The House on the Gulf

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  “Wrong answer! You’re sentenced to eight hours in the broiling sun!” I proclaimed, trying as hard as I could to sound mock serious and lighthearted and happy.

  I’m not sure she quite fell for it, but she giggled as she dashed back to her room to change into her swimsuit.

  I put the noodles by the door, on top of our huge tote bag of towels, sunscreen, chips, and soda. I tried not to think about the pictures I’d seen of Marcus grandchildren floating on top of these very noodles, or brandishing them like swords of their own.

  Instead I focused on what I’d say if I were the old Britt, ignorant and protected, not trying to protect anyone else.

  “Mom, why’d you have to let Bran have the car today?” I called. “We’re going to be too worn out to swim once we carry all this down to the beach.”

  “Who said anything about swimming?” Mom hollered back. “I’m just going to bask in the sun all day.”

  “Then I’ll bury you in sand,” I threatened.

  So far I was doing okay, but could I really keep this up for eight hours?

  The noodles slipped off the tote bag and I bent down to put them back. I was straightening up when I heard a key in the door and saw the door handle turning.

  My first thought was, Oh, Bran got off so he can come to the beach too. I hadn’t heard the car, but the air-conditioning was on, its subtle hum reminding me, as always, that we were breathing the Marcuses’ air. I felt a surge of relief. If Bran came along, he could act normal for both of us. I lifted a noodle, ready to hit him playfully when he walked in.

  Then the door opened. It wasn’t Bran.

  I recognized the face from hundreds of pictures I’d pored over. But she looked older now. The lines in her cheeks were deeper; her white hair drooped across her forehead, instead of rising gracefully the way I’d seen it so many times.

  “Mrs. Marcus?” I said uncertainly. Then I whispered, “Grammy?”

  Mrs. Marcus shrieked.

  “Who are you?” she asked. “What are you doing in my house?”

  I dropped the noodle and reached out to her. I think I just wanted to calm her down, but she jerked away.

  She was scared of me.

  “It’s all right,” I said, trying to sound comforting. “I know you didn’t expect anyone to be here. And I know we really shouldn’t be here but . . . Well, it’s not as bad as it seems. I’m your granddaughter.”

  I fixed her with a crooked smile, like a gift. A gift with a message attached: Hello, Grandmother-I’ve-never-met. Why don’t you love me? Can’t you start loving me now?

  Mrs. Marcus drew herself up straight, with great dignity.

  “You are not my granddaughter. I’ve heard about people like you—trying to prey on an old woman’s confusion. Well, I am not confused, so don’t even try it.”

  “No, really—,” I started to explain, but Mrs. Marcus was looking past me. She let out another shriek.

  “What have you done to my house?”

  I turned around and followed her gaze. The living room was a little messy, but only because we’d been getting ready. I’d left a T-shirt hanging half off the coffee table. One of Mom’s textbooks was open on the couch. And of course all Mrs. Marcus’s pictures were missing; every personal touch that said, “The Marcuses live here” had vanished.

  I wanted to assure her they were only hidden, not stolen, but there wasn’t time.

  Mom was coming around the corner from the hall.

  Her bright orange swimsuit glowed against her pale skin. She’d pulled her blond hair back into a ponytail. She was beautiful, as perfect as a Barbie doll. I was proud of her. I looked back at Mrs. Marcus, waiting for the cries of recognition. I held my breath. They would hug, of course, and cry, and try to explain. There’d probably be a few minutes when they forgot I was even there. But that was okay. They needed—I thought of the term the talk shows always used—they needed time to heal.

  Mom was looking blankly at Mrs. Marcus.

  “Is this one of the neighbors you’ve been helping, Britt?” Mom asked. “Can you introduce us? I’m sorry I haven’t been very neighborly—I’ve been studying so hard this summer—”

  “I am not a neighbor! This is my house!” Mrs. Marcus exploded.

  Mom looked at me in confusion. I stared back, just as confused. Had Mom and Mrs. Marcus really changed that much in eighteen years that they didn’t even recognize each other?

  “Mom, this is your mother!” I said. “And Mrs. Marcus, this is your daughter. Becky. I know you disowned her, but still—can’t you forgive her? Don’t you recognize her?” Both Mom and Mrs. Marcus were staring at me in disbelief. I wasn’t saying things right. What would Bran do? I desperately needed his help. I edged toward the phone. “I think Bran ought to come home,” I muttered.

  Mom was still gaping at me. Mrs. Marcus recovered her voice more quickly.

  “Get out of my house!” she screamed.

  Mom and I looked at each other helplessly. I punched numbers on the phone without looking. Mom stepped forward.

  “Mrs. Marquis?” she said hesitantly. “I don’t know why my daughter’s saying that. There’s some sort of mix-up here. But I’m Bran Lassiter’s mother. He’s your house-sitter, remember?” Her voice was high and unnatural. She was treating Mrs. Marcus like some senile old lady. I knew from Mrs. Stuldy that old people hate that.

  “I don’t have a house-sitter!” Mrs. Marcus yelled. “Just a yard boy, and his name is Brian, and he wasn’t supposed to come into the house—”

  “Oh, but that’s—” I wanted to explain how Brian the yard boy was really Bran, and why he’d had to lie about his name. But just then I heard Bran’s “Hello?” on the phone, and I hissed at him instead: “Mrs. Marcus is here! She and Mom are acting like they don’t even know each other!” I ran my words together because I didn’t want to miss hearing anything that Mom and Mrs. Marcus said.

  “What?” Bran said on the other end of the line, sounding much farther away than ten blocks.

  “Come home right now! It’s an emergency!” I shouted back, and hung up without waiting for his answer.

  Mom took another tentative step toward Mrs. Marcus.

  “Do you want to sit down?” she asked Mrs. Marcus cautiously. “I’m sure we can talk this out. You hired my son Bran to take care of your house while you were away. Not just the yard, the whole house. And it’s Bran, not Brian. And Bran told you—or Mr. Marquis, anyway—that my daughter, Brittany, and I would be staying here with him. I talked about everything with your husband. Is he here with you? Surely he can straighten everything out—”

  “My husband is dead,” Mrs. Marcus said icily. She did not sit down.

  “Oh,” Mom said, momentarily taken aback.

  “Mr. Marcus died last month, Mom,” I said. “Your father. I’m sorry. Bran and I should have told you.” I frowned. It did seem so clear suddenly, that we ought to have told. This was a horrible way for Mom to find out about her father’s death. “I’m sorry,” I said again. ‘And it really wasn’t Mr. Marcus that you talked to back in the spring. It was someone Bran knew from school.”

  Mom looked back and forth between me and Mrs. Marcus like we were both total lunatics. She seemed to be wondering if she could believe anything either of us said.

  “Well,” she said. “Mr. Marquis didn’t mention that anyone would be coming back at all this summer, so that’s why we’re a little surprised. . . . Perhaps you weren’t aware of the full extent of the arrangement your husband made with my son, but I can assure you we have every right to be here. Perhaps if you think back you’ll remember. . . .”

  A tiny part of me was impressed that Mom could forge ahead, continuing that calm, soothing flow of words. I could imagine her as a doctor talking to a mental patient, with just that tone. But to her own mother? Maybe that was the problem. Maybe both of her parents had been crazy.

  “You—you—,” Mrs. Marcus sputtered angrily. “How dare you—”

  I couldn’t stand it.
>
  “Why are you both acting like this?” I screamed. “Why can’t you just make up?”

  Mrs. Marcus glared at me.

  “I don’t have to put up with this! I’m calling the police!” she announced.

  Instinctively I laid my hand over the phone. Mrs. Marcus leaned forward, like she was going to come over and grab the phone from me, then she seemed to change her mind. She whirled around and walked back through the door.

  “Mrs. Marcus, wait!” I started to run after her, but Mom grabbed my arm and stopped me.

  “Hold it right there, young lady,” she said. “I don’t want you chasing her and terrifying her totally out of her wits. If she calls the police—if she’s even Mrs. Marquis in the first place—Bran will straighten things out. You need to tell me—why did you say that woman was my mother?”

  “Because she is!” Everything was so messed up, I couldn’t help sobbing. I blubbered, “Why—didn’t you—know her?” Then I was crying so hard I couldn’t talk. I collapsed into a heap on the couch. Mom seemed to give up on making sense of anything I said and just sat beside me, patting my back.

  And then Bran was there, and I was so relieved.

  “Did you tell her off?” he asked Mom. “Ever since I tracked down your parents on the Internet, I’ve been imagining something like this—I wish I’d been here.”

  Suddenly I wondered: Had Bran kind of wanted to get caught?

  I didn’t have time to think about that. Mom looked from me to Bran, then said very quietly, “Explain.”

  Bran told Mom everything he’d told me, about searching the Internet, and finding out where our grandparents lived, and deciding that our grandparents owed us a summer without rent. He explained the Marquis/Marcus lie, the fake Mr. Marquis on the phone, the extra mowing money that he’d said was for house-sitting. Through it all, Mom sat silently, listening, her fingers clutched over her own mouth. By the end, she had her entire face buried in her hands.

  Then, when Bran stopped talking, she whispered without looking up, “You found the wrong Marcuses.”

  The house was so quiet we could hear a siren far off in the distance.

  “What?” Bran said. “How could that be?”

  “When I was a kid,” Mom said, “there was another couple in town with the same name as my parents. John and Mary Marcus. They weren’t related or anything, but my parents were always getting their mail and vice versa. The bank even got their accounts mixed up once, and that was a mess. Something about their social security numbers being similar too. The other Marcuses must have moved to New York after I left. And my parents didn’t own their own property, they never had a listed phone number—you wouldn’t have seen a trace of them. So you found the other Marcuses instead.”

  Bran was silent for a minute. Then he said, “Oh.”

  Mom started shaking her head violently.

  “How could you, Bran?” She was still speaking quietly, but her voice was heavy. Screaming would have been easier to listen to. “I’ve always trusted you. I’ve always counted on you. What were you thinking? Even if you found the right family—even if they were the kind to own a house in Florida—did you really think I’d want to live in their house? To use something of theirs? Didn’t you know how much I’d hate being beholden to them for anything?”

  Mom stood up, her hands outstretched beseechingly.

  “But Mom, they owe you—,” Bran began.

  Mom whirled around furiously, coming face-to-face with Bran.

  “No, they do not! They don’t owe me a thing, and I don’t owe them anything either. That’s the deal. Don’t you see? I’m as happy to have them out of my life as they are to have me out of theirs. That’s why I never said much about them. It was better to pretend they didn’t exist.”

  “But kids need grandparents,” I said in a small voice.

  Now Mom glared at me. I sank lower into the couch.

  “Sure, if they’re good grandparents,” Mom said. She was truly yelling now. “But guess what? This isn’t a fairy tale. This is real life. Want to know the winners you got in the grandparents lottery? One set told their son, your father, to stop going to AA meetings because ‘You’re just a social drinker. What’s wrong with that?’ The other set—” Mom gulped back a sob. Tears glistened in her eyes. But she continued, her voice stronger than before. “Right after your father left me I sent a picture of you two to my parents. You were both so cute in that picture. You looked like angels. I thought, If that doesn’t bring them to their senses, nothing will. But they sent back the letter without even opening it.” The sob came out. She bit her lip and went on. “So I had to protect you. I wanted to raise you without being bitter—everything was my fault, so I wanted to save you two. But now—”

  The sound of the siren got closer. Mom gasped.

  “Oh, no. She did call the police. Of course she did. Why wouldn’t she?” Mom looked around wildly, as if she was planning to grab our things and run. But signs of our presence were everywhere. It wasn’t just my T-shirt on the coffee table and Mom’s book on the couch—our possessions had settled over the Marcuses’ like the layers of sedimentary rock we’d studied in science class. No wonder Mrs. Marcus had been horrified by the sight of her living room. It didn’t look like she belonged here anymore. It looked like we did.

  “Mom, don’t you think we can explain—,” Bran started.

  “How? ‘We didn’t mean to break into a stranger’s house. We really meant to steal from people who hate us’? I’m sure that’ll go over really well.” Now Mom sobbed for real. “I can’t believe this. You’re just like me. You made one mistake as a teenager that’s going to ruin the rest of your life. You’re going to have a criminal record. You might even go to jail. How do you think that looks on a college application?” Mom was hysterical. “Don’t you know that every time I regretted my mistakes, I thought, It’s all going to be worthwhile, because Bran and Brittany are such great kids. I’m so proud of them. I had this little dream. I thought when you two were all grown up and complete successes, I wanted to take you back to my parents and say, ‘Look how wonderfully they turned out. You were so wrong.’ And now I find out my parents were right. They always said, ‘The sins of the fathers are visited on the sons.’ And now my faults led to yours—”

  We were so paralyzed listening to Mom cry, it took a while to realize that the siren had stopped. I went over and peeked out the front blinds, but there wasn’t a police car in sight. What did they do—hide somewhere and wait for the criminals to come out? I knew that wasn’t true, because all the police cars that came to Sunset Terrace had arrived with lights flashing and sirens blaring.

  “Mom,” I said hesitantly. “I don’t think the police were coming here.”

  “Well, it’s just a matter of time,” she said bitterly.

  “Mom,” Bran protested. “Don’t be like that—”

  I couldn’t stand any more of this. I slipped out the front door and slumped on the porch, my back against the wall, my face in my hands. Behind me, I could hear Mom and Bran shouting at each other. It was like being back at Sunset Terrace, listening to other people fight. But I’d always lain in bed then thinking, I’m so glad my family’s not like that. Now it was my family. Out of habit I turned around, ready to run to Bran and say, Make everything right again. But this time he couldn’t. He was the one who had made everything wrong.

  I stared out at the deserted street, waiting for the police. Maybe I could explain everything when they came. Maybe they’d listen if I told them what a great person Bran really was, how he really didn’t mean any harm, how he was just trying to help Mom. But why should they believe me? I was guilty too. More guilty, maybe—I’d known all along that what Bran did was wrong, and I didn’t do anything about it.

  I felt so awful then that I couldn’t sit still. I stood up, and my feet carried me automatically down our sidewalk and over to the Stuldys’. I looked at every frond and flower along their driveway as if I’d never seen them before. The colors were
too bright in the harsh sunlight. I felt like I was in one of those nightmares where everything was different—backward and topsy-turvy and upside down. Only this was real life. By the time I reached Mrs. Stuldy’s porch, I was desperate for someone to comfort me. I pounded on the door.

  “Mrs. Stuldy! It’s me! Britt!”

  “Come in!” she called from the back of the house.

  I pushed my way in and dodged the extra furniture in the living room. I tried not to think about how all that furniture was there because Mrs. Stuldy’s son was in prison, and maybe Bran would be going there too. I was panting and sweating when I got to the kitchen doorway.

  And for the second time that day I came face-to-face with Mrs. Marcus.

  “You!” Mrs. Marcus practically spat. She had a cup in her hand and it wobbled, sloshing tea onto the table.

  I couldn’t say anything. I squinted, confused. Not by Mrs. Marcus—by what I was feeling. I would have expected to be angry or scared, but the emotion I was flooded with was entirely different.

  It was hope.

  I didn’t know why. It was like my body figured out something before my brain did.

  “Glad you’re here, Britt,” Mrs. Stuldy said in her most comforting voice. “Sounds like you and Mrs. Marcus have something to work out.”

  I looked from Mrs. Stuldy to Mrs. Marcus, and suddenly I understood. This was our chance. If Mrs. Marcus hadn’t called the police yet, maybe Mom or Bran could persuade her not to. Or if the police were already on the way, maybe we could talk Mrs. Marcus into not—what was it called?—pressing charges. I looked back, but the distance I’d have to travel to get back to Mom and Bran seemed impossible. And they were busy screaming at each other. Could either of them explain everything calmly to Mrs. Marcus? Bran was still too defensive. And Mom was still hoping that Mrs. Marcus herself was an impostor.

  For the first time in my life, I felt like everything depended on me.

  I slipped into a chair opposite Mrs. Marcus at the table.