But growing up in that house, the antiques were the least of their problems.
Winter 2016
8½ years after the funeral
Chapter Two
Alice stood barefoot in the kitchen, stirring a gigantic pot of chili. The smell of freshly cut cilantro from her garden, still resting next to her on a wooden cutting board, mixed with tomatoes and the smooth air of a mild Georgia winter that flowed through the open windows.
She breathed it all in, trying to settle her stomach before dinner. She had barely eaten since a lawyer rang their doorbell a few days ago with the contract her mother had signed last spring, selling the house where Alice grew up and slating it for demolition two weeks from tomorrow. She didn’t fear the wrecking ball. In fact, Alice had imagined it gliding into the too-quiet brick colonial like an eagle in flight, exploding the pain and loneliness of her childhood along with the Corinthian columns out front. Picturing herself stepping inside her parents’ house, though—that’s how she thought of it, never her house or “home”—sent her back to the fridge to pour another glass of wine.
She had entered the house less than a dozen times since graduating from the University of Georgia at twenty-two, and never beyond her mother’s elegant parlor off the foyer. Since her mother left, the house had ticked as an unavoidable bomb in Alice’s mind, one that she’d wanted to evade for another few months. “Procrastinating,” Walker had called it.
Alice moved around the kitchen island, picking the last chili ingredients from among the scattered papers, mail, outdated report cards, dog treats, energy bars, pens, and spare change. As she walked past her open shelving crowded with knickknacks and frames filled with mismatched art, Alice prepared herself for tomorrow by mentally walking through the house of her childhood, with its pristine antiques and silver frames from Tiffany’s.
The sound of a car on the driveway cut through the neighborhood’s quiet, the reverent hush Walker had used to convince Alice they should buy the house, even though the stone facade and gated neighborhood were grander than she’d envisioned for the house where she would raise her children. She restacked items in one corner of the island, turned down the music, and switched it from Johnny Cash to REM.
Normally, she valued the quiet time to mince, stir, and drink wine before the family piled in, especially since she was never alone at work anymore. In the last few years, her tiny cabin on the lake had become a full-fledged research and outreach center, complete with donors to impress, research assistants to coach, and staff meetings to call. The Georgia Creekside Center was a dream of hers, a success, yet she couldn’t help but miss the glorious early years as the founder and only employee, wading through the water with a teetering Caitlin. Today, though, Alice was eager for the family’s noise.
“Who’s that?” she said to Buddy. She walked to the door as the golden retriever slipped on the hardwoods with his enthusiasm.
“How was your day?” Alice asked her husband. But when he leaned in to kiss her, she couldn’t stomach acting like normal, not today, and turned the other way as if to check the simmering pot.
In answer to the rejection, Walker ignored her question. “Isn’t it a little cold for the windows to be open?” He walked over to shut them without waiting for an answer.
Without another word, he stopped at the fridge to grab a beer and went to sit on the gray suede couch in the living room. His tennis shoes, still muddy from running up and down the sides at Robbie’s game, clunked to the floor, and the television flipped on.
After a hug from Alice, Robbie sat on the hardwood floor with the back of his too-clean soccer jersey against the dark island cabinets and Buddy propped under his thighs. He retrieved a cursive practice sheet from his backpack and started to draw the letters carefully.
Alice dialed Caitlin and struggled to balance the phone on her shoulder while opening a bag of shredded cheese.
“Where are you? I made chili. Weren’t you going to come home earlier tonight so we could have Sunday family dinner?”
“I’m at Chelsea’s. Maybe it’s better if I eat here.”
Alice sighed. “I feel like I haven’t seen you.” Since the day Caitlin announced she would apply to NYU and Walker forbade it, her waking hours at the house had dwindled to near zero.
“Will you come if I tell him not to bring it up?”
“Fine. Be home soon.”
Finally, a crisis Alice knew how to solve.
Alice retrieved a beer from the fridge as a bargaining chip and walked to the family room. “If you keep this up,” she said to Walker, “she’s going to be living at Chelsea’s pretty soon.”
“We’re not letting her live at her girlfriend’s house.” He turned his eyes away from Mad Money. “The farthest I’m willing to go is Duke. It was good enough for us, right?”
She handed him the beer, and he twisted off the cap.
“Promise me you’ll drop it for tonight.”
He nodded and looked back at the TV.
When Caitlin came in ten minutes later, she and Robbie set the table as he explained the intricacies of his teacher’s post-marriage name change: “She was Miss Smith, but now we’re supposed to call her Mrs. Hersch. Isn’t that weird? Last week, she changed the name on her desk and everything.”
Caitlin nodded. “Very weird.”
The family sat at a dinged-up six-seater wooden table in the kitchen with Buddy at Alice’s feet. Like most of the house, the room felt homey but a few years too worn, the walls a warm yellow that was no longer in style and made the entire room look dark. For years, Alice had put off Walker’s pleas to work with a decorator to mimic the magazine decor of his colleagues. And since Walker’s promotion to partner at a top Atlanta law firm a few months ago, he insisted a complete remodel was the only solution. She imagined her plants in their mismatched pots and the children’s artwork gone in favor of stylized accessories, and her stomach twisted again, remembering what tomorrow held.
Alice and Walker joined hands, but Caitlin lingered before she grabbed her father’s hand. He squeezed and smiled at her. Caitlin closed her eyes.
“Dear God, Our Father,” Walker said, and on cue the family bowed their heads. “We thank you for the gifts we are about—” The telephone rang, and Caitlin hopped up to grab it.
“It’s Mimi,” she said, bringing the still-ringing phone over to Alice. Alice considered not answering, but clicked the phone on for the last ring: “Hello?”
“Hello? With whom am I speaking?” her mother said, voice dripping honey, as if she had dialed a friend and a sweet-voiced child answered instead.
“It’s Alice. Your daughter.” She tried to mimic her mother’s sweetness.
“What?” her mother said too loudly.
In the background, a nurse said: “Your daughter, Alice. You wanted to call and talk to her, Mrs. Tate.”
“Yes. Robinson is going to check you out after third period. We’re leaving for Florida at 2:00 p.m. sharp. I’ll hold you both accountable if you’re late, and we’ll go on to the beach without you. Is that understood?”
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”
Alice closed her eyes and tried to gather her patience. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Good girl.” Maura hung up.
Her mother had returned them both to this moment—the last shred of normalcy before everything with Rob fell apart—more and more frequently in the last months, as if Maura’s brain was a speeding train that knew it was about to hit a wall, as if deep inside her subconscious, she remembered about the house and its sale and demolition, as if she remembered Alice would finally be forced to go inside. But the call was only another lapse in memory, even if it felt like a victory lap to the decades-long battle of stubbornness that Alice and Maura had fought over the house.
The battle over the house intensified every year. First, when Alice came to pick up her mothe
r from the house, she would take longer getting ready as Alice waited in the driveway, to see if she would come inside to fetch her. When that didn’t work, Maura doubled her standards for Christmas every year in a silent plea for relocation to her own home. The silver and lace tablecloth, tall burning candles, and crystal wineglasses waged war with Alice’s scratched leather-backed dining chairs, but neither Maura nor Alice voiced the battle out loud. At times like those, Richard had always acted as the buffer between Alice and her mother. He died five years ago, but she still missed him.
“How was she?” Caitlin asked, while Walker spooned sour cream into his chili.
“Sounded like a bad day.”
They ate in silence for a few minutes, forgetting the unsaid prayer. Robbie raised a full spoon above his bowl and let the chili splash back down.
“You know the rules,” Walker said to him. “Eat or you’re not leaving this table.”
Robbie rested his chin on the table and eyed the full bowl.
“If you need me tomorrow, call my cell, instead of the Center. I’ll be at Mimi’s house all day.”
“Why?” Robbie said.
“Since she’s living at her apartment now”—that’s what she and Walker called the nursing home—“I’m going to get all of her stuff out, so they can build a new house there.”
“Why?”
“Because Mimi’s house is old,” Walker said.
“How long will it take?”
“Only a week.” Alice hoped, although she had two before the demolition, if she needed more time to figure out what to do with her mother’s endless collections and antiques. She had left Grace, the Center’s assistant director, with dozens of tabbed folders and lists of what would need to be done while she was gone. The winter months were always the slowest because fewer school groups traveled to stay at the on-campus aquatic camp. But Alice wanted to prepare for their busiest months in the spring when the professors she worked with would rush to analyze the year’s data in time for grant deadlines. She planned to call to check in every day, even though she promised Grace she wouldn’t.
“Mom, can I please be excused?” Robbie asked.
Alice nodded, and he stood up from the table. “But don’t let Buddy come,” he said. “He’ll walk all over my puzzle again.”
She placed her foot on Buddy’s fur to keep him steady.
They ate quietly for a couple more minutes before Caitlin and Walker started into a heated discussion about something happening in the Middle East. “If people would stop blowing themselves up,” Walker said. Alice stopped listening.
She supposed forty-two was a little old to fear a house so much, to avoid a whole section of her life. But dwelling on memories of her time there created a sinking feeling in her chest as if her heart was a hole with gravity strong enough to suck in her other organs. She pictured the house—and the tree house where she and Rob would play—alone on the empty street, lots cleared of old houses, a vortex that inhaled the mailbox and bugs and their childhood pets and her mother’s hatpin collection, and finally, inhaled the family itself, with only Alice left holding onto the edge—
“Mom, he’s doing it.”
“Doing what?” Walker threw his hands up in the air.
“Let’s not fight tonight. We all agreed not to talk about NYU, right?”
“It wasn’t about NYU,” Walker said.
“I said I think I want to major in English or creative writing and minor in women’s studies, wherever I go, but probably at NYU, and he said—”
“I said I didn’t think the job opportunities would be good for that, but even with that degree, she could still go to law school later. I really don’t think the minor is a good idea; she shouldn’t be broadcasting it.”
“What’s that supposed to—”
“I work in the corporate world. I know—”
“Ready, Dad, say it with me.” Caitlin brought her hands in front of her chest. “Les”—clap—“bi”—clap—“an.”
“No!” He glanced behind him to the wall, as if they were in a public restaurant. “No, that’s not what I meant. I guarantee no one at my firm took women’s studies. That’s all I’m saying. Plus, I am paying for this crap, if you remember.”
It wasn’t completely true, but Alice didn’t contradict him. Meanwhile, Walker reached for a piece of corn bread and took a large bite.
“Forget it.” She turned to Alice. “I need to work on some stuff anyway.”
“Love you so much, honey!” Walker called as the sound of Caitlin’s combat boots on the stairs echoed through the house. He turned to Alice with a smile, as if the last thing he said was all that mattered. Upstairs, the music for the play Caitlin was directing at school seeped bass beats and electric notes down the stairs. Alice prayed the premiere on Saturday would be the end of the house-shaking vibrations.
“You just can’t help yourself, can you?” Alice said.
“Guess not.” He stood up, carrying his beer to the basement.
Alice sat surrounded by half-eaten bowls of homemade chili.
* * *
As Alice brought the bowls to the sink, she attempted to convince herself that going to the house was a positive, as she always did with the things she dreaded most. Maybe it was coming at a good time since she could use some alone time to think. She could run over the other item on her procrastination list—her marriage—instead of looping again through a conversation with Maura from last Sunday’s visit to “her apartment.” She’d spent so much time with her mother in her head in the last week that Alice gave herself a pass for today’s weekly visit.
That day, her mother was in one of Alice’s favorite forms: a friendly stranger, not stuck in the past or unhappy at her confusion.
“Why would a young lady like you come talk to an old lady like me?” her mother said—teasing, friendly.
“Same reason you would want to talk to me.”
“And why do you think that is?”
“It’s nice to have someone to talk to. So you don’t get lonely.”
“Is that why you think old people like to talk to young people? Bless your heart! I’m not lonely. I have myself, and I’m the best friend I’ve ever had.”
Alice laughed. Her mother was charming, something Alice could see easily now that had eluded her when they lived in the same house.
“We like to talk to young people to share our wisdom. It makes us feel like all our pain was worth it, if only the next generation could learn from it. Of course, young people are always too stupid to listen. I was the same way. What problem could you use an old lady’s pain and wisdom on?”
Did she dare?
“Well, one,” Alice began, monitoring her mother’s face for any switch in mood. “I found out yesterday my husband has been having an affair. He doesn’t know I know. I…” She guessed her mother wouldn’t understand texting or the subtext of an eggplant, then donut emoji, not to mention all the creative synonyms for what Alice had only heard her mother refer to as it. Alice pushed the words from her mind. “I found letters they wrote to each other.”
Her mother clucked her tongue. “Difficult, but nothing you can’t handle,” Maura said.
Alice looked at her mother, hoping for a second that she knew to whom she was speaking, if only to have the confidence her mother had in her.
“Are you satisfying him?”
“Mam-ura!” Alice said, attempting to change to her mother’s name mid-exclamation.
“At least you haven’t gotten fat. What color is that lipstick though? It does nothing for you.”
“It’s ChapStick.”
“Exactly.” Maura smiled, as if her point had been proven. “What will you do?”
Alice shifted in her chair, crossing her legs the other way.
She knew suddenly why she had chosen her mother, an unlikely confidante for this se
cret: her mother’s generation saw marriage as a logical piece of machinery, a system of levers and pulleys that, with a quick repair, could run smoothly. Success was measured only in that the machine kept running; happiness was inconsequential.
“I don’t know.” Wasn’t it a sign that she’d let that view of marriage seep into her own thinking, that she could utter these words—“I don’t know”—so levelheadedly? That after seeing the texts, she had promptly left the room to take Buddy out and continue with her morning?
“Are there children?”
“Two. Caitlin is seventeen and Robbie is eight.”
“Put it in a box in your mind, lock the box, and put it on the highest shelf.” Maura looked directly at Alice, as if wondering if she had formed the right words to reflect the sentiment. “You understand what I am trying to say, don’t you?”
Alice nodded. It was the advice she knew her mother would give, but why then had she wanted to hear it so badly?
They sat in silence for a few minutes.
“I like that name, Robbie. Is it short for anything?”
She watched her mother carefully. “No. Just…Robbie.”
“How nice.”
* * *
Alice started the dishwasher, and her mind came back to the empty, now clean(ish) kitchen. The memory of Walker’s texts lingered though; the memory of reading them at the island joined the rest of the room’s chaos and to-do’s. She grabbed her house key and went to the garage to stare at Walker’s pristine (leased) Audi, sitting innocently in the garage with its buffed shine.
She knew what she was supposed to feel as she constantly replayed the conversation with her mother: hurt, enough to burst into tears, or even better, rage. Like the kind she had seen last summer at the neighborhood pool when a wife, whom she recognized from the women’s events she forced herself to go to for fundraising contacts, had marched over to her own husband, smoking cigars with a group of fathers and drinking a beer, slapped him in the face, and told him he deserved to be castrated. Alice wanted to summon that feeling, but instead, she felt nothing.
How to Bury Your Brother Page 3
