What Makes a Family

by Colleen Faulkner

  The door clicks shut. It’s got an old-fashioned brown glass doorknob and a big square lock that must have once had a long key. Most of the doors still have the old knobs. Only the bathrooms have newer doorknobs and, therefore, locks. I think Mom said she put the upstairs one on herself to keep Birdie out. But Grandpop added a dead bolt on the office door. To keep out snoops, I’m sure.

  I walk slowly toward his desk and lower my laptop to the coffee table. The room smells like old papers and coffee. And a dog that’s been in the bay this morning. But not in a bad way. “I’m really sorry about your mom.”

  He smiles at me from behind his desk. He’s got a big computer screen to one side, and his hands are resting in front of a keyboard. “I appreciate that, Sarah.”

  I glance at the violin. “Is it okay if I pick it up?” He always lets me. Has since I was little, but I ask anyway.

  My grandfather doesn’t play the violin. No one in the house does. It was his grandmother’s. It was made in Boston in the eighteen hundreds. She was from there, and when she came to marry a Joe or John Brodie (I can’t remember which), she brought it with her.

  I have to step over Duke to get to it. He doesn’t move, just opens one eye. I pick up the violin very carefully and lift it to my shoulder as if I know how to play. I pick up the bow and drag it ever so lightly across the strings. The delicious sound that comes from the violin makes the hair stand on the back of my neck. I love violin music.

  “I wish I’d taken those lessons you offered that summer,” I say. I think back to those days when I was in elementary school and Reed was in middle school. We used to come here and stay weeks at a time in the summer when I didn’t have field hockey and Key Club and Reed wasn’t playing travel lacrosse. Life was so easy then. I was never afraid, and I always felt loved. I didn’t worry about the nuclear bombs North Korea is building or viruses that could potentially wipe out the human race.

  “Never too late,” Grandpop says. “To learn. I know a man who gives lessons in town twice a week.”

  I set the violin back gently on its stand. Then the bow. “Long way to drive for music lessons.”

  “You could move here,” he suggests. “Got plenty of room. Your mom and dad could have her room, and you could have Joseph’s old room.” He’s just joking. And not.

  I walk to one wall and study a bunch of black-and-white framed photos, mostly of people. Them and some of the Dukes. “That you?” I point to a handsome man wading in the bay. There’s an old rowboat in the background. He’s wearing pants and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a big straw hat on his head. It looks like it might have been taken in the backyard. The man is grinning like he’s the happiest guy on earth.

  “My dad,” he says.

  I look at another. It’s Mom Brodie leaning against a car from, maybe, the fifties. She’s wearing pants and a shirt and an apron like Birdie wears, the kind that almost looks like a really long tank top. Only it ties at the neck and the waist, in the back, and is really ugly. There’s a scarf on her head, tied like a turban, and she’s laughing, her head tilted back, stray locks of hair blowing in the wind. I know it’s her because she looks so much like me. Or rather the other way around.

  “Do you think you could find Mom Brodie’s marriage license?” I ask, studying a photo of one of the Dukes dragging a wooden bushel basket of blue claw crabs by the handle. I don’t know which Duke it is. “You said you might have it.”

  “If I do, I know it’s one of two places.” He gets up and goes to one of the metal cabinets. It’s a little rusty around the handle. He pulls open a drawer.

  I turn back to the pictures on the wall. “I know Mom Brodie was born in Indiana. How’d she get to New Jersey, where she met your dad?”

  “I don’t know. Or maybe I did, and I’ve forgotten.” He closes a drawer and opens another. He sounds like he’s thinking it through. “Visiting a cousin, maybe?”

  “You ever meet the cousin? Or . . . anyone else from her family?” When he doesn’t answer, I turn away from the photos to look at him. “A brother? A sister?”

  “She was an only child. Parents were musicians from . . . Chicago, maybe. No, I can’t say that I ever met any of her relatives.” He’s holding a file in his hand. “I guess she didn’t have any.”

  “But obviously she did.” I walk toward him. “The cousin she was visiting in New Jersey. Or was she living there with her? Him?”

  “It was a girl. But maybe she was just a friend. My memory’s not what it was. I can hardly remember what I had for breakfast this morning. Why all the questions?” He sets the file on top of the file cabinet, opens it, and begins flipping through papers.

  “I don’t know.” I shrug. I’m not good at lying, so I want to be careful what I say. People know when I’m lying. Especially my mom. And for all I know, she got her superpowers from her dad. “I know it’s a little late, but I guess I’m curious about her life. About who she was before she came to Brodie Island.” All true. “Maybe because I was named after her?” Not a lie, either.

  “It’s never too late to show interest in your family.” He frowns. “It’s not here. Maybe the fire box.” He leaves the file on top of the cabinet and crouches down to pull a big, heavy box out from under a table. It’s got a combination lock.

  “What’s in there?”

  “Stuff I wouldn’t want to lose if there was a fire. Stock certificates, a few photos, insurance papers, bank information, car titles, promissory notes,” he rattles off. I like the way my grandfather talks to me. He never acts like I’m a kid. Never did, not even when I was one. “Some cash money. For emergencies.”

  I nod. Now I know why it’s locked. Celeste. She takes money. Last summer she took a twenty out of the pocket of my jean jacket hanging on the back porch. She told me she didn’t, but she was lying. I guess she’d take money from her father’s safe, too, if it weren’t locked.

  He rolls the little dials on the thingy and opens the heavy, molded lid. “I don’t think Mama’s childhood was a happy one,” he says. “It was the Depression. Life was hard, particularly in the Midwest. Brodies were pretty cash poor in those years, but we had plenty of food, between what we grew and what we took out of the Chesapeake Bay. There weren’t many jobs. Kids went hungry. Without shoes. Clothes. I imagine being a professional musician was hard. I think that’s why Mama never told us much about it.”

  I think about the tattoo. That is not the tattoo of someone with an unhappy childhood. Or at least, unhappy young adulthood. It’s the tattoo of a woman who knew how to live, or at least dreamed of that life. I think the tattoo also has sexual connotations. . . or at least sensual. I think my great-grandmother knew what it was like to love someone. I’d bet my college fund that Grandpop has stashed away that Mom Brodie was not the innocent virgin when she got married that everyone assumes she was. Why else would she hide that tattoo for eighty-some years with flowered aprons and a position on the Methodist church council?

  I wonder if it’s a possibility that she might have been a lady of the evening. That’s probably what they would have called it then. Maybe she was one of those women working in a speakeasy in Chicago? Because, so far, what I’ve found on the Internet is mostly pictures of tattoos that prostitutes and exotic dancers had. Which might be another euphemism for a prostitute. Wouldn’t that be something to write about in my college entrance essay, how I’m the great-granddaughter of a prostitute? Something like that might even get me a scholarship.

  A slut nixes sex in Tulsa. That’s the only prostitute palindrome I know.

  I smile to myself and look at my grandfather again. “Your dad just met her at this tent revival thing and what? Married her on the spot?”

  He nods, standing up with an old manila envelope in his hand, the kind with the metal tab. “I guess it was something like that. He once told me he took one look at her and fell in love. Knew he couldn’t live without her.” He carries the envelope to his desk, sits down, and dumps the contents.

  “Love at fi
rst sight. Really?” I rest my hands on my hips. It’s my new favorite pose, hands low, fingertips on my pelvic bones. My friend Maggie says it makes me look sexy and badass at the same time. “You believe there’s such a thing?” I ask my grandfather, my tone indicating that clearly I think it’s bullshit.

  “You’re young to be such a cynic.”

  “My dad says the same thing.” I walk toward the desk. “I’m serious, Grandpop. Do you really think it’s possible to fall in love with someone the first time you meet? Like before you even know what kind of person they are?”

  “I think anything is possible in God’s world.”

  The God explanation always annoys me because I feel like God’s just the excuse adults use when they can’t or don’t want to try to explain something. But I let it go because I’m not up for a God discussion with anyone today. I push a little green metal tractor on his desk with my finger. It’s an antique. Been here as long as I can remember. “Was that the way it was when you met Birdie? Love at first sight?”

  He reaches for his reading glasses on the desk. They’re the kind without frames. They perch on the end of his nose. He doesn’t look at me. “Your grandmother was a little girl when she came here. I was a teenager.”

  “That’s not really an answer,” I point out.

  He glances at me over the top of his glasses. “I don’t suppose it is.” He’s quiet for a second, like he’s trying to think of what to say. “Even though I’m older, your grandmother and I kind of grew up together.”

  I run my finger over one of the rubber tires. “You think Mom Brodie brought her here with the intention of marrying you two? I mean . . . was it like an arranged marriage or something?”

  He laughs.

  “What? We talked about arranged marriages in my history class last semester. People used to arrange marriages for, like, political reasons. Did you know Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI’s marriage was arranged? She married him when she was fourteen! That’s younger than me.” I cross my arms over my chest. “Bet she wished her parents hadn’t done that.”

  My grandfather kind of smiles, one side of his mouth turning up. “I don’t think there was any political gain for our families in the case of our marriage.”

  “Right. Because Birdie was an orphan. No family. No money.” I know I should let it go, but I just can’t. Birdie and Grandpop are so different; I could never figure out why someone like him would marry someone like her. “So . . . did you guys fall in love, or did Mom Brodie and your dad kind of push you two together?”

  “We married because we wanted to, Sarah. People get married for different reasons.”

  “Were you in love with her?”

  He holds up a piece of paper that’s about half the size of a piece of notebook paper. “Knew it was here somewhere.”

  He didn’t answer my question. Duly noted. I take the paper; it’s so old and delicate that I’m afraid it’s going to disintegrate in my hands. The words Certificate and Record of Marriage are printed across the top; it’s a preprinted form with the information handwritten in. There’s a place for the husband’s name, the wife’s name, where the marriage took place, the name of the person who officiated, and then there’s information on each of the people getting married. All of the actual information is written with slanty cursive that’s hard to read. I read it out loud. “Sarah Agnes Hafland married Joseph James Brodie, May 23, 1933, in . . .” I squint. “Teton . . . Trenton, maybe. Trenton, New Jersey.” I look up. “Were they married in Trenton?”

  Grandpop nods. “I guess so.” He sits down.

  I return my attention to the document. “Says he was born in Brodie, Maryland, and was thirty years old.” I look up. “That’s old for getting married in those days, wasn’t it?”

  “He was briefly married in his early twenties. A girl from Baltimore, but she died, giving birth. Baby died, too.”

  “That’s so sad. He must have really loved her to wait so long to marry again.” I carry the marriage certificate to the couch and sit down and prop my bare feet up on a pile of seed catalogs. “Mom Brodie was eighteen, born in Chicago, Illinois.” I look up. “I thought she was born in Indiana.”

  He nods. “She was.”

  “Then why does this say Chicago?” I hold it up.

  “Someone made a mistake, I guess.”

  “Eww.” I point at the paper. “It says they’re both white.” I look up again. “Why would you write the color of someone’s skin on a marriage certificate?”

  “There were rules in those days, laws about who could marry whom.”

  “You mean white people weren’t supposed to marry black people?” I’m so disgusted by the idea that it takes me a second to realize I’m treading on touchy ground. Uncle Joseph’s birth mother was an African-American woman. Grandpop cheated on Birdie with a black woman. And even though, by then, the 1980s, the United States was supposed to be way past the whole race discrimination thing, I know they weren’t on Brodie Island. Celeste once told me that everyone talked about it for years after.

  My grandfather nods, but he doesn’t say anything. I return my attention to the marriage certificate. He and I have never talked about the fact that Uncle Joseph isn’t Birdie’s son. It’s not the kind of conversation you have with your grandfather. Maybe someday I will, but today’s not the day.

  “There’s the name of the minister who married them here.” I squint. “Reverend Allen or Albert . . . Cummings. But what . . . What are these names on the other side of the paper?” I get up and walk around Grandpop’s desk to show him.

  He studies the place where I point. “Looks like those were their witnesses.”

  “Witnesses?”

  “You have to have two witnesses to a marriage. Usually the man has one and the woman has one. It’s usually the people who stand up with you. Like, your best man and the maid of honor. In those days there wasn’t usually a big wedding. People just got married.”

  “James Brodie,” I read. “Obviously a relative. You know him?” I smile. “Of him?” If Grandpop Big Joe was still alive, he’d be like 112.

  Grandpop shakes his head. “No, but my dad had second cousins in New Jersey. On the shore. Fishermen. Gotta be a cousin. It’s likely that’s who my father was visiting when he met Mama.”

  I nod, walking back to the couch to sit down again. “So her witness was . . . Billie . . . no, Bilis . . . looks like . . . Allsop.” I glance up, making a face. “Bilis? What kind of name is that for a girl?”

  He shakes his head, rising from behind his desk. “No idea.”

  “And Mom Brodie never mentioned her?”

  He comes around his desk, grabbing a ball cap and pulling it down over his mostly bald head. “Can’t say that she did.”

  I’m trying not to be perturbed with him. Why doesn’t he know any of this stuff? She’s his mother. And she’s going to die; someone needs to know these things.

  “I gotta go see Jesse Junior about the crabs. He’ll probably steam ’em for me. Your grandmother doesn’t like the smell in her house. Be back around three for crabs.” He gets to the door. “You’re welcome to stay put.” I get a half smile from him that’s pretty close to a smirk. “Hide out in here, where it’s safe.”

  “Thanks.” I look down at the marriage certificate in my hand. “You think Birdie would know anything about Mom Brodie’s cousin, or friend, Bilis?”

  He shrugs and taps his thigh. Duke leaps up and bounds toward him. “Maybe. Hard to say. You know how the two of them were sometimes. They could get each other worked up. But they talked. Women who live in the same house. They get close. Even when they don’t want to.” He hesitates. “You know, your grandmother . . . Birdie, she . . .” He exhales slowly. “She loves you. She loves you all so much. She just . . . she doesn’t know how to show it. She’s got a good heart. She just says the wrong things, sometimes. But none of us are perfect, Sarah. Good Lord makes that clear.”

  He nods. I nod. Then he smiles at me. Meeting my gaze. Really looki
ng at me.

  I like that about my grandfather. I think he really sees me for who I am. He gets me. I wish I came here more often. I wish I could remember how this feels when Mom asks me if I want to come for the weekend and I say no because I want to hang out with my friends. Hanging out with my grandfather, with Uncle Joseph, even with Celeste and her craziness is way better than hanging out with my friends. Most of the time. I mean, my friends are fun, but I don’t think about them later, or about what we talked about. Not like I do with my family.

  “Thanks,” I say. “I might. Internet’s way faster in here.” I point at a little table behind his desk. “Router.”

  “Yup.” Duke goes out the door ahead of him. “These old walls. I think they block the signal.”

  He closes the door behind him. I stare at the marriage certificate. I trace Mom Brodie’s signature with my finger. “Born in Illinois and not Indiana. Or Indiana and not Illinois,” I murmur. “With a cousin . . . or possibly a friend named Bilis. So who are you, grandmother with a tat? And whom did you lie to?”

  I reach for my laptop.

  21

  Abby

  “Has she been restless?” Gail, the hospice nurse, gently wraps the blood pressure cuff around my grandmother’s bird-like arm.

  Gail looks nothing like what I expected a hospice nurse to look like. I was expecting . . . I don’t know. Someone more grandmotherly-like? Or maybe nun-like? She’s neither. Gail is a six-foot-tall, curvaceous-leaning-toward-chubby brunette with almost as many tattoos as my brother. She’s got bumblebees circling one arm leading to a Star Wars rebel symbol and something that looks like Sanskrit on the other forearm. She wears jeans and a white, short-sleeved T-shirt with a badge identifying that she works for Coastal Hospice and Palliative Care. Her hair is super long and piled on top of her head the way Sarah wears hers. Gail can’t be thirty.