You Could Be Home by Now (32 page)

And he knew this, too: There was a rich vein of weakness in him. That Sadie couldn't have this conversation was one of the reasons he liked her.

“Where are you heading?” he asked, if only for the sake of changing the subject.

“My husband's sister's kid did up her basement as an apartment. Up in Eloy?”

Ronnie nodded like she knew the geography.

“She's putting us up till I find—who am I kidding? She's putting us up for the foreseeable. Half what she'd normally ask for rent. She was always a twit.” The insult sounded graceful and extraordinary, like something keen and lithe slinking through the trees.

“Nice of her.”

Ronnie glowered. As if he hadn't realized how sickeningly pious that sounded.

“I'm losing my home.” Mona Rosko's tone was frank. “Gary loved this place. He'd worked hard all his life. He wanted to
play
. I'm glad he never saw—” For a confused moment, Ben thought the woman meant Sadie's Gary. The two dead husbands must have had the same first name. He wanted to tell Mona. Look. Everyone in the universe has some slight thing in common.

Veronica said, “I'm sorry.”

Mona's arm twitched like she was considering a handshake. “You aren't one of those women who never does sweets, are you? All the guilty neighbors have been baking. Going to rot that kid's teeth and leave me with the dentist bills. More pie than I'll eat in my life. Let me get you one.”

She retreated. The torn screen hung limp. Veronica nudged it with her foot. “I hope she overcharges you for that. You're a disaster.”

“What?”

“We were fine at the house. Comfortable, talking, and then you run off to—Jesus Christ.” Veronica bent and fingered the broken place.

“You're the one who called smoke.”

“It was a joke. A little puff, a little joke, and you ran off screaming. That's not normal.”

“I wasn't screaming.”

“Here.” Mona was back, extending a tin topped with a sudsy billow. “I think it's lemon under there. You mind? Citrus makes Ty blotchy.”

“Lemon's great,” Veronica said. “Thanks.”

From the courtyard Tyson whined for his grandmother to hurry up. Mona looked the two of them over. She sniffed. The smell of smoke was everywhere. “You don't have to share with him,” she said, and she closed and locked the door.

Veronica shook her head.

A high shrill sounded, and then a percussive crackle. Tyson with a firecracker.

Ben said, “Credit where credit's due. I hardly know the woman and I was willing to run into a burning—”

“You actually thought it was burning. Firecrackers, Ben. It breaks my heart.”

An eruption of sparks. The timbre of the boy's laugh. Buyer wants us out ASAP, Mona had said. It was possible he'd never see her again.

“Are you this afraid all the time?” Ronnie asked.

“I wasn't. I'm not.”

“Ben.”

“I'm fine. This week—it's been a weird one.”

“But there's no telling when it's going to be weird. You could have fifty-two weird ones in a row.”

Not here, he almost said, and he saw it like Veronica would. The daily perimeter walk. The easy pattern of sport and sociability. She'd have another name for all this peace and she would not be entirely wrong. Instead, he said, “Weird can be good.”

“Not for you. You look wrecked.”

“Okay. Yes. Maybe weird throws me more than it should.”

“You think?” Another round of ricocheting light. He made sure not to flinch at the pops. Veronica studied him. “There's tense and then there's—”

“Point taken, Ronnie.”

“If there's really a fire, you don't run into it. You call the—” She paused. “And of course you don't have your phone. You're a mess.”

“I'll get it tomorrow. My phone.”

“That was blind panic back there. It wasn't pretty.”

“Look. What time's your flight?”

“It's a problem, Ben. It's not going away because you offload me. You can't possibly—”

“What time?”

“Eleven. Ish.”

“Okay. So I need to stop by the hospital and get my phone anyhow. You come with me, you see me make an appointment to talk to someone, you go home happy.”

She had something to say. Ronnie always had something to say. She worked the words over in her mouth like a cherry pit.

“I'll go,” he said. “Scout's honor. I'll go for a run of—let's say—four appointments.”

“Eight.”

“Ronnie.”

“Can't help it.”

“Four. But I'll have them take my picture. Right in the guy's office. With the day's
Times
, like a hostage.”

“Now you're making fun.”

“A little. But if it helps you feel better.” At his age you had to be able to look at yourself unflinchingly. And with
that
eye he could see that he was past due for some help. He'd been getting by, yeah. He'd had a lovely, predictable idyll. Golf twice a week, tennis twice a week, a daily long-distance brain twister. It was nice. It was safe. It was passing time though, not living.

Veronica said, “It's not my place to feel better.”

“Come off it. Will it help?”

“Yeah. It would.”

“One condition.”

“Shoot.”

He made a swipe at the tottering meringue. She shrieked; the sound carried and then was matched by another Rosko firecracker. He lunged. She dodged. He knew what it must look like.
Pie
. He knew the connotations. Veronica was jogging now, the tin held awkwardly before her. The air in the street was acrid, and Ben drew in a deep breath of smoke. Veronica turned and walked toward him. He inhaled once more and remembered how his lungs had burned during her last month at business school. They'd bought a case of cigars because she was going to learn to like them, damn it. The men all did, those titans in their hushed, upholstered rooms. She was going to join them, breathe it all in till the world was hers. How he loved her then, how he loved her still. But the look she gave him. You never looked that way at a husband. It was an expression he'd seen before, soft, lit with pride, tempered with a startling bloom of sorrow. She'd worn it as their children, backs slim and squared, rode away from them for the first time, wobbly on their bikes.

A
LISON BROUGHT THEIR FLATTENED MOVING
boxes in from storage and the lunch-bag smell of cardboard filled the condo. She said she'd skip her morning run, restoring box after box to its original shape. The condo wasn't spacious; the efficient thing would be to fill one box at a time as needed. But Ali had it right. Nearly twenty stood empty at the ready by the time Seth headed out to tender his resignation. The sight hit him, giddy in the chest.

They were on their way.

The grounds were a mess, the too-earnest façade of the Hacienda Central presiding over the drunken remnants of a Hallmark convention. A wire Christmas deer lay on its side, as if the adjacent cupid had brought it down. A peevish plastic leprechaun had lassoed an Easter bunny with a string of colored lights. A turkey, its plumage thicker and more vibrant than anything actually farmed for meat, sat atop a foppish scarecrow, and a flock of fake flamingos stood interspersed. Seth took it in a minute, then went to track down Lobel.

It didn't take long. The holiday junk was still
in situ
when he left the Hacienda. He phoned Ali. “Done,” he said. “Two weeks' notice.”

“Wow. Terrifying.”

“Yeah.”

A groundskeeper began to clear away the chaos. He hoisted the cupid under one arm and Seth realized: The whole setup was so bizarre that the statue hadn't even registered as a baby.

“Was Lobel surprised?” Ali asked. “He couldn't have been.”

Odd. For all their troubles, Seth must have seemed, during their tenure here, the sort of man who made the love of his wife his life's rudder. He'd taken a swing—a physical swing—at a septuagenarian who'd looked at her funny. He'd allowed himself to curdle professionally. He felt buoyant. It was no small thing to be thought of as such a man. “You know Hoagie,” he said. “He took it like a cowboy. And get this: He's going to give us both references.”

“No.”

“Hand to God.”

“Huh. You really did have something on him.”

“I reminded him of what he said. Remember? When we interviewed? He wanted history where there's really none.” The way he'd phrased it in Lobel's office was
Alison was giving you what you wanted and she's not the only one on the books with a slippery grip on the truth. Your IT guys take care of that Rosko glitch?
Seth had been glad to be sitting when he said it. He felt like he was reading lines from a play. Lobel seemed more amused than intimidated, but he went along with it, and Seth had felt an unanticipated fondness for the CEO.

Alison laughed. Actually laughed. “He
did
say that. You remember everything, don't you?”

“I've got an ear for it. Things like the periodic table though . . .”

“Well, who needs the elements?”

“They only make the whole world.”

Seth watched the groundskeeper go for the leprechaun. He tugged but the thing held fast. He set the cupid down and used both arms. The leprechaun wiggled and came free, thin metal stakes coming up with it from the ground. The groundskeeper hauled it toward the edge of the grass, where a pickup waited, The Commons' logo on its door. He'd have to make upward of a dozen trips, though he'd be done in minutes if he were allowed to park closer. But this was The Commons. The grass, if nothing else, was sacrosanct.

Seth would be jobless in two weeks. He was thirty-two, a husband, and a father of sorts. He began to gather up flamingos; he needed to move, needed to be anywhere but back at his desk. The groundskeeper gave him a funny look but did not interfere. They worked quickly and the truck filled. When the lawn was clear, the other man extended a hand as if to shake, then seemed to change his mind. He gave the pickup an assertive thump and swung up into the driver's seat. The truck pulled away and Seth wished he'd thought to snap a picture of all those crazy lawn ornaments for Alison. That or snagged a pair of flamingos to bring home like a triumphant hunter, dangling fat birds by their feet.

He and Ali would travel on. They'd be a pair of blue dots in another red state. Arizona would make the news in the coming years. The Colliers' inboxes would fill with outrage and grassroots requests for monetary support. Arizona's definition of marriage. Arizona's definition of life. Arizona's vigilantes and Arizona's anti-immigration measures. They'd make PayPal donations—small ones; after all, they had quit two jobs each in the space of one year—and sign petitions online. They would track, in horror, the breaking news of gunfire in a grocery store parking lot. And Seth would think that it only went to show how crazy they both had been. Half a year in the Grand Canyon State and an oddball display of holiday decor was the nuttiest thing he'd allowed himself to see.

Veronica spent the morning on the phone with friends and friends of friends, gathering recommendations and securing him an appointment. Next Wednesday, two
P.M
. The doctor was called Jordan Cable and Ben didn't know if he should expect a man or a woman. Veronica had him swear up and down that if he didn't click with Dr. Cable, he would get a referral for someone else. She found an old Bible and made him raise his right hand. That was, they both knew, pushing things a bit too far, but that was how things stood now. There was a new kind of space between them, a space best filled in with bold strokes.

Ben drove Veronica to the airport. His ex inched the passenger seat forward, her knees folding up like a mantis'. He'd forgotten the way she got jittery with too much space before the dash. The radio saved them from more conversation. Callers argued about a blown call at some baseball game last night. Veronica yawned.

“Sleepy?”

“Under-caffeinated.”

“We could probably track down a Starbucks.” He gestured at the GPS.

Veronica scrunched her mouth in playful distaste.

“Next time call ahead. We'll find the most potent sludge from here to Nogales.”

“Or you can teach me to use that crazy machine of yours.”

They were probably both wondering if there ever would ever
be
a next time. He said, “We'll track down that
Gone with the Wind
dirt too.” If she never came, he'd find it himself and send some her way. She could swap it for the sand in her Zen desk garden, comb it with a miniature rake whenever her mind needed quieting. They arrived at the airport. He pulled up to the curb and helped Veronica with her bag. His ex disappeared through the revolving door. Ben thought, as he suspected everyone did now at airports, of the towers and the day they fell. He really was getting old. Old and pickled and ungenerous. Three thousand people died in those attacks and here he was, grateful that he could just go home, that security measures spared him the departure gate question of whether to accompany Veronica in.

From five states to the North an official proclamation came:
I, Jennifer M. Granholm, Governor of the State of Michigan, do hereby declare Armando Galarraga to have pitched a perfect game.
Ali's voice filled the condo that had never seemed properly full before. She was on the phone with one of her brothers, squabbling full tilt. No, Alison was saying, Galarraga should under no circumstances make the record books. Nope, not even with an asterisk. “No. I don't
care
what they do in hockey. Instant replay's for wimps.” The condo was a whirl of to-do lists. She had drawn a neat, open square beside each task to be ticked off in the days to come. He kissed the knob at the base of her neck. She said, “C'mon, Ryan. Would you feed that line to the guys you coach?” Pause. Her brother's reply was unintelligible from where Seth stood. “Please,” Ali said. “The emperor of Chihuahua can proclaim that I'm a parking meter, but that doesn't make it true. No—No—Listen, Seth's here, I've got to go, thanks.” This last ran together almost as a single word. She hung up. She told him that she'd had the exact same fight with her brother Neil and again with her brother Brendan. She told him she considered him proof that not all males were gibbering idiots, but that he'd better not think of taking their side. She said that Ryan thought they were nuts to up and leave without a plan but had offered to store some of their stuff in his basement while they found their footing wherever it was they were going to find their footing. They could ship a bunch of boxes media rate. They could Craigslist their heavy furniture. Maybe swap for some quality camping gear.