All the Roads That Lead From Home Read Online Free PDF Page B

insisted. He says it’s time to get at the
root. When your father’s retirement home called last month to say he’d written
them a bad check, you paid the bill, then went into a bit of a tailspin, it’s
true. What’s pissing you off goes a lot deeper than money , your husband
said. Maybe yes, maybe no. The point is, you recovered. You always do.
    Dr.
Schiff—Leonard—moves on to Edmund. Edmund’s wife is an alcoholic. She hides
vodka everywhere, including the toilet tank where Edmund discovered two bottles
when the plumber came to fix a leak. Edmund told the plumber the bottles were
his.
    “Did
anything bother you about that?” asks Leonard.
    Edmund
seems to consider the empty space above Leonard’s head. Finally he says, “Yeah.
The look on his face.”
    “And what
look was that?”
    “Like he
was sorry for me, like he knew I was lying.”
    Edmund’s
eyes are troublesome. One is blue, the other brown. Leonard’s eyes are like
dark honey. Their deep grief says how much the world has had its way with him,
how much he’s given up against his will.
    Edmund
says nothing. Leonard lets the silence continue. People stare at their own
hands. Someone coughs. Your mind wanders. What are you going to make for
dinner, you wonder. Is your husband going to be home before you? And what about
the yard work you’ve been putting off—all those shrubs to be dug up and
replaced with something more attractive?
    “Ralph,”
says Leonard. “How’s it going with Lisa?”
    Ralph’s
daughter shoplifts. She’s thirteen, and has been in and out of juvenile
detention.
    “Fine,”
says Ralph.
    “Just
fine?”
    “Well, I
had to tell the police she’s getting counseling.”
    “I see.”
    “But she’s
not, is she?” says Miranda, whose sister steals, too, but only from family.
    “No,” says
Ralph.
    “Because
she doesn’t think she has a problem.” Miranda’s eyes burn with bitterness.
Miranda’s sister ran up her credit card in Vegas for over ten thousand dollars,
then begged for a plane ticket home.
    “Right,”
says Ralph.
    “She
probably thinks you’re the one with the problem.”
    Ralph
nods, his big eyes sad, like a spaniel’s. He has big ears, from which tufts of
hair reach out. His shoulders are huge, but his feet are small. You’ve never
seen a man with such small feet, smaller even than Leonard’s, which sit primly
in their shiny brown wingtips.
    The church
basement is cold, and hard morning light breaks through high windows. The gray
carpet is stained with coffee, and you imagine Styrofoam cups in the hands of
pious people, deciding how best to raise money for that new steeple. You are
not a churchgoer. You’re not an atheist, exactly, but the idea of organized
religion sits poorly with you. Your father was once a Quaker, a leaning he
inherited from his mother, a woman you didn’t know and of whom he said little,
except that she never raised her voice. You cannot imagine this petite, quiet
woman. You’re neither petite, nor quiet, facts your father seems to regret when
he looks at you.
    “Darlene,”
Leonard says. “Why don’t you tell us how it’s going?”
    You shift
on your metal chair. Your pantyhose make a rasping sound as you cross your
legs. You can’t think of anything to say.
    “Have
there been any more incidents?” Leonard asks, urging you with those anguished
eyes.
    “Well,
yes. He wrote another check.”
    “A big
one?”
    “Two
thousand dollars.”
    Ralph
whistles. “That’s not chump change,” he says.
    “Who’d he
give it to?” asks the woman in green.
    “An old
student of his. Guy got a Ph.D, then some teaching job that fell through.”
    How can
you ask me why, Dar? Because I know those clowns who denied him tenure. No job,
and stuck at home now with a sick baby. Didn’t know that, did you, about the
sick baby?
    A sick
baby would be easier to handle than your father.
    After the
bounced check to the retirement home, he took cash advances on credit cards
whose monthly