Things to Do When It's Raining

by Marissa Stapley

  She can’t speak. If she does, she’ll break into a thousand pieces.

  “Listen to me, right now.” The female detective leans forward. The hostility in her tone surprises Mae and she glances at the male but he looks away from her. She wishes she could remember their names. “Do you know how many people are getting screwed here? How many people are losing money? What’s going to happen to them? How can they get it back if you don’t talk?”

  Mae leans away and crosses her arms around herself protectively. “Okay. I’ll talk. I am talking. I just . . . sorry.”

  “So, did he ask you to meet him anywhere?” The male again, in his “good cop” voice, but Mae does not uncross her arms.

  “No.”

  “Did you ever wonder why Peter never cosigned on the loan for the business?”

  “He said he had a problem with his credit rating because of a company he tried to start when he first graduated from college.”

  “Earlier, you said you had a feeling something was amiss, but nothing you could formalize. Was this just a sense he was keeping secrets from you? Or was there more to it?”

  “He would often tell me that there were parts of the business I didn’t need to worry about, that he was the one with the business sense. When he started it with Andrew, I asked to be more involved, for a more official title, but he avoided it. Maybe I should have fought him on that, maybe then I would have known everything. I received a merit-based fellowship at Columbia Business School every year. I made the dean’s list every year, too. But . . . I’m sorry, I know maybe that doesn’t matter, but somehow I didn’t feel good enough, not smart enough. Not at Peter’s level. He used to tell me my academic experience wasn’t the ‘real world.’ I always found his disdain for higher education strange, given that he was a Harvard grad.”

  At this, at the mention of Harvard, the female detective raises an eyebrow and smirks. Mae feels something snap and go cold deep inside her, ice water rushing through her veins.

  “I’m afraid that’s not true.”

  “What isn’t?”

  “What exactly did Peter tell you about his past?”

  “That he was from Charleston.”

  “What else?”

  He told me his mother eventually developed a proclivity for drinking Hurricanes out of coffee mugs, thinking no one would know about the liquor—except the concoctions were so strong you could smell them when you walked into a room. He said she died of cirrhosis of the liver, that she would cough blood into monogrammed handkerchiefs. That his father died of a heart attack shortly thereafter, in the bed of the housemaid, the one remaining staff member of the financially ruined family. That there was not a penny left from the former empire after his father ran it into the ground to will to Peter or his brother, Clay—the one who later jumped in front of a train and dragged the family dog along with him. But how could it be that a dog could live that long? If Peter got the dog when he was five, how could it still be alive then, when he was thirty-five?

  “Look, can you just—he was lying to me, obviously. Can you just tell me who he really was and spare me the embarrassment of telling you all the stupid stuff I believed?”

  A long sigh. The male detective won’t meet her eyes again, but finally he’s the one who speaks. “His real name is Bradley Matheson. He has a criminal record for fraud in Michigan, which is where he was born and where he grew up. In Novi. Father unknown, mother unemployed. He never went to Harvard, that’s for sure. He was on probation when he disappeared seven years ago. Ms. Summers, you don’t look well. Let’s break now.”

  He faked an identity, he faked an accent, he faked a life, he faked everything. And he didn’t love me. She closes her eyes against this thought. All of it was a lie. But only a fool would have fallen for it. “No. Keep going.” Eyes still closed, she pictures the inn, the river, her grandparents, Lilly and George. At least she has somewhere to go when this is all over, people to run home to. At least she’s always had, and will always have, the inn. More than just a home. A place where everyone is welcome, no matter how broken they are. She opens her eyes again. “Let’s just get this over with. Please.” So I can go home, where it’s safe.

  Go to the Legion hall and flip through the Book of the Dead. This town had a lot of heroes in WWI and II. My father fought in the war, with his best friend, Everett, whose name is in the Book of the Dead. Look him up: Everett Patrick Green. And my uncle Tommy is in there, too. This town lost a lot.

  George can’t sleep. He had too much rye at the Legion, down the road from the hotel he’s staying at now. He used to pity the men who would stay so late and drink so much. Now he’s one of them, a man who staggers past the Book of the Dead on his way out the door but is not fit to be counted among those heroes whose pictures and stories are inside. Not just because he didn’t die, but because he’s a coward. Even worse, he’s a man living in a hotel room. He sits on the side of the bed and it creaks. There is a perpetual dampness at the corner of each of his eyes now. It doesn’t go away.

  On the floor at his feet is Lilly’s cedar box, the one that holds all her private things: her letters, her memories, her photographs. Birth notices, death notices. All the things she has lost. We have lost. He feels a surge of indignation as he picks it up and places it on the bed beside him. He hears Lilly say it again in his mind: “He was the father of my child.”

  She finally admitted it after all these years. And she admitted more when she didn’t think he was listening. Her “darling” Everett: the truth had come out. And when it did, George had allowed the anger he felt to sweep him away and up, up the stairs and into their bedroom, where he did the first thing he could think of: packed a suitcase. Five pairs of socks but only two pairs of underwear, and no undershirts; this caused him fresh rage every day because he certainly couldn’t go back to the inn and get them, and buying new ones would be a waste.

  That night, the anger swept him, wavelike, back down the stairs and out the front door without a word to his wife of sixty-seven years. On his way past her, where she still sat at that desk with her head in her hands, he picked up her memory box and all the things that went in it, and he left her where she was. Because if he was leaving her, he was not leaving her alone with Everett, with his best friend, even if Everett was long since dead.

  He had paused at the door for just a moment, and she had looked up at him. It was as if she didn’t recognize him. He didn’t recognize himself either, this angry man he’d become.

  He walked into town; he left her the car. Let it not be said that he had left his wife in the lurch. All he had taken from her was this one thing, and he opens the lid of it now. There are flowers carved into the box, and they’re crude but carved with love. Who made her this box? He bets it was Everett, a token of his adoration. He begins to sift, his new habit. Poring through the contents is like ripping off a scab: you do it even though you know the wound will only bleed and need to heal all over again. His age-spotted hand closes on a packet of letters and he eases the decaying rubber band away. He skims the first letter, dated April 18, 1940, his eyes alighting on the familiar refrains of a young soldier at the front, missing home. Then he sees his name, and reads the passage more slowly:

  Thank you for the picture of my beautiful niece. Virginia is a pretty name. I’ll meet her soon. And please, send my regards to George. I’m sure glad to hear those depth-charge injuries have healed up. That was a rough go. For all of you. I’m sorry.

  And then this:

  I think about you all the time, and about your loss. I’m sure you do, too—but I’m glad you have George now. You have a new life, sister. Make the best of it.

  Now I want you to do something for me. Take that baby girl with you, my dear little niece I have yet to meet, and introduce her to the river. I swear to you I would trade anything at all just to come back home and stay in one place, forever and ever. You don’t realize what you have until it’s missing from your life, Lilly. Remember that.

  Love,

&nbs
p; your brother,

  soon to be home (I hope),

  Tommy

  Hope is a funny thing, George thinks. Hope changes nothing, but you think it does until the moment you can’t anymore. Tommy was shot down in the middle of the war, and for a while they said he was MIA. So everyone hoped he’d be found, and he was found—dead in a prison camp. Tommy was George’s friend, not as close as Everett, but still . . . and then he was gone and no one talked about him because it hurt too much.

  With a trembling hand, George puts Tommy’s letter back and picks up another.

  “Everett.” He says it aloud, and it feels as if doing so summons a ghost. Was that the pressure of a hand on his shoulder? Was that the breath of his friend in his ear? No, not here. Everett’s ghost would never haunt these decrepit hallways, these rooms that time and goodwill have forgotten.

  August 4, 1939

  My beautiful Lilly, I lost your picture. We were hit by a wave and your likeness slipped overboard. I need you. I need your picture. Please send me another. When I close my eyes, your face is there. And your hair, and your smell, and the softness of your skin.

  George stops reading. He feels it, as if the bed he is sitting on were moving. Waves like that the body doesn’t forget. Never, no matter how many years you try to pretend you never sailed that particular sea. It all comes back.

  * * *

  George and Everett were on the mess deck on the corvette boat in a tiny compartment, thirty-three-by-twenty-two feet. Each man had a hammock, a locker for his clothing and a metal ditty box for his personal effects, kept in the rack above.

  They had just finished their watch and gone down to the mess decks to try to sleep.

  As usual, Everett had taken out his ditty box. It’s what he always did: he took out the picture of Lilly and then lay on his hammock. “Georgie?” he called over, eyes still on the photo.

  “Mmm?” George was pretending to read, but really he was wishing he could see that photo.

  “Think she’s going to wait for me?”

  George was silent, staring down at the book and not seeing the words.

  “George?” Everett repeated. George lowered the book.

  “Of course she’s going to wait. She loves you. And she’s Lilly.”

  This said it all, didn’t it? She was loyal, knowable and she belonged to Everett. Except—George closed his eyes for just a moment. Except there was the memory of her lips against his, so fast perhaps they were never really there, like butterfly wings in a dream.

  “Thanks, mate,” Everett said. “You’re a good friend.”

  George felt like he was choking suddenly, on his own disloyalty, his own want for something that belonged to his best friend. His brother in arms. The day before, George had been sick over the side of the boat in some particularly rough waters, and a fellow crew member had muttered something about George being a milquetoast. Everett had the guy up against the wall so fast, spitting insults into his ear until he apologized to George and skulked away.

  “You, too, Everett. You, too,” George managed, then covered his mouth with his hand.

  Everett frowned, concerned. “How’s the gut now? Feeling okay?”

  “Oh, yes, much better today.”

  Everett went back to looking at Lilly’s photo and George went back to pretending to read. That kiss. He thought about it all the time. As a memory, it was faded and frayed, because he had taken it out and pondered it so many times. They had gone for a walk the day before he was to leave. She was mostly silent, walking with him beside the river as they had so many other times. Until she stopped and said, “George, please be careful.” And then her lips like rose petals against his own, and then her body, her heartbeat, her warmth, her scent. George had been rendered senseless by the unexpected combination of all the things that made her Lilly. And he had done nothing, had not even moved his lips or lifted his arms to place them on her back, had not pulled her in. Too soon, she was gone and his lips were moving against air, his hands were reaching out for nothing. He didn’t want to go, he wanted to tell her he was scared, but he couldn’t tell anyone because they were all scared.

  He felt foolish. He had given it too much meaning. She had probably just been giving him a friendly peck, a pal’s embrace. They had known each other forever, and he was going off to war. Life was not normal. Kisses didn’t mean anything at times like those—or they did, but that meaning would have no place in the world when the war was over.

  He closed his eyes again, about to imagine her face in Everett’s photo, when the ship shuddered. Torpedo!

  No, it was a wave. Not certain death, only the possibility of it. They were tossed from their hammocks, flung with bruising force to the floor. He knew he was going to be sick again, but managed to hold it in.

  “Shit!” Everett was on the floor beside him. “You all right, George?” George saw Everett’s hands, scrabbling around on the ground. For a moment he thought maybe he was hurt, but then he realized his friend had lost hold of Lilly’s photo.

  But there were other things to worry about. The ship was going over. The emergency alarm was screaming for all hands on deck. George spotted the photograph. He was on all fours, reaching for it—and Everett didn’t see because George placed his hand over it so quickly.

  “We have to go up,” George said.

  Everett stopped his frantic search. When he turned to head onto deck, George slipped the photo into his pocket. Then he followed his friend.

  The ship rolled onto its right side, and it seemed there was nowhere else for it to go except all the way over, but it didn’t somehow. George and Everett made their way out to the wheelhouse to help shore things up. As they worked, all George could think about was the photograph crammed in his pocket, wet, possibly wrecked, but there.

  He should have given it back to Everett. But he did not. Not then. Not ever.

  It’s upstairs, at home, hidden in his old ditty box at the back of a closet. It’s been there for seventy years. And Lilly has never known.

  She’s not the only one with secrets. And he has another one, too: he has a new friend. His friend is Jonah Broadbent. He’s having breakfast with him tomorrow, and Lilly wouldn’t like that. Which is partly why he’s doing it—but it’s not the only reason.

  Play charades.

  For weeks, Mae is asked to come into the police station to talk to the detectives—she calls them “Good Cop” and “Bad Cop” in her mind, depending on their mood and the day, until she finally finds their cards in the pocket of a pair of jeans she retrieves from the bedroom floor and drags over her legs one morning: detectives Nick Lamoglea and Anna Baker, from the NYPD.

  Sometimes she sees coworkers passing through the doors of the station as she is coming in. Every time, she wishes for the courage to say something, but instead she looks away, ashamed. She brings Bud with her wherever she goes. At the police station, he’s always at her feet.

  There’s a knot of anxiety in her stomach, and it’s growing every day. She throws up sometimes, can manage only plain toast and tea, drinks Pepto-Bismol straight out of the bottle and congratulates herself because at least it’s not vodka. One night, while she sits in the apartment—Peter’s apartment, it doesn’t matter how much of her stuff is in it, it’s not hers and she knows that now—staring at the television, the landlord knocks and tells her the rent has not been paid for two months. He’s been trying to call Peter but his phone isn’t on.

  “That’s right,” Mae says. “His phone isn’t on because he committed a felony and fled the country.”

  The landlord blinks at her a few times, as if he’s trying to decide if she’s joking. “I’ll get you the money. I’ll have a check for you on Friday.” This isn’t true: she has no money because her account is frozen and she maxed out her credit cards on office furniture.

  When he’s gone, she returns to the couch and stares at the television again. She’s not going to stay here. She needs to go home, as soon as Good Cop and Bad Cop tell her she’s free
. It will be quiet there. There’s the past to contend with, there always is, but it will still be peaceful. The river will be frozen and silent, the town empty of tourists. She can keep herself busy by doing some of the repairs she noticed were in need of addressing when she and Peter were there at Christmas. She had been hoping he wouldn’t notice, because she had painted such a pristine picture of it for him before they arrived. But how could he not have seen the water damage from a burst pipe, the aging roofs on the guest cabins, the worn carpets, that one kitchen cupboard hanging askew?

  Mae puts her face in her hands. How is she going to tell her grandparents about this? They wanted more for her, she wanted more for herself, but it’s not just that. They invested money in WindSpan, too. It had been her idea, but Peter had let her go through with it. And all those repairs are going to take money.

  She stands, shuts off the lights and goes to bed. After she closes her eyes she hears Bud pad into the room and jump up to join her where she is lying, fully clothed. He weighs down the side that used to be Peter’s, and when she reaches out, he licks her hand. And she wishes, for just a moment, that once upon a time Peter really did have a dog named Earl, that this one thing was true, that for what it was worth, maybe there was a time when he was just a boy with a dog.

  Tomorrow, she’ll ask the detectives how much more she has to endure. She’ll ask if she can go home. As the sleeping pill she took earlier finally kicks in and halcyon drowsiness dulls the edges of her pain, she sees it, thank God, she had trouble picturing it today, during a short break at the police station when they finally left her alone: Summers’ Inn, perched at the edge of the Saint Lawrence, where the water flows into the bay. She sees the yellow-gray stone walls, the navy blue shutters on every window, the red roof, the weather vane in the shape of a sturgeon. She sees it as it was, not as it is. She sees the guest cabins and the dock and the white-painted boathouse and the old gas pump. She sees the fir trees lined up along the bank, their needles the color of army fatigues in peacetime. She sees the wide-girthed oak tree with its whorled bark, the rope hanging from its thick branch. And she sees herself and Gabe—Damn you, Gabe—swinging and splashing, over and over, two children, best friends. She sees his little boat with the outboard motor. She sees his face. She sees the islands, the white chalk on the rocks, the numbers and the names: Blueberry. Rachel’s. Half Moon. And Island 51.