Page 89 of The Sign for Home

40THE UNEXPECTED VISITOR

It had been two weeks since I lost my job when I woke up around six forty in the morning from a nightmare. In the nightmare I had this old dog, like a smaller version of Snap but male, and even more mangy and pathetic looking. The dog’s name was John Wayne—for God knows what reason—and the dog was deaf and blind, which was pretty on the nose. At a certain point, John Wayne the DeafBlind dog slipped out of his harness and ran toward a busy highway, and I started chasing him in utter panic. Tears streamed down my face because I was making no progress. I kept tripping over these objects the size of toaster ovens that kept popping up every ten feet or so. At first, I had no idea what the hell they were. I just kept running and tripping, running and tripping. Finally, I realized the objects were giant, old-fashioned hearing aids emerging from the ground. The earth, it appeared, had hearing loss. I also noticed that all my tripping had injured me, and the blood was seeping through my baggy white linen pants—which were not at all my style. I thought to myself,I should just let John Wayne run onto the highway and be killed. Perhaps it’s for the best. He’s old, deaf, and blind. He’ll die soon anyway.Despite this thought, I kept running, weeping and tripping, my pants getting bloodier and bloodier, still desperate to save him.

As I was just about to fall back to sleep, I heard banging on my front door. I figured it had to be Hanne. I had drunk-dialed her the nightbefore and left a rambling, self-pitying message. Hanne could be selfishness personified, but if someone was in trouble she suddenly turned into the Mother Teresa of MILFs. I threw a towel around my naked lower half, tripped over an empty wine bottle, and barked at the door like a weary, hungover seal.

“For fuck’s sake! Don’t be such an impatient, codependent bitch! It’s not even seven in the goddamn morning!”

But when I opened the door, the person standing there, wrapped in a tassel-covered shawl, was none other than Professor Lavinia Bahr. I quickly pushed the door halfway closed to cover my semi-nakedness and wiped the drunk sleep from my face.

“Oh, shit, Professor. I’m sorry… Shoot. I thought you were someone else.”

“I assumed so,” Professor Bahr said. “I’m so sorry for coming at this hour.”

I mumbled something about how I didn’t usually use misogynistic language, except with my best friend, and then only in an ironic, campy way. Then I noticed that while she was done up in her usual fashion, her eyeliner and contouring, usually Rembrandt-perfect, looked almost haphazard, as though she hadn’t been able to pay attention or was in a rush.

“There’s something urgent I need to discuss with you,” she said, anguish in her voice.

“Okay, yeah, of course. Hey, would you mind if I, you know, got dressed? It will take me just a few minutes. Be right back.”

I slammed the door harder than I meant to, then hobbled to the sink and gargled a mouthful of water to get rid of any wine breath. I pulled on sweatpants and a T-shirt.Why the fuck is she here this early?I kicked two empty wine bottles under the couch as I skirted back to the door.

“Um… okay,” I said. “Did you need to come in? Or did you just wanna do it standing there?”

“Do what?” Professor Bahr asked, stepping inside my vestibule. Hereyes widened at the sight of my just-ransacked-by-Visigoths living room, and taking a sniff of my boozy unshowered perfume, she grimaced.

“Jesus, my man. You smell like skid row on Sunday morning.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “I wasn’t expecting visitors at sunrise. Also, I haven’t been working lately, because, you know,because. So, yep, a bit of a mess.”

Professor Bahr shook her head sadly. I steeled myself for the impending berating.

“Look, Professor,” I said. “I know what Birch and Molly are telling people.”

Professor Bahr lifted her hand to silence me.

“Please, I need to tell you something very important.” Professor Bahr took a deep, sad breath. “Arlo withdrew from my class.”

“He did?”

“Yes. Two weeks ago. I emailed Molly when he didn’t show up for a few days, but I got no reply.”

I wanted to rage, to tell her there would be no way Arlo would have quit her class, that Molly didn’t respond because she and that uncle creep were the reason he wasn’t in class. But I didn’t. I had to stay out of it. I had to stop caring.

“I’m sorry, but I really can’t—”

“Let me finish. When I discovered he’d withdrawn I was devastated. I wrote him emails, left phone messages for his uncle, but still I heard nothing. Then two days ago I received an envelope in the mail with that copy ofLeaves of GrassI had lent him. There was a letter stuck inside the front cover written very large with a Magic Marker. He told me everything. He told me about what happened to Shri, and about the lies his family told him. He said his uncle has completely cut him off from all communication with the outside world. He’s forbidden to write emails or use the internet at all.”

I wanted to feel glad that someone else finally understood the truth, but instead I felt angry that she was pulling me back into it.

“Look, Professor, I’m not working with Arlo anymore.”

“Can you please stop calling me ‘Professor’? I think we’re past that. My name is Lavinia.”

“Fine,” I said, exasperated. “Lavinia, can we please just finish this—”

“But you need to know that Arlo admitted lying to both of us about the field trip. He wrote that he just wanted to get to Shri. I’m sorry I got so angry.”

I was ready to explain how I wasn’t even supposed to be talking to anyone about Arlo, that all of it was someone else’s problem, and to ask her to just leave me the hell alone. But before I could, Lavinia shoved Arlo’s letter in front of me, pointing to a section she had circled in red.

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