Days Like This

by Laurie Breton

  They reached the second-floor porch and stopped at a battered wooden door. A half-dozen banana boxes were stacked next to it, beside two large suitcases. The boxes were neatly labeled in thick black marker. BOOKS/VIDEOS. STEREO EQUIPMENT. MISCELLANEOUS. PRIVATE! RECORDS. LEROY.

  Leroy? Casey exchanged glances with Rob, raised her eyebrows, and he shrugged. A purple ten-speed bicycle leaned up against the peeling paint, next to a battered guitar case. Atkinson knocked on the door, and a small dog began yapping.

  The door was opened by a fortyish woman with a tired face and worried eyes. “Good morning!” the attorney said, stepping into the entryway. “Lorraine Harriman, this is Casey and Rob MacKenzie.” The woman nodded but didn’t offer her hand.

  Rob said, “Hey,” and moved past her into the house. Casey gave the woman a brief smile and followed him inside. The dog, some kind of miniature mixed breed, danced and darted and sniffed around their feet in an enthusiastic attempt to determine whether they were friend or foe.

  The entryway opened directly into the living room. To her left, through an open doorway, Casey caught a glimpse of an avocado-green refrigerator. In the living room, a boy of about eight and a teenage girl were sitting together on the couch, watching MTV. The girl glanced up at them, whispered something to the boy, and stood, unfolding her body until she reached her full height. She had to be at least five-six, because she towered over Casey’s five-foot frame like Gulliver in the land of the Lilliputians. Lost in the voluminous folds of a man’s button-down shirt worn with slender jeans and high-top sneakers with lime green laces, the girl sported multiple earrings that dangled in a noisy cluster. She’d gone a little heavy-handed with the make-up: bright red lipstick, rosy cheeks, too much eye liner.

  Casey stared at her, stunned by her resemblance to Rob. Paige was built just like her father, tall and lanky, with long arms and legs and big feet. Whippet-thin, just like he’d been at twenty. She had his eyes, his strong jaw line, his thick, curly blond hair, except that his stopped at his shoulders, and hers tumbled in a wild cascade down the center of her back.

  Atkinson took the girl by the hand and drew her forward. “Paige,” he said, “I’d like you to meet your father and your stepmother, Rob and Casey MacKenzie.”

  The girl squared her jaw. Glanced at Casey, then at Rob. “Hi,” she said.

  Casey returned her greeting, but Rob remained silent. She glanced over at him, concerned for an instant, until he reached out a hand toward his daughter. The girl hesitated, then shrugged and reached out her own hand. He took it in his and held it while they studied each other.

  A tear rolled down his cheek. He cleared his throat. “Is there some place we can talk in private?”

  “The kitchen,” Lorraine Harriman said. “Right through that doorway.”

  He shepherded his daughter into the kitchen, leaving the rest of them standing awkwardly in the living room. Over the sound of the television, Casey could hear the soft murmur of his voice, but couldn’t tell what he was saying to the girl. “Sandy and I were friends,” Lorraine Harriman said. “I’ve watched Paige grow up. I’d figure out a way to keep her if I could. But Sandy was determined that Paige would go to her father.” Lorraine’s mouth thinned. “I’m still not sure it was the right decision.”

  Casey reached out and took the woman’s hand in hers. “I want you to know that my husband is one of the good guys. I’ve known him since he was twenty, and I’d trust him with my life. We’re not living any kind of wild rock-and-roll lifestyle. He hasn’t even been out on tour in more than a year. We live a quiet, normal life in the little rural town where I grew up, in an old house just down the road from my dad’s dairy farm. She’ll have aunts and uncles and cousins nearby, and her grandparents are right here in South Boston, so she’ll get the chance to see you when we visit them. And we have so much love to give her! We have a strong marriage, but so far, it’s been just the two of us. Paige will make us a family. I won’t lie and say this hasn’t been a shock, because it has. But we’re both thrilled about Paige. We’ll do right by her, I promise you.”

  Rob and his daughter returned from the kitchen, both of them silent, but some of the tension seemed to have dissipated. The little dog ran to Paige and danced in circles around her feet, and she crouched down to rub its ears. Atkinson glanced at his watch and said, “If I can have just a few minutes of your time, Mr. MacKenzie, we have some business to go over.”

  Rob disappeared back into the kitchen with the lawyer. “Are those your things on the porch?” Casey asked the girl. Still playing with the dog, Paige nodded. “Okay, then,” she said briskly. “We might as well start loading the car while your father’s tied up with Mr. Atkinson.”

  She stuck her head into the kitchen, where her husband and the attorney were sitting at the table with a thick manila envelope between them. “Sorry to interrupt,” she said. “Car keys?” Rob pulled them from his pocket and tossed them to her, and she blew him a kiss.

  Outside, on the porch, she eyed the stack of boxes and said, “Is this everything?”

  Paige nodded. “Everything else—all my mom’s stuff—went into storage.”

  “Okay, then. Grab a box, and let’s get started.”

  Together, they carried boxes, suitcases, guitar, and bicycle down the long flight of stairs and up the hill to where Rob had parked the Explorer. Casey opened the tailgate and began packing the rear cargo area tightly with boxes, while Paige squeezed the suitcases and the guitar into the back seat. They debated how to fit in the bicycle, finally managed, after a couple of failed attempts, to maneuver it in and close the tailgate.

  Brushing grit from the bicycle tires off her hands, Casey said, “There. We did it!”

  Paige shrugged, and for the first time, Casey saw a bit of Sandy in the girl. “You remind me a little of your mother,” she said as they began walking back toward the house. “I knew her, years ago. I liked her.”

  “You knew my mom?”

  “I did. She and Rob dated, off and on, for quite a while.”

  After a moment of deliberation, Paige blurted, “Were you the reason they broke up?”

  The stricken look on the girl’s face almost broke her heart. “Oh, no, honey. Rob and I have only been together for a short time. I was married to Danny Fiore for thirteen years. I knew your mom because we were all friends back then. I don’t know why they broke up. If you want to know, you’ll have to ask your father.”

  They reached the house, began climbing the stairs. “I’m so sorry about your mother,” she said. “I can empathize with what you’re going through. I lost my mom when I was fifteen, and it was a terrible thing to live through. I know this is scary for you, because we’re strangers. You don’t know us, and we don’t know you, and this is a whole new world for all of us. But we’re so glad to make you part of our family. We look at you as a gift, one that just dropped into our laps from out of nowhere. And those are the best kind of gifts. The unexpected ones.”

  In a flat tone, Paige said, “That’s pretty much what he said to me. My father. In the kitchen.”

  “I’m not surprised. We’re generally on the same wavelength. Your dad’s a really good guy, Paige. But he’s scared to death right now, because he doesn’t have a clue how to be a father, and he doesn’t want to screw it up and disappoint you. Or himself. Try to give him a chance, and don’t expect him to always get it right. Just remember how hard he’s trying.”

  Inside, Rob waited with the lawyer and Lorraine Harriman, the manila envelope tucked into the crook of his elbow. Atkinson shook hands all around, wished them luck, and saw himself out. “You didn’t have to load it all without me,” Rob said when the attorney was gone.

  “We are two strong, independent women. Fully capable of doing it for ourselves. Right, Paige?”

  Paige just made a soft snorting noise.

  “Well, then,” Rob said. “I guess we’re ready to roll.”

  Paige said goodbye to Lorraine and the boy, then picked up her purse and a
bright pink leash from the couch. “Come on, Leroy,” she said. The dog ran to her, and she snapped the leash onto his harness.

  Casey and Rob exchanged startled glances.

  “The dog’s yours?” he said.

  “You didn’t know?” Terror, mixed with defiance, filled her eyes. Frantically, she said, “You won’t make me get rid of him? I’ve had him since he was a puppy, and he sleeps with me every night. He’s my best friend. My only friend.”

  Casey and Rob exchanged glances again and held a silent conversation. This would not go over well with Igor, Rob’s cantankerous Siamese cat, who was cranky under the best of circumstances, and who still, after all this time, hadn’t accepted Casey as part of his family.

  Without speaking a word, they reached consensus. Oy, she thought. This should be interesting.

  “Of course we won’t,” Rob said. He crouched down to the dog’s level and held out a hand. Leroy daintily lifted a paw, and Rob shot Casey a quick grin. “Hey, Leroy,” he said, taking the paw and shaking it. “Welcome to the family.”

  They stopped at a McDonald’s somewhere in the urban sprawl on Route 1 north of Boston for lunch, a bathroom break, and a dish of water for Leroy. Paige had very little to say, and once they were back on the road, Casey attempted to draw the girl out. “So you play guitar?” she asked, turning in her seat to see the girl’s face.

  Paige shrugged. “Some.”

  “Maybe you and your dad can play together. He’s an amazing guitarist.”

  “I’ve heard him play.”

  “Really? Where?”

  “MTV. And Mom had record albums. I don’t live under a rock.”

  Casey looked to Rob for help, but he glanced at her and shrugged, his shoulders clearly conveying his message: Don’t look at me. I don’t know thing one about teenagers.

  When she checked the back seat again, Paige had put on her headphones. With Leroy curled up beside her, his head on her lap, she was pointedly ignoring them. Casey looked at Rob. He glanced in the rearview mirror, picked up the manila envelope he’d tucked beside his seat, and handed it to her.

  The envelope contained a notarized copy of Sandy’s will and other legal paperwork detailing custody arrangements. It also held an official copy of Paige’s birth certificate, her school records, her medical records, her baptismal certificate. Casey skimmed them. All the girl’s immunizations were up to date. She’d had chicken pox at age four, and impetigo at age seven. Her tonsils had been removed when she was nine. She was a solid B student, had been a member of the school chorus in middle school, and would be entering tenth grade when classes resumed in September. “Wow,” Casey said quietly. “Atkinson was thorough.”

  “If you dig deep enough,” he said, “you’ll even find Sandy’s family medical history.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “We’ll sit down and go over it together when we have time. It doesn’t have to be today. I just wanted you to get a quick look at it.”

  “We really did this, didn’t we, Flash?”

  “We really did it, babydoll.”

  She stuffed everything back into the envelope and closed it. After a few minutes of silence, he took one eye off the road, shuffled through the cassettes in the center console, chose the one he wanted, and handed it to her. She opened the case and popped the tape into the stereo, and Gene Pitney began singing in his unique, pained vibrato about a town without pity. She hid a smile, secretly tickled by the fact that her diehard rocker husband was a closet Gene Pitney aficionado.

  Or maybe not so closeted, considering that lately, he’d been bringing Gene to the regular weekend get-togethers at her brother Bill’s house. Most of the adults there, who were all old enough to remember Pitney’s angst-y ballads from the dusty reaches of childhood, found his choice of music perfectly acceptable. Most of the kids, on the other hand, were reduced to eye rolling and occasional emergency trips to town so they could wash away the taste of Pitney with some speaker-blowing Guns n’ Roses.

  From the back seat, there was absolute silence. Casey glanced over at her husband, and he shot her a wink. She smiled, leaned back into soft leather upholstery, and they listened to oldies the rest of the way home.

  Paige

  Sunlight spilled through the gauzy curtain fluttering in the breeze from the open window. At first, she didn’t know where she was. Confused, she blinked at the brightness, looked around the room, saw the boxes piled in the corner. And remembered. The pain hit her hard, low in the stomach. Her mom was gone, life as she’d known it was over, and she’d been shipped off to live with strangers in this old house at the end of the earth.

  She reached out for Leroy. When she didn’t find him, she rolled onto one hip and looked down the length of the bed. She was alone. Panic clutched her insides. Paige rolled out of bed and walked to the window. Outside, on the back lawn, her father’s wife was on her knees, weeding the garden. Leroy lay nearby, basking in the sunshine, his leash hitched to a wooden stake that had been driven into the ground.

  The panic receded, but her stomach still hurt. She threw on jeans and a tee shirt and padded barefoot to the kitchen. The refrigerator didn’t offer anything exotic or exciting. She settled for a bowl of Cheerios, rinsed the bowl and spoon when she was done and left them in the sink. Somebody in this house, probably Casey, was a serious neat freak. Wasn’t it usually the woman who kept the house in order? Not that she actually knew. The closest she’d ever come to a normal household, with a mother and a father, was all those TV sitcoms she’d grown up watching.

  Paige glanced around the kitchen. Her Walkman had died yesterday. Somewhere in this house, there had to be a package of batteries. They’d most likely be found in the junk drawer, and even rich people had junk drawers. Although this didn’t look like a rich person’s house, she knew he—her father—was worth beaucoup bucks. His wife was probably even richer; Danny Fiore had been a huge star, and when he died, all that money must have gone to his widow. Why had they buried themselves in this half-assed town, when they could have lived in Paris or London or frigging Hollywood? There were cows—cows, for Chrissake!—just up the road. The road itself wasn’t even paved. Who in their right mind would choose to live in a place like this?

  She began opening drawers in search of the holy grail. After several false starts, she found what she was looking for. The drawer held an assortment of mismatched screwdrivers, a pencil with a broken lead, a random selection of screws and nails and cup hooks, a piece of sandpaper, slightly used, and beneath that, voilà! An unopened 4-pack of AA batteries. She popped it open, dropped a couple into her palm, and returned the pack to the drawer.

  With her Walkman revived, Paige took a long, hot shower, dressed in cut-off jeans and a Metallica tee shirt, and stepped outside to see just what she’d gotten herself into. She was immediately struck by the quiet; it was a little creepy, the complete absence of car horns or sirens. Instead, there was the buzzing of insects and the annoying chirping of birds.

  The grass was soft and springy against the soles of her feet. She circled the house, moving toward the only other human who seemed to exist in this rural hell. Casey was on her knees in the garden, methodically murdering weeds and tossing them aside. The resulting pile of dead soldiers reminded Paige of a photo her eighth-grade history teacher had shown the class of one of the death chambers at Auschwitz, limp bodies stacked like firewood. Her father’s wife was wearing some kind of lame-ass wide-brimmed straw hat. Its pink cotton print straps, designed to tie under the chin, instead fluttered loose around her face.

  The two of them—her father and his wife—had hovered over her last night like a pair of fussy old hens, pouring on the niceness and the bogus concern until Paige was ready to scream. Did they really think they were going to win her over with pizza and fake smiles? He had made a huge deal out of helping her set up her stereo (as if she didn’t know how to do it herself!), even going so far as to unearth a dusty set of speakers that were twice the size of hers and could really bark.<
br />
  She’d offered him a stilted thank-you. She didn’t even know what to call him. Dad? Not in this lifetime. Father? Too snobby-rich-socialite. Rob? That seemed far too friendly. Mr. MacKenzie? Utterly preposterous. She’d finally settled on the generic pronoun: Him. He. You. It seemed the most appropriate choice. Just because they shared DNA and a last name didn’t mean he could waltz into her life and take it over, as if the first fifteen years hadn’t meant a thing. He was not her dad, and would never be; she’d gotten along quite nicely for fifteen years without a father. Rob MacKenzie was nothing more than some random stranger who had once known her mother, and who looked a little—okay, if she wanted to be honest, a lot—like Paige herself. A sperm donor. They did not have any kind of father/daughter relationship, and she intended to keep it that way.

  Leroy wagged a greeting, and Casey looked up from her work. She rocked back on her heels and, gardening trowel in hand, adjusted her ridiculous hat. “Good morning!” she said in a tone so saccharine it make Paige’s teeth ache.

  “Hey.”

  “Did you sleep okay?”

  Paige shrugged and said, “Why do you do that? The weeding? It looks like so much work. I’m not sure I get the concept.”

  “If I don’t pull the weeds, they’ll take over. They’ll strangle my poor vegetable plants, and then I won’t get any peas or beans.”

  It still didn’t make sense to her. All that work, when you could just go to the grocery store and buy vegetables in a can. “So what’s with the hat?”

  Casey cocked her head to one side. Sounding surprised, she said, “You don’t think it’s the height of fashion?”

  It took her a minute to realize she was being teased. Paige hardened her resolve, not intending to give an inch. “Ha,” she said.

  “I spend a lot of time in the garden. In the sun. I don’t want to wake up one day at the age of fifty with a face like a dried-up old prune. The hat protects my skin.”