by Lisa Duffy
“Did you eat?” my father asked. “I picked you up some of the soup from Herbert’s that you like.”
Herbert’s Turkey Farm sold chicken soup that tasted and smelled like it was made right at home. But the farm was on the edge of town, nowhere near anything. A long drive for a bowl of soup.
“I left a note that I was eating at Betsy’s. Didn’t you see it?” I said, feeling awful.
“I didn’t get it until I got home. I put the soup on the stove just in case you wanted some. I’ll eat with you if you’re still hungry.” He gestured to the table. He’d set the table with two place mats, a bowl on each next to a napkin and spoon.
I followed him into the kitchen. I wasn’t hungry. I wanted nothing more than to go in my room and shut the door. But I knew he hadn’t eaten a thing, and he wouldn’t if I didn’t sit there with him. He looked so thin to me lately. His belt had been hanging on the back of the bathroom door the other night, and I saw that he’d made a hole in it to make it smaller.
I filled the bowls, brought them to the table, and sat across from him.
He dipped his spoon in the soup, brought it to his mouth, wincing when he swallowed. Then he placed his spoon on the napkin and sat back in his seat.
“Don’t you like it?” I asked.
“Not much of an appetite lately. I’m glad you’re feeling better. You had me worried all day.”
I swallowed hard, thinking of him working a long day on the boat and lifting crate after crate for hours after that, and then getting in his truck and driving a half hour in the other direction from home just to bring me the soup he knew I liked.
He worried all day while I was sailing. Sailing in a boat he’d given me years ago when I’d asked him to teach me to sail. We’d stayed in the river at first because I was afraid of the dark water, fearful of how far it stretched in front of the Salt House.
But after a month, my father convinced me to go out in the bay, reassuring me that we were just fine. That he wouldn’t let anything happen to me. That it was his job to keep me safe.
We sailed in the harbor all of July. By August, we were past the breakwater. The last sail we took that summer, we were so far out in the Gulf of Maine, I couldn’t see land.
Across the table, my father caught my eye and winked. The bowls of soup between us. The air around us filling with the smell of home.
14
Kat
Grandma was going back to Florida in a couple of weeks and moving in with Roger, and Mom was saying that she hadn’t heard anything as ridiculous as that in a long time. They were in the kitchen, and when Mom said this, Grandma patted my arm, in a soothing sort of way, like I was the one getting spoken to.
My cereal was getting soggy, but I didn’t want to crunch too loud and miss something. I hadn’t seen Mom this fired up since that night she fought with Dad.
“Tell me you’re not serious,” Mom said.
“Why would I say it if I wasn’t serious?” Grandma gave her a puzzled look.
“You’ve only been dating for a year!”
“We’ve been dating for a year and a half, and I’ve known him for ten. Longer than I knew your father before I married him. For the record.”
I’d never met my grandfather. He died when mom was Jess’s age, but this seemed to make Mom even madder.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means time is irrelevant when it comes to love. I knew your father ten minutes, and I wanted to marry him. And we’d still be going strong if he was here.”
“But why now? I mean, it’s sort of out of the blue.” Mom squeezed the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. It was a habit she got from Grandma, but I didn’t think it was the right time to point that out.
“Well, because he asked,” Grandma said. “Just last night. He asked and I said yes.” She took a sip of her coffee, winked at me over the rim of the mug. “I’ve lived alone for thirty years. A lot of those years I spent missing your father. There wasn’t room for anyone else. And now I feel that there is. And you know what I always say. So much of life is just finding that balance. The balance of holding on and letting go.”
Mom put her chin in her hand. “You do say that. All the time, you say it.”
“Well, I say it because it’s true. Those words helped me enormously after your father died.” Grandma looked at me. “Did your mother ever tell you this story?”
“Here we go,” Mom said.
“She was sixteen,” Grandma said to me, pointing at Mom. “And dead set on not moving out of Alden, away from her friends. I didn’t have a job, any family of my own up here. My parents were livid that I wasn’t coming back home to Alabama with their only grandchild. Livid! My father could have bought and sold Alabama twice over with his money, and he told me he wouldn’t give us a dime unless we moved back. It didn’t matter to them what was best for you. Or me. I was almost forty years old by then. Can you imagine moving back home after you’ve had a husband and a child. A life!”
I didn’t know if this was a question, but she was looking at me, so I shook my head. I heard Mom let out a long breath.
“So one day the phone rings, right in the middle of this whole mess, and it was your uncle Pete, Petey we called him, your grandfather’s brother. He died soon after in a car accident. Anyway, he was asking how I was holding up, and I just lost it. I mean, crying and carrying on, talking about how I was tired of fighting with my parents, exhausted of explaining why I needed to do what I was doing. Finally when I was done, he just said in the simplest of ways into the phone, ‘Then stop.’ And I said, ‘Well, stop what?’ and he says, and I’ll never forget this, ‘Well, stop explaining, Barb. It’s your life, after all.’ ”
Grandma got up from the table and poured herself another cup of coffee from the pot on the stove, held it out to Mom, who covered her cup, shook her head.
“So anyway,” Grandma continued after she sat down again. “I hung up speechless. Just speechless. I was a forty-year-old woman asking permission to live her life.” She stopped talking, and I waited, but when she looked up at me, she smiled, finished with her story.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “What does that have to do with that thing that you say. About balance or whatever.”
“Oh. There was a book of poetry on the table that I was reading at the time, and it was open to that page. Sort of a sign, I think.”
Mom lifted her eyebrows at me, and then looked at Grandma. “Are you getting married too?”
“Oh, I suspect,” Grandma answered. “But one thing at a time. I don’t want to get overwhelmed.”
“No, that’s prudent,” Mom said.
“You make Jess go to her room when she’s sarcastic,” I told her. I didn’t know what prudent meant, but the way she said it was definitely sarcastic.
Mom groaned. “I’m sorry for being sarcastic. I’m just surprised. I know you told me a few weeks ago that you were serious about Roger. I just love having you here. I thought maybe you might reconsider moving back. Even spend half the year here. Lots of people do that—”
Grandma held up her hand, interrupting her. “I love spending time with all of you. But I despise Maine. You know this. Your father loved it here, so I lived here. And I visit for all of you. But that’s where my ties end.”
“You’re so dramatic,” Mom said.
“And you hate change,” Grandma said, folding her arms across her chest.
“Can we go now?” I asked.
“Go where?” Grandma asked.
“My fun day,” I told her.
She looked from me to Mom.
“I told Kat we’d spend the day together,” Mom explained. “Do whatever she wants. Her choice.”
“Anything?” I asked.
“Anything that is within driving distance and not dangerous.”
“Well, then. Where to?” Grandma asked me.
“I wanted to go to the water park.”
I looked out the window at the rain, the sky bright fro
m a flash of lightning.
“Dangerous,” Grandma said.
“How about a movie?” Mom asked.
“Can I get gummy bears? The big box?”
She never let me eat them because they stuck to my teeth and caused cavities, or so the dentist said. Her mouth twisted, but she nodded glumly.
“Okay,” I said, and hopped off the chair while Mom went to get dressed.
Grandma motioned for me to come over to her. “After the movie, tell her you want to go to Bert’s for ice cream, and then to the Salt House,” she whispered.
The Salt House was my favorite place on the planet. Well, besides the water park, but that was out anyway because of the rain.
“But she’s says no every time I ask her to go there.”
“It’s within driving distance and it’s not dangerous,” she said, then looked back to her newspaper, as if she hadn’t said anything at all.
“Why doesn’t she like it there anymore?”
“Oh, she likes it plenty. Now, go. Your fun day awaits.”
Mom was quiet in the car, and when I asked her from the backseat if we could stop by and see Daddy, she looked at me in the rearview mirror like she was surprised I was sitting there.
“He’s on the boat, Kat,” she said.
I looked out the window at the rain coming down; the fog was so thick, I could see only the outline of the stores as we passed them.
“He doesn’t usually go out in the rain.”
Mom shook her head. “He shouldn’t be out there today, coughing like that last night. I argued with him this morning when he went to leave, but he went anyway.”
“He said he feels okay. I asked him last night when he was reading me a book. But then he fell asleep, and he was making weird noises like he was having a bad dream.”
“Your father doesn’t know how to admit he doesn’t feel well. He thinks it makes him look weak.”
“Daddy weak? That’s crazy. His muscles are like BAM!” I flexed my arm and held my hand up to where Dad’s muscle would be.
Mom smiled, and I thought it would be a good time to bring up what Grandma said.
“Remember you said we could do anything I wanted today?”
“I think I did say that.”
“So we’ll go to the movies.”
“On our way as we speak,” she said.
“And then we’ll get ice cream,” I added.
“Of course.”
“And then we’ll go to the Salt House.” I held my breath after I said it.
She looked at me in the mirror.
“Please,” I begged.
“Kat, no.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Well, to start, it’s not open.”
Every summer Mom spent an entire weekend “opening” the Salt House.
The trunk of her car would be filled with cleaning supplies, clean sheets, towels, and grocery bags. Dad stuck to the outside, putting the screens on the windows and cutting the grass.
I knew this because I begged them to take me one year, and it was the most boring day of my life.
Mom kept kicking me out of the house because she was cleaning it, and Dad said he had special jobs for me, but what he really meant was yard work. I spent most of the day swinging on the hammock by the water wishing I’d gone with Jess to the town pool.
“We can still go and just see it. We didn’t even go at all last summer.”
“Yes, we did. You remember we went and took pictures in the beginning of the summer when they tore out all the walls and put new ones up?”
“I mean after that,” I said.
“Well, you know, it was a busy summer . . . with everything that happened.” Her voice faded away.
I could tell by her face that she meant Maddie. She died the day I got out of school for summer. After that, Mom didn’t want to do much of anything. Dad brought me to the house once after that. It looked the same on the outside, the yellow shingles still chipped, but the grass around it was so overgrown, it looked like you could get lost in it.
Dad had mowed the lawn while I walked from room to room. The walls were gray, and it just looked lonely and empty. All of our stuff was packed in boxes in the front hall, and the first one I opened had all of Maddie’s cups, with scrapes on the part you drink out of because she was just getting teeth and liked to chew on them. I closed the box and went down to the hammock until Dad was done.
But that was a year ago. It seemed like more than a year ago. It seemed like forever. And I told her that now.
She looked in the mirror and sighed. “Okay. How about this. I’m not ready to go today—”
I started to argue, but she held up her hand.
“But soon. I promise.”
We were in the parking lot of the movie theater, and she pulled in a space and turned off the car.
She gestured to the front seat. “Come up here.”
I climbed over, and she pulled me against her, her arms around my middle. I felt her chin on the top of my head.
“Question for you,” she said.
I tilted my head back and looked at her.
“There are a lot of memories for us in that house.” She played with a piece of my hair. “Of lots of things.”
She swallowed hard enough that I heard it.
“I mean lots of memories of your sister. Of Maddie,” she said in a voice that was loud, louder than it needed to be in the small space we were in, like she was forcing out the words before they slipped away.
“Isn’t that a good thing?” I asked.
She gave me a little smile. “It is a good thing,” she agreed. “I want to make sure you’re ready.”
“Ready for what?” I asked.
“Well, sometimes memories can make you happy. And sometimes, they can make you sad.” Her fingertips touched my cheek when she said this. Like she was brushing away invisible tears. “I just want to make sure you’re ready, that’s all.”
“I’m ready.” I nodded fast to prove it.
She didn’t look convinced. And then she looked out the windshield at nothing and started to get the faraway look that meant she was going to get very quiet. I pulled my knees underneath me so I was taller in the seat and stuck my head in front of where she was looking.
“Mom? I’m ready,” I said loudly.
Her eyes focused on me and she let her breath out, like she’d been holding it.
“Well, then. I think I need to be brave like you.”
“You’re brave, Mommy,” I told her, resting my head on her shoulder. “The bravest mommy in the whole world.”
When I looked up, she was smiling down at me. It wasn’t a happy smile, but it wasn’t sad either. We sat like that for a minute until Mom said we should go to get a good seat.
We were walking through the parking lot, holding hands, when I realized we had talked about Maddie.
And for the first time in as long as I could remember, Mom hadn’t cried.
15
Hope
In the kitchen, Jess was on the phone.
“I’ll see you soon,” she said before she hung up, her voice chirpy, a sparkle in her eye when she turned around.
“Alex?” I asked her.
The cordless phone bobbled in her hands, slipped and clanged against the counter. She smothered it as though it were a football tumbling in the grass. After she placed it securely in the holder, she looked at me. I was smiling, but a look of panic crossed her face. I felt my smile fade.
“It was Bets. She’s home for the weekend.”
“Oh. That’s nice. I know you’ve missed her.”
She watched me warily.
“So, Alex,” I said. “I heard you know each other.”
I didn’t tell her it was Kat who told me about them. How she’d seen them having lunch on the hood of Alex’s truck in the parking lot in front of her camp. Kat and Jess got along great for the most part. But when they argued, it was usually Jess telling Kat to mind her own business. Now, I didn’
t want Jess to be angry with Kat.
She shrugged. “He works at the sailing camp next to the shop.”
“And you met how?”
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t remember. I think I was riding my bike and I hurt my ankle. He gave me a ride home.”
“You were riding your bike way over there?”
“I just said I don’t remember. It was, like, forever ago. Why does it even matter?”
“I’m just surprised you never mentioned him.”
“Maybe I didn’t mention him because I knew you’d act like this,” she accused.
“Act like what?”
“Like this. Like me hanging out with a boy is this huge deal.”
“Well, it is sort of a big deal. I mean, you haven’t had a boyfriend before.”
“He’s not my boyfriend. Even if I wanted him to be, since Dad treats me like I’m two years old.”
“Jessica. Come on. I’ll admit he’s a little overbearing when it comes to you and boys, but you can always talk to me.”
She scowled at me. “Maybe I didn’t want to. I wasn’t aware that I had to report everything that happens in my life. I mean, it’s not like you don’t have your own stuff.”
“Stuff? What kind of stuff?” I was baffled, taken back by her anger.
“Things you keep to yourself. Things you don’t say.”
“Can you give me an example?”
“I don’t know. Like yesterday. You told Grandma that you liked her date nut bread even though I saw you cover most of it under your napkin. Then you threw it in the trash when she left the room.”
“There’s a difference between saying something to spare someone’s feelings and willfully withholding information.” My voice was strained now, my patience dwindling.
“Okay. Then what about Kat? You withheld information from her,” she said. “Is that different from me withholding telling you about Alex?”
It took a minute for the words to process in my head. It was as if I’d been expecting to hear them all along—how could I not have expected to hear them!—but they still came as a shock. They rippled through my body. The hair on my arms stood up. Time stopped.
