2022-03-21 - Home

Una rode the bus out of Gray Harbor early on Sunday morning. It was, she realised, the first time she'd left the city limits since her arrival, more than three months before... unless of course one counted all those Dream excursions, which, she supposed, she both did and didn't.

It still felt strange to be leaving, to feel-- physically feel -- the difference, the further the bus drove from town. It hadn't been something she'd noticed, on her arrival, and maybe it wasn't even real.

But then, what was real? When you know the monsters under your bed are real, is anything actually in your imagination?

Gray Harbor's only a couple of hours from Seattle, if you're driving: less than two, on a good day, if the traffic's not so bad when you pass through Tacoma, and then hit Seattle itself. It's another tick in the 'get your damn licence' column that Una has been tabulating and also not doing anything about for months, now. She knows she knows how to drive, but...

It takes longer, when you're not driving. There's the 40 bus and the 64, but none of them are direct to Seattle: you have to change, either to a train or another bus, in Olympia. It's a five or six hour trip, and that's just to get to Seattle itself, and it's not as through travelling within Seattle is quick either.

Una wondered if she would feel a sense of longing, of homecoming, as the bus began to wind up towards Puget Sound. Instead, she began to wish she hadn't decided to come.

This wasn't home anymore, and everything felt wrong.

She stared out the window at the rain-swept highways, as they passed roadsigns pointing out exits: Tacoma, Fife, Federal Way, Kent. They passed SeaTac, where Una had wished she had reason to go for so many years, dreaming of all the places she'd like, but never had reason or resources, to visit. She tried to imagine getting off the bus and getting on a plane, intead, and flying off to... London, Paris, Moscow, somewhere, but... the idea sat wrong, somehow.

It was mid-afternoon by the time the bus pulled up, 5th Avenue and Dearborn.

Home. Not home.

Not home.

"You're here."

Lara's surprised, when she opens the door. She looks tired and drawn, even more than she ever has. She's only forty-four, but she looks at least a decade older, paper-thin like the tiniest of breezes would topple her over, blow her away.

The glimmer-glow that Una has associated with her mother since she was seventeen is still there, of course. It's more familiar, now, in a way - in the sense that Una is more used to seeing them, anyway, though how her mother's talents manifest themselves is still a mystery. Lara looks dulled, even with that.

"I wanted to talk to you."

Lara doesn't seem thrilled to see her, though that's been true for years, now, and only exacerbated by the events of the past few months. She opens the door, though, and lets her daughter in.

They're silent, sitting across the table from each other with coffee and convoluted chemistry. Una loves her mom, but she doesn't understand her.

The same can be said of Lara.

"Why?"

The question could have come from either of them: why has Una come back, now, after months of silence? why has Lara allowed the distance to grow between them; why has she not explained, why did she cut off contact with her mother, why... why.

But it's Lara who speaks first, and that leaves Una to fumble through her thoughts and try to find an answer.

"I need to understand," she says.

"I can't help you with that," says Lara.

"Why not?"

Lara says nothing.

The kitchen is quiet, save the ticking of the clock above the doorway, the one that's been there for as long as Una can remember. The silence hangs over them; Una feels weighed down by it, as if it were a blanket-- a weighted blanket, pressing and pushing and dampening everything, turning her half of the kitchen into an isolation chamber.

"I'm doing well. I'm happy. I have two roommates," she says, finally, forcing the words out and begging, with her tone and her expression, for her mother to engage. "Della and Jules. And friends. I'm going to be working in a friend's medical clinic. I bake more cookies than I know what to do with, but they always get eaten. I did karaoke, this week. I went out, with friends, and we had a great time."

"That's good," says Lara, vaguely. "Are you here to stay? Now's the time to get your job back, before the college kids start looking for summer work."

"Mom... no. I'm not moving back. I told you: I'm happy."

"It'll eat you alive."

It's been twenty-six years since Lara last step foot in Gray Harbor. She no longer remembers her reasons for leaving; the wounds have healed over, the scars begun to fade.

She remembers that she escaped. She remembers escaping, too: a pre-dawn run for the bus, one hand on her not-yet-visible pregnant belly. The feeling of relief, as the bus got further and further away.

She knows it's not a place her daughter should be.

"Mom."

"Don't go back, Una. There's nothing there for you. Literally nothing. Nothing good."

There are no answers for Una in Seattle. There's no rapprochement.

She hugs her mother goodbye, and her mother is brittle and stiff in her arms. "I'll call," she promises, and Lara nods; but they both know it won't happen.

Something snapped between them on a summer night nearly eight years ago, and there's no healer on earth who can fix it.

The bus speeds off through the gathering twilight, heading south, and the closer they get, the more Una's heart lifts:

Home.

She's coming home again.

There's no escape.