The Promise of Home (10 page)

“What is it?” Michael asked.

“A hobo mark,” his uncle replied. “It's a crude, universally understood symbol for a loaf of bread. Someone put it there to tell others that food is given out here.”

“Mother does that, gives out old stale pieces of bread to people who come to the door, even though Grandma tells her not to.”

“After what happened yesterday, I doubt she'll do it again. But we're going to get rid of this so any other wanderers who come by don't see it.” His uncle took a handkerchief from his pocket and rubbed the symbol until the black lines were smudged and the image completely obscured. “You should keep an eye out, Michael. Check here and around the property every few days. If you see any other marks here or anywhere else, get rid of them any way you can.”

They walked back to the house, where each brought in another armload of wood. Anna was moving around the kitchen table, scooping scrambled eggs from a frying pan and depositing them on plates.

“That coffee smells good,” Frank said. “And the eggs, too.”

“I'll get a cup for you,” Lizzie said, starting to rise from her seat at the table, but Frank patted her shoulder as he brushed past her.

“No need, I can help myself.”

Michael had pulled out his chair to sit down when he looked over at his mother. She was standing on the opposite side of the table, holding a spatula and the nearly empty frying pan, but had stopped dishing out the eggs. Her face was unusually pale, her gaze distant and unfocused. She took an unsteady step backward.

“Mother?” he asked. “Mother, are you all right?” He remained standing, ready to reach out to her, and his question prompted his uncle and grandmother to turn their attention to her as well.

“Anna?” his uncle said, but she didn't reply or even acknowledge that she'd heard him. The heavy cast-iron pan fell from her hand, hitting the corner of the table and sending bits of egg flying. A half-second later, it landed on the wood floor with a loud
thunk,
and Michael watched his mother's eyes roll back into her head as she collapsed.

H
aving spent the morning in bed, Karen forced herself to get up and dressed when the old clock on the wall in the foyer chimed to announce the noon hour. No one had called the landline or her cellphone during the morning, and she shot a nasty look at them both as she carried them into the bathroom with her. What she wouldn't give for any bit of news about her husband.

Where is he now?
she asked herself periodically during the day. Maybe he was being rescued or on his way back to the base. Her heart leaped at the mere thought. Maybe he was bound and blindfolded, a hostage of some radical group.
Or maybe
…She always tried to stop herself there, before her thoughts entered the most terrifying realm of possibility. Images from news stories about other Middle East kidnapping victims were seared into her mind. Images of beaten and bloodied prisoners, of kidnappers brandishing long swords in front of video cameras before inflicting unthinkable agony on their hostages…

Nick is smart and strong,
she told herself.
He'll figure out a way to free himself, if he's been kidnapped. He'll fight to get back home to Ben and me.

And, Karen knew, he'd expect her to fight just as strongly.

When was the last time she'd really fought for something or someone? Her monotonous struggle with depression didn't quite fit the bill. Oh, she had a good temper, once she was sufficiently provoked, but just the idea of getting her dander up seemed exhausting right now. Still, she remembered a time, three or four years back, when she'd done exactly that.

It was before they'd moved to Mill River. Ben was still in elementary school, and he'd started coming home from school ravenous. At first, she'd chalked up his increased appetite to a growth spurt, but after it had continued for several weeks, she became worried.

“I don't know what's happening with you,” she'd told her son as he went straight to the refrigerator after arriving home. “You're acting like you're not eating lunch at all. The school's food isn't that bad, is it? What did they serve today?” She hadn't eaten at the school that day, since she worked there only part-time, on Tuesdays and Fridays.

“I don't know, Mom,” Ben replied. Strangely, he didn't look at her. Instead, he kept his focus on the contents of the refrigerator.

“What do you mean, you don't know? You did eat lunch, didn't you?”

Ben didn't reply.

“Ben?” She took hold of his arm and pulled him around to face her. She'd fully intended to scold him for ignoring her, but the look on his face told her that something was wrong. “Answer me, Ben. Did you eat lunch today?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I didn't have money for lunch.”

“What? Why would you say that? I give you money to buy a lunch ticket each week.”

Ben paused for a minute before he quietly answered her. “Because they keep taking it.”

“Taking it? ‘They'?” Karen's voice rose as she realized what her son was telling her. “Who's taking your lunch money?”

“Two big kids. From the middle school.”

“Do you know who they are? Do you know their names?”

“Not really. One of them is Billy, I think. I don't know the other one, or their last names.”

“And where does this happen?”

“Usually on the bus, on Mondays. The first time, they twisted my arm and said they'd hurt me worse if I didn't keep giving them the money for the lunch ticket. Or if I told anybody.”

Karen remembered him favoring his left arm about a month before. He'd told her he wrenched it swinging on the monkey bars.

At that moment, she felt a searing rage unlike anything she'd ever experienced. She was ready to rip her son's prepubescent bullies to shreds, regardless of the fact that they, too, were children. She would allow
no one
to harm her only child, and it was all she could do to keep her voice steady as she drew Ben into her arms and tried to reassure him.

“You're being bullied, Ben, and you did the right thing, telling me. I love you so much, and I promise you that I will not allow it to continue. Nobody is going to hurt you again.”

The very next Monday, she and the middle school principal met Ben's bus as it arrived at the school. Ben exited and stood beside his mother. They waited as other students filed out until her son nodded. The principal cleared his throat and stepped forward as the final two passengers—two tall, older boys—came out of the bus.

“Good morning, Billy and Darren. Walk with me, please. We need to have a little chat in my office.”

One of the two kids had glanced around to glare at Ben, but Karen caught his eye and stared him down with the wrath of a mother grizzly protecting her cubs.

The boys denied any wrongdoing until the principal had them empty their pockets. Only then, when they had produced the five- and ten-dollar bills she had subtly initialed before giving them to Ben that morning, were they forced to admit their actions. School suspensions for the two had followed quickly, and Karen smiled to herself as she remembered the boys showing up at her home with their parents to apologize to Ben.

If only all wrongs could be righted so easily,
she thought. Karen feared the worst and prayed constantly that Nick would be found alive and unhurt and returned to her in one piece. The uncertainty of the situation taunted her, forced open her imagination to any number of nightmare scenarios, each worse than the previous one. She moved from the sofa only when the silence and the uncertainty became too much to bear. If she sat alone in her house for one more minute, she really would lose it.

Even as she felt increasingly helpless in her struggle against the familiar darkness—which seemed to be growing stronger, despite her efforts to keep it at bay—she realized the importance of minimizing the time she was alone. Her work as a teacher's assistant kept her busy on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but today was Monday. Ben was at school and wouldn't be home until closer to three o'clock. Right now, there was only one place she could think to go to find some semblance of companionship and comfort without having to hear and try to respond to questions about Nick.

The Alzheimer's care facility where her father lived was only fifteen minutes away, on the north side of Rutland. She visited frequently, and the receptionist smiled when she came in. “Hello, Mrs. Cooper. Nice to see you. Willie's just gotten his lunch, but you can go ahead in, no problem.”

“Thank you.” As she signed her name in the visitors' log, Karen returned the smile of the woman behind the counter, though doing so made her face feel like brittle, immovable plastic.

Her father was seated at a table in his room. An attendant sat next to him, holding a spoon of food she had scooped up from a tray in front of him.

“Hi, Maureen. I can help him with that,” Karen said. She approached her father, put a hand on his back, and bent to kiss him on the cheek. “Hi, Daddy.”

He said nothing as he turned to look at her. His face reflected childlike innocence, but his expression was empty emotionally and devoid of recognition.

This first contact at the beginning of every visit was the hardest part for Karen. Each time she arrived, she carried the dread of seeing her father's vacant stare as well as a sliver of hope that her father would indicate in some small way that he knew her. She searched his eyes, focused on every twitch of his facial muscles as a possible sign that there was something left of him, of memories of his family and of her, inside his diseased mind.

But when, like today, there was nothing to indicate that she hadn't been erased from her father's memory, her sliver of hope became a sliver of glass, painfully slicing its way deeper into her heart.

She understood what Alzheimer's was doing and would continue to do to her father. Nevertheless, she wondered whether his memories of her were still there somewhere, locked away inside the darkest recesses of his brain. It comforted her to think they were, and that even as his disease entered the most advanced stage, he hadn't truly forgotten her.

“I'm Karen,” she told him as Maureen relinquished her seat and left the room. “I'm your daughter, and I came to visit you.”

“Oh.” His brow furrowed, and Karen held her breath. Then his forehead was smooth and relaxed again, and he didn't say anything more.

“Here, Daddy, let me help you with your lunch.”

Karen sat down beside her father. His lunch tray held meatloaf and mashed potatoes with gravy, along with peas and a dessert serving of fruit salad. She picked up the spoon the attendant had left. It held a small bite of the meat and potatoes, and her father complacently opened his mouth for it. He chewed very slowly, and Karen watched him carefully to make sure he was able to handle the food without choking. At some point, she knew, his disease would rob him of his ability to chew and swallow.

She focused her gaze on the side of her father's face. His strong jawline was unchanged by time. As a younger man, he had worked so hard to support their family. Sometimes he'd had to take a second job to make sure she and her mother and brother were taken care of, and he'd always done it without hesitation or complaint. And yet, he managed to spend enough time with her and her brother to maintain close relationships. It made her all the more grateful that she was able to help care for him now, to return some of the love he had given her in a tender, tangible way.

“Are you ready for another bite? Here you go, Daddy.” As he worked on chewing the second mouthful, she looked him over carefully. Her father had gotten noticeably thinner over the years after his diagnosis, but his weight had stabilized after he'd entered the care facility. He was clean-shaven and wearing his typical outfit of gray sweatpants and a long-sleeved T-shirt, each of which had a sewn-in tag that read
WILLIAM MANNING.

Karen waited to give him another spoonful and looked down at his feet. He was wearing clean white tube socks and his usual house shoes, navy corduroy with sturdy rubber soles. How many times had she stood on those feet as a little girl?

She remembered a period during her childhood when he had worked as a truck driver. The money from that job had been enough to support the family, but it had required him to be away from home most weeknights. Back then, every Friday had brought great excitement when he arrived home, and Saturday nights were more fun than a party. Her mother always fixed a big dinner on Saturday evening, doing her best to make up for the lack of family time during the workweek. And after dinner, before they gathered around their old television set to watch a program or a movie together, there was the dancing.

Her parents always went first, swaying around the living room to whatever love song her mother chose while Karen and her younger brother, George, sat on the sofa, groaning and covering their eyes. When their mother disappeared to the kitchen to tackle the dishes, George would put on the latest pop hit, and he and their father would dance themselves silly, trying to one-up each other with their latest moves. Her father had actually tried to break-dance once. The memory of him lying on the carpet with his legs up in the air, attempting to spin around on his back, still elicited giggles from her.

Karen's turn was always last. She chose a song once in a while but usually humored her father by letting him put on Louis Armstrong's “What a Wonderful World.” It was his favorite, and she liked it, too. When she was very young, she would stand on his feet as he maneuvered them both around the room. Slowly but surely, as the years passed, the song had become their anthem. They danced to it to celebrate her making the honor roll in middle school and after her high school graduation. It had been the obvious choice for their father-daughter dance at her wedding.

As she grew up and went through various stages of life, the words of the song took on new and deeper meanings. Even during times of great sadness—her years of living an ocean apart from Nick, and her mother's sudden passing from a brain aneurysm twelve years ago—the song had given her strength. It was a celebration of the beautiful things in life and the friendship and love between people. It was a song of hope.

“Here's another bite for you, Daddy. Peas this time.” Karen gently inserted the spoon in her father's mouth. “You're doing such a good job with your lunch.” Her father continued to stare straight ahead as he chewed, as if he were alone in the room.

She wasn't sure what prompted her to start talking about Nick's disappearance. True, she had left her house wanting to avoid discussing her missing husband, and she knew her father was no longer capable of carrying on or even understanding a conversation. Maybe that was just it. Though he was no longer himself, the man sitting next to her was still her father. She still loved him dearly and felt comfortable talking to him. But whatever words she uttered would disappear into the room without a reply. It was a one-sided unloading of fear and anxiety, stress, anger, and sadness, and a release she desperately needed.

“I'm so afraid, Daddy,” she choked out after she had told him everything. “I don't know if I'll ever see him again, and I don't think I can go on if he doesn't come home. I know I've got to, somehow, for you and Ben, but I can feel the depression pulling me under again. It's so much stronger this time, Daddy. Some days I wish I could just die.”

Karen stopped speaking, shocked by hearing herself say those words. It was the first time she had articulated her recent suicidal thoughts. Overwhelmed, she set the spoon down on her father's lunch tray and covered her face with her hands.

After a few minutes, as she struggled to compose herself, she realized that her father had turned to stare at her. His brow furrowed again, and he seemed to study her face. Slowly, he raised a hand and touched her wet cheek with one finger. “Louie?”

Her initial surprise at his question quickly turned into grateful elation. It was the first time in several weeks that her father had said anything meaningful. Even though it was one word, she knew what he was trying to ask.