You Could Be Home by Now (21 page)

“This hat?” Dodgers passed a hand across the battered brim.

“Gentlemen, please.” That was Hoagland Lobel. Ben didn't like him—slick as Jell-O—but you had to admire the gravitas.

The room stilled. The historian began again. “Adah decided to quarantine—”

“Yeah. That hat.” The young man rocked forward, knees bent for maximum spring. Ben had never thrown a punch, but he sure as hell knew the posture for it. Dodgers was on his feet, too. For Christ's sake. He should remove the hat, proffer an apology, and be the adult his mother raised him to be.

“Gentlemen,” Lobel cautioned again.

“A misnomer.” The historian gave a tart little nod and just like that, Ben liked her. Shades of Veronica, of Sadie in a funk.

The young man took a looming step closer. The historian's tenor changed. “Seth, please.” Her voice was small without the microphone's help. Only the first few rows heard.

Dodgers did. “Seth,” he crooned. Ben cringed, embarrassed for him. And then Seth rushed forward. A swift flare of envy. The man's youth, the tumult that propelled him, the fierce clarity of his gait. It didn't occur to Ben to think
fight
; that didn't happen in well-ordered conference rooms, with podiums and deli trays. And technically, Seth never laid a hand on the other man. He touched only the brim of the hat. An indolent wrist flick knocked it to the ground.

Some mannerly instinct prodded Ben to stoop and retrieve it; Sadie might be watching.

Dodgers made a low throat sound Ben recognized from Chicago.

Veronica's trauma pamphlets would have a list of things to do now: visualize water, take mindful breaths, count to ten in every language that you know. Instead Ben watched another neighbor, paunchy, called Dan, maybe, or Don, step between the men, hands out to keep them apart. An aftershock of that initial envy: not too long ago
he'd
have been handy in a crisis like this. Around the room, neighbors rose in a crescendo of babble. Lobel brushed the little historian aside and took up the mic. His amplified permutations of
enough
and
ladies and gents
and
your seats, please
ricocheted. The historian pulled her young man off by the elbow, hopping mad if you could credit her hyperbolic gestures. Paunchy Don wrangled Dodgers from the room and, Ben hoped for the young man's sake, out of the building. Ben still had the man's hat, and he pulsed with nonsensical pride. Nothing to do with having weathered the altercation, though Ronnie would never believe he'd held so steady. It was the hat. He'd nabbed the offending hat, and with it the vague, schoolboy thrill of having pulled one over on everyone.

L
OBEL GOT THE ROOM BACK
under control. Lobel summoned Alison from Seth's side. “Please, continue.” When he called for her, Ali went, instantly cool. She couldn't even be bothered to finish their fight. Lobel hovered at the podium beside her, a bodyguard or a cartoon conscience. Ali reordered her note cards.

“In the aftermath of the epidemic, Adah Chalk—”

“Forget Adah Chalk.” That was Mona Rosko. She stood, weathered and immovable. One of those spirits carved on the ancient prows of ships. “No one came here for a history lesson that's bound to be BS anyhow. Let's get on with it. I've got a child to care for. If this nonsense goes on much longer, I'll be late getting his dinner.” She smiled, but there was no light to it. The grandson's suit was much too big.

Alison tried again. “With the new fashions and attitudes of the nineteen twenties, Adah—”

“You can't go putting out signs, Mona.” A woman, thin, tanned, and brassily hennaed, stamped her foot for emphasis. “The code clearly states that any signs or window decals that can be seen from public spaces are expressly forbidden.” The whole thing had to be rehearsed. No one could come up with this stuff on the fly.

“Hear, hear,” said someone on the other side of the room.

“This place'll look like a junkyard.”

“Relax. It was only the one.”

“We should
all
put out signs. Show some support for Mona.”

“Yes!” Seth recognized the speaker: the broken man. The fly man. The man who knew the names of lost girls. “Well, we do support her. You, Mona. We do support you.” His face was flushed and shining, his voice a tick too rapid. He actually bowed at the Rosko woman. Seth knew making amends when he saw it. Seth had amends to make before him. Ali stood at the microphone, slight and silent, a child stumped at a spelling bee.

“Support? Really?” The henna woman again. “For the sign she shouldn't have, or the child she shouldn't have?”

“Real charitable, Jeanne,” somebody said.

Jeanne gave another imperious stamp. “The Commons is not a charity; it's a community.”

A smattering of applause followed, a chorus of boos, and too many voices at once. Almost everyone was standing now.

“It
isn't
a community.” The general din died down for Mona; it wouldn't have for anyone else. “It just tries to look like one.” Her grandson stared out the window. Seth wasn't quite a parent, but it was obvious even to him: The more a child pretends not to listen, the better attention he's paying.

“A community,” Jeanne repeated, climbing up onto her folding chair. “Built on agreed-upon regulations that serve to—”

“Built on lies. Community?” Mona made a choked noise that might have been a nascent, bitter laugh. She shouldn't have brought the boy to the meeting. She should've guessed how ugly people would be. Seth tried to catch Alison's eye. She'd agree with him on that much. She'd agree with him and all would be well. Ali looked like she'd swallowed chlorine. Mona's voice was low and mordant. “We're trying to leave this place—sorry, this community—believe me. But until we do, my Ty's no skin off your teeth. It took an outsider to even notice him. That's hardly community.” The speech wasn't doing her any favors, but holy hell did Seth understand. It was easier on the soul to rail than to beg.

“We all agreed to certain precepts—”

“We can adapt,” the fly man—Ben, his name was—said. His flush was gone but the sweat clung. “We can be human about it.”

Someone toward the back said, “He's right.”

And someone else, “Mona's playing for the cameras, you know.”

Lobel's amplified voice called for civility.

Someone suggested
Robert's Rules of Order
, which nobody seconded.

“It's not right,” another someone said, “kicking out a child.”

“She knew the regulations before she bought.” It was that Jeanne. Up on her chair with her petulant foot. A plain old folding chair, rickety as could be. The woman had a hell of a sense of balance.

“Communities don't have regulations.” Mona again. “They got folks. Four generations my family's been here. That's
real
history. Why don't I head on up to that podium and set the rest of you straight?”

At that his wife bolted. Ali all over. Her boy was ashes; her husband, brawling. And what stirred her was the hint that someone, somewhere, could be better at something than she. Seth followed, angry, instinctive, pressing through the crowd. It felt good to jut his elbows out, to gloss over the excuse mes, to burn through the adrenaline of his almost-fight.

He caught some mention of extenuating circumstances.

From her perch on the chair, Jeanne derisively echoed the phrase. Another stomp.
Toddlers
were better behaved. Timothy would have been. Ali was picking up speed. He felt pink and overheated and strained to untangle the conversations around him. A McCain had made a bullhorn of his hands, insisting that if they relaxed the rules for children they should ease up on the ones for dogs. Someone could've sworn Mona's grandkid was a girl. Someone said, “Mona's doing her best.”

And Jeanne, “That doesn't mean anything.”

Seth's brainstem clogged with the fact that Ali had made it to the door. It was just a door. She passed through it. There was no reason for that to feel as significant as it did.

Someone said, “Did you see Ben Thales the other day? Charlie sent a link.”

Someone said something that made Jeanne stamp her foot again.

Someone said, “I think I heard the daughter's serving, and that's worth keeping in mind.”

A girl straightened at that. She caught the eye. Young, which was part of it, and pretty, if a bit overdone. A dime a dozen back in the halls of North Chettenford, though that didn't stop Nicky Tullbeck—who had no reason to be here; he and Seth were due for a chat—from blatantly puppy dogging. The girl knew she'd drawn her fair share of attention; girls like that always did. She smiled and said, in that petulant way specific to girls just coming into their own power, “Yeah, she's serving. Time.” And then, with the flip-flopping of adolescence, the woman was a child again, overstating and overdramatic, unsure of ever being clearly understood. As Seth reached the door, he heard her press on: “Serving time. Like, in jail.”

M
S.
R
OSKO LAUGHED.
A
FULL-BODY,
pudge-wobbling, teeth-bared laugh full of crazy. She scooped up the little boy, who barnacled on. His pale brows made him look perpetually worried so there was no way to tell if he'd understood. Nicky Tullbeck followed stalker-close. His Rocky-esque face married hunger and smirk.

Ms. Rosko started toward her. Tyson squirmed. “You're mashing my sling.”

The Rosko laugh continued, unpunctuated, but she shifted her hold on Ty so maybe a smidge of sane remained. Gran wasn't anywhere. No, Gran was pushing her way to the per-vet, whose face was the color of uncooked shrimp. Cue the Very Disappointed in Yous, because if
he'd
heard her all the way across the room there was zero percent probability that Gran hadn't. Ms. Rosko bore down, laughing. Lily tasted envelope glue.

Nicky Tullbeck grinned. She wished him snaggletooth. She wished him dentures.

Tyson Rosko cocked a finger gun at her and Lily remembered being small enough for that to feel like a threat. It felt like a threat now, with the laugh, the grandmother, the room full of people and their unforgiving noises. “Gran!” she called, but Gran was off with the per-vet, who was cultivating a very soap-operatic, middle-distance glare. Like what she'd done was unforgivable. Like
he
was one to talk. All the piping up for Mona mid-meeting didn't cancel out a single cunt.

The laugh devolved into breaths, big ones, like a kid with a cake full of candles. The glaring per-vet was right, the hypocrite. What she'd done was unforgivable. She hadn't known how thoroughly her allegiance had shifted until she went and opened her mouth. Nicky Tullbeck had his stylus out. Fair enough. Lily was a see you next Tuesday and deserved to have this documented. The nutbar on the chair broke out a rape whistle. Tyson covered his ears. Ms. Rosko was much too close. “You.” She pointed.

“It's not a lie.”

“I told you. Everybody lies.” There was a hushed, singing quality to her voice. Too small for her bulk, too far away for her closeness. “Everyone lies. Even in this
community
. Community. That's a good one. There used to be
folks
here. Not queers and golf shirts and Adahstown.” A laugh. The ghost of the
uber
laugh in it. Ty recocked the finger gun. Mona Rosko pointed again. “Adahstown. The old ranch wife used to come by our Feed 'n' Seed.
Guadalupe
Chalk. That first wife didn't last two summers. Miss Historian's as full of it as you are. And so pretty. Go after her. You'd suit.”

Lily was electric-alert and tense on a cellular level. The boy shut his eyes and yelled
bang!
A horrible moaning started and she brought a guilty hand to her throat as if to feel it thrum. Nothing. The noises were Ben noises. She saw him gray and teetering. She saw him fetal on the floor.

B
EN WAS CRAVEN AND CURLED
in on himself. An arm over his face for protection, another across his abdomen. He heard his own raw wordlessness, and over that, his heart. That line they fed you about panic being blind was a great gob of nothing; Ben saw a thousand shattered details. The scuffs on the linoleum. Sandaled feet, well corded with veins. And he saw other feet in overlay, the Chicago ones, their eager boots ready to grind away at the soft space below his ribs. The rope-veined feet belonged to Sadie Birnam. A blotch of scale below her ankle. Ben, she was saying, Ben, Ben. His innards had turned liquid; pulverized, as if they could leach out his pores. Sadie got him to his feet; somehow he still had feet of his own. She steered him by the shoulders. People stood aside as if for a pallbearer. The granddaughter trailed behind. He was still all liquid when she poured him into her cart. Her voice seemed more cadence than comprehensible words. He registered
hospital
though and he shook his head.

“Benjamin. You were on the ground.” The cart jittered along. In a kinder world, she would blame that for the uncontrollable movement of his hands. “You're scaring me. I don't know what to do here.”

“I want to go home.” He sounded like a child. His body began to re-congeal, bone and fiber, shame. This should not have happened to him. He absolutely should not have allowed it.

“You were screaming.” Sadie sounded exhausted. “You were—” she broke off and twitched in imitation. It looked as bad as he'd imagined.

“Please.” A return to civility meant a return to self. Sadie had to see. “I'm zonked. Please take me home.”

“You sure?”

He nodded. She turned toward Daylily Crescent. Veronica would have been adamant about the hospital. She babied him after Chicago. She told everyone he had been beaten savagely. It was the modifier that made their acquaintanceship give him a wide berth. How clearly it evoked the desperate, deliberate thoroughness. The humiliation. The streetlights came on. Times like this, the things your mind came up with. He remembered that alphabetized list of Veronica's, counselors who specialized in post-traumatic adjustment. At her insistence, he made an appointment. The first entry: Abelard, Dr. Yvonne B. He'd sat in her waiting room and wondered how broken you had to be to pursue her kind of career. He left before his name was called. He lied to Veronica. Said he'd found another doc. The only psychological professional he actually saw was the marriage counselor Veronica insisted upon once the fact that their insurance was never billed for his biweekly sessions brought the whole mess down around his ears.