"The diner?"
"I was thinking...somewhere else. Actually, I have this place I want to take you to."
"Okay. I can follow you?"
"How about I just drive us both?" As she glanced back at the club, he shook his head. "Actually, follow me, please. You'll feel safer with your own car."
There was a pause, as if she were testing her instincts. Then she shrugged.
"No...that's not necessary." She looked up at him. "I really don't think you'll hurt me."
"You can bet your life on that."
Vin escorted her over to the M6, and after she was settled in the passenger seat, he got in behind the wheel. "We're going to the Wood."
"What's that?"
"A residential part of town where every single street ends with 'wood. Oakwood, Greenwood, Pinewood." He started the engine. "It's like the city planners just ran out of inventive names at that point, and you have to wonder why there isn't a Woodwood Avenue over there."
She laughed. "I've been here for about a year and a half. I should probably know where it is."
"It's not far. Just about ten minutes."
Five blocks over from the club, he eased onto the Northway and went up one exit, getting off at Caldie's northern suburbs. As they passed street after street of postage-stamp lots, the houses were small and became even smaller as he went on.
He had memories of these neighborhoods, but not the Norman Rockwell, squeaky-clean, happy-family kind. More like him sneaking out of the house to get away from his parents and hooking up with his friends to go and drink and smoke and fight. Anything was better than being home back in those days.
God, how he'd prayed for them to go away. Or for him to leave. And he'd gotten his wish, hadn't he.
"Almost there," he said, although Marie-Terese seemed perfectly content next to him, her body relaxed, her head back against the seat rest as she looked out the window.
"I feel like you could just keep driving for hours," she murmured, "and I'd be happy just to sit here and watch the world go by."
He reached over and took her hand, giving it a squeeze. "When's the last time you had a vacation?"
"Forever."
"Ah. I know how that one is."
When he got to 116 Crestwood Avenue, he pulled into the driveway and up to a tiny two-bedroom with aluminum siding and a concrete walkway to the front door.
The place where he'd grown up had never looked so good, the bushes around the foundation trimmed and the big oak tree free of dead branches - and when there was grass growing on the ground, it would be mowed every week. He'd also replaced the roof two years ago and had the siding redone and the driveway resurfaced. It was the best-kept house on the street, if not in all of the Wood.
"What is this?" she said.
He was abruptly embarrassed, but then that was the point. Devina had never been here. No one who worked with him even knew about the place. Ever since he'd started making it, he'd shown people only what he'd been proud of.
He opened his door. "This...is where I grew up."
Marie-Terese was out of the car by the time he came around, and her eyes were going over every inch of the house, from stoop to flashing.
He took her arm and led her up to the front door. As he unlocked and opened the way, the scent of artificial lemon rolled out like a welcome mat, but it was a false greeting, as fake as the chemicals that were approximating the smell.
Together, they stepped through the jambs and he flipped on the hall light, then closed the door and cranked the heat on.
Cold. Damp. Disordered. In contrast to the exterior, the house inside was a mess. He'd left it exactly as it had been the day his parents had fallen down the stairs together: an artifact of ugliness.
"Yup, this is what I grew up in," he said roughly, looking down at the only fresh stretch of rug in whole the house - which was at the foot of the staircase. Where they'd landed after they'd fallen from the top landing.
As Marie-Terese looked it all over, he went into the living room and clicked on a lamp so she could also see the ratty sofa with the bald patches on the arms...and the low coffee table with the cigarette burns...and the bookshelves that were still filled more with his mother's empty vodka bottles than anything you could read.
Man, the light was not kind to the orange-and-yellow drapes that hung with wilted exhaustion from their wrought-iron rods or the faded rug that had a worn track leading from the couch into the kitchen.
His skin was crawling as he walked over to the archway and hit the light switch for the fixture over the stove.
What should have been Betty Crocker awesome was even worse than the living room: The Formica countertops were stained with circles left by cans that had sat for weeks, bleeding rust onto the surface. The refrigerator with its loose handle was harvest gold, or probably had been when it had been bought - now it was hard to tell how much had been intentional color choice and what was decay and dust. And the pine cabinets...what a mess. Originally they'd been glossy, but they were now dull, and the section of them that was under the old leak in the ceiling had strips of varnish bubbling up from the wood like streaks of poison ivy on skin.
He was so ashamed of it all.
This was his real estate Dorian Gray, the rotting reality he kept locked in his proverbial closet while to the rest of the world he presented only beauty and wealth.
Vin glanced over his shoulder. Marie-Terese was wandering around, her mouth slightly parted, as if she were watching a scene in a movie that had shocked the shit out of her.
"I wanted you to see this," he said, "because it's the truth and I never show it to people. My parents were both alcoholics. My dad worked as a plumber...my mom was a professional smoker and that was about it. They fought a lot and died in this house, and to be honest, I don't miss them and I'm not sorry. If that makes me a bastard, I'm okay with it."
Marie-Terese walked over to the stove. Sitting on the cooktop, between the gas burners, there was an old spoon cradle which she picked up and dusted off. "'The Great Escape."
"An amusement park up north. Ever heard of it?"
"No. As I said, I'm not from here."
He came over, looking at the cheap, touristy thing with the red logo on it. "I bought that on a school field trip. I thought maybe if the other kids saw me getting something homey for my mother, they wouldn't guess what she really was like. For some reason, the lie was important to me. I wanted to be normal."
Marie-Terese put the thing back with more care than it deserved and stayed where she was, staring at the thing. "I go to a prayer group every Tuesday and Friday night. At St. Patrick's."
Her revealation caught his breath...and he had to force himself to be cool. "You're Catholic? Me, too. Or at least my parents were married in a Catholic church. I'm lapsed and then some."
She tucked some of her hair behind her ear and took a shuddering breath. "I go...I go to the meetings because I want to be around the normal people. I want to be...like them again someday." Her eyes flashed up and met his. "So I understand. I understand...all of this. Not just the house, but why you don't bring people here."
Vin's heart thundered in his chest. "I'm glad," he said hoarsely.
Her eyes drifted around. "Yes...every bit of this, I get."
He held out his hand. "Come with me. Let me show you the rest of the place."
She took what he offered, and the warmth of her palm in his was transformative, lighting up his whole body, showing him just exactly how cold and numb he usually was. He'd been hoping she'd accept him even with this in his background. Praying.
And now that he saw she did, for some reason he wanted to thank God.
As they went up the stairs, the steps squeaked under the fetid carpet cover and the banister was about as steady as a drunk on a boat. At the top landing, he bypassed his parents' room, went down past the single bathroom, and paused in front of a closed door.
"This was where I slept."
After he opened it up, he turned on the overhead light. Tucked under the eave of the attic, his old twin bed was still covered with a navy blue quilt, and the single pillow at the head was still flat as a slice of bread. The desk where he'd done his homework, when he'd actually worked on the stuff, was still under the window, the goosenecked lamp he'd studied by cranked up to the ceiling. Over on the bureau, his Rubik's Cube and his black Ace comb and the 1989 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition with Kathy Ireland on the cover were where he'd left them last.