one at Day would ever find out she was affiliated with the big old house in Ladue that got dorked out for every holiday. Gran said, “It wouldn't ever be the same. It's foolish to pretend.” So Lily shunted the box to the car. Gran said to rotate it. Ease it into the slot behind the passenger seat. There. Look at all the space saved.

They waited till dark and they waited for the festival to close. Nights got chilly, so Gran channeled her inner responsible adult long enough to insist on long sleeves. She grabbed a cashmere cardigan, black, with a sheer appliqué of gray umbrellas. “I guess I look like a widow after all.”

“You look like a ninja.” Lily gave a fake karate chop. Gran reminded her to buckle up and they backed down the drive. The per-vet and
Die Exfrau
were visible through lit windows.

“I still think she has duck neck,” Lily said.

Gran gave her a look. She could've said something, too, something pat and knowing and
uber
Gran. Instead she picked up speed. Lily was glad. Their night would tumble down on itself if Gran returned to wisewoman mode. The lights of other houses slipped by. They came to The Commons' palm-flanked entrance. Gran parked and fed a fat fistful of quarters to the meter, never mind that they were gearing up for some amateur vandalism. Only Gran.

They began with the flamingos, which were banded neck to neck. One pair wouldn't separate so Lily arranged them like they were fully fornicating. Gran unloaded the holiday boxes. She lined them up in calendar order and opened them one by one. Their corrugated scent overpowered the cut grass, briefly, then was gone. Lily realized that they'd forgotten the toilet paper, which completely cracked up Gran. She uncoiled the string of Chinese lanterns her grandparents always used for New Year's, wound it around the waist of a schoolmarmish Easter bunny, then threaded it slalom-style through the knee-high ranks of a gingerbread army. Gran balanced a Speedo-clad gnome at the fountain's edge as if ready to dive, then lifted a chubby cupid. Lily tugged at the antlers of a wire reindeer. There was bunting to unfurl, a caroling family of snowmen to pose, a squat brigade of pumpkins, and a scarecrow waiting in the backseat. Gran said to hurry. They didn't want to be caught.

Lily stacked the pumpkins totem style.

Gran tucked a pinwheel behind the scarecrow's ear. The breeze picked up and it spun. She threw her head back. “Look. Stars.”

“Yeah.”

“Sit a minute. We're almost done.”

Lily sat.

Gran flopped on the grass beside her. “This was ridiculous. Thank you.”

Gran didn't look any older, lying there starlit, but even so, Lily swallowed panic: Gran would die someday, and what if it happened before Lily got a chance to sort herself out? “You're welcome,” she said.

“What is it?” Clearly, Gran could tell she was thinking
something
. Step one of any future self-sorting: acquire poker face. “Conscience got you?”

“No conscience. I'm a delinquent, remember?”

“A terrible influence on young and old alike.”

“They'll send me off to Aunt Manda's next.”

“Nah. I think I'll keep you.”

The cool night went vivid with the hope of it. She'd stay here. She'd never have to face down Sierra or the drama-minions she was bound to be recruiting. She'd never have to see Rocky or Jennifer Vogler again. “You'd have to move,” she said, thinking of Ty. She wondered if Mom and Dad had put down a deposit for her next year at Day.

Gran rolled over on her stomach, ankles crossed. Sierra's standard posture for studying, but Sierra'd never studied Lily with any kind of intensity. “Lily—” Sierra's voice had never been so tentative and kind.

Of course. Lily wouldn't be staying on. Gran was joking. Lily made her smile expansive. “Too bad I've already knocked off the summer reading.” An outright lie. The paperbacks lay, spines unbroken, in the inner pocket of her suitcase.
Daisy Miller.
The Things They Carried.
In Addition AP Students Should Come to Class Prepared to Report on a Title That Pertains to Our Theme of Americans Abroad.

Gran flopped down again and that smarted. Just because Lily wasn't a source of constant joy didn't mean she had to go limp with relief that she wasn't expected to keep her. Still. It was Gran's paper reverse-iversary. Give the woman a pass. “You like it here,” Lily said.

“I do.”

“I'll tell Dad. Aunt Manda, too, I guess. Because they worry.”

“Good. Tell them. I'm happy. Or mostly happy. Or I'm going to be.” Gran plucked a blade of grass and drew it to her lips. She blew and a bleating whistle carried.

“Shhh! Gran! They'll hear us.”

Gran giggled.

“I won't tell them about Ben. When I'm home. Not if you don't want me to.”

“It's not—well, it's not anything, and it's not a secret. And if it were it'd be a hell of a thing to ask you to keep.”

“I would.”

“A hell of a thing. No.”

“He's nicer than he seems. Isn't he?” He'd have to be.

Gran's feet pointed, then flexed.

“Sorry. That was rude.”

“I'm thinking. I'm trying to see how he'd seem if you didn't know him.”

“He doesn't—it's not my business—”

“Motorboat.”

“Huh?”

“Motorboat. Remember? Your grandpa used to say that when he knew a ‘but' was coming. But, but, but.” She made the words sound like a motor sputtering to life.

“Sorry.”

“No. It was rude of me to interrupt.”

“I was going to say, he doesn't seem very much like Grandpa.” Grandpa, who she never once heard say that motorboat thing, probably because he knew what the Rocky-boys meant when
they
said it.

“I don't know. Maybe. Ben's a whole person already. I'd known Gary for years by the time we were your age.” She paused. “We grew up together. It'd be greedy to think we'd grow old together, too.” She propped herself up on her elbows. “What a self-indulgent, sentimental thing to say.”

They'd
made
each other. Grandpa and Gran. From the shapeless putty of childhood. Everything Lily thought was an infantile variation of it's not fair.

“I was twelve when I met him. Ice skating with my girlfriend. Joyce Maddox. Her parents gave us those silver napkin rings for our wedding. You used them for pirate treasure, remember?”

Lily didn't, but in a moment like this you couldn't say you mean another cousin, Gran.

“He stole Joyce's hat. Glided on over and took it. He could
skate
. I went after him. Joyce was the clumsiest thing.” Gran stood and surveyed their work, the baffled scarecrow, the jumble of holidays, the pinwheels, the garish plastic flock. She swayed to and fro, pumping her arms like a skater. “The thing is, I don't remember it. It's a story they told. Gary. Joyce. My whole life changed in a moment that I didn't get to keep. By the time I knew Gary
mattered
he was already a—I don't know—a fixture. I wish I'd known he was going to be
Gary.
It would've been nice to pay attention.” Her arms froze midswing at the distant sound of a car door slamming. Lily stood, prepared to vacate the scene of their crime. No one came, and Gran said, quieter now, “I like Ben. I like Ben a lot, but there are days I'd trade away knowing him to remember the color of that hat.”

“Maybe Joyce would know.” Sierras of the universe, take note: Neglect thou not thy best friend. You never know when she's been paying attention.

“Joyce Maddox.” Gran shook her head. “For the longest time I thought it was her Gary was after. Maybe because it was
her
hat.”

“My best friend's completely paranoid now that she has a boyfriend.” Best friend. It just came out that way. Something for Lily to work on.

“Paranoid how?” asked Gran.

“Paranoid sneaky. Paranoid mean. She'll do anything to keep him.” Lily blushed, hearing her words bridge the generations, knowing Gran probably thought she meant sex. “Not—well, anyway, I think it's stupid.”

“Maybe,” said Gran, but there was nostalgia in that
maybe
. “For the longest time I had this mania about skating. As if I'd somehow
won
him by skating fast. I practiced all winter, all my free time, like that would mean I could keep him; I don't know what I was thinking. I got
good
, too. If I hadn't predated Title Nine . . .” She gave a sneakered approximation of a skater tensed for the starting gun.

“But that was Grandpa.” Rocky wasn't worth a lap around a roller rink.

“But I didn't
know
that. It's life. You don't get sneak previews.”

“Sierra used me to humiliate this other girl. With my blog. You know. Because she thought maybe Rocky liked her instead. And now I'm the one everybody's mad at.” It sounded so petty in the face of what Gran was trying to say.

“Maybe you should talk to her.”

Points for trying, sure, but that was guidance counselor advice. Lily thought of Joyce Maddox, wobbly at the ankles and hating Gran a little as she sped away silver on her blades. “
Sierra's
the one who dropped
me
. The second he showed interest. And the guy's a doofbutt.”