All the Roads That Lead From Home Read Online Free PDF

right
out.” I guess I’ve been holed up in here for a while. I can’t hide forever. I
return to my office, past Janice, who watches me go.
    Back at my
desk my right hand flies to my rescue, even though I’m beyond rescuing. I used
to sit like this, chin to palm, and pretend to be deep in thought. Trouble is,
I’m right-handed, so when I had to write something, I had to show myself. I
tried writing with my left hand. Ambidextrous sort of thing, only it didn’t
work. Sherry’s handwriting has become increasingly poor this quarter ,
one teacher wrote home.
    Stop it , my mother said, crumpling that note. Just stop it!
    I force
myself to concentrate. The invoices add up. Ed’s spends a lot, and makes a
little more than he spends. That’s the way it’s supposed to be, I guess, if you
call yourself a going concern.
    At lunch
we brown-bag it in the break room. No one talks, and no one looks at me funny,
so maybe one of them said something to the rest, but then I don’t think so,
because they all just seem lost in their own heads.
    Then Derek
says, “Dad, that’s my old bat, isn’t it? From Little League.”
    “Yup,”
says Ed. Derek, a Little Leaguer? Don’t exactly see that.
    “Can’t
believe you still have it,” Derek says.
    “I
wouldn’t throw something like that away.”
    “Dad used
to coach me,” Derek tells me and Janice. “He was pretty tough.”
    “Too
tough, sometimes,” says Ed.
    “Nah, you
were fine.”
    “You quit
because of me. Because I was such a bastard about your swing.”
    Derek
looks thoughtful. Clearly, he’d forgotten that episode.
    And that’s
when I remember my last conversation with my mother, the day she died, as she
got into her car to drive to the mall, minutes before a semi jumped the median
and hit her head on. She was talking about my life again, saying I’d turned
into a recluse, afraid to take a chance. She said, You don’t have enough
confidence to open up , because— I’d rolled my eyes, turned away, and
didn’t give her the chance to finish. If I had, I’m pretty sure she’d have said
something like because I’ve been so critical. She’d been reflecting on
things a little more those last few weeks. As if she were trying to come to
terms, put things in order somehow, or at least make amends. Maybe she had a
premonition that she wasn’t going to be around much longer, I don’t know. I’ll
never know.
    “She’s
gone,” I say, suddenly.
    Derek puts
his plastic cup on the table. Janice looks up from her magazine.
    “Who’s
gone, Sher?” asks Ed.
    “My mom.”
    “We know,
hon. We know.”
    “No, I
mean she’s really, really gone.”
    They
expect me to cry, I think, because they’re all there around me, hands on
shoulders, murmuring tones of comfort.
    I don’t
cry. I don’t laugh. I only turn to the window which shows a slice of blue sky
so lovely I can’t speak. When I turn back I realize I’ve given them my bad
side. But it doesn’t matter at all because I’m no worse than they are. I’m no
worse than anyone, and I never was. That’s for sure.

 
     

    Loss of Balance
     
     
    The woman in green talks
again about her boy, Joey. Her face bears all the pain he’s put her through,
the broken promises, the stolen money, the calls from the police. Joey can’t
stop shooting drugs into his arm, so he’s in rehab again. Only on Thursday he
gets out, and this woman, whose name you can’t remember, is sure the cycle will
start all over.
    She
doesn’t know what to do with Joey, and you don’t know what to do with your
father. Your father is not a drug addict, only an old man who likes to give his
money away. Joey has a problem with self-control, your father has a problem
with self-control, so you, the woman in green, and five others who bear
responsibility for a wayward soul meet today with Dr. Schiff in a church
basement—the best he could arrange after hearing that his office had flooded
overnight.
    You don’t
want to be here, but your husband