Kathleen Alcott: Infinite Home

“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.

THOMAS AND SONG 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.

THE 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!”

—

THE 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.