YOU COULD
BE HOME
BY NOW
TRACY MANASTER
For Marc Alifanz
THE HENRY QUESTION
IN THE FACE OF CALAMITY, the Colliers’ first impulse was to overspend at the bookstore. Seth and Alison were thirty-one and twenty-nine, respectively. They taught journalism (him) and history (her) at North Chettenford High. They were approaching their fourth wedding anniversary and meant to do as the grief books said: Be gentle with each other. Maintain open communication. Treat mourning as a sacred process. Put off major decisions for at least a year.
Only.
A Tupperware of coleslaw sent Alison retching from a lunchtime staff meeting. Principal Shipley—who hadn’t offered a word of condolence—winked and punched Seth’s shoulder. “Again?” The implication being, well done, you dog you, the grin better suited to the locker room.
That close, cabbagy smell. Seth wanted to hurl, too. One of Alison’s nurses had said crushed cabbage in the bra would ease things when her milk came in. He’d left his wife’s bedside to get it, driving out from the hospital in concentric circles until he found an open grocery store. He'd bought two heads. The nurse hadn’t stipulated purple or green.
The lunch meeting dragged. The vat of coleslaw returned half-empty to the fridge. That night, Seth told Ali what Shipley’d said.
“Principal Shit-ley,” was her only response. Alison, who never went for the cheap joke. She just sat there on the horrible houndstooth couch they’d had since college. She adjusted the cushions and turned on the TV. It was Friday night. They were looking at two whole days alone together.
Alison changed the channel.
Seth went to bed and whispered Timothy, Timothy, until it no longer made sense as a word.
The front door slammed early the next morning. Ali, off on her run. Seth sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee. There were papers in neat stacks; Alison must’ve been up all night grading. AP European History. He picked up a test and thumbed to the back.
Discuss the role of clergy in fifteenth-century Italian governance, economics, and art.
Which Lutheran critique was most essential to the Reformation? Justify your response.
How would the world today be different if Henry, Duke of Cornwall, had survived to maturity?
Seth scanned the essay. Henry, Duke of Cornwall, was what Henry VIII called both his sons with Catherine of Aragon who died at birth. If they’d lived then England would be different. Alison had underlined the word different three times. How? she wrote. Your thesis statement must be specific.
Alison turned away whenever guys got whacked on The Sopranos.
Alison turned away when guys got their knees bashed on The Sopranos.
Sixteen students had answered the Henry question. Alison had read all sixteen essays and awarded five of them full marks. She’s been so strong, people said, that’s one hell of a wife you’ve got. And they were right. Ali was strong, Ali was the one who boxed up Timothy’s things: the crib, the car seat, the Special Edition onesie they’d meant him to wear home.
Seth topped off his coffee and watched his wife stop at the end of their driveway, a finger at her wrist to take her pulse. She ran every day. What soft hints remained of Timothy were waning fast. Her key clicked in the lock. She splashed her face at the kitchen sink.
“You got a lot of grading done,” he said.
“Yeah.” She shrugged. “Nothing good on after midnight.”
“You’ve got the Ambien.”
“I’m okay.” Her skin was damp, her bangs flat against her forehead. Her face and limbs and neck (and, he knew, breasts and all the rest of her) were freckled. I’m a leopard, she’d joked when they first got together, so you know I’m going to be wild in the sack.
“Good run?”
“Good enough.” Ali rubbed her arms, their skin pinked over with cold. He’d joined her once, maybe a month ago. A blunt, clear morning, glittery with snow. Less than thirty degrees out and even so there’d been four fucking strollers. An Orbit, two Chiccos, and one of those Joovy doubles. Alison hadn’t said a word.
“See anything interesting?” Seth set down his mug. They’d done more research on Timothy’s Maclaren than they had on their car.
“Nada.” Above the V of her T-shirt, Alison’s collarbones were very prominent. Seth understood Henry VIII. The divorces, the beheadings, the faith of his boyhood in ashes. She hadn’t said their son’s name in weeks. The Maclaren was with the rest of his boxes in the basement quadrant they paid their landlady extra to use, separated from her tool bench and Christmas lights by a duct-tape line of demarcation. Their landlady had sent a card. She had told them that they were young, that they could always try again. Everyone seemed to think it was nursery-rhyme simple.
Alison drew an arm across her chest and leaned into the stretch. “Any coffee left?” She reached up toward the ceiling. Her shirt gapped, exposing a pale ribbon of stomach. Seth remembered the old wives’ tale: Don’t raise your hands above your head. It’ll loop the cord and choke the baby.
“We have to leave,” he said.
“Leave what?” There was coffee still. Alison helped herself.
“All this. Vermont. New England. Maybe even the country.”
“The hemisphere. The planet. The universe.” Ali gestured broadly with her mug. Coffee sloshed.
“I’m serious. If we don’t leave here together, we’re going to wind up leaving each other.”
I’m going to wind up leaving you. It almost came out that way.
Alison was meant to say No, no, we’re in this together, I love you, Seth, everything will be fine. What she said was, “Okay, sure. We’ll leave.”
It felt like the essential part of her had left already. Ali loved Chettenford. As a girl, she’d been sent to a nearby summer camp and had been bused in for the Fourth of July fireworks; she’d bought penny candies at a general store that was now a CVS. Ali’d wanted to live here and so had made it happen, selling Seth on Chettenford’s cost of living, equidistance from their respective families, miles of bike paths, independent bookshops per capita, and abundant greasy spoons.
“I’m serious,” Seth said.
“Then we should go.” And just like that, they could. There was a lot they could do just like that. Stay up. Sleep late. Loiter in bars till last call. Jaunt off to Paris on a whim.
“I’m serious,” he said again.
“It’s fine, Seth. I said I’m game.”
They sat side by side with laptops, touching up the resumes they hadn’t glanced at in years. Alison deleted her maiden name one glowing letter at a time. Seth had misspelled proficient and that idiot Shipley had hired him anyhow.
How was this for a waste of miracles? They got interviews, despite an economy that skewed ever more toward crap. Seth lied. To Shipley, their colleagues, the subs. A doctor’s appointment for Alison, who would need his moral support. Autopsy results. In the staff room, people stood at an unsubtle remove, as if distancing themselves from a bad smell. Counseling, Seth said and only Ross Henry—whose wife was expecting twins—offered a hearty “Good, good. I’m glad you’re talking to someone.”
Alison told him to stop. Alison said he was being awful. Fine. He wanted to be awful. He wanted somebody to actually say something. Those first few weeks, formula samples kept arriving. Seth called the customer hotlines. Take us off your goddamn list. My son is dead. He liked the apologetic stammering. He liked that the bald fact of it was as much a shock to the voice on the line as it was to him.
When they flew to Arizona, Ali said she would handle the excuses.
The Arizona jobs weren’t teaching jobs, which was fine by him. The bigger the change, the better. The Co
mmons sought an editor for the newly established Commons Crier and had a one-year contract open for a town historian. The Commons. Its the integral, like The Vatican or The Hague. A luxury retirement community consisting (according to its website) of more than six thousand residences, two golf courses, and three convenient villages for all your shopping, entertainment, and social needs. Everyone was hale and athletic in the photos.
The Colliers paid their own way out. The jobs were a long shot and the last-minute airfare more than they could afford, but what were they scrimping for, a college fund? A uniformed driver met them at the airport. The AC was cranked much too high. Seth shivered in his suit jacket, thinking Ali must be miserable in her thin blouse.
They turned off the highway and up a palm-lined straightaway. The golf courses were a shocking green after the long, dry drive. A red-rock arch, flanked by fountains, marked the official entrance and the car delivered them to a sprawling, hacienda-style building. Here, too, the air conditioner blasted and Seth—whose grandmother had never been without layers of mismatched sweaters—wondered how the aging residents could stand it. The receptionist directed them to wait. Alison flipped through the latest Golf Digest. Seth clenched and unclenched his hands so they wouldn’t be icy when the time came to shake. The door opened and there stood Hoagland Lobel, president and CEO of The Commons, Inc., whose photo and greetings graced the inner flap of all the brochures. Lobel wore jeans and rolled-up shirt cuffs. He was aggressively tan. “The Colliers,” he said, without prompting from the girl at the desk. “Our two-for-one recession special.”
Ali rose, hand extended. “I’m afraid you’ll have to pay us both, Mr. Lobel.”
Lobel had the reedy laugh of a much smaller man. “Call me Hoagie. Either of you tee ’em up?”
“Mini golf only, I’m afraid,” said Alison. His wife: her unfussy, vulpine prettiness, her smile that pulled slightly to the left. Most of her friends were men, most of whom had managed to navigate the awkwardness of realizing that it wasn’t flirting, it was Alison being Alison, friendlier and more direct than attractive women usually were. Lobel leaned toward her. Some hybrid of defensiveness and desire twisted through Seth, and then awareness. This was the first time he’d thought of her body as her body without that undertow of Timothy.
“Mini golf.” Lobel shook his head. “I never saw the point of it, myself.”
“At least you can count on us not to tee off on the clock,” said Seth.
“True enough.” Lobel checked his watch. “Tell you what, let’s start you off with the grand tour.”
They rode in a golf cart, Ali and Seth in back, Lobel up front. He steered one-handed, an arm slung across the passenger seat. “Everything at The Commons is cart accessible,” he explained, looking back at them over his shoulder. Seth knew that; all The Commons materials said as much. Still, he nodded. Though his hair was almost entirely gray, Lobel had the buoyant, vigorous air of a kid cutting class. He pointed at a distant fence, hewn of the same red-brown stone as the entry gate. “There’s a road for cars on the other side. Runs round the whole place. Inside it’s all carts. Cost of gas these days, it saves folks a bundle and their kids don’t wind up worrying about car wrecks and all.”
“Like Zion,” said Seth.
“Zion?”
“The National Park. Up in Utah? They’ve closed the whole place to cars to cut down on pollution.”
“The green angle. Good call.”
Lobel drove them through neighborhoods of sprawling adobes (“Six years ago this was all sagebrush. Used to be a working ranch. Got the old land deed framed in my office. Had a time tracking it down. You’d get a kick out of it, Alison. Man couldn’t write so they had him sign his name with an X.”). They trundled around a blaring blue lake (“Stocked. Trout. Folks love it. You could make a killing selling gear.”). They skirted golf courses and rode through a neatly gridded town (“Centerville Commons. I never was much good with names”). The houses were all flat roofs and projecting beams, sand-colored stucco, corners rounded to benign nubs. They devoured their lots, and the trees were all spindly and new.
“I don’t see any For Sale signs,” Alison said. “I guess you haven’t been hard hit by this real estate mess?”
“HOA doesn’t allow them. Messes with the neighbors’ heads.” Lobel tapped his temple. “But we’re doing all right. Had to postpone work on Phase Four, but what’s already built . . . well, most folks bought to live here, right? And that’s why you’re here, see. We’re going to add to that whole experience.” Lobel drew out the word. “Tough times hit and people like living in a real place. Like to be a part of that place. So we’ll get our own paper. And you—” He turned to Alison. The cart drifted into the neighboring lane. “You, Miss, you’ve got to add some authenticity to our town. Some history when there’s really none.”
“Not to talk myself out of a potential job, but shouldn’t you be looking for someone in PR?” The cart had picked up speed. Ali had to shout.
“I want a real historian. You know those little brown signs by the side of the highway?”
“Historical markers, sure.”
“I bet you’re the kind of folks who always pull over for them.”
“Sometimes,” said Seth.
“My students get extra credit for reading them,” Ali said. “Last week one of my sophomores discovered his grandfather’s place was once a hub on the Underground Railroad.”
“That’s what I’m talking about. History. You’d never guess if it weren’t for the brown signs. And even if you don’t read them, you see them and you think, good, this place is a part of things. Folks need a dose of that here. My latest brainwave. We’ve got to stop it from feeling too much like summer camp.”
“Summer camp’s not so bad,” said Seth. Ali hadn’t told him about the hub house.
“For vacation, yeah. That was my first brainwave. Took off like crazy, let me tell you. First and second phases sold out like that. But now—tougher times, people want to belong. I can give them that. Started up a festival last year, food booths and a sidewalk sale, art stuff, live music. Founder’s Day. Big hit. Going to repeat it this summer. June the second. Mark your calendars.”
“Why the second?” Alison asked.
“My birthday. I know. The ego of it.” They jostled along. Lobel showed them where the cart paths burrowed beneath the highway toward the strip malls on the other side (“They set up special golf cart parking for us and everything. Though anything you get there you can get here, and we’ve got award-winning landscaping.”). He waved a hand at the employee parking lot, heat shimmering off acres of windshields (“Most neighborhoods in these parts got a free shuttle for Commons employees. We’re the biggest show in thirty miles.”).
It had been hailing that morning in Vermont. The Camry had taken three tries to start. Arizona was all naked warmth and hallucinogenic colors, and Seth’s lungs felt fuller here than they had in ages. He and Ali could rent a place with a patio and a view of distant mesas. They could jog down the streets of a town without strollers. The Commons, where the rules were painless and explicit. All residents must be at least fifty-five years of age. They had six months left on their lease back home, but so what, they’d break it. Two weeks’ notice wouldn’t be anywhere near the end of the school year, but the books were unanimous and frank: Do what you must to take care of yourselves. Seth wanted this job. He wanted Shipley to gripe about being left in the lurch. He wanted to grasp the man’s shoulder, to clasp his hand, to look him straight on, and say, “I am so very sorry for your loss.”
BENJI IN ELDERLAND
THE LAYOUT OF THE CART paths made it a huge pain in the rear to shop offsite, so most folks didn’t bother. Ben Thales did though. Eggs were fifty cents a dozen cheaper at the Walmart across the way. Chicken breasts, too, almost a dollar less a pound. And it’d been a close eye on his money that had gotten him here in the first place. Golf twice a week, tennis twice a week, a guest suite for Stephen and Anjali with jets in the bathtub a
nd a loft for the kids they’d presumably get around to having someday; not bad for a dumb kid out of Wheelsburg. Truth be told though, it wasn’t about the nickels and dimes. It was the way the whole system reeked of coal scrip. It wasn’t easy shaking a thought like that, not when your family’s two generations out of the mines. He’d been the first Thales to leave the state for college; his father the first to go, period, thanks to Uncle Sam. And even then, Ben hadn’t known anything about anything. When Veronica Corbin, his beautiful Phi Beta Ronnie, had said yes, she’d marry him but only after she finished business school, he’d thought she meant secretarial training.
She was the smartest woman, hell, the smartest person he had ever met. Oh, Ronnie, he’d said. I know you can do more than that.
Ben started up the golf cart and backed down the drive. One of The Commons’ thousand groundskeepers stood jumpsuited across the way, pruning. Ben waved. Call it the mark of a decent man: to look straight at the people your money meant you could look away from.
The other man kept working. What he must think of the lot of them. Everything you could desire, for sale and self-contained. Ben’s son, Stephen, once had an assignment like that, a frog he’d had to keep alive for grade school. Think of its needs and how to keep them in balance. Seal its terrarium and see what happens.
It wouldn’t have been grade school though. Nor middle. If it had been he’d have remembered Tara with a frog, too.
Down the street a car approached, breaking through the heat shimmers. An actual car. You didn’t see that much; once they got over feeling like fools on a parade float, people here liked zipping around in their carts. Ben slowed to let the car pass. It stopped, its window opening with a brief puff of chilled air.
“Benjamin! Off to practice on the sly?” Sadie Birnam was his standing Thursday golf date. She had a capable, elegant swing, and though she could best him, easily, from the advanced tees, she always set up at the ladies’. When he’d joked—tentatively, because they’d never talked politics—about women’s lib, she’d shut him down. She’d been teeing up at the ladies’ forever. If she changed her standard at this late date, she would have no proper measure of her lifetime progress.
You Could Be Home by Now Page 1
