All the Roads That Lead From Home (21 page)

Then the
moment came when she could no longer stand the confines of her room. She
dressed in layers. Ice crystals lay on the black window, brightened here and
there by the street lamp three floors below. Outside, the paths were black and
the snow was white, but a dim white, as if the life and power had been drained
from it.

Snow that
lay in darkness must have a name, she thought. Night snow? But its color. What
was the color, exactly? Were colors exact or approximate? Was this something
she was supposed to know? Did anyone know?

Too many
questions, and not enough answers. That was her problem. How could she go through
life in this state of constant ignorance? Is that why people ended it, because
there were too many things they didn’t know? Or, was it knowing that they’d
never find out? And seeing that death was the one big mystery, the one thing no
one really knew for sure, they hastened it, rushed into it, all for that
desperate need to know.

Her boots
were silent as they hit the ground. No one was out. The world had gone
completely still. The only thing moving was the silver plume of her own breath.
She heard the water in the gorge well before she reached the bridge. The sound
was like a song of defiance, because the water was stronger than the cold. The
water did not freeze.

She felt
nothing. Not the bitter air. Not fear. Not regret. She’d stopped thinking about
the people she’d once known, how they would take her end, what their lives
would be like as they moved forward without her.

The
railing was under construction. Renovation, actually. A guard was being placed
that would prevent climbers from being able to jump unless they snuck by at
either end. She stood there, aware of the challenge, but also of a change in
the light around her. It was growing brighter. Dawn was underway. She’d never
been awake at dawn before, never seen the sun rise. The first and last, she
thought, then felt the idea was trite.

Then the
light rose enough so that an icicle hanging from a dark ledge of shale was
illuminated. It seemed to glow. Kirsten had never seen anything so beautiful.
She didn’t understand how the light had reached the ice before falling on
anything else. Soon other icicles were coming to life, turning a faint, warm
yellow.

“My god,”
she said, holding the rail with her gloved hands.

“Are you
all right?” a man’s voice asked. She turned. All there was of him was his thick
coat and wool hat. He asked the question again.

“Look at
the gorge. Look at the light. Isn’t it amazing?”

The man
turned. He didn’t seem to know what she was talking about.

“It’s damn
early to be up and about,” he said.

“It’s
beautiful.”

“I work on
campus. I have to be there by six. That’s why I’m out here, freezing my ass
off.”

She said
nothing.

“What are
you doing out here, if you don’t mind my asking?” he asked.

Suddenly,
she no longer knew. She was cold. And tired, and very hungry. She continued to
look at the icicles and realized the man wasn’t going to walk off until she
went, too. She gazed down, hearing the water rush, held by the dawn, feeling as
if she herself were lit from within.

The old lady had died
some time that spring. No one knew exactly when, because she’d been shut up in
a nursing home forever, and then one day the son came around with a mover and
that was that. The whole place was cleaned out. Minor repairs were done to the
outside. As to the inside, it was hard to say for sure. People up and down the
street who’d been there long enough to remember the old lady remembered a
cramped, ugly kitchen, with Formica counter tops and a vinyl dinette set. While
she was gone no one had lived there. The son came by every now and then and
made sure things were okay, and people wondered why he didn’t just take charge
and sell the place. It wasn’t as if she’d ever come back, the old lady. Once
you went into a nursing home that’s where you stayed. Until the funeral parlor,
and that little plot of ground you hoped someone had been good enough to buy
for you in advance.

Then the
Dugans moved in. Although the street wasn’t particularly close-knit—no block
parties or pleasant pot-lucks—the neighbors welcomed them. Their efforts were
ignored. The Dugans had moved seven times in the last ten years, and the idea
of putting down roots was just plain silly. Soon, the neighbors made comments.
Not only were the Dugans unfriendly, they were noisy and didn’t collect the
shit their dog left wherever it wanted, usually in someone else’s yard.

Mrs. Dugan
left every morning at exactly seven-thirty. She got into her car, a rusty green
Subaru, wearing a suit. Her hair was up in a bun. She even carried a briefcase.
No one knew what she did. One man said she worked in a bank. The woman across
from him said she sold insurance.

Mr. Dugan
didn’t work because he’d hurt his back years before on a construction site. The
disks he’d ruptured eventually went back in place, but not before causing permanent
scarring and calcium deposits which caused pain that ranged from annoying to
agonizing. He was never without pain, in fact, and had a standing prescription
for Vicadin which mixed badly with alcohol. That’s why he was reduced to
drinking only beer, instead of his beloved whiskey. You had to give your body
the space it needed, he told his kids. No two ways about that.

Five
children made up the family. The eldest was Angelica, a fat, teenage girl with
a nose ring and short, spiky green hair. She ruled her siblings with a steady
stream of insults. Her favorites were “dumbass,” “dumbshit,” and “horsedick.”

The next
in line was Timothy. The cast in his left eye was a painless affliction. He
wasn’t aware of it until people stared hard, then looked away in embarrassment.
A baby-sitter once told him it was a gift from God, proof that Timothy was
special. The baby-sitter was an old woman whose saggy chin sported a forest of
short, white hairs.

Twin
girls, Marta and Maggie, came just after Timothy. Mr. Dugan had objected to the
German name, Marta. He thought the German people were fat, pretentious slobs.
Far too young to ever have been directly involved in the Second World War, his
sentiment stemmed from a boss he once had, Otto Klempt, who told Mr. Dugan he
was the laziest worker he’d ever had in his storeroom. Oddly enough, Marta was
rather like Mr. Klempt in temperament, harsh and scornful. Maggie was quiet on
the surface, yet full of deep longings and desires she was afraid to share. One
day, she was sure, she’d be on the stage, and very, very rich. Her husband
would do everything for her—in her later years she’d see that she developed
this idea from watching her mother bully her father—and she’d take every
gesture with the same mysterious smile she gave her other fans.

The
youngest was Foster. The name was based on a statement Mrs. Dugan made, that if
she had any more children they’d end up in foster care. Foster had been born
with a twisted leg that gave him a definite hitch in his stride, but otherwise
did little to slow him down. He was a pleasant child, despite the generally
sullen atmosphere of his household.

All in
all, the five children didn’t particularly care for one another, and they
didn’t dislike each other, either. One thing they knew was that they stood as a
pack against the rest of the world, a term that had special significance after
one of their neighbors came home to find them all roller skating in his
driveway, where they’d apparently knocked over his trash cans in the process,
and called them a pack of wild dogs.

He was
punished for that. Paper bags full of dog shit, carefully collected over the
week from their mutt, Thaddeus, were set afire seconds before a frantic knock
on the door, made by Maggie, their fastest. Answering the call, the neighbor
found the growing blaze and reacted as anyone would, by stamping it out.
HAHAHAHAHA, the children thought to themselves, individually, in the privacy of
their own thoughts, for that caper, like all their others, was born in
committee, yet appreciated alone.

Angelica
felt the lack of community most.
We don’t have enough family time
, is
what she concluded. She’d seen families spend time together. Across the street,
the Morrises were always having cook-outs, and batting balls, and playing
badminton. The children—two, maybe three—laughed a lot. The mother never
yelled, and the father had a strong, steady gait. She knew her own family could
never be like that, yet she wished they could.

Mrs. Dugan
came home from work tired. She was often crabby, too. She worked in the sales
department for a small company that sold manufactured homes. Her job was to
walk clients through their purchase options. The people she dealt with had all
fallen on hard times, or were old and looking to down-size. None had the flush
of optimism. Mrs. Dugan thought she herself had once been full of hope and
ambition which, over time, had been whittled away. She decided to give herself
a kick in the pants, and when the chance came to represent the company at a
regional conference, she put in her bid, and even took her boss out for lunch.

She was
chosen. She walked on air. Mr. Dugan didn’t like the idea of her spending three
days down in Wilkes-Barre. He was glum, and snuck sips of whiskey from a flash
he kept on a shelf in his closet.

“Three
days, Potter. One, two, three,” said Mrs. Dugan. She couldn’t wait. She loved
her family, and she hated them, too, and lately the balance had been tipping
towards hate.

“And just
what is it you plan to do at this conference?” Mr. Dugan looked like he was
about to put his head through a brick wall, something Mrs. Dugan used to admire
about him and now found exhausting.

“Attend
presentations. Walk around the convention floor. See what other vendors are
doing to improve sales.”

“Sounds
boring.”

“Only a
boring person would say that.”

The stone
face melted. His mouth turned down.

“I’m
sorry, Potter. I didn’t mean that. You’re not boring.”

“Yes I am,
or you wouldn’t have said it.”

He took
himself off to the small back room he called his den and lay down on the couch.
He watched the dust dance in the light. Maybe three days wouldn’t be so bad.
Three days wasn’t all that long. He could get a lot of good drinking done in
three days. The thought cheered him.

Over
dinner, Mrs. Dugan laid out the program.

“Angelica,
you’re in charge. But you don’t do all the work—share it equally. Start getting
ready for school. There’s only another week left. When you’re not doing that, I
want you each to clean your rooms. When you’re done with that, take turns
weeding the garden.” The neighbors complained most about the garden. “And make
sure Thaddeus gets his walks regular. I don’t want to come home to a house full
of dog poop.”

Around the
table the faces were still. The children had never been away from their mother
before. Plans of mischief were being born, right there, as forks were lifted to
mouths, and pieces of inedible pot roast were slipped unseen to Thaddeus below
the table. Angelica knew where her mother kept some extra money. That would
come in handy when she took off for the mall. The twins planned to stay up all
night watching TV. Timothy and Foster would live on ice cream and candy. They’d
been handed a vacation, and they intended to make the most of it.

Mrs. Dugan
packed her bag in a state of excitement and fear. She didn’t have very nice
clothes, although they were respectable. Which of her four blouses would go
best with the brown suit? Where she’d never given much thought before to her
appearance at work, she was now overcome with self-criticism and doubt. She had
to look the part. She was an executive on the move. Secretly she yearned for a
promotion, more money, and to get the family out of rental homes and into a
place of their own. That thought made her sit down suddenly on her bed. The
promotion might come, as might the money and home ownership, but the people who
lived there would be the same—lazy, unkempt, and bad-tempered.

“Change
your mind?” Mr. Dugan asked when he found her there some time later, still
sitting. Some strands of her naturally blonde hair had escaped her bun and
floated around her small, pretty face.

“No. Just
taking a break.” And with that she was up, finished packing, put her bag by the
front door so she wouldn’t forget it in the morning, then shouted for her
children to get ready for bed.

***

The sunlight that first
day—Tuesday—said it would be hot. The house was not air conditioned. If they
were lucky, the children could get their father to drive them out to the lake
and swim. They liked going to the lake. One look at him passed out in the den
put an end to that particular plan. Angelica said they should give Thaddeus a
bath. The others agreed. A small, dirty plastic wading pool was put to use.
Thaddeus didn’t think any of it was a good idea, and bolted from the tub the
moment soap was applied and his fur scrubbed. He escaped the yard in no time,
an easy feat since there was no fence, and bounded across the street where Mrs.
Hooper was trimming her rose bush. Thaddeus stopped right in front of her and
shook, sending water and suds everywhere. Mrs. Hooper shrieked and called the
dog an ugly name, called the children watching from their porch an even uglier
name, and then threatened to call the police when Angelica turned around, bent
over, and dropped her pants. No one came to fetch Thaddeus. Everyone knew from
experience that he’d return eventually, which he did, the moment a can of dog
food was opened in the kitchen.