Infinite Home (28 page)

B
ECAUSE
W
ALLACE
’
S
TR
UCK
, gray like wet gravel, could fit only three, and Thomas’s rental had been mysteriously returned on his behalf, he had to stay behind while Song’s son drove the two hours to the tiny municipal airport. Thomas sent with him a hand-painted sign, oil on plywood, that featured their names. His right hand, competent now but never assured, had trembled as he added a flourish to the “A” in “Adeleine” and “E” in “Edith.” He had kissed two fingers, tapped them on Wallace’s side mirror, and watched the truck bump along the untended land until the trees obscured it.

Outside the arrivals terminal, there was no shade, everything cut away for the shimmering parking lot, and the heat rose in abundance from the concrete, uncut by any wind. Wallace leaned on the hood, whistling long notes under his straw cowboy hat, holding up the sign though the plane still sat on the runway, full of passengers.

The people who began filtering out ten minutes later were rumpled and squinting in the white push of heat. Some, met by relatives in shorts who waved halfheartedly before turning back to their cars, crossed the lot at a clip, rolling suitcases at their heels. Others, solitary, navigated the parking lot like those emerging from a long matinee, not yet accustomed to the changed light. When the last of them had slipped through the sieve of warmth into air-conditioned cars, the slow automatic doors revealed Adeleine and Edith, the younger woman in a broad sun hat that cast checkered shadows on her milky shoulders, the elder in a pinstriped dress that drooped from her body. He pressed his Stetson to his chest and approached.

“You must be Edith.”

Their eyes were similar, the blue-green patterned in symmetry, and the lids slightly hooded, folds like loosely made beds.

“I don’t know who you are.”

“I’m Wallace. I’m here to take you home. See? Sign right here says so.”

Edith kept her face up to the sound of his speaking but clutched both hands on her patent-leather purse, as though feeling for some makeshift weapon within it. Wallace’s mild voice washed in, becoming emphatic.

“There’s a big lunch waiting, Edith. We’re roasting all kinds of vegetables and brewing a vat of cider. We built you a bed from cedar and painted it yellow. There’s a fireplace and a porch with a chair just for you, and if you want, I’ll show you the place in the woods where I keep a hammock. There are cats, and some are sweet and some spend most days exploring on their own. We stay quiet most of the time, so we can always hear the river. Everything you’ll need is close by, and the water is clean. Would you like to come see?”

He put his hand out to her, spread it flat and wide, and acknowledged Adeleine—who blushed in the uncertainty of her part in all of it—with a wink. Edith shuffled across the pavement with a certain dignity, her jaw bobbing as she looked left and right, and when they reached the passenger side of Wallace’s truck, he pressed down on the silver handle, led the door’s opening as if conducting the first note of an opera.

T
HOUGH
E
DWARD
HAD
PREPARED
his voice, called on notes of casual competence, he answered as though being held over a fire.

“Um, hello,” she said.

“Helena! It’s Edward!” His whole body protested the moment, and he tried to compensate for anxiety with enthusiasm.

“Boy howdy and Jesus Christ. I knew I recognized the number. I just didn’t know whose it was.”

“Well.”

“Well?
You
called
me
.”

“Right. How are you?”

“As in . . . how have the last ten years treated me? Or, right in this moment, am I good or bad? Have I consumed any above-average fusion cuisine recently? Is the weather decent?”

“Okay—I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have called. But listen, I’m actually calling about an extremely important issue, one that’s keeping me up nights, and that’s—joint health.”

“What?”

“Are you taking care of your joints? Enough omega-threes in your life?”

“I’m not going to laugh. You’re very funny, but I’m not going to.”

“I’m not laughing. Do you hear me laughing? I cannot stress enough the crucial nature of knee bends. How would you like to spend your middle age? The choice is yours.”

“Where are you, Edward? What are you doing? Anything? Why are you calling?”

“I’m, uh—”

“Are you right where I left you?”

“Actually, I’m in Tennessee.”

“What?” The genuine surprise in her voice exposed a warmth previously hidden, and he was hit by the ghost of their dynamic, arriving at punch lines together at the dinner table, clutching at each other’s elbows in glee.

“Yeah. The Smoky Mountains. But specifically, the side of some road, knee-deep in all kinds of weird grass I’ve never seen before. I’m here to see—they’re called synchronous fireflies, and they only do this once a year, only here and somewhere in the Philippines, and they light up all at once, rhythmically, in a dance. It’s like
the
destination rave for bugs.”

“Are you fucking with me?”

“No.”

“Why are you there?”

“Um, I’m here with my neighbor. Well, he’s my friend. He’s also a disabled thirty-three-year-old who plays the electronic keyboard pretty well and owns several plastic swords. He’s very generous and wants to talk to everyone, always, and has barely left my apartment in the last six months. But we’re getting evicted. Edith—you remember her?”

“She was amazing. She used to make me tea when you and I fought.”

“Really?”

“Really. I farted while crying once and she
winked
at me.”

“Wow. Well, she’s essentially lost it—she went from forgetful to paranoid overnight—and her son’s kicking us all out, so me and my neighbor and his sister decided to take this trip.”

“I remain amazed.”

“He wanted to come here more than I want . . . I don’t know. I guess more than I’ve ever wanted anything. Except you.”

She grunted with an immediate remorse, as though seeing herself lock the keys in the car. “This isn’t
fair
. You can’t call after years and say that, like we’re twenty-six and imagining the rest of our lives on someone else’s fire escape. I’ve
built
things, Edward. I have a—”

As though on cue, the sound of a child, its urgent question. It wanted her, belonged to her. He waited as she murmured sweet instruction in a voice he had never heard, her hand over the phone, and the fact of it banished anything he might have said. He thought he heard her say, “Can you show me what you did with the blue paper?” And then,
“
No, that’s not for eating.

“Look, Edward. It sounds like—it seems that you’ve built something pretty good yourself. Enjoy that. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m proud of you. And also, truly, I have to go. Okay?”

“All right,” he said, finally, though the electronic light that signified her had faded.

T
HOMAS
AND
S
ONG
and all her sons had gathered to watch Wallace open the passenger side of his mottled truck. The rusted door eked forward and revealed Edith, who remained facing straight ahead, as though enjoying some film playing just beyond the windshield. Beside her in the slim middle seat, barely visible, Adeleine’s hair gave a flaxen glow. Wallace bowed and waved for Thomas to come forward, and Thomas felt his toes spread, slightly, to steady his position.

Stepping away from the others, glad to separate from the throng, he approached the cab, where he laid a hand on Edith’s knee and squeezed. Adeleine’s eyes were closed. He couldn’t reach her.

“Edith, I’m so glad you came. I’ve missed you. I’m so sorry it’s taken so long. It was so hard to find the right place, and then so difficult to recognize it once I’d gotten there.”

He placed his hand along her chin, waiting until her watery vision focused on him before he continued.

“Jenny and I have arranged everything for you: a quiet place where you can nap, and another where you can just sit and think. Everyone here knows all about you, Edith—I’ve told them who you are, how much I like you. I know it’s not the home you made but you can trust me that it’s safe, that the air is clean and the people are good. Will you—please—let me show you?”

Edith blinked and changed, as if she were waking from an introspective lull in a grim lobby, having heard her number called.

“Declan,” she said. “You’ve always been softhearted. I knew that about you from the beginning.”

“Edith, it’s me. It’s Thomas. Jenny’s here, Edith—your
daughter
is here and she can’t wait to see you.”

“Declan! Why didn’t you say so, you old goon!” Edith moved her face into a smile and put out her hand with a flourish, each finger proudly flexed. Thomas aligned his forearm with hers, felt them strain together as she descended the cab and began to search the crowd for the face of her child. She scrutinized each with resolve, considering faces and hairlines and postures; it was here, finally, the event she had trained for in so many dreaming hours.

When Song stepped forward, Edith’s arm left his, and Thomas noticed that everyone had grown more quiet, if possible: he could hear no one breathing or shifting, only the unseen water moving over rocks and moss, the irregular steps of Edith as she shambled towards her daughter. It had been forty-six years, Thomas knew, since Jenny had posed for that photo on the steps, had parted her painted lips and placed one light hand on her pink leather suitcase. Edith continued shuffling, stirring up sheets of red dirt, until she was close enough to reach out and tug the cloud of hair that floated down Song’s chest. Sent wild with want, delivered back to the moment she was handed the tiny life and pressed it to her paper gown, her eyes resisted blinking, and her hands grabbed at the features before her, the lobes of her daughter’s ears and the rangy length of her neck.

She let out the sound of many small pieces halting at once, a train’s final chuff.

“Her,” she said.

Deepening light fell in layers of color, rusty golds and lilacs through the veil of branches, studying the maps of their faces.

The child’s only answer was a palm to her mother’s temple, slight but insistent.

The mother seemed to know what she meant, and nodded.

T
HE
PATH
BACK
to their campsite skirted a row of half-decayed logging buildings, multistory wooden structures whose staircases ceased halfway up to the rotted ceiling, where the extant beams hung close and crooked. Edward swept a hand over his sweat-pearled face, felt the spiked hair of his eyebrows and the trenches worry had driven across his forehead. He hoped to present the expression to Paulie and Claudia that would best indicate his remorse, that would immediately earn his redemption. When he reached them, they looked up briefly from their blue nylon chairs and smiled with full lips, their subdued happiness like that of an old couple waiting blithely for a bus.

“Um, guys?”

“Yes, Eddy? Yes, Chiefo?” Paulie held a stick of red licorice in the leftmost corner of his mouth and chewed it slowly, like some dusty movie-cowboy. Claudia, whose hair the humidity had translated into wild curls, winked.

“A wink? You’re winking? Aren’t you mad?” Edward’s body, still posed for apology, held the stiffness of guilt and panic; his knees locked. “Aren’t you going to say something?”

Paulie gave an authoritative wave of the sugary wand.

“Like what? Like should I go crazy and yell that you’re a monster? Should I throw your things in the river and let them rush away? It’s okay, Eddy. We’ve got so much to do. We don’t need to do that. And we love you. Right, Claude?”

“For
some
reason.” She lifted her dirty feet from the cooler and leaned forward. A can of Miller High Life flew from her hand; Edward watched as his own shot up to receive it. Paulie observed the exchange with curiosity, as he might a documentary about rainforest wildlife, and chuckled brightly.

“Eddy,” he said. “Only two hours till the fireflies!”

—

T
HE CAMPGROUND
, littered now with sound systems and fans and wide vehicles and red-faced regional families, began to hum in the hour after dusk with small, fitful movements: the zipping of mesh tent doors and fanny packs, the on-off, on-off tests of headlamps. The clusters of people, many of them in tight, synthetic clothing that molded their flesh into unnatural lumps, looked generally cagey, as though they had spent the last of their dwindling energy on a shot at wonder and would take any measure to obtain it. The sky accepted night and the campers began their migration to the riverside grove recommended for observation, huffing as they shifted their long-sedentary bodies. Sunburned and drunk, Edward felt both repelled by their needy anticipation and at risk of catching it.

The three of them set out with the rest of the campground, joined the army of flashlights covered in red Saran wrap so as to not spook the bugs, and moved towards an area where a group of rangers spoke to the gathering crowd. Paulie—whose knees almost cleared his navel as he marched, whose taut fingers at his sides seemed liable to snap off—had fallen into a manic feedback loop.

“Eddy
do you think we’ll see them?
Claude I
hope we see them.
Claude
do you think we’ll see the fireflies
? Eddy I
hope
we
see
them!”

As they approached the bend in the river that held the desperate hordes, Edward imagined the ineluctable pushing and sweating and yelling once the spectacle actualized—if it actualized at all—and knew he couldn’t be there for it.

“Paulie,” he said. “I’ve heard it’s better firefly watching up the river a mile or so. Let’s go that way.”

Claudia screwed up her face to protest, but Paulie had already begun to follow the confidence in Edward’s voice, and so she fell in behind them, listening only to the sounds of the violent mountain stream, looking towards the winks of light up ahead, single fireflies pulsing, oblivious to expectations of awe.