The California Dashwoods

by Lisa Henry

  He was twenty years old, and he wasn’t ready for this.

  He closed his eyes as he hugged his mom, and tried to feel stronger than he was.

  ***

  In the afternoon they had a picnic on the overgrown croquet lawn. Abby sat on the blanket with her back to the house, and a half smile on her face that fell far short of reaching her eyes. Greta sat across from her, craning her head to watch for movement from the house, as though she were expecting the Family to attempt some devious maneuver if she looked away for even a second.

  Marianne leaned against Elliott, and he exchanged a glance with her and saw his own trepidation mirrored there. For all that he and Marianne were very different people, they had always been incredibly close. Elliott couldn’t remember a time when Marianne hadn’t been at his side. If life was a series of snapshots, then Marianne was in every single one, her brilliant grin a counterpoint to Elliott’s shyer smile—and Norland Park was in every frame as well. It wasn’t just a house. It was their home, and soon there would be no more picnics on the lawn.

  Marianne handed him a peanut butter sandwich.

  Picnics were another family tradition. Someone would grab the blanket from the bottom of the kitchen pantry and announce that they were eating outside today. There was nothing as planned as a picnic basket involved. Just sandwiches stacked on a plate, plastic cups, and the jug of cold apple tea from the refrigerator.

  Growing up, Elliott had thought it was perfectly normal for families to migrate outside and sit on the grass to eat their lunch. People did it in city parks, didn’t they? Why not their own gardens? He hadn’t realized for a long time that anything was odd about it. And, when it came to oddness, impromptu picnics were definitely one of his favorite family quirks.

  “Someone’s watching us from the kitchen,” Greta announced, and squinted. “I think it’s Uncle Aldous.”

  Marianne craned her head to see.

  Elliott closed his eyes and concentrated on the feeling of the sun against the back of his neck. He didn’t want to talk about the Family. Not right now. He needed a break from them just as much as his mother and his sisters did. He didn’t need reminders of them invading the picnic like ants.

  He opened his eyes again when Marianne nudged him.

  “Remember that time we were playing chasey and you ran headfirst into the greenhouse?” she asked with a smile.

  Elliott touched the tiny scar hidden in his hairline reflexively. “I had to get a tetanus shot.”

  “Well, trust you to run into a nail,” Marianne teased.

  “I was six.”

  “And couldn’t outrun a four-year-old? What a loser.”

  Elliott laughed.

  Abby smiled at them fondly. “I remember when we had to take Greta for a rabies shot because she got bitten by that raccoon.”

  “That wasn’t my fault,” Greta said.

  “You had a raccoon in your bedroom!” Marianne exclaimed.

  “I was domesticating him.” Greta shrugged. “It turned out he wasn’t really on board with that plan.”

  Elliott’s chest tightened, and that familiar ache rose up in him. Norland Park held so many memories. It was the only home he’d ever known, and he didn’t want to leave it. But there was nothing he could do to stop it. The Family had descended like vultures the moment his dad had died, here to pick the bones clean.

  What was Norland Park to them but a figure on a spreadsheet courtesy of some valuation by a realtor? It wasn’t about money for Elliott, it was about home, but what did that word even mean to the Family? Elliott couldn’t imagine any of them sitting on the grass reminiscing. And maybe that was unfair. Maybe Great Uncle Montgomery had a favorite chair in a favorite spot. Maybe Cynthia stepped out of her heels at the end of a long day and padded barefoot through her house, soaking it in. Maybe Francesca looked at Norland Park and imagined her future children running through the halls, breathless with laughter.

  Then again, why should Elliott feel generously disposed toward any of them?

  They sat out on the lawn for a while after the sandwiches were finished. Greta was the first one to head back to the house, carrying the plates and cups. Marianne and Abby were the next to go, leaving Elliott lying on the blanket with his arms folded behind his head.

  He dozed, sun-blind. He soaked up the light and the warmth, lost in a lifetime of memories.

  “Hey.”

  Elliott jolted awake, unaware he’d even slipped into sleep. He blinked up as the silhouette looming over him transformed into Ned.

  “Hey,” he said, his voice scratchy with sleep.

  Ned held up a bottle of beer. “Want one?”

  Elliott pushed himself into a seated position. “Thanks.”

  Ned sat down beside him. He uncapped the beer and handed it to Elliott, then took a sip from his own bottle. “You okay?”

  “That’s a question I really don’t know how to answer.”

  “Short answer: no.”

  Elliott quirked his mouth in a smile. “No.”

  “Listen, if there’s anything you need me to do, you can ask.” Ned looked so earnest that Elliott’s heart clenched. “Like, I’m probably totally out of line here, but have you talked to a lawyer?”

  Elliott picked at the label on his beer. “Mom doesn’t want that. She doesn’t want anything to do with them. She thinks going after them would prove them right.” He shrugged. “They cut Dad out twenty years ago. It’s pretty watertight, from what I understand.”

  “Have you checked?” Ned asked him in an undertone.

  “Their lawyers would crush us. Keep us tied up for years. It’s how they operate. It’s not worth it. The best we can hope for is that John will come through with money for school and stuff.”

  Ned looked at him worriedly.

  “Montgomery has a daughter, you know?” Elliott said. “Not his wife’s. She was the housekeeper’s. She must be fifty-something by now. She’s never seen a penny, because every time she tried, they just dragged her back into court. Appeal after appeal after appeal. They’ve probably paid millions to their lawyers because they’d rather pay them than her. You don’t win with people like them. You can’t.”

  Ned was silent for a long time. “I’m sorry,” he said at last.

  “You don’t win,” Elliott repeated.

  Ned reached out and put his hand over Elliott’s where it rested on the blanket. He threaded their fingers together. Quiet, solid comfort.

  They sat in silence, and Elliott felt like he could breathe again for the first time in days.

  John and Francesca were spending the day antiquing in town, so Elliott didn’t get a chance to press John on whether or not he’d be able to give them more financial support than the Family wanted. Elliott wasn’t too proud to go cap in hand to his half brother, and couldn’t help but wonder if Francesca was intentionally keeping John away from him. It was starting to feel that way, but maybe Elliott was being unfair. John probably needed a break from the Family too, because Great Uncle Montgomery and Cynthia and Aldous were apparently fixtures in Norland Park nowadays. They’d adopted strategic positions throughout the house that meant only the bedrooms were safe territory to retire to, or, in Elliott’s case since he didn’t have one of those right now, the studio.

  In the afternoon, tired of working through a hundred different and equally depressing scenarios for the future in his head, Elliott gave up and fetched himself a blank canvas from the stack leaning against the far wall. Elliott was no painter, but who was going to use it now? And the canvas was already assembled, primed with gesso, and ready to go.

  The studio was too hot to put on one of Henry’s paint-stained smocks, so Elliott stripped off his shirt to avoid ruining it and left it on the couch. He pushed open the windows to let the cool air inside, turned on the radio to the station Henry had last been listening to, and began to paint. He’d never had the right sort of temperament for painting. He didn’t have an artist’s soul, and found it difficult to disengage from the
everyday and lose himself in the kind of trancelike headspace that Henry had often existed in for days on end.

  Elliott had sometimes envied his dad’s all-consuming passion for painting, even if he had never really understood it. Art, to him, was a contradictory thing. He couldn’t deny how meaningful it was to his parents, and to Marianne and to Greta, but at the same time it was also incredibly meaningless. Hours and days lost hunting for truth and beauty and something in the ether, the answer always remaining out of reach, exhilarating and frustrating in equal measure. He could see how the pursuit of art was invigorating to some people, was vital, but Elliott wasn’t made that way. He had always liked the smell of the oil paints, though.

  He tended to produce abstract pieces. Shapes and lines and blocks of color that pleased his eye and satisfied his urge to cover every piece of the canvas. He’d never been good at human figures, or even landscapes, and his bowls of fruit were terrible. But none of that mattered in Henry’s studio. Art was the process, the journey, and not the finished product. Art was about living.

  A pang of something too sweet to call grief stabbed his heart. He could feel his dad’s presence here still, as though if he glanced up from his canvas he’d see Henry watching him with his proud, gentle smile. He closed his eyes and laid an arc of cadmium green across the canvas. The placement of the sweeping line didn’t matter. Only the faint metallic smell of the paint mattered, and the fact that Elliott had left something on the canvas that had not been there before.

  He opened his eyes again and worked for a while to the sound of the radio and the memory of his father’s smile. The canvas he had chosen was large. Too large for an easel, so Elliott had leaned it up against the wall, against a stack of finished paintings that were protected by a drop sheet. He probably should have chosen a smaller canvas, but what did it matter now? Any they couldn’t sell or store securely before they left would probably be tossed into the nearest dumpster by Francesca.

  A faint knock at the door startled Elliott, and he steeled himself. It wasn’t as though Abby or his sisters would knock, which meant it was someone from the Family. Elliott tucked the paintbrush behind his ear and looked around for a cloth to wipe his fingers on. His hands were speckled with paint, and there were a few smudges on his torso that blended into his skin like bruises.

  He turned toward the door, wiping his hands. “Come in!”

  The door opened to reveal Ned. He stepped inside the studio cautiously, holding a plate in front of him. “Um, Marianne said I should bring you a snack.”

  Elliott resisted the urge to roll his eyes at Marianne and her meddling. “Thanks.”

  Ned closed the distance between them. He set the plate on the old piano stool, amid the paints and brushes. He stared at Elliott’s canvas for a moment. “That’s, um . . .” A flush crept up his throat, on the faint pinkish end of the quinacridone red spectrum. “I don’t know much about art.”

  “It’s shit,” Elliott said frankly, smiling at Ned’s startled expression. He shrugged. “It’s sophomoric and unsophisticated and messy.” He reached for the sandwich. “But I enjoyed doing it.”

  Ned’s answering smile was soft. “I think it looks good.”

  “It looks like the sort of thing you’d buy in a dollar store to decorate your dorm room with,” Elliott told him around a mouthful of turkey sandwich. “Goes perfectly with bookshelves made of cinder blocks.”

  Ned inspected the painting again, his brow furrowed. “I don’t think it’s quite that bad.”

  Elliott set the sandwich down, leaving blue fingerprints on the bread. He took the paintbrush from behind his ear and held it out to Ned. “Have a try.”

  Ned looked from Elliott’s face to the paintbrush and then back again. “Are you serious?”

  “It’s a painting,” Elliott said. “Not delicate surgery.”

  Ned took the paintbrush. His gaze didn’t leave Elliott’s face. “Um, you have a little. . .” He reached out with his free hand and brushed his fingertips against Elliott’s cheek. They came away blue. “I think I just made it worse.”

  Elliott smiled. His cheek tingled. He stepped into Ned’s space, feeling the cold dab of the paintbrush against his skin. He stepped back again and looked down at the blue stripe it had left on his ribs. His smile widened.

  “Shit,” Ned whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  Elliott curled his fingers around Ned’s and, with no idea of exactly what the hell he was doing, drew the paintbrush up his torso. The paint left a line from his sternum to his collarbone. His chest rose and fell heavily.

  Hot as hell or stupid as fuck? Elliott wasn’t sure he could actually tell.

  He met Ned’s gaze. Ned’s eyes were wide, and there was something in his expression approaching panic. Elliott was just about to blurt out an apology, or make a joke of it, when suddenly Ned was pushing him up against the canvas and leaning in to lick a stripe up the side of his throat.

  Paint squished against Elliott’s shoulder blades. The paintbrush clattered to the floor.

  “Shit,” Ned said. His breath was hot against Elliott’s neck. “I’ve ruined your painting.”

  “It was a terrible painting anyway,” Elliott reminded him, and reached for the hem of Ned’s shirt, then tugged it out of his khakis.

  “Art is about living, Elliott,” his father used to say, and Elliott thought that maybe he’d never been very good at art, but he was getting the hang of this living business. A part of him recognized the total irrationality of this thing with Ned, but it didn’t matter. He was allowed to do something just because it made him feel good, made him feel more vibrant than art ever had. He was allowed to pursue whatever this was in the full knowledge that it wasn’t the start of anything, like Marianne thought. This was enough, right here.

  “Is the paint toxic?” Ned asked, pulling back enough to straighten up and meet Elliott’s gaze.

  “I mean, if you drank a few gallons of it, probably. This is fine.” He laughed as Ned took him at his word and pressed him harder against the canvas.

  The muscles in Ned’s abdomen—not quite defined enough to be called a six-pack—shifted under his skin as Elliott drew his shirt off and tossed it onto the floor.

  “I don’t have anything,” Ned said.

  “S’okay.” Elliott jutted out his chin so he could nip the side of Ned’s jaw. “Let’s just, um . . .” He slid a hand down Ned’s abdomen, his fingers leaving streaks of paint on his skin and then on the khakis that had probably cost more than anything Elliott had in his closet. He worked the button free and pulled the zip down. Ned’s dick was already bulging against his underwear.

  “Yes,” Ned said. “Yeah.”

  Elliott dragged Ned’s khakis and underwear down, then left them in a tangle somewhere around his thighs. Ned reached forward to do the same to Elliott’s faded jeans, and then they were rutting against one another, a hand each pressing their dicks together, and one of Elliott’s legs hooked behind Ned.

  Elliott’s breath caught in his throat as he stared at their dicks. It was ridiculous. Their hands were slick with paint and sweat and pre-come, and it was the craziest, hottest thing Elliott had ever done. Need coiled tight in his lower belly, and then in his balls, and he hadn’t been this hard this fast in years now.

  He hadn’t been this alive.

  He dug the fingers of his free hand into Ned’s shoulder. Ned rocked with him in the choppy rhythm they’d somehow fallen into. Words were unnecessary. Impossible, maybe. They panted against one another, fixated by the sight of their dicks clenched together in their hands and by the fast-building pleasure they were chasing.

  Elliott came first, his bare toes curling as he spurted come all over their joined hands. Ned followed moments later, hunched over and pressing his forehead against Elliott’s shoulder.

  Bright sparks of pleasure gave way to a spreading warmth, and a looseness in his body that he hadn’t felt in so long. He dropped his head back, not giving a fuck in that moment about getting paint in his
hair.

  “Oh my God,” Ned whispered after a moment.

  Elliott’s lazy, satisfied smile was curtailed by a screeching echo:

  “Oh my God!”

  Elliott snapped his eyes open and saw, over Ned’s shoulder, Francesca and John standing in the doorway of the studio. John looked dumbfounded. Francesca looked like she was about to transform into a harpy.

  “Oh my God!” she screeched again. “You dirty little gold-digging whore!”

  Elliott stared at her blankly for a moment.

  This probably meant they weren’t getting the money for Marianne’s college or Greta’s school fees, right?

  Yeah.

  Probably.

  ***

  There were sporadic shouting matches up and down the hallways of Norland Park for the rest of the afternoon, and once, when Elliott ventured into the kitchen to get a glass of juice, he ran straight into Aunt Cynthia, who looked him up and down and announced that she knew it and had known it all along.

  “I wouldn’t expect anything else from one of her children.”

  “Oh, fuck off, you poisonous old hag,” Marianne said from behind Elliott, and then shrugged at his expression. “What? You heard her. They’re not going to think any less of us if we finally say what we really think.”

  Marianne wasn’t the only one who figured Elliott’s transgression gave them carte blanche to strike back against the Family. He caught Greta releasing a jarful of spiders underneath Great Uncle Montgomery’s bedroom door.

  Most of Francesca’s anger seemed to be directed, surprisingly, toward Ned, and Elliott felt a flash of guilt at that. She kept some in reserve for Abby, though, who gave back just as good as she got.

  “I don’t give a flying fuck what you think of me, Francesca,” Abby declared, her eyes blazing. “But if you ever talk about my son like that again, I will find some way to end you.”

  Francesca’s voice rose as she screamed at Abby’s retreating back. “I want you and your children out of this house!”