All the Roads That Lead From Home

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 [email protected], 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

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

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.