All the Roads That Lead From Home

by Anne Leigh Parrish

  ALL THE ROADS THAT LEAD FROM HOME

  Stories

  Anne Leigh Parrish

  Press 53

  Winston-Salem

  Press 53, LLC

  PO Box 30314

  Winston-Salem, NC 27130

  First Edition

  Copyright © 2011 by Anne Leigh Parrish

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole

  or in part in any form except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For permission, contact author at editor@Press53.com, or at the address above.

  Cover art, “Lone Chair,” Copyright © 2011 by Lydia Selk

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2011914804

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents

  are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally.

  Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons,

  living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  To John, Bob, and Lauren,

  the three brightest stars in my sky

  Table of Contents

  Surrogate

  An Undiscovered Country

  Loss of Balance

  For the Taking

  Pinny and the Fat Girl

  All the Roads That Lead From Home

  An Imaginary Life

  Snow Angels

  The Comforts of Home

  The Fall

  Our Love Could Light the World

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the publications where these stories first appeared:

  “Surrogate” won first place in The Pinch’s 2008 Literary Award, and appeared in their Spring 2009 issue

  “An Undiscovered Country” received an Honorable Mention in the 2009 Arthur Edelstein Prize for Short Fiction, and was published in the Writing Site’s Featured Writer Series in July 2010

  “Loss of Balance” was named as a Top Twenty-Five Finalist in Glimmer Train’s Summer 2007 Fiction Open and was later published in the October/November 2007 issue of Eclectica Magazine

  “For The Taking” was a Finalist in the Salt Flats Annual 2007 Emerging Writer Fiction Contest. The story was published in the May/June 2007 issue of River Walk Journal, and later included in the anthology Late-Nite River Lights, published by EditRed Books

  “Pinny and The Fat Girl” appeared in Issue 38 of Storyglossia

  “All The Roads That Lead From Home” was awarded First Place in American Short Fiction’s 2007 contest, and appeared in their Summer/Fall 2008 issue

  “An Imaginary Life” appeared in Issue 31 of Storyglossia

  “Snow Angels” was published in the June 2010 issue of PANK Magazine

  “The Comforts of Home” was the first piece of original short fiction published by Chamber 4 Magazine in November 2010, and also appeared on the website for their new literary venue, C4 in February 2011

  “The Fall” appeared in Issue 3 of Prime Number magazine

  “Our Love Could Light The World” appeared in the March 2011 issue of Bluestem

  Surrogate

  The statue was really a lawn ornament, a crude Madonna, between three and four feet tall. They’d gone to the garage sale to find a crib, but when Maggie saw the statue, she just had to have it. What pulled her in was how the mother’s head, arm, and cradled child made one smooth arc, to represent the essential—the eternal—flow of life.

  She wanted it where the dining room table was, in front of a bay window that looked out on a strip of dead grass, so Donny moved the table into the hall, and then to get around it you had to squeeze, not easy to do with a growing stomach.

  There would be more room for everything if the previous owner hadn’t split the house in half. What used to be a good-sized living room and study were now a separate apartment, and Maggie and Donny had bought the house for that very reason. Donny thought the extra rent would help with a baby on the way, and in a couple of years, when they needed more room, they would break through the wall and add about nine hundred square feet to their living space.

  Then the baby was no longer on the way but dead, and removed with an injection of something to bring on labor. It was a girl, as Maggie had wanted, with a tiny face so absurdly human it made her weep. For two days she lay in her hospital bed tormented by memories of her mother who abandoned her at age five, her father whose ashes she’d scattered just last summer into the blue water of Lake Cayuga north of Dunston, her doctor saying she’d conceive again in no time, and a social worker who said grief is a process, a slow hum forward.

  Maggie didn’t want to go forward. She wanted to stay where she was and let the world leave her behind.

  But the world dragged her along. The crib and changing table they’d ordered arrived in flat boxes Donny propped against the wall by their front door. Maggie stubbed her toe on them several times before her body learned to sway to one side when passing by.

  The caretaker of the cemetery called to ask when she wanted to come and choose a headstone. She refused to choose a headstone, so Donny and his mother, who’d come down from Buffalo in a snow storm, did. Donny’s mother rented a motel room for two weeks and appeared every day to make casseroles, clean, and fold laundry. She complained about the placement of the furniture—Jesus, Donny, you got the whole place upside down here—said the table should go back by the window, and the statue out in the yard where it belonged. Don’t you dare touch it, Maggie whispered so hard that spit flew from the corner of her mouth. Donny’s mother brought her a cup of tea, here, take this, don’t be silly, I went through it myself after Donny’s father died, and said that sooner or later Maggie would come to see that life belonged to the living.

  In February, four months to the day of the miscarriage, a bird flew into the glass of the bay window and dropped dead into the bushes. Donny went to remove it. Maggie watched. Her hand dropped to the statue. She ran her fingers along the cold, smooth stone. She met a notch, a flaw, she hadn’t noticed before.

  In the spring their tenant, who’d brought cookies and flowers when she’d heard their sad news, moved out. She left a smear of pink nail polish in the bathtub, five empty pizza boxes stacked on the kitchen counter, and took away in return a picture of a little girl with a swan which had hung above the sink.

  Donny hired cleaners, then painters to brighten the walls to their original, antiseptic white. He replaced the leaky faucet, installed a new light fixture in the bedroom ceiling, switched the sofa with the love seat to make the living room look larger, and even set some bright, plastic dishes out on the kitchen table with cheerful cloth napkins. Maggie thought he was nuts. Donny was patient. He talked about strategic marketing, creating a positive impression. She didn’t care if they found a new tenant or not. Again, Donny was patient. Empty space like that was a waste when it didn’t generate something, he said.

  He placed an ad in both the local and student newspapers. Several people came to look it over, then didn’t return. After the apartment had been empty all summer Donny stopped talking about lost money, and said they should start the remodeling project they’d first planned on.

  “Oh, Donny,” said Maggie.

  “Why not?” He’d downed a few beers and was sweaty and red-faced. He was celebrating. Sales figures for the month had been posted, and once again he’d sold more cars than anyone else. Maggie didn’t know how he did it. All that charm and energy, day after day. Even after the baby died, he barely slowed down.

  She sat across from him at the table. Behind him and facing her the statue stood, still as ever. The kitchen window let in the smell of someone’s barbeque. Donny ran his thick hand through his hair and then watched her. She hated it when he
did that. She helped herself to a small spoonful of last night’s macaroni and cheese.

  “I don’t see the point, that’s all,” she said.

  “Look. I know it’s a little sooner than we planned, but I think we can swing it. We’re making decent money.”

  Now probably wasn’t the time to mention that she was probably going to get fired. She was a cashier in a grocery store by the university. She couldn’t stand all the nerdy college students, not to mention the ones from God knows where, who could barely speak English. Just yesterday she’d raised her voice to one, and her boss, who long ago stopped being sympathetic about the miscarriage, said her attitude sucked.

  “Drop it,” she said.

  After dinner Donny wrote up a new ad, making the apartment sound much nicer than it really was. Territorial view. Newer appliances. Large parking space.

  Two weeks later a young woman came to see it. She wore sky blue eye shadow, torn jeans, and smelled like beer.

  “You take kids?” she asked Donny.

  “It’s only got one bedroom,” said Maggie.

  “Doesn’t matter. She can share with me, ‘less of course I have company. Then the sofa’s fine for her.”

  Donny turned red. The woman didn’t seem to notice. She’d gone into the bathroom, and was opening and closing the cabinet door.

  She returned to the dining room. “Place come furnished, then?” she asked.

  “Yes,” said Maggie.

  “When can you move in?” asked Donny. His color was still high.

  “Monday. That’s when I got to be out of my other place.”

  “We’d like a reference from your current landlord, if you don’t mind,” said Maggie.

  “Oh, no, you don’t. He’d just give you a bunch of bull.”

  “Even so, I really would prefer—”

  “Listen. The guy’s a major turd. How come you think I’m getting out?”

  The woman removed five one-hundred-dollar bills from her pocket and gave it to Donny.

  “You give me a receipt for that later,” she said. “Oh, and I’m Jo.”

  “Jo,” said Maggie.

  “Short for Joellen.”

  Later, Donny counted the money again. Maggie lay down and stared at the ceiling above their narrow bed.

  “I like a tenant who pays cash,” Donny said.

  “Good for you.”

  Donny folded the money, put it in an envelope, then licked the envelope and sealed it.

  “That’s disgusting,” said Maggie.

  “What?”

  “You. That sound you made.”

  “What sound?”

  “With your tongue.”

  Donny stared at her. Sometimes, when she was lying down, he lay down with her, and before too long his hands would go inside her shirt. She hoped he had no such notion at the moment. He put the envelope in the inside pocket of his jacket, which lay across the bed at Maggie’s feet.

  “Donny,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “It’ll be okay.” He meant the noise a child would make, after what had happened.

  ***

  The little girl, Shauna, made no noise at all. It was her mother who stomped, clattered, banged doors, and yelled. Sometime she yelled at Shauna. Pick that up! Put that down! Go to bed! Maggie watched them come and go, Shauna always walking behind, looking at the ground. She was probably around five. She went to day care in the morning, and didn’t come home again until six or seven in the evening. Sometimes a man brought her home and stayed until Jo’s car appeared in the driveway. One time he didn’t. Maggie watched his rusty Chevrolet blow out smoke as it went off down the street.

  Maggie pressed her ear hard to her bathroom wall. It was the one place where she could hear most clearly what went on next door. She heard nothing. A few minutes later she stood in a scratchy evergreen bush and peered through the living room window into Shauna’s apartment. Clothes were scattered across the floor. A beer can lay on its side. A liquor bottle was visible under the couch.

  Shauna trotted from the bedroom to the hall in a pair of hot pink pajamas. She dragged a chair from the dining room into the kitchen, climbed onto it, opened a cabinet, and took down a box of cookies. Then, with the box in one hand, she dragged the chair back to the table.

  Maggie’s firm knock was answered after a long silence by Shauna saying, “Go away!”

  “That’s not very nice. Besides, I know you’re in there.”

  “I’m not allowed to talk to strangers.”

  “I’m not a stranger. I’m your landlady.”

  “We don’t have a landlady!”

  “Of course you do, and that’s me. I’m also your next-door neighbor.” Maggie stood on tiptoes and tried to see down through the half-moon glass at the top of the door.

  The silence resumed, though by the time Maggie realized she could use her duplicate key to get in, Shauna had opened the door. She looked up at Maggie with cold brown eyes. She was African-American, Maggie realized, seeing her up close for the first time.

  “That man that was here, what’s his name?” Maggie asked.

  “Uncle Frank.”

  “I see. Well, Uncle Frank shouldn’t have left you alone.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Well, I do. You come next door with me for a little while.”

  “You got a TV?”

  “Oh, yes. A nice TV. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  “You got Teletubbies?”

  “What’s that?”

  “My favorite show.”

  Once inside Maggie’s apartment, Shauna went straight for the statue. They were about the same height. Shauna then turned to Maggie and said, “It doesn’t have any eyes. How come you don’t color it some?”

  “Well, because it’s not—”

  “You got crayons?”

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t. Why don’t you come and watch TV, instead?”

  Shauna didn’t budge. Maggie wondered what she had around to bribe her with. There was some Halloween candy that was almost a year old, but that didn’t seem like a good idea.

  “Or maybe you’d like to look at my jewelry box. I used to love looking at my mother’s jewelry when I was a little girl,” said Maggie.

  Jo’s pickup truck rumbled up the driveway. Shauna ran to Maggie’s front window and slapped her little hand on the glass. Jo got out with a bag of groceries in her arms. When she saw Shauna, she yelled, “What the hell you doing over there, girl?”

  Maggie opened her front door, and leaned on the jamb with folded arms. “Staying with me. Your friend left her alone.”

  “Really? When?”

  “I don’t know. Half an hour ago, maybe.”

  “Huh. Well, he’s a right SOB, that’s for sure.” Jo closed the door of her truck with her foot. Shauna trotted out to her.

  “Mommy, you’re late!”

  “I know, baby. I’d have got here a lot sooner if that jerk at the store had taken my damn check. Know what he made me do? Use the cash machine. Only it was out of cash, if you can believe that, so I had to find another one.”

  “I’m hungry!”

  “Well I’ve got something for you in here, if you can wait one minute. Now, get the mail for me.”

  Shauna trotted down the walk to the twin boxes in front. “Nothing!” she called back.

  “Nothing from your dad?”

  “Nope.”

  “Shit! Fucking deadbeat.” She turned to Maggie. “Oh, and thanks for watching her. I’d return the favor if you had one of your own, but seeing as you don’t, guess I’m off the hook!”

  She grinned, went inside, and Shauna skipped in after her. Maggie stood a few minutes longer in the silence they’d left, then went to her couch, and sat with her head in her hands.

  ***

  “So, like this guy, this retarded guy comes through my line, right? And he’s touching the damn conveyer belt and saying, ‘It just goes around and around and around,’ and his kee
per, aide, whatever, is looking at a magazine. God! Drove me nuts,” said Sally.

  The overhead light in the lunch room made the dark line beneath her eyes even darker. Maggie slipped off her shoes. She had ten more minutes of break. She rubbed her neck, and stretched her shoulders. Her body always felt so cramped and sore, as if she were hiding in a box.

  “What’s got you so bummed?” asked Sally.

  “Nothing,” said Maggie.

  “Don’t give me that shit. You’re always bummed.”

  Sally was two years younger than Maggie, twenty-eight, and had four children, two from two different men she hadn’t married, and a set of twins by a man who’d been married to someone else at the time she got pregnant. The kids stayed with Sally’s mother most of the time, even when Sally wasn’t working. Sally’s new boyfriend didn’t like children and couldn’t stand to be around them. Maggie thought he’d get Sally pregnant one of these days, and then she’d have one more little bundle to unload on Grandma. It just wasn’t right, all those healthy babies cast off like puppies to an animal shelter. All Maggie had wanted was one.

  Maggie’s red sweater was tight and itchy. With her white Customer Service smock she looked like a candy cane. She’d worn it because her boss, Mr. Dominian, had said to look more cheerful.

  Making an effort then, are you? Donny had asked that morning as they got ready to go. She said nothing, only pulled her hair brush through and through again.

  Maggie helped herself to a cigarette from Sally’s pack on the table and lit it with Sally’s lighter.

  Sally yawned.

  “Jesus. What a night. Kyle’s teething and I was up with him three times,” she said.

  Maggie didn’t reply.

  Sally looked at the clock on the wall, and then at her watch. She lit a cigarette for herself, and slid the pack into the pocket of her smock. “So, you guys going to try to get pregnant again?”