All the Roads That Lead From Home (22 page)

After
Thaddeus enjoyed his lunch and dropped soapy water on the floor, boredom
returned. Foster applied a Band-Aid to each of his eyes—top to bottom—and
groped his way through the living room where Timothy was on the floor coloring.

“What the
fuck’s wrong with you?” Angelica asked. She was sitting in their mother’s
stained easy chair, flipping through an old magazine.

“Want to
know what it’s like being blind.” Foster tripped over someone’s jacket,
collected himself, and continued, arms outstretched.

Maggie
passed him in her ballet shoes. She was practicing standing on her toes. It
hurt a lot. She thought of hovering over the dusty wood-planked stage to the
silent, tense awe of the audience.

“Watch
out, dumbass!” Angelica said when Maggie lurched across Timothy. “Jesus, what’s
wrong with everyone today?”

Pizza was
ordered for dinner. After all dimes, nickels, and stray pennies were gathered
from every pocket, drawer, stray sock. Mr. Dugan grieved. “Where the hell’s my
wallet?” When he couldn’t find it he sat at the kitchen table and stared into
space. The children recognized this mood. Their mother was both the cause and
cure. She’d called to say she’d gotten there safely. Timothy had answered the
phone. There was noise in the background, a man’s voice, the sound of tinny
music. Mr. Dugan took the receiver and told everyone to leave him alone so he
could have a civilized conversation, for once, which he did for about
forty-five seconds before Mrs. Dugan hung up.

At noon
the following day, Angelica went to dress and had no clean underwear. Foster
lacked a clean shirt, and Mr. Dugan’s sock drawer was empty. Monday was laundry
day, and Monday was the day Mrs. Dugan had packed her bag. She hadn’t done the
laundry. Her oversight was painful to Mr. Dugan, because it strengthened his
suspicion that his wife was essentially dissatisfied with her life.He called
the children into the kitchen and told them to start washing clothes. Maggie
took charge and trotted down the basement stairs. She returned to report that
there was no more laundry detergent. A debate ensued. Could dish soap be used?
What about shampoo? Angelica told everyone to shut up, ordered her father to
find his damn wallet, give her some money, and wait until she returned from the
store.

“Let me
go, let me!” Foster was hopping up and down. The store was a ten-minute walk,
yet Angelica doubted Foster’s ability to successfully choose and pay for a
bottle of detergent on his own. Foster was only eight. She told Timothy and the
twins to go with him. Safety in numbers, she figured. With four of them, not
much could go wrong.

She jotted
down some other necessary items on a list. Milk, bread, eggs, frozen fish
sticks, ice cream, chewing gum, and mayonnaise.

“I want a
candy bar,” said Marta.

“Me, too,”
said Timothy.

“You get
this stuff, first. If there’s money left over, fine.”

The
children left. Angelica put the dirty dishes in the sink. The sink was full, so
placing them was tricky. She passed by her father’s den.

“Angie!
Hey, Angie! There’s a guy on TV eating goldfish! What do you think about that?”
he called out.

“That’s
pretty neat, Dad.”

In her
room—which was hers alone after a bitter fight with Mrs. Dugan about who would
sleep where—she applied black nail polish with great care. She loved painting
her nails. She loved painting other people’s nails. She once painted all the
nails of her siblings—including the boys’—a fiery red. The effect was stunning.
Mrs. Dugan called her an idiot, and demanded that it be removed at once. Mrs.
Dugan had lost her sense of humor, Angelica realized. There was a time when her
mother laughed, danced about in her bedroom slippers, and bestowed gentle
affection on her family.

Next, she
checked her cell phone. It was a cheap phone, gotten at great personal cost of
begging and wheedling. Mrs. Dugan had been unmoved by Angelica’s repeated
statement that all the kids at school had cell phones. In the end, a cheap,
poorly made cell phone with chronically bad reception found its way into
Angelica’s loving hands. She liked to send text messages on it. There was one
boy she sent messages to. The boy, Dwayne, had been in her math class the year
before and she thought he was fabulous. She hungered for Dwayne the way she
hungered for mint chocolate-chip ice cream. The messages she sent were bland,
non-committal things like,
TV. sucks today. What’s up?
His replies were
equally bland:
Nothing,
and
baseball practice,
and
cleaning out
garage
. Yet into each she read a special meaning, a deeper truth that when
added up in time would prove that he felt for her what she felt for him. There
was no message from Dwayne. He hadn’t texted her for two whole days, and her
nerves were about to snap.

She texted
her sometime best friend, Luann.
no mssg. from D. means what?
Luann
texted back,
phone’s probably off. or battery ran down
. Luann’s brutal
logic was painful, not comforting at all. If Dwayne cared so little about
staying in touch that he turned off his phone, or let the battery die, then
what Angelica feared—that this relationship was completely one-sided—was true.

She shoved
the phone in her pocket and went downstairs. The house was quiet. Her father
had switched to a game show, and the sound of clapping and cheers was like a
party from another planet.
Planet Party
, she thought, and wanted to
write that down. Every now and then she made notes of random thoughts thinking
that they, like the messages from Dwayne, would one day contain a brilliant and
tragic truth about the human condition that only she was sensitive enough to
see and appreciate.

The
children hadn’t returned from the store. The clock said they’d been gone almost
an hour. She was furious at the idea that she might have to go looking for
them.

“Boneheads,”
she said, and ate a slice of cold pizza left over from the night before.

Twenty
minutes later, Angelica saw the four children walking slowly up the street.
Foster was in the lead. Behind him, Timothy carried a single bag of groceries.
The twins followed, with an old man in between them. Each girl held one of the
old man’s hands. The old man was shuffling along, bobbing his head. His white
hair was bright in the sun. He wore a plaid bathrobe over blue pajamas, and
bedroom slippers.

“Jesus
Christ,” she said. She looked in on her father. He was asleep on the couch. The
television set was on and a muscular young woman in work-out garb was jogging
on a treadmill with a forced smile on her sweaty face. Angelica felt what she
always did when she saw a body like that—deep, agonizing envy. She was thirty
pounds overweight, and the last time she’d been to the doctor she’d been warned
of the dangers of developing diabetes, which more and more young fat people
were.

The
children came through the back door with the old man in tow.

“Who the
fuck is this?” Angelica asked.

“We found
him,” Timothy explained.

“Found
him? Where?”

“At the
store,” said Marta.

“Outside
the store. On a bench, in the shade,” said Maggie.

“Can we
keep him? I think we should keep him,” said Foster.

They put
the old man in a chair at the kitchen table. His blue eyes were watery and
empty.

“Caroline,”
he said, when he saw Angelica.

The old
man smelled of camphor.

“Why the
hell did you bring him here?” Angelica asked.

“We told you.
He was on a bench. No one came out to get him, so we figured he was lost.”

“Sir,
what’s your name?” Angelica asked and peered hard at the old man.

“Caroline,”
he said.

“Great.
Did you check his wallet?”

“Doesn’t
have one,” said Timothy. Timothy was the most resourceful of them all.

“He gave
me a lollipop. There are more, if you want one,” said Foster.

Sure
enough, the old man had three lollipops in the pocket of his bathrobe.

Maggie put
the groceries away. Angelica saw that they’d forgotten the laundry detergent
and the mayonnaise. And the eggs. She sat down. The day had become difficult.

“Well, he
obviously wandered away from somewhere, so someone must be looking for him,”
said Angelica.

“They
won’t find him. We’ll hide him, and then say he’s our grandfather, or
something,” said Foster.

“Are you
out of your fucking mind? Where’s he going to sleep?” Angelica asked.

“With us.
He can have the top bunk, and we’ll share the bottom one,” said Maggie.

“He might
fall out of the top bunk. Better put him down below,” said Marta.

“Caroline,”
said the old man.

“Sir, who
is Caroline?” Angelica asked.

The old
man smiled. His teeth were perfectly white and strong.

“Is
Caroline your wife? Is Caroline looking for you? Can we call Caroline?”
Angelica asked.

The old
man looked at her vacantly. She might as well have been speaking Greek. She had
to do something, but she had no idea what. The old man whimpered. He sounded
like a puppy looking for its mother’s milk. Angelica ordered the twins to open
and heat a can of soup. They argued about whether split pea or tomato was best.
They settled on tomato. Foster tied a dish towel around the old man’s neck.
They put the bowl of soup in front of him. The old man looked at it, and
whimpered.

“Help him,
then. Jesus,” said Angelica.

Timothy
lifted a spoonful of soup. The old man opened his mouth like a toddler would.
He took the soup, swallowed, and opened his mouth again. He consumed the entire
bowl.

“Maybe he
ran away because he was hungry,” Foster said.

“He didn’t
run away, stupid. He wandered off. Someone didn’t lock the door,” said
Angelica. Then she realized that a search might be underway, and bulletins
issued about the old man being missing. She went into her father’s den and
turned to the news. A tanker truck had exploded on an overpass in Indiana. A hurricane was speeding towards the coast of North Carolina. The President gave a
speech about the economy to a crowd of angry, sullen-looking people. Closer to
home the local teacher’s union had rejected the latest contract proposal. No
one was looking for the old man.

Mr. Dugan
opened his eyes. “What’s up? I thought I heard voices,” he said.

“Nothing.
Go back to sleep.”

“I’m ready
for some lunch.”

“I’ll
bring it to you in here.”

“That’s
okay. I need a little stretch.”

“Dad,
don’t.”

“What?
Stretch?”

Angelica
explained about the old man. Mr. Dugan sat up and stared at the worn rug at his
feet. He nodded. He cleared his throat.

“You did
the right thing,” he said.

They both
went into the kitchen. The old man’s head had drooped down towards his chest.
He snored loudly. Mr. Dugan said that if there were any soup left, he’d
appreciate a nice bowl with a slice of buttered bread. Thaddeus stood by the
old man’s side, sniffing his leg. The other children were all seated at the
table, each in his usual chair. The chair they’d put the old man in was Mrs.
Dugan’s. Angelica prepared her father’s lunch. Her cell phone buzzed in her
pocket. Luann had asked,
anything?
Angelica quickly wrote back,
no!

“I think
we should vote,” said Foster.

“On what?”
asked Maggie.

“On
whether or not we’re going to keep him.”

“We can’t
keep him. He’s not ours,” said Mr. Dugan. “I’ll call the police after lunch.
They’ll handle it.”

“No! Daddy
don’t do that. Please!”

“Now,
listen. This is a person, not a pet. Even if he were a pet, we’d have to find
out if he belonged to someone else. In the case of a person, you can be
well-assured that he does, in fact, belong to someone else.”

Mr. Dugan
was proud of his speech. He was very sorry his wife wasn’t there to hear it.
The old man went on snoring. The twins got up from the table.

“Oh,
well,” said Marta. “Too bad.” They went into their room. The boys stayed
behind. Mr. Dugan called the police. His voice was bright and polished. He
seemed happy. Angelica wasn’t happy. She was gripped by a growing sense of
alarm.

“Someone
will be along in a while,” said Mr. Dugan.

“Do they
know who he is?” asked Angelica.

“No. They
said it happens all the time. The nursing home might not even know he’s gone,
yet.”

“Assholes.”

“Exactly.”

The old
man lifted his head and stared around him. He blinked. Mr. Dugan helped him
from his chair, and guided him into the living room.

“Come on,
Pops. You’ll be more comfortable in here. There you go. Want your feet up? No?
Okay. Just sit there, and stay out of trouble.”