Heaven Adjacent

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  Roseanna waited, but it seemed Nita would never finish the thought.

  “Like what?” she asked, her voice much gentler than usual.

  “Like a mother. Kind of.”

  “Oh,” Roseanna said. And for a long, uncomfortable moment they just stood in the mostly dark, breathing steam. “Well, then I’m a complete idiot. I guess that makes me a real first-class jackass, doesn’t it? Because I had no idea you felt that way. None whatsoever. I mean, we got along well enough. I always liked you. But we saw each other outside work maybe . . . what? A couple of times a year? And we never confided or talked about anything personal, or—”

  Roseanna stopped talking suddenly. For a moment she stood quietly and allowed a few thoughts to awaken in her.

  “What?” Nita asked.

  “Ironically, I just realized that’s exactly the kind of mother I was. My relationship with my own son is just what I was describing. Just now.”

  Roseanna looked up to see that Nita had taken to pacing back and forth under the light post. It felt mildly alarming.

  “Speaking of Lance,” Nita said, “you need to call him. Tell him where you are. He’s been calling.”

  “Lance called the office? How did he even know I was gone?”

  “How could you not tell him?” Nita shouted. Shouted. It was chilling.

  “I . . . I thought it would take him much longer than this to even figure out I was gone. We only talk a handful of times a year.”

  “Well, it’s possible Jerry might have phoned him,” Nita said, seeming calmer now. Though it might have been an artificial calm, because she did continue her pacing. “You know. In case he knew where you were.”

  “I’ll call him,” Roseanna said, surprised by how much the anxiety inherent in Nita’s pacing was pulling her apart at the seams. “Can we sit in my car and talk for a minute? It’s cold out here. And pacing makes me nervous.”

  Roseanna ran the engine so they could have the benefit of the heater.

  She glanced over at Nita, whose face was fairly visible in the dashboard light.

  “You have to come back at some point,” Nita said. “You know. At least to make some arrangements.”

  “I wasn’t planning on it.”

  “But you have to sell your condo and make some kind of deal for your partnership, and . . .”

  “So what do people do, then, Nita? When they need to make business deals but they don’t want to have to be physically present? You should know this. You work for a law firm.”

  “They get their attorney to do it all.”

  “Right.”

  “But you don’t have an attorney. Because you are one.”

  “True. But I know one or two. Hundred. So I’m sure I can work that out.”

  “I don’t get it,” Nita said. And sighed. Then a strange noise came out of her. A quiet little thing, like a cross between a breath and a whimper. It took Roseanna a few seconds to realize Nita might be crying. “How can you hate everything at home so much that you can’t even go back to do your own packing or sell your own property? How is that even possible since yesterday morning?”

  “Hard to believe that was just yesterday morning.”

  “Don’t deflect the question, please.”

  Through the windshield and off in the distance, car headlights streamed along the interstate. Roseanna watched them in silence.

  She opened her mouth to speak, and in that moment the rain let go again. Just all at once like that.

  “I guess I feel like it was all strangling me.”

  “Is this about Alice Cummings?”

  Roseanna closed her eyes and listened to the rain before speaking.

  “I guess everything is, to some extent. But it’s also about me.”

  “I’m going to say something that I never would have said to you before. Before now I would have kept this to myself out of respect, and out of feeling like I have no right to comment on your life. You’re my boss. There are boundaries. But I guess I don’t work for you anymore. And I probably won’t see you again after tonight. So here goes. I think Alice . . . Ms. Cummings . . . would have been dead set against this. I think if she were here right now, she’d say you’re nuts to leave this all behind. Everything you two worked for.”

  Roseanna sat a few moments longer, her eyes still closed, gently poking at her feelings. Exploring around in them. She did not feel agitated by Nita’s comments. Not in the least. She felt surprisingly at peace. It felt like a confirmation that she was doing the right thing.

  That felt good.

  So few things had lately.

  “Yes and no,” Roseanna said. Softly. “I think if she were here and still alive . . . and still just who she always was. Then . . . yes. She’d be furious with me. But let’s say that wherever she is now, she can still think. I mean, let’s say she exists somewhere with . . . you know. A . . . consciousness. Can you honestly tell me she wasn’t smart enough to learn from her mistake? She spent her whole life working for something she never lived long enough to enjoy. If she were here right now with full benefit of hindsight . . . being able to factor in her sudden death . . . well, I have to believe she’d tell me not to make the same mistake. Don’t you think?”

  Nita never answered. Just sighed. She dug a tissue out of her purse and dabbed at her eyes. Carefully, so as not to smear her makeup.

  No freedom, Roseanna thought. I hope someday you know the freedom I found. Double breakfasts. Rubbing your eye without smearing your mascara. Running away from home.

  “Well,” Nita said. And she was resigned now. Roseanna could hear it. “That was my best shot. Those were the big guns, right there.”

  Nita sighed deeply, a tremble on the out breath. Then she opened Roseanna’s car door and stepped into the rain.

  Roseanna sat a moment, watching her walk through the downpour. Then she opened her driver’s door and stepped out. The rain was torrential, coming down in huge, battering drops. It soaked her to the skin in seconds.

  She trotted after Nita.

  “Wait,” she called.

  Nita stopped and turned around. Roseanna caught up to her and wrapped her in a bear hug. They stood that way for the longest time, dripping in the rain. Cold except for each other. Nita might have been crying again, but the rain was hammering off the tarmac so loudly it was hard to tell.

  “A piece of motherly advice,” Roseanna said. “I’m letting you down. I get that. People always will. That’s not as much of a downer as it sounds. There’s a reason people will always let you down. It’s because they came to this weird planet to live their own lives. Not anybody else’s. Classic case of needs in conflict. You get what I’m saying?”

  Nita nodded against her shoulder, then lifted her head and smiled sadly.

  “I think so,” she said. “Yeah.”

  Then Nita walked off into the rain. And Roseanna knew she would never see her again. She could. Arrangements could be made to stay in touch. But they wouldn’t be. And she knew it. And it was okay.

  People come into our lives, she thought, and it’s not always a forever kind of thing, and not always meant to be. Not every deal is for keeps.

  Roseanna let herself into the farmhouse for the first time ever, carrying two of her suitcases. She stumbled into the middle of the room by feel, and by moonlight. There was a moon, fortunately. A three-quarters-full thing, hanging in the sky, shining a trace of light through her dusty, rain-streaked farmhouse windows. It allowed her to see the hanging chain for the light, which she pulled sharply.

  The light came on, and she looked around. And felt nearly overwhelmed by fear. Bowled over.

  It was cold, and she was still soaking wet. She had seen firewood stacked in a lean-to on the property, but she had never built a fire and wasn’t sure how. She had stopped for a sandwich on the way home, but there was no coffee for the morning, no food in the fridge.

  And she had no idea which of her belongings Nita had seen fit to pack.

  She shook the feeling awa
y again and opened one suitcase, lifting out clothes. She carried them into the tiny bedroom. There was a freestanding electric space heater, she noticed. And maybe that would do for her first night.

  It was only spring. It would probably feel fine in here all summer, she thought. But when winter came she would have to do something. Maybe get a heating and air-conditioning unit installed outside the corner of the house, with a duct into the bedroom and bathroom.

  A knock on the door nearly stopped her heart. It was a big knock. A pounding. And here she was, alone. Alone out in the middle of nowhere. With no phone reception. No burglar-proof locks.

  “Who is it?” she called, too loudly, her voice breathy with panic.

  “I need the key to that padlock,” a young female voice called back.

  Roseanna pulled a few deep breaths and tried to convince her heart to settle.

  She moved to the door. But she did not open it. Just touched the wood of its surface with the tips of her fingers as she spoke.

  “I don’t have the key,” she said.

  “How can you not have the key? You put a padlock on a place. The padlock comes with a key.”

  She sounded desperate, but not angry. More as though she were about to break into millions of pieces, leaving shards of desperate young woman all over Roseanna’s front porch.

  “I didn’t put that lock on the shed.”

  “Oh, it just jumped on there all by itself?”

  “No. Of course not. That real estate lady had it done.”

  Silence. Roseanna waited. But nothing more was said. And she heard no footsteps retreating, either. Apparently the young woman was just standing at her door doing . . . what? Roseanna had no idea.

  She carefully opened the door.

  The girl on her porch was a thin thing, maybe in her early twenties. Her hair was long and thick and wild, not recently combed. A lovely amber color. Other than the great hair, there was nothing about her that would cause a person to look twice. Her face was pleasant but unremarkable.

  A child of five or six slept in her arms, head drooped over her shoulder. Lost in that stubborn, nearly irreversible sleep that children do so well.

  “So you would be my squatter,” Roseanna said.

  “Well, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, then,” the young woman said, ignoring Roseanna’s squatter comment entirely. She seemed to be holding back tears. “The car broke down. And we missed the last bus. We walked two and a half miles to the bus stop to go into town, which means I carried her for two and a quarter miles. And then we missed the last bus home. So I’ve been walking with her all this way. I’ve been walking for almost four hours. And she’s heavy, you know? And it rained on us half the time. But nobody offered to give us a ride, and we had to get home. And then we get home, and there’s a padlock on the door. All my stuff is in there. I can’t even sit down. It’s cold out here, and it might rain again, and I can’t put her to bed, and I can’t even get a drink of water after all that walking . . .”

  At this juncture of the story the young woman trailed off. Seemingly not so much because she was done recounting the horrors of her evening. More because tears and emotion overcame her and stole the show.

  “You want to come in and have a glass of water?” Roseanna asked.

  “Thank you,” she said, wiping her nose on the shoulder of her shirt that did not contain a sleeping child. “That would be very nice.”

  “I may or may not have a glass. This is all a process of discovery. But come on in and we’ll see.”

  “I told the real estate lady that it was a harsh thing to do. Locking up somebody’s belongings like that.”

  They stared down at the sleeping child as Roseanna spoke. The little girl lay sprawled on the couch, cheeks twitching, as if she were smiling at something in her dreams.

  “Well, thanks for that, anyway.”

  “Thing is, you have to understand she was angry because you’re living here without permission. There are liabilities involved with a thing like that.”

  The young woman drained the last of her water and held the glass out to Roseanna.

  “Can I have another, please?”

  Roseanna sighed. Accepted the glass. Rose to her feet and began the short walk to the kitchen area.

  “It wasn’t without permission,” she heard the girl say. “Macy let us live in that little place. She even let us use her car.”

  “Macy?”

  “The lady. You know. She lived in this house for, like . . . I don’t know. Sixty years or something.”

  “And then she died?”

  Roseanna turned on the tap. The stream of water sputtered and hissed with trapped air, as it had while delivering the first glassful.

  “Yeah. She died.”

  “And, sorry as I am to say it, with her died any permission you might have had to use the property.”

  Roseanna waited for an answer, but none came. She turned off the tap and carried the water back to the couch. Handed it to the young lady, who accepted it without looking up.

  “I still need to get our stuff out,” the young woman said after a time.

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you with that. She didn’t give me a key. Technically I’m just renting this place until the escrow goes through. You’ll have to take it up with her or someone in her real estate office.”

  “That’s in Walkerville.”

  “It is.”

  “That’s more than thirty miles from here.”

  “Right.”

  “So what are we supposed to do?”

  Roseanna sighed deeply. Sat back on the couch. She was tired, too. In a different sort of way, but she was. It had been a long, strangely emotional day. It had been scarier than she had allowed herself to consciously realize. She felt barely equal to her own challenges in that moment.

  “I realize it must be hard raising a child on your own.”

  “It is.”

  “And with not much money.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “And I really don’t mean to be cold or uncaring. I swear I don’t. But the world is full of people in the middle of their challenges. I feel for them. But I’m in the middle of my own. And this really doesn’t have much to do with me. Just because I’m the next person to come along and live in the house after . . .”

  “Macy.”

  “Yes. Macy. That doesn’t really make this mine to solve. If you know what I mean.”

  “Right. Got it.”

  The girl set her now-empty water glass down on the steamer trunk that served as a coffee table. Scooped up her positively boneless sleeping child. She made no attempt to hide her tears from Roseanna.

  “I have a phone,” Roseanna said to her back as she carried the child to the door. “You’d have to walk it up that hill to get reception. But if you want to call somebody to come help you, I would loan you my phone. You could even leave the little girl here on my couch . . .”

  The young woman stopped at the door. Looked back toward Roseanna without connecting their gazes. She shook her head.

  “There’s nobody I can call. Nobody’s going to help me.”

  She walked out, closing the door behind her.

  Roseanna stood staring at the door for a moment. Then she forced her gaze away and returned to her unpacking. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say she briefly pretended she would unpack again.

  She picked up another armload of clothes, carried them into the bedroom. Dumped them on the bed.

  Then she walked quickly to the door and opened it, expecting to see the two squatters on their way to the road. There was no one there.

  “Hmm,” she said.

  It occurred to her that the young lady might be out back by the shed, seeing if she could break the lock or climb through a window.

  Roseanna picked her way carefully out to the shed in the moonlight.

  The young woman and her daughter were there. But not attempting to break in. The woman had simply slumped down onto her ow
n welcome mat, her back up against the locked shed door, her child still sleeping on her shoulder. Still crying.

  “I could give you a ride into Walkerville,” Roseanna said.

  “Well, that’s very nice of you. But the office is going to be closed till morning.”

  “There’s a motel.”

  “I can’t afford a motel.”

  “It’s only about seventy dollars.”

  “Only? Only seventy dollars?” Her bitter laughter mixed with her sobs, forming something quite strange. “You know how long my daughter and I live on seventy dollars? I have thirty-one dollars in my pocket and we have to eat on it for more than a week.”

  Great, Roseanna thought. You couldn’t leave it alone. You had to mix in. Had to make it your problem, too. And now it’s a big problem, and you’re stuck in it. And this young person who rightfully owns the big problem isn’t even working with you here. She isn’t even trying.

  Roseanna turned to walk back to the house. But she only made it a step or two before turning around to face her squatters again.

  “Okay, fine,” she said. “I’ll drive you into Walkerville and I’ll loan you the seventy dollars.”

  But “loan” really meant “give” in this case, and Roseanna knew it. She figured they both did.

  “So, not to be rude . . . ,” Roseanna began.

  They were driving along a back road, a shortcut into Walkerville, in the pitch dark. Under more stars than Roseanna had even known existed.

  “This is a really nice car,” the young woman, whose name Roseanna still had not asked, said.

  “Thank you. Are you trying to distract me from asking a rude question?”

  “Probably.” She sighed. The sleeping little girl on her lap opened her mouth and let out an almost comically loud snore. “But go ahead, I guess.”

  “There’s no bathroom in that little shack.”

  “No.” She stared out the window, though there was nothing to see in the dark. “There’s no bathroom. But that’s not really a question.”

  “Right. I was hoping you would volunteer the rest.”

  Roseanna waited. Nothing was volunteered.