The Long Way Home (7 page)

Rita was the first one out of the bathroom. She lingered at the display, glanced at the brochures in the rack, and took a sip of water at the bubbler before going outside to wait for the others. They’d only been on the road for a few hours, and she was already starting to doubt the wisdom of this trip. It had seemed like a good idea when Jazzy had broached the subject at the grief group. God knew Rita needed something to pull her out of her rut. Glenn had tried for years, bless him, with no success. They’d gone on trips, gotten a kitten, volunteered at a homeless shelter. Every step of the way she thought how much more fun it would be if Melinda were there.

This trip was different, mostly because Glenn wasn’t with her and also because she’d met these women after Melinda died. She’d thought that maybe, just maybe, this would keep her mind off herself. And it was working, at least somewhat. Driving required concentration, and the other women were nice, so far. So why did she feel so alone?

A woman pushing a baby in a stroller approached the glass door, and Rita opened it from the inside. The woman, who wore training sneakers, spandex shorts, and a tank top, had a decidedly athletic look. “Thanks so much,” she said brightly, guiding the stroller with one hand and taking a sip from a water bottle with the other. Rita nodded, and after the stroller cleared the door, she headed outside to wait for the others.

To stretch her legs Rita strolled down the slight incline, away from the building, alongside the V-shaped deck in back. The sun warmed her face and she lifted her chin to get the full benefit of the rays before stopping by a covered picnic table.

After a few moments, she spotted Jazzy standing in front of the tree line, sixty feet away. She had her arms extended and eyes closed, and she was turning slowly, so slowly. Rita was about to call out to her when she was stopped short by the sight of an animal coming boldly out from between two bushes. The words froze in her mouth. The animal, a good-sized doe, stepped deliberately toward Jazzy. Rita sucked in a breath and held it. What a remarkable sight.

Laverne appeared at Rita’s side and watched the animal approach Jazzy. The deer came right up to Jazzy and nuzzled her hand.

The two women leaned forward. Laverne leaned over and whispered loudly, “Holy guacamole! A tame deer, what do you think of that?”

Rita shook her head. “I don’t think it’s tame.” She fixed her eyes on Jazzy, willing her not to move, afraid that even the slightest twitch might scare the deer away.

“Oh,” Laverne said, the word so soft it was more of an exhale than a verbalization. She lifted her arm and silently pointed to the thicket of trees behind Jazzy where one by one, a group of deer loped out from behind the trees.

Rita counted. Five, now six, now seven of them. Eight total, all does. They came out in a cluster and stopped just outside the woods, their gaze fixed on Jazzy and the first deer. The sound of a semi pulling out from the other side of the building didn’t spook the animals, although it did startle Rita, who registered the sound right before she got a whiff of exhaust fumes.

A breeze kicked up and lifted Jazzy’s hair up off her shoulders. It rose and fell with the motion of a tablecloth being shaken out. Jazzy opened her eyes but didn’t seem shocked to see one deer nosing her palm and eight others watching intently. The young woman and doe locked eyes, and then the deer stepped closer. Jazzy stroked its head and murmured something undecipherable. The doe raised its head and nuzzled her shoulder.

In the parking lot beyond, Rita became aware of the sound of a vehicle pulling into a space and car doors opening and shutting. A small boy yelled, “Mommy! Look at all the deer.” Out of the corner of her eye, Rita saw the boy running toward them. “Just a minute, Tyler,” his mother called, but he wasn’t listening. As the boy got closer, the deer changed from tame creatures to wild animals. Their reaction was physical—heads raised as if sensing danger, bodies turning, legs pumping—their white tails the last thing seen before they disappeared into the woods.

The little boy turned back in disappointment. “They didn’t wait for me,” he said, wailing.

“It’s okay, baby,” his mother said. “You can pick out a candy bar in the vending machine.” The family went into the building, passing Marnie as she came out. She walked down the incline and joined Laverne and Rita at the picnic table. “Did I miss anything?” she asked.

As they approached the Mississippi River on Highway 151, Rita called out, “Once we get to the other side of the river we’ll be out of Wisconsin and into Iowa.”

Rita looked in the rearview mirror to see Laverne’s face light up like a kid at a county fair. Hard to believe that crossing an invisible line held such significance for a woman that age. Laverne put her palm on the glass as the car made the seamless transition from solid road to bridge. “Oh, it’s so big,” she said, her eyes wide at the sight of the river. “I didn’t know it would be so big.”

“The mighty Mississippi,” Jazzy said, suction-cupping Garmina to the windshield. “The same one that Huck and Big Jim traveled by raft.”

Jazzy had made light of her meeting with the deer in the picnic area at the wayside. She admitted it was odd but shrugged it off. Who knew why animals did what they did? Maybe they thought she had food. Rita wasn’t about to let the subject go that easily. She waited until they were firmly in Iowa and the others were occupied: Laverne with her nose pressed to the window and Marnie reading a magazine. While Jazzy adjusted the angle of the GPS screen, Rita said, “I’m still wondering about those deer. Why do you suppose they came right up to you?”

“Pretty crazy, huh?” Jazzy said. “They must be used to people.”

“That’s really what you think?” Rita asked. “The deer are just used to people?”

Jazzy pushed her hair behind her ear. “What else could it be?”

Was Rita imagining things, or did Jazzy stiffen up? She lowered her voice so the others in the backseat wouldn’t hear. “You can tell me what you think,” Rita said. “Please. Whatever it is, I need to know.”

There was a palpable tension now, the silence punctuated by the vibration of the tires on the road. Jazzy turned and gave her a cautious look. “How much do you want to know?”

“All of it,” Rita said. “Everything.”

Jazzy tapped her fingers on the dashboard, considering. She sighed.

Rita said, “Whatever it is, just tell me.”

“I have a lot of weird stuff happen to me. I don’t usually tell people. It changes things.”

“Please.”

“You’ll think I’m a nut job.”

“I promise I won’t think you’re a nut job.”

“You say that now.” Jazzy looked straight ahead for a minute or so and then gave Rita a long, questioning look.

“Try me.” Rita said.

“Okay, if you have to know, I have this talent,” Jazzy said finally. “Or maybe it’s a curse. I’m still not sure. The truth is, and I know it sounds unbelievable, but I’m psychic. I pick up on people’s thoughts. And I get messages from the dead.”

Rita’s grip on the steering wheel tightened. She’d suspected as much, but it was another thing to know for sure. “I had a feeling,” she said, struggling to keep her eyes on the road.

Jazzy said, “It’s not as dramatic as in the movies. I don’t see apparitions, at least not in the way most people think of apparitions. I don’t know the future, although sometimes I get inklings. Most of the time it’s not clear-cut. I just get…”

“What?”

“Thoughts,” Jazzy said. “Messages. I have no control. They just come. Little flashes of ideas or words. I get these thoughts and they’re like voices in my head making suggestions or passing on information.”

Rita listened in fascination. “How do you know the voices are from dead people?”

“My grandmother used to have the same thing. She was the one who told me it was spirits. It’s like having a radio receiver in my head.”

“And the deer?” Rita asked.

“Animals pick up on things,” Jazzy said slowly. “They have to rely on their instincts more than people do. I think the deer were directed to me. To get my attention and serve as a conduit. As weird as that sounds.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “When the one touched my hand, I got a message. A female voice. She said we needed to stop in someplace in Colorado. I couldn’t quite catch the name. It sounded kind of like Preston Place. Anyway, we’re supposed to stop there.”

“Why?”

“Why do we have to stop, or why did I get the message?”

“Both, I guess.”

Jazzy sighed again. “I don’t know. Lots of times it’s confusing. Usually though, it all works out for the best.”

“The female voice—” Rita tried to keep the words steady, but it was hard going. “Was it a young woman? In her early twenties, maybe?”

“I don’t know. Maybe,” Jazzy said. “Not old, anyway.” She continued, apologetically. “It happened so quickly. All I got was a sort of impression. It’s like overhearing part of a conversation in another room.”

“But it could have been a young woman?”

“Maybe. Female definitely. I’m not sure about the age. Youngish, I guess. Why do you ask?”

“I think it was my daughter,” Rita said and then, reconsidering, spoke with more assurance. “No, I don’t think. I
know
. I know it was Melinda.”

“I can’t tell you that for sure. I didn’t get that she was connected to you,” Jazzy said.

“But it was a young woman.” Rita didn’t even try to keep the excitement out of her voice. “And it came through the deer.”

“I don’t want you to get your hopes up,” Jazzy said, carefully. “Sometimes it’s totally random, not connected to anything around me.”

“No, it was Melinda.”

“Why do you think so?”

“I’ve been at that wayside with Melinda many times. We always stopped there on our road trips. And using deer?” Rita felt something light up inside of her. “That’s so Melinda, you don’t even know. She collected deer figurines and stuffed animals. Her friends nicknamed her Bambi because she cried when she saw the movie for the first time when she was in high school. She told me once that she hoped she could be reincarnated as a deer.”

“Wow,” Jazzy said, but somehow Rita didn’t think she was all that shocked. A person who got messages from dead people couldn’t be surprised by too many things.

“It was Melinda,” Rita said, almost to herself. “It’s exactly what she would do.” A wave of raw emotion came over her and she had to swallow hard to keep from crying. The feeling was similar to when she first held Melinda as a newborn. Awe and wonder and hope. Now, like then, a miracle had happened. Heaven had split open and allowed her daughter to send down a message.

From the backseat, Marnie said, “What are you two talking about up there?”

“We were talking about the deer,” Jazzy said, with a nonchalant wave of her hand.

“What about the deer?” Marnie asked.

“I was just telling Jazzy that they reminded me of my daughter,” Rita said, willing her voice to stay level. “Melinda collected them.”

Laverne perked up. “She collected
deer
?”

“Stuffed animals. Plastic figures. It was sort of her thing.”

“Oh,” Laverne leaned back. “That’s real nice, I suppose.”

When Rita glanced over, Jazzy gave her a knowing smile, a signal between them. There was no need for the other two women to know their secret.

Riding in the backseat for hours gave Marnie too much time to ruminate. It was only the first day on the road, but she was already questioning the wisdom of driving to Las Vegas. If it were just her, she might have turned around and gone back by now, but it wasn’t just her. The other women had already eased into the kind of camaraderie you usually only saw among longtime roommates or agreeable coworkers. Jazzy was the impetus, teasing a smile out of Laverne, threatening to make everyone play car games if they didn’t talk. Laverne opened up pretty readily, telling how she met her husband at a high school dance. Rita had a better story. Her husband, Glenn, literally bumped into her at a diner, spilling the contents of his coffee cup down the front of her best blue blazer. The only reason she’d stopped at the diner was to kill time before a job interview. “Glenn was so embarrassed,” she said, laughing. “And he turned beet red. He was so cute it was hard to get mad at him, although I was a little, at first.” She didn’t get the job, but she said that by then she didn’t care.

“How did you meet your guy?” Jazzy asked, turning the conversation to Marnie.

Marnie had hoped the fact that Brian died recently would make them believe it was a raw subject, but no such luck. She cleared her throat. “I don’t have a great story,” she said. “We met at work.”

“So you worked together?” Laverne said.

“No,” Marnie said. “I met Brian because I had his son Troy in my kindergarten class. His wife left him and moved to Las Vegas, so he needed someone to watch Troy after school. He asked if I knew of a babysitter, and I volunteered to do it.”

“Wow, that was nice of you,” Rita said, her eyes still on the road.

Marnie shrugged. “I wasn’t doing much else anyway, and he seemed to be in a real bind.”

Jazzy said, “I think that’s an awesome story. What did you think when you first saw him?”

“Oh, he was the cutest little thing,” Marnie said. “He used to come to school with this little scrap of blanket. He called it his Biffy.”

Laverne chortled, and Marnie realized her mistake. Jazzy had been asking about Brian, not Troy.

“Brian was a very handsome, charming man,” she said, clearing her throat. “I just always thought of them as a package.” Odd, but she couldn’t get a clear picture of Brian from that time. Troy she remembered well. He was a shy boy, small for his age, always on the edge of the group. Cute, with brown hair that went every which way. His big, dark eyes framed long lashes.

In the classroom, he sometimes called her Mommy by mistake, which was as heartbreaking as it was endearing. “My wife abandoned us,” Brian had said when she asked about Troy’s mom, or lack thereof. Kimberly. Even then she’d had harsh feelings about the woman. What kind of woman could leave a precious boy like Troy for even a day, much less forever?

When Brian said he needed someone to watch Troy after school, she didn’t think twice about it. They agreed she’d babysit at Brian’s house. That made the most sense. Bit by bit, she made herself familiar and then indispensible, cooking dinner so that a hot meal was on the table by the time Brian came home from work. He was grateful and complimentary too. Her meat was perfectly seasoned; vegetables had never tasted so good; her desserts were decadent. The way he ate her meals had a sensual quality to it. He ate each bite slowly, groaning with pleasure.

It hadn’t taken long before they became a couple. Marnie moved in when the school year ended. She was twenty-five. For a year or so she was happier than she’d ever been, happier than a human being deserved to be. Brian stopped and picked up flowers for her on the way home, complimented her endlessly, swept her into the bedroom every night as soon as they were sure Troy was sound asleep.

After about a year, it all fell apart. He pulled away when she went to hug him, stopped complimenting her or even noticing her. When she asked if she’d done something wrong, he denied it and said she was being paranoid. The sex stopped completely. She was puzzled, he was defensive. All relationships cooled off, Brian said. Meanwhile, her family asked when there would be a wedding. As the years went by, they stopped asking.

The permanent divide came when Brian was diagnosed with sleep apnea and had to sleep with a CPAP machine. He said it made him nervous to have her next to him when he had the mask up to his nose and the straps over the top of his head. She never understood that. What difference did it make if she was there? To make it sound like he was being selfless, he said he didn’t want the noise of the machine to bother her. Odd, because the CPAP noise was a gentle hiss of air, almost like a vaporizer, but somewhat more soothing. Certainly a better sound than the snoring he did when not using the machine. But really, what could she say? If he didn’t want to sleep with her, it would be pathetic to argue the point. Eventually she moved all her clothes and personal items to the guest bedroom. One advantage was that she finally had her own bathroom and didn’t have to look at the remnants of shaving cream and whiskers in the sink each morning.

She should have moved out at the first sign of trouble, and she almost did, but every time she threatened it, Brian begged her to stay and reverted back to his old self. He’d rub her shoulders and whisper in her ear. “I love you, Marnie. You know that. I’m just not good at relationships. I’m working on it. Please give us another chance. Please. We need you.”

Oh, he was charming, all smiles and flowers and nice messages on her voice mail. She usually got a few good weeks out of it, anyway. What Brian didn’t know was that his tactics weren’t what kept them together. It was Troy. That little boy adored her, and the feeling was mutual. They had private jokes that didn’t involve Brian, or anyone else for that matter. He was a perceptive child, able to tell from the look on her face when she was troubled or had a headache. As he got older, their house became the place where all of Troy’s buddies hung out. She provided the best snacks and joked with them in a comfortable but not overbearing way. Brian, for the most part, was just a guy who was there. The two of them got along and he was glad she took care of all the household details, but he didn’t go out of his way for her. She continued teaching and because she had few living expenses was able to bank nearly her entire paycheck year after year. Now she was financially stable, but thirty-five and alone.

Jazzy interrupted her thoughts. “So you always thought of them as a package?” she prompted.

“Always,” Marnie said firmly. “In fact, I wouldn’t have stayed with Brian if not for Troy.” It was, she realized, the first time she’d said that to anyone. It wasn’t a flattering thing to admit.

“How come?” Jazzy asked.

“He was…” Marnie searched for a diplomatic way to put it. “Not a very warm man. I was lonely.”

The car was silent for a moment. Laverne said, “Men. For Pete’s sake. It’s always something with them,” and they all agreed. To change the subject, Laverne pulled a large Ziploc bag out of her purse and held it up. “If anyone is feeling under the weather, I brought my whole stash. Anything that’s wrong, I got something that will fix you right up.” The bag was filled with vials of prescription drugs and over-the-counter pain medication.

“Good Lord,” Jazzy said, reaching for the bag. “You have a whole pharmacy in here. Where’d you get all this stuff?” Her brow furrowed as she looked at the labels through the plastic. “Yowza.”

“Don’t worry, it’s nothing illegal,” Laverne said. “They were all prescribed, at one time or another. And some are just regular medicine. Aspirin and such.”

“Who’s David Benner?” Jazzy asked, reading off a prescription label.

“My son. He had a hernia operation a while back and didn’t use all his pills.”

“And Christopher Benner?”

“My youngest grandson. They tried him out on that ADD medication, but he didn’t take to it too well. It’s good if you want a little pep in your step.” Noticing the look on Jazzy’s face she added, “Only for emergencies. I’m very careful.”

Jazzy handed the bag back. “And your family just gives you this stuff?”

“More or less.” She put it back in her purse.

“You know you’re not supposed to take other people’s medication?” Jazzy said.

“Yeah, I know. I hardly ever use it, but when you need it, you really need it.”

Jazzy nodded in agreement, while Marnie listened, horrified. She’d never in her life taken medication prescribed for someone else and she never would. Didn’t Laverne know that doctors and pharmacists carefully calculate drug usage based on weight and other health considerations? It was a good way to get herself killed, this cavalier attitude toward drugs. Some people were unbelievable.

As they drove the next hundred miles, Marnie watched as Laverne’s eyes closed and then her head drooped, her curly head pressed against the car window, wire-rim glasses askew. Odd to think the woman lived right below her for months and she’d never caught sight of her until now. She wanted to know what Laverne’s problem was—why had she been so reclusive? And why come out now? She didn’t ask though. Marnie had learned that people tell you what they want you to know all in good time. It would come out eventually or not at all. The choice was Laverne’s. If there was anything she learned from Brian, it was not to push things. She got better results with a soft approach.

Iowa was lush and green with gently rolling hills that leveled out deeper into the state. The sun was ahead of them now, but in the backseat, Marnie was in the shade. Rita had turned on the air-conditioning long ago, and it seemed to do a good job cooling the whole car. It was comfortable in the back, anyway. Jazzy fiddled with her iPod and made an occasional comment, but otherwise, things were quiet.

They’d stopped for a bite at a McDonald’s at one point, and made regular bathroom stops along the way. Halfway through the afternoon, Rita had insisted on stopping for gas, even though the tank wasn’t that low. She’d filled up at a place called “Kum & Go,” a name that Jazzy had said was wrong “on so many levels.” Even though Jazzy didn’t like the name, she got out with the rest of them to use the bathrooms and buy some junk food and a magazine in the attached convenience store. Now that they’d spent a good amount of time together, Marnie was starting to get a read on everyone in the car. Jazzy was a cheerful free spirit, Rita was a prim and proper lady (she rarely went more than five miles over the speed limit, which was so infuriating), and Laverne vacillated between wide-eyed tourist and naïve old-person. Her most defining characteristic was her tendency to blurt out whatever came into her brain. The woman had no filters. At all.

It was going to be a long trip.