by Lily King
I cannot seem to get on my bike and return to Water Street, even though it feels like I have come onstage too late to be anything but the straight man to their summer antics.
In the early evening, without my father knowing, I call my mother.
“Can I stay another night?”
“Of course. I’m glad it’s going so well. All summer I worried.”
“Worried about what?”
“I just worried, that’s all.”
“What do you mean?”
“You two were so close.”
After a while she says, “Daley?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you sure you want to stay?”
“Yeah,” I say, but my throat is tight.
“Oh, honey. Maybe you should come back here. You’ll see him on the weekend. You’ll see him every weekend. And things will fall back into place with him.”
“Mrs. Tabor is here a lot.”
“Mmm,” she says, which means she already knew that. “Patrick’s one of your best friends.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Isn’t he?” She’s doing something, painting her nails maybe. The phone keeps slipping away from her mouth.
Patrick follows my father around like one of his dogs. It isn’t the same. Nothing is the same. “How’d your interviews go?”
“Pretty well. One in particular.”
“What?”
“This child advocacy lawyer needs an assistant. He’s a good guy. He helps children.”
“When will you know if you got the job?’
“Within a week, he said. But I’ve got two more interviews tomorrow. I’ll be home by four. Come home for dinner, okay? I miss you.”
“I miss you, too.”
I hang up and nearly pick it up again to ask her to come get me. Then Patrick calls for me, saying we’re going to Peking Garden for dinner.
I’ve come here a lot with my parents. We always got a booth along the wall and had a waiter named Roy, the owner’s son. My father would order the moo goo gai pan just because he loved to say it to Roy in a funny voice. My mother would get a drink with a bright paper parasol so I could play with it. I liked to pretend it belonged to my spoon and that the fork was in love with her, though he could never see her face behind the parasol. I never suspected we all weren’t having a good time.
There are six of us now—Frank showed up again right at dinnertime—so they put us at a round table in the middle. Mrs. Tabor is wearing a shimmery green dress that falls to her ankles and has wide sleeves that droop onto her plate and into the small bowls of sauces without her noticing. She and my father order a new drink every time Roy comes to the table. Roy winks at me but he acts like he doesn’t know my father, who is quiet tonight, his head hung low over his plate, his eyes casting around, seeing little. I wonder if he misses sitting in our booth, the three of us on a Sunday night.
Patrick and I order spareribs. We slather on the sweet-and-sour sauce and compete to see who can gnaw down to a clear bone quicker.
“You two are revolting,” Frank says.
My father looks at me hard. “You ever see your mother eat a piece of chicken?”
“No,” I lie.
He breaks into a fake smile and chuckles. I can tell there is nothing funny about how my mother eats chicken. “She’d eat everything—tendons, cartilage, the works. Then she’d crack open the bone and suck it dry. I’m not kidding.” He shakes his head. “She was a beauty.”
“Now you’re the chicken bone,” Mrs. Tabor says, pleased with her analogy.
My father isn’t pleased. He mutters something I can’t hear and tries to gesture to Roy, who turns and goes into the kitchen without acknowledging him.
Elyse, reaching for a different crayon, knocks her water straight into my father’s lap.
He leaps up and screams “Goddammit!” as loud as he’s able, as if he’s forgotten we’re in a restaurant. “Goddammit! Goddammit!” His yellow eyes in his purple face flash from Elyse to Mrs. Tabor. The restaurant is silent. Roy stands stunned by the fish tank.
Mrs. Tabor starts laughing.
“Fuck you, you little bitch. Fuck you!” He picks up a chair like he’s going to throw it at her, but it just shakes in his hands until Roy’s father comes and puts it back down and wipes up the spill. Mrs. Tabor never quite wipes the smirk off her face.
My father sometimes irritated my mother by complaining too much about Hugh Stewart, his boss at the brokerage firm. She’d tell him to hush and sometimes he might say Hush yourself, but that’s about as heated as they ever got in front of me. He yelled, but it was never at her; it was always about someone else. And when she was mad at him, she squeezed her lips together and looked away. I wonder what Roy and his father think has happened to my father, who used to chat easily with them up at the counter while he was paying the bill.
Elyse continues to color in her place mat and Frank looks blankly at the wall ahead of him, but Patrick is crying. I take slow breaths and count backward from a thousand in my head. Roy slips a blue parasol beside my spoon. It has a thin band of paper around it, keeping it shut.
On the way home, Elyse asks my father to sing her favorite song. He seems to know what she means because he starts singing: “Mr. Rabbit, Mr. Rabbit, your ears are mighty …” He pauses and she fills in—blue—and he continues: “Yes, my Lord, I’ve been pooping in my shoe.” Elyse tries to join in but she’s laughing too hard, so my father sings the chorus alone:
“Every little creature’s gotta shine shine shine.
Every little creature’s gotta shine.”
It’s hard to leave the next afternoon. I want to go, but it feels awful, like I’m leaving my father all over again. I keep putting it off, letting Elyse talk me into a game of Candyland, making water balloons with Patrick.
They’re in the sunroom when I go to say goodbye.
“I’m going to hit the road now.”
“All right,” my father says, looking at Mrs. Tabor. “See ya.”
I go over and kiss him on the cheek. He keeps his eyes fixed on Mrs. Tabor and does not kiss back. “I’ll be back Friday.”
“When school starts, come with Patrick in the car pool. I think it’s Mrs. Utley on Fridays,” Mrs. Tabor says.
I don’t know if I should kiss her. “Okay. Thanks for everything.”
“You’re welcome.”
As soon as I cross the threshold, my father begins his hoarse whisper and Mrs. Tabor shushes him and then begins whispering, too.
At the end of the driveway I almost turn my bike around. I picture going back in the sunroom, asking if I can stay just one more night. But once I’m out on the main road, my legs start pumping the pedals hard and I don’t even look at the front of the house as I whiz past.
I feel light and free as my bike drops down the long hill into town. I flip it into the hardest gear and pedal the whole way down, moving faster than I ever have on my bike, not bothering to look around for cars turning in or out of side streets and driveways. A few hippies hanging out on a bench in the park shout something to me but I’m going too fast to hear. I rise up from the seat going over the train tracks. The bike bucks and twists but I stay on. I pass the gas station and the sub shop, the kids on the steps of Bruce’s (who make no comment today), the gift shop, the library, the Congregational church, and the chowder restaurant. This is still my town. I’m still home.
I remember Neal. I forgot to ask Patrick about him. How did I forget? It’s like I had static in my ears up there on Myrtle Street and I couldn’t think about the other parts of my life. I feel like calling him up when I get to the apartment, then remember where he is and that my father might answer and how weird that would be.
I turn left down Water Street. I pass our apartment building to see what’s at the end of the street. It dead-ends at the harbor. There’s a tiny patch of dirty sand and a bench. Two teenagers are sitting on it, making out. My bike makes a tic-tic-tic sound as I make a wide U-turn, but it doesn’t bother them.
The apartment is nicer than I remember it. The carpet is clean and soft, the ceilings are high, and there’s a picture window looking out onto the make-out bench and the harbor beyond that lets in two huge squares of light. My mother is in her bathrobe, straightening chairs at a new table.
She hugs me hard. She smells of lemon furniture polish. It seems at that moment like the best smell on earth. I remember I need to ask her a lot of questions about taking care of her garden.
“How was it?” She pulls away just far enough to see me clearly. She pushes hair from either side of my face. Her skin is shiny from lotion.
“Good.”
I feel her eyes raking across my face, as if I’ve hidden something there really well.
It’s the moment I could tell her about the whispering, the drinking, the word boner, but the moment passes.
“I’m so glad.” She takes her eyes off me and points to the table and the high-backed chairs that surround it. “What do you think?”
“Nice.” I stand next to a chair. It has a silky striped cushion sewn into it. “Fancy.”
“And,” she says, pointing to the walls. She’s hung paintings from Myrtle Street. She took the ones of the sea, which are my favorites too. In her bedroom she hung the portrait of me and Garvey sitting on the lip of the fountain when we were much younger. In the painting I have no freckles, and my eyes are too far apart, and you can see where the artist had to paint in more background over Garvey’s head when my mother brought it back, complaining his hair was too poufy.
Her room looks even bigger than I remember. I see the canopy bed and know that I’m not done feeling angry about her having it, along with the big beautiful room and the deck.
My mother has climbed up onto the bed and is dangling her legs off it and staring out the French doors. I’m aware of something different about her, something lighter. She is happy. Beneath her is a folded duvet, velvet on one side, satin on the other.
“Nora called, sweetie. She really wants to see you.”
“Oh.”
“You know your father let her go.”
“Yeah, I guess I put that together.”
She looks like she’s going to say more but stops. Then she says, “You should call her.”
“I will.” But the idea of Nora is like my stuffed animals. It feels like there is suddenly no place for her. I stroke the velvet blanket. “Is this new?”
“Yes,” she says. “Isn’t it divine?”
“Did you get me one?”
“They only had them for a queen-sized bed.”
“It’s a good thing you have the bed then. Good thing you got that, too.”
“Daley.”
“I don’t know where you’re getting all this money. All you did all summer was worry about money, and now you’re buying yourself all kinds of things. I guess you sold some of Granny’s jewelry.”
“What?”
“I know about how you emptied the safe.”
“I didn’t—I needed to have some—Jesus. He told you that?”
“He told me you cleaned it out. I saw it. It’s empty.”
“I didn’t steal it. I just needed to get some protection, Daley. For you. For me to take care of you. But we’ve agreed now on a settlement.”
“I wish you’d tell me things, Mom. I wish I knew what they were talking about when they say things like Al Carr. I wish you’d told me you weren’t going to see Sylvie but to meet some guy so he could stick his boner into you.”
My mother has gone pale. She is pointing a finger at the door. “Go. Go to your room right now.”
“Go to your crappy shit-hole room, Daley.” The anger is like vomit. I can’t stop it from coming out. “I’m only here five nights a week and I’m not sleeping with anyone, so it makes perfect sense to give me the dark smelly room with the little shitty beds.” I slam her door hard. Bitch, I think. Bitch bitch bitch.
5
School starts. Five new kids join our grade. It’s always the same with new kids. They come on the first day in their public school clothes, their huge pointy collars, polyester blends, and all the wrong shoes, but by the next Monday they’re in topsiders and Bean shoes, the boys with tiny buttons at the tips of their little collars and the girls in wraparound skirts. Then, once they look like the rest of us, they change everything around. No one is in my homeroom with Miss Perth. Mallory, Patrick, Gina, and Neal are all with Mr. Harding. I think on the first day that Neal will explain why he didn’t write back. I stand right behind him in the lunch line, but he never says a word. By Thursday I hear he likes a new girl named Tillie Armstrong. I decide never to speak to him again.
On Friday I take a suitcase to school and in the afternoon I wait with Patrick and the other kids from his carpool for Mrs. Utley to pick us up. She’s late because she had brownies in the oven. She brings them and we pass the warm pan from the front to the back to the way-back, cutting out huge squares. She’s even brought napkins. The brownies are dense, undercooked, and delicious. Like many of the mothers I’ve seen since I’ve been back, she’s curious about my summer “adventure” and wants me to be sure to say hello to my mother for her. I feel her watching me in the rearview mirror more than she watches the others.
All week Patrick has been saying there’s going to be a surprise at Myrtle Street, but he won’t tell me what it is. I think maybe my puppy is back, but when Mrs. Utley pulls in I see that the surprise involves construction of some kind. There’s a bulldozer in the driveway and a huge truck piled high with dirt and brush. Embedded in the dirt are glints of pale blue. I grab my bookbag and suitcase, holler out a thank-you, and run. I stop at the stone wall. The rose garden is gone. There’s still the terrace off the living room and the steps leading down, but the scrolled bushes and flower beds, the roses, the fountain, the stone steps, and the iron door leading nowhere are all gone.
“We’re building a tennis court!” Patrick has big teeth with flecks of white and he flashes them at me until I punch him hard in the stomach.
“Goddamn,” he gasps, bent over. “I thought you liked tennis.”
My father comes home from work early on Fridays. He is sitting in that armchair in the kitchen, the dogs pooled at his feet.
“Well, what do you think?” He’s proud of himself. He wants me to show my shock. He wants that satisfaction.
“Looks good,” I push out. I go outside again so he won’t see me cry. The bulldozer and the truck have driven away, but the smell clings to the air. The smell of my mother.
I have to get off the property. I head to the front, and once on the road I know where I’m going. I cross the street and follow a thin pretty driveway down to the little house at the bottom. They have geraniums in pots on either side of the front door. The bell is the old-fashioned kind, attached to the middle of the door, that you twist like a can opener. It makes a racket inside, but no dog barks.
The taller, gaunter one answers.
“Hello, Miss Vance.” I rehearsed my speech on the driveway. “I was wondering if I could just say hello to your dog.” I know I have to say your dog, so they won’t think I’m coming to reclaim him. “I’ve been away all summer.”
“Yes, you have.” Her voice is low. “Step into the parlor.”
We stand in the black-and-white entryway. She makes a funny sound with her teeth and tongue, as if she is cracking nuts, and the puppy races from a room, leaps down a few steps, and scrambles across the tiles to me. He’s whining and pressing his nose hard into my hand, but when he jumps up Miss Vance says, “Major!” and he puts his paws back on the floor quickly. When I squat down he nuzzles his nose in my neck and his tail whaps so fast back and forth I think he’s going to hurt himself. He’s grown in height and girth and his hair is longer and soft. His eyes are a pale olive green. He is a much more beautiful dog than I remember.
“Well, I think someone was greatly missed.” She sounds angry, but when I look up her narrow face has bunched into a smile. “He likes his tea in the garden at a
bout this time. Would you like to join us?”
I follow her to a door at the back of the house. Before opening it, she calls up a thin set of wooden stairs, “Teatime, Mother.”
I thought there was just a sister. The mother would be at least a hundred. How will she get down those stairs?
Major bolts through the door as soon as Miss Vance turns the knob, but then he tears back to lick my hand. He hears a squirrel rustling in some leaves and he’s off again. The whole time I’m there he seems torn between his usual routine of chasing and sniffing and making sure I’m still there.
Miss Vance and I sit in white latticed iron chairs that press the bare skin of my legs into small cubes. A woman in a white dress and white shoes comes out with a tray and sets it on a glass table nearby. On the tray is a silver teapot, a small pitcher of hot water and an even smaller one of cream, half a lemon wrapped in cloth, three blue teacups, four saucers, and a plate of thin lace cookies.
“Thank you, Heloise,” Miss Vance says, leaning toward the tray. She makes the nut-cracking noise again and Major comes to her side. Onto the extra saucer she pours tea up to the rim and sets a lace cookie to float on top. She nestles the saucer in the grass by her foot while Major sits watching. Another crack and Major bends down to eat and drink.
“There you are,” she says, without looking at the woman approaching in the grass.
This is the shorter, rounder one, the one who always wears a blue wool coat in winter, the one I thought was her sister.
“You’ll have to pull over a chair, Mother.”
I jump out of my seat. “Please, sit here. I’m happy on the grass.”
The woman waves me off, heading toward another cluster of chairs. I don’t notice the garden until the old woman walks into it. It’s a wilder, more chaotic garden than my mother’s, the stone pathways overgrown, the flowers tall and frizzy. There are tufts of long tangled beach grasses, wildflowers, and even a few miniature trees in no particular design. She moves slowly; both her legs are wrapped in bandages. She pulls out a thin green chair from the chaos, and as she sets it down she knocks the tray slightly and mutters something that sounds awfully like, “Sorry, Father,” under her breath.
